On Mani's doctrine that the Body was made by the Evil One.

But if he who framed the Body is evil, as they blasphemously say—and this God forbid, it is not so—if the Darkness contrived to frame that Body to be a Prison-house for the Soul that it might not go forth thence, it would not be difficult for him to know from this that the refining Furnace which he framed injured him and refines the Light. But if it escaped his notice at the beginning he could, now that experience has taught him, destroy his framing and make another Body, not one that separates (the Light), but one that imprisons; not one that refines, but one that befouls; not one that purifies, but one that defiles ; and not one that makes room for the Light (to escape), but one that detains the Light. If this making of the Body really belongs to him (i.e., the Evil One), then his work convinces us concerning him that he is a wise and skilful Maker, he who might have made vessels alien to the Cleansing of the Light. [P. 6.] But if he might have made them so and yet did not so make them, his workmanship is sufficient to extol him and to put to shame those who falsely accuse him.