Acts of the Disputation with the Heresiarch Manes

¹¹ He holds also that God has no part with the world itself, and finds no pleasure in it, by reason of its having been made a spoil of from the first by the princes, and on account of the ill that rose on it. Wherefore He sends and takes away from them day by day the soul belonging to Him, through the medium of these luminaries, the sun and the moon, by which the whole world and all creation are dominated. Him, again, who spoke with Moses, and the Jews, and the priests, he declares to be the prince of the darkness; so that the Christians, and the Jews, and the Gentiles are one and the same body, worshipping the same God: for He seduces them in His own passions, being no God of truth.

For this reason all those who hope in that God who spoke with Moses and the prophets have to be bound together with the said deity, because they have not hoped in the God of truth; for that deity spoke with him in accordance with their own passions. Moreover, after all these things, he speaks in the following terms with regard to the end, as he has also written: When the eider has displayed his image, the Omophorus then lets the earth go from him, and so the mighty fire gets free, and consumes the whole world.

Then, again, he lets the soil go with the new aeon, in order that all the souls of sinners may be bound for ever. These things will take place at the time when the man's image has come. And all these powers put forth by God, — namely, Jesus, who is in the smaller ship, and the Mother of Life, and the twelve helmsmen, and the virgin of the light, and the third elder, who is in the greater ship, and the living spirit, and the wall of the mighty fire, and the wall of the wind, and the air, and the water, and the interior living fire—have their seat in the lesser luminary, until the fire shall have consumed the whole world: and that is to happen within so many years, the exact number of which, however, I have not ascertained.

And after these things there will be a restitution of the two natures; and the princes will occupy the lower parts proper to them, and the Father the higher parts, receiving again what is His own due possession.— All this doctrine he delivered to his three disciples, and charged each to journey to a separate clime. The Eastern parts fell thus to the lot of Addas; Thomas obtained the Syrian territories as his heritage; and another, to wit, Hermeias, directed his course towards Egypt. And to this day they, sojourn there, with the purpose of establishing the propositions contained in this doctrine.