ℹ️ This corpus has no morphological tagging. Glosses are matched by word form against a dictionary — a match does not prove it is the same word (an inflected form can coincide with another word’s lemma). Verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
1. I thought I had sufficiently discharged the parts of my task when, in the preceding chapter, I summarily reviewed those things which seemed to pertain to the disputations of Manes with Archelaus. For it was not my purpose to weave apologetic theological dissertations, but to gather, as it were into a compendium, the history of the Manichaeans from certain and authentic monuments and authors; just as most excellent men have already composed the several histories of the Pelagians, Donatists, Arians, Eutychians, and of other heretics who strove to corrupt and overthrow the Catholic religion.
But since, in running through the work of Beausobre, I everywhere encountered such and so great falsehoods and calumnies, wrapped about with thick darkness, I resolved to bring some light to his trifling nonsense and sophisms, by which, as by the sun from the East, they might be dissolved and put to flight. Otherwise, if I had persisted merely in pointing out the bad faith of this heretical man, the learned of the present time—who love only to dwell upon the surface of things—might easily suppose that Beausobre's arguments were too great to be refuted by us, if we should touch upon them briefly, or dissemble them altogether. That we may make a beginning of this matter, it will be permitted first to pass over in silence some of the observations of this Batavian writer;
those, namely, by which he attempted to paint the bishop Archelaus as a man proudly glorying in his previously reported victory, who, in the presence of his humbled and vanquished enemy, wished again to present himself at the village of Diodoris, binding Diodorus (or Trypho) the presbyter to break off the contest begun, so that he himself might enter into a new struggle with Manes concerning matters of the faith. Yet I will not dissemble that he called the bishop's zeal in the cause of the Christian religion 'pride, swelling, and fury,' and that the manner of Manes's acting and his forms of speech very greatly displeased him.
That is, when the heretic besought Archelaus to grant him that he might carry to its conclusion the disputation begun with the presbyter, being on that account afraid to contend about the dogmas of religion with the bishop, who was superior to himself in authority and dignity. 'It was a grave absurdity' (he says) 'to put these words in the mouth of a heretical man.' Who not only had already long since publicly disputed with Archelaus over the new dogmas, but also, wickedly puffed up, dared to have himself called a disciple of Christ, an apostle of Jesus, and the Paraclete promised by the Son of God.
When Gottfried Arnold had learned of this most grave difficulty, persuading himself that the Acts of Archelaus were authentic, he thought that those obsequious words had been uttered by Manes slyly and ironically (as they say), so that, namely, he might guard against that confusion which he had first been compelled to suffer at Caschara, chiefly since he was led into the hope that he could more easily overcome the presbyter than the bishop. What absurdity, then, would follow from so natural an explanation, I plainly do not see, since the zeal of heretical men is chiefly employed in this: that they may be able to prevail by favor, authority, and reputation among the unlearned and ignorant common people. All which things Manes hoped to attain, if he could overcome the parish presbyter in disputations.
Would he not, in that disputation which he had instituted, if he had conquered his adversary, have drawn to his own opinion as many of the faithful as had come thither from Diodoris and the nearer places, unless they had been suddenly supported by divine aid and illumined by the light of truth? Let it not, therefore, seem absurd to Beausobre that Manes, to guard against a new peril of shame and ignominy—which he had foreknown for certain to be threatening him, from the previous experiment given at Caschara—should have declined to contend again with Archelaus concerning the dogmas of the faith.
For this is wont to be the prudent manner of acting among those who contend: that they who have once been overcome by their adversaries should by no means commit themselves again to a contest with the same men, now stronger in strength, knowledge, and fortune, and should rescue themselves from those struggles which they have known will be destructive to them. Since, therefore, Manes knew for certain that at Diodoris no better aids of knowledge were at hand for him, he was right to decline a new kind of contest with Archelaus, chiefly since he had found him to be exceedingly well versed in the sacred letters of both Testaments.
Far be it from us, therefore, to suspect that those Acts of Archelaus are spurious, on the ground that Manes, publicly overcome and vanquished in the contest, refused to renew another most grievous and most perilous struggle. 2. Nor can I likewise dissemble the grave censure with which the same Beausobre inveighs both against Archelaus and against the tradition of the Church and the doctrine of the ancient Fathers, when, this last disputation of Manes and Archelaus being called to examination, he brands the holy and wise bishop with the marks of many heresies—which, with too much zeal, he attempted, by rash and unjust presumption, to fish out from his sayings and opinions and to bring into the open.
Wherefore, lest we should seem to labor in vain, it was our resolve to blot out to the utmost of our power the brand of such infamy, and to vindicate the ecclesiastical tradition by refuting each thing which Beausobre wrongly objected. He, then, proposes chiefly three arguments of the Manichaean disputation, to which he has subjoined as many responses of Archelaus. The first pertains to the mystery of the incarnation, which Manes, wishing to overthrow, contended that Christ the Son of God was not a true man born of a woman, but appeared such only by divine dispensation, without having a real and substantial human nature joined to himself.
He therefore abused the words of the apostle Paul to the Philippians, in which it is affirmed that Christ was made in the likeness of men. But that he might add strength to his wicked dogma, he further appealed to the words of Luke, in which it is said that the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Christ when He was baptized in the Jordan. As therefore (thus Manes reasoned according to Beausobre) the Holy Spirit was by no means united to a true and corporeal dove, but only bore the appearance of a dove and wished to have an apparent likeness; so the Son of God bore the figure of a man only in appearance, without having assumed a true and real human nature.
This crude first argument of Manes (says Beausobre) the bishop Archelaus refuted with most solid reasons, but at the same time he brought forth such propositions as bear no fewer marks of heresies. Of which matter he judged that the readers should be admonished, so that, namely (he says), from observations of this kind they might understand that faith is not to be regulated according to antiquity; nor to be subjected to the authority of tradition and of the Fathers of the first three centuries of the golden age—which they (understand: the un-Catholics) affirm to have been brought to destruction when Constantine the Great held the reins of empire. But it must be affirmed that the true faith ceased even sooner, if we suppose that the virtues of bishops were the character and privilege of that age.
Thus far Beausobre. But I ask him why, having left aside his accustomed and familiar trifles and fables, he grows so greatly angry that, making an attack upon the ancient Church, he wished to bark at and bite its most holy bishops after the manner of rabid dogs. He contends that tradition is not to be admitted, and that faith is not to be placed in the ancient Fathers of the Church.
But lest we should seem to act off-stage, let Beausobre tell, I pray, by what support the Catholic dogma concerning the incarnation—about which the present disputation of both Manes and Archelaus turned in the first place—would have been proved, if Archelaus, following even a private spirit and not the authority of the bishops his predecessors, had wished to interpret the testimonies of Paul and Luke just praised, which Manes wrested to perverse significations? If Archelaus, forsaking the doctrine and tradition of his predecessors, had wished to explain the aforesaid objected passages of the Scriptures; if moreover he had not attended to the highest consensus of the other Churches, he would then have augmented wicked novelties with new fabrications;
and both of them, discoursing about one and the same mystery, would from it have fallen into diverse and diverse heresies. But that Archelaus disputed and thought rightly, solidly, and wisely concerning the true flesh of Christ, His baptism, death, burial, and resurrection, the same Beausobre asserts. Therefore he did not indulge in new and strange doctrines, but pursued those which the sacred prelates of the Churches, his predecessors, had taught him. What, then, is tradition? What is that divine rule of the Church, from which the dogmas of the true faith are drawn? What is the consensus and doctrine of the holy Fathers? Nothing other than all that which Beausobre in the present carps at and condemns, and seeks to overthrow with fabulous inventions, so that he may indulge his own pursuits and party rather than the truth.
But Beausobre dares maliciously to contend that Archelaus clung to novelties while he defended those Catholic dogmas concerning the true flesh of Christ, His true passion and death. For the bishop (he himself says) affirmed that Jesus was truly affixed to the gibbet of the cross, and that, after He Himself rose from the dead, He was taken up into that place where Christ the Son of God reigns. He asserts, therefore, that Archelaus most excellently explained the Lord's descent to the lower regions, according to which manner of speaking, the 'place of hell' is the same as the sepulchre, from which Jesus, come to life again, ascended the heavens. He adds that such an interpretation is reasonable and just, but contends that it is accompanied by various and terrible heresies.
Nor for any other cause does he call the interpretation just praised reasonable and just, than because he judges that it favors Theodore Beza, Calvin, and himself, who deny that the soul of Christ descended to the lower regions. About which celebrated and well-worn question the Fathers of both Churches have everywhere spoken, chastising those who, following the Hebrew readings, judged that 'hell' was to be taken more strictly for 'sepulchre.' To prolong this disputation further at present we do not think fitting. Since learned and accurate men have already published various lucubrations, which show that those words of Theodore Beza, 'He descended into hell,' are by no means to be erased from the Symbol of the faith.
But even before these learned men had accomplished this, Leo the Great, in condemning the errors of the Manichaeans and the Priscillianists, defended from many passages of Scripture the Truth of which we are treating, and he was struck with wonder that Turibius, bishop of the Church of Astorga, had consulted the Apostolic See upon this article of the Christian religion: 'I marvel that the understanding of any Catholic should labor, as though it were uncertain whether, when Christ descended to hell, His flesh rested in the sepulchre; which, as it was truly both dead and buried, so too was truly raised again on the third day.' After this he appeals to seventy testimonies of the Scriptures, which we ourselves append in the notes, and immediately adds:
By these words it is certainly manifest that the flesh of the Lord both truly rested when buried and did not undergo corruption, because it rose again, being swiftly quickened by the return of the soul. Not to believe this is impious enough, and that it belongs to the doctrine of Manes and Priscillian is beyond doubt. These men, with sacrilegious understanding, feign to confess Christ in such a way that they take away the truth of His incarnation, of His death, and of His resurrection. 4. But Beausobre, adhering in this dogma of which we treat to Manes and Priscillian, we must needs pluck out whatever objections he has at last raised against the faith of Bishop Archelaus.
First, then, he casts suspicion of injured faith upon this, that Archelaus should call the divine nature of Jesus by the name of Christ—a term which can designate only a person who has attained something through grace, gifts, perfections, and dignity. Such a mode of speaking, he adds, was already familiar to the heretics. Yet Father Petau contends that it was in use among Catholics, among whom are numbered Justin Martyr, Dionysius of Alexandria, Novatian (or the author of the book On the Trinity), and Ambrose—all of whom, if we except Ambrose, are more and more held as suspect of the Arian dogma. On account of this form of speech he judged, as it were, that indulgence must be shown to Archelaus.
But because he drags and directs both the preceding and the following reasonings of his own discourse toward the dogma of the Nestorians—saying that Jesus after the resurrection was translated to that place in which Christ the Son of God reigns—for this reason he holds Archelaus inexcusable. For the praised words, he claims, plainly imply that Jesus and the Son of God are two separate persons, of whom the one ascends to the other, as the following words show even more clearly: 'For there is he who was born of Mary, the Son, who willed to endure this whole contest—Jesus. This is the Christ of God, who descended upon him who is of Mary.'
But in order to do violence to the preceding words and to increase and strengthen his own bad faith in writing, Beausobre reasons quite plainly thus: He indeed who descended upon Jesus at His baptism could by no means be the person of Jesus Himself. And because he who descended upon Jesus is Christ the Son of God, therefore Jesus could in no way have been the Son of God except after He descended upon Him—that is, after Jesus was endowed with baptism. And that these were the heresies of Cerinthus and Carpocrates, who from the very beginnings troubled the Church, he strives to prove from Dionysius Petavius, to whom he appeals.
Nay more, he asserts that the Ebionites, the Elcesaites, the Ophites (or Serpentines) preached not unlike things concerning Jesus; who, on the authority of Theodoret, rashly invented that Jesus was one person, but Christ, who descended upon him, another. And this first objection, which he raised against the faith of Archelaus, he closes with wicked insults. For as though bursting with insane fury, he both devoted the holy bishop to calumnies and curses, and, denying the fame of his sanctity, believed him—cut asunder and pierced through with the same censures and anathemas—to be banished outside the fellowship of Catholics, together with that unhappy crowd of heretics just praised, which indeed was proscribed by a holier judgment than that of the Church of Archelaus. 5.
When I was running over these and other like things, my spirit did not flare up against Beausobre. I noticed only his zeal, by which he attempts to turn upside down and corrupt the preceding testimonies and opinions, so as to overthrow root and branch the authority of the Acts, and utterly to cast down the piety of that most holy bishop. But I clearly understood that Beausobre always sought to spin tales out of his own opinion, to throw dust in men's eyes, and to sell trifles to the reader, by confusing those two descents of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus—of which the one, the sacred Scriptures most evidently attest, ought to be referred to His conception from the Virgin Mary and the hypostatic union of the Son of God with human nature, but the other to the baptism of the same Christ.
To Archelaus, therefore, disputing about the mystery of the incarnation, it could by no means have come into his mind that Jesus was made Christ the Son of God at that time when the Holy Spirit descended upon Him after His baptism. For he would have departed from the question proposed—namely, whether Christ the Son of God had joined to Himself a true human nature when He came forth from the virginal womb—which Manes denied, asserting that His humanity was merely phantasmal, while on the opposite side Archelaus wisely and in Catholic fashion contradicted him.
Since, therefore, the inquiry turned solely upon this—whether it was repugnant and unseemly for the Son of God truly to be born of a woman and to associate to Himself a true human nature in the womb—Archelaus could by no means confess that Jesus was begotten as one person and brought forth from the virginal womb, and that after His baptism, when the Holy Spirit descended upon Him, another person of Christ and of the Son of God had come. Otherwise the objections of Manes would have stood; and impiously would Archelaus have striven to subscribe, beside the question, to the Jews and to Photinus. Wherefore he would deservedly have been rebuked by Manes; because, namely, hard pressed by the force and weight of the arguments, he would have been compelled to profess that of Mary was begotten and born not God, but a man.
Who, then, could conclude or devise that Archelaus fell into so horrible a crime from those cited words which Beausobre objected? For Jesus is the name of a true and singular man, which the angel, announcing the mystery of the incarnation, had said by the Father's command and authority was to be imposed upon His Son and promulgated among men, as the Evangelists testify. But it can by no means be the name of Christ's person; rather it is the designation of power and of kingship:
—that these two names most strictly agree, without any distinction or difference of persons, to the one Son of God in the flesh born of the Virgin Mary. This Archelaus proved from the sacred writings and from the common consent of his forefathers, both there and in the letter which he had sent to the presbyter Diodorus, refuting the ravings of those heretics who invented that Jesus was another than Christ the Son of God. Falsely, therefore, does Beausobre reason, contending that the name Jesus of itself points to one person separate from Christ the Son of God. For even Lactantius, treating of these names against the Gentiles, writes thus:
'But although His name'—understand, of the Son of God—'which the supreme Father imposed upon Him from the beginning, none other knows save Himself, yet He has one designation among the angels and another among men. Jesus, indeed, He is named among men. But Christ is not a proper name, but the designation of power and of kingdom.' Too arrogantly, therefore, does Beausobre calumniate those words of Archelaus, when he notes that the holy bishop wrote: 'For there is he who was born of Mary, the Son, who willed to endure this whole contest—Jesus.' He alludes to that contest which Jesus underwent upon the cross, that He might reign; namely, when, sustaining true death and burial, He appeared on the third day risen again, about to return to the Father from whom He had descended.
'This Jesus,' Archelaus subjoins, 'is the Christ of God, who descended upon him who is of Mary.' No one, therefore, unless he wishes to interpret the spoken words malignantly and violently, will ever affirm that Archelaus, from that diversity of names, offices, and natures, wished also to indicate a distinction of persons. For the holy bishop is wholly occupied in this question—that Christ, that is, the Son of God, assumed a true human nature from Mary—reasoning thus against Manes: 'For if you confess Him to have been born of Mary, His passion must needs follow; and upon the passion, resurrection; and upon the resurrection, judgment; and so the precepts of Scripture will be preserved.'
Wherefore, as though wishing to press his adversary more forcibly, he proves by the following texts of the Scriptures that the same and only Son of God was brought forth into the light from Mary according to true humanity. Namely: 'But when it was the will of God, 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 up us with Him by His power.' It was fitting, therefore, that Beausobre should compare the words objected to us with the rest of the context of the disputation, and with those things which he wrote to Diodorus, or Trypho, the presbyter.
For there, having set up a comparison between the Old Testament and the New, he proves by many examples brought forward that both are from God, on account of the supreme harmony of the prophecies. And speaking chiefly of Moses and of Jesus, he here expressly, without any veiling of words, calls Jesus the true Lord of Moses; he affirms that Jesus is the author of the Sabbath and the bestower of beatitude, who, by His own power leading the people out of the bonds and captivity of sins, delivered them over to eternal salvation. All these and other not unlike forms of speech, just as they plainly indicate that Jesus was the true Son of God, so they set forth and lay open the holy bishop's sound and Catholic faith concerning the mystery of the incarnation, without any mark of heresy.
And lest all these should seem our own fabrications, they are abundantly strengthened by the opinions written in the letter to the presbyter Diodorus (as we have said), which can easily be examined by the studious; wherefore we have judged it superfluous to transcribe and compare the same in this work. 6. But as for what Beausobre invents concerning that other descent of the Holy Spirit upon the baptized Jesus, now is the time that we dispose of it in a few words. From the preceding ill-digested reasonings, therefore, by which he feigns things with the greatest loss to truth and to sanctity, affirming that the bishop disputed neither more holily nor more wisely about the mystery of the incarnation than Manes himself, he passes on to another argument, which the same Beausobre begins in these terms:
Archelaus asks his adversary Manes, and urges him to answer: the real and true birth of Christ the Lord from Mary being denied—so that the same Christ would seem to have only the appearance of a man, not the truth of a body and soul—upon whom did the Holy Spirit descend in the form of a dove? He likewise presses him to say who then was baptized by John. Then he subjoined: 'If He was perfect, if He was the Son, the Spirit could not enter in, just as neither can a kingdom enter within a kingdom.' Such testimonies being set down, Beausobre contends that this Latin rendering of the Greek and Arabic text smacks of barbarism;
and that the Greek word, rendered into Latin as 'kingdom,' rather signified 'throne,' 'domination,' 'power,' 'principate'—words which are more frequently used in the Scriptures to designate the heavenly intelligences. Wherefore our master of the ancient theologians animadverts against Archelaus and his words, subjoining the following false censure: that he put Christ for Jesus, and affirmed Him born of Mary, as though Jesus could not also be called Christ according to the flesh. But that charge which Beausobre objects ought rather to be turned against the Evangelists. For Matthew, speaking of the generation of the Son of God born in the flesh, employed both names, writing: 'The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David'; and again he adds:
'Jesus, who is called Christ.' Since indeed we meet with testimonies of this kind—along with almost innumerable others—most frequently in the Scriptures, which express the Son of God born of Mary by a double name, indicating no distinction of persons whatsoever between Jesus and Christ, I do not see why—by what religious scruple and by what effort our censor could have supposed that with those two words coupled together Archelaus was constructing, or at least meant to hint at, [a distinction of persons]. (Cf. Tertullian, On the Prescriptions, ch. 47; Origen, Book VI Against Celsus: the same men venerated the serpent by which Eve was deceived, and pointed him out as Christ.) But that Beausobre feigned this out of zeal for detraction and reviling, another calumny, which he immediately subjoins, most evidently demonstrates.
For attending to the remaining words of the praised opinion, he violently wrests them into a contrary sense; and, feigning to himself that he is addressing only dull and leaden men who have never touched theological studies nor surveyed the holy Fathers and the Scriptures, he again inveighs against the holy bishop, and makes him the author of that heresy by which it was impiously affirmed that Jesus Christ was made the Son of God only after receiving baptism from John. Otherwise, he says, one would have to say that one divine power entered, and that the same Spirit was another that entered. For this reason it was necessary that Jesus Christ should have a true human nature, so that the Holy Spirit might descend upon Him.
Yet how alien from such a way of thinking was the pious and Catholic mind of Archelaus, the things already said in the preceding paragraphs plainly lay open. For once it be granted that Manes and Archelaus agreed in this—namely, that at the beginnings of the appearing of Jesus Christ He was truly God and the Son of God, and that the controversy proceeded solely about His true birth from Mary, about the true human nature assumed in the Mother's womb and joined to the divine Word—then it could no longer be permitted to Archelaus to go outside these established limits of the disputation, nor to wander off, nor to deny true divinity to Christ; but it behooved him to affirm and only to prove that that descent of the Holy Spirit upon the baptized Jesus took place for the sake of human nature.
That is, so that to the world, to the angels, and to men it might surely become known that He is the mediating helper of the human race, and the true propitiator predestined from eternity, and in time sent from the seat of the Father to men, that He might preach to the captives remission, to the blind sight, that He might set at liberty the bruised in remission, and preach the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of retribution. By that descent, therefore, was made manifest that abundance and fullness of grace which we all received from God through the Mediator, the High Priest anointed by God. This ministry, then, and the power and authority thereafter to be exercised—for which He was called the Anointed—the Holy Spirit wished to signify, just as long before Isaiah had prophesied.
Wherefore, although the Fathers, in a Catholic sense, have explained that descent of the Holy Spirit upon the baptized Jesus in one way and another, yet all agree in this—that it took place that men might be taught that the first-fruits of human nature had been restored, when the true man, capable of sanctification, willed to appear, as Cyril says; and at the same time that it might become known that at that time His anointing had been fulfilled, because He took up all the ministries, functions, and exercises prophesied by Isaiah himself and pertaining to the priesthood. 7. From all which it follows that with the greatest injustice Archelaus was brought under suspicion of heresy, because he attributed both names, of Jesus and of Christ, to the one Son of Mary.