To Justinus the Manichaean, against the Two Principles of the Manichaeans and on the True Flesh of Christ 16

Do not suppose that it is by the impulse of evil, as though of some existing, arisen or made substance, that one is driven headlong into vices. It is the soul which, standing in freedom, violated the dominion granted to it by the licence of free will. It is deceived by desire and curious craving rather than by pride. Next, you say that a lord of two substances rules us, as human kingdoms of twofold, or rather manifold, nature rule countless nations. For you so delight in examples that you love to look upon eternal and perpetual things through mortal and perishable ones. You deny flesh in Christ, and yet confess a man; you do not want him born, and yet do not deny that he lived; you cry out that he was killed by the Jews, and yet judge that what was wounded did not exist. So you assert the dead bodies of the condemned, crucified on the right and the left, so that the death of Christ himself was fulfilled; and you do not want a true man in flesh where you find a true burial. See, Justin: what truly is, you try to assert did not exist; and what is not and was not, you strive to prove persists. But, reminded by you yourself as teacher, I say firmly: it was possible for the eternal one to die; was it not possible for him to have flesh? It was possible for him even to make firm what was not; was it not possible for him to grant the world two natures, of light and darkness? Would the Lord, who is from himself, not be by his power the origin of contraries? Cease, Justin, cease to grasp with careful zeal the barbarism of this vanity; and, as a Roman, strive to be removed from Persian or Armenian sacrilege. For it is in no way fitting that darkness, or the devil, with Mani as their authors, should dwell in the glory of eternal life, in the kingdoms of true light. And in vain until now, by constant fasting, you have thinned the members of the flesh, which you call hostile, judging that the juices of a well-fed body harm the merits and nature of the soul, swelling it with distended fat, and that one is weighed down by the mass of the belly; if, after this labour of fasting, you return to your creator, whom you call either the devil or the outer darkness. I think it better, and declare plainly, that you should confess God almighty to be your creator, so that you may truly be the temple of God, as the apostle Paul says: “You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you.” And if you are deprived of this honour, so that you are neither God's temple nor does his Spirit dwell in you, then Christ came not as the Saviour of man but as one who drives him away; which divine law forbids us to say, and the eternity of his majesty does not admit. For if we are not his temple, and his Spirit is not in us, what have we to do with him? But if we are his, we are his in both, soul and body; and that true and catholic word spoken by the holy mouth stands: God is all in all, who is the one and only principle, almighty without beginning, the whole of the universe, infinite through all things. To him be honour and glory.