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| Helpidius Disputed Well Against the Manichæans as to the Authenticity of the New Testament.
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Chapter XI.—Helpidius Disputed
Well Against the Manichæans as to the Authenticity of the New
Testament.
21. Furthermore, whatever they had censured420
| 420 See iii. sec. 14, above. | in Thy
Scriptures I thought impossible to be defended; and yet sometimes,
indeed, I desired to confer on these several points with some one
well learned in those books, and to try what he thought of them.
For at this time the words of one Helpidius, speaking and disputing
face to face against the said Manichæans, had begun to move me
even at Carthage, in that he brought forth things from the
Scriptures not easily withstood, to which their answer appeared to
me feeble. And this answer they did not give forth publicly, but
only to us in private,—when they said that the writings of the
New Testament had been tampered with by I know not whom, who were
desirous of ingrafting the Jewish law upon the Christian faith;421
| 421 On this matter reference may be made to Con.
Faust. xviii. 1, 3; xix. 5, 6; xxxiii. 1, 3. | but they
themselves did not bring forward any uncorrupted copies.422
| 422 They might well not like to give the answer in
public, for, as Augustin remarks (De Mor. Eccles.
Cath. sec. 14), every one could see “that this is all that is
left for men to say when it is proved that they are wrong. The
astonishment that he experienced now, that they did “not bring
forward any uncorrupted copies,” had fast hold of him, and after
his conversion he confronted them on this very ground. “You ought
to bring forward,” he says (ibid. sec. 61), “another
manuscript with the same contents, but incorrupt and more correct,
with only the passage wanting which you charge with being
spurious.…You say you will not, lest you be suspected of
corrupting it. This is your usual reply, and a true one.” See
also De Mor. Manich. sec. 55; and Con. Faust. xi. 2,
xiii. 5, xviii. 7, xxii. 15, xxxii. 16. | But I,
thinking of corporeal things, very much ensnared and in a measure
stifled, was oppressed by those masses;423
| 423 See above, sec. 19, Fin.. | panting under which for the breath
of Thy Truth, I was not able to breathe it pure and
undefiled.
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