St. Ephraim
Third to Hypatius against the Teachings

III. Mani's Teaching; he placed the Light World in contact with the Darkness, and thereby introduced great difficulties. How did the attractiveness of Light reach the Senses of Darkness?

They are all different. Mani takes any explanation that suits him regardless of consistency.

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They are all different. Mani takes any explanation that suits him regardless of consistency.

And see how like the perverse crabs are to one another, each one of whom takes a devious course and goes forth, not to come to the Scriptures, but to turn aside from the Scriptures! And, perhaps, Satan, their father, took a somewhat devious course, because he is a native in Error -- that is because they are foreigners from foreigners, who do not blaspheme at all. For let the circumcised foreigners prove that each of them is a drop of poison 'of the troubled sea.' Whenever, therefore, it suits Mani, he brings their two sides into [P. 71.] contact, like Sun and Shade, which cannot be mingled together. And, again, when he is forced he destroys the first and mixes them together -- the Good and the Evil -- like water with water. And that he may not be refuted (by the argument) that if they had been near together, how did the Darkness recently desire the Light, as if it had suddenly met it, he constructed the theory 'that sometimes HULE acquired Thought.' And in seeking to avoid refutation, he came to such a point that he rightly suffered confusion. And because he was compelled he named two Roots ; and because again he was plainly exposed he produced many Natures from the midst of two Natures. But a tongue which is in the power of Falsehood is turned by it as it (i.e., Falsehood) finds convenient.


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