講道與書信 第 193 章 第 2/2 段

What then must we for the present judge concerning so many and so great changes and additions of letters, which we detect in those names that Beausobre has heaped together, in order to designate the origin and properties of the word 'Manes'? But even granting freely that his manner of discoursing ought to be called neither trifling nor fabulous, what follows from it? Will 'Manes' now be a name of honor, because in the Scriptures of the Old Testament a certain king of the Israelites was called by that word? Was not the name of Judah in that same Testament honorable and most worthy of praise? Yet if we consult the New Testament, we shall find that there was one man, who had been a disciple of Christ and was called Judas, who was wicked, a traitor, sacrilegious, and the source of many evils.

Did he then also obtain a royal origin, and was the scepter of the Israelites owed to him? Away with such a figment! But since it might be counted a fault to linger too long over these matters, we pass over almost innumerable examples which would more forcefully constrain Beausobre and overthrow his inept conjectures. But what is to be said concerning the name 'Paraclete,' which Manes had rashly assumed to himself, we shall now explain from Leo the Great and others, so as more abundantly to refute the rest of Beausobre's false conjectures. 8. Beginning now to treat of the dogmas of Manes, we ought above all to report that one which furnishes the foundations for all the rest, upon which that whole engine of sacrileges and fables had been constructed by that most impious architect.

And first there is set before us that portent of blasphemy into which Manes burst forth, as soon as he began to scatter his wicked heresy among the common people. With sacrilegious boasting, therefore, he gloried in a divine power given to himself; and, in order to display the might and authority of a supernal Deity, and to win for himself the people's faith and veneration, at one moment he strove to show forth the form of Christ's own nature, at another he proclaimed himself to be the very Paraclete. This last point Beausobre calls into doubt;

and, convinced by the testimony of others—although he does not dare to deny that Manes was called Paraclete and comforter—he nevertheless contends that he obtained that appellation rather from that widow who had adopted Manes as her son and heir, and who, having first granted him his liberty, wished to have him as the comforter of her widowhood and old age. For he affirms that he cannot believe the world and mankind to have been so stupid as to give credence to this crude artifice and to have been willing to be deceived by it.

Therefore it seems more agreeable to reason, he says, that—his condition of servitude having been changed by his benefactress—he wished to add some syllable to her name, so that, become as it were a new man, on account of which he tries to prove, by the testimony of Dom Assemani (who writes that the name 'Maanus' was familiar both to Syrian and to Arab kings), that the name was very honorable. But that Eusebius of Caesarea opposes these fabulous conjectures, Beausobre (vol. I, bk. I, ch. 6) either wholly dissembled, or was unwilling to notice.

For he—who could borrow the deeds done by Manes neither from Cyril of Jerusalem nor from Epiphanius, being as he was more ancient than those writers, but rather from more venerable documents preserved in the archives of the Churches, as he attests in his preface—describing the history of ecclesiastical affairs, says, in the time of Pope Felix: 'A certain Manes, raving in accordance with his own name, and driven by the instigation of a demon, teaches a heresy hateful and execrable to all.' Behold, then, how Eusebius sets forth the genuine name of the heretic, explains its etymology and signification, and at the same time indicates those demonic aids which he used to disseminate his errors hither and thither.

That Manes obtained this madness, or frenzy, by demonic art, he again recalls in that place, and appeals to the outcome of the deeds done by him, in order to persuade his readers of it. Whence, after this, about to prove what he had said, he immediately subjoins that which we adduced a little before, namely: 'At one moment he strove to bear the form of Christ; at another he proclaimed himself to be the very Paraclete.' Eusebius therefore wished to persuade three things: first, that the heretic was called by the Persians 'Manes,' not 'Manahem'; second, that the frenzy, audacity, and madness had been fulfilled in him by the power of a demon;

third, that, by lyingly imitating the form and likeness of Christ the Lord, he feigned this, and proclaimed himself to have been sent as the Paraclete for the solace and instruction of the world and the Church. Who does not understand that these three things plainly overthrow the conjectures of Beausobre's fables, if now, being about to persuade his disciples of all his sacrilegious inventions, he first devised this: that he should feign himself, as it were, an apostle from Christ and a comforter of men, and pretend himself to have been sent? And lest I should seem to censure and reproach Beausobre unjustly as a fabler, let me be permitted to appeal to Leo the Great, pontiff of the Roman

Church, who, in the general inquisition held at Rome against the Manichaeans there lurking, anxiously wished to search out what they believed and what the disciples of Manes dared to teach. And indeed that the Manichaean disciples had believed, or at least had preached, this blasphemy, he explained not obscurely in the following words:

'His disciples, that they might seem to follow some great and sublime author, believed that in their master Manes the Holy Spirit had appeared, and that the Paraclete promised by the Lord had not come before this deceiver of the wretched arose, in whom the Spirit of God so remained that Manes himself was none other than the Spirit, who through the ministry of a bodily voice and tongue would lead his disciples into all truth.'

The truth of the facts, therefore, ought to conquer and snatch away every contrary conjecture of Beausobre. Nay, without any hesitation of mind it ought to persuade us that Manes opened for himself a way—by that most palpable and blasphemous falsehood especially—to so many and so great sacrilegious dogmas, which either corrupt or utterly overthrow the more sacred mysteries of the Catholic faith. But let us return to the order of the history. 9. For this cause, therefore, the heretic strove to procure for himself the books of sacred Scripture with money, so that he might by these enticements draw Christian men to himself, mixing certain truths with lies and fables. By which art, namely, while he was striving to render his sect more plausible, he gradually instilled his errors into the minds of others.

Moreover, by magical arts and by illusions he corroborated all these things, which he certainly used for deceiving men; while he did not shrink from sometimes attempting arduous tasks utterly impossible to human and diabolical powers. As when he attempted, by a fruitless effort, to cure the son of the king of the Persians, who was destitute of the aid of physicians and laboring under a grievous disease.

Having laid these sacrilegious and superstitious foundations, therefore, disseminating other dogmas (says Eusebius), foolish and impious, borrowed from various heretics who had already before been extinguished, he undermined the Catholic religion with Persian poisons, and utterly corrupted it. Among his other fabrications, borrowed from Marcion, Valentinus, Carpocrates, and other authors of the Gnostic sect, the following are wont to be numbered: namely, that there are two principles of all things, God, that is, and the devil; from the former he taught that all good things, from the latter all evil things, are produced; that the former is the fount of all virtue and perfection, from whom he derived the New Testament, but that the latter is the author of sin and of the Old Testament;

that the substance of men had been produced by both Gods, yet in such a manner that that good God created only the souls, but that material bodies, being as it were imperfect and forever subject to corruptions and vicissitudes, drew their origin from no other than the evil God. He wholly took away free will from men, introducing fate and necessity into our human affairs. Moreover, he denied the true incarnation of Christ, and contended that He had assumed only a phantom body:

and he taught the peoples other things of this kind which, as we have said, had been drawn partly from the most foul cesspools of the ancient heresiarchs, partly from the absurd dogmas of the gentile philosophers, partly from the institutions of the Christian religion itself perversely or wrongly explained—all which insipid fables and feigned dreams were more brilliantly described by St. Epiphanius.

By these, therefore, and by other sacrilegious dogmas, Manes strove to make himself great and illustrious above the other authors of heresies. Meanwhile, that most detestable impostor, in order to display great authority over men and to draw especially the common folk—who attend to nothing but the outer husks of things—into his opinions, feigned to imitate Christ the Lord, the Savior of the human race, both in those things which pertain to the choosing of disciples, and in others which pertain to the apostolic mission. Which will appear more fully in the following chapter, when we shall undertake to treat of the number of these disciples.