Book of Heresies 1 part 3/9

Therefore both these things were in the incarnation of the Saviour, that is, there was a body and a soul, which for our salvation He deigned to take. It behoves us to know that He had both a true human soul possessing understanding, and a human body likewise possessing carnal sense, so that He could both suffer in body and die. Yet this flesh is known to have been made of the Holy Spirit, and the soul likewise created, as it is written in the Gospel: 'The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee'; and that He had a true soul, He shows by saying, 'I lay down my soul for you'; and concerning the passible flesh He says to Thomas, that a spirit has not bones and flesh, as you see me to have. And the blessed apostle Peter testified concerning the Saviour, saying:

'His soul was not left in hell, neither did His flesh see corruption.' By that whereby He became incarnate, He is believed, acknowledged, worshipped, and proclaimed in the catholic Church as both man for the sake of our salvation and as true God. There are others, the Tropitae, who say that the Word was converted into flesh, not understanding what the blessed apostle John says: 'The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us'; not attending to this, that the Word is unchangeable and unconvertible, that is, God the Son of God; but the flesh which He took for our salvation, He Himself took and put on by forming it, for the sake of our incapacity.

Therefore, that He might be beheld, these realities joined together in one for our salvation declared not a changing of the Word into flesh, but rather the assumption of a visible thing, so that the Invisible might be seen, believed, and known through the visible flesh, and be worshipped in a way comprehensible to the human race. But there are other heretics who go astray concerning the Passion, saying that in the Passion our Lord Christ laid aside the flesh and so ascended into heaven, and that the divinity is now no longer in it. For (they say) neither did He rise in the flesh after the Passion, nor did He ascend into heaven with the flesh — although the whole salvation of man consists in the suffering of His very flesh, and in its rising and ascension into heaven, without any doubt for us and for all believers;

since the blessed angels also said to the apostles, for our faith and joy, in the Acts of the Apostles: 'As you have seen Him ascending into heaven, so hope that He shall come again from heaven.' There are others, the Aerians, so called from a certain Aerius, who give themselves to abstinences, and very many of whom dwell in the province of Pamphylia, who are also called Encratites, that is, abstainers. These possess nothing, abominate the foods which God with His blessing granted to the human race; they also condemn the marriages allowed by the Law, asserting them not to have been instituted by God. There is another heresy, that of the Borborians, who, entangled in the vices of the world and serving evil lusts, do not hope for a judgment to come, but rather praise the carnal lust of the world.

These, therefore, going into the mire and then, mindful of the mire, deforming their own faces and limbs, and thereby exhibiting these same things to all as though God's creature were to be blamed — whereas that whirlpool of faults and that pernicious damnation of vices descended from the will of men, not from the permission of the divine Law. There are others, named Artotyritae, in Galatia, who offer bread and cheese — not that which the catholic and apostolic Church celebrates in its offering.

There are again others, the Ascodrugitae, in Galatia, who set up an inflated wineskin and cover it in their church and go around it, raving and reveling rather, like those pagan Liberipatriani, frenzied with insane minds after the manner of the gentiles, and not understanding what the Saviour says, that new wineskins are to be taken, and into them new wine is to be put, not into the old. And while they hasten to serve their own blindnesses, they are found to be strangers in every way to Christian salvation, since the apostle casts down that Jewish justification and carnal vanity, but confirms the true and full sentence of Christ, saying: 'Old things have passed away; behold, all things are made new through Christ.'

For the Lord spoke of the Law and the shadow, and of the fulness of His own grace, and of two men, in that the apostle says: 'The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven, heavenly.' For what was through the shadow, and what was to come greater and better at the Lord's presence — this He announced by teaching and confirmed by witnessing realities. There are others, the Passalorhynchitae, who, placing a finger upon their nostrils and mouth and lips, practise as it were a perpetual silence, devoting their zeal to nothing else but to taciturnity. In doing this they desire to imitate the blessed prophets, as it were, because the blessed David says: 'Set, O Lord, a watch before my mouth, and a door round about my lips.'

And because the blessed prophets, giving themselves to fastings, often devoted themselves to silence, these men, usurping from this, suppose that they are observing something — hastening to follow rather the vanity of Pythagoras than the heavenly life and wisdom of the prophets. There are others, called Aquarians, who in the heavenly sacraments offer water, not that which the catholic and apostolic Church has been accustomed to do. There are other heretics who assert that there are prophets daily and preach that prophecies are being made, ignorant that the Law and the prophets were until the blessed John the Baptist, and that the end of the Law and the prophets was completed and consummated in the presence of Christ.

There are others, the Coluthians, so called from a certain Coluthus in Egypt, who say that God is not the maker of evils. On the contrary, another opposed him, saying that God is the maker of evils — who himself was likewise a heretic; and while both were carried away by an empty contention, they did not know the power of reason. For Scripture has proclaimed that God makes good things and nonetheless also makes evil things, since the prophet says: 'I am the Lord, who make peace and create evil.' And another prophet says: 'Is there evil in a city, which God has not made?'

But Scripture did not say that those evils were made by God by nature, but by reason of existing causes, namely of men sinning against the Lord under the Law — which evils are temptations, persecutions, and the various distresses which, by God's permission, rise up against sinners, as it is written: 'Who gave Israel for a spoil? Was it not the Lord, against whom they sinned, and would not walk in His ways?' But Scripture does not say anywhere that God made evils by nature: 'For behold,' it says, 'all things which God made were very good,' in the book of Genesis — that is, the creatures of the world. And elsewhere the prophet says: 'For God made not evil, neither delights He in the destruction of the living.'

Therefore, since evils are not by nature from the cause of God the Creator, but from the will of men — which, liable to the law and judgment of God, is pressed and constrained by coercion — for the sake of conversion these things are daily brought upon men by the Lord. When, therefore, these things are spoken, the manner in which they are spoken is not understood. For the evils which are imputed to men by way of coercion are full of instruction and benefit, which the perverse will of men deserves to suffer, since the apostle says: 'Is God unjust, who inflicts His wrath upon men?' Yet not without benefit and future profit are all these things permitted to befall the human race.

For the righteous man, by enduring in tribulation, is proved more faithful and more righteous; but the sinner either, being corrected, ceases from sinning, or, persevering, is taken from the world, lest, while remaining in the body, he should be seen to transgress yet more. Therefore either, corrected while he still remains in the body, he will not delay to do good work; or his mind is summoned away, that he may cease from sin — as the apostle says, 'He that is dead is justified from sin.' But there is another heresy which says that the world is not to be changed, but remains forever in the same state, even after the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ from the heavens — although He Himself says, 'All things shall pass away and be changed.'

But they do not understand that this was said by the Lord by reason of the changing of the elements, so that, these being changed, a new creation may be reformed — as David also teaches: 'They shall perish,' he says, 'but Thou Thyself art the same for ever.' And the Lord says: 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.' And: 'I will make a new heaven and a new earth, says the Lord.' He therefore announces the elements to be restored rather than to perish; and although it is not impossible for God — who made all things out of nothing — to be able again to destroy all things (as the most blessed Job says, 'But if He destroy all things, who shall say to Him, What hast Thou done?') — if then you so understand it, you acknowledge the omnipotence of the Lord Christ; or if someone judges them to be restored, he understands consistently.

For although Scripture shows that the seeds are to perish — that is, that the world itself can come to nothing — nevertheless, because what He made does not utterly perish. For He made, as Solomon says, all things out of nothing, that those things which were not might be able to be. And in the resurrection of men it shows the seeds not to perish, but to come unto a greater glory, as the apostle says: 'It is sown a natural body, it rises a spiritual body; it is sown in corruption, it rises in incorruption.' And again the same most blessed apostle: 'For the expectation of the creature awaits the revelation of the sons of God; for the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who subjected it, in hope of the future glory of dignity.'

'Wherefore,' he says, 'the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God' — thus showing that the elements, that is, men together with this very visible creation, will advance unto the glory of the sons of God, since the Lord says: 'Then shall the sun shine sevenfold.' The elements, therefore, shall pass over to a now greater glory and abide therein with men, although the Lord who made all things could also bring them to nothing. But in this is the eminent majesty and power of Christ, that He promises that these same elements shall pass over to a greater glory. For the apostle also at once announces and prophesies that these elements shall melt and come to nothing.

There is another heresy which asserts that men ought to walk barefoot, because (they say) it was said to Moses, 'Loose thy sandals,' and because the blessed Isaiah walked thus for three years — which things are rather human and of vain superstition, not of the tradition of the saints, nor of the command, authority, and power of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Novatians arose after the last persecution, from a certain Novatus, who before believed as the catholic Church does, receiving the Old Testament and the New.

But in the persecution, because many of the faithful had lapsed and were received into penance by the catholic Church, being angered — or rather led by presumption and pride — they attempted to sow a vain doctrine, separating themselves from the catholic Church and dissenting from the goodness and mercy of Christ, and saying that there is no place for any penance for the faithful after baptism, ignorant of what the Lord cries through the prophet: 'As I live, says the Lord, do I will the death of the sinner, so much as that he should return and live?' If, then, they should say that Scripture said this of those who are to be baptized, yet not of the faithful, let them hear the Saviour, after the baptism of water, speaking of another baptism, namely of the penance of suffering. He says thus:

'I have,' He says, 'a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am straitened until it be accomplished!' — showing assuredly to us that, after the baptism which He had before given through water, there is yet another, of the penance of suffering, to be granted to the human race by His own goodness and clemency to those who fall, and to be bestowed by the same Lord. Understanding this, the apostles preached that, after that first grace, He had also conferred this most salutary thing upon the human race through His passion. For as a provident and almighty One, He grants also to sinners through penance, that he who has fallen, rising and fighting again and persevering therein, may hope that he can attain from the Lord the longed-for victory.

For in Christ, and in His clemency and justice and goodness, there abounds daily, on behalf of sinners and penitents, that which the blessed Paul mourned over concerning those who, by reason of sin, had not done penance, as he said in his epistle: 'Who is weak, and I am not weak?' And again: 'Lest, when I come to you, the Lord humble me again on account of certain ones who have not done penance.' And the blessed apostle Peter said to Simon the magician: 'Do penance, if perhaps that which thou hast done may be forgiven thee.' And Paul commanded that he whom he had cast out be received again after a time. Therefore such men can suffer the loss of dignity, not the loss of salvation — as the Lord says: 'Many are the mansions with my Father.'

There are others, the Montenses, who rebaptize any men whom they have led astray, and madly promise, over and above the baptism of the catholic Church, another baptism of their own; who are also called Donatians, from a certain Donatus established in Africa, who sowed this heresy; who are also now called Parmenians, from a certain Parmenian who lately succeeded to their errors and falsehood.

There are others in Gaul and Spain and Aquitaine, abstainers as it were, who likewise follow a most pernicious portion both of the Gnostics and of the Manichaeans, and do not hesitate to preach the same things — separating men's marriages by their persuasions, and promising abstinence from foods; whereas such grace was granted by Christ to the will of men not by the precept of the Law, but for the sake of a heavenly advancement and dignity. For the Lord says to Peter: 'Not all receive this word.' And again the same Lord says: 'Whoever shall put away his wife without cause of crime, makes her to commit adultery.' It is therefore one thing for this to be done by common consent, a matter of praise,

for the sake of obtaining a greater reward from the Lord; and it is another thing to persuade against the Law and to act against the will of both. And again: 'He that eats not, let him not despise him that eats; and he that eats, let him not judge him that eats not.' That which is therefore of free will is a matter of praise and of greater things — nay rather, it is a desire of a heavenly reward; but that which is outside the Law was not handed down by God in Christ, but invented by the vain presumption and error of men. For it is written: 'I have given you all things to eat, even as the grass.'

But they do this for this reason: that, gradually despising foods, they may say that these are not good, and so that they may assert that foods were not granted by God to men for nourishment, but were made by the devil; thus they suppose, and in this they strive to preach that the creature was not created by God, but was made by the devil; and through this lie they have taken captive the souls of many. There are others in Africa, called Circuitores. These go about the land, and whomever they find on the road, they compel to be killed by them, saying that they themselves desire to suffer martyrdom; and under this pretext many at times turn to brigandage. But some of these die like self-slayers, casting themselves down a precipice, and undergo various kinds of calamitous destruction.

These, since they thus hasten to perish without cause, suffer the loss of an honourable death, and rather involve themselves in the coming judgment of God than free themselves from it. But there are others who will not take food with men, led by a vain presumption, thinking they do something better, because (they say) the prophets did this — ignorant that a different economy was appointed for men by the dispensation of Christ the Lord. These think rightly concerning the Father and the Son, but concerning the Spirit they do not rightly receive Him, believing the Holy Spirit to be created and made, not God, as the Scriptures announce and the catholic Church preaches. There is another heresy which asserts that we ought to keep the Passover with the Jews.

These dwell in Galatia and Syria and Phrygia and at Jerusalem, and since they follow the Jews, they together with them perish in error. And by this the Jews also confirm their own lie, when they perceive certain uninstructed Christians following the vanity of their law as though it were the rule of catholic truth. And these no less celebrate together with those, so that they are made manifest as partakers of the Jews' crime and wickedness, and are recognized by all. There is another heresy which holds only the Apocrypha — that is, the secret writings of the prophets and apostles — and does not receive the canonical Scriptures, that is, the Law and the prophets, namely the Old and the New Testament.

And when they desire to read only those apocryphal writings diligently, they hold opinions contrary to the canonical Scriptures, and gradually they teach as dogma, giving sentences against them, setting down decisions against the Law and the prophets and against the ordinances of the most blessed apostles. Of these are chiefly the Manichaeans, Gnostics, Nicolaitans, Valentinians, and very many others, who, having the apocrypha of the prophets and apostles — that is, separate Acts — disdain to read the canonical Scriptures.

On account of this it was decreed by the blessed apostles and their successors that nothing else ought to be read in the catholic Church except the Law and the prophets and the Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles, and the thirteen epistles of Paul, and seven others — two of Peter, three of John, one of Jude, and one of James — which seven are joined to the Acts of the Apostles. But the hidden Scriptures, that is, the Apocrypha, though they ought to be read by the perfect for the sake of morals, ought not to be read by all, because the heretics, not understanding, have added and taken away many things as they wished.

For the Manichaeans use the apocrypha of the blessed apostle Andrew — that is, the Acts which he did when coming from Pontus into Greece — which the disciples following the blessed apostle then wrote down; whence the Manichaeans and others like them also have the Acts of the blessed Andrew and of John the blessed Evangelist, and likewise of the most blessed apostle Peter, and equally of the blessed apostle Paul. In these, because they performed great signs and wonders — so that even cattle and dogs and beasts might speak — these ruined heretics have also reckoned that the souls of certain men are like those of dogs and cattle.

There are others who assert that the epistle of the blessed Paul to the Hebrews is not his, but say it is either of Barnabas the blessed apostle, or of Clement, bishop of the city of Rome; while others say it is of Luke the most blessed Evangelist. Some also wish to read the epistle written to the Laodiceans as of the blessed apostle. And because certain ones, thinking not rightly, added some things into it, therefore it is not read in the church; and if it is read by some, yet it is not read to the people in church, except his thirteen epistles and, at times, that to the Hebrews. And in this latter, because he wrote rhetorically, in a plausible style, some think it is not of the same apostle; and because he calls Christ 'made' in it, on that account it is not read; and concerning penance, likewise on account of the Novatians.

When, therefore, he calls Christ 'made,' he says it of the body, not that He was made in His divinity, since he teaches in that very place that the Son is of the divine, paternal substance: 'Who is the brightness of glory,' he says, 'and the image of His substance.' He also does not exclude repentance by his teaching, but shows a different degree of dignity between him who has kept his integrity whole and him who has sinned. There is therefore a loss of dignity in him who has sinned, not a loss of salvation. For if anyone fights bravely through martyrdom, he will recover his former soundness; or if he lives worthily in this world, he obtains what he desires to attain.

For in that very epistle he excludes the rebaptizers, but does not deny that the baptism of penance is to be conferred — which at times will be found unfruitful in many penitents; but afterward, by faith, life, good work, even in this world, they have been commended by the Lord, persevering now in good things and fruitful works — as the Lord had said through the prophet: 'I will not remember his evils, but rather his good things, if he now perseveres in good works.' The Melitians are others, from a certain Melitius in Egypt, who had been of the Arian party and was cast out by the catholic Church; who afterward, as though following the truth, was received, and his disciples together with him likewise.

And again, after these things, desiring to act indifferently, they communicated both with the heretics and with the catholic Church. When the catholic Church had perceived their indifference, it made them strangers to its communion. There are others in Egypt and Alexandria, from a certain man named Rhetorius, who praised all heresies, saying that all think rightly, and that none of them errs, but that they all walk well; and he did not perceive that they believed wrongly. If, then, he praised all, whom did he blame? Therefore he does not hold what is true. Photinus too, then, is to be praised, and the heretic who denies that Christ is God before the ages with the Father — and every heresy which blasphemes either against the Father, or against the Son, or against the Spirit.

Why, then, should he praise blaspheming heretics, when Christ the Lord has already condemned them from this present age, saying that the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not forgiven to men who blaspheme and persevere, neither here nor in the time to come? On account of which it is established that this man too is a heretic — or rather, that he knows nothing — who has judged them to be praised, not to be blamed and cast out. There is another heresy which says that the divinity suffered pain, when the flesh, joined to the divinity, suffered upon the cross — these men erring, in that not only can the divinity by nature not suffer, nor be held, nor be seen, but neither even can the soul of man, which was made by God, the Lord saying:

'Fear not them who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.' They err, therefore, in every way, who say that the divinity of Christ is by nature passible, and they impiously hold that it grieved, or wept, or groaned; for the passion of Christ is carnal — by the flesh naturally, not by the divinity grieving. And therefore He was not recognized by the Jews when, in the passible flesh, He was speaking — He who, out of the Law and the prophets, was announced to them as true God, and was openly preached as about to come in the flesh, the prophet saying: 'God shall come openly'; and again the same prophet David: 'The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup.' For what is the cup, but His passion?

He who, conferring such a gift of goodness and clemency upon the human race, was unknown to the most iniquitous people of the Jews. He suffered, therefore, in the passible flesh, not in the divinity which is naturally impassible — He who is both acknowledged and believed, yet not with the divinity absent, but joined together with the body alike, on account of the mystery of consummation appointed and defined beforehand. Knowing this, the apostle did not separate the divinity from the flesh on the cross, saying: 'For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.' The blessed Paul therefore joined both together, that he might manifest to us most fully the goodness and mercy of Christ. But the blessed apostle Peter taught openly what is by nature passible and what is impassible, saying:

'He was indeed put to death in the body, but made alive in the spirit.' Therefore neither was the flesh absent from the divinity, nor the divinity from the flesh, when the human flesh suffered naturally; and in this very thing, with the divinity of Christ permitting it, the mystery of our salvation was being consummated by the Lord, that a full conquest of the enemy might be made; so that He in whom He seemed to suffer as man — He who was God in the flesh — might conquer the enemy not for Himself but for us, and might, to us who were before conquered, in His passion open the power of conquering to those who believe in Him, and minister heavenly glory to those who follow Him. Therefore no natural suffering and grief of God of that sort was begotten in His divinity, as some suppose; otherwise He was only a man, not God and man, as it is written:

but the mystery of our eternal salvation was being consummated, which had before been announced by the Law and the prophets alike. There is another heresy which says that God is, as it were, three-formed and composite, so that there is a certain part of the Father, a certain part of the Son, a certain part of the Holy Spirit, and they assert that it ought so to be believed; and in saying this they neither know nor understand the sense of the divine Scripture. For in calling the substance a certain three-formed thing, they blaspheme worse than many, being ignorant that one is He who sent, another He who was sent. Therefore there is a true person of the Father, who sent the Son, and there is a true person of the Son, who came from the Father, and there is a true person of the Spirit, who was sent by the Son and the Father.

Of these three Persons, therefore, there is one truth, one majesty, an equal substance, and an everlasting divinity. For just as the Father's Person is boundless and unspeakable, so also is the Son's; so also is the Holy Spirit's, so that in the distinction of names and of the three Persons there is no diversity of nature. This Trinity, then, is immeasurable and invisible and unspeakable, which is known by faith alone, yet by the utterance of human speech and by mortal understanding cannot worthily be set forth.

For when Scripture says that the Father sends the Son and that the Son sends the Holy Spirit, it speaks for the sake of the Persons; it does not show them to be separated by distance of place — this on account of the heretics Sabellius and Photinus, who refused to understand God in a worthy way; for the Lord says: 「To whom do you make me like,」 says the Lord, 「and to whom shall I be like?」 *** 「For just as heaven is distant from earth, so distant are your thoughts and reflections and counsels from my thoughts and reflections,」 says the Lord. When therefore Scripture says that the Father sent and that the Son was sent, it speaks for the sake of the Persons, lest anyone, supposing either that the Father himself was sent or that the Son himself did the sending *** — for, not understanding it thus, Sabellius raves.

And again, lest the Son who was sent from heaven be thought not to be everywhere with the Father, he indeed said that he was sent by the Father, yet he showed that he is everywhere with the Father, saying: 「The Father who sent me is with me.」 He did not, therefore, speak of a separation of place, since the Son himself, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, fills and contains all things; but he deigned to teach thus, that we might believe the Father's Person to be true, and the Son's such as the Father's, and the Holy Spirit's a true Person just as the Son's, and that we might acknowledge of these three Persons one substance of quality, one majesty, and one power: