THE

AMERICAN

BIBLICAL REPOSITORY.

OCTOBER, 1841.

SECOND SERIES, NO. XII.—WHOLE NO. XLIV.

ARTICLE I.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE GNOSTICS: THE MANICHEAN HERESY, AND INFLUENCE OF GNOSTICISM ON CHRISTIANITY.

By the Rev. George B. Cheever, Pastor of the Allen-street Pres. Church, New-York.

MANES AND THE MANICHEAN HERESY.

OUR present investigation takes up the subject just at the point where it was left in the previous article on Gnosticism by Mr. Henry T. Cheever, to which the reader may refer in the number of this journal for October, 1840.

The principal authorities consulted or followed in these pages are those of Cyril, Epiphanius, Augustine, Titus of Bostra, with the Acts of Archelaus, among the ancients, and D'Herbelot, Beausobre, Lardner, Mosheim, Brucker, Michaelis, Tenneman and some others among the moderns. The greater part of ancient Christian writers have drawn their accounts of the founder of the Manichæan heresy from one and the same source, the book of the Acts of Archelaus, bishop of Cascar in Mesopotamia, purporting to contain an account of his conference or dispute with Manes. This book Jerome makes mention of, (De Viris Illustribus,) saying that Archelaus, in the reign of the Emperor Probus, composed it in Syriac, which was afterwards translated into Greek. Cyril, Epiphanius, Socrates, Photius and others either quote largely from it, or refer to it, and Socrates states expressly that he drew from it his own acSECOND SERIES, VOL. VI. NO. II.

1

count of the Manichæan heresy.* It was edited at Rome, by Laurentius Zacagnius, in the year 1698, in the Collectanea Monumentorum Veterum, with a valuable preface. The reader may find it, with this and other illustrative prolegomena, in the fourth volume of Routh's Reliquiæ Sacræ. The short passage in which Eusebius mentions Manes and his heresy contains no reference to this book;—a circumstance which led Beausobre to the opinion that it had not appeared in Greek, till after Eusebius composed and published his Ecclesiastical History. That it is of great antiquity, and in some things worthy of credit, there can be no doubt, though falsehood mingles with it. Mosheim's opinion is as follows: Hæc Acta .... multa continent, aut valde probabilia aut vero consentientia.† Beausobre argues somewhat like a special pleader, and regards the book of the Acts of Archelaus as a romance, fabricated by a Greek, who had got some materials for a memoir, and published them in the name of Archelaus, in the year 330, about sixty years after the death of Manes. Nevertheless, the epistle of Manes to Marcellus, though contained in that work, Beausobre regards as authentic, and supposes it to have been written in Greek, whence he infers that Manes understood that language.

Eusebius, in his slight notice of Manes and his heresy, is pithy and severe, or, as Lardner expresses it, (whose leaning towards the heretics is always that of kindness, a thing, we admit, under such circumstances, both just and necessary in order to be impartial,) "much out of humour." So, indeed, are all the old Christian writers; and taking their account of the scheme of Manes as at all correct, they could not well be otherwise. Cyril declares that he "blended together what was bad in every heresy, and being the lowest pit of destruction, collected the doctrines of all the heretics, and wrought out and set forth a yet more novel error." The reader may get a fair view of the opinions of the early church by turning to Baronius, who, in the first volume of his Annals, collects from Cyril, Epiphanius, Augustine and others, a black and hideous representation of the system and its author. The sum of the opinions and feelings prevalent in regard to it may be found in a passage

* Socrates Hist. Ecc. ch. 22.

† Prolegomena to the Acts, in Routh's Reliquiæ Sacræ. Vol. IV. p. 134.

Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis, 16, § 9.

from Pope Leo, who opposed it, compounding it out of the profaneness of Paganism, the blindness of Judaism, the deviltry of magic, and in fine, whatever is sacrilegious and blasphemous in all heresies.*

Beausobre, in his large and learned work, exhibits at great length, 1, the accounts of the Greek and Latin writers, drawn mostly, as we have seen, from the book of Archelaus, together with an investigation of their correctness; 2, the accounts of the Oriental writers, Persian, Syrian, Arabian. The first are Christian, the second Mohammedan, but all alike opposed to the Manichæans. The Mohammedans, who tolerate the Jews and Christians, not regarding them as excluded from the divine. compassion, suppose that there is no grace possible for the Manichæans, and place them in hell next to the Atheists. As almost nothing has been preserved of the writings of Manes, the dogmas of the sect, and of its chief, as well as his history, have to be learned from opposers; and there is much truth in the remark of Beausobre, that the disposition of antiquity was to receive without examination all that rumor published to the disadvantage of the heretics, to exaggerate the absurdity of their opinions, and to put down as articles of their original faith, all the consequences which could result from their principles.†

The Oriental writers,-Persian, Syrian and Arabian,-differ so much from the Grecian writers, that it might be supposed that the Manes of the Greeks and he of the Orientals are two distinct heresiarchs, who, whatever resemblance there may have been in their opinions, had almost none in their history.‡ Beausobre adds to this remark, that, in comparing the Greeks and Latins with the Orientals, you know not with whom are to be found the worst reasonings or the most fabulous histories.

The name of this heresiarch has given rise to not a little curious and learned etymological conjecture. The Acts of Archelaus make Manes to have been purchased as a slave, at the age of seven years, under the name of Cubricus, by a woman who set him free and put him to his studies. Archelaus asserts farther that he took the name of Manes at the age of twelve years, on the death of his benefactress; but the more probable conjecture is that his mistress gave him that name when she

* Baronius, Annales, 277.

† Beausobre, Hist. du Manich. Discours Préliminaire. Hist. du Manichæism, Tom. I. pp. 155, 156.

set him free,—a thing not uncommon in the East on such occasions. The learned and sagacious Archbishop Usher having dropped a suggestion in his Annals on the similarity between the name of Menahem king of Israel, and that of Manes,* Beausobre has sought to confirm the conjecture, which indeed is unquestionably the right one. The name of Manes is nothing but that of Manaem, that is to say, the Paraclete, the Comforter, changed first into Manem, and thence by the Greeks, not admitting the termination m, into Manen or Manes. It was very natural to suppose, (Paraclete being one of the Oriental significations of the name,) that Manes chose it because of his pretensions to be considered the Paraclete promised in the New Testament. We think it more likely that the name, acting with and upon his growing fanaticism, suggested to him the pretension, or rather confirmed him in it. He may have. really persuaded himself that he had been thus marked and designated beforehand by a higher power, as the revealer of new truth, and the world's comforter that was to come.

According to the testimony of the Chronicle of Edessa, Manes was born in the year 239 or 240 of the Christian Era.‡ D'Herbelots makes him to have lived under the reigns of Sapor and Hormisdas, but to have been put to death by Varanes the son of Hormisdas, in the year 277 or 278. He is supposed by some to have been one of the Persian Magi, by others a Chaldean. He was regarded as one of the most skilful of all men in the sciences of the Persians and Babylonians. He understood the Greek language, then uncommon in the East; he

* The suggestion is thrown out by Usher in the following remark on 2 Kings 15: 14, on the name of King Menahem.— A Sulpicio Severo, Lib. I. Hist. Pac., Manes hic appellatur; eodem quo Manes vel Manichæus hæresiarcha nomine. Utriusque vero nomen paracletum, sive consolatorem significat.-Usher, Annales, 47.

Hist. du Manich. Tom. I. pp. 71, 72.-Cyril, Epiphanius and others remark upon the Greek signification of the name: "You will hate all heretics in general," says Cyril," but especially him who takes his name from madness, uavías." Cyril, Catechesis, VI. 12.-Titus of Bostra has the same remark:Manichæus, qui a barbarie et furore nomen ducit. Bost. Contr. Man. Bibliot. Patrum, IV. 443.

Hist. du Manich. Tom. I. p. 65.

§ Bibliot. Orient. Voc. Mani.

Titus

was skilful in music, the mathematics, geography, astronomy, astrology, medicine and painting.* He believed in the spherical figure of the earth, and had himself constructed a terrestrial globe. When or how he became a Christian, we are not told; but he is said to have joined to his knowledge of the sciences an acquaintance with the Scriptures, and so great a zeal for the faith, that he was made a Christian priest at Ahvaz, a considerable city of one of the smaller Persian provinces. Here he taught and interpreted the sacred books, and disputed with the Jews, the Magi, and Pagan strangers from abroad.t

The churches of Persia‡ were in a tranquil state when Manes first broached his heresy; and there was at the head of the clergy of the East, a proud, imperious, unworthy primate, Papas by name, under whose administration a state of things had come about not unfavorable to the progress of the heretic. Under these circumstances Manes set himself up for an apostle, boasted that he had received his apostleship immediately from heaven, and alleged in proof of it, first, the perfection and plenitude of his knowledge, and second, the promise which Christ had made to the church of sending the Paraclete, the Comforter.§

Most of the Grecian writers have accused Manes of professing himself to be the Paraclete; but whether he meant that he was himself the personification of the Holy Spirit, or simply that the Holy Spirit dwelt in him, is difficult to say. Eusebius is the first writer who declares him to have pretended that he was the Paraclete. In the Acts of Archelaus it is said, that "as he found in the sacred books the name of Paraclete, he pretended himself to be that Paraclete." The historian Socrates declares that he called himself the Paraclete, and also named

* Hist. du Manich. Tom. I. p. 158.

+ Idem, Tom. I. pp. 67, 169.

Lightfoot, Vol. VII., also Vol. XII. p. 574, argues that St. Peter himself had preached in Chaldea, and that when he wrote his epistles he was in Babylon, the use of the word Bosor, in 2 Pet. 2: 15, indicating the Chaldee dialect.

§ Hist. du Manich. Tom. I. p. 186.

|| Eusebius, Hist. Ecc. ch. 31.

See the whole original Acta Disputationis in Routh's Reliquiæ Sacræ, Vol. IV. Also quoted in Beausobre, Tom. I. p.15.