113 Acts or Disputation Against Fortunatus, the Manichæan. [Acta Seu Disputatio Contra Fortunatum Manichæum.] a.d. 392.221 Disputation of the First Day. On the fifth of September, the most renowned men Arcadius Augustus (the second time) and Rufinus being consuls, a disputation against Fortunatus, an elder of the Manichæans, was held in the city of Hippo Regius, in the baths of Sossius, in the presence of the people. 1.  Augustin said:  I now regard as error what formerly I regarded as truth.  I desire to hear from you who are present whether my supposition is correct.  First of all I regard it as the height of error to believe that Almighty God, in whom is our one hope, is in any part either violable, or contaminable, or corruptible.  This I know your heresy affirms, not indeed in the words that I now use; for when you are questioned you confess that God is incorrupt- ible, and absolutely inviolable, and incontaminable; but when you begin to expound the rest of your system, we are compelled to declare Him corruptible, penetrable, contaminable.  For you say that another race of darkness, whatever it may be, has rebelled against the kingdom of God; but that Almighty God, when He saw what ruin and desolation threatened his domains, unless he should make some opposition to the adverse race and resist it, sent this virtue, from whose commingling with evil and the race of darkness the world was framed.  Hence it is that here good souls labor, serve, err, are corrupted:  that they may see the need of a liberator, who should purge them from error, loose them from this commingling with evil, and liberate them from servitude.  I think it impious to believe that Almighty God ever feared any adverse race, or was under necessity to precipitate us into afflictions. 221 This Disputation seems to have occurred shortly after the writing of the preceding treatise.  It appears from the Retractations that Fortunatus had lived for a considerable time at Hippo, and had secured so large a number of followers that it was a delight to him to dwell there.  The Disputation is supposed to be a verbatim report of what Augustin and Fortunatus said during a two days’ discussion.  The subject is the origin of evil.  Augustin maintains that evil, so far as man is concerned, has arisen from a free exercise of the will on man’s part; Fortunatus, on the other hand, maintains that the nature of evil is co-eternal with God.  Fortunatus shows considerable knowledge of the New Testament, but no remarkable dialectic powers.  He appears at great disad- vantage beside his great antagonist.  In fact, he is far from saying the best that can be said in favor of dualism.  We may say that he was fairly vanquished in the argument, and at the close confessed himself at a loss what to say, and expressed an intention of more carefully examining the problems discussed, in view of what Augustin had said.  Augustin is more guarded in this treatise than in the preceding in his statements about free will.  He found little occasion here, therefore, to retract or explain.  Fortunatus often expresses himself vaguely and ob- scurely.  If some sentences are difficult to understand in the translation, they will be found equally so in the Latin.—A.H.N. Disputation of the First Day. 188 Disputation of the First Day.