3.
Augustin said: You call me to something else, when I had proposed to discuss faith, but concerning your morals only those who are your Elect can fully know. But you know that I was not your Elect, but an Auditor. Hence though I was present at your prayer meetings, 1 as you have asked (whether separately among yourselves you have any prayer meetings, God alone and yourselves can know); yet in your prayer meetings where I have been present I have seen nothing shameful take place; but only that the faith that I afterwards learned and approved is denounced, and that you perform your services facing the sun. Besides this I found out nothing new in your meetings, but whoever raises any question of morals against you, raises it against your Elect. But what you who are Elect do among yourselves, I have no means of knowing. For I have often heard from you that you receive the Eucharist. But since the time of receiving it was concealed from me, how could I know what you receive? 2 So keep the question about morals, if you please, for discussion among your Elect, if it can be discussed. You gave me a faith that I today disapprove. This I proposed to discuss. Let a response be made to my proposition.
Fortunatussaid: And our profession is this very thing: that God is incorruptible, lucid, unapproachable, intenible, impassible, that He inhabits His own eternal lights, that nothing corruptible proceeds from Him, neither darkness, demons, Satan, nor anything adverse can be found in His kingdom. But that He sent forth a Saviour like Himself; that the Word born from the foundation of the world, when He had formed the world, after the formation of the world came among men; that He has chosen souls worthy of Himself according to His own holy will, sanctified by celestial command, imbued with the faith and reason of celestial things; that under His leadership those souls will return hence again to the kingdom of God according to the holy promise of Him who said: "I am the way, the truth, and the door;" 3 and "No one can come unto the Father, except through me." These things we believe because otherwise, that is, through another mediator, souls cannot return to the kingdom of God, unless they find Him as the way, the truth, and the door. For Himself said: "He that hath seen me, hath seen my Father also;" 4 and "whosoever shall have believed on me shall not taste death forever, but has passed from death unto life, and shall not come into judgment." 5 These things we believe and this is the reason of our faith, and according to the strength of our mind we endeavor to act according to His commandments, following after the one faith of this Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. 6
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The word used is oratio, by which is evidently meant the religious services to which Auditors were admitted, prayer (oratio) being the prominent feature.--A.H.N. ↩
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The allusion here is doubtless to the probably slanderous charge that the Manichaeans were accustomed to partake of human semen as a Eucharist. The Manichaean view of the relation of the substance mentioned to the light, and their well-known opposition to procreation, give a slight plausibility to the charge. Compare the Morals of the Manichaeans, ch. xviii., where Augustin expresses his suspicions of Manichaean shamelessness. See also further references in the Introduction.--A.H.N. ↩
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This is, of course, a mixture of two passages of Scripture.--A.H.N. ↩
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John xiv. 8, 9. ↩
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John v. 24. ↩
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As remarked in the Introduction, the Manichaeans of the West, in Augustin's time, sustained a far more intimate relation to Christianity than did Mani and his immediate followers. Far as Fortunatus may have been from using the above language in the ordinary Christian sense, yet he held, by profession at least, enough of Christian truth to beguile the unwary.--A.H.N. ↩
