And yet, if it were credible, we should want not to believe it, but to know it. For he who says that the Persians and Scythians warred with each other many years ago says a credible thing, yet one which we can believe as either heard or read, not know as experienced and grasped. Since, then, I would repudiate this man if he said any such thing—for he did not promise things I should be compelled to believe, but things I could know without any ambiguity—how shall I not repudiate him when he says things not only uncertain but even incredible? But what if by some reasonings he will make these things clear and known? Let us hear then, if we can, with all patience and gentleness, what follows.
'These indeed,' he says, 'in the beginning were two substances divided from each other. And the empire of light God the Father held in his holy stock, everlasting, magnificent in power, true by his very nature, ever exulting in his proper eternity, containing within himself wisdom and vital senses, through which he also comprehended the twelve members of his light—the overflowing riches, namely, of his own kingdom. And in each of his members are stored thousands of innumerable and immense treasures.'
'But the Father himself, preeminent in his own praise, incomprehensible in greatness, has joined to himself blessed and glorious ages, to be estimated neither by number nor by extent, with whom the same holy and illustrious Father and Begetter dwells, none in his kingdoms being set as either needy or lowly among his notables. And so his most splendid kingdoms are founded upon the shining and blessed earth, so that they can never by any be either moved or shaken.' Whence is he going to prove these things to me, or whence did he himself learn them? Do not terrify me with the name of the Paraclete. First, because I approached, made more fearful by you yourselves, not to believe things unknown but to know things certain.
For you know how vehemently you are wont to mock those who believe rashly, especially since he himself, who has now begun to narrate uncertain things, promised full and firm knowledge a little before. Next, because, if faith is to be commanded of me, that Scripture rather terrifies me, where I read that the Holy Spirit came and inspired the apostles, to whom the Lord had promised he would send him. Wherefore, either prove to me that the things he says are true, so that you may show what I cannot believe, or prove to me that he who says them is the Holy Spirit, so that I may believe what you cannot show. For I profess the catholic faith and presume that through it I shall arrive at certain knowledge;
but you, who try to shake my faith, hand over certain knowledge, if you can, so that you may convince me that I have rashly believed what I did believe. There are two things which you offer me: one, when you say that it is the Holy Spirit who speaks, and the other, when you say that the things he speaks are manifest. Both of these I ought to know from you without any doubt; but I am not greedy—teach me one of these. Show that this is the Holy Spirit, and I will believe that the things he says are true, even if I do not know them; or show that the things he says are true, and I will believe that he is the Holy Spirit, even if I do not know it. Can there be any fairer or more benevolent dealing with you? But you are able to show neither this nor that. You have chosen nothing else but to praise what you believe and to mock what I believe.
When, therefore, I in turn shall have praised what I believe and mocked what you believe, what do you suppose is to be judged by us, or what is to be done, except that we leave behind those who invite us to know certain things and afterward command that we believe uncertain things—and follow those who invite us first to believe what we are not yet able to behold, so that, made stronger by that very faith, we may deserve to understand what we believe, no longer by men, but by God himself inwardly illuminating and strengthening our mind? And since I have asked whence he may prove it to me, now I ask whence he himself has come to know it.
If he says that it was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit and that his own mind was divinely illuminated, so that he might know as certain and manifest the things he says, he himself indicates what the difference is between knowing and believing. For he himself knows, to whom these things are shown most openly; but to those to whom he narrates them, he does not instill knowledge, but persuades to credulity. And whoever rashly consents to him is made a Manichaean, not by knowing certain things, but by believing uncertain things—just as he once deceived us, unlearned young men. He ought therefore not to have promised us knowledge, nor manifest cognition, nor an arrival at what is sought without any ambiguity,
—an arrival, without any ambiguity, at what is sought; but rather he ought to have said that these things were shown to him, but that those to whom they are narrated ought to believe him concerning what they do not know. But if he said this, who would not reply to him: If, then, I am going to believe things unknown, why should I not rather believe those things which are now celebrated by the consent of learned and unlearned alike and are confirmed among all peoples by the weightiest authority? Fearing lest this be said to him, he pours out fogs upon the unlearned, first promising the knowledge of certain things, and afterward commanding the belief of uncertain things. Yet if it be said to him that he should at least teach that these things were shown to him, he likewise fails, and commands us to believe this too. Who would endure such deceit and such pride?
What? If, with the help of God our Lord, I shall have shown that the things he says are not only uncertain but even false, what more wretched thing can be found than this superstition, which not only does not exhibit the knowledge and truth which it promises, but says things which are vehemently contrary to knowledge and truth? This will appear more manifestly in what follows. For he speaks thus: 'Along one part and side of that illustrious and holy earth was the land of darkness, deep and of immense magnitude, in which dwelt fiery bodies—pestilential kinds, that is. Here were infinite shadows flowing from the same nature, immeasurable, with their own offspring; beyond which were miry and turbid waters with their inhabitants;'
'within which were horrible and violent winds with their prince and progenitors. Again, a fiery and corruptible region with its leaders and nations. In like manner, further within, a race full of gloom and smoke, in which dwelt the monstrous prince of all and leader, having around him innumerable princes, of all of whom he himself was the mind and origin: and these were the five natures of the pestilential land.' If he said that the nature of God was an airy or even ethereal body, he would assuredly be laughed at by all who are able—with whatever keenness of a now more serene mind—to behold the nature of wisdom and truth, extended and diffused through no spaces of places, great and magnificent without any mass, neither lesser in a part nor greater in a part, but through all things equal to the supreme Father,
having neither one thing here and another elsewhere, but everywhere whole, everywhere present. But what shall I say of truth and wisdom, which surpass all the powers of the soul—since the very nature of the soul, which is found to be mutable, in no way occupies the spaces of places with any mass of its own? For whatever is of any thickness whatever cannot but be diminished part by part, having one thing here and another elsewhere. For a finger is less than the whole hand, and one finger is less than two, and this finger is in one place, that in another, and the rest of the hand in another. Which we see not only in the jointed masses of bodies, but even this part of the earth is not there where that part is, because each thing occupies its own place;
and a smaller part of a liquid is in a smaller place, and a greater in a greater; and one part is around the bottom, another around the rims of the cup. Likewise the parts of air each fill their own places. Nor can it come to pass that the air with which this house is filled can have with it, in the same house, also that air which the neighbours have. And of light itself, one part is poured through this window, another through that, and a greater through a greater, a lesser through a lesser. Nor can there be at all any body—whether celestial or terrestrial or airy or watery—which is not less in a part than in the whole:
nor could it in any way have in the place of this part another part at the same time, but, having one thing here and another elsewhere, it is stretched out through any spaces of places whatever by a mass that is distant and divided, or rather, so to speak, sectile. But the nature of the soul—even if that power of it be not considered by which it understands truth, but that lower power by which it holds together the body and perceives in the body—is in no way found to be stretched out through the spaces of places by any mass. For it is wholly present to the several particles of its body, since it wholly perceives in the several parts; nor is a lesser part of it in the finger and a greater in the arm, just as the finger itself is smaller than the arm, but everywhere it is as great, because everywhere it is whole. For when a finger is touched,
it does not perceive throughout the whole body, and yet it wholly perceives. For that touch does not escape the whole; which would not happen unless it were wholly present. Nor is it so wholly present, when the finger is touched and it perceives in the finger, that it should for the rest desert the body and gather itself together to that one place in which it perceives. But when the hand wholly perceives in the finger, if another place be touched in the foot, it does not there cease to perceive wholly; and thus in the several distant places it is wholly present at the same time, not deserting the one so as to be whole in the other, nor holding both in such a way as to have one part here and another elsewhere, but sufficing to exhibit itself wholly to the several places at the same time, since—because it wholly perceives in the several parts—it sufficiently shows that it is not held by the spaces of places. What?
What if we consider its memory—not of intelligible things, but of these corporeal ones, which even beasts are perceived to have? For beasts too proceed without error through known places, and beasts return to their own lairs, and dogs recognize the bodies of their masters, and while sleeping they often mutter and sometimes burst into barking—which they could in no way do, unless images of things seen, or somehow perceived through the body, were turning in their memory. Who could worthily consider where those images are received, where they are carried, or where they are formed? For if they could not be greater than the quantity of our body could hold, one might say that within the very spaces of its own body, by which the soul too is enclosed,
the soul shapes and preserves these images. But as it is, since the body occupies a very tiny portion of the earth, the mind revolves images of immense regions and of heaven and earth, which, departing and succeeding in troops, do not make it cramped; and hence it shows itself not to be diffused through places, because it is not, as it were, captured by the images of the greatest places, but rather captures them—not by any fold or recess, but by an ineffable power, by which it is permitted to them both to add whatever it will and to take away, and to contract them into a narrow space and to expand them through immense extents, and to arrange them as it wishes, and to disturb and multiply them, and to reduce them to fewness or singularity. What now shall I say of that power—
By what faculty is truth understood — that faculty by which, when the very images drawn from bodily sense set themselves up in place of truth, they are resisted with great vigour? By what faculty is it seen that the true Carthage, for instance, is one thing, and that which a man fashions by thinking and, according to his own pleasure, changes with complete ease is another; that from this same ease there come the innumerable worlds through which the thought of Epicurus wandered without number; and — not to pursue many examples — that from this same ease there come both that earth of light spread abroad through infinite spaces and the five dens of the race of darkness with their inhabitants, in which the Manichaeans have dared to usurp for their phantasms the name of truth? What then is this power that discerns these things?
Assuredly, however great it be, it is both greater than all these things and is conceived without any such imagining of material things. Find spaces for it, if you can; spread it out through places; stretch it by the swelling of an infinite mass. Assuredly, if you think rightly, you cannot. For whatever such thing occurs to you, you judge by that very act of thinking that it can be cut into parts, and there you make one part smaller and another larger, as much as you please; but that very faculty by which you judge these things you perceive to be above them — not by loftiness of place, but by the dignity of its power. Wherefore, if the soul, so often changeable — whether by the crowd of its varied wills, or by its affections bending itself according to the abundance or want of things, or by the innumerable plays of phantasms themselves,
or by forgetfulness and memory, or by learning and ignorance — if, then, you perceive that the soul, as I said, though so often changeable by these and suchlike motions, is nevertheless not spread out and extended through places, but by the vigour of its power surpasses all such spaces, what must be thought or judged concerning God himself, who, abiding unshaken and unchangeable above all rational minds, bestows on each what is to be bestowed? Him the soul dares more easily to utter than to see, and the more sincerely it has been able to see him, the less does it utter him.
Yet if, as the phantasms of the Manichaeans clamour, he were bounded on one side by place and stretched on the others through immeasurable space, then however many little portions and innumerable fragments there might be in him, some greater, some smaller, they would be measured according to the thinker's arbitrary will, so that, for example, a two-foot part in him would be eight parts smaller than a ten-foot part. For this must necessarily befall all natures which, being diffused through such spaces, cannot be wholly everywhere — which is not found in the soul itself, and which is shamefully and basely believed of it by those who lack the strength to consider these matters.
Nevertheless, with carnal minds one must perhaps not proceed thus, but rather descend to the thoughts of those who, in their thinking, either do not dare or are not yet able to pursue an incorporeal and spiritual nature — so much so that they do not even consider their own thought by that same thought and find it, though it occupies no space of place, judging concerning the very spaces of place. Let us therefore descend to their manner of perceiving and ask them: on which part, or on which side, according as the Manichaean says, was the land of darkness alongside that illustrious and holy land? For he says, "On one part and side," but does not say which part or which side — right or left. But whichever they choose, this at least is manifest: that one is not said to be one side
unless there is where there is another side. But where there are either three or more sides, either the circuit of a figure is understood to be bounded on every side, or, if on some part it lies open into the immeasurable, it must nevertheless be bounded by those which are called sides. Let them tell us, then: on the other side, or on the other sides, what was joined to the land of light, if on one side there was the race of darkness? They do not say; but when they are pressed to say it, they say that the other sides of that land which they call the land of light are infinite — that is, that it is stretched out through infinite spaces and confined by no limit. Nor do they understand that then these are no longer sides — a thing most obvious even to any slow wits; for they would be sides only if they were bounded by their limits. "What is it to me," he says, "if there are no sides?"
But when you said "on one part and side," you compelled another part too, or parts, and another side, or sides, to be understood. For if there was only one side, it ought to have been said simply "alongside the side," not "alongside one side." Just as in our body we rightly say that something is alongside one eye, because there is another eye, or alongside one breast, because there is another. But if we should say alongside one nose or alongside one navel, when there is no other, we shall be laughed at by learned and unlearned alike. But I do not press you with words; for perhaps you meant "one" as "only." What, then, was alongside that side of the land which you call illustrious and holy? "The land," he says, "of darkness." What? Do you at least grant concerning this land that it was corporeal?
You must needs say this, since you assert that all bodies derive their origin thence. What then, I ask? Though slow, though carnal men, have you never even at any time noticed this — that these two lands could not be joined to each other by sides unless each were corporeal? Why then was it told us, perverted as we were by some blindness, that only the land of darkness had been or was corporeal, but that the one which was called the land of light ought to be believed incorporeal and spiritual? Let us at last wake up, good men, at least when admonished — which is very easy. Let us attend to the fact that two lands cannot be joined to each other by sides unless each is a body. Or if we are too gross and dull even for these things, I ask:
whether the land of darkness itself also had one side and the rest infinite, like the land of light. They do not believe so, for they fear lest it should seem equal to God. They say therefore that it is immeasurable in depth and in length; but upward, above it, they affirm spaces of infinite emptiness. And lest even it should seem to hold a single measure while the land of light held a double, they narrow it on two sides as well — as if, say, a single loaf (for what is being said can more easily be seen thus) were formed crosswise into four squares, of which three were white, one black. Now from the three white ones remove the distinction and make them infinite both upward and downward and everywhere behind: thus by them is the land of light believed to be.
But that black square make infinite downward and behind, while having above itself an immeasurable emptiness: thus they suppose the land of darkness to be. But these things they display, as it were as secrets, only to those who inquire very attentively and eagerly. Nevertheless, if it is so, it appears that the land of darkness is touched by the land of light on two sides; and surely if it is touched by two, it also touches by two. Certainly the land of darkness was alongside one side. Then how foul the figure of the land of light appears! — like a cloven hoof pinched below by a certain black wedge, bounded only there where it is cleft, gaping too and lying open above with an emptiness set between: whatever there is immeasurably upward from the surface of the land of darkness.
Then how much better is shown the figure of the land of darkness itself, since indeed the one cleaves, the other is cleft; the one is inserted, the other lies open between; the one gives place within itself to no emptiness, the other is not loose only in its lower part, where it is filled up by the hostile wedge. Unlearned men, then, and greedy, when they assign greater honour to a multitude of parts than to unity, so as to give six parts to the land of light — three downward, three upward — they preferred that the land of light be penetrated rather than penetrate. For by such a figure, even though they deny it to be commingled, yet they cannot deny it to be penetrated. Compare now the men of the catholic faith, though not spiritual,
in whom, as far as the mind can in this life, one discerns that the divine substance and nature is stretched out by no spaces of place, figured by no dimensions of outline. But compare our carnal and little ones, who, on hearing certain members of our body spoken of allegorically — as when the eyes of God and the ears of God are mentioned, and who by the license of imagination are wont to figure God to themselves under the form of a human body — compare these now with those Manichaeans, who are wont to describe these trifles to attentive and curious men as though they were great secrets; and consider which of them feel more tolerably and more honourably concerning God: whether those who think of him under a human form endowed with the highest dignity in its own kind, or those
who think of him as diffused in an infinite mass, yet not on every side, but infinite and dense in three squares, while cleft on one side — lying open, gaping, loose above with emptiness, wedged below with the land of darkness; or, if it is better so to speak, open above by its own nature, entered below by an alien one? Behold, I laugh together with you at carnal men, who cannot yet think spiritual things, judging God to be of human form; but do you too laugh with me, if you can, at those who imagine so misshapen and base a fissure or rent of God — so emptily gaping above, so dishonourably stopped up below — with a most pitiable act of thought; since there is also this difference, that those carnal men who think of God in human form,
if content within the bosom of the catholic Church, where they must be nourished with milk, do not cast themselves headlong into rash opinions, but there nourish a pious zeal of seeking — there let them seek that they may receive, there let them knock that it may be opened to them — begin to understand the allegories and parables of the Scriptures spiritually, and gradually to perceive that the divine powers are fittingly named now by the term of ears, now of eyes, now of hands or feet or even of wings and feathers, of shield too and sword and helmet and the rest of such innumerable things. The more they advance in this understanding, the more they are confirmed to be catholics; whereas the Manichaeans, once they have abandoned the imagining of that figure, will not be able to be Manichaeans.
For they ascribe this as something proper and pre-eminent to the praises of their founder: that they say those divine mysteries which were placed figuratively in the books by the ancients were reserved to be unravelled and shown by him who was to come last; and that on this account, after this man, no teacher would henceforth come from God, because he had said nothing through figures and allegories, since he both opened up the ancient things which had been such, and set forth his own plainly and manifestly. These men, then, have no interpretations to which they may resort, when it is read to them concerning their founder: "But alongside one part and side of that illustrious and holy land was the land of darkness."
Wherever they turn, it is inevitable that, cramped by the misery of their phantasms, they fall into clefts, or abrupt truncations and junctures, or most base props — things which it is most wretched to believe not, I will say, of the unchangeable nature of God, but of any incorporeal nature whatever, however changeable, as the soul is. And yet, if I could not strain myself toward higher things, nor unfold my thoughts out of the false imaginings which, fixed by memory, I carry through the bodily senses, into the liberty and sincerity of a spiritual nature, how much better would I think of God under the form of a human body than affix to him that black wedge of his lower cleft, and, finding no way to plug up his upper vastest looseness,
whence I might stop it up, and so leave it lying open and gaping with an immeasurable emptiness — how much better would that be! What is more foul than that opinion? What more dark can be said or feigned than this error? Then I wish it to be told me — since I read of God the Father and of his kingdoms founded above the luminous and blessed land — whether the Father and his kingdoms and the land are of one and the same substance and nature. And if it is so, then it is no longer some other nature, as it were a body of God, that the wedge of the race of darkness cleaves and penetrates — which itself would already be most base with unspeakable deformity — but the very nature of God altogether that the wedge of the land of darkness cleaves and penetrates.
I beg you, consider these things — you are men — I beg you, consider these things and flee them; and tear out and drive away from your faith the sacrileges of such phantasms with breasts rent, if it can be done. Or will you say that those three are not of one and the same nature, but that the Father is of one, the kingdoms of another, the land of another, so that each has its own diverse natures and substances, ranked by grades of excellence? But if that is true, then Manichaeus ought to have proclaimed not two, but four natures. If, however, the Father and the kingdoms have one nature, but the land alone a different one, then three natures ought to have been proclaimed.
Or if for this reason he preferred to say two — because the land of darkness does not pertain to God — I ask, how does the land of light pertain to God? For if it both has a different nature and he neither begot it nor made it, then it does not pertain to him, and his kingdoms are situated in another's domain. Or if it pertains for this reason, that it is near, then let the land of darkness pertain too, which touches the land of light not only by nearness, but even furrows it through by penetration. But if he begot it, it ought not to be believed to have a different nature; for what God begot, that ought to be believed to be what God is, just as concerning the only-begotten Son it is believed in the catholic faith.
And so necessity recalls you to fleeing and detesting that baseness, so that it is not a land, as it were another and diverse, but the very nature of God that the black wedge cleaves. But if God did not beget it, but made it, I ask, whence did he make it? If out of himself, what else is that than to have begotten it? If out of some alien nature, I ask, whether good or evil. If good, then there was some good nature which did not pertain to God — which you will in no way dare to say. But if evil, then that race of darkness was not the only evil nature. Or perhaps God had already taken from it some part which he might convert into the land of light and establish his kingdoms upon it? Then he would have done it out of the whole, so that even long ago there would have been no evil nature at all.
But if he did not make the land of light out of an alien substance, it remains that he made it out of nothing. Wherefore, if you are now persuaded that Almighty God can make something good out of nothing, come into the catholic Church and learn that all the natures which God made and founded are ranked by grades of excellence from the highest to the lowest, all good, but some more excellent than others; and that they were made out of nothing, since God the Artificer, by his wisdom, wrought, so to speak, potentially, so that what was not might be, and, insofar as it existed, might be good; but insofar as it should be defective, might show that it was not begotten of God, but made by him out of nothing.