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And first of all, it was time to get rid of Manicheeism. A Manichee would have made a scandal in a city where the greatest part of the population was Christian, and the Court was Catholic, although it did not conceal its sympathy with Arianism. It was a long time now since Augustin had been a Manichee in his heart.

He had just been studying astronomy, and he found that the cosmology of the Manichees of these men who called themselves materialists did not agree with scientific facts. Therefore Manicheeism must be wrong universally, since it ran counter to reason confirmed by experience. Augustin spoke about his doubts, not only to his friends, but to the priests of his sect.

Some have professed amazement that this honest and practical mind should have stuck fast in a doctrine so tortuous, so equivocal, contaminated by fancies so grossly absurd. But perhaps it is forgotten that there was everything in Manicheeism. The leaders of the sect did not deliver the bulk of the doctrine all at once to their catechumens; the entire initiation was a matter of several degrees.

And yet, however absorbed in their work the two Africans might be, it is pretty near certain that intellectual questions took the lead of all others. This is manifest in Augustin's case at least. He must have astonished the good Alypius when he got to Rome by acknowledging that he hardly believed in Manicheeism any longer.

"My puffed-out face," he says, "closed up my eyes." Nevertheless he had taken a great step in rejecting the fundamental dogma of Manicheeism the double Principle of good and evil. Henceforth for Augustin there exists only one Principle, unique and incorruptible the Good, which is God.

We therefore consider thee as a cause of scandal, and a rotten and creaking branch, to be excised by the spiritual arm, and do hereby excise thee, and cut thee off. Jack. Nay faith, that's a little too much, Master Frank. How long have you been Bishop of Exeter? Frank. For thy Manicheeism, let his lordship of Exeter deal with it.

He turned his back on the Bible, as he had thrown aside Hortensius, and he went to find pasture elsewhere. Nevertheless, his mind had been set in motion. Nevermore was he to know repose, till he had found truth. He demanded this truth from all the sects and all the churches. So it was, that in despair he flung himself into Manicheeism.

It is true that you have not been very obstinate in any of them, but your successive recantations appear to betray less submission to our Holy Mother the Church than eagerness to rush from one error to another, to leap from Manicheeism to Sabellianism, and from the crime of the Albigenses to the ignominies of the Vaudois."

In this angry state of mind he was no longer able to consider things with the same confidence and serenity. His mental disquietudes took hold of him again. His ideas were affected, first of all. He began to have doubts, more and more definite, about Manicheeism. He began by suspecting the rather theatrical austerity which the initiated of the sect made such a great parade of.

Above all, he attacks his old friends the Manichees.... He wrote many tracts against them. From the animosity he put into these, may be judged to what extent Manicheeism filled his thoughts, and also the progress of the sect in Africa. This campaign was even the cause of a complete change in his way of writing.