Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Earliest Heretics: Simon Magus, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, Nicolaus.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
IX.
Appendix.
Against all Heresies.8330
| 8330 [On p. 14, this
volume, see nearly all that need be said, of this spurious treatise. I
add a few references to Routh, Opuscula, Vol. 1. p. 160 etc. His
honouring it with a place in his work must be my apology for not
relegating it to the collection of spurious Tertulliana,
sub fine.] |
[Translated by Rev. S.
Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.—Earliest
Heretics:8331
| 8331 [Routh says he
inadvertently changed his title to read Advs. Hæreticos,
but that it is better after all, in view of the opening sentence.] | Simon Magus,
Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, Nicolaus. [The Work Begins as a
Fragment.]
Of which heretics I will
(to pass by a good deal) summarize some few particulars. For of
Judaism’s heretics I am silent—Dositheus the Samaritan, I
mean, who was the first who had the hardihood to repudiate the
prophets, on the ground that they had not spoken under inspiration of
the Holy Spirit. Of the Sadducees I am silent, who, springing from the
root of this error, had the hardihood to adjoin to this heresy the
denial likewise of the resurrection of the flesh.8332
The Pharisees I pretermit, who were
“divided” from the Jews by their superimposing of certain
additaments to the law, which fact likewise made them worthy of
receiving this very name;8333
and, together with
them, the Herodians likewise, who said that Herod was Christ. To those
I betake myself who have chosen to make the gospel the starting-point
of their heresies.
Of these the first of all is Simon Magus, who in
the Acts of the Apostles earned a condign and just sentence from the
Apostle Peter.8334
He had the
hardihood to call himself the Supreme Virtue,8335
| 8335 I use Virtue in this
and similar cases in its Miltonic sense. |
that is, the Supreme God; and moreover, (to assert) that the
universe8336
had been originated
by his angels; that he had descended in quest of an erring
dæmon,8337
which was Wisdom;
that, in a phantasmal semblance of God, he had not suffered
among the Jews, but was as if he had suffered.8338
| 8338 Or, “but
had undergone a quasi-passion.” |
After him Menander, his disciple (likewise a
magician8339
), saying the same
as Simon. Whatever Simon had affirmed himself to be, this did Menander
equally affirm himself to be, asserting that none could possibly have
salvation without being baptized in his name.
Afterwards, again, followed Saturninus: he, too,
affirming that the innascible8340
| 8340
Innascibilem;” but Fr. Junius’
conjecture, “innoscibilem,” is agreeable to the
Greek “ἄγνωστος.” | Virtue, that is
God, abides in the highest regions, and that those regions are
infinite, and in the regions immediately above us; but that angels far
removed from Him made the lower world;8341
and that, because light from above had flashed refulgently in the lower
regions, the angels had carefully tried to form man after the
similitude of that light; that man lay crawling on the surface of the
earth; that this light and this higher virtue was, thanks to mercy, the
salvable spark in man, while all the rest of him perishes;8342
| 8342 The text here is
partially conjectural, and if correct, clumsy. For the sense, see
de Anima, c. xxiii. ad init. | that Christ had not existed in a bodily
substance, and had endured a quasi-passion in a phantasmal shape
merely; that a resurrection of the flesh there will by no means
be.
Afterwards broke out the heretic Basilides. He
affirms that there is a supreme Deity, by name Abraxas,8343
| 8343 Or, Abraxes, or
Abrasax. | by whom was created Mind, which in Greek he
calls Νοῦς; that thence sprang the
Word; that of Him issued Providence, Virtue,8344
and Wisdom; that out of these subsequently were made
Principalities, powers,8345
and Angels; that
there ensued infinite issues and processions of angels; that by these
angels 365 heavens were formed, and the world,8346
in
honour of Abraxas, whose name, if computed, has in itself this number.
Now, among the last of the angels, those who made this world,8347
he places the God of the Jews latest, that
is, the God of the Law and of the Prophets, whom he denies to be a God,
but affirms to be an angel. To him, he says, was allotted the seed of
Abraham, and accordingly he it was who transferred the sons of Israel
from the land of Egypt into the land of Canaan; affirming him to be
turbulent above the other angels, and accordingly given to the frequent
arousing of seditions and wars, yes, and the shedding of human
blood. Christ, moreover, he affirms to have been sent, not by
this maker of the world,8348
but by the
above-named Abraxas; and to have come in a phantasm, and been destitute
of the substance of flesh: that it was not He who suffered among
the Jews, but that Simon8349
| 8349 i.e. probably
“Simon the Cyrenian.” See Matt. xxvii. 32; Mark xv. 21; Luke xxiii.
26. | was crucified in
His stead: whence, again, there must be no believing on him who was
crucified, lest one confess to having believed on Simon. Martyrdoms, he
says, are not to be endured. The resurrection of the flesh he
strenuously impugns, affirming that salvation has not been promised to
bodies.
A brother heretic8350
| 8350 Alter hæreticus.
But Fr. Junius suggests “aliter.” |
emerged in Nicolaus. He was one of the seven deacons who were appointed
in the Acts of the Apostles.8351
He affirms that
Darkness was seized with a concupiscence—and, indeed, a foul and
obscene one—after Light: out of this permixture it is a shame to
say what fetid and unclean (combinations arose). The rest (of his
tenets), too, are obscene. For he tells of certain Æons, sons of
turpitude, and of conjunctions of execrable and obscene embraces and
permixtures,8352
| 8352 So Oehler gives in his
text. But his suggestion, given in a note, is perhaps preferable:
“and of execrable embraces and permixtures, and obscene
conjunctions.” | and certain yet
baser outcomes of these. He teaches that there were born,
moreover, dæmons, and gods, and spirits seven, and other things
sufficiently sacrilegious. alike and foul, which we blush to recount,
and at once pass them by. Enough it is for us that this heresy of
the Nicolaitans has been condemned by the Apocalypse of the Lord with
the weightiest authority attaching to a sentence, in saying
“Because this thou holdest, thou hatest the doctrine of the
Nicolaitans, which I too hate.”8353
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
