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.

Another heresy, which for a time made even as much noise as the last,
was that of Hieracas of Leontopolis. Even in Egypt, where for two
thousand years it had been the custom to make the bodies of the dead
into mummies, to embalm them against the day of resurrection, a custom
which had been usually practised by the Christians, this