On the Nature of the Good 33–47

And that the evil angels themselves were not created evil by God but became evil by sinning, Peter says thus in his letter: “For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but thrusting them into the prisons of the darkness of the lower region handed them over to be kept for punishment in the judgment.” Here Peter shows that the punishment of the last judgment is still owed to them, of which the Lord says: “Depart into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.” They have indeed already received this lower region, that is, the lower, murky air, as a prison by way of punishment; yet this too is called heaven, not the heaven in which the stars are, but this lower one, in whose murk the clouds gather and where the birds fly (for we speak of a cloudy heaven, and flying creatures are called “birds of the heaven”). In this sense the apostle Paul calls these same wicked angels, against whom, envious of us, we fight by living piously, “spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” And lest this be understood of those upper heavens, he says plainly elsewhere: “According to the prince of the power of this air, who now works in the children of unbelief.”

Again, that sin or iniquity is not the desire for evil natures but the desertion of better ones is found written thus in the Scriptures: “Every creature of God is good.” And therefore every tree too which God planted in paradise is certainly good. So man did not desire an evil nature when he touched the forbidden tree, but by deserting what was better he himself committed an evil deed. For the Creator is better than any creature he has made; and his command was not to be deserted so that something forbidden, although good, might be touched, since, the better being deserted, the good of the creature was desired, which was touched against the Creator's command. God, then, had not planted an evil tree in paradise; but he himself was better, who forbade it to be touched.

For he had forbidden it for this purpose: to show that the nature of the rational soul ought not to be in its own power, but subject to God, and to keep the order of its salvation by obedience or corrupt it by disobedience. Hence he also called the tree he forbade to be touched the tree “of the discerning of good and evil,” because, when man touched it against the prohibition, he would experience the punishment of sin and in this way discern the difference between the good of obedience and the evil of disobedience.

For who is so foolish as to think that a creature of God, especially one planted in paradise, is to be blamed, when not even the thorns and thistles which the earth brought forth, according to God's judicial will, for the sinner to wear himself out on in toil, are rightly blamed? For such plants too have their own measure and form and order, and whoever considers them soberly will find them worthy of praise; but they are evils to that nature which, by the desert of sin, had to be restrained in this way. Sin, then, as I said, is not the desire for an evil nature but the desertion of a better one; and therefore the deed itself is evil, not the nature which the sinner uses badly. For it is evil to use a good badly. Hence the apostle rebukes certain people condemned by divine judgment, who “worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” For he does not rebuke the creature (whoever does that does injury to the Creator), but those who used a good badly, deserting the better.

Accordingly, if all natures kept their own measure and form and order, there would be no evil; but if anyone chooses to use these goods badly, not even so does he overcome the will of God, who knows how to order even the unjust justly; so that if they, by the iniquity of their will, have used his goods badly, he, by the justice of his power, uses their evils well, rightly ordering in punishments those who have perversely ordered themselves in sins.

For not even the eternal fire itself, which will torment the ungodly, is an evil nature, since it has its own measure and form and order, depraved by no iniquity; but the torment is an evil to the damned, to whose sins it is due. For neither is this light an evil nature because it torments those with sore eyes.

But the eternal fire is not eternal as God is, because although it is without end, it is not without beginning; whereas God is also without beginning. Further, although it is applied perpetually to the punishments of sinners, it is still a changeable nature. But true eternity is that which is true immortality, that is, the highest unchangeableness, which God alone has, who cannot change at all. For it is one thing not to be changed when one could be changed, and another altogether to be unable to be changed. So, just as a man is called good, yet not as God is, of whom it is said: “No one is good but God alone”; and as the soul is called immortal, yet not as God is, of whom it is said: “Who alone has immortality”; and as a man is called wise, yet not as God is, of whom it is said: “To the only wise God”: so the fire is called eternal, yet not as God is, whose immortality alone is true eternity.

Since these things are so according to the catholic faith and sound doctrine, and the truth is plain to those who understand, no one can harm the nature of God, nor does the nature of God harm anyone unjustly or allow anyone to do harm with impunity. For “he who does harm,” says the apostle, “will receive back the harm he has done, and there is no respect of persons with God.”

If the Manichaeans were willing to think about this with the fear of God and without the pernicious eagerness to defend their error, they would not blaspheme most wickedly by bringing in two natures, one good, which they call God, the other evil, which God did not make. They go so far astray, so far into raving, or rather into madness, that they do not see that, in what they call the nature of the highest evil, they place so many goods: life, power, health, memory, understanding, temperateness, strength, abundance, sensation, light, sweetness, measures, numbers, peace, measure, form, order; and in what they call the highest good, so many evils: death, sickness, forgetfulness, folly, disturbance, impotence, want, stupidity, blindness, pain, iniquity, disgrace, war, immoderation, deformity, perversity. For they say that the princes of darkness both lived in their own nature and were safe in their own kingdom, and remembered and understood. For they say that the prince of darkness made a speech in such a way that he could neither have said such things himself nor been heard by those to whom he spoke without memory and understanding; and that he had a temperament suited to his mind and body, and reigned by the strength of his power, and had abundance of his elements and of fruitfulness; and that they perceived one another and the light near them, and had eyes with which they saw it from afar; and those eyes certainly could not see light without some light, which is why they are rightly also called lights; and that they enjoyed the sweetness of their pleasure, and were bounded by measured limbs and dwellings. And unless there had been some sort of beauty there, they would not love their mates, nor would their bodies hold together by the harmony of their parts; and where this was lacking, the things they rave about as having happened there could not happen. And unless there had been some peace there, they would not obey their prince. Unless there had been measure there, they would do nothing but eat or drink or rage or anything else without any satiety; although not even those who did these things would have been bounded by their own shapes, unless there had been measure there. But as it is, they say they did such things that they cannot deny that in all their actions they had measures suited to them. And if there had been no form there, no natural quality would subsist there. If there had been no order there, some would not rule and others be subject, they would not live fittingly in their own elements, and finally they would not have their members arranged in their places, so as to be able to do all the things these people idly tell of. But as for the nature of God: if they do not say it is dead, what, according to their vanity, does Christ raise up? If they do not say it is sick, what does he heal? If they do not say it has forgotten, what does he remind? If they do not say it is foolish, what does he teach? If they do not say it is disturbed, what does he restore? If it has not been conquered and captured, what does he set free? If it is not in want, whom does he help? If it has not lost sensation, what does he quicken? If it has not been blinded, what does he enlighten? If it is not in pain, what does he refresh? If it is not unjust, what does he correct by precepts? If it has not been disgraced, what does he cleanse? If it is not at war, to whom does he promise peace? If it is not immoderate, on whom does he impose the measure of the law? If it is not deformed, what does he re-form? If it is not perverse, what does he amend? For they say that all these things are provided by Christ not to a thing that was made by God and became depraved by sinning of its own free choice, but to the very nature, the very substance of God, which is what God is.

What can be compared with these blasphemies? Nothing at all, if the errors of other perverse sects are considered. But if this error is compared with itself from another side, of which we have not yet spoken, it is shown to blaspheme against the nature of God still much worse and more execrably. For they say that some souls, which they want to be of the substance of God and of altogether the same nature, and which did not sin willingly but were overcome and oppressed by the race of darkness, which they call the nature of evil, to fight which they came down not of their own accord but at the Father's command, are fastened for ever to a horrible globe of darkness. So, according to their sacrilegious empty talk, God freed himself in part from a great evil, and again condemned himself in part, the part he could not free from the enemy, and then triumphed besides, as though over the enemy defeated. O wicked and incredible audacity, to believe such things of God, to say such things, to preach such things! When they try to defend this, they rush with closed eyes into worse, saying that the mixture of the evil nature causes these things, so that the good nature of God suffers such great evils; for by itself, in itself, it could not and cannot suffer any of them. As if an incorruptible nature were to be praised because it does not harm itself, and not because it cannot be harmed by anything! Further, if the nature of darkness harmed the nature of God and the nature of God harmed the nature of darkness, then there are two evils which harmed each other; and the race of darkness had the better disposition, because even if it did harm, it did so unwillingly; for it did not want to harm, but to enjoy the good of God. God, however, wanted to extinguish it, as Mani most openly raves in the letter of his ruinous Foundation. For, forgetting what he had said a little before, “But his most splendid kingdoms are so founded upon the bright and blessed land that they can never be moved or shaken by anyone,” he afterwards said: “But the Father of the most blessed light, knowing that a great ruin and devastation, which would rise from the darkness, threatened his holy ages, unless he set against it some outstanding and glorious divinity, mighty in power, by which he might at once overcome and destroy the stock of darkness, so that when it was extinguished perpetual rest might be prepared for the inhabitants of light.” See, he feared ruin and devastation threatening his ages! Surely they were so founded upon the bright and blessed land that they could never be moved or shaken by anyone! See, out of fear he wanted to harm the neighboring race, which he tried to destroy and extinguish, so that perpetual rest might be prepared for the inhabitants of light. Why did he not add “and a perpetual bond”? Or were those souls, which he fastens for ever in the globe of darkness, not inhabitants of light, of whom he says openly that they allowed themselves to stray from their former bright nature? There, even against his will, he was forced to say that they sinned by free will, he who wants to place sin nowhere but in the necessity of the contrary nature, everywhere not knowing what he says, and as though he himself were already shut up in the globe of darkness he invented, looking for a way out and not finding it. But let him say what he likes to the seduced and wretched, by whom he is honored far more than Christ, so that at this price he may sell them such long and such sacrilegious fables. Let him say what he likes; let him shut up the race of darkness in the globe as in a prison, and fasten outside it the nature of light, to which he promised perpetual rest once the enemy was extinguished: see, the punishment of the light is worse than that of the darkness, the punishment of the divine nature worse than that of the opposing race. For that race, even if it is inside in the darkness, it belongs to its nature to dwell in darkness; but the souls, which are what God is, will not be able to be received, as he says, into those peaceful kingdoms, and will be estranged from the life and freedom of the holy light, and fastened in the aforesaid horrible globe. “Hence,” he says, “these same souls will cling to the things they loved, left in the same globe of darkness, gaining this for themselves by their own deserts.” Is this not, surely, free choice of the will? See how in his madness he does not know what he is saying, and by contradicting himself wages a worse war against himself than against the God of the race of darkness itself. Further, if the souls of light are condemned because they loved darkness, the race of darkness, which loved the light, is condemned unjustly. And the race of darkness loved the light from the beginning, and wanted to possess it, though by violence, not to extinguish it; but the nature of light wanted to extinguish the darkness in war; and so, being conquered, it loved it. Choose which you like: was it compelled by necessity to love the darkness, or seduced by will? If by necessity, why is it condemned? If by will, why is the nature of God caught in such iniquity? If the nature of God was forced by necessity to love darkness, then it was conquered, not conqueror; if by will, why do the wretches still hesitate to attribute the will to sin to the nature which God made from nothing, so as not to attribute it to the light which he begot?

What if we also show that before the mixture of evil, which they have most insanely believed in as a fabulous invention, there were great evils in the very nature of light, as they call it? What will then seem able to be added to these blasphemies? For there, before the fighting, there was the harsh and unavoidable necessity of fighting. See, already a great evil, before evil was mixed with good! Let them say where this came from, when no mixture had yet been made. But if there was no necessity, then there was will. Where, then, does this so great evil come from, that God himself wanted to harm his own nature, which could not be harmed by the enemy, by sending it to be cruelly mixed, shamefully purged, unjustly condemned? See how great an evil of a pernicious, harmful, and most monstrous will, before any evil from the opposing race was mixed in! Or perhaps he did not know that this would happen to his members, that they would love the darkness and become enemies of the holy light, as he himself says, that is, not only of their God but also of the Father from whom they were? Where, then, did this so great evil of ignorance in God come from, before any evil from the opposing race was mixed in? But if he knew this would happen, either there was everlasting cruelty in him, if he felt no pain over the future contamination and damnation of his nature, or everlasting misery, if he did feel pain. Where, then, did this so great evil of your highest good come from, before any mixture of your highest evil? Certainly that little portion of his nature, which is fastened in the eternal bond of that globe, if it did not know that this threatened it, then even so there was everlasting ignorance in the nature of God; and if it did know, everlasting misery. Where did this so great evil come from, before any evil from the opposing race was mixed in? Or perhaps it rejoiced with great love, because through its punishment perpetual rest was being prepared for the other inhabitants of light? Whoever sees how impious it is to say that the nature of God is helped in this way by the nature of God, let him anathematize it. But if it did this at least in such a way that it did not become an enemy of the light, it might perhaps be praised, not as the nature of God, but as some man who was willing to suffer some evil for his country, an evil that could be for a time, not for ever. But as it is, they say that the fastening in the globe of darkness is eternal, and that it is not of some thing or other, but of the nature of God. And certainly it would be a most unjust, execrable, and unspeakably sacrilegious joy if the nature of God rejoiced that it would love the darkness and become an enemy of the holy light. Where did this so monstrous and wicked evil come from, before any evil from the opposing race was mixed in? Who could bear such perverse and impious madness as to attribute so many goods to the highest evil and so many evils to the highest good, which is God?

Now as for their saying that this part of the nature of God is mixed in everywhere, in the heavens, on earth, under the earth, in all bodies dry and moist, in all flesh, in all seeds of trees, plants, human beings, animals, not present by the power of divinity, without any bond, undefiled and incorruptible, to administer and govern all things, as we say of God, but bound, oppressed, polluted, and that it is loosed, freed, and purged, they say, not only by the course of the sun and moon and the powers of light, but also by their elect: it is horrible to say what sacrilegious and incredible obscenities this kind of most abominable error urges on them, even if it does not persuade them. For they say that the powers of light are transformed into handsome males and set before the females of the race of darkness, and again that the same powers of light are transformed into beautiful females and set before the males of the race of darkness, so that by their beauty they may inflame the filthiest lust of the princes of darkness, and in this way the vital substance, that is, the nature of God, which they say is held bound in their bodies, may be loosed from their members, relaxed through that lust, and flee, and be taken up or purged and freed. This the unhappy people read, this they say, this they hear, this they believe. In the seventh book of their Treasury (for so the Manichaeans call a certain writing in which these blasphemies are written), it is set down thus: “Then that blessed Father, who has bright ships as lodgings and dwellings according to their magnitudes, by the clemency implanted in him brings help, by which he is stripped off and freed from the impious fetters and straits and anguish of his vital substance. So by his invisible nod he transforms those powers of his which are held in this most bright ship, and makes them appear to the opposing powers which are ranged in each of the tracts of the heavens. Since these consist of both sexes, male and female, he orders the aforesaid powers to appear partly in the form of beardless boys to the opposing race of females, partly in the form of bright virgins to the contrary race of males, knowing that all those hostile powers, because of the deadly and filthiest lust inborn in them, are very easily captured and made slaves to these most beautiful forms that appear, and in this way are dissolved. But know that this same blessed Father of ours is the same thing as his powers also, which for a necessary cause he transforms into the undefiled likeness of boys and virgins. He uses them as his own weapons, and through them fulfils his will. Of these divine powers, which are set against the infernal races as if in marriage, and which with speed and ease accomplish in the same instant whatever they have thought, the bright ships are full. So when the occasion requires that these same holy powers appear to males, at once they display their likeness in the guise of most beautiful virgins; again, when they come to females, laying aside the forms of virgins they show the form of beardless boys. By this comely sight their ardor and lust increases, and in this way the bond of their worst thoughts is loosed, and the living soul, which was held in their members, released on this occasion, escapes and is mingled with its own most pure air; there the thoroughly cleansed souls ascend to the bright ships, which have been prepared for their conveyance and for their passage across to their own homeland. But that which still bears the stains of the opposing race comes down bit by bit through heats and warmths, and is mingled with trees and the other plants and all sown things, and is tinged with various colors. And in the same way as the figures of boys and virgins appear from that great and most bright ship to the contrary powers that live in the heavens and have a fiery nature, and by that comely sight the part of life that is held in their members is released and led down through the heats into the earth, so also that most high power which dwells in the ship of the living waters appears through its angels, in the likeness of boys and holy virgins, to those powers whose nature is cold and moist and which are ranged in the heavens. And indeed to those of them that are female the form of boys appears, but to the males that of virgins. By this change and diversity of the divine and most beautiful persons, the princes of the moist and cold stock, male or female, are dissolved, and what is vital in them flees; but what remains is released and led down into the earth through the cold, and is mingled with all kinds of earth.” Who could bear this? Who could believe, I do not say that it is so, but even that it could have been said? See, those who fear to anathematize Mani who teaches this do not fear to believe that God does and suffers these things!

They say that this same mixed part and nature of God is purged by their elect, namely by eating and drinking, because they say it is held bound in all foods; and when these are taken by the elect, as by holy men, for the refreshment of the body by eating and drinking, it is loosed, sealed, and freed by their holiness. And the wretches do not notice how not unfittingly people have believed of them what they deny in vain, unless they anathematize those same books and cease to be Manichaeans. For if, as they say, a part of God is bound in all seeds and is purged by the elect by eating, who would not with good reason believe that they do what they read in their Treasury happens between the powers of the heavens and the princes of darkness, since they also say that their own flesh is from the race of darkness, and do not hesitate to believe and affirm that that vital substance, a part of God, is held bound in it? If that must be loosed and purged by eating, as their deadly error forces them to admit, who does not see, and who does not shudder at, how great and how abominable an obscenity follows?

For they also say that Adam, the first man, was created by certain princes of the race of darkness in such a way that the light might be held back by them so as not to flee. For in the letter which they call the Foundation, Mani wrote as follows how the prince of darkness, whom they make the father of the first man, spoke to his other associates, the princes of darkness, and what he did: “So with wicked devices he said to those who were present: What do you think of this very great light that is rising? See how it moves the pole, how it shakes many powers. Therefore it is right that you should rather advance to me what you have of the light in your forces; for so I will fashion an image of that great one who has appeared glorious, through which we shall be able to reign, freed at last from our dwelling in darkness. Hearing this and deliberating long among themselves, they thought it most just to provide what was asked of them. For they did not trust that they would keep that light permanently; hence they thought it better to offer it to their prince, by no means despairing that in this way they would reign. How, then, they provided that light which they had, must be considered. For this too is sprinkled through all the divine Scriptures and heavenly mysteries; but for the wise it is not at all difficult to know how it was given; for it is known face to face and openly by him who is willing to look truly and faithfully. Since the crowd of those who had gathered was mixed, of females, that is, and males, he impelled them to have intercourse with one another. In this intercourse some sowed seed and others became pregnant. The offspring were like those who had begotten them, possessing, as the first ones did, most of the powers of their parents. Taking these as a special gift, their prince rejoiced. And just as we see even now that the nature of evil, the former of bodies, takes strength from this to fashion them, so also the aforesaid prince, receiving the offspring of his companions, which had the senses of the parents, their prudence, and the light procreated together with them in generation, ate them; and having taken many powers from food of this kind, in which there was not only strength but much more the cunning and depraved senses from the fierce mind of the parents, he called to himself his own consort, sprung from the same stock as himself; and having had intercourse with her, he sowed, like the others, the abundance of evils he had devoured, adding also something of his own thought and power, so that his sense would be the former and designer of all the things he had poured out; and his partner received these, as well-cultivated earth usually receives seed. For in her were constructed and woven together the images of all heavenly and earthly powers, so that what was being formed might obtain the likeness of the full world.”

O wicked monster! O execrable perdition and ruin of deceived souls! I pass over what it is to say these things of the nature of God, that it should be bound in this way. Let the wretched, deceived, and poisoned by deadly error, at least notice this: if a part of God is bound by the intercourse of males and females, which they profess to loose and purge by eating, the necessity of this abominable error forces them to loose and purge the part of God not only from bread and vegetables and fruit, which alone they are seen to take openly, but also from that in which, through intercourse, it can be bound if it is conceived in a woman's womb. Some are reported to have confessed in a public court that they do this, not only in Paphlagonia but also in Gaul, as I heard from a certain catholic Christian at Rome; and when they were asked on the authority of what scripture they did these things, they revealed that it came from their Treasury, which I mentioned a little before. But when this is put to these people, they usually reply that some enemy of theirs, from their own number, that is, from their elect, broke away and made a schism, and founded a heresy of this most filthy kind. Hence it is plain that even if these people do not do it, whoever does it does it from their books. Let them throw away the books, then, if they abhor the crime which they are forced to commit if they keep the books; or if they do not commit it, they are trying to live more cleanly than their books. But what do they do when it is said to them: “Either purge the light from whatever seeds you can, so that you do not refuse even that which you declare you do not do; or anathematize Mani, who, when he says that a part of God is in all seeds and is bound by intercourse, and that whatever of the light, that is, of that part of God, reaches the food of the elect is purged by eating, you see what he urges on you, and you still hesitate to anathematize him”: what do they do, I say, when this is said to them? To what evasions do they turn, when either so abominable a doctrine must be anathematized or so abominable an obscenity committed? In comparison with this, all those evils which I mentioned a little before as intolerable, their saying of the nature of God that it was oppressed by necessity to wage war, that it was either secure in everlasting ignorance or anxious in everlasting pain and fear as to when the corruption of the mixture and the bond of eternal damnation would come upon it, and finally that, the war once waged, it was so captured, oppressed, polluted, and that after a false victory it will be fastened for ever in the horrible globe and separated from the happiness of its origin, seem tolerable, though in themselves, if they are considered, they cannot be endured.