To these things (for they are speaking of the adulterine writings which were once circulated under the name of Paul) the Manichaeans have foisted in a Gospel according to Thomas, which the Catholic Church deservedly abhors as impious. To all which we at last subjoin this one thing: namely, that the Gospel of Thomas differs greatly from that book which was entitled The Revelation of the Apostle Thomas. For in the same Gelasian decree there is mention of both as of two distinct books, although nowhere is it indicated that the latter book, namely The Revelation of the Apostle Thomas, came forth from the Manichaean workshop. That Turibius, bishop of Astorga, was of this opinion, however, his letter to St. Leo the Great makes plain not obscurely. For in chapter...
...5, discoursing of the apocryphal books either composed or infected by that chief prince Manes and his disciples, he specially enumerated the Acts of St. Thomas, and things like these, from which (he says) the Manichaeans and Priscillianists, or whatever sect is akin to them, strive to confirm their whole heresy. 3. Besides one, or two, volumes of Gospels — impiously written as it were after the model and imitation of the Catholics — the Manichaeans had another book, namely of Epistles. And it was the belief of the ancients that this too came forth chiefly from the workshop of Manes. Of this volume, or medley of Epistles, mention occurs both in Goar and Peter of Sicily, and in the author of the Coteler and Toll formula.
From this body of Epistles without doubt (according to William Cave) was that famous epistle which the Manichaeans called the Foundation, which Augustine so often cites in his work On the Nature of the Good, and in the Acts against Felix. He also wrote an entire book against an epistle of this kind, in which, having rejected the earlier parts of that epistle of Manes, he showed that Manes had set before his insane followers, in place of the manifest knowledge which he promised and the certain knowledge, nothing but uncertain and absurd ravings. But on the contrary the Manichaean sect venerated this epistle as the very storehouse of their whole faith;
so that, on the authority of the same Augustine, as often as it was read before the hearers, with head bowed they were wont to say Amen, as though by the reading of this illumination they rendered thanks to its most wicked author. Now the opening of this epistle was this: Manichaeus, apostle of Jesus Christ by the providence of God the Father. These are the wholesome words from the perennial and living fountain. A similar opening we have already met in the epistle to Marcellus, as the Latin fragments of Archelaus recounted above have it, and Epiphanius, in heresy 66. But that all his epistles gathered in that codex had the same opening, Augustine alone among the rest testified, in book XIII, chapter 4, against Faustus, addressing them thus:
For your Manichaeus was not a prophet of the Christ who was to come, since he calls himself His apostle — with the deceit indeed of a most shameless man. And a little further down he adds: Yet all his epistles begin thus: Manichaeus, apostle of Jesus Christ. But of yet other epistles of Manes William Cave makes mention on page 92. In the third place, then, we judge that the Book of Mysteries must be reviewed, which the Manichaeans themselves had carefully composed to overthrow the Law and to blot out all the prophecies of the ancient prophets. For from Goar, William Cave recites a certain fragment in which an Anathema was pronounced upon a book of this kind.
That this too was one of the books of Scythianus, but enormously augmented by Manes and interpolated in countless places, so that he might indulge his own fancies, the same author asserts. Wherefore that it was divided into twenty-two parts in alphabetical order, written in the Syriac and Palmyrene tongue, Tollius declared. These books were then followed by a fourth, which some — from certain corrupt Greek manuscript copies — have quite wrongly testified ought to be entitled The Traffic of All Things. But that it had another title, William Cave alone among the rest noted in his Literary History, both from the writings of Timothy of Constantinople and from other more notable ancient copies.
Wherefore, relying on various conjectures, he showed from the arguments which it contained that this little book had rather received its own denomination, and that it was called: On the difference of those who come to the pure faith. And that the Manichaeans were wont falsely to boast of the purity of their own faith has already been proved a little before, from Augustine, in the preceding pages, since indeed they called themselves Catharists, that is, purifiers. 4.
Now that we may come to those things which, after the formula of Goar, Cotelerius and Tollius published, there presents itself to us another book called Apocryphal, in which (as Cave says) it is probable that the more hidden rites of the Manichaeans, their conjuring tricks, and the execrable mysteries of their religion were contained — the doctrine of which rites was handed down only to the initiates and to those steeped in their unspeakable orgies. This conjecture of Cave we by no means disapprove. For indeed the school of the Manichaeans, besides those common dogmas which it published abroad among its hearers, also taught and maintained other things, hidden and more secret, which became known only to the chiefs of this sect and to its principal masters.
That Turbo indeed testified this not obscurely in his abjuration of the heresy, we ourselves have already noted in the preceding book, chapter 14. And it is probable that in that book were described all the profane rites, sacrilegious ceremonies, fasts, and prayers which the Manichaean worshippers of the Bema used when celebrating their sacred and festal solemnities. Therefore in the Coteler formula the books of such rites and conjuring tricks are indicated in these words: That all things which are done and celebrated by them in their sacred rites, and which are contained in the Manichaean or conjuring books, are to be condemned. But to all these they added certain interpretations, called the Commentaries of the sayings and memorable deeds of Manes.
Among the Manichaean writers too a not inconsiderable place was held by that Addas, of whom we have also spoken above. He therefore composed a single book called Modius, which was stuffed with many axioms and philosophical principles, which were recognized even at first glance as utterly foreign and at war with the common notions implanted in nature. Of which sort surely were those by which they affirmed that men are necessarily led to sin by a certain evil author, existing without beginning and contrary to God. Or those others which they pronounced to the utmost insult of divine Providence, impiously contending, namely, that this visible world is by no means subject to divine rule and governance.
But the author of this book had also striven to make plain that the two Testaments, the Old, namely, and the New, are at war with each other, on the basis of certain apparent contradictions, or rather allegories and mysteries. And again, discoursing anew of the New Testament, he tried especially to show that the errors of the Manichaean sect had derived from it all their force, strength, and foundations. That these things, I say, were contained in that wicked and diabolical book, the volumes composed by Titus of Bostra clearly show. For that most holy bishop of Arabia — on the authority of Heracleon, bishop of Chalcedon, as reported in Photius — bent all the sinews of his effort to reject and overthrow the blasphemies and errors of that book. 5.
Curious, however, are the things which William Cave has recounted concerning Aristocritus, a not least disciple and writer of Manes. Who, although he did not fear to traduce his own teacher as an evil man, nevertheless, clinging to his dogmas, published a work in which he tried to show that the doctrine of the Jews, the Gentiles, the Christians, and the Manichaeans was one and the same. That this kind of argument Addas too had indicated in his book, is clear from what has been said before. Moreover, that the earlier chiefs, masters, elect, and hearers of the Manichaean sect made use not of these books alone, we understand from various monuments of the ancients.
For Timothy, presbyter of Constantinople, makes mention of a Book of Prayers, in which were contained the formulas of prayers and of conjurings. Wherefore the penitent Manichaeans, in abjuring their errors, were also bidden to anathematize the Book of Prayers. Of which kind too are all the other apocryphal writings described in the Gelasian decree, which the ancient writers were persuaded had come forth either from Manes or from his disciples, as may be seen in Cave, in the Novatian century, page 92. He likewise reviewed two other writers of this unspeakable sect, of uncertain date, whom he asserts to have been among the more celebrated.
The first of these is Agapius, a writer (he says) sufficiently obscure, since — apart from Photius — no one (so far as I know) of the ancients makes mention of him. Tillemont sided with Cave, who, likewise clinging to the testimony of Photius, makes Agapius contemporary with Eunomius, and affirms that he assailed and censured him in his writings, although he had basely defected to the party of the Manichaeans. Hence, however, there is some disagreement between the two. For Cave, tracing the matter further back and giving heed to what Peter of Sicily had written concerning Agapius, contends that the testimony of Photius can be explained otherwise. That Agapius was indeed one of the twelve disciples of Manes, who composed a book called the Heptalogue, we have already noted from the same Peter of Sicily.
How, then, could it come about that he, still surviving in the age of Eunomius, sharpened his pen against him and his errors? For from the year in which the heresy of Manes became known as to be condemned, to the fall of Eunomius the notary of Aetius, eighty and more years flowed by. Which interval of time surely can by no means cohere with these two things: namely, that one and the same Agapius should have been among the twelve chief disciples of Manes, and should have lived so long as to be able to assail Eunomius with his writings. This grave rock, which William Cave foresaw, he strove with much diligence to guard against.
But asserting that both could have happened, he brings forward various conjectures — now from Epiphanius, now from Cyril of Jerusalem — which he judges to make for his purpose, and admonishes the reader to weigh them, and at last has determined to lay down nothing for certain in this part. Of which matter indeed, to inquire more diligently into the state, or the reasoning, we now have no leisure at all, since those more ancient monuments which would settle a question of this kind have plainly perished, or at least lie utterly hidden. 6. Of the remaining works of Agapius, then, only a few things will remain to be said, to whom the praised Photius attributed two other works. Of these, one is divided into twenty-two little books;
the other comprised a hundred and two chapters, and both the author himself dedicated to a certain Urania, a little woman of his sect and a partner in his pursuit. If, moreover, we inquire more curiously from Photius what kind of arguments Agapius unfolded in these books, this will most evidently appear: that only wicked and fabulous fabrications were contained in those works — the very things which, from the confession of Turbo and the testimonies of Augustine, we have above more clearly explained; in weighing which we now judge it superfluous to linger again.
But into this same order of writers of uncertain date William Cave judged that a certain Alexander must be reckoned, whom the ancients called the Lycopolitan, from Lycus, one of the cities of the Egyptian Thebaid. He was indeed at first a Gentile in worship. But then, when the Manichaeans had betaken themselves into those regions of Egypt, he went over to their camp. At last, however, having abjured this wicked heresy, he professed the Catholic religion. Now before he purged himself of the stain of this heresy, he composed a book On the Tenets of the Manichaeans, which he knew excellently well and intimately; in which, on the same authority of Cave, he accurately expounds their inner meaning, and solidly refutes the unsound dogmas of this sect by reasonings drawn from the secret places of philosophy.
The same Cave censures his style of writing as somewhat harsh and rather difficult; nor did he dare to determine his date for certain, although he suspects that he was not far removed from the times of Manes, since the same Alexander affirms that he received those dogmas from those who had conversed familiarly with the man. Which words we judge must be referred to Papus and Thomas, disciples of Manes, since he makes mention of these two only. Finally, various things gathered here and there concerning the works and date of this Alexander, William Cave has reported — things indeed little consistent with one another, which are passed over by us, lest we dwell upon uncertain and doubtful matters. 7.
Now our present undertaking demands that we speak of Adimantus, a celebrated disciple indeed of the Manichaean sect (whom Cave, as we have seen, once confused with Addas). Concerning his writings and deeds Augustine has more than once discoursed in his works; but he engages with him in such a way as to describe the man as having departed from this light, and only assails and strives to overthrow his writings. This indeed becomes known from the first book of the Retractations, chapter 13, in which — reviewing the works composed by himself, while he still discharged the order of the presbyterate — he says:
At the same time there came into my hands certain disputations of Adimantus, who had been a disciple of Manes, which he wrote against the Law and the Prophets, as though he tried to demonstrate that the evangelical and apostolic writings were contrary to them. The holy doctor therefore indicates to us the title and aim of this Adamantic book of his; but since he there calls the writer a disciple of Manes, and speaks of him as of a man long since departed from life, we can scarcely doubt both that he heard Manes, and that, through the action of his sponsor, namely Addas, he obtained at least a place among the disciples of the second rank. But of the works of Adimantus the same Augustine also makes mention in his book against Faustus.
First indeed, putting words under that man's name, he as it were compels this Faustus to come upon the stage, boasting as it were of his own, of Manes', and of Adimantus' doctrine — who, elated with madness, more boldly affirmed: Now that errors have been sufficiently and more than sufficiently brought to light, and the fallacy both of Jewish superstition and of the half-Christians abundantly uncovered — by the most beloved, namely, and the only one zealous for us after our blessed Father Manichaeus, Adimantus — it has not seemed amiss. From which words of Faustus surely it was made plain not only that the Manichaeans were wont to arraign the worshippers of the Catholic religion as deceived by fallacies and depraved dogmas;
but also that they wished to cling to the writings of Adimantus, whom they venerated as, after Manes, the second standard-bearer of that profane sect. Again too the same Augustine assails Faustus, because from a certain feigned conflict of the Scriptures, adduced by Adimantus, he had erred more basely, either concerning the substance of men, of brutes, and of vegetables — whose life Adimantus, after Manes, fabled to be of the same nature;
or when he reasoned about the passage of souls and their migration into new bodies, or finally when, from the Scriptures of the New and Old Testament, he reasoned about the vain and superstitious choosing of foods. For that Faustus imbibed these errors chiefly from the volumes of Adimantus, and from them championed horrendous blasphemies, the same Augustine demonstrated more clearly in his sixth book. At last the holy doctor inveighs more harshly against Adimantus himself, refuting that error by which he taught that even rational beings, that is the souls of men, could be thrust into the bodies of beasts. What then will he (Adimantus, namely) do about so great a crime, if ever he has wearied a slow beast of burden with blows or urged it on with the bridle, in which perchance the soul of his father may have been?
Not to mention that he could even have killed his own parents among the lice and fleas, from the slaying of which those men do not refrain. Augustine had moreover learned that some Manichaeans, hard pressed by these and similar reasonings, were wont to deny that human souls could be revolved down to those tiniest of living things. Which evasion the holy doctor readily conceding, took from it an occasion to press Adimantus and the other Manichaeans more and more. Wherefore, progressing from the smaller to the somewhat larger, he mocked them quite wittily, and reasoned thus learnedly. For what does it profit them that they sometimes deny, etc.?
For they deny this lest they be held guilty of so many slayings, or be compelled to spare lice, fleas, and bedbugs, and to endure such great annoyances from them without any license to kill them. But that they may be still more vehemently pressed, Augustine therefore adds: Why can a human soul be revolved into a little fox, and cannot be revolved into a weasel, since the cub of a little fox is perhaps even smaller than a large weasel? Then, that he may mock their sayings still more fully, he closes the argument with these words: Then if it can into a weasel, why can it not into a mouse? And if it can into that, why can it not into a gecko? And if it can into that, why can it not into a locust? Or into a bee, or a flea, or come to anything much tinier?
From which manner of arguing he demonstrates that Adimantus and the other Manichaeans are made guilty of innumerable homicides, inasmuch as, since they clung to this superstitious and trifling credulity or dictate, their conscience, hindered by these greatest errors, labored the more grievously. 8. Now in this book against Adimantus, Augustine is wholly occupied in reconciling with one another the sentences of the Scriptures which the same Adimantus — contending that both Testaments could not be from one and the same author — had scraped together concerning the Old and New Testament as though mutually contrary. But the same Augustine makes mention of another book published by himself against the same man; in which, the words of Adimantus having first been set down, the holy Father had rendered his own response to them.
This work, he says, I gathered into a single volume, and in it I replied to certain questions not once but a second time, because what I had answered first had been lost and was found again only after I had already answered a second time. Some indeed of these same questions I resolved in popular ecclesiastical sermons, while to certain others I have not yet replied.
But if anyone, desiring to be more fully instructed in these matters, should inquire of us to which ecclesiastical and popular sermons Augustine wished here chiefly to appeal, to such a questioner we shall at once reply that it is above all in the twelfth sermon that he refutes the slanderous charges of Adimantus. In that sermon, still wishing to treat of the frauds and deceits of the Manichaeans, he inveighs against Adimantus, who, having zealously corrupted and distorted the testimony of the Apostle Paul, strove to argue that neither the princes, nor the powers, nor the virtues had known God. In order therefore to overturn a calumny of this kind, he says: But first I would like to ask these men where Adimantus read this in the Apostle — for this writer is the author of such calumnies.
I would wish, then, that he should say where he read the Apostle testifying and confirming, as he claims, that neither the princes, nor the powers, nor the virtues knew God — whereas the Lord says of the very angels of the men who believe in Him that they daily behold the face of the Father. These things, therefore, and others of the same kind, Augustine brings forward, evidently to reconcile that famous testimony of Job, which we read in chapter 1, with those other words of Matthew, chapter 5, verse 8, upon which Adimantus insisted, in order to introduce and press a contradiction between the two Testaments.
But since concerning this Adimantus nothing else worthy of note occurs either in the works of Augustine or in the writings of others, we must now, passing him by, at length necessarily turn our discourse to Fortunatus the presbyter, likewise a follower of the Manichaeans and a defender of their doctrine. He, then, according to Possidius, being stained with a defilement of this kind, when this infamous and wicked heresy was spreading more widely through the regions of Africa, so that it corrupted and undermined almost the whole city and province of Hippo, labored all too zealously. And so, while he lived and dwelt in that same place, the poison of this heresy grew up so quickly in a short time that very many of the citizens and foreigners of that city were tainted by this pestilential contagion.
Meanwhile (says the same Possidius) the citizens of Hippo and the Christian foreigners, both Catholics and also Donatists, approach Augustine the presbyter and demand that he meet with that man — namely Fortunatus, the presbyter of the Manichaeans, whom they believed to be learned — and dispute with him concerning the Law. And when these things were being transacted among the Africans, chiefly in the famous city of Hippo, Arcadius Augustus and Rufinus, most distinguished men, were holding their second consulship, and it fell in the year of Christ 382. Wherefore the holy presbyter Augustine, that he might indulge the wishes of his soul, by no means refused to undertake the task offered to him; nay rather, he showed himself wholly prepared to render an account to those demanding it concerning matters of faith.
When therefore matters were thus arranged, the Manichaeans begged Fortunatus to undergo the encounter with Augustine, lest the cause of their common sect should be endangered. But Fortunatus himself, who once at Carthage had known Augustine laboring under the same Manichaean disease, feared to engage with him. Yet at length, compelled and shamed chiefly by the insistence of his own party, he promised that he would come at close quarters and would undertake the contest of disputation. So on the fifth day before the Kalends of the seventh month, at Hippo, in the baths of Sossius, the disputation between Augustine and Fortunatus was begun. To hear it a great multitude of people had assembled, with learned and inquisitive men standing by above all, who, as usually happens, favored the two parties.
Then indeed, when the notaries' tablets had been opened, Augustine began the disputation; and the question turned chiefly upon whence evil comes. On this point, when he, the champion of Catholic doctrine, was explaining that the evil of man had arisen from the free choice of the will, while the other — namely Fortunatus — was striving to persuade that the nature of evil was coeternal with God, but in the disputation of the final day was little consistent with himself, he confessed that he found nothing to say against us.
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But, failing in his reply, he declared at last that he would confer with his elders about those things which he could not refute, and, if perchance they should not sufficiently satisfy him concerning these matters, he promised that he would take counsel for his own soul. This Possidius narrates in the passage cited; yet of this matter we are made more certain by the very words of that same presbyter Fortunatus, pronounced before all in the disputation of the second day, which words, being taken down by the notaries, were moreover faithfully recorded in writing in the ecclesiastical tablets, as may be seen also at the close of the disputation of the second day, which stands together with the former in volume eight of the works of St. Augustine.
In the meantime, let no one suppose that Fortunatus the Manichaean, overwhelmed with so great shame, modesty, and disgrace, thought of coming to his senses from his errors, or wished thereafter to give his name to the Catholics. Into such a resolve surely any man of sound mind would at once have fallen, who understood the affairs of his own faith to be tottering and led to ruin. But that Fortunatus, affected by so great confusion, having set out from the city of Hippo, returned to it no more, nor yet did he become a Catholic. Of this Fortunatus, the Manichaean presbyter, Augustine, so far as I know, makes mention nowhere. There exists only a certain letter of his written to another Manichaean presbyter, whom the Maurist Fathers in the latest edition of Augustine surmised to have been Felix of the congregation.
This Fortunatus, therefore, Augustine — now raised to the bishopric of Hippo — addressed in these words: And so I charge you in the name of Christ, that if you are ready, resolve the question in which your predecessor Fortunatus failed; and he departed hence in such wise that he did not return, unless, after conferring in disputation with his own, he should find what he might reply in answer, disputing with the brethren. From these things, therefore, it is clear that this Manichaean presbyter, who had succeeded Fortunatus, was roused and challenged by Augustine to resolve that same question, in which his predecessor had failed all too shamefully.
He slipped away from the city of Hippo in such wise that he studiously feigned that he wished to confer with the other chiefs of the Manichaeans about the things that had been objected to him. This presbyter Fortunatus was succeeded by Faustus, an African by nation, a citizen of Milevis, a bishop of the Manichaean sect, who flourished in the four-hundredth year. His talent, studies, gifts of mind, and writings, among others, William Cave alone described, saying: He was a man sweet in speech, crafty in wit, talkative rather than eloquent, a smatterer rather than solidly learned. And again a little below he adds: He composed a volume against the right Christian faith and the Catholic truth.
Nevertheless, the aforesaid writer did not accurately enough describe the argument of this book. For Augustine, who diligently examined the work of Faustus the Manichaean, in Book Two of the Retractations, chapter seven, explained in these words what that book contained in itself, saying: Against Faustus the Manichaean, who blasphemed the Law and the Prophets and their God and the incarnation of Christ, and who said that the Scriptures of the New Testament, by which he is convicted, had been falsified, I wrote a great work, setting forth his words and rendering my replies. This man indeed Augustine had known, who, in the sincere sacrifice of his Confessions, about to relate how he had fallen into the sect of the Manichaeans, says: