Heresy

So the man who has fallen into heresy passes through a waterless desert, having left the truly existing God;

" By "bread and water" the Scripture plainly means none other than the heresies that use bread and water in the offering not according to the rule of the Church.

But of the heresies, some are named from a name, like that from Valentinus and Marcion and Basilides—even though they boast of bringing forward the opinion of Matthias;

Not otherwise do heresies derive their strength from the infirmities of certain men, having no strength when they meet a faith that is in good health.

The works of these doctrines are adulterous, called heresies by a Greek word, from the interpretation of "choice," which a man uses either for setting them up or for taking them up.

that we ought not to wonder at these heresies — whether because they exist, since their coming was foretold, or because they subvert the faith of certain men, since that is their very purpose, so that faith, by having a trial, might also have a proof.

And they suffer this because they will not consent to become part of the wicked leaven of Arius.

Whether the man is also a heretic in mind, I do not know (for I think him without experience of any argument, and that he has no zeal or study about such matters;

' But as it is, we fear lest the evil, growing—like some flame that travels through burning matter and, when it has consumed what is near, lays hold also of what is far off—since the evil of the heresy spreads, and there is fear lest, having devoured our churches, it creep at last upon the healthy part of your region also.

It seems necessary to distinguish an heresy of opinion from faction.

Sacrilegious profanations are never committed except by young debauchees.

from that period to the present time, a space of more than seven hundred years, the church hath continued to burn those that are guilty, or supposed guilty, of an error in opinion.

Heresy, supposed to be included in the First and Second Commandments.

and let no tare of heresy spring up among you;

Luxury is now made the heresy, by which the new order of apparent zealots, but cool calculators of dollars and cents, advance their designs.

Save that heresy is the business of human rashness, not of divine authority, which thus always emends the gospels while it vitiates them — since, even if Marcion is a disciple, he is yet not above his master;

These compendious methods, more or less, we use when we are extricating ourselves against the heretics concerning the faith of the gospel — pleading both the order of times that prescribes against the lateness of falsifiers, and the authority of the churches that gives patronage to the tradition of the apostles, because the truth must precede the false, and must proceed from those by whom it was handed down.

He champions the one Lord, the almighty maker of the world, only that out of that very oneness he may forge a heresy.

By this consideration alike, against every heresy, it is settled in advance that whatever is first is true, and whatever is later is adulterate.

Nor need we dwell longer on this, except on account of the heretics who stuff into the soul some spiritual seed I know not what, conferred out of the hidden bounty of their mother Sophia, without the Maker's knowledge — whereas Scripture, more conscious of its Maker, who is its own God, has promulgated nothing further than that God breathed into the face of man the breath of life, and that man bec …

If, then, anything in this fashion darkens the bright and pure air of truth with the fumes of philosophy, these things must be cleared away by Christians, who both strike at the original argumentations — that is, the philosophical ones — and oppose to them the heavenly definitions — that is, the Lord's — so that both the things by which the heathen are captured through philosophy may be destroyed, …

"It is either false prophecy, if a spiritual voice has established these solemnities, or heresy, if human presumption has devised them.

that it must be judged a heresy if it is human presumption, or pronounced a false prophecy if it is a spiritual injunction—provided that on every side we who announce things otherwise hear ourselves anathematized.

Even if from John the Paraclete had fallen silent, we should ourselves have stood forth as prophets to ourselves for this cause above all—not now, I say, for entreating the wrath of God, nor for obtaining His protection or grace, but for fortifying through our very selves the condition of the last times, proclaiming all "lowliness of mind," since the prison must be learned by heart, and hunger and …

and so, once for all, the weakness by which it was struck breathes out the wounded faith either into heresy or into the world.

But we, contending about God elsewhere, and about the rest of the body of every heretical doctrine, now, in this one species of engagement, draw certain lines beforehand, defending — as the will of no other God than the God of Israel — that will which made room for martyrdoms, as much from the precepts forbidding idolatry always, as from the judgments punishing it.