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Updated: May 13, 2025
This brought him to open at random the book of the Holy Scriptures which he had before him, and to read what came before his eyes: and these were words which finally induced him to give up Manichaeism. He was a great anatomist and deeply versed in natural science; but he unfortunately gave up research therein, and from being a great physicist he became a mediocre theologian.
I am minded to be a good man; and to be that, I will give up as you have made all other methods impossible for me all which seems to make life worth having'? Oh! instead of finding fault with such men; instead of, with vulturine beak, picking out the elements of Manichaeism, of conceit, of discontent, of what not human frailty and ignorance, which may have been in them, let us honour the enormous moral force which enabled them so to bear witness that not the mortal animal, but the immortal spirit, is the Man; and that when all which outward circumstance can give is cast away, the Man still lives for ever, by God, and in God.
In India they seem indigenous to the soil and not imported by the Aryan invaders, for they are not clearly enunciated in the Rig Veda, nor formulated before the time of the Upanishads . They were introduced by Buddhism to the Far East and their presence in Manichaeism, Neoplatonism, Sufiism and ultimately in the Jewish Kabbala seems a rivulet from the same source.
And if, in view of their great perplexities, of circumstances which they could not control, utter degeneracy and approaching barbarism, they lent their aid to some institutions which we cannot endorse, certainly when corrupted, like Manichaeism and ecclesiastical domination, let us remember that these were adapted to their times, or were called out by pressing exigencies.
Christianity had a hard battle with Gnosticism and Manichaeism, both of Persian origin, and did not come out unscathed. No Grecian system of philosophy, except Platonism, entered into the Christian system so influentially as the disastrous Manichaean heresy, which Augustine combated.
On broiling hot days she denied herself a drop of water to quench an almost intolerable thirst. Verily Manichaeism has eaten like a canker into the heart of the Latin Church. But the early anchorites of Europe were not usually guilty of such extravagance. They were earnest men who sought by self-conquest to place themselves in a position in which they could act as missionaries.
If the undistinguishing and immoral Autotheism of the playwrights, and the luxury and heathendom of the higher classes, first in Italy and then in England, were the natural revolt of the human mind against the Manichaeism of monkery: then the severity and exclusiveness of Puritanism was a natural and necessary revolt against that luxury and immorality; a protest for man's God-given superiority over nature, against that Naturalism which threatened to end in sheer animalism.
The flowers of the mind, if they can be transplanted at all, often flourish with special vigour on alien soil. Witness the triumphs of Islam in the hands of the Turks and Mughals, the progress of Nestorianism in Central Asia, and the spread of Manichaeism in both the East and West outside the limits of Persia.
'I say, that extremes meet, and prudish Manichaeism always ends in sheer indecency.
It was hoped in this way especially to remedy the financial troubles of the moment, which were partly due to a shortage of metal for minting. As the trading capital was still placed with the temples as banks, the government attacked the religion of the Uighurs, Manichaeism, and also the religions of the other foreigners, Mazdaism, Nestorianism, and apparently also Islam.
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