The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK SEVEN 13 intending that it would be understood as referring to this life, where men become like beasts by the wickedness and shamefulness of their ways and thus in a sense are turned into beasts. By this means they hoped to show erring men their degradation and thus recall them from their wicked desires.
CHAPTER 11
The absurd theories of the Manicheans about transmigration.
16. Stories are told about persons who have had some kind of recollection of having been in the bodies of animals. Now, either these stories are false, or an illusion has been produced by demons in the minds of these persons. For if it happens in sleep that a man can be induced by a false recollection into seeming to recall that he was what he was not or that he did what he did not do, it should not seem strange that demons, by God's just judgment hidden from us, may be allowed to effect something similar in men's minds even in their waking hours.
17. The Manichees, who think they are Christians or like to be considered Christians, hold a doctrine on the transplantation or transmigration of souls that is more erroneous and repulsive than that of the Gentile philosophers or other false teachers who hold such theories. For the Gentile philosophers and others distinguish between the soul and God, whereas the Manichees say that the soul is nothing else than the substance of God and is simply identifed with God Himself. They have no scruple about saying it is subject to changes unworthy of its nature, so that, according to their incredible foolishness, there is no kind of plant or worm with which the soul has not commingled or to which it cannot be transplanted.
But let them put out of their minds these subtle questions which they ponder in materialistic patterns of thought, thereby of necessity falling into a morass of false, mischievous, and ludicrous opinions, and let them hold firmly to the fundamental principle that is by nature clearly implanted in every rational soul beyond all doubt and dispute, namely, that there exists a