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Updated: May 2, 2025
Augustine had dallied a little with the sect of the Manichees, which appears to have grieved his mother more than his wild life. But she was comforted by a vision, when she found herself in a wood, and met "a glorious young man," who informed her that "where she was there should her son be also."
The Manichees, and the Pelagians, and Socinians, all did profess great strictness and sanctity of life; and there never was heretic yet, from they whom the Apostle makes mention of, who fasted from meats, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, down to the Quakers, Dippers, and New Lights of this generation who have not, like their fathers of old, put on the shape of Angels of Light, and lived severe and over-strict lives.
Manes, or Manichaeus, the founder of the sect of Manichees, in the third century, taught that there are two principles from which all things proceed; the one is a pure and subtile matter, called Light, and the other a gross and corrupt substance, called Darkness. Each of these is subject to the dominion of a superintending being, whose existence is from all eternity.
He even drops into jokes which would offend modern shamefacedness by their Aristophanic breadth. These arguments, to say the truth, did not shake the foundations of the doctrine, and if a doctrine must be judged according to its works, the Manichees might entrench themselves behind their rigid moral rules, and their conduct.
Although forced to conceal their beliefs since the edict of Theodosius, there were a good many Manichees in the city. They formed an occult Church, strongly organized, and its adepts had relations with all classes of Roman society. Possibly Augustin presented himself as one driven out of Africa by the persecution.
Upon this, he prevailed with his unwilling father that he might be my scholar. He gave way, and gave in. And Alypius beginning to be my hearer again, was involved in the same superstition with me, loving in the Manichees that show of continency which he supposed true and unfeigned.
Finally, the immoralities which the Manichees made such a great point of against the Holy Writ, were justified, according to Ambrose, by historical considerations: what God did not allow to-day, He allowed formerly by reason of the conditions of existence. However, though the Bible might be neither absurd nor contrary to morals, this did not prove that it was true.
It was through him that his friends became Manichees: Alypius one of the first; then Nebridius, the son of a great landowner near Carthage; Honoratius, Marcianus; perhaps, too, the youngest of his pupils, Licentius and his brother all victims of his persuasive tongue, which he exerted later on to draw them back from their errors. So great was his charm so deep, especially, was public credulity!
But he found that Sergius could give him no information on that subject, but, on the contrary, discoursed so wisely and beautifully on holy things, that his pupil's intellect was enlightened, and his enthusiasm was inflamed, and he longed to go forth and instruct the ignorant people around him; the Saracens, and the Sabaeans, and the Zoroastrians, and the Carmathians, and the Baphometites, and the Paulicians, who are a remnant of the ancient Manichees.
Furthermore, what the Manichees had criticised in Thy Scriptures, I thought could not be defended; yet at times verily I had a wish to confer upon these several points with some one very well skilled in those books, and to make trial what he thought thereon; for the words of one Helpidius, as he spoke and disputed face to face against the said Manichees, had begun to stir me even at Carthage: in that he had produced things out of the Scriptures, not easily withstood, the Manichees' answer whereto seemed to me weak.
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