And this would
make the portions of thyself present in the several portions of
the world in fragments, great to the great, small to the small.
But thou art not such a one. But as yet thou hadst not
enlightened my darkness.
CHAPTER II
3. But it was not sufficient for me, O Lord, to be able to
oppose those deceived deceivers and those dumb orators -- dumb
because thy Word did not sound forth from them -- to oppose them
with the answer which, in the old Carthaginian days, Nebridius
used to propound, shaking all of us who heard it: "What could this
imaginary people of darkness, which the Manicheans usually set up
as an army opposed to thee, have done to thee if thou hadst
declined the combat?" If they replied that it could have hurt
thee, they would then have made thee violable and corruptible.
If, on the other hand, the dark could have done thee no harm, then
there was no cause for any battle at all; there was less cause for
a battle in which a part of thee, one of thy members, a child of
thy own substance, should be mixed up with opposing powers, not of
thy creation; and should be corrupted and deteriorated and changed
by them from happiness into misery, so that it could not be
delivered and cleansed without thy help.
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