Against the Manichees 2.45–2.62

In this way, then, we must also dispose of the madman’s accusation against so-called deadly herbs, since he has been eager to slander everything. So too he speaks falsely of iron and fire, doing the opposite of what he wishes in these too. For while accusing matter (which he vainly imagines exists), he again appears as a kind of patron and advocate of it, showing hostility to the things that consume matter as evil. Iron and fire were sown in the earth by the Creator, and found by man’s reasoning with God’s permission; without them human life would have been wholly maimed. If the madman thought them harmful because they destroy the bodies put to them, they will appear much more beneficial and saving by their necessary use for everything. And if they lay hidden in creation and man’s reasoning first found them, to whom must the reasoning that found them be credited? To evil and matter, which have no knowledge, by his account, or to the good? But plainly wisdom of reasoning is a good and a gift of the good. And when did iron ever leap of its own accord at anyone, iron which is subject only to the use of reason and serves every art? “But a man murders with it,” he says. Yet the evil art belongs to the user, not the tool; so that, if there were no one using it in this way, iron would not have seemed evil. For if the murderer plans to commit murder but fails in the deed, is it not plain that his purpose did the deed and the iron is sinless? So too, even if he does it, iron is not the cause, but the one who used iron’s cutting against reason. And if he strikes with wood, or beats with a stone, or strangles with his own hands, he will call these evil too. And with the madman everything is a cause rather than the true cause, voluntary reasoning. For all the things mentioned along with iron are neither good nor evil, but are drawn to whatever the user wishes, lying at hand like tools and serving the user; and if they had not been given to man, he would not have accomplished the arts as he has, nor had their abundant uses; and, what is more, he would hardly have been exercised in virtue. For not having tools at hand that could be drawn to the working of virtue and vice, he would not have had in his power the preference of virtue, so that he would seem to have suffered the greatest loss and to have fallen from the greatest good repute, if he were thought not to touch evildoing only because he lacked the means to do it. For what is wholly inactive is idle and without glory. “But look,” he might say, “at what results.” Nothing more than what is necessary happens. For death was not found by the murderer but laid down by the Creator; and if anyone is eager to prove iron and wood and stone, fire and water and the like to be evildoers, let him leave aside the tools and refute only the result (I mean death), and show that it was not reasonably appointed by the Creator, and so at last call evil the things that wrongly help to bring it about. But if death is shown by no one to be wicked, but on the contrary (as has been shown in many ways) is even beneficial, how is it not superfluous to accuse as evil by nature the things through which death may come, which do not know to what end they are moved by another to whom they were given, and are free of all blame, when one ought to blame only the one who moves them when it is not fitting, man?

So it has truly been shown that nothing in creation is evil, and that only human reasoning, which necessarily receives power, sometimes does wrong, and in doing wrong is only convicted of having preferred the worse; but that it can make nothing new against nature, nor turn things upside down at its pleasure, but only does what is according to nature, even if it is accused of acting against reason. For example, murder brings about natural death, doing nothing more than what is natural, except that it convicts the doer. Again, adultery and the like are accused only for the unreasonableness of the reasoning, but can make nothing at all new against the nature fixed by the Creator; so that the law of him who made nature is and remains inviolable, and sins turn somehow within natural things themselves, introducing no novelty, except that they convict the doer of doing wrong willingly, since he could not otherwise have done right had he not also had the opposite in his power, the willing avoidance of which he has for the acquisition of virtue. So it is the work of the utmost folly to blame iron or wood or any other thing in vain, and not the one who uses it unreasonably.

And if someone asks why a man is murdered, we shall say again what has often been said: why, then, does man die at all? If this were shown to be evil, the blame would reasonably go back to the one who appointed it. But if death is not evil, we must examine only the permission of him who provides for our affairs, for what reason a man meets, by way of murder, a death that is not evil by nature; and it would be found to happen for many and various reasons, which it would be superfluous to count. For the same thing happens to the righteous and the unrighteous for different reasons, neither to harm the righteous nor to punish the unrighteous; for what is natural would not be a punishment, but serves as an example or for chastening incurable evils. And there are many reasons why God permits a man to be murdered; yet plainly nothing happens beyond what is fixed for nature. For even if the circumstance differs, fever and unmeasured fullness or on the contrary famine, cold and heat, being buried or stoned, sword and fire and water, in all these the outcome is one. And what is that? What was well and fittingly appointed by the Creator for the whole race.

So it could be shown in many other ways too that nothing in creation is evil, and nothing in the divine economy deserves blame, but that all things have come to be by ineffable wisdom and are governed by ineffable providence; so that it would not be easy to learn the meaning of what God does, whether things that seem good or, again, painful. For it was not fitting, it seems, that the evidences of God’s wisdom should be accessible to all, and his ineffable and incomprehensible mind wholly bare to men, when even a human king and ruler sometimes keeps most of his plans hidden, so that even what is done is unclear as to the reason for which it is done. It is no wonder, then, if men cannot contain the reason of God’s whole governance; it befits them to submit without meddling, to keep quiet, and by no means to rise up against the ineffable governance. For often we do not even scrutinize a craftsman experienced in building, shipbuilding or bronze-working, but, respecting him as he does his own work, trusting his experience we wait to see the work; and sometimes we do not even notice when craftsmen make mistakes. What, then, shall we say of the wisdom of God that surpasses every mind, which we ought to be amazed at and honour, whether we understand or not?

But if anyone, because he does not grasp the reason of most of what God does, should fall into absurd opinions against God, such a man is most wretched and very foolish, using the very blindness of his own mind as his guide; like Mani, who devised a most grievous madness against those who believe him: since he did not grasp how our affairs are governed, he fabricated a second, beginningless principle of evil, so that he might go wrong about things above and not be allowed to understand things below, fabricating against the God of all such things as proclaim his supreme forbearance. For he divided up what is God’s and ascribed most of it to the evil that does not exist, blaspheming the Creator in every way by saying that God’s achievements are composed out of evil.

What, then, would he say about the principles of bodies? These are four, which they usually call the four elements; they are opposite to one another and exactly opposed, and none of them can accomplish anything by itself. For what would the dry be without the moist, or the hot without the cold? If, then, the meeting of opposites makes a body, which of the four will he assign to evil, and which to the good? For if he imagines in everything a mixture of good and evil, he must divide the four into two, and either separate them equally or set three against one; but whatever he assigns to the good would be found able to do harm by itself. For none of the four, unmixed, is not dangerous; indeed, even in the mixture, the one in excess becomes a cause of destruction to the body, as those skilled in these things say. If, then, the hot burns by itself, the cold chills, the dry dries and the moist floods, which of these will the deceiver reckon to God? For it is reasonable that the whole body should have a mixture of the things of which it is composed and by which it subsists; but that each of the things from which the mixture comes should itself be from a mixture is impossible. So there is no reason to divide each of the indivisible elements themselves between two opposite principles and to introduce a mixture of each. For what composition will the deceiver devise for the dry? What mixture for unmixed fire? Or what combination for the cold, which is cold throughout? And likewise for the moist. For these are plainly of one kind and indivisible, so that none of them could even subsist by itself, but has its being together with the others.

He is mad with a grievous madness, then, when he says that one part of fire belongs to the good and another to evil. And he must do this with the qualities of the elements too, and divide what admits no division. For the dry is dry throughout, dryness itself, simple and of one kind; and the cold cannot even come into the thought of division, being one and simple throughout. So too the moist and the hot. What part of fire, then, will belong to the good, and what, on the contrary, to evil, when it admits no division, since it admitted no mixture either, being unmixed? For a single body can be divided, at least in thought, but how could an unmixed element seem to be composed of opposites? And what opposition could one reckon in unmixed fire? If, then, each element by itself is wholly dangerous, none of them, by the madman’s account, will suit the good; all will be assigned to evil, and bodies will not be composed of the other, contrary to the madman’s hypothesis.

And how will one part of fire seem to him healing (in so far as it belongs to the good) and another destructive and burning (in so far as it belongs to evil), unless he madly imagined a mixture of good and evil in bodies too? Thinking this, he will be compelled to assign to the good whichever of the four elements he likes, entire and undivided, as they are by nature, and he will be seen admitting that something unmixed and harmful by itself exists even from God. But the fool divides the indivisible nature of fire, saying that its healing part is one thing and its burning part another, the barbarian not understanding that the division lies in the use, not in the nature of fire. For unmeasured nearness to it is dangerous, while a moderate distance gives a safe share in it; and besides, the very burning quality of fire is alone what is necessary, and that is what fire is. For this softens and melts what is brought to it for need; so fire is nothing else than its burning quality, and what is necessary is nothing else than this. But he insults fire in vain, being very ungrateful for the benefits of the Creator of all.

And if someone should grant that the four elements belong to evil, as he holds, how could they seem to be of one nature, being opposites? For if the hot comes from one place and the cold from another, or the reverse, and so again with the other pair, the mixture of bodies would be incoherent on such a hypothesis. And if he should ascribe to the ingenuity of evil the discovery of the four for the making of the world, evil, which has no mind or understanding, will turn out very wise indeed, so as to carry off even the Creator’s greatest wonder, if it understood how it could make them subsist.

And since he reveres the sun and defines it as unmixed (as he supposes) with evil, come, let us consider the sun truthfully too. It will be seen to belong to one of the four elements, I mean the hot substance. It does not harm things beneath it, but only warms and benefits them because it is very far away; but those it comes nearer to it burns, and makes such land barren. Indeed, in summer, falling unmixed on the earth at noon, it heats it so that the ground seems to those who walk on it barefoot to be laid under them like a branding iron. And often men caught in the sun’s blaze have perished in the great heat, finding no relief nearby. It blackens bodies and scorches them, plainly doing the work of fire. Or rather it is itself productive of fire, if one holds water in a glass vessel directly toward it. For the point of the sun’s ray, gathered by the transparency of the water and the glass and sent into a narrow space, meeting with matter easily catches fire, and at once begets fire and clearly persuades anyone unwilling to quarrel that the sun is a kind of fire, and the first of the bright works of creation, since the nature of fire would be found brighter than all things. For while all the other elements are carried downward, fire alone leaps upon what can be burned and takes its course upward through everything, lightened by its fineness, and proves even the air very heavy by rising above it, so that it appears finer than the air too, by kinship with the sun. So Mani, deifying the sun as of the nature of the good, runs the risk of introducing a good one like fire, or rather plainly such. For the sun, being of the hot substance, differs from fire in position but does the same in its working, except that the measure of its distance removes what lies near it from its sharper onset. Indeed, it would have been thought dangerous to all animals and plants if the Creator had not made along with it other things for help, through which we and the other animals are safe from the sun. These are retreats and shelters, and also, for plants, supplies of water and blowings of winds. So even those who define the sun as a fifth element, being unwilling to quarrel against what is plain, … And so let the most grievously mad man, who blasphemes the Creator of all, by no means be believed when he compares the sun with God and says it is from God’s substance. For everything visible (being a body) is by nature opposed to the invisible and incorporeal; it can be his work, and a very wonderful work, but it can have no likeness of nature to him.

To count all the impious things the deceiver has put into his writings would be a great task. For reviling all existing things as evil, he also slanders the fruits of the earth as nourishing matter. And while he admires the sun beyond measure and defines it as being from the good, as he says, he is not ashamed to decry bitterly the plants and seeds it nourishes by warming them, which could not exist at all without the sun, which was made by God. For as the sun would have been of no benefit unless supplies of rain watered the plants and blowings of useful winds stirred them, so again rain and the rest would have been of no benefit without the sun. So here too he fights hard against himself, bitterly slandering as evil the fruits of the earth, which grow through the sun that he greatly admires and honours.

And saying that rains are excretions, and defining them as the sweat of the rulers of matter as they are in love with the powers of the good and so toil, he tries to show their superfluity and waste (as he thinks) from the fact that rain falls on the sea and on the desert and unsown land; like some exact accountant come forward against God, as though God spent his supply of water in vain and wastefully, not seeing, through utter folly, what befits God: that if God were poor in water, he would make an exact distribution of it, measured to need; but since he is rich (more than anyone could say), this very abundance of supply is shown by his watering through clouds even the sea, from which the waters are carried up into the air. And the desert and unsown land are necessarily rained on to supply springs, and sometimes for travellers too, so that they may find gatherings of water. And in general he has not laid down that land without rain should be scorched by the sun, at least for the most part; for all land enjoys moisture from God either through rivers or through rains. So if it does not rain, the man and his followers are ready for blasphemy; and if it rains, they do not stop blaming and slandering God in vain. And when they take bread into their hands, the disciples of blasphemy first curse it, and so the ungrateful fill themselves; and enjoying creation no less than anyone, they alone have sharpened their tongues against it, or rather against him who made it, and they partake of it as God’s bitterest enemies, being vexed at this very thing, that they stand in need of the things of creation. And insulting the begetting of children, they [want] their intercourse to happen without it …, being slaves not of the necessary succession laid down by God but of pleasure, enemies in everything of true and genuine virtue and of piety, as though finding fault with the perpetuity of the human race and wishing the course of nature to stop somewhere, laying down laws for God and vexed at his goodness, because of which he bears their blasphemy with forbearance. Yet it is for this reason that a natural desire for intercourse has been instilled in bodies, so that animals are carried almost by necessity of the motions of nature to the work of succession, by the surpassing wisdom of the Creator, who laid this down too. For since labour pains are grievous for women, and the upbringing of children grievous for men and women, and succession very necessary, desire is moved naturally and in a way compels, while reason piously accepts that succession be made more important than pleasure. And pleasure is blameless in bodies, if it follows reason and the law of the Maker. But they, often reaping the pleasure, necessarily hate the work that comes from it, and give the instruction to loosen and cast out conceptions by sorceries brought in, and not to wait for births in due season, as though this alone were terrible and grievous, roused as enemies of nature, or rather of him who made it, and having learned madness against this universe.

“And why,” they say, “is there desire for intercourse in bodies?” How would the beauty of particular self-control have existed among men, unless there were by nature something that provokes, held in check by reason? And where would virginity be among women, or abstaining from marriage among men, surpassing common self-control, unless reason also had a love for holiness? Wrestling against natural things, it will make victors of those who rightly constrain their innate desire, not to insult nature, but for the practice of endurance and holiness.

So too we take pleasure in food and drink, reaping a pleasure that is not blameworthy (for it too is natural), and yet we train ourselves by fasts, not practising against nature what is above nature, but embracing endurance and propitiating God through humility. And we would not have taken up the practice of fasting if hunger were not present in the body. Everywhere, then, appetite procures good repute both for moderate use and for abstinence as far as one can. For it is not the use of natural things that makes sin. A moderate amount of wine is healthful, but the evil of drunkenness comes in through excess. Likewise the use of natural food in measure is blameless, while gluttony is convicted as unreasonable by its excess. So too with the appetite for intercourse: its lawful use, which knows measure, is wholly blameless, while the lawless and unmeasured use brings the charge of licentiousness.

So, since neither Mani nor his followers have seen anything by reason, they have carried everything off and insulted it madly, as though all desire were evil; whereas its measure, lawfully kept, is blameless, and abstinence as far as one can is the good repute of a wonderful virtue. For if someone who abstains is praiseworthy before God, that thing does not lie badly within his power, the abstinence from which is the achievement of perfect virtue; for it would be a loss if the highest good were not at hand, to be shown not empty through abstinence. For without not doing the opposite, when it is possible to do evil, one cannot seem to have done the opposite, the good, as we have often shown.

But Mani dishonours the good and virtue by decrying power and freedom. And he is not ashamed to say that stones have souls and to introduce all things as ensouled (even things plainly soulless), on the ground that the power of the good is still held captive even in stones; so far does he bring down what they honour into insult and cheapness that he says the nature of the good is fettered even in soulless stones. What madness could one say it is evidence of, to insist that these things are so? For if what was sent from the good is held captive even in stones, evil has already conquered, since on the contrary the one who came to bind has been bound. And he makes the noise in the air of a stone and a rod evidence that stones and wood have souls, as though he had ever heard articulate speech from them. Yet in us too the thought and reasoning of the soul are not heard at all, while what is audible comes from air struck through the bodily organ; which happens even without rational movement. One can find it in irrational creatures, which cry out but inarticulately, since they lack reason. So every body, even if soulless, naturally makes a sound by striking the air; for the incorporeal could not utter anything audible, since it does not strike the air, having no organ to strike it; otherwise the incorporeal powers would seem soulless, since nothing audible comes to us from them. So what he should have taken as evidence of things wholly soulless, since they necessarily make noise against the air (for this belongs to body alone, not to soul), he took as a sign of having a soul.

Hence he also gravely blames those who slaughter the four-footed animals and birds that are useful to men for food, on the ground that that power of the good gives these too their souls and is held captive in them, as though he were eager to insult in every way the one he supposedly calls good. We must ask, then: by whose permission were these given to men for food from the beginning? By evil, as insulting the good? But evil, having no knowledge, would not have understood so great a matter. For there would be no other creator, nor is there, as he says, but God, who also emitted the power from his own nature to chasten matter. All animals, then, came into being by the will of their Creator, both those suitable for men’s food and those not. So no one else but the Maker allowed these to be food for men. For nature as a whole would not have recognized what is useful to it if the one who made it had not so legislated. Indeed these have been made by nature a wealth, so that their use never fails; and the more some are consumed in use, the more prolific they are. Some only feed men, some also clothe them, and others provide other uses, made by the Creator by nature as servants for man. So even those great in bulk are subject to him, yielding gently; those in the air are brought down by the skill of reason; those in the waters are drawn up; and especially those that fulfil what is useful to men. So it is plain that men did not force irrational animals to serve them against the will of the Creator, but the law of their Maker subjected them to men.

Mani might say that it is not even pious to yoke an ox to plough the land, lest the soul sent by the good should seem to be utterly enslaved. And how could farming exist? How could the human race continue from generation to generation? So, against common reasoning, the man mad in every way fabricated everything against creation. For tame animals have been made by nature servants of man and given over to his use; and the untamed too are servants in another sense, besides the reason stated, so that man by reason prevails over all irrational creatures. And when God permits it for various reasons, not only might a lion, the most valiant beast, or some other wild beast or creeping thing overpower a man, but even a gnat or some other very small creature might get the better of him. Besides, the nature of wild beasts, in the way described, is set before the eyes of men (and sometimes into their experience) for various necessary reasons