the powers of light which have sunk into the material world in order to lead them back, finally, into the everlasting realm of light.  To oppose them, however, the demons created a new being, viz.:  man, after the example of the “original man,” and united in him the clearest light and the darkness peculiar to themselves, in order that the great strife might be renewed in his breast, and so man became the point of union of all the forces in the universe, the microcosm in which two principles ever strive for the mastery.  Through the enticements of the material and the illusions of the demon, the soul of light was held in bondage in spite of its indwelling capacity for freedom, so that in heathenism and Judaism the “son of everlasting light,” as the soul of the universe, was chained to matter.  In order to accomplish this work of redemption more quickly, Christ finally leaves his throne at God’s right hand, and appears on earth, truly in human form, but only with an apparent body; his suffering and death on the cross are but illusions for the multitude, although historical facts, and they serve at the same time as a symbol of the light imprisoned in matter, and as a typical expression of the suffering, poured out over the whole of nature (especially in the plant-world), of the great physical weltschmerz.  Christ, through his teaching and power of attraction, began the deliverance of the light, so that one can truly say that the salvation of the world proceeds from rays which stream from the Cross; as, however, his teachings were conceived by the apostles in a Jewish sense, and the Gospels were disfigured, Mani appeared as the comforter promised by Christ to accomplish the victory.  In his writings only is the pure truth preserved.  Finally there will be a complete separation of the light from the darkness, and then the powers of darkness will fall upon each other again.

The ignorant in all ages of Christianity seem to have held nearly the same opinion in one form or other, thinking that sin has arisen either from a wicked being or from the wickedness of the flesh itself.  The Jews alone proclaimed that God created good and God created evil.  But we know of few writers who have ever owned themselves Manicheans, though many have been reproached as such; their doctrine is now known only in the works written against it.  Of all heresies among the Christians this is the one most denounced by the ecclesiastical writers, and most severely threatened by the laws when the law makers became Christian; and of all the accusations of the angry controversialists this was the most reproachful.  We might almost think that the numerous fathers who have written against the Manicheans must have had an easy victory when the enemy never appeared in the field, when their writings were scarcely answered, or their arguments denied; but perhaps a juster view would lead us to remark how much the writers, as well as the readers, must have felt the difficulty of accounting for the origin of evil, since men have run into such wild opinions to explain it.