Leo the Great
(Serm. xv. cap. 4) speaks of the madness of the later Manichees
as including all errors and impieties: “all profanity of
Paganism, all blindness of the carnal Jews, the illicit secrets of the
magic art, the sacrilege and blasphemy of all heresies, flowed together
in that sect as into a sort of cess-pool of all filth.” Leo
summoned those whom they called the “elect,” both men and
women, before an assembly of Bishops and Presbyters, and obtained from
these witnesses a full account of the execrable practices of the sect,
in which, as he declares, “their law is lying, their religion the
devil, their sacrifice obscenity.”