The Prescription Against Heretics

But they are rather to be abominated and guarded against, as bringing eternal death, having no power except among those who are weak in faith. Fever, for instance, assigned among other deadly and tormenting ends to be dealt out to man, we neither marvel at because it exists—for it does exist—nor because it carries man off—for that is its purpose. Likewise, if we are terrified that heresies, brought forth for the languishing and destruction of faith, are able to do this, it is first necessary that we be terrified that they exist; for while they exist, they have power; and while they have power, they have existence.

But indeed fever, as an evil both in its cause and in its power, as is well known, we rather abominate than marvel at, and, as far as in us lies, we guard against it, not having the abolition of it in our power; but heresies, which bring eternal death and the burning of a greater fire, some prefer to marvel that they can do this, rather than to avoid their being able to do it, when they have the power of avoiding. Otherwise they will have no power at all, if men do not marvel that they have such power. For either, while they marvel, they are furnished with occasion of scandal; or, because they are scandalized, they therefore marvel, as though the fact that heresies have such power comes from some truth. It is remarkable, forsooth, that evil should have its own strength; except that heresies have great power among those who are not strong in faith.

In contests of boxers and gladiators, very often one does not conquer because he is strong, or because he cannot be conquered, but because the one who was conquered had no strength at all; so that same victor, afterwards matched against one in good condition, departs even having been defeated. In no other way do heresies derive what power they have from the weaknesses of certain persons, having no power if they encounter a faith in good condition.

Neither ought anyone to be scandalized if a bishop, if a deacon, if a widow, if a virgin, if a teacher, if even a martyr has lapsed from the rule; because faith is not proved by persons, but persons by faith. Indeed these mockers are accustomed to be built up unto ruin also by certain persons who have been captured by heresy: why did this man or that man, most faithful, most prudent, and most experienced in the Church, pass over to that side? Whoever says this, does he not answer himself, that those whom heresies were able to change are to be reckoned neither prudent, nor faithful, nor experienced? And is this remarkable (I suppose), that someone previously approved should afterwards fall away? Saul, good above the rest, is afterwards overthrown by envy. David, a good man according to the heart of the Lord, is afterwards guilty of murder and adultery. Solomon, endowed by the Lord with every grace and wisdom, is led into idolatry by women.

For it was reserved for the Son of God alone to remain without sin. What then, if a bishop, if a deacon, if a widow, if a virgin, if a teacher, if even a martyr has lapsed from the rule, will heresies therefore seem to hold the truth? Do we prove faith by persons, or persons by faith? No one is wise unless he is faithful; no one is greater unless he is a Christian; but no one is a Christian unless he has persevered to the end. You, as a man, know each person from the outside; you think what you see; but you see only as far as you have eyes. But the eyes of the Lord, he says, are lofty. Man looks upon the face, God looks upon the heart. And therefore, the Lord knows those who are his; and every plant which the Father has not planted, he roots up; and he shows the last from the first; and he carries the winnowing fan in his hand to purge his threshing floor.

Let the chaff of light faith fly away as much as it will in whatever blast of temptations; so much the purer shall the mass of grain be stored in the Lord's granaries. Did not certain of the disciples, scandalized by the Lord himself, turn away? And yet the rest did not therefore think they too should depart from his footsteps; but those who knew that he was the Word of life and had come from God, persevered in his company to the end, though he had calmly offered them the option of departing too, if they also wished. It is a lesser matter if some Phygelus, and Hermogenes, and Philetus, and Hymenaeus also abandoned an apostle of his: the very betrayer of Christ was from among the Apostles. Do we marvel at his Churches, if they are deserted by some, when those things which we suffer after the example of Christ himself show us to be Christians?

From us, he says, they went out, but they were not of us; if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us.

Rather let us be mindful both of the dominical pronouncements and of the apostolic letters, which have both foretold to us that heresies would come in the future, and have prescribed that they are to be fled; and just as we are not terrified that they exist, so let us not marvel that they are able to do that on account of which they are to be fled. The Lord instructs us that many will come in sheep's clothing, ravening wolves. What are these sheep's skins, but the outward surface of the Christian name? Who are these ravening wolves, but the crafty minds and spirits lurking outwardly to infest the flock of Christ? Who are the false prophets, but false preachers? Who are the false apostles, but adulterous proclaimers of the gospel? Who are the antichrists, both now and always, but the rebels against Christ?

Now there are heresies, provoking the Church no less by the perverseness of their doctrines than the Antichrist will then persecute it by the atrocity of persecutions; except that persecution also makes martyrs, whereas heresy makes only apostates. And therefore it was also necessary that heresies should exist, so that those who are approved might be made manifest, both those who have stood firm in persecutions and those who have not gone astray into heresies. For it does not help that those are understood to be approved who change their faith into heresy; just as on the other side they interpret for themselves, because he said elsewhere: Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. As though it were not possible, after examining all things badly, to stumble through error into the choice of some evil thing.

Furthermore, if he rebukes dissensions and schisms, which are without doubt evils, and immediately subjoins heresies, by joining heresies to evils he plainly declares them to be an evil, and indeed a greater one; since he says he believed concerning the schisms and dissensions because he knew that heresies also must needs exist. For he shows that, in view of a graver evil, he easily believed concerning the lesser ones; certainly not so that he believed concerning evils because heresies were good; but in order to forewarn that temptations of a yet more serious kind were not to be marveled at, which he said tended to make manifest those who are approved, namely those whom heresy could not corrupt. Finally, if the whole passage savors of maintaining unity and restraining separations, and heresies no less than schisms and dissensions tear away from unity, without doubt he also places heresies in the same condition of rebuke in which he places schisms and dissensions.

And by this, he does not make those approved who have turned aside into heresies, since he especially rebukes turning aside from such things, teaching that all should speak the same thing and be of the same mind, which heresies also do not permit.

Nor need we dwell longer on this, if it is the same Paul who elsewhere numbers heresies among carnal crimes, writing to the Galatians, and who suggests to Titus that a heretical man is to be rejected after the first correction, because one of such a kind is perverse and sins, being condemned by himself. But also in almost every epistle, pressing the point that adulterous doctrines are to be fled, he censures heresies, whose works are adulterous doctrines—heresies called by a Greek word, from the interpretation of choice, which one employs either for establishing or for receiving them. Therefore he also said that the heretic is condemned by himself, because in that whereby he is condemned, he has chosen for himself. But for us it is not lawful to introduce anything from our own judgment, nor indeed to choose what someone else has introduced from his own judgment.

We have the Apostles of the Lord as our authorities, who themselves also chose nothing from their own judgment to introduce; but faithfully delivered to the nations the discipline received from Christ. So that even if an angel from heaven were to preach otherwise, he would be called anathema by us. The Holy Spirit had already foreseen that there would come in a certain virgin Philumene an angel of seduction, transforming himself into an angel of light, by whose signs and tricks Apelles was led astray and introduced a new heresy.

These are the doctrines of men and of demons, born to itching ears from the ingenuity of worldly wisdom, which the Lord, calling it foolishness, chose the foolish things of the world to confound even philosophy itself. For that is the material of worldly wisdom: the rash interpreter of the divine nature and dispensation. Indeed the heresies themselves are furnished from philosophy. Hence the aeons, and certain forms I know not what, and the trinity of man, in Valentinus: he had been a Platonist. Hence Marcion's better god, derived from tranquility: he had come from the Stoics. And the teaching that the soul is subject to death is borrowed from Epicurus. And the denial of the resurrection of the flesh is taken from the one school common to all philosophers. And where matter is made equal to God, that is the discipline of Zeno; and where something is alleged about a fiery god, Heraclitus steps in: The same subject matter is turned over among heretics and philosophers, the same reconsiderations are entangled. Whence is evil, and why?

And whence is man, and how? And, what Valentinus lately proposed, whence is God? Namely, from Enthymesis and Ectroma. Wretched Aristotle! Who furnished them with dialectic, that art of building up and tearing down, shifty in its opinions, forced in its conjectures, harsh in its arguments, a worker of contentions, troublesome even to itself, retracting everything, lest it should have treated anything at all. Hence those fables and endless genealogies, and unprofitable questions, and words that creep like a cancer; from which the Apostle, restraining us, expressly testifies that philosophy is to be guarded against, writing to the Colossians: See that no one circumvent you through philosophy and vain seduction, according to the tradition of men, apart from the providence of the Holy Spirit. He had been at Athens, and had come to know from his encounters that human wisdom, that pretender and adulterator of truth, itself also divided into its own heresies by the manifold variety of sects mutually contradicting one another. What therefore has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has the Academy to do with the Church?

What have heretics to do with Christians? Our teaching is from the Porch of Solomon, who himself also had taught that the Lord is to be sought in simplicity of heart. Let those look to it who have put forward a Stoic and Platonic and dialectical Christianity. For us, after Christ Jesus we have no need of curiosity, nor of inquiry after the Gospel. When we believe, we desire nothing beyond believing. For this we first believe: that there is nothing beyond which we ought to believe.

I come therefore to that point which both our own people put forward as a pretext for entering into curiosity, and which heretics press upon us to import scrupulosity. It is written (they say): Seek and you shall find. Let us recall when the Lord uttered this word. I think it was at the very beginnings of His teaching, when it was still doubted by all whether He was the Christ, and when Peter had not yet declared Him the Son of God, and when even John had ceased to be certain about Him. Rightly therefore was it then said, Seek and you shall find, when He who was not yet known still needed to be sought. And this as regards the Jews; for the whole discourse of that rebuke pertains to them, who had a place where they might seek Christ. They have, He says, Moses and Elijah, that is, the law and the prophets proclaiming Christ, according to which also elsewhere, Search, He says, the Scriptures in which you hope for salvation; for they speak of me.

This will be, Seek and you shall find; for it is plain that the words that follow also apply to the Jews: Knock and it shall be opened to you. The Jews had formerly been with God; thereafter, cast out on account of their sins, they began to be outside God. But the nations were never with God, save as a drop from a bucket, and dust from a threshing floor, and always outside. Therefore he who is always outside, how shall he knock there where he has never been? What door does he know, into which he was never received, nor ever cast out? Or is it not rather he who knows that he was once within and has been put outside, who will knock and knows the door? Likewise, Ask and you shall receive applies to him who knew from whom he should ask, from whom also something had been promised; namely from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whom the nations knew no more than they knew any promise of His.

And therefore He spoke to Israel: I am not sent, He says, except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He was not yet casting the bread of the children to the dogs, nor yet commanding them to go into the way of the nations; since at the end He commanded that they should go to teach and baptize the nations, about to receive shortly the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, who would lead them into all truth. And this He did toward them. But if the Apostles themselves, appointed as teachers to the nations, were yet to receive the Paraclete as their teacher, how much more will Seek and you shall find be inapplicable to us, to whom the teaching was to come freely through the Apostles, and to the Apostles themselves through the Holy Spirit.

All the words of the Lord are indeed set before all, which have passed through the ears of the Jews to us; but most of them, being directed to particular persons, have not established for us a personal rule of admonition, but an example.

But for us, who have now believed, there is nothing further to be sought. I yield now willingly from that position: let it be said to all, Seek and you shall find; yet even here it is profitable to contend with the helm of interpretation in mind. No divine utterance is so loose and diffuse that only the words are to be defended and the reason of the words is not to be established. But first of all I set forth this: that one certain thing was assuredly instituted by Christ, which the nations are in every way bound to believe, and therefore to seek, so that when they have found it they may believe.

Moreover, of one and certain institution there cannot be an infinite inquiry; one must seek until one finds, and believe when one has found; and nothing beyond, except to guard what one has believed: while believing this further, that nothing else is to be believed, and therefore nothing else to be sought, since when you have found and believed what was instituted by Him who does not bid you inquire for anything beyond what He has instituted. If anyone doubts this, it will be established that what was instituted by Christ is with us. Meanwhile, in confidence of proof, I anticipate, admonishing certain persons that there is nothing to be sought beyond what they have believed to be that which they ought to have sought; lest Seek and you shall find be interpreted without the discipline of reason.

Now the reason of this saying consists in three points: in the matter, in the time, in the manner: in the matter, that you consider what is to be sought; in the time, when; in the manner, how far. Therefore one must seek what Christ has instituted; assuredly, when you do not find it: assuredly until you find it. But you have found it when you believed: for you would not have believed if you had not found it; just as you would not have sought unless in order to find. You seek therefore in order to find; and you find in order to believe. By believing you have fixed the entire process of seeking and finding; this limit was set for you by the very fruit of seeking; this boundary was marked out for you by Him who does not will you to believe anything other than what He has instituted, and therefore not to seek anything further.

Otherwise, if because so many other things have been instituted by others, we must therefore seek as far as we can find, we shall always be seeking and shall never believe at all. For where will be the end of seeking? Where the resting-place of believing? Where the completion of finding? With Marcion? But Valentinus too proposes: Seek and you shall find. With Valentinus? But Apelles also will press me with this pronouncement; and Hebion and Simon, and all the sects have nothing else by which, insinuating themselves to me, they may attach me to themselves. There will therefore be nowhere, while everywhere I am met with, Seek and you shall find, and as it were as one who has found it nowhere and as one who has never laid hold of that which Christ instituted, which ought to be sought, which must be believed.

One errs with impunity unless one transgresses (although to err is to transgress): with impunity, I say, does he wander who forsakes nothing. But if I have believed what I ought to have believed, and now think something else must be sought, I hope of course that something else is to be found; that hope is in no way entertained, unless either I had not believed who seemed to have believed, or I have ceased to believe. Thus, forsaking my faith, I am found a denier. Let me say it once: no one seeks except one who either never had, or has lost. That old woman had lost one of her ten coins, and therefore sought; yet when she found it, she ceased to seek. The neighbor had no bread, and therefore knocked; yet when it was opened to him and he received, he ceased to knock. The widow asked the judge to hear her, because she was not admitted; but when she was heard, she pressed her suit no further.

So there is an end both to seeking, and to knocking, and to asking. For to him that asks it shall be given, He says, and to him that knocks it shall be opened, and to him that seeks it shall be found. Let him look to it who always seeks, because he does not find: for he seeks there where it will not be found. Let him look to it who always knocks, because it will never be opened: for he knocks there where no one is. Let him look to it who always asks, because he will never be heard. For he asks of one who does not hear.

For us, even if we still had to seek, and always, yet where ought we to seek? Among heretics? Where everything is foreign and hostile to our truth, those to whom we are forbidden to draw near? What slave hopes for food from a stranger, not to say from an enemy of his master? What soldier seeks a donative and pay from allied kings, not to say from hostile ones, unless he is plainly a deserter, and a runaway, and a rebel? Even that old woman sought her coin within her own house; even that knocker beat upon his neighbor's door; even that widow appealed to a judge who, though harsh, was not her enemy. No one can be instructed by that which destroys him: no one is enlightened by him who darkens him. Let us therefore seek in our own, and from our own, and concerning our own; and that only which can come into question while the rule of faith remains safe.

Now the rule of faith is that by which we profess what we defend from this point on, namely that by which one believes: that there is one God, and none other besides the Creator of the world; who brought forth all things from nothing through His Word, first of all emitted; that Word, called His Son, seen in the name of God in various ways by the Patriarchs, always heard in the Prophets, lastly brought down from the Spirit of God the Father and His power into the Virgin Mary, made flesh in her womb, and born of her, lived as Jesus Christ; thereafter preached the new law and the new promise of the kingdom of heaven; wrought mighty works; was fixed to the cross, rose again on the third day; caught up into the heavens, sat at the right hand of the Father; sent the vicarious power of the Holy Spirit, who guides believers;

who is to come with glory to take the saints into the fruit of eternal life and of the heavenly promises, and to adjudge the profane to everlasting fire, after the resurrection of both parties together with the restoration of the flesh.

This rule, instituted by Christ as will be proved, raises among us no questions except those which heresies introduce and which make heretics. Otherwise, while its form remains in its own order, seek and treat as much as you please, and pour out all the appetite of your curiosity; if anything seems to you either to hang in ambiguity or to be overshadowed in obscurity, there is assuredly some brother who is a teacher gifted with the grace of knowledge, there is someone who has conversed among the experienced, someone who inquires together with you, yet more carefully; lastly, it is better to be ignorant, lest you come to know what you ought not, since you already know what you ought. Your faith, He says, has saved you; not your exercise in the Scriptures. Faith is placed in the rule: you have the law, and salvation from the observance of the law; but exercise consists in curiosity, having glory only from the pursuit of learning. Let curiosity yield to faith; let glory yield to salvation.

Let them at least not make a disturbance, or let them be quiet. To know nothing against the rule is to know everything. Even if heretics were not enemies of the truth, even if we were not forewarned to shun them, what sort of thing is it to confer with men who themselves also profess that they are still seeking? For if they are truly still seeking, they have as yet found nothing certain; and therefore, whatever they seem to hold in the meantime, they display their uncertainty so long as they seek. Therefore you who seek in like manner, looking to those who are themselves also seeking, you who are doubtful from the doubtful, uncertain from the uncertain, blind from the blind, must needs be led into a pit.

But when, for the sake of deceiving, they pretend that they are still seeking, in order to insinuate their teachings to us by injecting anxiety; and then, when they have come to us, they straightway defend what they were saying needed to be sought: we ought already to refute them in such a way that they know we are deniers not of Christ but of themselves. For while they are still seeking, they do not yet hold; but when they do not hold, they have not yet believed; they are not Christians. But when they do hold and believe, yet say that one must still seek in order to defend it: before they defend it, they deny it, since they confess that they have not yet believed it while they seek. They therefore who are not even Christians to themselves, how much less are they so to us? They who come by deceit, what kind of faith do they argue? What truth do they champion, who introduce it by falsehood?

But they themselves deal from the Scriptures and persuade by the Scriptures. From what other source, of course, could they speak of matters of faith, except from the writings of faith? We come therefore to the matter proposed: for to this we were directing our course, and this we were building up by the preface of our address, so that now from this point we may join battle over that which our adversaries challenge us to. They put forward the Scriptures, and by this boldness of theirs they immediately move some; but in the actual encounter they weary those who are firm, they capture those who are weak, and they dismiss those in the middle with a scruple. This approach therefore we block above all, by not admitting them to any disputation from the Scriptures. If these are their forces, so that they may be able to use them, it must be examined to whom the possession of the Scriptures belongs, lest he be admitted to them to whom they in no way belong.

This I would have introduced out of a plan of distrust, or out of a desire to enter upon the matter in some other way, were it not that reason stands firm, first of all that our faith owes obedience to the Apostle, who forbids us to enter into questions, to give ear to new words, to meet with a heretic after one reproof, not after a disputation. So thoroughly did he forbid disputation, designating reproof as the cause for meeting with a heretic; and this once only, namely because he is not a Christian; lest he should seem to need to be corrected in the manner of a Christian, once and again, and before two or three witnesses; since he is to be corrected for the very reason that there is no disputing with him.

Furthermore, because a contest of Scriptures profits nothing, except that one enters into an overthrowing of the stomach, or of the brain. This heresy does not receive certain Scriptures: and if it receives any, it does not receive them whole: it perverts them by additions and subtractions to suit the arrangement of its own purpose: and if it presents them somewhat whole, it nonetheless converts them by devising diverse interpretations. An adulterous meaning obstructs the truth just as much as a corrupting pen. Their various presumptions necessarily refuse to acknowledge those things by which they are refuted; they rely on what they have composed from falsehood, and what they have seized upon from ambiguity. What will you accomplish, O most practiced student of the Scriptures, when whatever you defend is denied on the other side, and whatever you deny is defended? And indeed you yourself will lose nothing but your voice in the dispute; you will gain nothing but bile from the blasphemy.

But that person, if there be any, for whose sake you descend into a contest of Scriptures, in order to confirm him in his doubt—will he incline toward the truth, or rather toward the heresies? Moved by this very fact, that he sees you have accomplished nothing, with equal footing of denial and defense established on the other side, certainly equal, he will depart more uncertain from the altercation, not knowing which heresy he should judge. These things they can of course also turn back against us. For it is necessary that they too say that it is rather we who bring adulteries of the Scriptures and lies of interpretations, who likewise defend the truth for themselves.

Therefore one must not appeal to the Scriptures, nor must the contest be established in them, in which the victory is either none, or uncertain, or equal in its uncertainty. For even if the comparison of Scriptures did not turn out so as to place both sides on equal footing, the order of things required that what is now the only thing to be disputed should first be set forth: To whom does the faith itself belong? Whose are the Scriptures? By whom, and through whom, and when, and to whom was the discipline handed down by which men become Christians? For where it shall appear that the truth of Christian discipline and faith exists, there will be the truth of the Scriptures, and of the interpretations, and of all Christian traditions.

Our Lord Christ Jesus—let it be permitted to say for the moment, whoever he is, Son of whatever God, man and God of whatever substance, teacher of whatever faith, promiser of whatever reward—himself declared, while he lived on earth, what he was, what he had been, what will of the Father he administered, what he determined man must do; whether openly to the people, or separately to his disciples; from among whom he had attached twelve chief ones to his side, destined to be teachers of the nations. And so, one of them having fallen away, he commanded the remaining eleven, departing to the Father after the resurrection, to go and teach the nations, to be baptized in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Spirit.

Immediately therefore the Apostles (which appellation is interpreted as "those sent"), a twelfth having been added by lot in the person of Matthias in the place of Judas, on the authority of the prophecy which is in the psalm of David, having received the promised power of the Holy Spirit for miracles and utterance, first throughout Judaea having attested their faith in Jesus Christ and having established churches, then setting out into the world, proclaimed the same doctrine of the same faith to the nations, and likewise founded churches in each and every city, from which the other churches thereafter borrowed the shoot of faith and the seeds of doctrine, and borrow daily, so that they become churches: and on this account they too are reckoned apostolic, as the offspring of apostolic churches. Every kind must needs be reckoned according to its origin. And so, of all those many and great churches, there is that one first from the Apostles, from which all derive.

Thus all are first, and all apostolic, while all together prove their unity; while there is among them communion of peace, and the name of brotherhood, and the bond of hospitality: which rights no other principle governs than the one tradition of the same sacrament.

From this therefore we direct our prescription: if the Lord Jesus Christ sent the Apostles to preach, no others are to be received as preachers than those whom Christ appointed; because neither does any other know the Father save the Son, and he to whom the Son has revealed him, nor does the Son appear to have revealed him to any others than the Apostles whom he sent to preach—namely, what he revealed to them. But what they preached—that is, what Christ revealed to them—I will here also prescribe must not be proved in any other way than through those same churches which the Apostles themselves founded, themselves preaching to them, both by the living voice, as they say, and afterwards through letters.

If these things are so, it is accordingly established that all doctrine which agrees with those apostolic churches, the mothers and originals of the faith, is to be reckoned as truth, without doubt holding what the Church received from the Apostles, the Apostles from Christ, Christ from God; but that all other doctrine is to be prejudged as falsehood, which savors contrary to the truth of the Churches, and of the Apostles, and of Christ, and of God. It remains therefore for us to demonstrate whether this our doctrine, the rule of which we set forth above, is reckoned from the tradition of the Apostles, and by this very fact, whether the others come from falsehood. We hold communion with the apostolic churches, in that no doctrine is different: this is the testimony of truth.

But that the Apostles (whatever the opposing party is accustomed to say to the contrary) knew all things and handed all things down; to whom Christ deigned to expound all the Scriptures, and sent the Holy Spirit who would lead them into all truth. But since the proof is so ready that if it were immediately brought forward there would be nothing left to reconsider; and if it has not been brought forward by us, let us for the moment give place to the opposing party, if they think they can move anything to weaken this prescription. They are accustomed to say that the Apostles did not know all things, agitated by the same madness with which they turn everything upside down—that the Apostles indeed knew all things, but did not hand all things down to all; in both cases subjecting Christ to reproach, as having sent Apostles either insufficiently instructed or not entirely straightforward.

Who of sound mind can believe that they were ignorant of anything, those whom the Lord gave as teachers, having them as inseparable companions in his company, in his discipleship, in his daily life; to whom he expounded separately whatever was obscure, saying to them that it was given to know the mysteries which the people were not permitted to understand? Was something hidden from Peter, who was called the rock for the building of the Church, who obtained the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the power of binding and loosing in heaven and on earth? Was something also hidden from John, the most beloved of the Lord, reclining on his breast, to whom alone the Lord pointed out Judas as the betrayer, whom he entrusted in his own place as a son to Mary?

What did he wish them to be ignorant of, to whom he even displayed his glory, and Moses and Elijah, and moreover the voice of the Father from heaven?—not as though rejecting the others, but because in three witnesses every word shall stand. Were they therefore also ignorant, those to whom after the resurrection likewise he deigned to expound all the Scriptures on the road? He had indeed said at one time: I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now: yet adding: When that Spirit of truth shall come, he will lead you into all truth, he showed that they were ignorant of nothing, whom he had promised would attain all truth through the Spirit of truth; and he assuredly fulfilled his promise, as the Acts of the Apostles prove by the descent of the Holy Spirit.

Those who do not receive this Scripture cannot belong to the Holy Spirit, who are not yet able to recognize the Spirit sent to those who were learning, nor can they defend the Church, who have no means of proving when and by what beginnings this body was established. For it is of such importance to them not to have proofs of what they defend, lest the exposures of what they fabricate be likewise admitted.

They put forward therefore, to impute some ignorance to the Apostles, that Peter and those with him were rebuked by Paul. To such a degree, they say, something was lacking in them; so that from this they also construct the argument that a fuller knowledge could have supervened afterwards, such as came to Paul for the rebuking of his predecessors. We could say here also to those who repudiate the Acts of the Apostles: it is first necessary for you to show who this Paul is, and what he was before he was an Apostle, and how he became an Apostle: inasmuch as they make great use of him elsewhere for many questions. For if he himself professes that he was made an apostle from a persecutor, this does not suffice for anyone who examines the matter carefully before believing; since not even the Lord himself bore testimony concerning himself.

But let them believe without the Scriptures, so that they may believe against the Scriptures; yet let them show, from what they allege—that Peter was rebuked by Paul—that another form of the Gospel was introduced by Paul, apart from that which Peter and the others had previously set forth. On the contrary, transformed from a persecutor into a preacher, he is brought to the brethren by brethren, as one of the brethren, and to those who had put on the faith from the Apostles. Thereafter, as he himself narrates, he went up to Jerusalem for the purpose of getting to know Peter, by reason of the duty and right of the same faith and preaching. For they would not have marveled at the persecutor become a preacher, if he had preached something contrary; nor would they have glorified the Lord on that account, because Paul had come over as his adversary.

And so they also gave him the right hand, the sign of concord and agreement; and they arranged among themselves a distribution of office, not a separation of the Gospel; not that one should preach one thing and the other another, but that they should preach to different people—Peter to the Circumcision, Paul to the Nations. Moreover, if Peter was rebuked because, having lived with the Gentiles, he afterwards withdrew from table-fellowship with them out of respect for persons; this was assuredly a fault of conduct, not of preaching. For on this account no other God than the Creator was being proclaimed, and no other Christ than he who is of Mary, and no other hope than the resurrection.

It is not so well with me—nay, it is not so ill with me—that I should set the Apostles at variance with one another. But since these most perverse men put forward that rebuke to this end, that they may render the earlier doctrine suspect, I will reply as it were on behalf of Peter: that Paul himself said that he had become all things to all men, to the Jews a Jew, to those not Jews not a Jew, that he might gain all. So much so that for the times and persons and causes they rebuked certain things, into which they themselves likewise for the times and persons and causes fell: just as if Peter also were to rebuke Paul, because, while forbidding circumcision, he himself circumcised Timothy. Let those who sit in judgment on the Apostles see to it. It is well that Peter is made equal to Paul even in martyrdom.

But even if Paul was caught up to the third heaven, and carried away into paradise and heard certain things there, those things cannot be seen to have been such as would have furnished him with instruction for another doctrine, since the condition of those things was such that they were to be disclosed to no man. But if something of that unknown matter leaked out to the knowledge of some person, and some heresy affirms that it follows this, either Paul is guilty of betraying a secret, or another person also must be shown to have been afterwards caught up into paradise, to whom it was permitted to utter what Paul was not allowed to breathe a word of.

But as we have said, it is the same madness, when they confess indeed that the Apostles were ignorant of nothing, nor preached different things among themselves; yet they will not have them to have revealed all things to all men: for certain things they committed openly, and to all; but certain things secretly, and to a few: because Paul also used this expression to Timothy: O Timothy, keep the deposit. And again: Guard the good deposit. What is this deposit that is kept silent, so as to be assigned to another doctrine? Is it not rather that charge of which he says: This charge I commit to you, son Timothy? Likewise that precept of which he says: I charge you before God, who gives life to all things, and Jesus Christ, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession, that you keep the commandment? But what commandment, and what charge?

It will be understood from what is written above and below that by this saying there is no hint of some remoter doctrine, but rather that there is an insistence on not admitting any other than that which he had heard from him, and, I think, openly. Before many witnesses, he says. If they are unwilling to understand the Church by "many witnesses," it makes no difference, since nothing was kept secret that was brought forward before many witnesses. But neither, because he wished him to commit these things to faithful men who would be fit to teach others also, is this also to be interpreted as an argument for some hidden Gospel. For when he says "these things," he speaks of those things about which he was writing in the present letter; but concerning hidden things, as concerning absent matters in the conscience, he would have said not "these things" but "those things."

Furthermore, it followed that to one to whom he was entrusting the administration of the Gospel, he should add that it was not to be administered indiscriminately or carelessly, according to the dominical word, lest he cast pearls before swine and holy things before dogs. The Lord spoke openly, without any indication of any hidden mystery. He himself had commanded that whatever they heard in darkness and in secret, they should preach in the light and upon the housetops. He himself had prefigured by a parable that they should not keep one mina, that is, one word of his, without fruit in a hidden place. He himself taught that a lamp is not usually hidden under a bushel, but is set upon a candlestick, so that it may give light to all who are in the house. These things the Apostles either neglected or failed to understand, if they did not fulfil them by hiding something of the light, that is, of the word of God and the mystery of Christ.

They feared no one, as far as I know—not the violence of the Jews, not that of the Gentiles; all the more, then, did they preach freely in the Church, who did not keep silence in the synagogues and in public places. Indeed, they could neither have converted the Jews nor brought in the Gentiles, unless they had set forth in order what they wished to be believed by them; much less would they have withheld anything from the Churches that already believed, to entrust it separately to a few others.

Although, even if they did discuss certain things among those of the household, so to speak, yet those things are not to be believed to have been such as would introduce another rule of faith, different from and contrary to that which they set forth publicly to the Catholic Church; so as to proclaim one God in the church and another in the lodging-house; to designate one substance of Christ in the open and another in secret; to announce one hope of resurrection to all and another to a few: since they themselves besought in their Epistles that all should say the same thing and speak as one, and that there should be no schisms and dissensions in the Church, because whether Paul or others, they all preached the same things. Otherwise they remembered: Let your speech be, yea, yea; nay, nay; and whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil: lest, namely, they should handle the Gospel with inconsistency.

If therefore it is incredible either that the Apostles were ignorant of the fullness of the preaching, or that they did not publish the whole order of the rule to all, let us consider whether perhaps the Apostles indeed preached simply and fully, but the Churches through their own fault received it otherwise than the Apostles set it forth. All these incitements to scrupulosity you will find put forward by heretics. They cite the Churches rebuked by the Apostle: O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you? And: Ye did run so well, who hath hindered you? And the very opening: I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him who called you in grace unto another gospel. Likewise what was written to the Corinthians, that they were still carnal, nourished on milk, not yet fit for solid food; who thought they knew something, when they did not yet know as they ought to know. When they cite the rebuked churches as an objection, let them believe that those churches were corrected.

But let them also acknowledge those in whose faith and knowledge and conduct the Apostle rejoices and gives thanks to God: which churches, however, today share the same institutions with those that were rebuked.

Come now: suppose all have erred; suppose the Apostle was deceived in bearing testimony concerning certain persons; suppose the Holy Spirit had regard for none of them, so as to lead them into truth, he who was sent by Christ for this purpose, who was asked of the Father for this purpose, that he might be the teacher of truth; suppose the steward of God, the vicar of Christ, neglected his office, allowing the Churches in the meantime to understand otherwise and to believe otherwise than he himself was preaching through the Apostles: is it at all probable that so many and so great churches should have erred into one faith? Among many, one outcome is not the result of chance: the error of doctrine among the Churches ought to have varied. But that which is found to be one and the same among many is not error but tradition. Let someone then dare to say that those who handed it down were in error.

However the error may have come about: at any rate the error reigned only so long as there were no heresies. Truth was waiting to be set free by certain Marcionites and Valentinians: in the meantime the Gospel was preached wrongly, wrongly believed, so many thousands of thousands wrongly baptized, so many works of faith wrongly administered, so many miracles, so many gifts of the Spirit wrongly wrought, so many martyrdoms at last crowned in vain. Or if neither wrongly nor in vain, what manner of thing is it that the affairs of God should have proceeded before it was known whose God he was; that there were Christians before Christ was found; that heresy came before true doctrine? But indeed in all things truth precedes its image; likeness follows after the reality. Besides, it is quite absurd that heresy should be held to be prior in doctrine; or because it is true doctrine itself that foretold the heresies that were to come and to be avoided.

To the Church of that doctrine it is written—nay, that very doctrine writes to its own Church: Even if an angel from heaven preach otherwise than we have preached, let him be anathema.

For it is established that Marcion and Valentinus first believed in the Catholic doctrine in the Church at Rome under the episcopate of Eleutherus; until, through their restless curiosity, having been expelled once and again, and at last banished into permanent separation, they spread abroad the poisons of their doctrines. And the same judgment holds concerning others, who cannot prove themselves to be new apostles by virtues and miracles. Where then was Marcion, the Pontic shipmaster, the devotee of Stoicism? Where was Valentinus, the follower of Platonism? For it is established that they lived not so very long ago, approximately in the reign of Antoninus, and first believed in the Catholic doctrine in the Church at Rome, under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherus, until, through their ever restless curiosity, by which they also shunned their brethren, having been expelled once and again—Marcion indeed along with the two hundred sesterces which he had brought into the Church—they were at last banished into permanent separation and spread abroad the poisons of their doctrines.

Afterwards the same Marcion, having confessed repentance, when he met the condition given to him, being about to receive peace on the condition that he restore to the Church the others whom he had led to destruction, was overtaken by death. For it was necessary that there should be heresies. Yet heresies are not therefore good because they were necessary, as though evil too were not necessary. For the Lord also had to be betrayed; but woe to the betrayer? Lest anyone should defend heresies even on this ground.

If the lineage of Apelles also is to be reviewed, he himself is no more ancient than Marcion, his founder and forerunner: but having fallen into a woman and deserted Marcionite continence, he withdrew from the sight of his most holy master to Alexandria; thence after some years he returned no better, except only in that he was no longer a Marcionite, and fell upon another woman, that virgin Philumene, whom we mentioned above, who afterwards became a monstrous harlot herself, by whose influence he was beguiled and wrote down as the Phaneroses what he learned from her. There are still living in the world those who remember them, even their own disciples and successors, so that they cannot deny that they are of later date. Moreover they are also convicted by their own works, as the Lord said. For if Marcion separated the New Testament from the Old, he is later than what he separated; because he could not have separated it unless it had been united.

United therefore before it was separated, and afterwards separated, it shows the separator to be the later party. Likewise Valentinus, expounding differently and without doubt correcting, demonstrates by the very fact of correcting that whatever he corrects was previously, as faulty, in existence before him. We name those as the more notable and more frequent adulterers of the truth. But also Nigidius I know not who, and Hermogenes, and many others who still walk about perverting the ways of God, let them show me from what authority they have come forth. If they preach another God, how do they use the things and writings and names of that God against whom they preach? If the same God, how otherwise? Let them prove themselves to be new apostles: let them say that Christ has descended again, that he himself has taught again, been crucified again, died again, been raised again: for thus he is accustomed to make Apostles, giving them moreover the power to perform the same signs which he himself also performed.

I am willing therefore to have their miracles also brought forward; except that I acknowledge their greatest miracle, by which they perversely rival the Apostles: for the Apostles made the living out of the dead, but these make the dead out of the living.

But I shall return from this digression to the discussion of the priority of truth and the posteriority of falsehood, under the patronage also of that parable which places the good seed of wheat sown by the Lord in the beginning, but superimposes the adulteration of barren tares by the enemy the devil afterwards. For it aptly figures the distinction of doctrines, since elsewhere also the word of God is likened to seed. Thus from the very order it is made manifest that what was handed down first is the Lord's and true; but what was introduced later is foreign and false. That verdict will stand against all later heresies, to which no consistency of conscience belongs for defending the truth as their own.

But if any heresies dare to insert themselves into the apostolic age, so as to appear to have been handed down by the Apostles because they existed in the time of the Apostles, we can say: Let them then set forth the origins of their Churches; let them unfold the list of their bishops, running in succession from the beginning in such a way that their first bishop had as his author and predecessor some one of the Apostles or of the apostolic men who, however, continued with the Apostles. For this is the manner in which the apostolic Churches are reckoned. Their own: as the Church of the Smyrnaeans reports that Polycarp was placed there by John; as that of the Romans publishes that Clement was ordained by Peter; and in like manner the rest also exhibit those whom they have as offshoots of apostolic seed, appointed to the episcopate by the Apostles. Let the heretics contrive something of the sort. For what is unlawful to them after blasphemy?

But even if they should contrive it, they will gain nothing. For their very doctrine, compared with that of the Apostles, will declare by its own diversity and contrariety that it has neither any apostle nor any apostolic man as its author; because, just as the Apostles would not have taught things different from one another, so also the apostolic men would not have published things contrary to the Apostles, unless those who learned from the Apostles preached otherwise. To this standard, then, they will be tested by those churches which, although they bring forward none of the Apostles or apostolic men as their founder, being much later—indeed, being founded daily—yet, since they agree in the same faith, are reckoned no less apostolic, by reason of the kinship of doctrine. Therefore let all heresies, when challenged by our Churches on either ground, prove themselves to be in whatever way they think apostolic.

But they are not, and they cannot prove what they are not, and they are not received into peace and communion by the Churches that are in any way apostolic, manifestly because of the diversity of the mystery, being in no way apostolic.

I bring forward, in addition to this examination of the doctrines themselves, those which existed under the Apostles, and were both pointed out and denounced by those same Apostles. For in this way they will more easily be exposed, inasmuch as they will be found either to have already existed at that time, or to have taken their seeds from those which already existed at that time. Paul, in the first epistle to the Corinthians, marks out those who deny and doubt the resurrection. This opinion is peculiar to the Sadducees; Marcion, and Apelles, and Valentinus, and any others who undermine the resurrection of the flesh, appropriate a part of it. And writing to the Galatians, he inveighs against those who observe and defend circumcision and the law: this is the heresy of Hebion. Instructing Timothy, he also censures those who forbid marriage: thus do Marcion and Apelles his follower teach. He likewise touches upon those who said that the resurrection had already taken place: this the Valentinians assert of themselves.

But also when he names indeterminate genealogies, Valentinus is recognized; in whose system that certain Aeon of some new and not single name begets from his own Charite Sense and Truth; and these likewise bring forth two, Word and Life; and then these in turn generate Man and the Church: and this is the first ogdoad of aeons. Thereafter ten others, and twelve further aeons arise with wondrous names, amounting to the mere fable of thirty aeons. The same apostle, when he censures those who serve the elements, points to something of Hermogenes, who, introducing matter as unbegotten, compares it to the unbegotten God, and thus making matter the mother of the elements into a goddess, is able to serve her whom he compares to God. But John, in the Apocalypse, commands that those who eat things sacrificed to idols and commit fornication be rebuked: there are even now other Nicolaitans, there is said to be the Cainian heresy.

But in his epistle he calls those especially antichrists who deny that Christ came in the flesh, and who did not believe that Jesus is the Son of God: the former position Marcion claimed, the latter Hebion. Moreover the discipline of Simonian magic, serving angels, was itself also reckoned among idolatries, and was condemned by the Apostle Peter in Simon himself.

And so, since they share with those a fellowship in their preaching, they must also share in their condemnation, especially since they were foretold by the Apostles.

These are, as I judge, the kinds of adulterated doctrines which we learn from the Apostles themselves to have existed under the Apostles; and yet we find no institution, among so many varieties of perversions, which raised controversy concerning God the creator of all things. No one dared to suspect another God. There was more hesitation about the Son than about the Father, until Marcion introduced another God besides the Creator, a God of goodness alone; until Apelles made some glorious creator of angels belonging to a higher God into the God of the law and of Israel, affirming him to be fiery; until Valentinus scattered abroad his aeons, and traced the fault of one aeon back to the origin of God the creator. To these alone, and to these first, was the truth of the Divinity revealed—having obtained, of course, greater condescension and fuller grace from the devil, who wished thus also to rival God, so as to make disciples beyond the master from the doctrines of poisons, which the Lord denied.

Let all the heresies therefore choose for themselves their times—whenever they existed—provided only that there is a question of when, provided they are not from the truth. Certainly those which were not named by the Apostles cannot have existed under the Apostles: for if they had existed, they too would have been named, so that they too might be restrained. But those which did exist under the Apostles are condemned in their very naming. Whether therefore those same ones are now somewhat more refined which were crude under the Apostles, they have their condemnation from that time; or whether those were indeed one set and others arose afterward, and certain persons borrowed from those former ones, sharing with them a fellowship of preaching, they must necessarily also share a fellowship of condemnation; with that aforementioned principle of posteriority going before, by which, even if they shared nothing with the condemned, they would be prejudged by age alone; so much the more adulterous, in that they were not even named by the Apostles.

Whence it is more firmly established that these are the ones which were even then being announced as yet to come.

All heresies, challenged and refuted by us through these definitions—whether later ones, or those contemporary with the Apostles, provided they are different; whether generally or specifically noted by them, provided they are pre-condemned—let them dare to answer with some prescriptions of the same kind against our discipline. For if they deny the truth of it, they must prove that it too is a heresy, refuted by the same method by which they themselves are refuted; and at the same time show where the truth is to be sought, since it is already established that it is not among them. Our thing is not later; nay, it is prior to all: this will be the testimony of truth, which everywhere occupies the first place. It is certainly not condemned by the Apostles, but rather defended: this will be the mark of its proper ownership. For that which those who condemned every foreign thing do not condemn, they show to be their own, and therefore also defend it.

For to one who runs through the apostolic churches, in which the very chairs of the apostles still preside in their own places, and among them the Roman, from which authority is also at hand for us (where Peter and Paul were crowned), it will be established that she has drunk in that same faith from the Apostles, by which faith water marks with its seal, the Holy Spirit clothes, the Eucharist feeds.

Come now, you who wish to exercise your curiosity to better purpose in the matter of your salvation, run through the apostolic churches, in which the very chairs of the Apostles still preside in their own places; in which their very authentic letters are read aloud, sounding the voice and representing the face of each one. Is Achaia near to you? You have Corinth. If you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi, you have the Thessalonians. If you can travel into Asia, you have Ephesus. But if you are adjacent to Italy, you have Rome, from which authority is also at hand for us. How blessed is that Church!

Upon which the Apostles poured out their whole doctrine together with their blood; where Peter is made equal to the Lord's passion; where Paul is crowned with the death of John; where the Apostle John, after being plunged into boiling oil and suffering nothing, is banished to an island; let us see what she has learned, what she has taught, what token of fellowship she has exchanged with the African churches as well. She knows one God, the creator of the universe, and Christ Jesus from the virgin Mary, the Son of God the creator, and the resurrection of the flesh; she mingles the Law and the Prophets with the evangelical and apostolic writings, and from these she drinks her faith; that faith she marks with water, she clothes with the Holy Spirit, she feeds with the Eucharist, she urges on to martyrdom, and thus she receives no one against this institution. This is the institution—I say not now that which foretold the heresies that were to come, but from which the heresies went forth.

But they were not of her, from the moment they were made against her. Even from the kernel of the gentle and excellent and needful olive the rough wild-olive springs up; even from the seed of the most welcome and sweet fig the windy and worthless wild-fig rises. So also heresies come from our stock, but not of our kind; from the grain of truth, but wild through falsehood.

If these things are so, that the truth is adjudged to us—to all of us who walk in that rule which the Church received from the Apostles, the Apostles from Christ, Christ from God—the reasoning of our purpose stands firm, which determines that heretics are not to be admitted to entering into a contest about the Scriptures, since we prove without the Scriptures that they do not belong to the Scriptures. For if they are heretics, they cannot be Christians; not having from Christ that which, by following it of their own choice, they accept under the name of heretics. Thus, not being Christians, they have no right to claim the Christian writings. To them it is rightly to be said: Who are you? When and from where did you come? What are you doing in what is mine, you who are not mine? By what right, Marcion, do you cut down my forest? By what licence, Valentinus, do you divert my springs? By what authority, Apelles, do you remove my boundary-stones?

What are the rest of you doing here, sowing and pasturing according to your own will? This is my possession; I have possessed it long; I have firm origins, from the very authors whose property it was. I am the heir of the Apostles. As they provided by their testament, as they committed to the faith, as they adjured, so I hold it. You certainly they always disinherited and disowned, as strangers, as enemies. But how are heretics strangers and enemies to the Apostles, if not through the diversity of doctrine, which each one has either put forward or received from his own judgment against the Apostles?

There, therefore, both the adulteration of the Scriptures and of their expositions is to be reckoned, where diversity of doctrine is found. Those who had the purpose of teaching otherwise were compelled by necessity to arrange otherwise the instruments of doctrine. For otherwise they could not have taught otherwise, unless they had otherwise the means by which they taught. Just as corruption of doctrine could not have succeeded for them without corruption of its instruments; so also for us integrity of doctrine could not have been fitting without integrity of those things through which doctrine is handled. For indeed what have we introduced into our own writings that is contrary to us? What have we brought in from our own resources, so that we might remedy by subtraction, or addition, or alteration something found contrary to what was in the Scriptures? What we are, such are the Scriptures from their very beginning; we are from them, before things were otherwise, before they were interpolated by you.

But since every interpolation must be believed to be later, coming of course from a motive of rivalry—which is never prior to, nor native to, that which it rivals—it is as incredible to any wise person that we have introduced an adulterous style into the Scriptures, we who are both first and from them, as that they have not done so, who are both later and opposed. One perverts the Scriptures by hand, another by exposition of their meaning. For even if Valentinus appears to use the complete text, he did not lay hands on the truth with less cunning than Marcion. For Marcion openly and plainly used the sword, not the pen; since he carried out the slaughter of the Scriptures to suit his subject-matter. But Valentinus spared them; since he did not adapt the Scriptures to his subject-matter, but the subject-matter to the Scriptures: and yet he took away more, and added more, taking away the proper meanings of individual words, and adding arrangements of things that do not appear.

These are the devices of spiritual wickedness, with which our struggle is, brethren—rightly to be contemplated, necessary for faith, so that the elect may be made manifest, so that the reprobate may be detected. And therefore they have power, and facility in devising and constructing errors—not so greatly to be marvelled at as though it were difficult and inexplicable, since an example of such facility is ready at hand even from secular writings. You see today a wholly different story composed from Virgil, the subject-matter arranged according to the verses, and the verses fitted together according to the subject-matter. Hosidius Geta, for instance, drew out the tragedy of Medea most fully from Virgil. Indeed a kinsman of mine from the same poet, among other exercises of his pen, expounded the Tablet of Cebes. There are also those commonly called Homerocentones, who from the poems of Homer stitch together their own works in the manner of a patchwork, composing one body out of many pieces gathered here and there.

And certainly divine literature is more fruitful for the capacity of any subject-matter. Nor do I hesitate to say that the Scriptures themselves were so arranged by the will of God as to furnish material to heretics, when I read that there must be heresies, which cannot exist without the Scriptures.

That these things are done by the same instigation of the devil, who also imitates the very rites of the divine sacraments in the mysteries of idols; for example, he baptizes certain persons, promises expiation of sins from the washing, marks them on the foreheads, celebrates also the offering of bread. It will follow, by whom the understanding of those things which make for heresies is perverted? By the devil, of course, whose part it is to pervert the truth, who also imitates the very rites of the divine sacraments in the mysteries of idols. He too baptizes certain persons, namely his own believers and faithful; he promises expiation of sins from the washing; and if I still remember rightly, Mithras there marks his soldiers on the foreheads; he celebrates also the offering of bread, and introduces an image of the resurrection, and redeems the crown at the point of a sword. What of this also, that he appoints a chief priest of a single marriage, and has his virgins, and has his continent ones?

Furthermore, if we turn over the superstitions of Numa Pompilius, if we consider the priestly offices, insignia, and privileges, if we examine the sacrificial ministries and instruments and vessels of those sacrifices and piacular rites and vows, is it not manifest that the devil imitated that fastidiousness of the Jewish law? He therefore who so zealously strove to reproduce in the affairs of idolatry the very things by which the sacraments of Christ are administered, assuredly the same one with the same ingenuity was eager and able also to assail the instruments of divine things and of holy Christians, sense from senses, words from words, parables from parables, for a profane and rival faith. And therefore no one ought to doubt either that spiritual wickednesses were sent in by the devil, from which heresies also come, or that heresies differ not from idolatry, since they are of the same author and the same work as idolatry.

They either feign another God against the Creator, or, if they confess the one Creator, they discourse of him otherwise than the truth is. And so every lie which they speak concerning God is in some manner a kind of idolatry.

I shall not omit a description of the conduct of the heretics themselves as well, how frivolous, how worldly, how merely human it is, without seriousness, without authority, without discipline, as befits their faith. First, who is a catechumen and who is a believer is uncertain; they come together alike, they hear alike, they pray alike; even if pagans should come in, they will cast what is holy to dogs and pearls, though not true ones, before swine. They wish simplicity to mean the overthrow of discipline, the care of which among us they call pandering. They also mix peace promiscuously with all; for it matters nothing to them, though they treat of different things, so long as they conspire together for the assault upon the one truth. All are puffed up, all promise knowledge. Their catechumens are perfect before they are taught. The very women of the heretics, how forward they are! Who dare to teach, to dispute, to perform exorcisms, to promise cures, perhaps even to baptize.

Their ordinations are rash, light, inconstant: now they place neophytes, now persons bound to the world, now our apostates, in office, that they may bind them by ambition, since they cannot by truth. Nowhere is advancement more easily gained than in the camp of rebels, where the mere fact of being there is a merit. And so one man is bishop today, another tomorrow; today a deacon who tomorrow is a reader; today a presbyter who tomorrow is a layman: for they impose priestly functions even on laymen.

But what shall I say concerning the administration of the word, when their business is not to convert pagans but to subvert our own people? They seek this glory rather, if they work the ruin of those who stand, not the raising up of those who lie fallen; because even their own work itself comes not from their own proper building, but from the destruction of the truth. They undermine ours in order to build up their own. Take away from them the law of Moses, and the Prophets, and the Creator God, and they have no accusation to utter. So it comes about that they more easily work the ruin of standing buildings than the construction of fallen ruins. For these works alone they act humbly, and gently, and submissively. Otherwise, they do not even know reverence toward their own leaders. And this is why schisms among heretics are scarcely ever absent; because, since they exist, they do not obey. Schism is their very unity.

I lie if they do not also vary among themselves from their own rules, while each one adjusts what he has received according to his own judgment, just as he who handed it on composed it according to his own judgment. It acknowledges its own nature and the custom of its origin, the progress of the thing. The Valentinians were permitted the same as Valentinus, the Marcionites the same as Marcion, to innovate the faith according to their own judgment. In short, all heresies, when thoroughly examined, are found to dissent in many things from their own founders. Most of them do not even have churches; without a mother, without a seat, bereft of faith, they wander as exiles, without a home.

The associations of heretics with very many magicians have also been noted: with mountebanks, with astrologers, with philosophers, devoted of course to curiosity: Seek and ye shall find, they remember everywhere. So also from the character of their manner of life the quality of their faith can be estimated: discipline is the index of doctrine. They deny that God is to be feared; and so all things are free and unrestrained for them. But where God is not feared, where is he but where he does not exist? Where God does not exist, there is no truth at all; where there is no truth, such discipline as this is deservedly found. But where God is, there is fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom. Where there is fear of God, there is honest gravity, and astonished diligence, and anxious care, and tested admission, and deliberate communion, and well-earned promotion, and religious subjection, and devoted service, and modest conduct, and a united Church, and all things of God.

Accordingly these testimonies of stricter discipline among us serve as proof of the truth; from which it profits no one to turn aside, who remembers the coming judgment at which we must all stand before the tribunal of Christ, rendering account first of the faith itself. What then will those say who have defiled it with heretical adultery, the virgin delivered by Christ? I believe they will plead that nothing was ever foretold to them by him or by his apostles concerning serious and perverse doctrines to come, and that nothing was commanded concerning avoiding and abominating them. Let them rather acknowledge their own fault than that of those who forewarned us so long beforehand. They will add moreover many things concerning the authority of each heretical teacher; that those men especially confirmed the faith of their doctrine, raised the dead, restored the infirm, foretold the future, so that they were deservedly believed to be apostles.

As though this too were not written, that many would come who would even perform the greatest miracles, to fortify the deception of corrupt preaching. Will they therefore deserve pardon?

But those who, mindful of the dominical and apostolic warnings, have stood firm in the faith with integrity, I believe will be in danger concerning pardon, with the Lord answering: I had indeed foretold that there would be teachers of deceit in my name, and of the Prophets and Apostles also; and I had commanded my disciples to preach the same things to you; I had once entrusted the gospel and the doctrine of the same rule to my apostles; but since you did not believe, it pleased me afterward to change certain things therein: I had promised the resurrection of the flesh also, but I reconsidered lest I might not be able to fulfil it: I had shown myself born of a virgin, but afterward it seemed shameful to me: I had called him Father who made the sun and the rains, but another better Father adopted me: I had forbidden you to lend an ear to heretics, but I was mistaken?

Such things are capable of being imagined by those who go astray and do not guard against the peril of the truth of faith.

But now we have dealt in general terms against all heresies, to be repelled from comparison with the Scriptures by definite and just and necessary prescriptions. For the rest, if God's grace shall grant it, we shall also reply specifically to certain ones. To those who read these things in the faith of truth without cavilling, peace and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ for ever.

Of those heretics, to pass over many, I shall touch briefly on a few. For I pass over in silence the heretics of Judaism, I mean Dositheus the Samaritan, who was the first to dare to repudiate the prophets as not having spoken in the Holy Spirit. I pass over in silence the Sadducees, who rising from the root of this error dared to add to this heresy even the denial of the resurrection of the flesh. I pass over the Pharisees, who by adding certain additions to the law were separated from the Jews: whence they were also worthy to receive the very name which they bear: and along with these the Herodians, who said that Christ was Herod.

I turn to those who wished to be heretics from the Gospel: of whom the first of all is Simon Magus, who in the Acts of the Apostles merited a fitting and just sentence from the apostle Peter. He dared to say that he was the supreme power, that is, the supreme God, and that the world was established by his angels, that he had descended, led astray by a demon, to seek among the Jews what wisdom was, that he had not suffered in the phantom of God but had as it were suffered. After him Menander his disciple, likewise a magician, saying the same things as Simon himself: whatever Simon had said he was, this Menander said he was, denying that anyone could have salvation unless he had been baptized in his name.

After these there followed also Saturninus, and he likewise saying that the unbegotten power, that is God, dwells in dreams and in those infinite regions and in the higher places, but that angels far distant from him made the lower world: and that because a certain splendor of light had shone down from above in the lower regions, the angels, for the likeness of that superior light, took care to fashion man after that likeness: that this man lay upon the earth crawling: that the mercy of that light and power sent a spark to save it, while the rest of man perishes. That Christ was not in the substance of a body, and had only in phantom as it were suffered; that the resurrection of the flesh would in no way come to pass. Afterward the heretic Basilides burst forth: he says the supreme God is named Abraxas, from whom mind was created, which he calls in Greek NOUS. Thence the Word.

From it providence, from providence power and wisdom: from these then principalities and powers and angels were made, then infinite generations of angels and emanations: by these angels three hundred and sixty-five heavens were established, and the world in honor of Abraxas, whose name contained this number computed within it. In the lowest angels indeed, and those who now made the world, he places last the God of the Jews, that is, the God of the law and the prophets; which God he denies, but calls him an angel. To this one the seed of Abraham fell by lot, and therefore this one led the children of Israel from the land of Egypt into the land of Canaan. That this one is more turbulent than the other angels, and therefore also frequently stirs up seditions and wars, and even sheds human blood.

But that Christ came not sent by him who made the world, but by that Abraxas, in a phantom: that he was without the substance of flesh: that he did not suffer at the hands of the Jews, but that Simon was crucified in his place; whence one ought not to believe in him who was crucified, lest anyone confess that he had believed in Simon. He denies that martyrdoms are to be undergone. He vigorously attacks the resurrection of the flesh, denying that salvation is promised to bodies. Another heretic Nicolaus emerged; he was one of the seven deacons who were chosen in the Acts of the Apostles. He says that darkness was in concupiscence of light, and indeed foul and obscene concupiscence: from this mingling it is shameful to tell what things are fetid and unclean.

For he relates that certain aeons of shameful things were born, and execrable embraces and minglings, and obscene conjunctions, and certain things yet more shameful than these: that moreover demons and gods and seven spirits and other things equally sacrilegious and foul were born: which things we blush to recount, and now pass over. It is enough for us that the Lord's Apocalypse condemned this entire heresy of the Nicolaitans by the weighty authority of his sentence, saying: Because thou holdest this, thou hatest the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

To these were added also those heretics who are called Ophites. For they magnify the serpent to such a degree that they even prefer him to Christ himself. For he, they say, gave us the origin of the knowledge of good and evil. Moses, perceiving his power and majesty, they say, set up a serpent of bronze: and whosoever looked upon it obtained health. He himself, they say moreover, Christ in his own Gospel imitates the sacred power of the serpent, saying: And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up: him they introduce to bless their Eucharist. But the whole scene and doctrine of this error flowed from the following source. For they say that from that supreme primary aeon several other lower aeons came forth; yet over all these aeons one presides, whose name is Jaldabaoth.

This one, they say, was conceived from another aeon mingled with the lower aeons: and afterwards, when he wished to press upward into the higher regions, being unable, by reason of the weight of the matter mingled with him, to reach the higher regions, left behind in the middle, he stretched himself out entirely, and thus made the heaven. Jaldabaoth, however, descended lower, and made for himself seven sons: and he shut off the upper regions by his expansion; so that, since the angels could not know what the upper regions were, they might think him alone to be God. Those powers and lower angels therefore made man: and because he had been fashioned by weaker and middling powers, he lay like a worm crawling on the ground. But that aeon from whom Jaldabaoth had proceeded, moved by envy, cast a certain spark into the man as he lay, by which, being roused, he might through prudence have wisdom, and be able to understand the higher things.

Thus again Jaldabaoth, turned to indignation, brought forth from himself a power and the likeness of a serpent: and this was the power in paradise, that is, this was the serpent, in whom Eve had believed as though in the Son of God. He plucked, they say, from the fruit of the tree, and thereby bestowed upon the human race the knowledge of good and evil. But Christ was not in the substance of flesh, and the salvation of the flesh is not to be hoped for at all. There also broke forth another heresy, which is called that of the Cainites. For they too magnify Cain, as though he were conceived from some powerful force which wrought in him. For Abel was conceived and begotten from a lower force, and was therefore found to be inferior. Those who assert this also defend Judas the betrayer, declaring him to be admirable and great, on account of the benefits which he is boasted to have conferred upon the human race.

For some of them think that thanksgiving must be rendered to Judas for this reason. For Judas, they say, perceiving that Christ wished to subvert the truth, betrayed him, lest the truth should be subverted. And others dispute against this and say: Because the powers of this world were unwilling to suffer Christ, lest salvation should be prepared for the human race through his death, he, consulting the salvation of the human race, betrayed Christ, so that the salvation which was being hindered by the powers who resisted Christ's suffering might not be hindered at all: and therefore through the passion of Christ the salvation of the human race could not be delayed. But there also came forth that heresy which is called that of the Sethites.

The doctrine of this perversity is as follows: that two men were established by angels, Cain and Abel; that on account of these great contentions and discords arose among the angels; that for this reason that power which is above all powers, which they call the Mother, when Abel was said to have been slain, wished to conceive and bring forth this Seth in place of Abel, so that those angels who had founded the two earlier men might be brought to nothing, while this pure seed dies and is born. For they say that the minglings of angels and men were wicked: and for this reason that power, which (as we have said) they call the Mother, brought on the flood also as vengeance, so that the seed of that mingling might be removed: and this seed alone, which was pure, might be kept intact.

But those who had established the seed of those earlier ones, secretly and covertly, and without the knowledge of that Mother Power, sent with those eight souls into the ark also the seed of Ham, so that the seed of wickedness might not perish, but being preserved along with the rest, and restored to the earth after the flood, might grow up after the example of the others, and be poured out, and fill and occupy the whole world. Concerning Christ, however, they hold the opinion that he was only Seth, and that he himself was Seth in place of Seth.

Furthermore Carpocrates, Cerinthus, Hebion. Carpocrates moreover put forward this sect. He says there is one principal Power in the higher regions, from which angels and powers were brought forth: these, being far removed from the higher powers, founded this world in the lower regions; Christ was not born of the virgin Mary, but was begotten only as a man from the seed of Joseph, yet better than the rest in the practice of righteousness and integrity of life: he suffered among the Jews: his soul alone was received into heaven, because it was stronger and more robust than the rest: from which he concluded, since only the salvation of souls was attempted, that there are no resurrections of the body. After him the heretic Cerinthus broke forth, teaching similar things.

For he too says that the world was founded by those powers: he proposes that Christ was born from the seed of Joseph, contending that he was only a man without divinity, also maintaining that the law itself was given by angels: presenting the God of the Jews not as the Lord but as an angel. His successor was Hebion, not agreeing with Cerinthus in every point, in that he says the world was made by God, not by angels: and because it is written, No disciple is above his master, nor a servant above his lord. He also puts forward the law, namely to exclude the Gospel and to vindicate Judaism.

The heretic Valentinus introduces many fables, which I, passing briefly over them, will set forth in summary.

For he introduces a Pleroma and thirty Aeons: and he sets these forth through syzygies, that is, certain conjunctions. For he says that in the first place there are Bythos and Silence; from these proceeded a seed, Mind and Truth: from which burst forth the Word and Life: from these again were created Man and the Church. But from these too proceeded twelve aeons; and from the Word and Life, ten other aeons: this is the triacontad of aeons, which is formed in the Pleroma from the ogdoad and the decade and the dyodecade. The thirtieth aeon, however, wished to behold that Bythos, and dared to ascend into the higher regions of the Pleroma to see him. And because he was not capable of beholding his greatness, he fell into deficiency, and was nearly dissolved, except that he who is called Horos was sent to establish him, and confirmed him by the utterance Iao. This Apelles pronounces as Io.

This Aeon, having fallen into deficiency, he calls Achamoth, and says he was in certain passions of desire, and from the passions produced matter. For he was seized with fear, he says, and dread, and grief, and from these passions he conceived and brought forth. Hence, he says, came heaven and earth and sea, and all things whatsoever are in them, and for this reason all things made by him are weak and fragile and perishable and mortal: since he himself was conceived and brought forth from perplexity: yet he fashioned this world from those materials which Achamoth had supplied through fearing, or dreading, or grieving, or sweating. For from fear, he says, darkness was made: from fear and ignorance, the spirit of wickedness and malice: from grief and tears, the moist matter of springs, rivers, and the sea. But Christ was sent by that forefather who is Bythos.

He, however, was not in the substance of our body, but bearing some kind of spiritual body from heaven, passed through the virgin Mary as water through a pipe, receiving nothing from her nor borrowing anything. He denies the resurrection of this flesh, but affirms another. Of the law and the prophets he approves some things, disapproves others: that is, he disapproves all things, while he rejects some. After him arose the heretics Ptolemy and Secundus, who agree with Valentinus in all things. They differ from him in this one point alone. For whereas Valentinus had invented only thirty Aeons, these added several more. For they first added four, then four more. And what Valentinus says, that the thirtieth Aeon departed from the Pleroma into deficiency, these deny. For it was not from that triacontad that he who fell into deficiency came, through desire to behold the forefather. There arose moreover another heretic, Heracleon, who holds the same opinions as Valentinus, but by a certain novelty of expression wishes to appear to hold different views.

For he introduces in the first place that which he declares to have existed, and then from that monad two, and then the remaining Aeons, and then introduces the whole of Valentinus.

After these there were not lacking a certain Marcus and Colarbasus, composing a new heresy from the alphabet of the Greeks. For they deny that truth can be found without these letters; nay, that the whole fullness and perfection of truth is arranged in these letters. For this reason, they say, Christ said: I am A and Omega. Furthermore Jesus Christ descended, that is, the dove came upon Jesus, which, since it is called peristera in the Greek name, has according to its number, DCCCI. These men run through omega, psi, chi, phi, upsilon, tau, the whole way to Alpha Beta, and compute ogdoads and decades, so that to set forth all their vanities would be foolish and idle, though this is not only vain but also dangerous. They invent another God besides the Creator. They deny that Christ was in the substance of flesh. They deny that there will be a resurrection of the flesh.

To these is added a certain Cerdon; he introduces two first principles, that is two gods, one good and the other cruel; the good one superior, the cruel one the creator of this world. He repudiates the prophecies and the law, renounces the God the creator, maintains that Christ came as the Son of the superior God, denies him in the substance of flesh, declares he existed in phantasm alone, and that he did not suffer at all but only as it were suffered: and that he was not born of a virgin, but was not born at all. He approves the resurrection of the soul only, and denies that of the body. He accepts only the Gospel of Luke, and not even all of that. Of the Apostle Paul's letters he takes neither all nor the whole of each. The Acts of the Apostles and the Apocalypse he rejects as false.

After him emerged his disciple a certain Marcion by name, a Pontic by race, the son of a bishop, cast out from communion with the Church on account of the violation of a certain virgin. He, seizing upon the saying, Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bad fruit, attempted to approve the heresy of Cerdon, saying the same things which that earlier heretic had said before. After him arose a certain Lucanus by name, a follower and disciple of Marcion: and he too, going through the same kinds of blasphemy, teaches the same things which Marcion and Cerdon had taught. After these follows Apelles, a disciple of Marcion, who, after he had fallen into the flesh, was separated from Marcion. He introduces one God in the infinite higher regions. This one, he says, made many powers and angels: and therefore also another power which he calls Lord, but sets down as an angel.

He wishes this world to be understood as founded in imitation of the higher world, with which world he mingled repentance; because he had not made it so perfectly as that higher world had been established. He repudiates the law and the prophets. He says Christ was neither in phantasm, as Marcion holds, nor in the substance of a true body, as the Gospel teaches; but that because he descended from the higher regions, in the very act of descent he wove for himself a sidereal and aerial flesh: and that at the resurrection he restored to each of the individual elements, which had been borrowed in his descent, what was due in his ascent, and thus, with the several parts of his body dispersed, restored only the spirit to heaven. He denies the resurrection of the flesh; he uses only the Apostle, but Marcion's version, that is, not the whole. He declares the salvation of souls alone.

He has moreover his own private but extraordinary readings, which he calls the phaneroseis of a certain girl Philumene, whom he follows as a prophetess. He has moreover his own books, which he entitled Syllogisms, in which he attempts to prove that all things whatsoever Moses wrote concerning God are not true, but false.

To all these heretics is added one Tatian, another heretic. He was a disciple of Justin the martyr, and after him began to hold different opinions. For he savors entirely of Valentinus, adding this point, that Adam cannot attain salvation: as though, if the branches be saved, the root also be not saved. Other heretics have appeared, who are called according to the Phrygians; but their doctrine is not one. For there are those who are called kata Proclum, and there are those who are designated according to Aeschines. These hold one blasphemy in common, and another blasphemy not in common but peculiar to themselves: and the common one is indeed that by which they say that the Holy Spirit was indeed in the Apostles, but that the Paraclete was not; and by which they say that the Paraclete spoke more things in Montanus than Christ brought forth in the Gospel, and not only more things, but also better and greater ones.

But those who are kata Aeschinem hold this as their private blasphemy, by which they add also this, that they say Christ himself is both the Son and the Father. There is moreover, joining himself to all these, also Blastus, who wishes to introduce Judaism secretly. For he says that the Passover is to be observed in no other way than according to the law of Moses, on the fourteenth of the month. But who does not know that the grace of the Gospel is made void, if one brings Christ back to the law? To these is added Theodotus the heretic of Byzantium: who, after he had been arrested for the name of Christ and denied him, did not cease to blaspheme against Christ. For he introduced a doctrine by which he would say that Christ was only a man, yet denied that he was God; born indeed of the Holy Spirit from a virgin, but a man alone and bare, with no other authority above the rest save that of righteousness alone.

After him another Theodotus the heretic broke forth, who likewise introduced another sect, and likewise says that Christ was only a man, conceived and born equally of the Holy Spirit from the virgin Mary; but that he is inferior to Melchisedech, on the ground that it was said of Christ: Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech. For he holds that Melchisedech is a heavenly power of special grace: on the ground that, whereas Christ became an intercessor and advocate for men, Melchisedech performs this office for the heavenly angels and powers; for he is so much better than Christ that he is apator, ametor, agenealogetos, whose beginning and end neither has been nor can be comprehended. But after all these, a certain Praxeas also introduced a heresy, which Victorinus took care to strengthen. He says that God the Father Almighty is Jesus Christ; he maintains that this one was crucified and suffered and died: furthermore he sets forth with profane and sacrilegious rashness that he sits at his own right hand.