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| He Reproves the Triflings of the Manichæans as to the Fruits of the Earth.
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Chapter X.—He Reproves the
Triflings of the Manichæans as to the Fruits of the
Earth.
18. These things being ignorant of, I derided
those holy servants and prophets of Thine. And what did I gain by
deriding them but to be derided by Thee, being insensibly, and
little by little, led on to those follies, as to credit that a
fig-tree wept when it was plucked, and that the mother-tree shed
milky tears? Which fig notwithstanding, plucked not by his own but
another’s wickedness, had some “saint”258
| 258 i.e. Manichæan saint. | eaten and mingled with his
entrails, he should breathe out of it angels; yea, in his prayers
he shall assuredly groan and sigh forth particles of God, which
particles of the most high and true God should have remained bound
in that fig unless they had been set free by the teeth and belly of
some “elect saint”!259
| 259 According to this extraordinary system, it was the
privilege of the “elect” to set free in eating such parts of
the divine substance as were imprisoned in the vegetable creation
(Con. Faust. xxxi. 5). They did not marry or work in the
fields, and led an ascetic life, the “hearers” or catechumens
being privileged to provide them with food. The “elect” passed
immediately on dying into the realm of light, while, as a reward
for their service, the souls of the “hearers” after death
transmigrated into plants (from which they might be most readily
freed), or into the “elect,” so as, in their turn, to pass away
into the realm of light. See Con. Faust. v. 10, xx. 23; and
in Ps. cxl. | And I, miserable one, believed that
more mercy was to be shown to the fruits of the earth than unto
men, for whom they were created; for if a hungry man—who was not
a Manichæan—should beg for any, that morsel which should be
given him would appear, as it were, condemned to capital
punishment.260
| 260 Augustin frequently alludes to their conduct to the
poor, in refusing to give them bread or the fruits of the earth,
lest in eating they should defile the portion of God contained
therein. But to avoid the odium of their conduct, they would
inconsequently give money whereby food might be bought. See in
Ps. cxl. sec. 12; and De Mor. Manich. 36, 37, and
53. |
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