On the Catholic Way of Life and On the Manichaean Way of Life 2.20

What more shall I say about your morals? I have told what I found out myself, when I was in the city where these things were done. What was done at Rome in my absence would take long to explain in full. Yet I will tell it briefly. For the matter broke out so far that it could not be hidden even from those who were absent; and when I was later at Rome, I confirmed that everything I had heard was true; though the man who had brought me the report, who had been present, was so close to me and so well proved that I could not doubt it at all. A certain Hearer of yours, who yielded nothing to the Elect in that memorable abstinence, who had a liberal education and wished and knew how to defend your sect copiously, was much distressed that the utterly corrupt morals of the Elect, who lived scattered, in the worst way, and anywhere, were often thrown at him when he argued. So he desired, if it could be done, to gather into his own house all who were ready to live according to those precepts, and to support them at his own expense. For he was both no ordinary despiser of money and a man of no ordinary wealth. He complained that his great efforts were hindered by the laxity of the bishops, with whose help he ought to have carried them out. Meanwhile there was a certain bishop of yours, a man plainly, as I found myself, rustic and uncultured, but who somehow seemed by that very roughness stricter in keeping good morals. This man, long desired and at last present, the Hearer seizes upon and sets out his wish to him: the bishop praises it and agrees, and it is decided that he himself should be the first to begin living in his house. When this was done, all the Elect who could be at Rome gathered there. A rule of life from Mani's letter was set before them: to many it seemed intolerable; they left; yet not a few remained out of shame. They began to live as had been decided, and as so great an authority prescribed; while the Hearer pressed all vigorously to everything, yet pressed no one to anything he did not first undertake himself. Meanwhile very frequent quarrels arose among the Elect; crimes were charged against one another, all of which he heard with groans, and he took care that in quarreling they should betray themselves most incautiously: they betrayed unspeakable and monstrous things. There it became known what sort of men they were, who nevertheless, beyond the rest, thought they ought to submit to the force of those precepts. What, then, was to be suspected of the others, or rather what was to be judged? What more? At length, under pressure, they murmured that those commands could not be borne; and from that into mutiny. The Hearer pleaded his case by a very short dilemma: either all those things must be kept, or the man who had commanded such things on such a condition, things which no one could fulfill, must be thought most foolish. Yet the most unbridled clamor of the many overcame the opinion of one, for it could not be otherwise. Afterwards the bishop himself gave way, and fled with great disgrace; and it was said that foods outside the rule had been secretly taken by him and often found, since he had plenty of money from his own purse, carefully hidden.

If you say these things are false, you resist things all too plain and widely known. But I wish you would say it! For since these things are manifest and very easy to learn for those who want to know, it will be understood how truly those are accustomed to speak who deny that they are true. But you use other defenses, which I do not reject. For either you say that there are some who keep your precepts, and that they ought not to be smeared with the crimes of others; or that one ought not to ask at all what sort of people those are who profess your sect, but what sort the profession itself is. Though I grant you both (although you can neither show those faithful observers of the commands nor clear the heresy itself of so many and such great trifles and crimes), this I will strongly demand of you: why do you pursue with curses the Christians of the catholic name, looking at the ruined life of some, when you either shamelessly refuse to have an inquiry made about your own people, or more shamelessly do not refuse, and want it understood that in your great fewness there are hidden some who keep their precepts, but will not allow it in the great multitude of the Catholic Church?