MA NICHE A NS. 
551 
distinguished merit in their number; and in the seventeenth, previous 
to the Reformation, if any sparks of real piety subsisted under the 
prevailing superstitions, they were to be found only among the Mystics. 
The principles of this sect were adopted by the Quietists in the seven- 
teenth century, and, under different modifications, by the Quakers and 
Methodists of a later period. 
Manicheans. 
A SECT of ancient heretics, who asserted two principles ; so called 
from their author. Manes. This heresy had its first rise about a. d. 277, 
and spread principally in Arabia, Egypt, and Africa. St. Epiphanius 
treats of it at great length. It was a motley mixture of Christianity 
with the ancient philosophy of the Persians, in which Manes had been 
instructed during his youth. He combined these two systems, and 
applied and accommodated to Jesus Christ the charaeters and actions 
which the Persians attributed to the god Mithras. 
He established two principles, a good and an evil one: the first, a 
subtle and pure matter, which he called light, did nothing but good ; 
and the second, a gross and corrupted substance, which he called 
darkness, did nothing but evil. This philosophy is very ancient, and 
Plutarch treats of it at large in his Isis and Osiris. Our souls, accord- 
ing to Manes, were made by the good principle, and our bodies by 
the evil one ; these two principles being, according to him, co-eternal 
and independent of each other. Each of these is subject to the 
dominion of a superintendent being, whose existence is from all eternity. 
The being who exists over the light is called God ; he that rules the 
land of darkness, bears the title of hyle or demon. The ruler of the 
light is supremely happy, and in consequence thereof benevolent' and 
good ; the prince of darkness is unhappy in himself, and desirous of 
rendering others partakers of his misery, and is evil and malignant* 
These two beings have produced an immense number of creatures 
resembling themselves, and distributed them through their respective 
provinces. 
After a contest between the ruler of light and the prince of darkness, 
in which the latter was defeated, this prince of darkness produced 
the first parents of the human race. The beings engendered from 
this original stock, consist of a body formed out of the corrupt matter 
of the kingdom of darkness, and of two souls ; one of w hich is sensi- 
tive and lustful, and owes its existence to the evil principle ; the other 
rational and immortal, a particle of that divine light which had been 
carried away in the contest by the army of darkness, and immersed 
into ilie mass of malignant matter. The earth was created by God 
nut of this corrupt mass of matter, in order to be a dw^elling for the 
human race, that their captive souls by degrees might be delivered 
from their corporeal prisons, and the celestial elements extended from 
the gross substance in which they were involved. 
With this view' God produced two beings from his own substance, 
vi 2 . Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost ; for the Manicheans held a 
consubstantial Trinity. Christ, or the glorious intelligence, called by 
the Persians, Mithras, subsisting in and by himself, and residing in the 
