Writings in Connection with the Manichaean Heresy

Heraclides, Aphthonius, Adas, and Agapius. Unfortunately, all of these books have perished, whether in the flames to which the Christian authorities commanded that all Manichaean books should be consigned, or by the slower, if not more critical and impartial, processes of time.

Manichaeus himself was the author of several works: a Gospel, the Treasury of Life (and probably an abridgment of the same), the Mysteries, the Foundation Epistle, a book of Articles or heads of doctrine, one or two works on astronomy or astrology, and a collection of letters so dangerous that Manichaeans who sought restoration to the Church were required to anathematize them.

Probably the most important of these writings was the Foundation Epistle, so called because it contained the leading articles of doctrine on which the new system was built. This letter was written in Greek or Syriac; but a Latin version of it was current in Africa, and came into the hands of Augustine, who undertook its refutation. To accomplish this with the greater precision and effect, he quotes the entire text of each passage of the Epistle before proceeding to criticize it. Had Augustine accomplished the whole of his task, we should accordingly have been in possession of the whole of this important document. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, Augustine stops short at an early point in the Epistle; and though he tells us he had notes on the remainder, and would some day expand and publish them, this promise lay unredeemed for thirty years until the day of his death. Extracts from the same Epistle and from the Treasury are also given by Augustine in the treatise De Natura Boni De Natura Boni (On the Nature of Good).¹

Next, we have in the Opus Imperfectum of Augustine some extracts from a letter of Manichaeus to Menoch, which Julian had unearthed and republished to convict Augustine of being still tainted with Manichaean sentiments. These extracts give

¹ The De Natura Boni, written in the year 405, is necessarily very much a reproduction of what is elsewhere affirmed: that all natures are good and created by God, who alone is immutable and incorruptible. It presents concisely the leading positions of Augustine in this controversy and concludes with an eloquent prayer that his efforts may be blessed to the conversion of the heretics—not the only passage which demonstrates that he wrote not for the glory of victory so much as for the deliverance of men from fatal error.