not attained this liberty is in bondage.  Therefore, according to you, God, since part of God is God, is both corrupted by folly, and is changed by falling, and is injured by the loss of perfection, and is in need of help, and is weakened by disease, and bowed down with misery, and subject to disgraceful bondage. 23.  Again, if part of God is not God, still He is not incorrupt when His part is corrupted, nor unchanged when there is change in any part, nor uninjured when He is not perfect in every part, nor free from want when He is busily endeavoring to recover part of Himself, nor quite whole when He has a weak part, nor perfectly happy when any part is suffering misery, nor entirely free when any part is under bondage.  These are conclusions to which you are driven, because you say that the soul, which you see to be in such a calamitous condition, is part of God.  If you can succeed in making your sect abandon these and many 76 similar opinions, then you may speak of your mouth being free from blasphemies.  Better still, leave the sect; for if you cease to believe and to repeat what Manichæus has written, you will be no longer Manichæans. 24.  That God is the supreme good, and that than which nothing can be or can be con- ceived better, we must either understand or believe, if we wish to keep clear of blasphemy.  There is a relation of numbers which cannot possibly be impaired or altered, nor can any nature by any amount of violence prevent the number which comes after one from being the double of one.  This can in no way be changed; and yet you represent God as changeable!  This relation preserves its integrity inviolable; and you will not allow God an equality even in this!  Let some race of darkness take in the abstract the number three, consisting of indi- visible units, and divide it into two equal parts.  Your mind perceives that no hostility could effect this.  And can that which is unable to injure a numerical relation injure God?  If it could not, what possible necessity could there be for a part of him to be mixed with evil, and driven into such miseries? 129 The Value of the Symbol of the Mouth Among the Manichæans, Who are Found…