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21. Furthermore, whatever they had censured in Thy Scriptures I
thought impossible to be defended; and yet sometimes, indeed, I
desired to confer on these several points with some one well learned in
those books, and to try what he thought of them. For at this time the
words of one Helpidius, speaking and disputing face to face against
the said Manichaeans, had begun to move me even at Carthage, in that
he brought forth things from the Scriptures not easily withstood, to
which their answer appeared to me feeble. And this answer they did not
give forth publicly, but only to us in private, when they said
that the writings of the New Testament had been tampered with by I
know not whom, who were desirous of ingrafting the Jewish law upon the
Christian faith; but they themselves did not bring forward any
uncorrupted copies.' But I, thinking of corporeal things, very
much ensnared and in a measure stifled, was oppressed by those masses;
panting under which for the breath of Thy Truth, I was not able to
breathe it pure and undefiled.
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