“His worship was simple, without altar, temple, images, or any imposing ceremonial.  Pure and simple prayer was their only form of adoration.”  They talked much of “Christ” as a heavenly principle, but “did not believe in his birth or death.  Prayers and Hymns addressed to the source of light, exhortations to subdue the dark and sensuous element within, and the study of the marvellous book of Mani, constituted their devotion.  Their manners were austere and ascetic; they tolerated, but only tolerated, marriage, and that only among the inferior orders.  The theatre, the banquet, and even the bath, they severely proscribed.  Their diet was of fruits and herbs; they shrank with abhorrence from animal food.”  Mani met with fierce hostility from West and East alike; and at last was entrapped by the Persian king Baharam, and “was flayed alive.  His skin, stuffed with straw, was placed over the gate of the city of Shahpoor.”

Such a death was as cruel and as ignominious as that of crucifixion; yet his doctrines “expired not with their author.  In the East and in the West they spread with the utmost rapidity....  The extent of its success may be calculated by the implacable hostility of other religions to the doctrines of Mani; the causes of that success are more difficult to conjecture.”

Every reason, which, as far as I know, has ever been given, why it should be hard for early Christianity to spread, avail equally as reasons against the spread of Manichaeism.  The state of the East, which admitted the latter without miracle, admitted the former also.  It nevertheless is pertinent to add, that the recent history of Mormonism, compared with that of Christianity and of Manichaeism, may suggest that the martyr-death of the founder of a religion is a positive aid to its after-success.

[Footnote 1:  See Strauss on the Infancy of Jesus.]

[Footnote 2:  My “Eclectic” reviewer (who is among the least orthodox and the least uncandid) hence deduces, that I have confounded the two questions, “Does the Bible contain errors in human science?” and, “Is its purely spiritual teaching true?” It is quite wonderful to me, how educated men can so totally overlook what I have so plainly and so often written.  This very passage might show the contrary, if he had but quoted the whole paragraph, instead of the middle sentence only.  See also pp. 67, 74, 75, 86, 87, 125.]

[Footnote 3:  Any orthodox periodical which dares to write charitably, is at once subjected to fierce attack us unorthodox.]

[Footnote 4:  Explicit Faith in a doctrine, means, that we understand what the propositions are, and accept them.  But if through blunder we accept a wrong set of propositions, so as to believe a false doctrine, we nevertheless have Implicit (or Virtual) Faith in the true one, if only we say from the heart:  “Whatever the Church believes, I believe.”  Thus a person, who, through blundering, believes in Sabellianism or Arianism, which the Church has condemned, is regarded to have virtual faith in Trinitarianism, and all the “merit” of that faith, because of his good will to submit to the Church; which is the really saving virtue.]