De Praescriptionibus Hereticorum

The condition of the present times provokes from us even this admonition: 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. Vainly, then, and inconsiderately, are very many scandalized by this very thing, that heresies are so strong. How strong would they be, had they not existed? When anything has been allotted to be at all, it receives the cause on account of which it is; and it acquires the force by which it exists, that it may not be impossible for it to exist.

The fever, in short, reckoned among the other deadly and tormenting ways of dispatching a man, we do not wonder at either because it exists — for it does exist — or because it dispatches a man, for that is its purpose. So too, if we are alarmed that the heresies, brought forth for the languishing and ruin of the faith, are able to do this, we ought first to be alarmed that they exist at all — they which, while they exist, have the power, and while they have the power, exist. But indeed, as a known evil both in its cause and in its power, we abhor rather than wonder at the fever, and so far as in us lies we guard against it, not having its abolition in our own power. Yet, as for the heresies, which bring eternal death and the burning of a greater fire, some men prefer to wonder that they can do this rather than to take care that they may not — though they have the power of taking care. But these heresies will have no power at all, if men only do not wonder at their power. For either, while they wonder, they are furnished an occasion of stumbling, or, because they stumble, they therefore wonder, as if the very strength of heresies came from some truth. Marvellous indeed, that an evil should have its own forces! — except that with those who are not strong in the faith, heresies are very strong. In a contest of boxers and gladiators, for the most part a man wins not because he is strong, or because he cannot be conquered, but because the one who was conquered was of no strength; and so the very same victor, afterwards matched against a man of good strength, retires even beaten. 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.

These weaker ones, indeed, are wont to be built up unto ruin even by certain persons who have been captured by heresy. "Why have such-and-such a woman, or such-and-such a man, most faithful and most prudent and most familiar in the Church, gone over to that party?" Who that says this does not himself answer himself, that those whom heresies could pervert are to be esteemed neither prudent nor faithful nor familiar? And is this a marvel, I suppose — that one approved before, afterwards falls away? Saul, good above the rest, is afterwards overturned by envy. David, a man good after the Lord's own heart, is afterwards guilty of murder and adultery. Solomon, endowed by the Lord with all grace and wisdom, is led into idolatry by women. For to the Son of God alone it was reserved 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, shall have fallen from the rule — shall heresies on that account be seen to possess the truth? Do we prove the faith from persons, or persons from the faith? No one is wise, no one faithful, no one greater, save a Christian; and no one is a Christian save he who shall have persevered to the very end. You, as a man, know each one from without. You think what you see. But you see as far as you have eyes. "But the eyes of the Lord," it says, "are high." Man looks at the face, God upon the inward parts. And therefore the Lord looks upon, and therefore knows, who are his own; and the plant which he did not plant he roots out; and out of the first he shows the last; and he carries a winnowing-fan in his hand to purge his floor. Let the chaff of a light faith fly off as much as it will at every breath of temptations: the mass of wheat will be laid up the purer in the Lord's granaries. Did not certain of the disciples, scandalized, turn aside from the Lord himself? Yet not on that account did the rest too think they should depart from his footsteps; but those who knew him to be the Word of life, and to have come from God, persevered in his company even to the end, when he had gently offered them too, if they wished, to depart. It is a smaller thing if certain men — a Phygelus and a Hermogenes and a Philetus and a Hymenaeus — forsook even an apostle of his: the very betrayer of Christ was of the apostles. Do we wonder at his Churches, if they are deserted by some, when the very things we suffer, after the example of Christ himself, show us to be Christians? "They went forth from us," it says, "but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us."

Rather let us be mindful both of the Lord's pronouncements and of the apostolic letters, which both foretold to us that there would be heresies, and prescribed beforehand that they should be fled; and, just as we are not alarmed that they exist, so let us not wonder that they have the power 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 clothings, but the outward surface of the Christian name? Who the ravening wolves, but treacherous minds and spirits, lurking within to infest the flock of Christ? Who the false prophets, but false preachers? Who the false apostles, but counterfeit evangelizers? Who the antichrists, both for the time and always, but the rebels against Christ? These will be the heresies, harassing the Church by the perversity of their doctrines no less than antichrist will then persecute it by the atrocity of his persecution; except that persecution makes even martyrs, while heresy makes only apostates. And therefore it was necessary that there should also be heresies, that the approved might be made manifest — both those who stood firm in persecutions and those who did not deviate into heresies. For it is no help to understand those approved who change their faith into heresy; though, on the contrary, they interpret for themselves that he said elsewhere, "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good," as if it were not possible for all, after a faulty proving, to dash by error into the choice of something evil.

Further, if he upbraids dissensions and schisms, which are without doubt evils, and immediately subjoins heresies — what he joins to evils he certainly professes to be an evil, and indeed a greater one, since he says he believed concerning the schisms and dissensions because he knew that there must also be heresies. For he shows that, at the sight of the graver evil, he easily believed concerning the lighter — certainly not that he believed concerning the evils because the heresies were good, but that, even concerning temptations of a worse mark, he might forewarn us that we ought not to wonder at those which he said tended to the manifesting of the approved, namely, of those whom they could not deprave. In short, if the whole chapter savours of the maintenance of unity and the curbing of separations, while heresies tear men from unity no less than schisms and dissensions, then without doubt he sets heresies too in that same condition of reproof in which he sets schisms and dissensions; and by this he does not make those approved who have turned aside into heresies, since he chiefly reproves the turning aside from such things, teaching all to speak one thing and to mind the same thing — which heresies do not permit.

Nor longer on this, since it is the same Paul who elsewhere too numbers heresies among carnal crimes, writing to the Galatians, and who suggests to Titus that a heretical man, after a first correction, is to be refused, because such a one is perverse and offends, being self-condemned. But in almost every epistle, insisting on the fleeing of adulterous doctrines, he censures heresies. 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. For this reason he said that the heretic is also self-condemned, because in that wherein he is condemned he made his own choice. But to us it is not permitted to indulge anything out of our own judgment, nor to choose what any man has introduced of his own judgment. We have the apostles of the Lord as our authors, who did not themselves choose anything out of their own judgment to introduce, but faithfully assigned to the nations the discipline received from Christ. And so, even though an angel from heaven should preach the gospel otherwise, he would be pronounced accursed by us. The Holy Spirit had already then foreseen that in a certain virgin Philumene there would be an angel of seduction, transfiguring himself into an angel of light, by whose signs and tricks Apelles, being led on, introduced a new heresy.

These are the doctrines of men and of demons, born for itching ears of the cleverness of worldly wisdom, which the Lord, calling foolishness, chose the foolish things of the world even unto the confounding of philosophy itself. For this is the material of worldly wisdom — that rash interpreter of the divine nature and dispensation. The very heresies, in short, are equipped by philosophy. Thence the aeons, and I know not what infinite forms, and the trinity of man, in Valentinus: he had been a Platonist. Thence Marcion's better god, out of his tranquillity: he had come from the Stoics. And that the soul should be said to perish is observed from the Epicureans; and that the restoration of the flesh be denied is taken from the one common school of all the philosophers; and where matter is made equal with God, that is the teaching of Zeno; and where anything is alleged about a fiery god, there Heraclitus intervenes. The same matter is debated among heretics and philosophers, the same discussions are entangled: whence comes evil, and why? and whence man, and how? and — what Valentinus has lately propounded — whence comes God? forsooth, out of "thought" and "abortion." Wretched Aristotle! who taught them dialectic, that craftsman of building up and pulling down, shifty in its propositions, forced in its conjectures, harsh in its arguments, a worker of contentions, a burden even to itself, retracting everything so as to have treated nothing at all. Hence those fables and endless genealogies and unfruitful questions and discourses creeping like a cancer, from which the apostle, restraining us, expressly attests that philosophy must be guarded against, writing to the Colossians: "See that no one circumvent you through philosophy and empty seduction, after the tradition of men, against the providence of the Holy Spirit." He had been at Athens, and from his encounters had come to know that human wisdom, the affecter and corrupter of the truth, itself too parcelled out into its own heresies by the variety of mutually warring sects. What, then, has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What the Academy with the Church? What heretics with Christians? Our instruction is from the Porch of Solomon, who had himself handed down that the Lord must be sought in simplicity of heart. Let them see to it who have brought forth a Stoic and Platonic and dialectical Christianity. We have no need of curiosity after Christ Jesus, nor of inquiry after the gospel. When we believe, we desire nothing further to believe. For this we believe first of all, that there is nothing further which we ought to believe.

I come, therefore, to that point which both our own people put forward to enter upon curiosity, and the heretics urge to import scrupulousness. "It is written," they say, "Seek, and you shall find." Let us recall when the Lord uttered this saying. I think in the very first beginnings of his teaching, when it was still doubtful among all whether he was the Christ, and when not yet had Peter pronounced him the Son of God, when even John had ceased to be certain about him. With reason, then, was it said at that time, "Seek, and you shall find," when he was still to be sought who was still not recognized. And this so far as it concerns the Jews. For to them belongs the whole discourse of this reproof, who had where to seek Christ. "They have," he says, "Moses and Elias" — that is, the law and the prophets, preaching Christ — according to what he says elsewhere openly: "Search the Scriptures, in which you hope for salvation; for they speak of me." This will be the meaning of "Seek, and you shall find." For it is manifest that the words that follow apply to the Jews too: "Knock, and it shall be opened to you." The Jews had formerly been with God; thereafter, cast out for their offences, they began to be outside God. But the nations were never with God, save as a drop from a bucket, and dust from the threshing-floor, and always outside. How, then, shall one who is always outside knock there where he never was? what door has he known, into which he was never either received or cast out? Or is it not rather the man who knows that he was within and was driven out who knocked, and knows the door? Likewise, "Ask, and you shall receive," befits one who knew of whom he was to ask, by whom too something had been promised — namely, of 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, "save to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Not yet had he cast to the dogs the children's bread, not yet did he bid them go into the way of the nations. For in the end he charges them to go and teach and baptize the nations, who were soon to receive the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, who would lead them into all truth. And this, therefore, he does for that reason. But if the apostles, destined as teachers to the nations, were themselves too going to receive a teacher, the Paraclete, much more was the "Seek, and you shall find" idle as regards us, to whom the teaching was going to come unsought, through the apostles, and to the apostles themselves through the Holy Spirit. All the Lord's sayings, indeed, are set forth for all; through the ears of the Jews they passed to us. But many things, directed to particular persons, have constituted for us not the propriety of the admonition, but an example.

Come now, of my own accord I step down from this footing. Let it have been said to all, "Seek, and you shall find"; yet even here the sense demands to contend with the rudder of interpretation. No divine utterance is so loose and diffuse that the words alone are defended, and the reason of the words is not established. But first of all I lay this down: that there was instituted by Christ some one definite thing which the nations ought by all means to believe, and therefore to seek, that they might, when they had found, be able to believe. Further, of one definite institution there cannot be an infinite inquiry. It must be sought until you find, and believed when you have found, and nothing more — except that what you believed must be kept, while you believe besides this, that nothing else is to be believed, and therefore nothing else inquired after, once you have found and believed what was instituted by him who commands you to inquire after nothing else than what he instituted. If anyone doubts of this, it will be established that the thing instituted by Christ is with us. For the present, out of confidence in the proof, I anticipate, admonishing certain men that nothing is to be sought beyond what they have believed — that this was the very thing they ought to have sought — lest they interpret "Seek, and you shall find" without the discipline of reason.

Now the reason of this saying consists in three points: the matter, the time, and the manner — in the matter, that you may consider what is to be sought; in the time, when; in the manner, how far. We are to seek, then, what Christ instituted, surely so long as we do not find it, surely until we find it. But you have found when you have believed. For you would not have believed unless you had found, just as you would not have sought save in order to find. To this end, then, are you seeking, that you may find; and to this end finding, that you may believe. By believing you have fixed all further prolonging of the seeking and the finding. This bound the very fruit of seeking has set for you. This trench he himself has marked out for you, who does not wish you to believe anything other than what he instituted, and therefore not to seek anything else. For the rest, if, because others have instituted so many other things, we must therefore go on seeking just so far as we are able to find, we shall always seek and never at all believe. For where will be the end of seeking? where the station of believing? where the discharge of finding? With Marcion? But Valentinus too proposes, "Seek, and you shall find." With Valentinus? But Apelles too will assail me with this pronouncement, and Ebion and Simon, and all in order, have nothing else by which, while insinuating themselves to me, they make me over to themselves. So I shall be nowhere, while I am meeting it everywhere — "Seek, and you shall find" — as though nowhere; as one who has never laid hold of that which Christ instituted, which must be sought, which must of necessity be believed.

One errs with impunity, provided one does not offend — although even to err is to offend. With impunity, I say, does he wander who deserts nothing. But if I believed what I ought to have believed, and yet think that something else is to be sought afresh, I surely hope that there is something else to be found — which I should in no way hope, save because either I had not believed, though I seemed to have believed, or I have ceased to believe. So, deserting my faith, I am found a denier. Let me say it once for all: no one seeks save he who either did not have, or has lost. That old woman had lost one of her ten drachmas, and therefore sought; but when she found it, she ceased to seek. The neighbour did not have bread, and therefore knocked; but when it was opened to him, and he received, he ceased to knock. The widow asked to be heard by the judge, because she was not admitted; but when she was heard, she pressed no further. So there is an end both of seeking and of knocking and of asking. "For to him that asks it shall be given," he says, "and to him that knocks it shall be opened, and by him that seeks it shall be found." Let him look to it who seeks always, 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.

As for us, even if we must still and always seek, yet where must we seek? Among the heretics, where all things are foreign and adverse to our truth, to whom we are forbidden to approach? What slave looks for his rations from a stranger — not to say from his master's enemy? What soldier seeks bounty and pay from princes not in alliance — not to say from hostile kings — unless he is plainly a deserter and a runaway and a rebel? Even that old woman sought her drachma within her own roof; even that knocker beat upon his neighbour's door; even that widow appealed to a judge not hostile, though harsh. No one can be instructed by that from which he is destroyed; no one is enlightened by that by which he is darkened. Let us seek, then, in our own, and from our own, and concerning our own — and that only which can come into question while the rule of faith is kept safe.

Now the rule of faith — that we may here at once profess what we maintain — is that by which it is believed that there is one only God, and none other beside the Maker of the world, who produced all things out of nothing through his Word, sent forth first of all; that this Word, called his Son, was variously seen in the name of God by the patriarchs, was always heard in the prophets, at last was brought down, by the Spirit and power of God the Father, into the virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, and, born of her, came forth as Jesus Christ; that thereafter he preached the new law and the new promise of the kingdom of heaven, worked miracles, was crucified, rose again on the third day, was caught up into the heavens, sat down at the right hand of the Father, sent the vicarious power of the Holy Spirit to direct believers, and will come with glory to take the saints into the enjoyment of eternal life and of the heavenly promises, and to judge the profane with perpetual fire, both parts being raised again with the restoration of the flesh. This rule, instituted by Christ, as shall be proved, raises among us no questions save those which the heresies introduce, and which make heretics.

For the rest, while its form abides in its own order, seek and discuss as much as you please, and pour out all the lust of curiosity, if anything seems to you either to hang in ambiguity or to be overshadowed by obscurity. There is surely some brother, a teacher endowed with the grace of knowledge; there is some one among the experienced; there is some curious one who has consorted with you — yet one who, while seeking with you, will at last know better that you should be ignorant, lest you should know what you ought not, because you know what you ought. "Thy faith," he says, "has made thee whole" — not thy exercise in the Scriptures. Faith is placed in the rule; it has its law, and salvation from the observance of the law: but exercise consists in curiosity, having its glory only from the pursuit of skill. Let curiosity yield to faith, let glory yield to salvation. At least let them either not clamour, or be still. To know nothing against the rule is to know all things. Even if the heretics were not enemies of the truth, so that we were not forewarned to flee them, what sort of thing is it to confer with men who themselves profess that they are still seeking? For if they are still truly seeking, they have as yet found nothing certain, and therefore, whatever they seem in the meantime to hold, they show their own doubt, so long as they seek. And so you, who likewise seek, looking to those who themselves also seek, doubtful toward the doubtful, uncertain toward the uncertain, blind led by the blind, must needs be led down into the pit. But since, for the sake of deceiving, they pretend to be still seeking, that they may insinuate their treatises to us by injecting solicitude — in short, when they have come to us, they straightway defend what they said had to be sought — we must then so refute them as to make them know that we are deniers, not of Christ, but of themselves. For while they are still seeking, they do not yet hold; and while they do not hold, they have not yet believed; and while they have not yet believed, they are not Christians. But while they do indeed hold and believe, they nevertheless say it must be sought, in order to defend it. Before they defend, they deny what they confess they have not yet believed, so long as they seek. Those, therefore, who are not Christians even to themselves — how much less to us? What faith do they argue, who come by trickery? For what truth do they plead, who introduce it from a lie? "But they themselves treat of the Scriptures, and out of the Scriptures persuade!" From what else, forsooth, could they speak about the things of faith, save from the writings of faith?

We come, therefore, to the matter proposed. For toward this we were directing, and this we were building up by the preface of our discourse, that we might from here on engage about that concerning which our adversaries challenge us. They put forward the Scriptures, and by this audacity of theirs they straightway move certain men. But in the very engagement they weary the strong, they capture the weak, they dismiss the middle sort with a doubt. This footing, therefore, we above all bar off — that they should not be admitted to any disputation from the Scriptures. If these are their strength, that they may be able to have it, it must be examined to whom the possession of the Scriptures belongs, lest he be admitted to them to whom it in no way belongs.

I would not have brought this forward out of distrust, or out of a desire to enter upon the question in another way, had not the reasoning in the first place stood firm: that our faith owes obedience to the apostle, who forbids us to enter upon questions, to lend our ears to new voices, to deal with a heretic after one correction — not after a disputation. So far did he interdict disputation, designating correction as the cause for dealing with a heretic, and this one correction only, because he is not a Christian, lest, after the manner of a Christian, he should be thought to need chastising once and again and under two or three witnesses — when he is to be chastised for the very reason for which one is not to dispute with him: and then, because the engagement of the Scriptures profits nothing, except plainly to upset the stomach or the brain of him who enters upon it.

This heresy does not receive certain Scriptures; and if it receives any, it perverts them by additions and subtractions to suit the arrangement of its own scheme; and if it receives them, it does not receive them whole; and if it presents them in some sort whole, it nonetheless overturns them by devising diverse expositions. A perverse sense thwarts the truth as much as a corrupting pen. Vain presumptions necessarily refuse to recognize those things by which they are refuted. They lean on what they have composed out of the false, and what they have seized from ambiguity. What will you advance, you most expert in the Scriptures, when, if you defend anything, it is denied from the other side, and if you deny anything, it is defended? And you indeed will lose nothing but your voice in the contention, will get nothing but bile from the blasphemy.

But that other man — if there is anyone for whose sake you go down into the engagement of the Scriptures, to confirm him in his doubt — will he incline toward the truth, or rather toward the heresies? Moved by this very thing, that he sees you have advanced nothing, the adverse party being on equal footing in denying and defending — the standing at least being even — he will depart from the altercation the more uncertain, not knowing which he should judge a heresy. For these things they too can retort upon us. For it is necessary that they also should say that the adulteries of the Scriptures and the falsehoods of the expositions are rather brought in by us, who likewise defend the truth for ourselves.

Therefore there must be no appeal to the Scriptures, nor must the contest be established in those things in which victory is either none, or uncertain, or too little certain. For even if the comparison of the Scriptures did not so turn out as to set both parties on a par, the order of things demanded that that should first be proposed which alone is now to be disputed: to whom the very faith belongs; whose the Scriptures are; by whom, and through whom, and when, and to whom was handed down the discipline by which men become Christians. For where it shall appear that the truth of the discipline and of the Christian faith is, there will be the truth of the Scriptures and of the expositions and of all the Christian traditions.

Christ Jesus our Lord — let me say for the moment, whoever he is, of whatsoever God the Son, of whatsoever matter man and God, the teacher of whatsoever faith, the promiser of whatsoever reward — what he was, what he had been, what will of the Father he was administering, what he determined was to be done by man, so long as he was acting upon earth, he himself proclaimed, whether openly to the people or apart to the disciples, of whom he had chosen twelve as his chief to be at his side, destined as masters to the nations. So, one of them being struck off, he bade the remaining eleven, as he departed to the Father after the resurrection, to go and teach the nations, who were to be baptized into the Father and into the Son and into the Holy Spirit. Straightway, therefore, the apostles — whom this appellation interprets as "the sent" — having by lot taken a twelfth, Matthias, into the place of Judas, on the authority of the prophecy which is in the psalm of David, and having received the promised power of the Holy Spirit for miracles and for utterance, first throughout Judaea, having attested their faith in Jesus Christ and founded Churches, then went forth into the world and promulgated to the nations the same teaching of the same faith. And likewise they founded Churches in each city, from which the other Churches thereafter borrowed, and daily borrow, the runner of the faith and the seeds of the teaching, that they may become Churches. And by this they too will be accounted apostolic, as the offspring of the apostolic Churches. Every kind must needs be reckoned according to its origin. And so, of so many and so great Churches, that one is the first, from the apostles, from which all are. Thus all are first, and all apostolic, while all together prove one unity: the fellowship of peace, and the appellation of brotherhood, and the mutual pledge of hospitality — rights which no other principle governs than the one tradition of the same sacred truth.

Hence, then, we direct our prescription: if the Lord Christ Jesus 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 to any others than the apostles whom he sent to preach — surely what he revealed to them. But what they preached — that is, what Christ revealed to them — I will here too prescribe ought to be proved in no other way than through the same Churches which the apostles themselves founded, themselves preaching to them, as they say, both by living voice and afterwards by epistles. If this is so, it is established likewise that all teaching which agrees with those apostolic Churches, the mother-wombs and originals of the faith, is to be reckoned to the truth, as undoubtedly holding that which the Churches received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, Christ from God; but that all teaching is to be prejudged of falsehood which savours against the truth of the Churches and of the apostles of Christ and of God. It remains, then, that we demonstrate whether this teaching of ours, the rule of which we set forth above, is reckoned of the apostles' tradition, and, by this very thing, whether the rest come of falsehood. We hold communion with the apostolic Churches, in that no teaching is diverse. This is the testimony of the truth.

But since the proof is so ready that, if it were brought forward at once, there would be nothing further to discuss, let us — as though it had not been brought forward by us — give place for the moment to the opposing party, if they think they can move anything to weaken this prescription. They are wont to say that the apostles did not know all things — driven by the same madness by which, again, they reverse it, saying that the apostles indeed knew all things, but did not deliver all things to all — in both casting reproach upon Christ, who sent apostles either too little instructed or too little straightforward. Who, then, of sound mind can believe that those were ignorant of anything whom the Lord gave as masters, keeping them inseparable in his company, in discipleship, in fellowship of life, to whom he expounded apart whatever was obscure, telling them that to them it was given to know the secrets which the people were not allowed to understand? Did anything lie hid from Peter, called the rock of the Church to be built, who obtained the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the power of loosing and binding in the heavens and on earth? Did anything lie hid from John, most beloved of the Lord, reclining on his bosom, to whom alone the Lord pointed out Judas the betrayer beforehand, whom he commended in his own place as a son to Mary? What did he wish those to be ignorant of, to whom he even displayed his glory, and Moses and Elias, and besides the Father's voice from heaven? — not as rejecting the rest, but because "in three witnesses shall every word stand." Ignorant, then, were also those to whom, after the resurrection too, on the way, he deigned to expound all the Scriptures. 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 himself will lead you into all truth." He showed that those were ignorant of nothing whom he had promised would attain all truth through the Spirit of truth. And surely he fulfilled the promise, the Acts of the Apostles proving the descent of the Holy Spirit. Those who do not receive that Scripture can neither be of the Holy Spirit, who cannot yet acknowledge the Holy Spirit sent to the disciples; nor let them say that they defend the Church, who have no means of proving when, and from what cradle, this body was instituted. For it is of such moment to them not to have the proofs of the things they defend, that there may not equally be admitted the exposures of the things they falsify.

They propound, then, to brand some ignorance upon the apostles, that Peter, and those who were with him, were rebuked by Paul. "So far," they say, "was something wanting to them," so as to build out of this also that conclusion: that a fuller knowledge could afterwards have come upon them, such as came to Paul when he rebuked his predecessors. I can here too say to those who reject the Acts of the Apostles: First you must show who this Paul is, and what he was before he was an apostle, and how he became an apostle — inasmuch as they use him very much for other questions too. For even if he himself professes that he became an apostle from a persecutor, it is not enough for each one who believes after examination, since not even the Lord himself bore witness of himself. But let them believe without the Scriptures, that they may believe against the Scriptures; yet let them show, from the fact they allege — that Peter was rebuked by Paul — that a different form of the gospel was superinduced by Paul, apart from that which Peter and the rest had set forth before. But, being changed into a preacher from a persecutor, he is led to the brethren by brethren, as one of the brethren, and to those by those who had received their faith from the apostles. Thereafter, as he himself relates, he went up to Jerusalem to make Peter's acquaintance, by the office and right, forsooth, of the same faith and preaching. For neither would they have marvelled that a preacher had been made out of a persecutor, if he had preached anything contrary; nor, besides, would they have magnified the Lord because his adversary Paul had come over. And so they gave him the right hand, a sign of concord and agreement, and arranged among themselves a distribution of office, not a separation of the gospel, nor that one should preach one thing, another another, but that one should preach to one set, another to another: Peter to the circumcision, Paul to the nations. For the rest, if Peter was rebuked because, having lived with the Gentiles, he afterwards separated himself from their company out of respect of persons, it was surely a fault of conduct, not of preaching. For not on this account was another God than the Creator, and another Christ than the one from Mary, and another hope than the resurrection, announced.

It is not so well with me — nay, it is not so ill with me — that I should set the apostles at odds. But since these most perverse men put forward that rebuke for this purpose, to make the earlier teaching suspect, I will answer, as it were on Peter's behalf, that Paul himself said he had become all things to all men — to the Jews a Jew, to the non-Jews a non-Jew — that he might gain all. So, according to times and persons and causes, they rebuked certain things into which they themselves likewise, according to times and persons and causes, fell — just as if Peter too had rebuked Paul because, while forbidding circumcision, he himself circumcised Timothy. Let them see to it who judge of the apostles. Well it is that Peter is made equal to Paul even in martyrdom. But even though Paul, caught up to the third heaven and carried into paradise, heard certain things there, they cannot be seen to have been such as would render him instructed for another teaching, since their condition was such that they were to be disclosed to no man. But if anything of that sort flowed out to anyone's knowledge, and some heresy affirms that it follows it, then either Paul is guilty of betraying a secret, or some other must be shown to have been caught up into paradise afterwards, to whom it was permitted to utter what to Paul it was not permitted to murmur.

But, as we have said, it is the same madness, when they indeed confess that the apostles were ignorant of nothing, nor preached differently among themselves, yet do not wish them to have revealed all things to all — for they delivered some things openly and to all, some things secretly and to a few, because Paul used this word too to Timothy: "O Timothy, guard the deposit," and again, "Keep the good deposit." What is this deposit, so secret that it is reckoned of another teaching? Or is it that of the charge of which he says, "This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy"? likewise that precept of which he says, "I charge thee before God, who quickeneth all things, and Jesus Christ, who witnessed under Pontius Pilate the good confession, that thou keep the precept"? But what precept, and what charge? From the things written above and below, it will be understood that nothing about a more remote teaching is hinted at by this saying, but rather that it is urged that no other be admitted besides that which he had heard from himself, and, I think, openly — "before many witnesses," he says. If they will not have these many witnesses understood to be the Church, it makes no difference, since nothing was secret which was brought forth before many witnesses. Nor, because he wished him to commit these things to faithful men, who should be fit also to teach others, is this too to be interpreted as an argument for some hidden gospel. For when he says "These things," he speaks of those concerning which he was at present writing. But of hidden things, as of absent ones, to the consciousness, he would have said not "These," but "Those."

Further, it followed that to one to whom he was committing the administration of the gospel, not to be administered everywhere nor inconsiderately, he should add, according to the Lord's voice, that he should not cast the pearl to swine and the holy thing to dogs. The Lord openly declared, with no indication of any covered sacred mystery. He himself had charged that, if they had heard anything in the darkness and in the hidden, they should preach it in the light and on the housetops. He himself had prefigured by a parable that they should not keep back one mina — that is, one word of his — without fruit, in concealment. He himself taught that a lamp is not wont to be hidden under a bushel, but set on a lampstand, that it may give light to all who are in the house. These things the apostles either neglected or by no means understood, if they did not fulfil them, hiding something of the Light — that is, of the word of God and the sacred truth of Christ. They feared no one, so far as I know — not the violence of the Jews, not of the Gentiles; the more freely, surely, did they preach in the Church, who did not keep silence in the synagogues and in public places. Nay, they could neither have converted the Jews nor brought in the Gentiles, unless they set forth in order what they wished to be believed by them. Much more, to the Churches already believing, would they have withheld nothing which they were to commit apart to a few others. Although, even if they discussed certain things among their household, so to speak, yet it is not to be believed that these were such as would superinduce another rule of faith, diverse and contrary to that which they were catholically bringing forth into the open — so that they should name one God in the Church, another in the lodging; designate one substance of Christ in the open, another in secret; announce one hope of the resurrection to all, another to a few — when they themselves besought in their epistles that all should speak that very same one thing, and that there should be no schisms and dissensions in the Church, since, whether Paul or others, they preached the same things. For the rest, they remembered, "Let your speech be: Yea, yea; nay, nay; for what is more than this is from evil," lest they should treat the gospel in diversity.

If, then, it is incredible either that the apostles were ignorant of the fullness of the preaching, or that they did not set forth the whole order of the rule to all, let us see whether perhaps the apostles indeed preached simply and fully, but the Churches, by their own fault, received it otherwise than the apostles set it forth. You will find all these incitements to scrupulousness put forward by the heretics. They allege the Churches rebuked by the apostle: "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?" and, "You were running so well; who hindered you?" and the very opening, "I marvel that you are so quickly being transferred from him who called you in grace to another gospel." Likewise it is written to the Corinthians that they were still carnal, who were nourished with milk, not yet fit for solid food; who thought they knew something, when they did not yet know how they ought to know. When they oppose the rebuked Churches, let them believe them also corrected. But let them also recognize those of whose faith and knowledge and conduct the apostle rejoices and gives thanks to God — which yet today share the rights of one institution with those that were rebuked.

Come now, let them all have erred; let even the apostle have been deceived in rendering his testimony; let the Holy Spirit have regarded none of them, so as to lead it into the truth — the Spirit sent for this by Christ, asked for this from the Father, that he should be the teacher of the truth; let God's steward, Christ's vicar, have neglected his office, suffering the Churches in the meantime to understand otherwise, to believe otherwise, than he himself was preaching through the apostles: is it at all likely that so many and so great Churches should have erred into one faith? Among many outcomes there is no one outcome. The error of the teaching of the Churches would have had to vary in its issues. But what is found one among many is not error, but tradition. Will anyone, then, dare to say that those erred who handed it down?

However the error came about, it surely reigned just so long as there were no heresies. Liberating truth was waiting for some Marcionites and Valentinians. In the meanwhile the gospel was wrongly preached, was wrongly believed; so many thousands of thousands were wrongly baptized, so many works of faith wrongly administered, so many miracles, so many graces wrongly wrought, so many priesthoods, so many ministries wrongly discharged, so many martyrdoms, in short, wrongly crowned. Or, if not wrongly and not in vain — what sort of thing is it that the things of God ran their course before it was known of what God they were? that there were Christians before Christ was found? that there were heresies before the true teaching? But in all things the truth goes before its image; the likeness comes after. For the rest, it is foolish enough that heresy should be held the prior teaching — even because it is the very teaching which foretold that future heresies were to be guarded against. To the Church of that teaching it is written — nay, the teaching itself writes to the Church — "And if an angel from heaven should preach the gospel otherwise than we do, let him be accursed."

Where then was Marcion, the shipmaster of Pontus, the student of the Stoics? Where then was Valentinus, the follower of the Platonic sect? For it is established that they were not even of any great antiquity — about the principate of Antoninus — and that at first they believed the teaching of the Catholic Church among the Romans, under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherus, until, on account of their ever-restless curiosity, by which they were corrupting the brethren also, being once and again cast out — Marcion indeed with the two hundred sesterces which he had brought into the Church — at last, relegated into perpetual separation, they sowed the poisons of their doctrines. Afterwards Marcion, professing repentance, when he came upon the condition given him — that he should so receive peace, if he restored to the Church the rest whom he had trained for perdition — was forestalled by death. For there had to be heresies. Yet not therefore are heresies a good thing, because there had to be heresies — as though there did not also have to be evil. For the Lord too had to be betrayed; but woe to the betrayer! — lest from this too anyone should defend heresies. If the lineage of Apelles too must be reviewed: he himself is no more ancient than Marcion, his founder and forefather; but, lapsing into a woman, a deserter of Marcionite continence, he withdrew from the eyes of his most holy master to Alexandria. Returning thence after some years, no better — except only in that he was now no longer a Marcionite — he ran upon another woman, that virgin Philumene whom we set forth above, but afterwards a monstrous prostitute, by whose frenzy circumvented he wrote the Phaneroseis ("Revelations") which he learned from her. There are still surviving in the world those who remember them — even their own disciples and successors — so that they cannot deny that these are later. Although they are also refuted out of their own works, as the Lord said. For if Marcion separated the New Testament from the Old, he is later than that which he separated, since he could not separate save that which was united. What was united, then, before it was separated, by being afterwards made separate, shows the separator to be later. Likewise Valentinus, expounding otherwise and without doubt correcting — by which very name, whatever he corrects, he demonstrates to have been another's before, as faulty in time past. These we name as the more notable and frequent adulterers of the truth. For the rest, both a certain Nigidius, and Hermogenes, and many others still walk about perverting the ways of the Lord. Let them show me by what authority they came forth. If they preach another God, how do they use the things and the writings and the names of that God against whom they preach? If the same God, how do they preach otherwise? Let them prove themselves new apostles; let them say that Christ has come down again, taught again himself, was crucified again, died again, was raised again. For thus the apostle described it; thus he is wont to make apostles — to give them, besides, the power of producing the same signs which he himself produced. I wish, then, that their miracles too be brought forth — except that I recognize that their greatest miracle is that by which they rival the apostles in perverse fashion. For the apostles made the living out of the dead; these make the dead out of the living.

But let me return from my digression to discussing the priority of truth and the posteriority of falsehood, out of the support of that parable too, which sets the good seed of wheat, sown by the Lord, at the beginning, while the adulteration of barren oats and tares is afterwards superinduced by the enemy, the devil. For it properly figures the distinction of doctrines, since elsewhere too the likeness of seed is the word of God. So from the very order it is made manifest that that is the Lord's and the true which was first handed down, but that is foreign and false which was later sent in. This sentence will stand against all heresies, however later, to which there belongs no constancy of conscience for defending the truth to themselves.

For the rest, if any dare to insert themselves into the apostolic age, that they may seem to have been handed down by the apostles because they existed under the apostles, we can say: Let them, then, produce the origins of their Churches; let them unroll the order of their bishops, running down from the beginning by succession in such a way that their first bishop had as his author and predecessor some one of the apostles, or of apostolic men who nonetheless continued with the apostles. For in this way the apostolic Churches present their reckonings, as the Church of the Smyrnaeans relates that Polycarp was placed there by John, as the Church of the Romans that Clement was likewise ordained by Peter. And in like manner, surely, the rest too exhibit those whom, appointed to the episcopate by the apostles, they have as transmitters of the apostolic seed. Let the heretics contrive something of the kind. For after their blasphemy, what is unlawful to them? But even if they should contrive it, they will advance nothing. For their very teaching, compared with the apostolic, will pronounce, out of its diversity and contrariety, that it is of no author either apostolic or apostolic-derived; because, just as the apostles would not have taught things diverse among themselves, so too the apostolic men would not have set forth things contrary to the apostles — unless, indeed, those who learned from the apostles preached otherwise. To this form, then, they will be tested by those Churches which, though they produce no author of their own from among the apostles or apostolic men, as being much later — those, in short, which are daily being founded — yet, conspiring in the same faith, are reckoned no less apostolic for the kinship of doctrine. So let all the heresies, when challenged to both these forms by our Churches, prove themselves apostolic in whatever way they think. But indeed they neither are, nor can prove what they are not; nor are they received into peace and communion by Churches in any way apostolic, being, on account of the diversity of their sacred truth, in no way apostolic.

I add to these, moreover, a review of the very doctrines which then existed under the apostles, and which were both pointed out and abjured by those same apostles. For thus too they will be the more easily exposed, while they are either caught existing even then, or shown to have taken their seeds from those which existed even then. Paul, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, marks the deniers and doubters of the resurrection. This opinion is proper to the Sadducees. Part of it Marcion and Apelles and Valentinus, and any others who undermine the resurrection of the flesh, take to themselves. And writing to the Galatians, he inveighs against the observers and defenders of circumcision and of the law. The heresy of Ebion is thus. Instructing Timothy, he censures also the forbidders of marriage. So Marcion teaches, and Apelles his follower. He likewise touches those who would say that the resurrection had already taken place. The Valentinians assert this of themselves. But also, when he names "endless genealogies," Valentinus is recognized, with whom that aeon, I know not who, of a new and not single name, generates out of his "Charis" ("Grace") "Sensus" ("Mind") and "Veritas" ("Truth"), and these likewise beget out of themselves "Sermo" ("Word") and "Vita" ("Life"), and then these too generate "Homo" ("Man") and "Ecclesia" ("Church"); from which first ogdoad of aeons, ten others thereafter, and the remaining twelve aeons, arise with wondrous names into a mere fable of thirty aeons. The same apostle, when he reproves those who serve the elements, points to something of Hermogenes, who, introducing unborn matter, compares it to the unborn God, and so, making the mother of the elements a goddess, can serve her whom he compares to God. John, in the Apocalypse, is bidden to chastise those who eat things offered to idols and commit fornications. There are even now other Nicolaitans. It is called the Gaian heresy. But in his epistle he calls those above all antichrists who would deny that Christ came in the flesh, and who would not think Jesus to be the Son of God. The one Marcion maintained; the other Ebion. But the discipline of Simonian magic, serving the angels, was surely itself too reckoned among idolatries, and was condemned by the apostle Peter in Simon himself.

These are, as I judge, the kinds of adulterous doctrines which we learn from the apostles themselves to have existed under the apostles. And yet we find no institution, among so many diversities of perversities, which raised a controversy concerning God the Creator of all things. No one dared to suspect another God. There was hesitation more easily about the Son than about the Father, until Marcion introduced, besides the Creator, another God of goodness alone; Apelles made the Creator an angel — some glorious one of a higher God — the god of the law and of Israel, affirming him to be fiery; Valentinus scattered abroad his aeons and traced the fault of one aeon into the origin of the Creator God. To these alone, and these first, was the truth of the divinity revealed — having forsooth obtained a greater favour and a fuller grace from the devil, who wished thus also to rival God, so that, out of the doctrines of poisons — which the Lord forbade — he himself might make disciples above their master. Let all the heresies, then, choose their times — when each existed — provided it makes no difference which existed when, provided they are not of the truth; and surely those which did not exist under the apostles cannot have existed at all. But if they had existed, they too would have been named, that they too might be curbed. Those which did exist under the apostles are condemned in their very naming. Whether, then, the same heresies are now somewhat more polished which were under the apostles rude, they have their condemnation thence; or whether some were of one kind and others, arising later, have usurped certain opinions from those — by having fellowship of preaching with them, they must needs have fellowship of condemnation too; the aforesaid principle of posteriority going before, that, even if they shared nothing of the condemned doctrines, they would be prejudged from their age alone, the more adulterous in proportion as they were not even named by the apostles. Whence it stands the more firmly that these are the very ones which were even then announced as to come.

Challenged and refuted by us with these definitions, let all heresies — whether later, or contemporary with the apostles, provided they are diverse; whether generally or specially noted by them, provided they are pre-condemned — dare to answer themselves with some such prescriptions against our discipline. For if they deny its truth, they ought to prove that it too is a heresy, refuted by the same form by which they themselves are refuted, and to show at the same time where the truth is to be sought, which it is now established is not with them. Our cause is not later — nay, it is prior to all; and this will be the testimony of the truth everywhere holding the chief place: that it is everywhere not condemned by the apostles — nay, is defended — this will be the mark of its propriety. For that which they do not condemn, who condemned every foreign thing, they show to be their own, and therefore defend it too.

Come now, you who wish to exercise your curiosity better in the business 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 own authentic letters are recited, sounding the voice and representing the face of each one. Achaia is near you: you have Corinth. If you are not far from Macedonia, you have the Philippians, you have the Thessalonians. If you can reach Asia, you have Ephesus. But if you adjoin Italy, you have Rome, whence authority is at hand for us too. How happy is that Church, into which the apostles poured out their whole teaching 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 he was plunged into burning oil and suffered nothing, was relegated to an island. Let us see what she learned, what she taught, who has exchanged tokens of fellowship with the African Churches too. She knows one God the Lord, the Creator of the universe, and Christ Jesus, of 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; thence she drinks her faith; this she seals with water, clothes with the Holy Spirit, feeds with the Eucharist, exhorts to martyrdom; and so against this institution she receives no one. This is the institution — I do not say now which foretold future heresies, but from which heresies came forth. But they are not of it from the time that they were made against it. Even from the kernel of the gentle and rich and necessary olive there springs up the rough wild olive; even from the seed of the most pleasant and most sweet fig there rises the windy and empty wild fig. So too heresies are from our shoot, though not of our kind — from the grain of truth, but, by falsehood, wild.

If these things are so, that the truth is adjudged to us — whoever walk in that rule which the Church received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, Christ from God — the reasoning of our proposition stands firm, which defines that the heretics are not to be admitted to enter upon a challenge from the Scriptures, whom we prove, without the Scriptures, to have no concern with the Scriptures. For if they are heretics, they cannot be Christians, not having from Christ that which, following of their own choice, they assume under the names of heretics. So, being not Christians, they acquire no right to the Christian writings; to whom it may rightly be said: Who are you? when, and whence, did you come? what are you doing in my domain, you who are not mine? By what right, in short, Marcion, do you cut down my wood? By what licence, Valentinus, do you turn aside my fountains? By what power, Apelles, do you move my boundaries? It is my possession. Why do you others here, at your own pleasure, sow and pasture? It is my possession; I have long possessed it; I possess it first; I have firm origins from the very authors whose the property was. I am the heir of the apostles. As they provided by their testament, as they committed it in trust, as they adjured, so do I hold it. You, certainly, they always disinherited and disowned, as strangers, as enemies. But whence are heretics strangers and enemies to the apostles, save from the diversity of teaching, which each one, out of his own judgment, has either brought forth or received against the apostles?

There, then, the adulteration both of the Scriptures and of the expositions is to be reckoned, where diversity of teaching is found. Those whose purpose was to teach otherwise were compelled by necessity to arrange otherwise the instruments of teaching. For otherwise they could not have taught otherwise, unless they had otherwise the means by which they taught. Just as for them the corruption of the teaching could not have succeeded without the corruption of its instruments, so for us the integrity of the teaching would not have belonged without the integrity of those things through which the teaching is treated. For what is there in our own writings contrary to us? what have we brought in of our own, so that we should remedy by subtraction or addition or transmutation anything contrary to it found also in the Scriptures? What we are, that the Scriptures are from their beginning. We are of them, before it was otherwise, before they were interpolated by you. But since every interpolation must be believed to be later, coming surely from a cause of rivalry — which is never either prior to or akin to that which it rivals — it is as incredible to any wise man that we should be seen to have brought an adulterate pen into the Scriptures, who are from the beginning and first, as that those should not have brought it in, who are both later and adverse. One man perverts the Scriptures by his hand, another their meaning by his exposition. For even if Valentinus seems to use the entire instrument, he laid hands on the truth with no less crafty wit than Marcion. For Marcion openly and avowedly used the sword, not the pen, since he made his slaughter of the Scriptures to suit his own matter. But Valentinus spared them, since he devised not his matter to the Scriptures, but the Scriptures to his matter; and yet he took away more and added more, taking away the properties of the several words too, and adding arrangements of things that do not appear.

There were minds of the spiritual wickednesses, with which is our wrestling, brethren — minds rightly to be contemplated, necessary to the faith, that the elect may be made manifest, that the reprobate may be detected. And therefore they have power and a facility in devising and constructing errors, not so much to be wondered at as if it were difficult and inexplicable, since even from secular writings an example of such facility is at hand. You see today out of Virgil a story composed wholly other, the matter being fitted to the verses and the verses to the matter. In short, Hosidius Geta drew out his tragedy Medea quite fully from Virgil. A certain kinsman of mine, among the other leisures of his pen, unfolded out of the same poet the Pinax of Cebes. They are wont to be called also Homerocentos who, out of the poems of Homer, patch into one body their own works, after the manner of a patchwork, composed of many pieces taken from here and there. And surely the divine literature is more fertile for the resources of any matter. Nor do I run a risk in saying that the very Scriptures too were so arranged by the will of God as to furnish materials to heretics, since I read that "there must be heresies," which cannot exist without the Scriptures.

It will follow to ask by whom is interpreted the understanding of those things which make for heresies. By the devil, forsooth, whose part it is to pervert the truth, who even rivals the very things of the divine sacred mysteries in the mysteries of idols. He too baptizes some — that is, his own believers and faithful; he promises the putting away of offences from his washing-place; and, if I still remember rightly, Mithras there seals his soldiers on their foreheads; he celebrates the oblation of bread also, and brings in an image of the resurrection, and under the sword redeems a crown. What of his setting his high priest in one marriage? he has his virgins too, he has his continent ones. For the rest, if we unroll the superstitions of Numa Pompilius, if we consider the priestly offices and badges and privileges, if the sacrificial ministries and instruments and the very vessels of the sacrifices and expiations, and the curious niceties of the vows — has not the devil manifestly imitated that fussiness of the Jewish law? He, then, who so enviously affected to reproduce, in the business of idolatry, the very things by which the sacred mysteries of Christ are administered, surely both desired and was able, by the same wit, to fit also the instruments of the divine things and of the Christian holy ones — sense from senses, words from words, parables from parables — to a profane and rival faith. And therefore no one ought to doubt either that the spiritual wickednesses, from which heresies too come, were sent in by the devil, or that heresies differ in nothing from idolatry, since they are both of the same author and the same work as idolatry too. They either feign another God against the Creator, or, if they confess the one Creator, they discourse of him otherwise than is in truth. And so every lie which they tell about God is in a manner a kind of idolatry.

I will not omit also a description of the very conduct of the heretics — how futile, how earthly, how merely human it is, without gravity, without authority, without discipline, as befits their faith. In the first place, who is a catechumen, who a believer, is uncertain; they come in together, they hear together, they pray together — the heathen too, if they come in. They will cast the holy thing to dogs, and their pearls (false, though they be) to swine. Simplicity they would have to be the overthrow of discipline, the care of which among us they call pandering. They mix peace too indiscriminately with all. For it makes no difference to them, though they treat of diverse things, provided they conspire to the storming of the one truth. All are puffed up, all promise knowledge. The catechumens are perfect before they are taught. The very heretical women — 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 appoint neophytes, now men bound to the world, now our apostates, that they may bind them by glory, since they cannot by truth. Nowhere does one advance more easily than in the camps of the rebels, where the mere being there is to earn merit. And so one is a bishop today, another tomorrow; he is a deacon today who tomorrow is a reader; he is a presbyter today who tomorrow is a layman. For they enjoin priestly functions even upon laymen.

But what shall I say of the administration of the word, when this is their business — not to convert the heathen, but to overturn our own? They rather catch at this glory, if they work the ruin of those standing, not the raising up of those lying down. Since their very work comes not from a building of their own, but from the destruction of the truth, they undermine our things, that they may build their own. Take 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 ruins of standing buildings than the raising up of fallen ruins. For these works alone they act humble and bland and submissive. For the rest, they know no reverence even for their own presidents. And this is why schisms are almost non-existent among the heretics, because, when they exist, they do not appear. For their very unity is schism. I lie, if they do not even vary from their own rules among themselves, while each one likewise modulates by his own judgment what he has received, just as out of his own judgment he composed it who handed it down. The advance of the thing acknowledges its nature and the custom of its origin. The same was permitted to the Valentinians as to Valentinus, the same to the Marcionites as to Marcion — to innovate the faith out of their own judgment. In short, the heresies, when thoroughly inspected, are all found dissenting in many things even with their own authors. Very many have not even Churches; without a mother, without a seat, bereft of faith, banished, they wander about in their own worthlessness.

The dealings of the heretics with the magicians, with mountebanks, with astrologers, with philosophers, have also been noted — devoted, forsooth, to curiosity. "Seek, and you shall find," they everywhere remember. So even from the kind of their conduct the quality of their faith can be judged. Discipline is the index of doctrine. They say God is not to be feared. And so to them all things are free and unrestrained. But where is God not feared, save where he is not? Where God is not, neither is there any truth. Where there is no truth, with reason is there such discipline too. But where God is, there is the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom. Where there is the fear of God, there is gravity, both honourable and attentive in diligence, and solicitous care, and a well-examined admission, and a deliberate fellowship, and a promotion earned by merit, and a religious subjection, and a devoted attendance, and a modest procession, and a united Church, and all things of God.

Likewise these testimonies of a stricter discipline among us go to the proof of the truth, from which it is profitable to no one to turn aside who remembers the future judgment, at which we must all of necessity stand before the tribunal of Christ, rendering an account, first of all, of the faith itself. What, then, will those say who have defiled it — the virgin handed down by Christ — by heretical adultery? They will allege, I suppose, that nothing was ever pronounced to them by him or by his apostles concerning future depraved and perverse doctrines, and nothing prescribed about guarding against and abominating them. They will rather acknowledge their own fault and that of their teachers, who did not forearm us beforehand. They will add, besides, much about the authority of each heretical teacher: that those above all confirmed the faith of their teaching, raised the dead, restored the feeble, foreshowed the future, so that they were deservedly believed apostles — as though it were not written too that many should come who would even produce the greatest miracles to fortify the deceit of a corrupted preaching. And so they will deserve pardon. But if, mindful of the Lord's and the apostles' Scriptures and denunciations, they have stood firm in the integrity of the faith, they will, I suppose, be in peril of their pardon, the Lord answering: I had plainly foretold that there would be teachers of deceit in my name, and of the prophets and the apostles too, and I had charged my disciples to preach the same things to you — forsooth, in case you would not believe. Once for all had I committed to my apostles the gospel and the teaching of the same rule; it pleased me afterwards to change some things therein. I had promised a resurrection, even of the flesh; but I bethought myself, lest I should be unable to fulfil it. I had shown myself born of a virgin; but afterwards it seemed base to me. I had said that the Father was he who makes the sun and the rains; but another better Father has adopted me. I had forbidden you to lend an ear to heretics; but I erred. Such things they admit themselves to think who go astray and do not guard against the peril to the faith of the truth. But for the present we have indeed dealt generally against all the heresies, that they must be repelled, by certain and just and necessary prescriptions, from the comparison of the Scriptures. For the rest, if the grace of God grants it, we will answer certain ones specially also. To those who read these things through with leisure in the faith of the truth, peace and the grace of God our Lord Jesus Christ.