Now Hegesippus, in the five memoirs that have come down to us, has left a most complete record of his own opinion. In them he makes clear how, having undertaken a journey as far as Rome, he associated with very many bishops, and how he received the same teaching from them all. It is well to hear what he says, after certain remarks about the epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, adding this:
「And the church of the Corinthians continued in the right doctrine until Primus was bishop in Corinth, with whom I associated when I sailed to Rome, and I spent a good many days with the Corinthians, during which we were refreshed together by the right doctrine.」
「And when I was in Rome I drew up a list of the succession down to Anicetus, whose deacon was Eleutherus; and Soter succeeds Anicetus, and after him Eleutherus. And in every succession and in every city things are as the Law preaches, and the Prophets, and the Lord.」
The same writer also sets forth the beginnings of the heresies of his time, through these words: 「And after James the Just had suffered martyrdom for the same reason as the Lord, Symeon the son of Clopas, his uncle's son, was appointed bishop, whom all put forward as being the cousin of the Lord, the second. For this reason they called the church a virgin, for it had not yet been corrupted by vain hearings.」
「But Thebuthis, because he had not been made bishop, began to corrupt it, being one of the seven sects (he too was among the people), from which came Simon, whence the Simonians; and Cleobius, whence the Cleobians; and Dositheus, whence the Dositheans; and Gorthaeus, whence the Goratheni; and Masbotheus, whence the Masbothei. From these came the Menandrianists and Marcionists and Carpocratians and Valentinians and Basilidians, and each one, individually and differently, introduced his own opinion.」
「From these came false Christs, false prophets, false apostles, who divided the unity of the church by corrupting words against God and against his Christ.」
Furthermore, the same writer also relates the heresies that had formerly arisen among the Jews, saying: 「Now there were diverse opinions in the circumcision, among the sons of Israel, against the tribe of Judah and against the Christ, these: Essenes, Galileans, Hemerobaptists, Masbothei, Samaritans, Sadducees, Pharisees.」
And he writes very many other things, of which we have already in part made mention earlier, setting forth the narratives suitably to their proper times. And from the Gospel according to the Hebrews and from the Syriac, and especially from the Hebrew tongue, he sets down certain things, showing that he himself had come to believe out of the Hebrews; and he records other things as from unwritten Jewish tradition.
And not he alone, but also Irenaeus and the whole company of the ancients, called the Proverbs of Solomon Wisdom embracing all virtue. And, treating of the so-called apocrypha, he relates that in his own times some of them were fabricated by certain heretics. But indeed we must now pass on to another matter.