Psychics

There will therefore be here too a title against the Psychics, against the partnership which they once held with my own past opinion — wherefore they may the more cast this at me as a mark of fickleness.

" Deservedly do they so object, since they have usurped into their own power the fruit also of this penitence — that is, pardon.

"And as for you, do not worship for this people, and do not ask that they obtain mercy, and do not approach me for them, for I will surely not hear" — surely those who ask for mercy, surely those who from repentance weep and fast, and offer their affliction to God.

But all these things, I believe, are unknown to those who are troubled by our practices—or perhaps known only by reading and not by attention as well—according to the greater force of the ignorant among that most glorious multitude, forsooth, of the Psychics.

For as regards fasting, they set against us the days fixed by God, as when in Leviticus the Lord enjoins upon Moses the tenth day of the seventh month, the day of atonement:

Likewise they accuse our Stations as "appointed," and some indeed as "set even toward evening," under the name of novelty, saying that this office too is to be undertaken by choice and not to be prolonged beyond the ninth hour—after their own custom, of course.

For a man set in the spirit, especially when he beholds the glory of God, or when God speaks through him, must of necessity fall from his senses, overshadowed, namely, by the divine power — concerning which there is a question between us and the psychics.

but Praxeas, by asserting falsehoods about these very prophets and their churches, and by defending the authority of the bishop's predecessors, compelled him both to recall the letters of peace already sent out and to draw back from his purpose of receiving the spiritual gifts.