Concerning the manifold pestilence of heresies, and the various errors which have arisen from the beginning of the world, and flowed down among the Jews, and have sprouted up since our Lord Jesus the Saviour came in the flesh, it is fitting to speak, and gradually to set forth their number, and to recognize that the enemy of the human race, the devil, has not without reason been compared by the holy prophet to the partridge: for that bird, since it often suffers barrenness, broods stealthily over the eggs of others and cherishes and claims them as its own offspring for a certain time; but when, as their age advances and brings discernment, the time has grown ripe for them, then, having lost their false parents, recalling by their own perception the rights of their true parents and beholding them plainly with their eyes, they no longer delay to follow them.
For whose sake has this likeness been declared to us? Because, when the devil has been forsaken—he by reason of whose impiety, while he thought to hold the whole world under his sway and power—yet afterward, when Christ our Parent had been seen and recognized by us, every man, having lost the falsehood of that most lying parent, no longer delays to follow the footsteps of his true parent Christ, recognizing him. For daily we perceive that the prophecy of the most blessed Jeremiah is fulfilled, as in an enigma, speaking thus:
«The partridge cried out, it gathered what it did not bring forth, making for itself riches not with wisdom; in the midst of its days they shall forsake it, and at the last it shall be foolish»—which now is fulfilled, when all the nations, daily forsaking the deadly idolatry of the enemy, hearing from the law and the prophets that Christ is now the true God, and believing and remembering that he is forever with the Father, hasten alike to fly to him as suppliants in every way, that the prophecy may be fulfilled: «All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord Christ.» THIS, THEN, IS THE NUMBER OF THE HERETICS FROM THE BEGINNING AND ORIGIN OF THE WORLD: FIRST are the Ophites, who are also called Serpentines.
These venerate the serpent, that is, the snake, saying that it first brought us the beginning of the knowledge of good and evil. Hence they assert that God envied it, because, they say, it first conveyed to the woman the knowledge of good and evil things, and through her it thus spread to the whole race of mankind; on which account, they say, it was first cast down from heaven into another; whence they also say it will come from heaven, and they reckon it to be a kind of power of God, and they proclaim that it must be adored.
Others are the Cainites, who praise Cain the fratricide, the firstborn of our father, the blessed first-formed Adam, saying that Cain was made by another power, that is, of the devil, while the most blessed Abel was born of the other power; and they say that the greater power, which was in Cain himself, prevailed, so that he killed his own brother. There is also another heresy, that of the Sethians, who venerate Seth, the son of Adam afterward begotten and so named, who was born after the slaying of the most blessed Abel; from whom they are called Sethians, worshipping him and saying that, when two men were created at the beginning and the angels were set in dissension, a feminine power prevailed in heaven; for among them males and females, gods and goddesses, are supposed to exist.
Perceiving this, they say, the mother, because the righteous Abel had been slain, devised to bring forth the righteous Seth, in whom she also placed a spirit of great power, that the hostile powers might be destroyed. And from Seth himself, they say, Christ the God draws his lineage. But certain of them assert and suppose not only that he draws his lineage from him, but that Seth himself is the Christ. A certain Dositheus, afterward, a Jew by race, dared to say that one must live according to the flesh alone, hoping for no future resurrection in the law of God concerning it, believing neither in the Spirit of God nor in an angel, nor awaiting a future judgment from the law and the prophets.
After him the Sadducees, named from a Jewish man Sadoc, who was called by this name—who was a disciple of that man, and who confirmed this heresy, so that from him they were called Sadducees—likewise preach that one must live according to the flesh alone, that one must be circumcised and the body baptized, but expecting nothing else from the divine law, following Epicurean madness rather than the ordinances of the divine law. Concerning these it is also written in the Gospel, the Lord teaching and preaching against this pestilential heresy. And there is another, that of the Pharisees, which confesses a future resurrection, accepts the law and the prophets, but awaits Christ as a righteous man.
These judaize and do not accept the Gospels, and they assert that certain times are contrary to Christ our Lord. But others are the Samaritans, so named from a king Samareus. Others, however, say that they are named from a son of Canaan, who was called by this name Samareus, from whom the Samaritans are called.
These accept the law of Moses, that is, only the four books, not awaiting a future judgment, denying the resurrection, not believing that Christ the God, the Son of God, was foretold in the law and the prophets; not holding, according to the law, that man has an immortal soul, but supposing that one must live only in this body, and reckoning that the future resurrection is in the procreation of children, which happens daily in this age—esteeming and preaching this vanity, being indeed compared to senseless beasts, as it is written in the prophet: «Man, being set in honour, did not understand; he was compared to senseless beasts, and was made like to them.»
There is another heresy of the Jews who are called Nazoreans, which accepts the law and the prophets, yet affirms that one must live carnally, and supposes that all justification consists in carnal observance; they even let the hair of the head grow, thinking that all the power of righteousness consists in it, presuming this for themselves as a sign, as it were from that judge Samson, because they were called Nazoreans: from which afterward the pagans, taking over strong men after his figure, named them Hercules. But the Essenes are others, who are called by this name. These practise the life of monks, taking no delicate foods, nor showing zeal in clothing, nor possessing anything,
but devoting themselves to reading and to good works, dwelling also in separated places; yet not awaiting Christ the God, the Son of God, nor recognizing him as the Lord proclaimed in the law and the prophets, but believing in and awaiting him only as a prophet or a righteous man. But others are the Heliognosti, who are also called Deinvictiaci, who adore the sun, saying that the sun knows all the things that are God's, and that nothing else but the sun gives light to men, and that the sun supplies them with all nourishment—not recognizing that, set in servitude, it daily traverses its course as appointed by God the Father through Christ the Lord in the Holy Spirit; concerning which it is written: «He who bids the sun to rise, and it rises; and not to rise, and it does not rise.»
This vain pagan, the famous Hermes Trismegistus, taught that after God the Almighty no other but the sun ought to be adored both by him and by men; and when he had gone to the province of the Celts, he is known to have taught them this, and to have persuaded them to succumb to this error. The captive Jews adored this sun, as the prophet Ezekiel condemns those same Jews by accusing them, and declares and convicts them as guilty of the crime of high treason, calling them to witness, as it is written. There are others who worship the frogs which, in the wrath of God under Pharaoh, at that time flowed forth upon the land of the Egyptians, to wear out the Egyptians with their stench; and in this wickedness they still persist, thinking that they can appease the wrath of God by this vain observance.
There are others by the name of Musiritae, who worship field-mice; these, when in the time of Eli the priest of old the ark of the covenant had been captured by the foreigners (Philistines), and the earth, by the wrath of God, brought forth mice to destroy their crops, being admonished by their own people, made golden mice, and sent them back with the ark and five golden seats; and the plague ceased from them. So these, accepting the law and the prophets, do not recognize that this thing is vain and abominable, which is despised by all and mocked in every way. There are others who worship the fly of Accaron (Ekron) in the city so called, as is written in the book of Kingdoms, just as King Ozias (Ahaziah) of the Jews, being sick, had sent to the fly of the city of Accaron to learn whether he could be healed of the sickness of his body;
for which cause the blessed Elias the prophet, kindled with divine zeal, because the king of the Jews chose to hope for the salvation of the Jews not from God-Christ, but rather from a fly and the city of Accaron, being thus angered, by the divine Spirit declared at once that he would not escape, but would die in his bed. There are the Troglodytes, who are so called among the Jews, who, dwelling in caves, did not cease to worship idols in hidden places, as the prophet Ezekiel says, the Lord showing how in hidden caves the elders of the people, holding censers, sacrificed to idols and adored them with blind minds.
There is another heresy among the Jews, which they call the Queen, and also the Fortune of Heaven, and whom in Africa they call Caelestis (the Heavenly One); and they do not hesitate to offer sacrifices to her, so that even to the prophet Jeremiah the Jews then said openly, when he admonished them to depart from idols and serve the Lord, and that they ought to adore him alone: enraged, they cried out, saying that, ever since, they say, they ceased to sacrifice to the Fortune of Heaven or the Queen, from that time all evils and dangers had befallen them. On which account blessed Jeremiah, going forth from the people and from their city, had written in a book his Lamentations because of that impiety, and was announcing that not long after, ruin would come upon them and upon their city.
There are others among them who, keeping in memory the name of Baal, king of the Tyrians, and adoring his very idol, sacrificed to it, as is contained in the book of Kingdoms, when Ahab, king of the Israelites, and Jezebel his wife did not cease to sacrifice to that idol. In which matter, led by divine zeal, the blessed prophet Elias, sent by Christ the Lord, said to them—who under the name of Judaism professed the law, but served a pernicious pagan impiety—and to all the people thus he said: «How long do you halt upon both your knees? Either to God, God, or to Baal, Baal!» And nonetheless the king and queen, favouring the priests of the groves, perished by various punishments and torments.
The people too, not departing from idols, perished in frequent captivities. There are others who venerated Asthar the man and Chamos, the abomination of the Canaanites and Sidonians—that is, idols of men and women—and offered to them various sacrifices; on whose account captivity often came upon those kings and the people, the Lord then permitting it, as is contained in the books of Kingdoms. Except for the blessed king David, and the holy Hezekiah, and Josiah, and Jehu the son of Nimshi, all the others permitted the peoples to sacrifice to idols, and often were themselves involved in their ruin, not destroying these things, but rather hastening to become abettors of their impiety, like the other kings, as the books of Kingdoms testify.
There is another heresy among the Jews, concerning which the Lord rebuked them through the prophets. And concerning it the blessed martyr Stephen reproached them, saying: «Did you offer to me victims and sacrifices for forty years, O house of Israel, says the Lord Almighty? And now you have taken up the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Remphan, the forms of fixed idols and graven images?» On which account the Lord says: «I will cause you to be carried captive in migration into the land of Babylonia and of the Persians, and into other inner and arid places, and into the uttermost parts of all lands.» There are others who, setting up an altar so called by the name Topheth, after someone, in the valley of the son of Ennom (Hinnom), there immolated their sons and daughters to demons. Concerning whom the Lord says through the prophet Ezekiel:
«Behold, son of man, see what the people of Israel do: this one immolates his sons and his daughters in the valley of Topheth to demons, which I did not command them to do, this iniquity in Israel my people.» There are others, the Puteoritae, who worship wells, digging deep, and drawing from them as it were water of salvation, hoping for something in it; whereas the Lord says through the prophet, admonishing: «They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug for themselves worn-out cisterns, which cannot hold the water of salvation.» What therefore he spoke before through the prophet, he fulfilled in his own divine presence, saying: «Everyone who shall drink of this earthly water shall thirst again; but of the water which I shall give him, if he drink, he shall not thirst forever, but it shall become in him a spring leaping up into eternal life.»
Indeed it was the Christian grace of saving baptism granted to the human race by the Lord and Saviour. There is another heresy among the Jews which sacrificed to the serpent, and celebrated this same impiety toward the serpent down to Hezekiah, that most blessed king of the Jews; as we read in the books of Kingdoms, that down to Hezekiah the Jewish people sacrificed to the bronze serpent which blessed Moses had been commanded to make at the exodus of Israel from Egypt, when the murmuring Jews were bitten by serpents and were perishing: and in this the Lord commanded that Moses make a bronze serpent and lift it up in the midst of the people upon a pole; and those who looked upon it were saved from the plagues and various wounds.
To that bronze serpent, then, the Jewish people sacrificed down to King Hezekiah; and there were also formations on a great stone, like an obelisk, which had been set in the temple in place of a column, and on it the Jews carved incisions and impressions by the hand of men, and as of certain letters, and taking various little figures and setting them on plates, they carried them about on their necks: teaching incantations also, and having as it were phylacteries—nay rather practising them as sorceries—they worshipped these same things, and from them they carried, and carry, on their body amulets and protective charms, which the Lord had everywhere forbidden in the law to be made, because this was the impiety of pagan blindness.
These impressions, then, or carvings, the most blessed King Hezekiah ordered to be destroyed, and to be utterly scraped away with iron and cut out; he also commanded the bronze serpent to be taken down and broken: for which act he was deservedly delivered by the Lord from so great a siege of the Persians and Assyrians, who at that time had come to take captive the people and city of the Jews; so that on that night when King Hezekiah feared the barbarians, an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and struck a hundred and eighty-five thousand of the foreigners besieging the city in the silent night, and in the morning showed all the men lifeless and dead to the king and to all the people of the Jews.
There is another heresy, as the prophet Ezekiel, by God's command, perceived: under the earth, in a cave, seventy elder men of the Jews standing, holding censers, and sacrificing to various graven figures and adoring these same things. There is another heresy of the Jews, which, by God's command, the prophet is compelled to perceive in a cave: women sitting and lamenting a certain Thamuz by name, who was the son of a king of the Gentiles, whose image the Jewish women adored with weeping, and, practising the impiety of the Gentiles, did not cease to offer sacrifices to him. For Thamuz was also the name of that Pharaoh, king of the Egyptians, who in the time of blessed Moses presided over the Egyptians at that time.
There is another heresy among the Jews which, as of many men, as it were, and many women, worshipping the idols of the Baalites, did not cease to offer to them sacrifices in hidden caves, the Scripture saying that there was, as it were, a number of many men and many women: but this was named either from King Belus, who held the East with a powerful rule for a long time, and from whose wife and sons and daughters, thus born of those parents, it showed that all their offspring proceeded, so that from them the Baalites were named in the plural. For just as there is a race either of the Greeks or of the Anicii and others, so from their own parents arose all their offspring, that from one name the impious generation should be called Baalites.
And so the dead, when they were placed in their tombs, and their offspring likewise buried in that place, deserved to be named by their own people, by their posterity, by this name, so that they were called Baalites from their original lineage. But Belus obtained this name or surname either from his proper name, or from his prowess in war, because at that time he overcame many: and concerning this matter the people of the Jews are accused by divine Scripture for following the impiety of the Gentiles, because, sacrificing to them—that is, to the kings and their sons and all their subsequent kindred—they were delivered into various captivities.
There is another heresy among the Jews, which asserts that the idol Baal, or Balaam the false prophet—who had come from Mesopotamia against the most blessed Moses—took its name; because Balak, then king of the Moabites, had asked him to come to him and curse the people of the Jews. And because, as a prophet, he was beforehand named in the Scriptures, but, despising the Lord's command, he afterward descended to the ruin of a false prophet by plotting against the people of God, the Jews, like pagans, making an idol of him under this name, did not cease to worship it. There is another heresy concerning the Pythoness (the witch with a familiar spirit), namely that, by covering a woman with garments, they hoped to be able to obtain certain responses from her.
Whence they say that that Pythoness raised up the soul of blessed Samuel from the dead; and from this very many even to this day chiefly suppose that it could be believed, because the things which the most blessed prophet, while yet living, had said to King Saul, those same things he is known to have said truly again, as it were, in the raising-up, as God's responses; and since very many prefer to acquiesce in this lie, they descend forever into ruin, although the prophet says: «The souls of the righteous are in the hand of the Lord, and death does not touch them.» How, then, could an impious soul raise up from the dead a holy and pious soul, and that of a prophet most of all?
But because they are ignorant that souls departing from the faith of Christ the Lord now give themselves over to impiety and subject themselves to it with all zeal—since every man is of his own free will, so that he may choose to do what he wishes, God permitting it—now, because such a soul has departed from the Lord, so that an unclean spirit now lorded it over him, among those who are doubtful and halting in the divine law, as blessed Elias said: «Either to God, God, or to Baal, Baal.» For he who cleaves to Christ is one body, and he who cleaves to an unclean spirit is one in consent.
And when Ahab, king of the Jews, believed Zedekiah and the other false prophets, and despised Micaiah, the true prophet of the Lord, the Lord questions the unclean spirit—a place of goodness having still been granted to the king by Christ the Lord up to a certain time, so that, if he were willing to believe the true prophet, he might avoid the storm of danger; but if he were unwilling and rather believed the false prophets, he would without doubt perish. For thus the Lord questions the unclean spirit, saying: «Who shall seduce King Ahab of the Israelites, that he may go into battle and there be slain?» And behold, the unclean spirit came, saying: «I will go and do it.» And the Lord said to the unclean spirit: «How will you do this?» And the unclean spirit said to the Lord:
«I make myself as it were an angel of light, and I will speak like words, and I will lead him into the fray, and there I will desert him, and so he shall die.» And the Lord said to him: «Go, so shall you do.» And therefore the Apostle also says: «It is no great thing if even Satan transforms himself as it were into an angel of light, since his servants are transformed.» And so they deceive many by sight, by word, or by persuasion—by nothing else, indeed, than by what is, as it were, similar and true; so that, when men are willing in due time to believe and to cleave to them with words, as it were, similar, and with appearances, as it were, good and not evil, they incur the inescapable sentence of eternal death, and after the departure of the body are cast down with various punishments and torments.
This danger befell the king of the Jews at that time, because he had preferred to believe false rather than the true prophets of God. There is a heresy among the Jews which, worshipping Asthar and Astharoth after the death of Moses and the succession of Joshua the son of Nun, were delivered over to the captivity of the Gentiles. For they worshipped Asthar and Astharoth, men and women, and their figures, which were the names of the kings of the Syrians and of the Egyptians: when their sons and daughters were worshipped by their own peoples, afterward also making temples for them, and after their death burying their offspring in that same place, they offered to them the names of gods and goddesses, with sacrifices likewise.
For there is an Astartium (temple of Astarte) in Syria, and various others, many in number, since from the nation of the Canaanites all this impiety then blazed up—the nation which Moses, with all his people, was commanded by the Lord to root out. Others are the Herodians, so called from Herod, king of the Jews. These confess the resurrection, accept the law and the prophets, but await Herod, king of the Jews, struck down by an angel, hoping for him as the Christ. NOW AFTER THE PASSION OF CHRIST OUR LORD AND HIS ASCENSION INTO HEAVEN, there was a certain Simon Magus, a Samaritan by race, a Gitthean, from a place which is an estate in Samaria so named:
who, devoting himself to magical arts, deceived many, saying that he was a certain power of God, which, he said, is above all powers. The Samaritans venerate him as it were a father, and extol him as the founder of their pernicious heresy, and strive to set him above many with praises. He, baptized by the blessed apostles, departed from their faith, and sowed a wicked and pernicious heresy, saying that he had been transformed in semblance—that is, as it were through a shadow—and had thus suffered, although, he said, he did not suffer. He even dared to say that the world was made by angels, and that the angels were made by certain senses endowed from heaven, and that they had deceived the race of men.
He asserts, moreover, that there is a certain other Intellect, which descended into the world for the sake of the salvation of men—that Helen, he says, who in the Trojan war is reported to have been produced by most vain poets. And the powers, he says, which had made the world, led by lust for that Helen, were stirring up sedition. For she, he says, giving lust to those powers, and appearing in feminine form, could not ascend into heaven, because the powers which were in heaven did not permit her to ascend; but she was awaiting another power—that is, the presence of the Magus Simon himself—which, coming, might save her.
He even asserts, by allegory, that the wooden horse, which the most vain poets say existed in the Trojan war, was that engine—the ignorance of all the impious nations—although it is established that that Helen, who was with the Magus, was a harlot from Tyre, and that this same Simon Magus had followed her, and with her had perpetrated various magic and various crimes. When he was fleeing from the blessed apostle Peter from the city of Jerusalem and came to Rome, and there contended with the blessed apostle before King Nero, being overcome on every side by the prayer of the blessed apostle and struck by an angel, he thus deserved to perish, so that his magic and his lie might be made manifest to all men as evident.
After him a certain man by the name of Menander, who, having become his disciple, followed his impiety in all things. After this man a certain Saturnilus, himself also taking from there the fuel of a deadly teaching, asserted, saying that the world was made by angels, and that the angels differed from that Power, and that the world was divided by rank among the angels, and that they had thought to make man. So they made man, and their work, he says, was man; for from the supernal Power a light had been sent down, which illumined this world and led the angels to lust, and at once it ascended into heaven. But they, made desirous of that very light, were eager to see its power; yet not prevailing, they said to one another:
'Let us make man after our image and likeness.' And once man had been made, because he was powerless, he could not be saved. So the heavenly Power, seeing what those beings had done to him, sent forth a spark, which set man right, raised him up, and made him live. Therefore they hold that the spark is to be saved, while the rest, they imagine, is dismissed and abandoned to those powers that fashioned it. They assert moreover that Christ appeared only in a shadowy fashion, that he did not take the true flesh and soul of a man, and that he thus fulfilled the whole economy of the Saviour's mystery. After these came Basilides, who is called a heresiarch by many, because, while setting forth and speaking of the Law and the Prophets and the Apostles yet thinking otherwise, he violated the laws of Christian truth.
When he had come to Egypt, he taught, laying down his teaching thus: that from the unbegotten and sole God was born Mind; from Mind, Word; from Word, Sense; from Sense, Power and Wisdom; and from Power and Wisdom were made various Principalities and Powers and angels. For these very angels, he says, made heaven; after them other angels made a heaven; and so, from some others being put forth, others made a third heaven. And in this order, he says, still others made three hundred and sixty-five heavens. He assigns angelic names to those powers, and, himself given over to magic arts, he likewise deceives many unlearned people. He further asserts that man was made by the angels.
He even dares to call the true, almighty God an angel, and says that this one received the Jewish nation as an inheritance and led them out of the land of Egypt. This one, then, having grown more bold, was lifted up—he says—against the rest of the angels, and, wishing to hold the others in subjection, he gained hostile nations, which his enemy powers stirred up. For this reason, he says, diverse nations rose up against the Jews. He says, moreover, that Christ suffered only in semblance, as if through a shadow. He affirms also that Simon of Cyrene came to the passion in his stead; for it was he, he says, who carried the cross. This man also wickedly permits loose living and gives license to cling to worldly vices. He even forbids men to suffer martyrdom for the name of Christ the Lord, speaking thus: