from his profession.  Archbishop Usher conjectured that it was a form of Manaem or Me- nahem, which means Paraclete or Comforter; founding this conjecture on the fact that Sulpicius Severus calls the Israelitish king Menahem,23 Mane.  Gataker supplements this idea by the conjecture that Mani took this name at his own instance, and in pursuance of his claim to be the Paraclete.  It is more probable that, if his name was really given on account of this meaning, he received it from the widow who seems to have adopted him when a boy, and may have called him her Consolation.  But it is also possible that Mani was not an un- common Persian name, and that he adopted it for some reason too trifling to discover.24 While still a young man he was ordained as a Christian priest, and distinguished himself in that capacity by his knowledge of Scripture, and the zeal with which he discharged his sacred functions.25  His heretical tendencies, however, were very soon manifested, stimulated, we may suppose, by his anxiety to make the Christian religion more acceptable to those who adhered to the Eastern systems.  Excommunicated from the Christian Church, Mani found asylum with Sapor, and won his confidence by presenting only the Magian side of his system.  But no sooner did he permit the Christian element to appear, and call himself the apostle of the Lord, and show a desire to reform Magianism, than his sovereign determ- ined to put him to death as a revolutionist.  Forced to flee, he took refuge in Turkestan, and gained influence there, partly by decorating the temples with paintings.  To lend his doctrines 34 the appearance of divine authority, he adopted the same device as Zoroaster and Mohammed.  Having discovered a cave through which there ran a rill of water, he laid up in it a store of provisions, and retired there for a year, giving out that he was on a visit to heaven.  In this retirement he produced his Gospel,26—a work illustrated with symbolical drawings the in- genuity of which has been greatly praised.  This book Mani presented to Hormizdas, the son and successor of Sapor, who professed himself favorable to his doctrine, and even built him a castle as a place of shelter and retirement.  Unfortunately for Mani, Hormizdas died in the second year of his reign; and though his successor, Varanes, was at first willing to shield him from persecution, yet, finding that the Magians were alarmed for their religion, he appointed a disputation to be held between the opposing parties.  Such trials of dialectic in Eastern courts have not unfrequently resulted in very serious consequences to the parties engaged in them.  In this instance the result was fatal to Mani.  Worsted in argument, he was condemned to die, and thus perished in some sense as a martyr.  The mode of his death is uncertain,27 but it seems that his skin was stuffed with chaff, and hung up in public in 23 2 Kings xv. 14. 24 "Peut-être cherchons nous du mystere, ou il n’y en a point."—Beausobre, i. 79. 25 [This is in the highest degree improbable.—A.H.N.] 26 Called Erteng or Arzeng, i.e., according to Renaudot, an illustrated book. 27 Böhringer adopts the more horrible tradition.  "Sein Schicksal war, dass er von den Christen, von den Ma- giern verfolgt, nach mannig fachem Wechsel unter Bahram lebendig geschunden wurde" (p. 386). 47 Preface to the Anti-Manichæan Writings.