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Updated: May 21, 2025
The Manicheans, who had occupied themselves with questions on the nature of God, the creation of the world, and the origin of evil, seemed to have attained on these points some tangible conclusions. For want of better Augustine defended their doctrines without participating in the excesses which distinguished those sectaries.
Some observers of the controversy have indeed not scrupled to affirm that those of whom we speak are really Manicheans without knowing it; and build their systems upon assumptions secretly borrowed from the disciples of Zoroaster, without ever stating those assumptions openly in the form of postulates or definition.
What if there is some truth in what the Manicheans say about purification, that in every food something of God is present and that part of God is purified by chewing and digesting, and the purified part is turned into angels, who are said to depart from us in belching and flatulence: how many angels may be believe were produced by the flesh eaten by these pigs and by the great farts they let go?
As we are now entering the region reddened with the blood of these heretics, it will not be improper here to give a little account of them. The Albigenses are often erroneously confused with the Waldenses, with whom really they had little in common. Actually, the Albigenses were not Christians at all, but Manicheans.
God, therefore, as the Manicheans, with Plato and Aristotle before them, had taught, could be the author of good only; or, to express the same thing in less figurative and misleading language, it was only the good in things that could contribute to our idea of divinity.
Through the whole of the Middle Ages, under the various names of Manicheans, Albigensians, Vaudois, &c., they became exceedingly vigorous, though their importance was only fitful. For them property was essentially unclean, something to be avoided as carrying with it the in-dwelling of the spirit of evil.
From words he ascended to definitions, and like all true inquirers began to love the definite, the precise. He wanted a basis to stand upon. He sought certitudes, elemental truths which sophistry could not cover up. Then the Manicheans could no longer satisfy him. He had doubts, difficulties, which no Manichean could explain, not even Dr.
We might almost think that the numerous fathers who have written against the Manicheans must have had an easy victory when the enemy never appeared in the field, when their writings were scarcely answered, or their arguments denied; but perhaps a juster view would lead us to remark how much the writers, as well as the readers, must have felt the difficulty of accounting for the origin of evil, since men have run into such wild opinions to explain it.
This notion was characteristic, and the poetical feeling in which it originated, when the doctor attempted to explain the doctrine of the Manicheans, was still more distinctly developed; for his Lordship again expressed how much the belief of the real appearance of Satan, to hear and obey the commands of God, added to his views of the grandeur and majesty of the Creator.
This system was logically weak, because these absolutes were in the first place two, which is one contradiction, and in the second place relative, which is another. But in spite of the pitfalls into which the Manicheans were betrayed by their pursuit of metaphysical absolutes, they were supported by a moral intuition of great truth and importance.
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