A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

MALACHI, THE PROPHECY OF. A canonical book of the Old Testament.

The author of the Lives of the Prophets, and the Alexandrian Chronicle, say, that Malachi was of the tribe of Zebulun, and a native of Sapha, and that the name of Malachi was given him because of his angelical mildness; which made Origen and Tertullian believe, that he was an “angel incarnate.” He is called an “angel” by most of the Fathers, and in the version of the Septuagint. Some think that Malachi is no other than Ezra, or Esdras, and this is the opinion of the ancient Hebrews, of the Chaldee Paraphrast, and of St. Jerome.

Malachi is the last of the twelve lesser prophets. He prophesied about three hundred years before Christ, reproving the Jews for their wickedness after their return from Babylon, charging them with rebellion, sacrilege, adultery, profaneness, and infidelity, and condemning the priests for being careless and scandalous in their ministry. At the same time, he forgets not to encourage the “pious remnant,” who, in that corrupt age, “feared the Lord, and thought upon his name.”

This prophet distinctly points at the Messiah, who was “suddenly to come to his temple,” and to be introduced by Elijah the prophet, that is, by John the Baptist, who came “in the spirit and power of Elias,” or Elijah.

The Jews pretend that, in the time of Darius, son of Hystaspis, there was held a general assembly of the heads of their nation, to settle the canon of their Scriptures; that Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi presided in this council, and that Esdras was their secretary. But it is certain Daniel did not live at that time. They add, that in the last year of Darius, died the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, and with them ceased the spirit of prophecy among the Israelites; and that this was the sealing up of vision and prophecy, spoken of by Daniel.

The death of the prophet Malachi is placed, in the Roman martyrology, on the 14th of January.

MANASSES, PRAYER OF. One of the apocryphal books of the Old Testament, which is rejected as spurious even by the Church of Rome; and though in the list of the apocryphal books contained in the sixth Article, is not read in the service of the Church of England. It cannot be traced to a higher source than the Vulgate version; and is evidently not the prayer of King Munasseh, mentioned in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 18, 19, as it never was extant in the Hebrew.—Horne’s Introd.

MANICHEANS. Christian heretics, who took their name from one Manes. The ancients do not well agree as to the time of this heretic’s first appearance. But Spanheim says, it was in the time of Probus, a little before Diocletian, and that his heresy was a compound of the Pythagorean, Gnostic, and Marcionite opinions. According to the accounts given by the Greeks, (from whom, however, the Oriental writers differ considerably,) one Terebinthus, disciple to Scythianus, a magician, finding that in Persia, whither he was forced to retire out of Palestine, the priests and learned men of the country did strongly oppose his errors and designs, retired into a widow’s house, where (it is said) he was killed, either by angels or by demons, as he was engaged in incantations. This woman, being heiress to the money and books of Terebinthus, bought a slave named Cubricus, whom she afterwards adopted, and caused to be instructed in all the sciences of Persia. This man, after the woman’s death, changed his name, to obliterate the memory of his first condition, and assumed that of Manes. He pretended to be the apostle of Christ, and that he was the Comforter our Saviour promised to send. He promised the king of Persia that he would cure his son; whereupon the father sent away all the physicians, and the patient died soon after: whereupon Manes was imprisoned, but made his escape; but being soon apprehended again, was flayed alive, and his carcass thrown to the wild beasts.

Manes held that there were two principles, the one good, from whence proceeded the good soul of man, and the other bad, from whence proceeded the evil soul, and likewise the body with all corporeal creatures. He taught his disciples to profess a great severity of life, notwithstanding which they were able to wallow in all impurity, and he forbade to give alms to any that were not of his own sect. He attributed the motions of concupiscence to the evil soul; he gave out that the souls of his followers went through the elements to the moon, and afterwards to the sun, to be purified, and then to God, in whom they did rejoin; and those of other men, he alleged, went to hell, to be sent into other bodies. He alleged, that Christ had his residence in the sun; the Holy Ghost in the air; wisdom in the moon; and the Father in the abyss of light: he denied the resurrection, and condemned marriage; he held Pythagoras’s transmigration of souls; that Christ had no real body; that he was neither dead nor risen, and that he was the Serpent that tempted Eve. He forbade the use of eggs, cheese, milk, and wine, as creatures proceeding from a bad principle; he used a form of baptism different from that of the Church. He taught that magistrates were not to be obeyed, and condemned the most lawful wars. It were next to impossible to recount all the impious and damnable tenets of this heresiarch, insomuch that Leo the Great said of him, that the devil reigned in all other heresies, but he had built a fortress and raised his throne in that of the Manicheans, who embraced all the errors and impieties that the spirit of man was capable of; for whatever profanation was in Paganism, carnal blindness in Judaism, unlawful curiosity in magic, or sacrilegious in other heresies, did all centre in that of the Manicheans.

The Manicheans were divided into hearers and the elect: of the elect, twelve were called masters, in imitation of the twelve apostles; and there was a thirteenth, who was a kind of pope amongst them. Authors charge them with ascribing a body to God, and alleging that he was substantially in everything, though never so base as mire, dirt, &c., but was separated from them by the coming of Christ, and by the Manicheans eating the fruits of the earth. They likewise maintained, that there had been a great combat between the princes of darkness and light, wherein they who held for God were taken prisoners, and that he laboured still for their redemption. Moreover, he held that the sun and the moon were ships, that the soul of a man and of a tree were of the same substance, and both of them a part of God; that sin was a substance, and not a quality or affection, and therefore natural, and that acquired by the fall; he likewise held a fatality, and denied free-will. The emperors, in the fourth century, made laws against these heretics, who renewed their opinions in Africa, Gaul, and Rome, where a council was held against them.—But Manicheism continued to exist among the heretics of the middle ages.—See Burton. Augusti.