Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/295

 was adapted to the masses, from whom only moderate abstinence was required. They ministered religiously to the Elect, whom they thus enlisted as redeemers on their behalf, so that with the addition of a term of purgatory after death, they also became fitted for paradise. Mani utilized some of the ideas of Christianity in order to connect his religion practically with mankind, but his transferences are rather imitations than acceptances of anything really Christian. Thus he acknowledged a Jesus Christ, who abides in the son, as the "primal man" or first-born of the Deity. He had visited the earth as a prophet, and from him Mani had received his apostolic mission, whence he usurped the title of the Paraclete, whose advent was promised in the Gospels. He also instructed twelve disciples to preach his doctrine. The success and prevalence of Manichaeism was at one time very great, for it arose as the revivifying force of more than one aspect of dualism in the East and West. It fostered the time-honoured traditions of the inhabitants of the Euphrates valley, and drew to itself the disintegrating coteries of Gnostics within the Roman Empire. A Manichaean popedom was established, which had its seat for several centuries in Babylon. As early as 287 Diocletian denounced the propagation of the religion as a capital offence, on the grounds that the "execrable customs and cruel laws" of the Persians might thereby gain a footing among his "mild and peaceful" subjects.