For this economy of speech had to be preserved, so as to indicate the conjunction of the two natures, as Theodoret notes. Nay more, on the authority of Augustine, if anyone had not known Jesus Christ to be more than man, he would certainly not have known Jesus Christ. For if He is only man and nothing more, He is not Jesus Christ Himself. But to pluck out utterly every crafty and deceitful interpretation made upon the words of Archelaus, what need can we have of the manner of speaking and the opinions of the other Catholic Fathers?
That Archelaus explained himself quite fully, most evidently betray both the arguments of the aforesaid disputation, the very series and signification of the words, and the blasphemies and objections of Manes, which the holy bishop strove to reject and overturn by the testimonies of the Scriptures. With this argument, therefore, Archelaus assailed Manes: 'For if, according to what you say, He was not born, without doubt neither did He suffer; for it is impossible that He who was not born should suffer. But if He did not suffer, the name of the cross is taken away.' And, with certain other things of this kind interposed, pressing the same Manes hard, he subjoins: 'But you connect all these things, denying that He was born of Mary;'
'for if you confess Him to have been born of Mary, the passion must needs follow, and upon the passion resurrection, and upon the resurrection judgment, and the precepts of Scripture will be preserved for us.' And after a few words, he thus accosts him: 'Therefore answer me to each of the things I shall ask: how shall we cast away such and so great utterances of the Apostle, which say: But when it was the will of God in us, He sent His Son, made of a woman. And again: Christ our Pasch is sacrificed. And: Because God has raised up the Lord, and will also raise us up by His power.' With these, then, and other testimonies drawn from the Apostle, Archelaus firmly insisted, that he might defend the sole true birth of Jesus Christ from the Virgin Mary.
After this, Archelaus proceeded to that descent of the Holy Spirit upon the baptized Jesus, which Beausobre contends reeks of the marks of heresy; and again he assails Manes with these words: 'Tell me this too, O Manichaeus. If you say that Christ was not born of Mary, but only appeared as a man when He was not a man, this being brought about and effected by the power which is in Him: tell me, upon whom did the Holy Spirit descend like a dove? Who is it, moreover, who is baptized by John? If He was perfect, if He was power, the Spirit could not enter in, just as neither can a kingdom enter within a kingdom. And to whom did the voice sent forth from heaven bear witness, saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased?'
'Come, tell me, delay not: who is He that relates all these things, who works all things?' 8. To Archelaus thus questioning, Manes dared, more audaciously, to answer that it seemed pious to him to say that the Son of God did nothing in that His coming which was procured to the earth; nor had He need of a dove, nor of baptism, nor of a mother, nor of brothers, perhaps nor of a father—who, according to you (namely, Archelaus), was Joseph for Him—but this whole descending One, [emptied] Himself, in whom Paul says that He was found in fashion as a man. 'Show, then, of what thing He stood in need who transformed Himself into all things?' Afterward, seeking to close the debate, he subjoins this other argument, by which [he thought] the holy
bishop, thinking as it were to strike at his throat, he said: 'For if you say that He is only a man from Mary, and that He received the Spirit at His baptism, then He will be seen to be Son by progress, and not by nature.' Finally, instituting a comparison between the Holy Spirit and Christ Himself the Son of God, he thus goes on to reason: 'If, however, I grant you to say that He is Son by progress, as one made man—you being of the opinion that He is truly man, that is, one who is flesh and blood—it is necessary, then, that the Spirit also, who appeared like a dove, be nothing other than a natural dove: for it was said LIKE A MAN, and LIKE A DOVE;'
'and whatever can be supposed concerning that saying which was spoken, LIKE A MAN, conceive also by this same supposition concerning that which was said, LIKE A DOVE; it is necessary to receive these things equally, for so are they found in the Scriptures which are written concerning Him.' 9. Meanwhile, however, Archelaus was revolving many things in his mind, taking in so many and so great blasphemies uttered from the mouth of Manes; but chiefly he feared lest, disputing altogether circumspectly, this disputation should bring more of peril than of profit to the ignorant and unwise who were present. For since he knew for certain that the understanding of the Scriptures is not given to all, he could not carefully manifest and resolve the question fitted [to the matter], except for the sake of those who stand by and hear us.
Nevertheless, by the throng of the people, as though led by necessity, passing over some of the things which Manes had objected, he strove by the following reasoning to pluck out and overthrow only those which the other had publicly proclaimed, wrapped in palpable and gross errors. Wherefore, about to pursue his engagement again, he immediately reasons thus 'to the man,' as the schools say: 'Tell me, then: if we understand Jesus to have been made a man naturally from Mary, having flesh and blood—if we understand it so—is it necessary that the Holy Spirit also be a true dove, and not the Spirit?' That he may refute this false consequence, he forthwith shows that a true dove cannot enter a true man and remain in him;
just as flesh cannot naturally enter flesh. On the contrary, we faithfully understand the mode and reason of the Scriptures' speech if we profess Jesus Christ to be a true man, born of Mary with true flesh and blood, and the Holy Spirit only to have borne the figure of a dove. For the Spirit, according to a certain reason, dwells in man, descends, and remains, and this has fittingly both been done and is done always. That the true properties of a man ought to be affirmed of Christ Jesus naturally, Archelaus there proves. But that, on the other hand, it is unlawful to affirm of the Holy Spirit the true properties of a dove—and that this is forbidden—he most evidently proved from the operation, perfections, attributes, and manner of acting of the Holy Spirit.
Having brought forward this so disparate a reasoning into the midst—against which neither Manes nor any other assertor of impieties could gainsay—he thus accosts his adversary, at the same time pressing him hard and mocking him with jesting words. Since indeed Manes professed himself the Paraclete of God, he had said that the Spirit had come upon him, whom Jesus had promised He would send; and whence (says Archelaus), unless it descend from heaven? That heaven, therefore, the Holy Spirit inhabits, and descends from heaven upon man, and abides in him, he confirms with the words that have been praised; that thence he may gather that it cannot descend save upon a man worthy of it—that is, one full of grace and virtue.
But that true doves descended upon Manes himself, not upon Christ, ought rather to be thought: 'That we may take you,' he says, 'to be rather a thief of doves, contriving snares and nets for them; for you are worthy to be mocked with ridiculous words.' But returning at once to the disputation from which he had a little digressed—namely, to that transformation by which Manes feigned that God had transformed Himself into a man, or into the sun—in order to show that our Jesus was made a man only in fashion and appearance (from which, as a thing heretically said, every one of the faithful ought to shrink), he appeals to all the promises and figures expressed in the Scriptures concerning His nativity; nay more, even to the very name of the 'advent':
which would necessarily be erased, since, being placed in the heavens, He could do whatever He willed, if we affirm that He was only a Spirit and not a man. But that it is not so, he proves from the words of the Apostle to the Philippians. Namely: 'He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant.' Wherefore he immediately subjoins: 'But I speak of Him who was made man from Mary.' Which manner of speaking plainly lays open the nature and person of the divine Word before His nativity from the Virgin. Just as, in the world after His baptism, the Father's voice wished to announce, discoursing of Him who was the Son born of Mary: 'This is the Christ of God, who descended upon him who is of Mary.' 10. It does not escape me that this latter phrase of the discourse is not sufficiently approved by Beausobre:
nay, it is accused as though it were the very fountain of the Nestorian heresy. But far be it that even in the very heat of the disputation Archelaus should there have distinguished two persons in Christ—namely, of man and of God. Since he himself discoursed only of two natures mutually coupled, which the one Son of God, truly born of Mary, held conjoined in Himself, as throughout the whole disputation he professed in Catholic fashion. And indeed that those words of Archelaus, which Beausobre strove to interpret malignantly, sound nothing else, those very words most clearly lay open: 'This is the Christ of God,' that is, the Son, 'who descended upon him who is of Mary.' And a little after, he asserts in unambiguous terms that this Son of God was begotten of Mary.
For, speaking of the baptized Jesus, who had already ascended from the waters of the Jordan, he says: 'For immediately Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert, to be tempted by the devil; whom, since the devil did not know Him, he kept saying to Him: If therefore you are the Son of God—'. But he did not know, on account of that which had begotten the Son of God, who was preaching the kingdom of the heavens. That the Son of God, therefore, had been begotten of Mary in a true humanity, Archelaus professed. He also received the Holy Spirit at His baptism, through whom the paternal voice testifies, saying: 'This is my beloved Son'; whom no other prevailed to bear, save He who was born of Mary, Jesus above all the saints. 11.
But since Manes had objected various things to Archelaus, which did not yet seem plucked out and overthrown, he is thus wisely compelled to press his adversary more forcibly, never departing from the limits of the disputation proposed. Wherefore, about to prove that Jesus the Son of Mary was not a man in fashion only and apparent appearance, the bishop thus speaks out: 'If you say Him to be a man in fashion and appearance, how could He be held by the Pharisees, who were born of man and woman, and dragged to judgment, since a spiritual body cannot be grasped by grosser bodies?' And rebuking and harassing the same Manes, who had said that the Son of God at His pleasure transformed Himself into every form and appearance, just as also into the sun, he thus subjoins:
'Go on, I beseech you, and bring me a fistful of the sun, or a peck-measure full!' The sun itself, indeed, inasmuch as it is of a subtler body, can cover and surround you, but you, even if you should trample it, harm it in nothing. On the contrary, he concludes: 'But my Lord Jesus, if He was held, was held as a man by men. If He is not a man, neither was He held. If He was not held, neither did He suffer, nor was He baptized. If He was not baptized, neither was any one of us baptized. But if baptism is not, neither will there be remission of sins, but each one will die in his sins.' 12.
From which sayings of Archelaus, Manes, foreseeing that the greatest disadvantage was being brought upon himself, passes over this whole discourse, and insisting only upon those last words, brought forward into the midst those two consequences. First he retorts: 'Therefore baptism is given for the remission of sins?' And when Archelaus had granted this, answering 'Amen,' he straightway subjoined that other blasphemy: 'Therefore Christ sinned, because He was baptized?' At which last thing, shuddering with horror, Archelaus at once withstood him, answering 'God forbid'; and, employing the words of the Apostle Paul, he closed the discourse with these words: 'Nay rather, He was made sin for us, taking upon Himself our sins.'
For this reason He was born of a woman, and for this reason He came to Baptism, that He might receive the sanctification of this part; that He might be able to bear in the body which He had assumed the Spirit who had descended in the form of a dove. That Archelaus departed from the principles of Catholic truth in the last part of this reply, Beausobre does not fear to contend. For although he had known and proclaimed the supreme innocence of Jesus Christ, by saying that He did not receive baptism in order that He might be cleansed from His own sins — which nonetheless he did affirm impiously —
when he had then added that Jesus was baptized in order that, according to that part by which He had been born of a woman, He might receive sanctification and be made fit to sustain the Spirit who had descended upon Him, for that reason he departed infinitely from the principles of the Catholic faith. But who does not see that these things contain calumny and fabrication? That the soul of Christ, through the hypostatic union with the divine Word, was most fully sanctified, Archelaus, throughout that whole disputation, both implicitly and explicitly confessed: for there was no sin present in His soul that could be blotted out by baptism.
But since He was to undergo the hard contest of the cross, of passion and of death — for the sake of which the Holy Spirit had descended upon Him in that visible form — therefore the weak and fleshly body which He had assumed from the Virgin needed also to be strengthened outwardly, that it might be able to bear all the torments of so bloody a contest. Whence then does Beausobre gather that by that saying Archelaus departed from the Catholic faith? For that body and soul, which in the very instant of its conception was united to the Person of the Word and substantially sanctified, did not need a new purification through baptism in order to be made a dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit.
Or did not Archelaus confess this very thing, when he denied that Christ had any sin of His own, but rather that He was made sin for us, taking upon Himself our sins? Therefore, while He took up our sins to be expiated, He needed also to be purified outwardly by visible signs, that He might be able to affix our sins to the cross and blot them out by His death and passion. Finally Archelaus meant to hint that, in that sense, He needed a certain outward purification, in that He appeared as a sinner in the world for us, when He truly bore our infirmities and carried our sorrows. Did He not, in the garden before He ascended the cross, experiencing the disturbances of His soul, receive strength from an angel?
Did He not, upon the cross, yielding up His soul and experiencing mortal pains, pray to God the Father, saying: My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? That He in no way needed such support, on account of the hypostatic union with the divine Word, the Catholics affirm with unanimous consent. But that these things were necessary to declare the true nature of man, who ever could deny except Beausobre alone? 12. Finally Beausobre, that he might the more zealously indulge the party of his own non-Catholic sect, appeals to Saint Methodius, a contemporary of Archelaus, whom he assails as a patron of the Arian and Nestorian dogma;
being led by this reasoning, that he might show that the Catholic bishops and martyrs, who flourished already in the third century of the Church, were not sincere guardians of the evangelical and Catholic faith, but had weakened and corrupted it with depraved opinions. But since the present pursuit of our leisure by no means permits us to linger longer in refuting these and other like matters, therefore our discourse will subject to examination other things which pertain to the history of Mani, namely his death; more happily attaining that truth which Beausobre attested he had merely in his wishes by counterfeit words alone, and this in order that he might more and more deceive his followers, and beguile incautious and half-learned readers.
In overthrowing the Beausobrian calumnies against the faith and religion of Bishop Archelaus — wickedly and with utmost injustice heaped up and fabricated — we have expended much labor in the preceding chapters, led namely by this reasoning: that we might diligently recall to examination the things which on the one side were impiously championed by the Manichaean in his disputation against Catholic truth, and then those things which on the opposing side Bishop Archelaus himself declared, in order to beat back and utterly reject the heretical dogmas objected against him.
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Whether therefore Archelaus in refuting the Manichaean and in defending Catholic truths was more successful than that champion of novelties, Beausobre, judged — when he arraigned that most holy bishop, who is worthy of praise, as a man of injured faith and an asserter of many heresies — the things soon to be declared by us will make plain. Chiefly since at present we intend to appeal to the judgment of those readers who are accustomed to be conversant in perusing the writings of the holy Fathers and of the ancient theologians;
and who, holding a perfect and well-ordered memory of the Christian matter, are by no means wont to refresh their mind with novelties, nor are they led by anxious zeal for acquiring varied and outlandish erudition to give themselves the more greedily to the reading of non-Catholic books, by which the mind is gradually and rashly imbued with false and prejudiced opinions, and the piety of the Christian name is weakened and corrupted.
But if I were to appeal to the judgment of those who, moved by love of novelties, are accustomed only to display, amid the throng of peoples and in the gatherings of the half-learned, wares borrowed from the books of heretics — peddling them with words and fabulous sayings — in order to claim for themselves the reputation of the learned, then I should understand that both my cause and that of Archelaus could fall, although it rests solely upon Catholic truth drawn from the Scriptures and tradition. 1. Not therefore departing in the least from our aim in writing, and lest our manner of discoursing become too prolix, we affirm that Mani, most disgracefully confounded, was compelled to depart secretly from the parish or village of Diodoris.
For without doubt he would have undergone a violent death by the wrath and tumult of the people, had not Marcellinus — the prudent administrator of civil affairs in that province on behalf of the Roman empire — and Archelaus himself, led by mildness, restrained the fury of the crowd. Supported therefore by the aid of flight, he sought refuge across the river Stranga, and again withdrew into the fortress of Arabio, from which he had long before departed before he set out for Mesopotamia; flattering himself perhaps that the sentence of death passed against him by the king of the Persians had either been entirely abolished or altered, on account of the change of civil affairs which had perhaps happened in that interval of time during which he had withdrawn from the court.
Archelaus described the matter in nearly these words in his disputation, adding: But he, retracing the ways by which he had come, having crossed the river, returned to the fortress of Arabio. Where, afterward being seized, he was brought before the king, who, stirred by very great indignation against him, and desiring to avenge two deaths upon him — one that of his son, the other that of the jailer — ordered him to be flayed and hung before the gate of the city; and commanded his skin, treated with medicaments, to be inflated, and his flesh to be given to the birds. Nor did Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, describe the death of Mani otherwise in his instructions for the catechumens.
He only explained other circumstances, namely that Mani, having been brought to the king of the Persians and compelled to present himself before him, was assailed with many reproaches on account of his lies and his flight. Which king moreover mocked his servile condition, accused him of the slaying of his son, and of the guards who had been condemned on his account to death. And so (concludes the same Cyril, supporting the words of Archelaus) he commanded Mani to be flayed by the Persian law, and delivered his remaining body to be devoured by beasts. But the skin, in which so great a wickedness of his was contained, he caused to be hung before the gates like a wine-skin. In a not dissimilar manner Socrates described the death of Mani.
Indeed, wishing to relate the records of ecclesiastical affairs, holding in his hands the disputation of Archelaus with Mani already consigned to writing, and having surveyed with his own eyes the very things which we have hitherto said, he set them forth in a faithful narrative with the order of events preserved. But lest the things which he there relates should at some time be brought under suspicion of falsity, in order to render the reader's mind free of prejudices, after he had written: 'But the king of the Persians, having learned that the Manichaean was tarrying in those parts, ordered him snatched thence and his skin to be stripped off, and, filled with straw, hung it before the gates of the city' — at once, to vindicate all credit for this matter, he added: 'And these things we have by no means invented;'
but we have excerpted them from a certain disputation of Archelaus, bishop of the city of the Cascharenes in Mesopotamia, which we have read. 2. Consigned therefore to writing, and rendered into the Greek tongue, this disputation of Archelaus was then in circulation. Nor did anyone from that time up to the year one thousand seven hundred and forty dare to judge it as false and supposititious. No one, I say, affirmed it to contain invented trifles and little fables. Shall we then reckon that this was reserved solely for the judgment of Beausobre, and of a few others who endeavor to flatter the aforesaid writer? But we shall now speak more clearly concerning this kind of vindication in what follows.
But at length, about to pursue the discourse concerning the death of Mani, besides the authority of Epiphanius, who supports the preceding writers, the testimony of Photius is also ready at hand — who, although as a man of injured faith on account of the schism introduced into the Catholic Church he ought deservedly to be so called, nevertheless that he applied much diligence in scrutinizing the writings of the ancients, and was endowed with much erudition, no one has yet dared to deny. He therefore, although in recounting the death of Mani and the deeds of Archelaus he does not follow the ordinary method of the preceding writers, it is nonetheless ascertained that he scarcely departed from their statements.
For in chapter 13 he narrates how, to escape the wrath and vengeance of the king of the Persians, Mani was compelled to wander hither and thither; he describes the guards everywhere seeking him out, in order to bring him to the king, and he asserts that, once brought, he was at length harassed with the gravest reproaches, and underwent a death not unworthy of his horrible impieties. Hence therefore he closes the aforesaid chapter with these words, which we judge to have been borrowed from Socrates and Archelaus: For while that unhappy man was still among the living, stripping the skin from his body, they thus draw him from life and as it were cut him asunder, and the remaining body they cast as prey to the wild beasts, and the skin itself, filled with wind like a wine-skin, they hung before the doors.
Such an end of life did that apostate and most wicked man attain. But again the aforesaid Photius, in chapter 15, commemorates this same bitter death, having however first prefaced that celebrated disputation which Archelaus held against him. And he calls this divine and holy man bishop of the Cascharenes in Mesopotamia. He then adds that Mani, overcome by unexpected shame in the public encounter, fled as a fugitive to Diodoris. And again he was driven to flight by the same Archelaus disputing a second time, and Mani appeared a most worthless man, to be derided and detested in all his dogmas; then at length he was captured by the royal ministers seeking and searching him out, and underwent those bitter punishments. 3.
This truth, confirmed by so many and so great proofs, although Beausobre did not dare to deny, yet with much zeal applied he endeavors gradually to weaken. For in chapter 11 of the first book, about to describe the death of Mani, he asserts that Bishop Archelaus was the author and as it were the agent of it; and for this reason, having brought forward in French those words into which the bishop had burst after the disputation, namely: 'When I had learned these things, I judged it necessary to indicate to you also that he is sought by the king of the Persians up to this present day.' Indeed I think it hidden from no one that the words cited refer to the crimes perpetrated by Mani among the Persians.
These things Archelaus was as it were compelled to blurt out, namely when, the last encounter with the Manichaean being concluded, before the wondering peoples and crowds — who from the places of that province had gathered there to hear those two men disputing about religion — he enjoined silence, and laid open the whole series of the deeds and the crimes perpetrated by Mani. Beausobre therefore strove maliciously to charge this manner of Archelaus's acting as a crime, contending that the bishop ought not to have made known to the people those crimes of Mani, for which he was sought unto death by the royal ministers of the Persians — namely that he had killed the king's son.
It behooved him only, as a good shepherd, to speak concerning the Manichaean errors regarding the faith, that the people might guard against them. Wherefore he flatters himself that he can easily follow out and interpret the mind, will, and manner of acting of the holy bishop; judging, namely, that Archelaus wished by his words to excite the people to fury and sedition, so that, Mani being seized, he might be delivered into the hands of the Persians. For the Persians dwelt on the borders of Mesopotamia, nor were they separated from the dominion and garrisons of the Romans except by the river Stranga. Beausobre therefore contends that this intention of the bishop was depraved and, as they say, irregular. Which the people had then very well understood;
even before the bishop made an end of his speech, rising up against Mani, they strove to seize him, that he might be brought in chains to the barbarous villages, but he carefully fled to the fortress of Arabio. But what wonder is there? That Epiphanius wished to support this malicious interpretation, Beausobre likewise contrives out of his own opinion. For he pretends that this holy bishop understood such a zeal of Archelaus's acting to disgrace the episcopal character exceedingly;