25. He dared too to say that he was the
Paraclete, though it is written, But whosoever shall blaspheme
against the Holy Ghost, hath no forgiveness Mark iii. 29.. He committed blasphemy therefore by
saying that he was the Holy Ghost: let him that communicates with
those heretics see with whom he is enrolling himself. The slave
shook the world, since by three things the earth is shaken, and the
fourth it cannot bear,—if a slave became a king Prov. xxx. 21, 22.. Having come into public he now began
to promise things above man’s power. The son of the King of
the Persians was sick, and a multitude of physicians were in
attendance: but Manes promised, as if he were a godly man, to
cure him by prayer. With the departure of the physicians, the
life of the child departed: and the man’s impiety was
detected. So the would-be philosopher was a prisoner, being cast
into prison not for reproving the king in the cause of truth, not for
destroying the idols, but for promising to save and lying, or rather,
if the truth must be told, for committing murder. For the child
who might have been saved by medical treatment, was murdered by this
man’s driving away the physicians, and killing him by want of
treatment.