Against the Epistle of Manichæus, Called Fundamental

Contents (44 chapters)

1. 1. Title Page.
2. 2. To Heal Heretics is Better Than to Destroy Them.
3. 3. Why the Manichæans Should Be More Gently Dealt with.
4. 4. Augustin Once a Manichæan.
5. 5. Proofs of the Catholic Faith.
6. 6. Against the Title of the Epistle of Manichæus.
7. 7. Why Manichæus Called Himself an Apostle of Christ.
8. 8. In What Sense the Followers of Manichæus Believe Him to Be the Holy Spirit.
9. 9. The Festival of the Birth-Day of Manichæus.
10. 10. When the Holy Spirit Was Sent.
11. 11. The Holy Spirit Twice Given.
12. 12. Manichæus Promises Truth, But Does Not Make Good His Word.
13. 13. The Wild Fancies of Manichæus.  The Battle Before the Constitution of the World.
14. 14. Two Opposite Substances.  The Kingdom of Light.  Manichæus Teaches Uncertainties Instead of Certainties.
15. 15. Manichæus Promises the Knowledge of Undoubted Things, and Then Demands Faith in Doubtful Things.
16. 16. The Doctrine of Manichæus Not Only Uncertain, But False.  His Absurd Fancy of a Land and Race of Darkness Bordering on the Holy Region and the Substance of God.  The Error, First of All, of Giving to the Nature of God Limits and Borders, as If God Were a Material Substance, Having Extension in Space.
17. 17. The Soul, Though Mutable, Has No Material Form.  It is All Present in Every Part of the Body.
18. 18. The Memory Contains the Ideas of Places of the Greatest Size.
19. 19. The Understanding Judges of the Truth of Things, and of Its Own Action.
20. 20. If the Mind Has No Material Extension, Much Less Has God.
21. 21. Refutation of the Absurd Idea of Two Territories.
22. 22. This Region of Light Must Be Material If It is Joined to the Region of Darkness.  The Shape of the Region of Darkness Joined to the Region of Light.
23. 23. The Form of the Region of Light the Worse of the Two.
24. 24. The Anthropomorphites Not So Bad as the Manichæans.
25. 25. Of the Number of Natures in the Manichæan Fiction.
26. 26. Omnipotence Creates Good Things Differing in Degree.  In Every Description Whatsoever of the Junction of the Two Regions There is Either Impropriety or Absurdity.
27. 27. The Manichæans are Reduced to the Choice of a Tortuous, or Curved, or Straight Line of Junction.  The Third Kind of Line Would Give Symmetry and Beauty Suitable to Both Regions.
28. 28. The Beauty of the Straight Line Might Be Taken from the Region of Darkness Without Taking Anything from Its Substance.  So Evil Neither Takes from Nor Adds to the Substance of the Soul.  The Straightness of Its Side Would Be So Far a Good Bestowed on the Region of Darkness by God the Creator.
29. 29. Manichæus Places Five Natures in the Region of Darkness.
30. 30. The Refutation of This Absurdity.
31. 31. The Number of Good Things in Those Natures Which Manichæus Places in the Region of Darkness.
32. 32. The Same Subject Continued.
33. 33. Manichæus Got the Arrangement of His Fanciful Notions from Visible Objects.
34. 34. Every Nature, as Nature, is Good.
35. 35. Nature Cannot Be Without Some Good.  The Manichæans Dwell Upon the Evils.
36. 36. Evil Alone is Corruption.  Corruption is Not Nature, But Contrary to Nature.  Corruption Implies Previous Good.
37. 37. The Source of Evil or of Corruption of Good.
38. 38. God Alone Perfectly Good.
39. 39. Nature Made by God; Corruption Comes from Nothing.
40. 40. In What Sense Evils are from God.
41. 41. Corruption Tends to Non-Existence.
42. 42. Corruption is by God’s Permission, and Comes from Us.
43. 43. Exhortation to the Chief Good.
44. 44. Conclusion.