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The Manichees. Sect. IV. 361
also used the same phrase) did not mean tlie divine substance,
or nature, which they always reckoned incorruptible, invio-
lable, immutable, but only the substance from (jlod, the
celestial substance, the" substance ot his kingdom or empire.
I suppose that every one will perceive as much from what
will be hereafter said of their denying- the humanity of Christ,
and the incarnation of the Word, and all union of the divine
nature with the human. And it might be collected from
M'hat has been already produced concerning- their sentiments
of the divine perfections.
In a word, not to be too minute, the° Creator formed the
sun ajid moon out of those parts of light which had preserved
their original purity. The visible or inferior heavens, (for
now we do not speak of the supreme heaven,) and the rest
of the planets, were formed of those parts of light which
were but little corrupted by matter. The rest he left in our
world, which are no other than those parts of light which
had suffered most by the contag-ion of matter.
TheP Creator formed not the earth until after he had made
the heavens and the stars. This appears from the account
before taken out of the Acts of Archelaus.
And that we may the better conceive of all this, we may
observe and rectify a wrong account of Augustine. ' Mani,'
saysi he, ' teaches not only that man, but that the whole
' world, was formed by the mixture of two co-eternal natures,
' one good, the other bad, in such a manner however as to
' ascribe the formation of the world to the good God.' This,
says' Beausobre, is not just. Do not the sun and moon,
which were made out of the pure celestial substance, belongto
the world ? It is our earth properly, with its atmosphere,
and its heavens, which were composed of two substances :
which is the occasion that life and death, good and evil,
reign here. The Manichees, certainly, as that learned writer
goes on, were not orthodox upon the article of the creation
of the world : but setting aside their particular error, they
had noble ideas of the manner in which God made the world.
The disorders that are in the world, says* Fortunatus, sufK-
" His quinque elementis debellandis alia quinque elementa de regno et
substantia Dei missa esse, et in ilia pugna fuisse permixta. Aug. de Heer.
cap. 46. ° See B. ib. p. 364.
p Ib. p. 367,
1 Manichfeus ex commixtione duarum naturarum coaeternarum, boni scilicet
et mall, non solum horainem, sed universum nnmdum, constare dicit, et ad
eum omnia pertinentia : ita sane, ut ipsam fabricam mundi, quamvis ex commixtione
boni et mall, Deo bono et artifici tribuat. Op. Imp. 1. 3. c. 186.
' As before, p. 367, 368.
^ Facta consonant ; sed, quia inconvenientia sibi sunt, ac per hoc ergo