Very many places then of those
books having been explained, I now blamed my despair, in believing
that no answer could be given to such as hated and scoffed at the
Law and the Prophets. Yet did I not therefore then see that the
Catholic way was to be held, because it also could find learned
maintainers, who could at large and with some show of reason answer
objections; nor that what I held was therefore to be condemned,
because both sides could be maintained. For the Catholic cause
seemed to me in such sort not vanquished, as still not as yet to be
victorious.
Hereupon I earnestly bent my mind, to see if in any way I could by
any certain proof convict the Manichees of falsehood. Could I once
have conceived a spiritual substance, all their strongholds had been
beaten down, and cast utterly out of my mind; but I could not.
Notwithstanding, concerning the frame of this world, and the whole
of nature, which the senses of the flesh can reach to, as I more and
more considered and compared things, I judged the tenets of most of
the philosophers to have been much more probable.
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