4. For you well know that the
Manichees move the unlearned by finding fault with the Catholic
Faith, and chiefly by rending in pieces and tearing the Old
Testament: and they are utterly ignorant, how far1697
these
things are to be taken, and how drawn out they descend with
profit
into the veins and marrows of
souls as yet as it were but able to
cry.
1698
And
because there are in them certain things which are some slight
offense to minds ignorant and careless of themselves, (and there
are very many such,) they admit of being
accused in a popular way:
but
defended in a popular way they cannot be, by any great number
of persons, by reason of the
mysteries that are contained in them.
But the few, who know how to do this, do not
love public and much
talked of controversies and disputes:
1699
and on this account are very
little known,
save to such as are most earnest in seeking them out.
Concerning then this rashness of the Manichees, whereby they find
fault with the Old Testament and the Catholic
Faith, listen, I
entreat you, to the considerations which move me. But I desire and
hope that you will receive them in the same spirit in which I say
them. For
God, unto Whom are known the
secrets of my conscience
knows, that in this
discourse I am doing nothing of
evil craft;
but, as I think it should be received, for the sake of proving the
truth, for which one thing we have now long ago determined to
live;
and with incredible
anxiety, lest it may have been most easy for me
to err with you, but most difficult, to use no harder term, to hold
the right way with you. But I venture
1700
to anticipate that, in this
hope,
wherein I
hope that you will hold with us the way of
wisdom, He
will not
fail me, unto Whom I have been
consecrated; Whom day and
night I endeavor to
gaze upon: and since, by reason of my
sins, and
by reason of past
habit, having the
eye of the
mind wounded by
strokes of
feeble opinions, I know that I am without
strength, I
often entreat with
tears, and as, after long
blindness and
darkness
the
eyes being hardly opened, and as yet, by
frequent throbbing and
turning away, refusing the
light which yet they long after;
specially if one endeavor to show to them the very sun; so it has
now befallen me, who do not deny that there is a certain
unspeakable and singular good of the
soul, which the
mind sees; and
who with
tears and groaning confess that I am not yet worthy of it.
He will not then
fail me, if I
feign nothing, if I am led by
duty,
if I
love truth, if I esteem friendship, if I fear much lest you be
deceived.
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