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| Cerdo, Marcion, Lucan, Apelles.
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Chapter
VI.—Cerdo, Marcion, Lucan, Apelles.
To this is added one Cerdo. He introduces two
first causes,8397
that is, two
Gods—one good, the other cruel:8398
the good being the superior; the latter, the cruel one, being the
creator of the world.8399
He repudiates the
prophecies and the Law; renounces God the Creator; maintains that
Christ who came was the Son of the superior God; affirms that He was
not in the substance of flesh; states Him to have been only in a
phantasmal shape, to have not really suffered, but undergone a
quasipassion, and not to have been born of a virgin, nay, really
not to have been born at all. A resurrection of the soul merely does he
approve, denying that of the body. The Gospel of Luke alone, and
that not entire, does he receive. Of the Apostle Paul he takes neither
all the epistles, nor in their integrity. The Acts of the Apostles and
the Apocalypse he rejects as false.
After him emerged a disciple of his, one Marcion
by name, a native of Pontus,8400
| 8400 “Ponticus
genere,” lit. “a Pontic by race,” which
of course may not necessarily, like our native, imply actual
birth in Pontus. [Note—“son of a bishop:” an
index of early date, though not necessarily Ante-Nicene. A mere forgery
of later origin would have omitted it.] | son of a bishop,
excommunicated because of a rape committed on a certain
virgin.8401
| 8401 Rig., with whom Oehler
agrees, reminds us that neither in the de Præscr. nor in
the adv. Marc., nor, apparently, in Irenæus, is any such
statement brought forward. | He, starting from
the fact that it is said, “Every good tree beareth good fruit,
but an evil evil,”8402
attempted to
approve the heresy of Cerdo; so that his assertions are identical with
those of the former heretic before him.
After him arose one Lucan by name, a follower and
disciple of Marcion. He, too, wading through the same kinds of
blasphemy, teaches the same as Marcion and Cerdo had taught.
Close on their heels follows Apelles, a disciple
of Marcion, who after lapsing, into his own carnality,8403
| 8403 See de
Præscr. c. xxx., and comp. with it what is said of Marcion
above. | was severed from Marcion. He introduces one
God in the infinite upper regions, and states that He made many powers
and angels; beside Him, withal, another Virtue, which he affirms to be
called Lord, but represents as an angel. By him he will have it appear
that the world8404
was originated in
imitation of a superior world.8405
With this
lower world he mingled throughout (a principle of) repentance,
because he had not made it so perfectly as that superior world had been
originated. The Law and the prophets he repudiates. Christ he neither,
like Marcion, affirms to have been in a phantasmal shape, nor yet in
substance of a true body, as the Gospel teaches; but says, because He
descended from the upper regions, that in the course of His descent He
wove together for Himself a starry and airy8406
| 8406
“Aëream,” i.e., composed of the air, the
lower air, or atmosphere; not
“aetheream,” of the upper air, or
ether. |
flesh; and, in His resurrection, restored, in the course of His ascent,
to the several individual elements whatever had been borrowed in His
descent: and thus—the several parts of His body
dispersed—He reinstated in heaven His spirit only. This man
denies the resurrection of the flesh. He uses, too, one only apostle;
but that is Marcion’s, that is, a mutilated one. He teaches the
salvation of souls alone. He has, besides, private but
extraordinary lections of his own, which he calls
“Manifestations”8407
| 8407 Phaneroseis. Oehler
refers to de Præscr. c. xxx. q. v. | of one
Philumene,8408
| 8408 φιλουμένη,
“loved one.” | a girl whom he
follows as a prophetess. He has, besides, his own books, which he
has entitled books of Syllogisms, in which he seeks to prove
that whatever Moses has written about God is not true, but is
false.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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