is certain that Mani’s father was connected with a baptizing party, viz., the Mugtasilah.  According to the Fihrist Mani was the author of an Epistle on Baptism.  The question whether Mani and his followers practised water-baptism or not is by no means an easy one to solve.  The passage cited by Giesseler from Augustin to prove that the "Elect" were initiated by baptism is inconclusive.  Augustin acknowledges that God and the Manichæans themselves alone know what takes place in the secret meetings of the "Elect."  Whatever ceremonies they performed, whether baptism or the Lord’s supper, or some other, were matters of profound secrecy, and so we need not wonder at the lack of definite information.  From a passage quoted by Augustin in his report of a discussion with Felix the Manichæan, we should certainly infer that both ordinances were practised in some form by the Manichæans of the West.  But Augustin himself says that Manichæans deny the saving efficacy of baptism, maintain that it is superfluous, do not require it of those whom they win to their views, etc.  It is certain, therefore, that if they practised baptism and the Lord’s supper at all, they attached to it a meaning radically different from that of Augustin.  It is possible that a ceremonial anointing with oil took the place of baptism.  (Baur, p. 277 sq.).  Augustin mentions a dis- gusting ceremony in which human semen was partaken of by the Elect in order to deliver the imprisoned light contained therein (De Haeres. 46), and he calls this ceremony a sort of Eucharist.  But his confessed ignorance of the doings of the "Elect" discredits in some measure this accusation. The Fihrist gives us no definite information about the three signacula.  The seals (not signs) of the mouth, the hand (or hands), and of the bosom.  In these are contained symbol- ically the Manichæan moral system.  In the book Sadder (Hyde, p. 492) we read:  "It is taught [by the Manichæans] to abstain from every sin, to eliminate every sin from hand, and tongue and thought."  Augustin explains the signacula more fully and represents the Manichæans as attaching great importance to them:  "When I name the mouth, I mean all the senses that are in the head; when I name the hand I mean every operation; when I name the bosom I mean every seminal lust." It is confidently believed that the foregoing account of the Manichæan system, based upon the Arabic narratives preserved by the Fihrist, supplemented by the principal Eastern and Western sources, contains the essential facts with reference to this strange system of religious thought.  Our next task will to be to ascertain, as precisely as possible, the relations that Manichæism sustained to the various religious systems with which it has commonly been associated. 26 The Manichæan System.