Against the Epistle of Manichæus, Called Fundamental 15
15 The Doctrine of Manichæus Not Only Uncertain, But False. His Absurd Fancy of a Land and Race of Darkness Bordering on the Holy Region and the Substance of God. The Error, First of All, of Giving to the Nature of God Limits and Borders, as If God Were a Material Substance, Having Extension in Space PL 42, 182
19. What if I shall have shown, with the help of God and of our Lord, that this writer’s statements are false as well as uncertain? What more unfortunate thing can be found than that superstition which not only fails to impart the knowledge and the truth which it promises, but also teaches what is directly opposed to knowledge and truth? This will appear more clearly from what follows: "In one direction on the border of this bright and holy land there was a land of darkness deep and vast in extent, where abode fiery bodies, destructive races. Here was boundless darkness, flowing from the same source in immeasurable abundance, with the productions properly belonging to it. Beyond this were muddy turbid waters with their inhabitants; and inside of them winds terrible and violent with their prince and their progenitors. Then again a fiery region of destruction, with its chiefs and peoples. And similarly inside of this a race full of smoke and gloom, where abode the dreadful prince and chief of all, having around him innumerable princes, himself the mind and source of them all. Such are the five natures of the pestiferous land."
20. To speak of God as an aerial or even as an ethereal body is absurd in the view of all who, with a clear mind, possessing some measure of discernment, can perceive the nature of wisdom and truth as not extended or scattered in space, but as great, and imparting greatness without material size, nor confined more or less in any direction, but throughout co-extensive with the Father of all, nor having one thing here and another there, but everywhere perfect, everywhere present.
Unde si tibi videtur, inquit, ausculta prius quae fuerint ante constitutionem mundi, et quo pacto praelium sit agitatum, ut possis luminis sejungere naturam ac tenebrarum. Jam incredibilia et falsa omnino proposuit. Quis enim credat ante constitutionem mundi ullum praelium fuisse commissum? Et tamen si est credibile, modo nos non credere, sed cognoscere venimus. Nam qui dicit Persas et Scythas ante multos annos secum bellasse, rem dicit credibilem; eam tamen quam vel auditam vel lectam possumus credere, non expertam comprehensamque cognoscere. Cum ergo istum repudiarem, si tale aliquid diceret; non enim ea promisit, quae cogeret credere, sed quae possem sine ulla ambiguitate cognoscere: quomodo eum non repudiabo, quando non modo incerta dicit, sed etiam incredibilia? Sed quid? si aliquibus rationibus ea perspicua et cognita faciet? Audiamus ergo, si possumus, cum tota patientia et lenitate quod sequitur.