Writings in Connection with the Manichaean Heresy

His nine years of personal experience with the emptiness of Manichaeism made him thoroughly earnest and sympathetic in his efforts to disentangle others from its snares, and also equipped him with the knowledge required for this task. No doubt the Pelagian controversy was more suited to his mind. His logical sharpness and knowledge of Scripture served him better when combating men who fought with the same weapons than when dealing with a system that veiled its positions in the mist of Gnostic speculation, hid its doctrine under a grotesque mythology, or based itself on a creation story too fantastic for a Western mind to tolerate.¹ But however much Augustine may have misunderstood the strange forms in which this system was presented, there is no doubt that he comprehended and demolished its fundamental principles;² that he did so as a necessary part of his own personal search for the truth; and that, in doing so, he gained a vital and permanent grasp of ideas and principles that subsequently entered into everything he thought and wrote. In finding his way through the mazes of the obscure region into which Manichaeus had led him, he once and for all ascertained the true relationship between God and His creatures, formed his opinion regarding the respective roles of reason and faith and the connection between the Old and New Testaments, and found the root of all evil in the created will.

Some knowledge of the Magianism of the time of Manes may be obtained from the sacred books of the Parsis, especially from the Vendidad Sade, an account of which is given by Dr. Wilson of Bombay in his book on the Parsi Religion.—Tr.

¹ "Where there should have been developments and dialectical concepts, a picture or a myth appears."—Böhringer, p. 390.
² Some have thought Augustine more successful here than elsewhere. Cassiodorus may have thought so when he said: "he argued more diligently and vividly against them than against other heresies" (Instit. i. quoted by Lardner).