But that even when the deserved penalty is rendered to sinners there is no iniquity with God, he thus says: 'What shall we say? Is God unjust, who inflicts wrath?' And in one place he briefly noted that both goodness and severity are from Him, saying: 'Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: toward them indeed that fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in goodness.' Likewise, that even the power of those who do harm is not except from God, it is thus written, Wisdom speaking: 'By me kings reign, and tyrants through me hold the earth.' The apostle also says: 'For there is no power except from God.' And that this is done worthily is written in the book of Job: 'He maketh a hypocrite to reign,' he says, 'because of the perversity of the people.'
And concerning the people of Israel God says: 'I gave them a king in my wrath.' For it is not unjust that, when the wicked receive the power of doing harm, the patience of the good should be tested and the iniquity of the evil punished. For through the power given to the devil, Job too was tested, that he might appear just; and Peter was tempted, lest he should presume upon himself; and Paul was buffeted, lest he should exalt himself; and Judas was condemned, so that he hanged himself. Since, therefore, through the power which He gave to the devil, God Himself did all things justly, yet not for these things justly done, but for the unjust will of doing harm, which was the devil's own, punishment shall be rendered to him in the end, when it shall be said to the impious who have persevered in consenting to his wickedness:
'Depart into the eternal fire, which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels.' But that even the evil angels themselves were not created evil by God, but became evil by sinning, Peter thus says in his epistle: 'For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but thrusting them into the prisons of the gloom of hell, delivered them to be reserved unto judgment to be punished.' Hence Peter shows that the penalty of the last judgment is still owed to them, concerning which the Lord says: 'Depart into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels.'
although they have already received, as a penal place, this lower region — that is, this lower gloomy air as a prison — which, however, because it too is called 'heaven,' is not that heaven in which the stars are, but this lower one, by whose murk the clouds are massed together, and where the birds fly about — for the cloudy region too is called heaven, and the flying creatures are called 'the birds of heaven.' According to this, the apostle Paul names these same iniquitous angels, against whom, as envious of us, we fight by living piously, 'the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.' And lest this be understood of those higher heavens, he plainly says elsewhere: 'according to the prince of the power of this air, who now works in the children of unbelief.'
Likewise, that sin or iniquity is not the seeking of evil natures, but the abandonment of better ones, is thus found written in the Scriptures: 'every creature of God is good'; and thereby also every tree which God planted in paradise is assuredly good. Man therefore did not seek an evil nature when he touched the forbidden tree, but by abandoning that which was better he himself committed a deed made evil. For the Creator is better than any creature which He founded, whose command was not to be abandoned so that the forbidden thing should be touched — however good — since, the better being abandoned, the good of the creature was sought, which was touched against the Creator's command.
God, then, had not planted an evil tree in paradise, but He Himself was the better, who forbade it to be touched. For He had forbidden it for this purpose: to show that the nature of the rational soul ought not to be in its own power, but subject to God, and to keep the order of its own salvation through obedience, and to corrupt it through disobedience. Hence also He so named the tree which He forbade to be touched, 'the tree of the discernment of good and evil,' because when the soul had touched it against the prohibition, it would experience the penalty of sin, and in that way would discern what difference there is between the good of obedience and the evil of disobedience.
For who would be so foolish as to think that a creature of God, planted above all in paradise, should be censured — since not even those very thorns and thistles, which the earth, according to God's judicial will, brought forth for the sinner to wear himself out upon in labor, are rightly censured? For such plants too have their own measure and form and order, which whoever soberly considers will find worthy of praise; but they are evils to that nature which it was fitting should thus be restrained by the merit of sin. Sin, therefore, as I said, is not the seeking of an evil nature, but the abandonment of a better one; and thus the deed itself is the evil, not that nature which the sinner ill uses. For it is evil to make evil use of a good.
Whence the apostle censures certain men condemned by the divine judgment, who 'worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.' For he does not censure the creature — which whoever does, does injury to the Creator — but those who made evil use of a good, having abandoned the better. Accordingly, if all natures were to preserve their own proper measure and form and order, there would be no evil; but if anyone should choose to make evil use of these goods, not even so does he overcome the will of God, who knows how justly to order even the unjust, so that if they, through the iniquity of their own will, have made evil use of His goods, He, through the justice of His power, may make good use of their evils, rightly ordering in penalties those who have perversely ordered themselves in sins.
For not even that eternal fire itself, which is to torment the impious, is an evil nature, having its own measure and form and order, depraved by no iniquity; but it is an evil torment to the damned, to whose sins it is due. For neither is this light of ours an evil nature because it torments sore eyes. But the eternal fire is not eternal as God is eternal, because, although it be without end, it is nevertheless not without beginning; whereas God is even without beginning. Then, although it be applied everlastingly to the punishments of sinners, it is nevertheless a changeable nature. But that is true eternity which is true immortality; this is that supreme immutability which God alone has, who cannot at all be changed. For it is one thing not to be changed,
when it could be changed, but quite another thing to be utterly unable to be changed. Just as, therefore, a man is called good, yet not as God is, of whom it is said: 'None is good but one, God'; and as a soul is called immortal, yet not as God is, of whom it is said: 'He alone has immortality'; and as a man is called wise, yet not as God is, of whom it is said: 'to God alone wise' — so is fire called eternal, yet not as God is, of whom alone the immortality is true eternity. Since these things are so according to the catholic faith and sound doctrine and the truth manifest to the understanding, neither can anyone harm the nature of God, nor does the nature of God unjustly harm anyone, nor does it suffer anyone to harm with impunity;
'for he who does harm,' says the apostle, 'shall receive back that which he did wrongfully; and there is no respect of persons with God.' If the Manichaeans were willing to consider this without the pernicious zeal of defending their error, and with the fear of God, they would not most wickedly blaspheme by introducing two natures, one good, which they call God, the other evil, which God did not make — thus erring, thus raving, nay rather thus going mad, so that they do not see that even in what they call the nature of the supreme evil they place so many goods, where they place life, power, health, memory, understanding, temperance, virtue, abundance, sense, light, sweetness, measures, numbers, peace, measure, form, order; while in what they call the supreme good they place so many evils:
death, sickness, forgetfulness, folly, disturbance, powerlessness, want, stupidity, blindness, pain, iniquity, disgrace, war, immoderation, deformity, perversity. For they say that the princes of darkness both lived in their own nature and were saved in their own kingdom and remembered and understood. For they say that the prince of darkness so harangued them that he could neither have said such things himself, nor have been heard by those to whom he spoke, without memory and understanding:
and that he had a temperance suited to his soul and body, and reigned by the virtue of his power, and had stores of his elements and of fertility, and perceived one another and the light neighboring him, and had eyes with which they might behold that light from afar — which eyes assuredly could not see light without some light, whence they too are rightly called 'lights'; and that they had the full enjoyment of the sweetness of their pleasure, and were bounded by measured members and dwellings. But unless some beauty, of whatever kind, had been there, they would neither love their consorts, nor would their bodies consist of the congruity of parts: which, where it is not present, those things cannot come to pass which they rave were done there.
And unless there were some peace there, they would not obey their prince. Unless there were measure there, they would do nothing else than eat or drink or rage or whatever else, without any satiety; although not even those who did this would be defined by their own forms, unless there were measure there. But now they say that these did such things as they cannot deny that they had measures suited to themselves in all their actions. But if form had not been there, no natural quality would subsist there. If no order had been there, some would not rule and others be subjected, they would not live congruously in their elements, nor finally would they have their members disposed in their own places, so that they might do all those things which these men vainly fable.
But as for the nature of God: if they do not say it is dead, what, according to their vanity, does Christ raise up? If they do not say it is sick, what does He heal? If they do not say it is forgetful, of what does He remind it? If they do not say it is foolish, what does He teach it? If they do not say it is disturbed, what does He restore? If it was not conquered and captured, what does He set free? If it is not in want, whom does He succor? If it has not lost sense, what does He quicken? If it is not blinded, what does He enlighten? If it is not in pain, what does He revive? If it is not iniquitous, what does He correct through precepts? If it is not disgraced, what does He cleanse? If it is not at war, to whom does He promise peace? If it is not immoderate, on whom does He impose the measure of the law? If it is not deformed, what does He re-form? If it is not perverse, what does He amend?
For they say that all these things are bestowed by Christ not upon that thing which was made by God and depraved by its own choice through sinning, but upon the very nature, the very substance of God, which is that which God is. What can be compared to these blasphemies? Nothing whatever. But if the errors of other perverse sects be considered — and if, moreover, this error be compared with itself on the other side, of which we have not yet spoken — it is convicted of blaspheming against the nature of God still far more grievously and execrably.
For they say that there are also certain souls which they hold to be of the substance of God and of altogether the same nature, souls which did not sin of their own accord but were overcome and crushed by the race of darkness (which they call an evil nature), a race to which they descended not willingly but by the Father's command in order to make war on it; and these souls, they say, are fixed forever to a horrible globe of darkness. Thus, according to their sacrilegious idle talk, God freed a certain part of himself from a great evil, and again condemned a certain part of himself which he could not free from the enemy, and over that very conquered enemy he moreover triumphed. O the wicked and incredible audacity of believing such things about God, of speaking them, of proclaiming them! And this they attempt to defend.
So that with closed eyes they rush into worse things. They say that the admixture of the evil nature causes these things, so that God's good nature suffers such great evils; for by itself and in itself it could not and cannot suffer any of these things. As though the incorruptible nature were to be praised because it does no harm to itself, and not rather because nothing can harm it from any quarter. Furthermore, if the nature of darkness harmed the nature of God, and the nature of God harmed the nature of darkness, then there are two evils that harmed each other; and the race of darkness was of a better disposition, because even if it harmed, it harmed unwillingly — for it did not wish to harm, but to enjoy the good of God. God, however, wished to extinguish it, as Manichaeus most openly raves in the letter of his ruinous 'Foundation.'
For he forgot what he had said a little before: 'And so those most splendid kingdoms of the same one were founded upon a bright and blessed land, so that they can never be moved or shaken by anyone.' Afterward he said: 'But the Father of the most blessed light, knowing the great ruin and devastation which was rising up from the darkness and threatening to fall upon his holy realms, unless he should set against it some outstanding and glorious deity, mighty in power, whereby he might at once overcome and destroy the stock of darkness, so that, when it was extinguished, perpetual rest might be prepared for the inhabitants of the light.' Behold, he feared the ruin and devastation threatening his realms. Yet surely they had been founded upon the bright and blessed land in such a way that they could never be moved or shaken by anyone.
Behold, out of fear he wished to do harm to the neighboring race, which he attempted to destroy and extinguish — 'so that perpetual rest might be prepared for the inhabitants of the light.' Why did he not add 'and perpetual bondage'? Or were those souls, which he fixes forever in the globe of darkness, not inhabitants of the light — the very souls of whom he plainly says that they suffered themselves to stray from their former luminous nature? Here too, unwillingly, he was forced to say that they sinned by free will — he who refuses to place sin anywhere except in the necessity of a contrary nature, everywhere not knowing what he says, and as it were already himself shut up in the globe of darkness which he has fashioned, seeking a way out and finding none.
But let him say what he will to the seduced and wretched, by whom he is honored far more than Christ, so that at this price he may sell them such long and such sacrilegious fables. Let him say what he will, let him shut up the race of darkness in a globe as in a prison, and fix on the outside the nature of light, to which he had promised perpetual rest from the extinguished enemy: behold, the penalty of the light is worse than that of the darkness, the penalty of the divine nature worse than that of the hostile race. For that race, even if it is within in darkness, it belongs to its nature to dwell in darkness; but the souls, which are that which God is, will not be able to be received back, as he says. They will be alienated from those peaceful kingdoms and from the life and liberty of the holy light, and will be fixed in the aforesaid horrible globe.
'Whence also,' he says, 'these same souls will cleave to those things which they loved, left behind in the same globe of darkness, procuring this for themselves by their own deserts.' Surely there is no free choice of the will here. See how, in his madness, he does not know what he says, and by speaking things contrary to himself he wages a worse war against himself than against God's own race of darkness. Furthermore, if the souls of the light are condemned for this reason, because they loved darkness, then the race of darkness is unjustly condemned, which loved light. And the race of darkness indeed loved the light from the beginning, which it wished to possess, though by violence, not to extinguish; whereas the nature of light in the war wished to extinguish the darkness; therefore it loved them only after being conquered. Choose which you will:
whether it loved the darkness compelled by necessity, or seduced in its will. If by necessity, why is it condemned? If by will, why is the nature of God caught in so great an iniquity? If by necessity, the nature of God was compelled to love the darkness — therefore it was conquered, it did not conquer; if by will, why do these wretches now hesitate to attribute a will to sin to the nature which God made out of nothing, rather than assign it to the light which he begot? What then? If we should also show that, before the admixture of evil — which in their utter madness they have believed, though it was fabulously invented — there were great evils in the very nature of light which they speak of, what will it seem could be added to these blasphemies? For there, before there was any fighting, there was a harsh and inescapable necessity of fighting.
Behold now a great evil, before evil was mingled with good. Let them say whence this came, when as yet no admixture had been made. But if there was no necessity, then there was will. Whence then this so great evil, that God himself should wish to harm his own nature, which could not be harmed by the enemy, by sending it forth to be cruelly mingled, basely purged, and unjustly condemned? Behold how great an evil of a pernicious and harmful and most monstrous will, before any evil from the contrary race was mingled in. Or did he perhaps not know that this would befall his members, that they should love the darkness and become enemies to the holy light, as he himself says — that is, enemies not only to their God, but even to the Father, from whom they came?
Whence then in God this so great evil of ignorance, before any evil from the contrary race was mingled in? But if he knew this was going to happen, then either there was in him an everlasting cruelty, if he grieved not at all over the future defilement and condemnation of his own nature, or an everlasting misery, if he did grieve. Whence too this so great evil of your supreme good, before any admixture of your supreme evil? That very particle of his own nature, which is fixed in the eternal bondage of that globe — if it did not know this was hanging over it, then even so there was in the nature of God an everlasting ignorance; but if it did know, an everlasting misery. Whence this so great evil, before any evil from the contrary race was mingled in?
Or did he perhaps rejoice out of great love, because through its punishment perpetual rest was being prepared for the rest of the inhabitants of the light? How wicked it is to say that the nature of God is thus succored by the nature of God — let him who sees this anathematize it. But if he did this at least in such a way that this nature did not become an enemy to the light, he could perhaps be praised, not as the nature of God, but as some man who for his native land was willing to suffer some evil — an evil which indeed could be for a time, not forever. But now they say that fixing in the globe of darkness is eternal, and not of some mere thing, but of the nature of God. And surely it was a most iniquitous and execrable and unspeakably sacrilegious joy, if the nature of God rejoiced that it would love the darkness and become an enemy of the holy light.
Whence this so monstrous and wicked evil, before any evil from the contrary race was mingled in? Who could bear so perverse and so impious a madness — to attribute such great goods to the supreme evil, and to the supreme good, which God is, such great evils? And now indeed, in that they say this very part of God's nature is everywhere mingled — in the heavens, on the earth, beneath the earth, in all bodies dry and moist, in all flesh, in...
...in all the seeds of trees, of herbs, of men, of animals — not present by the power of divinity to administer and govern all things without any bond, inviolably and incorruptibly, as we say of God, but bound, oppressed, polluted, which they say is loosed, freed, and purged not only through the course of the sun and moon and the powers of light, but also through their own 'elect': how many sacrilegious and incredible foulnesses this kind of most abominable error persuades them to — even if it does not fully persuade — is horrible to tell.
For they say that the powers of light are transfigured into beautiful males and set against the females of the race of darkness, and again that the same powers of light are transfigured into beautiful females and set against the males of the race of darkness, so that by their beauty they may inflame the most filthy lust of the princes of darkness, and in this way the vital substance — that is, the nature of God, which they say is held bound in their bodies — being loosed from their members by that lust, may flee and, being taken up or purged, be set free. This the unhappy people read, this they say, this they hear, this they believe, and this is set down in the seventh book of their 'Treasure' — for so they call a certain writing of Manichaeus, in which these blasphemies are recorded — in these words:
'Then that blessed Father, who has ships of light as his abodes and dwellings according to their magnitudes, out of the clemency implanted in him brings aid, by which his vital substance is stripped and freed from the impious fetters, the straits, and the anguishes. And so by his invisible nod he transfigures those powers of his which are held in this most glorious ship, and makes them appear to the adverse powers which are set in order in the several tracts of the heavens.
'And since these adverse powers consist of both sexes, male and female, therefore he bids the aforesaid powers to appear, partly in the form of beardless boys to the adverse race of females, partly in the form of luminous virgins to the contrary race of males, knowing that all those hostile powers, on account of the deadly and most filthy concupiscence innate in them, are most easily captured, and by those very most beautiful forms which appear are enslaved, and in this way dissolved. But know that this same blessed Father of ours is the very same as also his own powers, which for a necessary cause he transforms into the undefiled likeness of boys and virgins. He uses them as his own weapons, and through them fulfills his will.
'And the ships of light are full of these divine powers, which are set against the infernal races after the manner of a marriage-union, and which with alacrity and ease accomplish in that same instant whatever they have conceived. And so, when reason demands that these same holy powers appear to males, straightway they display their own figure in the garb of most beautiful virgins. Again, when it comes to females, laying aside the forms of virgins, they show the form of beardless boys.'
'But by this comely sight their ardor and concupiscence grows, and in this way the bond of their most wicked thoughts is loosed, and the living soul, which was held in their members, being on this occasion released, escapes and mingles with its own most pure air, where, being utterly washed, the souls ascend to the ships of light, which are prepared for their conveyance and for the crossing over to their own homeland. But that part which still carries the stains of the adverse race descends piecemeal through the heats and warmths, and is mingled with the trees and the other plants and all crops, and is dyed with diverse colors.'
'And in the way that from this great and most glorious ship the figures of boys and virgins appear to the contrary powers which dwell in the heavens and which have a fiery nature, and from this comely appearance the part of life which is held in their members, being released, is drawn down through the heats to the earth: in the same way also that most lofty power which dwells in the ship of the vital waters appears, in the likeness of boys and holy virgins, through its own angels, to those powers whose nature is cold and moist, and which are set in order in the heavens. And indeed to those which are female, the form of boys appears in them, but to the males, that of virgins.'
'But by this change and variety of the divine and most beautiful persons, the princes of the moist and cold stock, whether male or female, are dissolved, and that which is vital in them flees; but that which has settled down, being released, is drawn down to the earth through the colds and is mingled with all the kinds of the earth.' Who could bear this? Who could believe this — I do not say that it is so, but even that it could be said? Behold those who fear to anathematize Manichaeus who teaches this, and do not fear to believe in a God who does these things and suffers these things! And through their own 'elect' they say that this same commingled part and nature of God is purged, namely by eating and drinking, because they say it is held bound in all foods:
and when these things are taken by the 'elect' as by holy men, by eating and drinking for the refreshment of the body, they are, through their holiness, loosed, sealed, and freed. Nor do the wretches consider how not incongruously it is believed of them — what they vainly deny — unless they anathematize those same books and cease to be Manichaeans. For if, as they say, in all seeds there is a bound part of God, and it is purged by the 'elect' through eating: who would not fittingly believe that they do what they read in their 'Treasure' takes place between the powers of heaven and the princes of darkness — since they even say that their own flesh is of the race of darkness, and do not hesitate to believe and affirm that that vital substance, the part of God, is held bound in it?
If indeed this must be loosed and purged by eating, as their deadly error compels them to confess, who does not see — indeed, who would not shudder — what great foulness and how abominable a thing follows? For they say that Adam, the first man, was created by certain princes of the race of darkness in such a way that the light might be held by them, lest it should flee. For in the letter which they call 'the Foundation,' Manichaeus wrote thus how the prince of darkness — whom they bring in as the father of the first man — spoke and acted toward the rest of his companions, the other princes of darkness: 'With wicked devices, therefore, he said to those who were present: What does this great light which is rising seem to you? Behold how it moves the pole, how it shakes very many powers.'
'Wherefore it is rather fitting that you should hand over to me that portion of light which you have in your own strength: for thus shall I fashion the image of that great one who appeared in glory, through which we shall be able to reign, being at last freed from the intercourse of darkness.' Hearing these things and deliberating long among themselves, they thought it most just to furnish what was demanded. For they did not trust that they would hold the same light continually: whence they judged it better to offer it to their prince, in no way despairing that they would reign in the same manner. In what way, then, they furnished the same light which they had, must be considered. For this too is sprinkled through all the divine scriptures and heavenly mysteries; but to the wise it is not at all difficult to know how it was given;