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Long before the Christian era, the Zoroastrian Persians held just such a theory of a struggling deity combating the evil machinations of Ahriman. The faithful were exhorted to do all in their power to assist Ahura Mazda in his stern fight with darkness and contamination. This dualistic view found its way West and appears in Manicheism.
Now scholars have pointed out that the idea of a prolonged conflict between a good and an evil power was characteristic of the Persian religion, and that this view tinged later Judaism and passed over into Christianity. Here it was met and reënforced by Neo-Platonism in the form usually called Gnosticism and Manicheism.
The proof that two infinities can coexist is that this idea passes beyond reason and enters the category of those things referred to in Ecclesiasticus: 'Inquire not into things higher than thou, for many things have shown themselves to be above the sense of men. "Manicheism, you see, must have had some good in it, because it was bathed in blood.
A sect known as the Paulicians arose in Samosata in Asia Minor, which combined Manicheism with a peculiar reverence for the teaching of St. Paul. Fiercely persecuted by the Christians, they revolted, joined with the Mahommedans, and wasted much of Asia Minor. Thence their doctrines spread fast. It would be of interest to know how much of their physical qualities were transmitted also.
Beausobre, too, in his learned, account of Manicheism reads a severe lesson to the 'sensible dummies, who, under the influence of such passions as fear and avarice, will do nothing to check the march of superstition, or relieve their less 'sensible, but more honest, fellow-creatures from the weight of its fetters.
The mass of the Slavs, however, were pagan till the ninth century, when they were converted by the great mission led by Cyril and Methodius from Salonika. Manicheism had already, in Justinian's time, taken a strong hold in the Balkan Peninsula. It now became amalgamated with a form of Christianity.
"Weel, I wad like to hear what ye hae agane Manicheism!" "The main objection of theologians would be, I presume, that it did not present a God perfect in power as in goodness; but I think it a far more objectionable point that it presents evil as possessing power in itself.
Raymond VI. dwelt in Languedoc, in all the luxurious splendor of an Eastern emir; and he doubtless found the doctrines of dualistic Manicheism more congenial to his taste for pleasure than the stern tenets of the Christian religion.
The following quotation from the same inspired author is very striking, inasmuch as the truth contained in it is founded upon an enlarged view of the Divine government, and directly pointed against that insidious Manicheism, which, originating in the East, has gradually infected the religious opinions of a large portion of mankind.
XVII. Even when farthest removed from the Roman Catholic Church, he paid the greatest regard to the decisions of the ancient councils, to the discipline of the primitive Church, and the authority of the Fathers. He writes, June 6, 1611, to John Utengobard , that he highly respected the ancient councils which condemned Manicheism and Pelagianism.
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