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The Egyptians, like most other Eastern polytheists, held the doctrine which was afterwards called Manicheism; they believed in a good and in a wicked god, who governed the world between them.
Manicheism, a system which was one of the three great universal religions of that time, and had a worship and a priesthood and a sacred literature of its own, was founded by a native of Persia.
The general opinion has almost invariably considered the heretics as dualists and their belief as a variation of Manicheism: but a plausible case has been made out for regarding the heresy as a variant of the Adoptionism which is found successively in Armenia, in the Balkan peninsula and in Spain, and perhaps sporadically in Italy and Germany.
The inquiry at first was painful, and half convinced me of the truth of manicheism; but deeper research taught me that the errors of man do not originate in the perversity of his nature, but of his ignorance. These however were most of them after thoughts, for Glibly did not allow us any long pause. 'Yonder, in the green boxes, said he, 'I perceive Mrs. Fishwife, the actress.
Now and on this point, Carhaix, who is distressed by these theories, can't reprehend me I am for the under dog. That's a generous and perfectly proper idea." "But Manicheism is impossible!" cried the bell-ringer. "Two infinities cannot exist together." "But nothing can exist if you get to reasoning. The moment you argue the Catholic dogma everything goes to pieces.
The States were very desirous that the King of Great Britain and the English Bishops should be satisfied with the manner in which they had explained themselves in the Edict: they were the more anxious as they had reason to believe James unfavourable to the Arminians . However the King, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishops of England allowed the doctrine of the Edict to be orthodox, and equally distant from Manicheism and Pelagianism: the only thing which gave the King some pain, was, to see the Civil Magistrate assume a right of making decrees in matters of religion .
Beausobre, too, in his learned account of Manicheism reads a severe lesson to those 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.
Thus, he wrote his long treatises against the Talmud and the Koran, so much had the Crusades already contributed to introducing into Western Europe the seeds of Asiatic errors. All historians agree in giving an Eastern origin to the Paulicians, Bulgarians, Albigenses, and others of those times. Manicheism indeed had infested Europe long before.
If, in the recoil from Manicheism, they conceived that a body of a saint thus purified had contracted supernatural virtue and could work miracles, they had not sufficiently attended to the facts, and so far are not unexceptionable witnesses to them.
But even this frightful Syrian Gnosticism, which gave to the principle of evil an origin as ancient and sacred as that of God himself Manicheism barefaced and radically immoral so repugnant to our feelings, so monstrous to our more correct ideas, bore a semblance of truth for many minds, at that time inclined toward every thing which came from the East.
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