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He began to suspect that this life here below is bearable and has a meaning only when it is fastened to the life on high. Even as for nations glory is daily bread, so for the individual the sacrifice to something which is beyond the world is the only way of living in the world. So, little by little, Augustin corrected the false notions that the Manichees had filled him with about Catholicism.
It was enough for me, Lord, to oppose to those deceived deceivers, and dumb praters, since Thy word sounded not out of them; -that was enough which long ago, while we were yet at Carthage, Nebridius used to propound, at which all we that heard it were staggered: "That said nation of darkness, which the Manichees are wont to set as an opposing mass over against Thee, what could it have done unto Thee, hadst Thou refused to fight with it?
In this island, there are temples in which great sums of money are expended on incense; and in one of these temples, there is a great idol all of pure gold, but concerning the weight of which travellers are not agreed. In the same island, there are great numbers of Jews, and persons of many other sects, even Tanouis, and Manichees, the kings permitting the free exercise of every religion.
And since I had read and well remembered much of the philosophers, I compared some things of theirs with those long fables of the Manichees, and found the former the more probable; even although they could only prevail so far as to make judgment of this lower world, the Lord of it they could by no means find out.
The council of Nice also condemned those who kept Easter upon the fourteenth day of the month. Augustine condemneth fasting upon the Sabbath day as scandalous, because the Manichees used so, and fasting upon that day had been a conformity with them; and wherefore did Gregory advise Leander to abolish the ceremony of trim-immersion?
Enough concerning Antichrist. Jews, Samaritans, and Manichees are his chief opponents; yet he does not forget to warn his hearers against the teaching of Sabellius and Marcellus, 'the dragon's head of late arisen in Galatia. Arius he sometimes contradicts in set terms, though without naming him.
Though the morality of the Manichees was pure, and though their religion is regarded by some as a sort of Christianity, there were but few points in which it was an improvement on Zoroastrianism.
Nothing is known of his early years and education, but we can see some things which influenced him later on. Ancyra was a strange diocese, full of uncouth Gauls and chaffering Jews, and overrun with Montanists and Manichees, and votaries of endless fantastic heresies and superstitions.
In the opinion of the Italian Catholics, nothing good came from Carthage: these Carthaginians were generally Manichees or Donatists sectaries the more dangerous because they claimed to be orthodox, and, mingling with the faithful, hypocritically contaminated them.
The Paulician theology, a theology in which, as it should seem, many of the doctrines of the modern Calvinists were mingled with some doctrines derived from the ancient Manichees, spread rapidly through Provence and Languedoc. The clergy of the Catholic Church were regarded with loathing and contempt. "Viler than a priest," "I would as soon be a priest," became proverbial expressions.
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