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| Of Manichæus Pertinaciously Teaching False Doctrines, and Proudly Arrogating to Himself the Holy Spirit.
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Chapter V.—Of Manichæus
Pertinaciously Teaching False Doctrines, and Proudly Arrogating to
Himself the Holy Spirit.
8. But yet who was it that ordered Manichæus
to write on these things likewise, skill in which was not necessary
to piety? For Thou hast told man to behold piety and wisdom,386
| 386 Job xxviii. 28 in LXX. reads: Ἰδοὺ ἡ θεοσέβεά ἐστι σοφία. | of which he
might be in ignorance although having a complete knowledge of these
other things; but since, knowing not these things, he yet most
impudently dared to teach them, it is clear that he had no
acquaintance with piety. For even when we have a knowledge of these
worldly matters, it is folly to make a profession of them; but
confession to Thee is piety. It was therefore with this view that
this straying one spake much of these matters, that, standing
convicted by those who had in truth learned them, the understanding
that he really had in those more difficult things might be made
plain. For he wished not to be lightly esteemed, but went about
trying to persuade men “that the Holy Ghost, the Comforter and
Enricher of Thy faithful ones, was with full authority personally
resident in him.”387
| 387 This claim of Manichæus was supported by referring
to the Lord’s promise (John xvi. 12, 13) to send the Holy Ghost, the
Comforter, to guide the apostles into that truth which they were as
yet “not able to bear.” The Manichæans used the words
“Paraclete” and “Comforter,” as indeed the names of the
other two persons of the blessed Trinity, in a sense entirely
different from that of the gospel. These terms were little more
than the bodily frame, the soul of which was his own heretical
belief. Whenever opposition appeared between that belief and the
teaching of Scripture, their ready answer was that the Scriptures
had been corrupted (De Mor. Ecc. Cath. xxviii. and xxix.);
and in such a case, as we find Faustus contending (Con.
Faust. xxxii. 6), the Paraclete taught them what part to
receive and what to reject, according to the promise of Jesus that
He should “guide them into all truth,” and much more to the
same effect. Augustin’s whole argument in reply is well worthy of
attention. Amongst other things, he points out that the Manichæan
pretension to having received the promised Paraclete was precisely
the same as that of the Montanists in the previous century. It
should be observed that Beausobre (Histoire, i. 254, 264,
etc.) vigorously rebuts the charge brought against Manichæus of
claiming to be the Holy Ghost. An interesting examination of
the claims of Montanus will be found in Kaye’s Tertullian,
pp. 13 to 33. | When, therefore, it was
discovered that
his teaching concerning the heavens and stars, and the motions of
sun and moon, was false, though these things do not relate to the
doctrine of religion, yet his sacrilegious arrogance would become
sufficiently evident, seeing that not only did he affirm things of
which he knew nothing, but also perverted them, and with such
egregious vanity of pride as to seek to attribute them to himself
as to a divine being.
9. For when I hear a Christian brother
ignorant of these things, or in error concerning them, I can bear
with patience to see that man hold to his opinions; nor can I
apprehend that any want of knowledge as to the situation or nature
of this material creation can be injurious to him, so long as he
does not entertain belief in anything unworthy of Thee, O Lord, the
Creator of all. But if he conceives it to pertain to the form of
the doctrine of piety, and presumes to affirm with great obstinacy
that whereof he is ignorant, therein lies the injury. And yet even
a weakness such as this in the dawn of faith is borne by our Mother
Charity, till the new man may grow up “unto a perfect man,” and
not be “carried about with every wind of doctrine.”388
But in him
who thus presumed to be at once the teacher, author, head, and
leader of all whom he could induce to believe this, so that all who
followed him believed that they were following not a simple man
only, but Thy Holy Spirit, who would not judge that such great
insanity, when once it stood convicted of false teaching, should be
abhorred and utterly cast off? But I had not yet clearly
ascertained whether the changes of longer and shorter days and
nights, and day and night itself, with the eclipses of the greater
lights, and whatever of the like kind I had read in other books,
could be expounded consistently with his words. Should I have found
myself able to do so, there would still have remained a doubt in my
mind whether it were so or no, although I might, on the strength of
his reputed godliness,389
| 389 See vi. sec. 12, note, below. | rest my faith on his
authority.
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