4. The fourth head deals with the fact that the birthday of Christ, which the Catholic Church venerates as His taking on Him the true man, because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” is not truly honored by these men, but they pretend that they honor it, for they fast on that day, as they do also on the Lord's Day, which is the day of Christ's [pg 379] resurrection. No doubt they do this because they do not believe that Christ the Lord was truly born in man's nature, but maintain that by a sort of illusion there was an appearance of what was not a reality.
5. Their fifth head refers to their assertion that man's soul is a part of the divine substance, and that the nature of our human state does not differ from its Creator's nature.…
6. The sixth points out that they say that the devil never was good and that his nature is not God's handiwork, but that he came forth of chaos and darkness.…
7. In the seventh place follows that they condemn marriage and are horrified at begetting children, in which, as in nearly all things, they agree with the profanity of the Manichæans.
8. Their eighth point is that the formation of men's bodies is the device of the devil and that the seed of conception is shaped by the aid of demons in the womb.…
9. The ninth notice declares that they say that the sons of promise are born, indeed, of women, conceived by the Holy Spirit; lest the offspring that is born of carnal seed should seem to share in God's estate.…
10. Under the tenth head they are reported as asserting that the souls which are placed in men's bodies have previously been without a body and have sinned in their heavenly habitation and for this reason have fallen from their high estate to a lower one alighting upon ruling spirits of divers qualities, and after passing through a succession of powers of the air and stars, some fiercer, some milder, are enclosed in bodies of different sorts and conditions, so that whatever variety and inequality is meted out to us in this life, seems the result of previous causes.…
11. Their eleventh blasphemy is that in which they suppose that both the souls and bodies of men are under the influence of fatal stars.…
12. The twelfth of these points is this: that they map out the parts of the soul under certain powers and the limbs under [pg 380] others; and they suggest the characters of the inner powers that rule the soul by giving them the names of the patriarchs; and on the other hand, they attribute the signs of the stars to those under which they put the body.