講道與書信 第 194 章 第 2/2 段

Nay rather, we judge it to lie altogether hidden how he could be called a cultivator of such great virtue, whom we do not know to have dispersed the riches he had obtained through the widow's inheritance. Therefore he ought to have subjoined how, when, or to what uses he had spent the inherited riches: whether on feeding the poor and the sick, whether on enriching friends and kinsmen, or finally whether he accomplished some notable work of piety, so as to reduce himself to extreme poverty. That Manes obtained the immense riches of Scythianus and of the widow whose slave he had been, Beausobre did not deny in the preceding chapters.

Therefore it would have most befitted a more accurate and more diligent writer, such as he boasts himself to be, to reconcile these two mutually repugnant things together according to the best rules of critics, lest he introduce insipid narrations into his new history of the Manichaeans. Since he had omitted to do this, we draw the conclusion that Manes either affected outwardly no poverty at all, or at least only the appearance of poverty. 4. These things therefore having been thus briefly noted, let us return to the order of the history. Sapor therefore, king of the Persians, grieving from his heart at the destruction of the royal son, was so prepared to rage against the author of the perpetrated crime, that he should pay the penalties both of a murderer and of a most audacious and most wicked impostor.

Manes therefore is arrested, and thrust into the prison of the citadel he is detained, while his disciples, whom he had led with him, visited him. Some of these, since he had already long before perhaps sent to Jerusalem, or into other regions of the Christians, to procure volumes of the New and Old Testament, he had determined to abuse these books, in order the more easily to delude and deceive the worshippers of the Christian name. Having set out (says Epiphanius, ibid., no. 5), the disciples buy those books without any delay interposed. Then returning to their master, now deprived of liberty, having entered the prison they offer the books. Amid the leisure of the prison therefore, Manes began diligently to unroll the received books of the divine Scriptures.

And although he feigned to adopt and receive the New Testament, nevertheless by his rash presumptions, in almost innumerable places, he corrupted and depraved it, now by subtracting those things which convicted his lying and wicked life, now by supposing sundry additions which might add strength to the errors, fables, and delusions of his impious sect. Many of this impostor's misdeeds, blasphemies, foulnesses, false and lying promises, and disgraces, addressing the catechumens, Cyril of Jerusalem enumerates and exaggerates. Nowhere, however, does he make mention of the volumes of the Scriptures corrupted by him while he was detained in prison. But he especially holds him up to mockery, that he fled from prison. Therefore he subjoins:

For he who said that he was the Paraclete and the champion of the truth, fled; not a successor or imitator of Christ, who went eagerly to the cross; but by fleeing he was contrary to Him. 5. But a flight of this kind from prison, or an escape, would have been altogether impossible for the Manichaean, unless the guards, bound by avarice and sloth, had complied with his wishes. That most crafty man had assuredly known that the prefect of the public custody could, by these two means, namely by entreaties and by monies, be overcome and corrupted. And therefore, both aids having been applied without delay, he easily broke his chains. The matter Epiphanius narrates in nearly these terms (ibid., no. 5):

Meanwhile, the jailer having been prevailed upon by a great sum of money and by unremitting entreaties, he seized flight, and having left Persia, he enters the borders of the Romans. The anger of the Persian king, which Manes then escaped, the guards of the prison (says the praised Cyril) experienced monstrously. For their infidelity, or even avarice, having been discovered by the king, he inflicted upon them the penalty of death, by which he had decreed to punish the Manichaean; so that that same man who was the cause of the death of the royal boy should also, through his flight, become the cause of the death of the guards. Amid so many and so great perils of life therefore, prepared for himself from his own wickedness and the indignation of the most powerful king, Manes indeed ought to have become more prudent for the future; namely, that he should guard himself, lest he rashly attempt anything further, or anything wicked.

But that the contrary happened, both the weightiest authors and the monuments of undoubted faith which survive testify. For he, having fraudulently obtained his former liberty and betaking himself into the dominion of the Romans, situated on the confines of the Persians and Mesopotamia, although he sometimes seemed to give himself to solitude, nevertheless in that retreat he did not indulge in peace and tranquility; but he meditated new misdeeds to attempt, that he might perpetually serve the spirit of pride and elation by which he was led. But Photius described this escape of Manes from prison somewhat otherwise, no express mention being made by what means and arts he had overcome and deceived those guards. He says only:

But since he was a slave, and skilled in servile craft, and knew that not long afterward he would pay the penalties of the perpetrated slaughter, inasmuch as he had by his impiety killed the son of the king, he fled from the house, and was the cause of death to the guards of the prison; for because they had not accurately guarded that wicked man, all were punished with beheading. What the crafts of the servile condition were, which Manes, detained in chains, could use, so that, having slipped from prison, he might guard against a capital penalty, Photius here did not expressly indicate. But it is very probable what we related above from Epiphanius: namely that he overcame the prefect of the prison and the guards by a great sum of money and unremitting entreaties;

especially since it is well known that the condition of vile slaves was never wont to reject gold and riches, and that slaves can easily be induced to sell their services. Whether therefore this could be an argument for that greatest poverty to which Beausobre describes Manes to have come, even before Sapor summoned him into the court to aid the sick boy with remedies and prayers, the reader himself shall judge; since meanwhile, before we remove our hand from the present picture, it behooves us to snatch away one other thing, which would utterly overthrow certain other matters established above from the ancients, if we should judge Beausobre's conjectures to have strength and truth. 7.

From the writings of the Orientals, then, Beausobre persuades himself that it became known to him that the hatred of the Persian king against Manichaeus took its origin by no means from the killing of the royal boy, but from the Christian religion which Manes professed. That king indeed, a worshipper of idols and of superstitious magic, knew that Manes had sent Thomas, Addas, Hermas, and other false apostles into the various regions of the world, who, running hither and thither, proclaimed the name of Christ, whose true apostle Manes falsely claimed himself to be by his preaching.

Therefore, led by a firm conviction that the propagation, extension, and increase of this new sect could gradually bring idolatry and the superstitious figments of the magi to ruin, he resolved to seize Manes, to cast him into prison, so that he might pay for so great a crime by capital punishment. Moreover, he asserts that the cause of this royal decree is plainly reported in the Acts of Archelaus, where one reads: 'He sends his disciples to preach undauntedly feigned and counterfeit errors,' etc. When the king of the Persians had learned of this, he made ready to subject him to worthy tortures. Here it is well to ask the censor Beausobre: to which mission ought the praised words of the Acts of Archelaus to be referred?

Is it to be referred to the earlier mission of Manes's false apostles, which they carried out before their master was summoned by Sapor and held in prison; or to the subsequent one, which they did not shrink from undertaking even after they had learned that their master was to suffer death by capital sentence of the king? It is necessary that Beausobre confess that those words cannot and should not be referred to the first. For, returning from it, Thomas, Addas, and Hermas—about to give an account of their past preaching—find Manes held in prison, and coming to him, they not only relate the things done by themselves, but also bring some codices of the Scriptures of the New Testament to be corrupted.

Nor does Beausobre rightly pretend that this preceding narrative of Archelaus smacks of falsehood or of a fable—being led by the testimony of St. Epiphanius, who affirms that Manes had already possessed the books of the Christians long before the king of the Persians cast him into prison. For indeed he could have possessed several ill-gotten books of the New Testament, and perhaps those which the Valentinians and other heretics had corrupted, since it is already known to the learned that the catholic Christians expended much labor to preserve the books of the canon intact—namely, lest the heathen should give them over to the fire, as Eusebius relates, and lest the leaders of the heretics should corrupt and deprave them;

just as we gather that it had already been done, from the book of the Constitutions which are attributed to the apostles, concerning which we shall speak more opportunely. How, then, could it not have happened that Manes carried with him into prison some books of the New Testament—either whole and genuine ones, which he depraved at his pleasure, or ones already depraved and corrupted according to the interpretations of Valentinus, Carpocrates, and Marcion—and sent his disciples into the regions of the East and of Asia to seek out yet others? Or had those fabulous books which are inscribed as the Gospels of Peter, Thomas, and Matthias perhaps not yet come forth under the name of the New Testament? Or was not the Gospel of Philip, devised by the Gnostics, being circulated?

or, finally, that other one which the Gaianites published under the name of Judas the traitor? It is most certain that Scythianus and Manes drew their heresy from these and other similar poisoned sources, of which Eusebius and the Fathers spoke. Those two things, therefore, can well cohere with each other without any trace at all of contradiction: namely, that Manes, confined in prison, possessed some books of the New Testament, which he corrupted and depraved more and more with fabulous fabrications for the patronage of his sect; and that he received still others from Thomas, Addas, and Hermas, returning from the earlier mission—books which those scoundrels had bought from the Orientals with the help of money.

8. Who does not see that this preceding explanation does not at all conflict with Beausobre's system, but rather coheres with it? For he himself, setting out in the chapter mentioned to treat in passing of Manes's religion, supposes that from adolescence Manes had imbibed a Christianity depraved by many errors, chiefly from the commentaries of Scythianus—which he himself afterwards perhaps corrupted and depraved still more, so as to make it agree with his own philosophy and that of the magi. It now remains, therefore, for us to see whether Sapor flared up terribly against Manes on account of that mission of the false apostles, which Beausobre himself, led by the testimony of Archelaus (as we have seen), asserts to have been the sole cause of so great a hatred.

And, to preserve the order of past events, it can be gathered that two missions of these disciples were made by Manes: one before Manes had attempted to heal the royal boy, from which, when those who had been sent were returning, they delivered several codices of the New Testament to their master held in chains. But we judge it more probable that he undertook this second one. For if we wish to insist on the testimonies of the Acts of Archelaus, as we have already done, when Manes had been visited in prison by those same disciples, he urged them to fear nothing and rose up to prayer.

This manner of acting, according to Beausobre himself, could be an argument both of surpassing sanctity and of that greatness of soul which a faithful disciple of Christ the Lord ought to have. Wherefore he concludes that Manes could not easily have set himself up as head of this sect, unless he had possessed great qualities or prerogatives of soul. And so, to display this confidence of soul more and more, Manes at first feigned that he feared not at all the threatened punishments and death itself; and therefore, to win authority for himself and to exalt his doctrine, 'again he sends his disciples to preach undauntedly feigned and counterfeit errors.' No one will doubt that these last words correspond to the preceding ones.

Therefore Sapor, having become aware of such audacity and seriously reconsidering the killing of the royal son, no longer permitting the murderer to be kept alive in prison, commands that the death hitherto deferred be undergone, and prepares to subject him to worthy tortures. But before the measures which Sapor had ordered for the exemplary execution of this most impious man could be arranged, having corrupted the keeper of the prison and the rest of the soldiers, Manes seized upon flight, just as we have already seen above.

These things it behooved us to write and observe in order to refute Beausobre's arguments, and this chiefly in order to reconcile the testimonies of the ancient writers—which Beausobre himself, little consistent with himself, turning and twisting everything upside down, contends are to be reckoned of little worth and deserving of no credence. But now let us return to the order of the history.