CATHAR LITERATURE 76lso that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are
sanctified by faith in me."^47 And Christ says in the Gospel of Matthew:
Have you come to arrest me with swords and clubs
as if I were a robber?
Day after day I sat in the temple, teaching,
and you did not take hold of me.^48And in Luke, "But this is your hour, and the power of darkness."^49 From all
this one must believe that the power of Satan and of darkness cannot pro-
ceed directly and immediately from the true god. Since if the power of Satan
and of darkness proceeds directly and immediately from the true god, with
all the other powers, virtues, and dominations of evil—which is what the un-
knowing say—then one would not understand how Paul and all others faith-
ful to Jesus Christ could have "removed power from darkness," nor how they
could have transferred this power of Satan to the true lord god. Above all,
if one considers that in removing power from darkness, they become in real-
ity, properly and essentially, attached to our lord god, since all powers and
virtues, according to the belief of our adversaries, emanate properly and es-
sentially from the good god. How then would the good god be able to strip
and eliminate another power than its own, if it is true that there can exist no
other before him, as all our enemies say of these true Christians whom one
calls, by their right title, Albanenses?^50
- Acts 26:16-18.
- Matthew 26:55.
- Luke 22:53.
- The name for the absolute dualists.