One of the fundamental doctrines of the Bogomiles was, as has been already implied, the belief in two Principles of Good and Evil. ‘I hear,’ says the worthy Presbyter Cosmas, ‘many of our orthodox congregation ask, “Wherefore does God permit the Devil to exercise sway over man?” Verily this is the first question which prepares the weak in belief for the reception of the Manichæan heresy.’ The Bogomiles satisfied their reason by supposing two conflicting self-existent principles of Good and Evil. Matter and the visible world belong to the Spirit of Evil. ‘Everything,’ says Cosmas, ‘exists, according to the Bogomiles, of the will of the Devil. The sky, the sun, the earth, men, churches, crosses, and all that is God’s, they give over to the Devil.’ The evil in the world is thus accounted for by supposing the Creation to be the work of the Evil One, and it consequently followed that the Bogomiles looked on the book of Genesis and the other Mosaic writings as inspired by this evil God, or, as they knew him, Satanael. But beyond this visible world, of which they could see only the dark and melancholy side, there existed, according to the Bogomiles, another, invisible, heavenly and perfect, the creation of the Spirit of Goodness and Light—Himself a perfect triune Being, from whom proceeded nothing incomplete or temporary. Cosmas distinguishes, however, two branches of the Bogomilian heretics. According to the earlier sect, dualism in its most uncompromising form prevailed.[22] According to a later offshoot of the Bogomiles, the Spirit of Good had two sons, the elder of whom, Satanael, rebelled and created matter, and that to rescue the world thus created from the dominion of the Prince of Evil, God the Father sent down his younger son Christ to enable men to combat the Ruler of this world.[23] Both sects, however, were agreed in accepting the Phantastic theory of the Incarnation. The antagonism between spirit and matter was too great to admit of the union of the two. The body of Christ was a phantom, left in the clouds at his ascension; and the Virgin was an angel and not the mother of God. Cosmas denies generally their belief in any of the books of the Old Testament or the Gospels; but this does not agree with the circumstantial account of Euthymius Zygabenus, who from having been commissioned by the Emperor to extract the tenets of his sect from the Bogomilian heresiarch Basil, is certainly one of the best authorities. Further, it is disproved by the whole conduct of the Bogomiles, which, as Cosmas himself shows, was based on a too literal interpretation of the Gospels. According to Euthymius,[24] the Bogomiles accepted seven holy books, which he enumerates as follows:—1, the Psalms; 2, the Sixteen Prophets; 3, 4, 5, and 6, the Gospels; 7, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse. So far, indeed, as the New Testament was concerned, they clung to the version of the orthodox Sclavic apostle, in which they altered not a word.[25]