Collected Works 23

I. The condition of the present times provokes even this admonition of ours: that we ought not to marvel at these heresies, whether because they exist — for they were foretold as about to be — or because they subvert the faith of some, for this is their very purpose, that faith, by having temptation, might have also its testing. Vainly, therefore, and inconsiderately are very many scandalized by this very thing, that heresies avail so much. How much would they avail, if they had not been? When a thing has been so allotted that in every way it is to exist, then, just as it receives a cause on account of which it exists, so it obtains a power through which it exists, and cannot but be. II.

The fever, in short, appointed to man among the other deadly and torturing means of death, we do not marvel at because it exists — for it does exist — nor because it does away with man, for to this end it exists. So too, if we are terrified that heresies, produced for the languishing and destruction of faith, can do this, it is first for us to be terrified that they exist as such — heresies which, while they exist, have power, and while they can, have existence. But indeed the fever, as an evil both in its cause and in its potency, as is well known, we abominate rather than marvel at, and, as far as in us lies, we guard against it, not having its abolition within our power.

But as for heresies, which bring in eternal death and the burning of a greater fire, some prefer to marvel that they can do this, rather than to avoid being able to be destroyed by them, though they have the power of avoiding. For the rest, heresies will avail nothing, if only men do not marvel that they avail so much. For either, while men marvel, they are furnished as an occasion of stumbling, or, because they are scandalized, therefore they marvel, as though the fact that heresies avail so much came from some truth. It is a wonder, forsooth, that evil should have its own strength — except that heresies avail much among those who avail not in the faith! In the contest of boxers and gladiators, for the most part one wins not because he is strong or because he cannot be conquered, but because the one who was conquered was of no strength:

so much so that this same victor, afterwards matched with one who is truly strong, withdraws even overcome. Not otherwise do heresies derive whatever strength they have from the weaknesses of certain persons, availing nothing if they run up against a faith that is truly strong. III. These wonderers are indeed wont to be edified unto ruin by certain persons captured by heresy: 'Why has this woman, or that man, most faithful, most prudent, most approved in the Church, gone over to that party?' Who that says this does not himself answer himself, that those whom heresies could pervert are to be reckoned neither prudent nor faithful nor approved? And is this a wonder, I suppose, that one once approved should afterwards fall away? Saul, good beyond the rest, is afterwards overturned by envy.

David, a good man after the Lord's own heart, is afterwards guilty of murder and adultery. Solomon, endowed by the Lord with all grace and wisdom, is led into idolatry by women. For to the Son of God alone was it reserved to remain without sin. What, then, if a bishop, if a deacon, if a widow, if a virgin, if a teacher, if even a martyr, has fallen from the rule of faith? Shall heresies on that account be seen to hold the truth? Do we prove the faith from persons, or persons from the faith? No one is wise unless he be faithful, no one is greater unless he be a Christian, and no one is a Christian unless he has persevered to the very end. You, as a man, know each one from the outside; you think what you see, and you see only so far as you have eyes. But 'the eyes,' He says, 'of the Lord are lofty.'

Man looks upon the face, God upon the heart. And therefore the Lord knows those who are His, and roots up the plant which He did not plant, and shows the last out of the first, and carries the winnowing-fan in His hand to purge His threshing-floor. Let the chaff of a light faith fly away as much as it will at whatever blast of temptations, so much the purer will the mass of wheat be laid up in the Lord's barns. Did not certain of the disciples, offended, turn away from the Lord Himself? Yet not on that account did the rest also think they should depart from His footsteps; but those who knew that He was the Word of life and had come from God persevered in His company to the very end, when He had graciously offered that they too, if they wished, might depart.

It is a lesser matter if certain men — Phygellus and Hermogenes and Philetus and Hymenaeus — forsook His apostle; the very betrayer of Christ was one of the Apostles. Do we marvel at His churches if they are deserted by some, when the very things we suffer prove us Christians after the example of Christ Himself? 'They went out from us,' he says, 'but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us.' IV. Rather, let us be mindful both of the Lord's pronouncements and of the apostolic writings, which both foretold to us that heresies would come and prescribed that they were to be shunned; and, just as we are not terrified that they exist, so let us not marvel that it is able to do that on account of which they are to be shunned.

The Lord instructs us that many will come in sheep's clothing, ravening wolves. What are these sheep's clothings but the outward surface of the Christian name? What the ravening wolves but the crafty senses and spirits, lurking within to infest the flock of Christ? What the false prophets but false preachers? What the false apostles but adulterous evangelizers? What the antichrists, both for the time and always, but the rebels against Christ? Such will heresies be, harassing the Church by the perversity of new doctrines no less than antichrist will then persecute it by the atrocity of persecutions — except that persecution makes even martyrs, but heresy makes only apostates.

And therefore heresies too had to exist, that those who are approved might be made manifest — both those who stood firm in persecutions and those who did not swerve aside into heresies. For neither does he bid those to be understood as approved who change their faith into heresy, as, on the contrary, they interpret in their own favour, because he said elsewhere: 'Test all things; hold fast that which is good.' As though it were not permitted that all, when things have been ill tested, should strike through error upon the choosing of some evil. V. Furthermore, if he rebukes dissensions and schisms, which without doubt are evils, and immediately subjoins heresies, then, since he joins them to evils, he certainly professes them to be an evil, and indeed a greater one, when he says he therefore believed the reports of schisms and dissensions because he knew that heresies also must needs be.

For he shows that, at the sight of a graver evil, he readily believed the lighter ones; certainly not that he therefore believed the evils because heresies were good, but that from temptations of a worse stamp also he might forewarn men that they need not marvel at those which he said tended to the making manifest of the approved — namely, of those whom he could not deprave. In short, if the whole passage is directed to the maintaining of unity and the coercing of separations, and heresies no less than schisms and dissensions tear men away from unity, then without doubt he has placed heresies also in that same condition of reprehension in which he placed schisms and dissensions.

And by this he does not make those approved who have turned aside into heresies, since he most strongly upbraids the very turning aside from such things, teaching that all should speak the one thing and hold the same understanding — which very thing heresies do not permit. VI. Nor need we dwell longer on this — whether it is the same Paul who elsewhere also enumerates heresies among the works of the flesh, writing to the Galatians, and who suggests to Titus that a heretical man is to be refused after a first correction, because such a one is perverse and offends, so as to be self-condemned. But in almost every epistle, inculcating the avoidance of adulterine doctrines, he brands heresies, whose works are the adulterine doctrines: called 'heresies' by the Greek word from the meaning of 'choice,' by which a man makes especial use of it, whether for establishing or for taking them up.

Therefore he also said the heretic to be self-condemned, because in the very point wherein he is condemned he has made a choice for himself. But for us it is not permitted to bring in anything of our own choosing, nor even to choose what another has brought in of his own choosing. We have the Lord's Apostles as our authors, who themselves also did not choose anything of their own choosing to bring in, but faithfully assigned to the nations the discipline they had received from Christ. And so, even if an angel from heaven should preach otherwise, he would be pronounced anathema by us. The Holy Spirit had already then foreseen that there would be, in a certain virgin Philumene, an angel of seduction transfiguring himself into an angel of light, by whose signs and wonders Apelles was induced and brought in a new heresy. VII.

These are the doctrines of men and of demons, born for itching ears out of the ingenuity of worldly wisdom — which the Lord, calling it foolishness, chose the foolish things of the world for the confounding even of philosophy itself. For this is the matter of worldly wisdom, that rash interpreter of the divine nature and dispensation. The heresies themselves, in fact, are equipped by philosophy. From this source come the aeons and I know not what infinite forms, and the trinity of man in Valentinus: he had been a Platonist. From this came Marcion's god, the better one from tranquillity: he had come from the Stoics. And that the soul is said to perish: Epicurus is heeded; and that the restitution of the flesh is denied, this is taken from the one school of all the philosophers; and where matter is made equal with God, it is the teaching of Zeno;

and where anything is alleged about a fiery god, there Heraclitus intervenes. The same subject-matter is turned over among heretics and philosophers, the same discussions are entangled: whence evil, and why? and whence man, and how? and — what Valentinus lately propounded — whence God? forsooth, from Enthymesis and Ectroma. Wretched Aristotle! who taught them dialectic, that craftswoman of building up and pulling down, shifty in her propositions, forced in her conjectures, hard in her arguments, a worker of contentions, troublesome even to herself, retracting everything so as to have treated nothing thoroughly.

Hence those fables and endless genealogies and unprofitable questions and words that spread like a cancer, from which the Apostle, restraining us, testifies by name that philosophy and vain deceit ought to be guarded against, writing to the Colossians: 'See that no one circumvents you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the tradition of men, contrary to the providence of the Holy Spirit.' He had been at Athens and, from his encounters, had come to know that human wisdom, that affecter and interpolator of the truth, itself also split into many parts by the variety of its mutually warring sects. What, then, has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has the Academy to do with the Church? What have heretics to do with Christians?

Our instruction is from the porch of Solomon, who had himself handed down that the Lord is to be sought in simplicity of heart. Let them look to it who have brought forward a Stoic and Platonic and dialectical Christianity! We have no need of curiosity after Christ Jesus, nor of inquiry after the Gospel. When we believe, we desire nothing beyond believing. For this we believe first: that there is nothing further which we ought to believe. VIII. I come, therefore, to that clause which both our own people put forward for entering upon curiosity, and the heretics urge for importing scrupulosity. 'It is written,' they say, 'Seek, and you shall find.' Let us recall when the Lord uttered this saying.

I suppose it was in the very first-fruits of His teaching, when it was still doubted among all whether He was the Christ, when not even Peter had yet pronounced Him the Son of God, when even John had ceased to be certain about Him. Rightly, then, was it said at that time, 'Seek, and you shall find,' when He was still to be sought who was not yet recognized — and this as regards the Jews. For to them belongs the whole discourse of this reproach, who had the means whereby to seek Christ. 'They have,' He says, 'Moses and Elijah,' that is, the Law and the Prophets, preaching Christ, according to what He says elsewhere openly: 'Search the Scriptures, in which you hope for salvation; for they speak of me.' This will be the meaning of 'Seek, and you shall find.'

For that what follows also applies to the Jews is manifest: 'Knock, and it shall be opened to you.' The Jews had formerly been with God; then, cast out for their offences, they began to be outside God; but the nations were never with God, save as a drop from a bucket and dust from the threshing-floor, and always outside. And so, they who are always outside — how shall they knock at the place where they never were? What door do they know, into which they were neither admitted nor cast out at any time? But he who knows that he was within and was driven forth, he rather will knock and knows the door. Likewise, 'Ask, and you shall receive,' belongs to him who knew from whom to ask, from whom something had been promised — namely, from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom the nations had known no more than any promise of His.

And indeed He was speaking to Israel: 'I am not sent,' He says, 'but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' Not yet was He casting to the dogs the children's bread, not yet had He commanded them to go into the way of the nations. Since indeed at the end He gave the precept that they should go to teach and baptize the nations, being soon about to obtain the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who was to lead them into all truth. And this, therefore, He does for them. But if the apostles, destined as teachers for the nations, were themselves also about to obtain the Paraclete as teacher, much more will 'Seek, and you shall find' be void as regards us, to whom the teaching was to come unsought through the apostles, and to the apostles themselves through the Holy Spirit.

Indeed, all the sayings of the Lord are set before all men; through the ears of the Jews they have passed to us. But most of them, directed to particular persons, have constituted for us not a strict propriety of admonition, but an example. IX. I now yield voluntarily from this ground. Grant that it was said to all, 'Seek, and you shall find'; yet even here the sense must be examined with a sure helm of interpretation. No divine utterance is so loosened and diffused that the words alone are to be maintained, and the reason of the words not established. But first of all I lay down this: that assuredly some one certain thing was instituted by Christ, which the nations ought in every way to believe, and therefore to seek, that they may be able, when they have found, to believe. Moreover, of one certain institution there cannot be an infinite inquiry;

one must seek until you find, and believe when you have found, and nothing further save to keep what you have believed — while you believe this besides, that there is nothing else to be believed, and therefore nothing else to be sought, once you have found and believed that which was instituted by Him who commands you to inquire after nothing other than what He instituted. Concerning this, indeed, if anyone doubts, it will be established that it rests with us — that which was instituted by Christ. Meanwhile, out of confidence in the proof, I anticipate by admonishing certain persons that there is nothing to be sought beyond what they have believed: that this is what they ought to have sought, lest they interpret 'Seek, and you shall find' without the discipline of reason. X. Now the reason of this saying rests upon three points: on the matter, on the time, on the manner.

In the matter itself, consider what is to be sought; in the time, when; in the manner, how far. Therefore what Christ appointed is to be sought—assuredly for as long as you have not found it, assuredly until you find it. But you have found it once you have believed. For you would not have believed had you not found, just as you would not have sought except in order to find. To this end, then, seeking that you may find, and to this end finding that you may believe, by believing you have set a limit to all further pursuit of seeking and finding. This very limit is fixed for you by the fruit of seeking itself. This boundary He has marked out for you Himself, who wills that you believe nothing other than what He appointed, and therefore that you seek nothing further.

But if, because others too have set up just as many other things, we are on that account bound to seek so long as we are able to find, then we shall always be seeking and shall never at all believe. For where will be the end of seeking? Where the resting-place of believing? Where the discharge of finding? With Marcion? But Valentinus too propounds: 'Seek and you shall find.' With Valentinus? But Apelles also will assail me with this same pronouncement; and Ebion and Simon and all in their turn have nothing else by which, insinuating themselves to me, they may draw me over to themselves. It will therefore be nowhere, so long as everywhere I meet 'Seek and you shall find'—as though it were nowhere, and as though I had never laid hold of that which Christ appointed, which ought to be sought, which must be believed. XI.

One errs without penalty unless one transgresses—though to err is itself to transgress; without penalty, I say, does he wander who abandons nothing. But if I have believed what I ought to have believed, and yet think that something else must again be sought, I surely hope that there is something else to be found; and I could in no way hope for that except because either I had not believed, though I seemed to have believed, or I have ceased to believe. Thus, deserting my faith, I am found to be a denier. Let me say it once for all: no one seeks except one who either never had, or has lost. That old woman had lost one of her ten drachmas, and therefore was seeking; yet when she found it, she ceased to seek. The neighbour had no bread, and therefore was knocking; yet when the door was opened to him and he received, he ceased to knock. The widow was asking the judge to hear her, because she was not admitted:

but when she was heard, thus far she persisted. So there is an end both to seeking and to knocking and to asking. 'For to him that asks it shall be given,' He says, 'and to him that knocks it shall be opened, and by him that seeks it shall be found.' Let him look to it who seeks forever because he does not find; for he seeks there where it shall not be found. Let him look to it who forever knocks because it shall never be opened; for he knocks there where no one is. Let him look to it who forever asks because he shall never be heard; for he asks of one who does not hear. XII. As for us, even if it were still and always necessary to seek, yet where ought we to seek? Among the heretics? Where all things are foreign and hostile to our truth, to whom we are forbidden to approach? What servant hopes for provisions from a stranger—not to say from an enemy of his master?

What soldier looks for a bounty and pay from kings not in league—not to say from hostile kings—unless he be plainly a deserter and a runaway and a rebel? Even that old woman was seeking the drachma within her own house; even that knocker was beating upon his neighbour's door; even that widow was appealing to a judge, though harsh, yet not an enemy. No one can be instructed from that whereby he is undone; no one is enlightened by him by whom he is darkened. Let us therefore seek in what is ours, and from those who are ours, and concerning what is ours: and that only which can come into question while the rule of faith is kept intact. XIII. Now the rule of faith is this—that we may here and now profess what it is we maintain—namely that whereby it is believed:

that there is one only God, and none other besides the Maker of the world, who produced the universe out of nothing through His own Word, first of all sent forth. That this Word, called His Son, was in the name of God seen in diverse ways by the patriarchs, ever heard in the prophets, and at last, brought down by the Spirit and power of God the Father into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, and, born of her, lived as Jesus Christ.

That thereafter He preached a new law and a new promise of the kingdom of heaven, wrought miracles, was crucified, rose again on the third day, was caught up into the heavens and sat at the right hand of the Father; that He sent in His stead the power of the Holy Spirit to guide believers; that He shall come with glory to take up the saints into the enjoyment of eternal life and of the heavenly promises, and to adjudge the profane to perpetual fire, after the resurrection of both parties, with the restoration of the flesh. This rule, instituted by Christ (as shall be proved), raises among us no questions save those which the heresies bring in and which make men heretics. XIV.

For the rest, so long as its form remains in its own order, you may seek and discuss as much as you please and pour out all your itch of curiosity: if anything seems to you to hang in ambiguity or to be shadowed by obscurity, there is assuredly some brother, a teacher endowed with the grace of knowledge; there is someone who has moved among the well-practised; there is someone with you who, though seeking, seeks with more care. In the end it is better not to know, lest you know what you ought not, because you do know what you ought. 'Your faith,' He says, 'has saved you'—not your exercise in the Scriptures. Faith is set in the rule; it has its law and its salvation from the keeping of the law. But exercise consists in curiosity, having its glory solely from the zeal of expertise. Let curiosity yield to faith, let glory yield to salvation.

At the very least let them either not clamour, or be still. To know nothing against the rule is to know all things. Suppose the heretics were not enemies of the truth, so that we were not forewarned to shun them: what sort of thing is it to confer with men who themselves profess that they are still seeking? For if they are indeed still seeking, they have as yet found nothing certain; and therefore whatever they seem meanwhile to hold, they betray their own doubt so long as they seek. And so you, who likewise seek, looking to those who are themselves seeking—doubtful going to the doubtful, uncertain to the uncertain, blind to the blind—must needs be led into the pit.

But since, for the sake of deceiving, they pretend that they are still seeking, in order that by casting anxiety upon us they may insinuate their treatises to us—yet as soon as they have come to us, they at once defend the very things they said must be sought—then we ought so to refute them that they may know that it is not Christ, but themselves, whom we deny. For while they still seek, they do not yet hold; while they do not yet hold, they have not yet believed; while they have not yet believed, they are not Christians. But when they do hold and believe, they nonetheless say that inquiry must be made, that they may defend it. Before they defend it, they deny what they believe, confessing that they have not yet believed while they seek. Those, then, who are not even Christians to themselves, how much less are they so to us? Coming as they do through deceit, what kind of faith do they dispute for?

For what truth do they act as patrons who bring it in from a lie? 'But they themselves proceed from the Scriptures, and from the Scriptures they persuade.' From what other source, forsooth, could they speak concerning matters of faith, save from the writings of faith? XV. We come, therefore, to our proposition. For to this we were directing our course, and this we were laying as a foundation in the preface of our discourse, that from this point we may now engage upon that on which the adversaries challenge us. They hold out the Scriptures, and by this their boldness they at once move certain persons. But in the very encounter they weary the strong, catch the weak, and dismiss the middling with a scruple. This step, therefore, above all we bar—that they are not to be admitted to any disputation from the Scriptures.

If these are their strength—that they may be able to have them—it ought to be examined to whom the possession of the Scriptures belongs, lest he be admitted to them to whom they in no way belong. XVI. I would have introduced this not out of any counsel of distrust or from a desire of framing the case otherwise, unless a reason stood firm, first of all that our faith owes obedience to the Apostle who forbids us to enter upon questions, to lend our ears to novel utterances, and to meet a heretic after one admonition, not after a disputation. So utterly did he forbid disputation, designating the admonition as the cause of meeting the heretic.

And this 'once'—namely because he is not a Christian—lest he should seem, after the manner of a Christian, to require correction once and again, and under two or three witnesses; whereas he is to be corrected for the very reason on account of which there is to be no disputing with him. Furthermore, since no profit comes from an encounter over the Scriptures, save plainly that one should come away either with an upsetting of his stomach or of his brain. XVII. That heresy does not receive certain Scriptures; and any it does receive, it does not receive entire, but perverts them by additions and subtractions to suit the arrangement of its own scheme; and if it presents them in any measure entire, it nonetheless twists them by devising diverse expositions. A false sense clamours against the truth as much as does a corrupting pen;

empty presumptions necessarily refuse to acknowledge the things by which they are refuted; they rely on those things which they have composed out of falsehood, and which they have seized upon out of ambiguity. What will you advance, most exercised in the Scriptures, when, if you defend anything, it is denied from the opposite side, and if you deny anything, it is defended? And you indeed will lose nothing but your voice in the wrangling, and will gain nothing but bile at their blasphemy. XVIII. But he, if there be any for whose sake you descend into the encounter of the Scriptures in order to confirm him in his doubting, will he incline toward the truth, or rather toward the heresies? Moved by this very thing—that he sees you have advanced nothing, the opposite party denying and defending on equal footing, the standing at any rate the same—he will go away from the altercation more uncertain than before, not knowing which he should judge to be the heresy.

These very things, to be sure, they too have to turn back against us. For they too must needs say that it is rather by us that adulterations of the Scriptures and falsehoods of exposition are brought in, they who likewise claim the truth for themselves. XIX. Therefore we must not appeal to the Scriptures, nor must the contest be set up in those matters in which victory is either none, or uncertain, or too little certain. For even if the comparison of Scriptures did not so turn out as to set both sides on a par, the order of things demanded that that be first propounded which alone is now to be disputed: to whom belongs the faith itself, whose the Scriptures are; from whom, and through whom, and when, and to whom was delivered that discipline whereby men are made Christians.

For where it shall appear that the truth of the Christian discipline and faith is, there will be the truth of the Scriptures and of the expositions and of all the Christian traditions. XX. Christ Jesus our Lord—may He permit me to say it for the moment—whoever He is, of whatever God the Son, of whatever substance man and God, of whatever faith the teacher, of whatever reward the promiser: what He was, what He had been, what will of the Father He was administering, what He determined man must do—so long as He walked on earth, He Himself proclaimed, whether openly to the people or apart to His disciples, from among whom He had chosen twelve chief ones, attached to His side, destined to be teachers of the nations.

And so, one of them having been struck off, He commanded the remaining eleven, as He departed to the Father after the resurrection, to go and teach the nations, baptizing them into the Father and into the Son and into the Holy Spirit. At once, therefore, the apostles—which name is interpreted as 'sent'—having taken by lot Matthias as the twelfth in the place of Judas, by the authority of the prophecy which is in the psalm of David, and having obtained the promised power of the Holy Spirit for miracles and utterance, first throughout Judaea bore witness to the faith in Jesus Christ and founded churches; then, going forth into the world, they promulgated the same doctrine of the same faith to the nations.

And likewise they founded churches in each several city, from which the rest of the churches have since borrowed, and daily borrow, the shoot of faith and the seeds of doctrine, in order that they may become churches. And by this very fact these too are reckoned apostolic, as being offspring of the apostolic churches. Every kind of thing must needs be reckoned by its origin. And so these churches, so many and so great, are that one first church from the apostles, from which all are derived. Thus all are first, and all are apostolic, while all are one. The communion of peace, the title of brotherhood, and the mutual pledge of hospitality prove their unity—rights which no other principle governs than the one tradition of the same mystery. XXI. Hence, therefore, we frame our prescription:

if the Lord Christ Jesus sent the apostles to preach, no other preachers are to be received than those whom Christ appointed—since neither does any other know the Father except the Son and he to whom the Son has revealed Him, nor does the Son appear to have revealed Him to any others than the apostles whom He sent to preach, namely that which He revealed to them. But what they preached—that is, what Christ revealed to them—here too I shall prescribe that it ought to be proved in no other way than through those same churches which the apostles themselves founded, themselves preaching to them both by the living voice, as men say, and afterwards by their epistles.

If these things are so, it is likewise established that all doctrine which agrees with those apostolic churches, the mother-churches and originals of the faith, is to be reckoned to the truth, holding without doubt that which the churches received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, Christ from God; but that all doctrine is to be prejudged as of falsehood which savours of anything contrary to the truth of the churches and of the apostles of Christ and of God. It remains, therefore, that we should demonstrate whether this doctrine of ours, whose rule we set forth above, is reckoned as of the apostolic tradition, and by that very fact whether the rest come of falsehood. We are in communion with the apostolic churches because no doctrine is different: this is the testimony of truth. XXII.

But since this proof is so ready that, if it were at once brought forward, there would be nothing left to reconsider—then, as though it had not been brought forward by us, let us for the moment give place to the opposite party, if they think they can do anything to invalidate this prescription. They are wont to say that the apostles did not know all things, driven by the same madness by which, on the other hand, they turn it about and say that the apostles indeed knew all things but did not deliver all things to all men—in both cases casting reproach upon Christ, as having sent apostles either too little instructed or too little straightforward.

Who, then, of sound mind can believe that those were ignorant of anything whom the Lord gave as teachers, keeping them inseparable in His company, in His discipleship, in His table-fellowship, to whom He expounded apart whatever was obscure, saying to them that it was given them to know the mysteries which the people were not permitted to understand? Did anything lie hidden from Peter, called the rock on which the church was to be built, who obtained the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the power of loosing and binding in the heavens and on earth? Did anything lie hidden also from John, most beloved of the Lord, who leaned upon His breast, to whom alone the Lord pointed out Judas the betrayer beforehand, whom He commended in His own place as son to Mary?

What did He wish them to be ignorant of, to whom He even displayed His own glory, and Moses and Elijah, and moreover the voice of the Father from heaven?—not as though rejecting the rest, but because 'in the mouth of three witnesses shall every word stand.' Those too, then, were ignorant, to whom after the resurrection also He deigned upon the road to expound all the Scriptures. He had indeed once said: 'I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now'; yet adding: 'When that Spirit of truth shall come, He will lead you into all truth,' He showed that they were ignorant of nothing whom He had promised should attain all truth through the Spirit of truth. And assuredly He fulfilled the promise, the Acts of the Apostles proving the descent of the Holy Spirit.

But those who do not receive this writing can neither belong to the Holy Spirit—since they cannot yet acknowledge that the Holy Spirit was sent to the disciples—nor can they claim to be the church, since they cannot prove when, and in what cradle, this body was established. For it is of such great moment to them not to have proofs of the things they defend, lest at the same time the exposures of the things they lie about be admitted. XXIII. They therefore bring forward, in order to jeer at some ignorance of the apostles, the fact that Peter and those with him were rebuked by Paul. 'So far,' they say, 'was something lacking to them,' that from this too they construct the notion that a fuller knowledge could afterwards supervene, such as befell Paul in rebuking his predecessors.

I can here say, even to those who repudiate the Acts of the Apostles: 'It is first necessary that you show who this Paul was, and what he was before he was an apostle, and how he was an apostle'—inasmuch as elsewhere too they make much use of him for their questions. For neither, if he professes himself an apostle from a persecutor, is that sufficient for each one who believes only after examination—since not even the Lord Himself bore witness concerning Himself. But let them believe without the Scriptures, that they may believe against the Scriptures. Nevertheless, let them show from that which they allege—that Peter was rebuked by Paul—that some other form of the gospel was superimposed by Paul, differing from that which Peter and the rest had put forth before.

And yet, changed from a persecutor into a preacher, he is led to the brethren by the brethren, as one of the brethren, to those who had put on the faith from the apostles. Thereafter, as he himself relates, he went up to Jerusalem for the sake of becoming acquainted with Peter, by the office and right, forsooth, of the same faith and preaching. For neither would they have marvelled at a persecutor made a preacher, had he preached anything contrary; nor would they besides have magnified the Lord, because His adversary Paul had come over to Him.

And so they gave him the right hand, the sign of concord and agreement, and among themselves they arranged a distribution of office, not a separation of the gospel, nor that one should preach one thing and the other another, but that they should preach to different persons—Peter to the circumcision, Paul to the nations. But as for the fact that Peter was rebuked because, after he had lived together with the Gentiles, he afterwards separated himself from their fellowship out of respect of persons—this was assuredly a fault of conduct, not of preaching. For not on this account was any other God than the Creator, or any other Christ than the one of Mary, or any other hope than the resurrection, being announced. XXIV. It is not so well with me—nay rather, it is not so ill with me—that I should set the apostles at odds.

But since those most perverse men hold out that rebuke to this end, that they may make the earlier doctrine suspect, I will answer, as it were on Peter's behalf: that Paul himself said he had become all things to all men—to the Jews a Jew, to those not Jews not a Jew—that he might gain them all. So they censured certain things according to times and persons and causes, into which they themselves likewise committed themselves according to times and persons and causes—just as if Peter too were to rebuke Paul because, while forbidding circumcision, he himself circumcised Timothy. Let those look to it who judge concerning the apostles. It is well that Peter is made equal to Paul even in martyrdom.

But even if Paul, caught up to the third heaven and carried into paradise, heard certain things there, those things cannot be regarded as such as would render him more fully instructed in some other doctrine, since their condition was such that they might be revealed to no man. But if some indistinct thing did flow out to the conscience of some one, and if any heresy affirms that it follows this, then either Paul is guilty of betraying a secret, or else some other man, afterwards caught up into paradise, must be shown to whom it was permitted to utter aloud what it was not lawful for Paul even to murmur. XXV. But, as we have said, it is the same madness when they confess indeed that the apostles were ignorant of nothing, nor preached diversely among themselves, yet nevertheless will not have it that they revealed all things to all men.

For, they say, some things they committed openly and to all, some secretly and to a few—because Paul too used this word to Timothy: 'O Timothy, guard the deposit,' and again: 'Keep the good deposit.' What is this deposit? So secret that it should be reckoned to another doctrine? Or is it of that charge concerning which he says: 'This charge I commit to you, my son Timothy'? Likewise of that precept concerning which he says: 'I charge you before God, who quickens all things, and Jesus Christ, who witnessed under Pontius Pilate the good confession, that you keep the precept'? But what precept and what charge?

From what is written above and below it was possible to understand that by this saying nothing indistinct was being hinted at concerning some more remote doctrine, but rather that it was being inculcated concerning the not admitting of any other than that which Timothy had heard from Paul himself—'and,' I think he says, 'before many witnesses.' If they will not have these many witnesses understood as the church, it makes no difference, since nothing was kept silent which was brought forth before many witnesses. Nor is it, because he wished Timothy to commit these things to faithful men who should be fit to teach others also, to be interpreted as an argument for some hidden gospel. For when he says 'these things,' he speaks of those things about which he was at present writing; but of hidden things, as of things absent, before conscience, he would have said not 'these' but 'those.' XXVI.

Furthermore, it was consequent that, to him to whom he was committing the administration of the gospel, he should add that it must not be administered indiscriminately nor inconsiderately, according to the Lord's word, 'lest he cast the pearl to swine and the holy thing to dogs.' The Lord spoke openly, without any signification of any hidden mystery; He Himself had commanded that if they had heard anything in darkness and in secret, they should preach it in the light and upon the housetops. He Himself had prefigured by a parable that they should not keep back a single mina—that is, a single word of His—without fruit in concealment. He Himself taught that a lamp is not wont to be thrust under a bushel, but to be set upon a lampstand, that it may give light to all who are in the house.

These things the apostles either neglected, or by no means understood, if they did not fulfil them—hiding something of the light, that is, of the word of God and the mystery of Christ. They feared no one, so far as I know—neither the violence of the Jews nor of the Gentiles. How much the more, then, did they preach freely in the church, who were not silent in the synagogues and in public places. Nay, they could not have converted either Jews or brought in Gentiles, unless they set forth in order what they wished to be believed by them. Much more, then, would they have withdrawn nothing from the churches which already believed, in order to commit it apart to a few others.

Although, even if they did discuss certain things among their household, so to speak, yet it must not be believed that these were such as would introduce another rule of faith, diverse and contrary to that which they were putting forth in public to the catholic body—so as to declare one God in the church, another in the guest-chamber; to designate one substance of Christ openly, another in secret; to announce one hope of resurrection to all, another to a few—when they themselves besought in their epistles that all should speak the very same one thing, and that there should be no schisms and dissensions in the church, since, whether Paul or others, they preached the same things. Otherwise they remembered: 'Let your speech be yea, yea; nay, nay.'

For whatever is more than this comes of evil—lest they should handle the gospel in diversity. XXVII. If, then, it is incredible either that the apostles were ignorant of the fulness of the preaching, or that they did not publish to all the whole order of the rule, let us see whether perhaps the apostles indeed delivered it simply and fully, but the churches, by their own fault, received it otherwise than the apostles were setting it forth. All these incitements of scrupulosity you will find put forward by the heretics. They hold up the churches rebuked by the apostle: 'O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?' and: 'You were running so well; who has hindered you?' and the very opening: 'I marvel that you are so quickly being transferred from Him who called you in grace to another gospel';

likewise what was written to the Corinthians, that they were still carnal, who were fed with milk, not yet fit for solid food, who supposed themselves to know something when as yet they did not know how they ought to know. When they set against us the rebuked churches, let them believe them also amended. But let them also acknowledge those churches of whose faith and knowledge and conduct the apostle rejoices and gives thanks to God—which nonetheless today share with those rebuked ones the rights of one and the same institution. XXVIII. Come now, suppose all had erred; suppose the apostle too was deceived in giving testimony to certain ones; suppose the Holy Spirit had regard to no church, so as to lead it into the truth, though sent by Christ for this, and asked of the Father for this, that He might be the teacher of truth.

Suppose the steward of God, the vicar of Christ, neglected His office, allowing the churches meanwhile to understand otherwise, to believe otherwise, than what He Himself was preaching through the apostles: is it in any way likely that so many and so great churches should have erred into one faith? Among many outcomes there is never one issue: the error of the churches' doctrine ought to have varied. But what is found one among many is not error but tradition. Let anyone dare, then, to say that those erred who handed it down! XXIX. In whatever way it was erred, error at all events reigned so long as there were no heresies. Truth to be liberated was awaiting certain Marcionites and Valentinians.

Meanwhile the gospel was preached amiss, believed amiss; so many thousands of thousands were baptized amiss, so many works of faith administered amiss, so many miracles, so many charisms wrought amiss, so many priesthoods, so many ministries discharged amiss, so many martyrdoms, in short, crowned amiss. Or if not amiss nor in vain, how is it that the things of God should have run their course before it was known whose God it was?—that there should be Christians before Christ was found? that there should be heresies before the true doctrine? But indeed in all things the truth precedes its image; the likeness comes after the reality. For the rest, it is quite absurd that heresy should be held prior in doctrine—if only because it is heresy itself which foretold the heresies that were to come and to be guarded against.

To the church of that doctrine it was written—nay, that very doctrine writes to its own church: 'And if an angel from heaven should preach otherwise, beyond what we have preached, let him be anathema.' XXX. Where then was Marcion, that shipmaster of Pontus, that student of Stoicism? Where Valentinus, that follower of Platonism? For it is agreed that they were not of any very ancient date—about the principate of Antoninus—and that at first they had believed the catholic doctrine in the church of Rome under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherus, until, on account of their ever restless curiosity, by which they infected the brethren as well, they were cast out once and again—Marcion indeed with the two hundred sesterces which he had brought into the church—and finally, being relegated to perpetual severance, they disseminated the poisons of their doctrines.

Afterwards Marcion, professing repentance, when he met the condition given to him—that he should so receive peace if he restored to the church the others also whom he had trained up to perdition—was forestalled by death. For it behoved that there should be heresies. Nor yet on that account is heresy a good thing, because it behoved them to be—as though evil also had not behoved to be. For it behoved even that the Lord be betrayed; but woe to the betrayer!—lest anyone even from this defend the heresies. If the pedigree of Apelles too must be traced, he is himself no more ancient than Marcion, his instructor and forefashioner; but, having fallen for a woman, as a deserter of Marcionite continence, he withdrew from the eyes of his most holy master to Alexandria.

Then, returning after some years no better than before, save only in that he was now no longer a Marcionite, he fell upon a second woman, that virgin Philumene whom we mentioned above, but who afterwards became a monstrous prostitute; deceived by the frenzy of her possession, he wrote down the 'Manifestations' which he had learned from her. There still remain in the world those who remember these men, even their own disciples and successors, so that they cannot deny themselves to be of a later date. And besides, they are refuted out of their own works, as the Lord said. For if Marcion separated the New Testament from the Old, he is later than that which he separated, since he could not separate anything except what had been united. Being therefore united before it was separated, and separated afterwards, it shows the separator to be the later one.

Likewise Valentinus, by expounding otherwise and without doubt correcting—by this very name of 'correcting' whatever he corrects—demonstrates that it was faulty before, and therefore earlier. These we name as the more notable and more frequent adulterers of the truth. But there is also a certain Nigidius, and Hermogenes, and many others who still walk about perverting the ways of the Lord. I desire that they show me by what authority they have come forth. If they preach another god, how is it that they use the things, writings, and names of that God against whom they preach? If the same God, how do they do so otherwise? Let them prove themselves to be new apostles; let them say that Christ has come down again, has taught again in person, has again been crucified, has again died, has again been raised.

For thus is He wont to deal with apostles: to grant them besides the power of performing the same signs which He Himself performed. I wish, therefore, that their mighty works too be brought forth—except that I recognize their greatest mighty work to be that whereby they imitate the apostles in perversity. For those made the dead into living men, these make the living into dead men. XXXI. But let me return from my digression to the argument that the truth holds primacy and falsehood comes after—an argument to be supported also by the patronage of that parable which sets the good seed of wheat, sown by the Lord, first in place, while the adulterating tares of barren straw the hostile devil afterwards superadds. For it properly figures the distinction of doctrines, since elsewhere too the likeness of seed is the word of God.

Thus from the very order it is made plain that this is the Lord's and true which was handed down first, but that is foreign and false which was introduced later. This principle will hold good against all later heresies whatsoever, which have no consistency of conscience whereby to claim the truth for the defense of themselves. XXXII. Moreover, if any dare to insert themselves into the apostolic age, so that they may seem to have been handed down by the apostles because they existed under the apostles, we can say: let them therefore publish the origins of their churches, let them unroll the roll of their bishops, running down in succession from the beginning in such a way that their first bishop had as his authority and predecessor some one of the apostles, or of apostolic men who nonetheless persevered with the apostles.

For in this manner the apostolic churches present their registers, as the church of Smyrna records that Polycarp was placed there by John, as that of the Romans records that Clement was ordained by Peter. In just the same way the rest also display those whom, appointed to the episcopate by the apostles, they hold as the shoots of the apostolic seed. Let the heretics contrive something of the sort. For after their blasphemy, what is unlawful for them? But even if they should contrive it, they will accomplish nothing.

For their very doctrine, when compared with that of the apostles, will by its diversity and contrariety pronounce that it has neither any apostle for its author nor any apostolic man; because, just as the apostles would not have taught things diverse among themselves, so too the apostolic men would not have published things contrary to the apostles—unless those who learned from the apostles preached otherwise. To this test, therefore, they will be summoned by those churches which, though they can produce no author of theirs from among the apostles or apostolic men, being much later—churches indeed which are being founded daily—yet, conspiring together in the same faith, are reckoned no less apostolic on account of the kinship of their doctrine.

Thus all heresies, when challenged to both these tests by our churches, may prove themselves apostolic in whatever way they think they are. But in fact they neither are, nor can they prove what they are not, nor are they received into peace and communion by any churches whatsoever that are apostolic—clearly because, on account of the diversity of their sacrament, they are in no way apostolic. XXXIII. Over and above these considerations, I bring in the review of the very doctrines which then existed under the apostles, and were both pointed out and denounced by those same apostles. For thus too they will be more easily convicted, when they are found either to have already existed then, or to have taken their seeds from those which existed then. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, notes the deniers and doubters of the resurrection: this opinion is proper to the Sadducees.

Part of it Marcion appropriates, and Apelles, and Valentinus, and any others who impair the resurrection of the flesh. And writing to the Galatians he inveighs against the observers and defenders of circumcision and the law: such is the heresy of Ebion. Instructing Timothy, he also chides the forbidders of marriage: thus do Marcion and Apelles his follower ordain. Equally he touches those who would say that the resurrection had already taken place: this the Valentinians assert of themselves. But also, when he names 'endless genealogies,' Valentinus is recognized, in whose system that certain Aeon—of a new and not single name—begets from his Charis (Grace) Sense and Truth;

and these in turn procreate from themselves Word and Life, and thereupon these too beget Man and Church; from which first Ogdoad of Aeons thereafter ten other Aeons and twelve remaining ones arise with marvelous names, into the mere fable of thirty Aeons. The same apostle, when he reproves those who serve the elements, points to something of Hermogenes, who, introducing unbegotten matter, compares it to the unbegotten God, and thus, making the mother of the elements a goddess, is able to serve her whom he compares to God. But John in the Apocalypse is bidden to chastise those eating things sacrificed to idols and committing fornications: there are now too other Nicolaitans; it is called the Caian heresy.

But in his epistle he calls those especially antichrists who denied that Christ had come in the flesh, and who did not think Jesus to be the Son of God: the former Marcion claimed, the latter Ebion. But the discipline of Simonian magic, serving the angels, was of course itself also reckoned among idolatries, and was condemned by the apostle Peter in the person of Simon himself. XXXIV. These are, as I think, the kinds of adulterated doctrines which we learn to have existed under the apostles from the apostles themselves. And yet among so many varieties of perversities we find no institution which stirred controversy about God the Creator of all things.

No one dared to suspect another god; more easily was hesitation felt about the Son than about the Father, until Marcion brought in, besides the Creator, another God of goodness alone; until Apelles made the Creator some glorious angel of a higher God to be the god of the law and of Israel, affirming him to be fiery; until Valentinus scattered his Aeons and traced the fault of a single Aeon back into the origin of God the Creator. To these alone, and to these first, was the truth of the Godhead revealed—having obtained, forsooth, a greater esteem and a fuller grace from the devil, who wished thus also to rival God, so that out of the doctrines of poisons—which the Lord forbade—he himself might make disciples above the master.

Let all the heresies therefore choose for themselves the times at which each existed—provided it makes no difference which existed when, so long as they are not of the truth—and assuredly those which did not exist under the apostles cannot have existed. For if they had existed, they too would have been named, so as to be themselves also restrained; whereas those which did exist under the apostles are condemned in the very naming of them.

Whether therefore they are now the same, somewhat more polished, which were crude under the apostles, they have from thence their condemnation; or whether some indeed existed then and others arose afterwards, and certain of these latter have usurped an opinion from the former, then, by having fellowship with them in preaching, they must of necessity have fellowship also in condemnation—by virtue of that aforesaid principle of lateness, whereby, even if they shared nothing of the condemned, they would be prejudged on the ground of their age alone, being so much the more adulterous inasmuch as they were not even named by the apostles. Hence it stands the more firmly that these are the ones which were then already being announced as things to come. XXXV.

Being challenged by us with these definitions and refuted—all the heresies, whether those which came later or those which were contemporary with the apostles, provided they are divergent; whether noted by the apostles generally or specifically, provided they are precondemned—let them dare to answer, and themselves too to put forward some such prescriptions against our discipline. For if they deny the truth of it, they are bound to prove that ours too is a heresy, refuted by the same form by which they themselves are refuted, and to show at the same time where in the world the truth is to be sought, which it is now established is not among them. Our position is not the later one; nay, it is prior to all. This will be the testimony of the truth, everywhere holding the primacy. It is not condemned by the apostles; nay, it is defended by them: this will be the mark of its ownership;

for that which they do not condemn—those who condemned every foreign thing—they show to be their own, and therefore also defend it. XXXVI. Come now, you who wish to exercise your curiosity better in the business of your own salvation, run through the apostolic churches, among which the very chairs of the apostles still preside in their places, among which their very authentic letters are recited, sounding forth the voice and representing the face of each one. Achaia is nearest to you: you have Corinth. If you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi; if you can reach into Asia, you have Ephesus; and if you border upon Italy, you have Rome, from which authority is at hand for us also.

How happy is that church, on which the apostles poured out their whole doctrine along with their blood; where Peter is made equal to the Lord's Passion, where Paul is crowned with an exit like John's, where the apostle John, after being plunged into fiery oil and suffering nothing, is banished to an island. Let us see what she learned, what she taught: joined by common tokens with the African churches too, she knows one God, the Lord, Creator of the universe, and Christ Jesus, Son of the Creator-God, born of the Virgin Mary; and the resurrection of the flesh; she mingles the law and the prophets with the evangelic and apostolic writings, and thence drinks in her faith; this faith she seals with water, clothes with the Holy Spirit, feeds with the Eucharist, exhorts to martyrdom—and thus, against this institution, she receives no one.

This is the institution—I no longer say that which foretold future heresies, but that from which the heresies came forth. Yet they are not of it, seeing that they were made against it. Even from the kernel of the mild, most excellent, and useful olive there springs the rough wild olive; even from the poppy of the most pleasing and delightful fig there rises up the windy and empty wild-fig. So too the heresies are of our shrub, but not of our stock—from the grain of truth, but wild through falsehood. XXXVII.

If these things are so, so that the truth is adjudged to be ours—whoever we are who walk in that rule which the churches handed down from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, Christ from God—the reason of our proposition stands established, which defines that heretics are not to be admitted to entering upon a challenge from the Scriptures, since we prove, without the Scriptures, that they have no part in the Scriptures. For if they are heretics, they cannot be Christians, not having from Christ that which they follow of their own choosing, admitting under the name of heretics. Thus, not being Christians, they acquire no right to the Christian writings; to whom it may deservedly be said: 'Who are you? When and whence did you come? What are you doing on my ground, you who are not mine? By what right, Marcion, do you cut down my woodland?'

By what license, Valentinus, do you divert my springs? By what power, Apelles, do you shift my boundaries? What are you others doing here, sowing and pasturing according to your own will? The possession is mine; I have possessed it of old, I possess it first, I hold firm origins from the very authors whose property it was. I am the heir of the apostles. As they provided in their testament, as they committed it to faith, as they adjured, so I hold it. You certainly they always disinherited and disowned as strangers, as enemies.' But whence are heretics strangers and enemies to the apostles, except from the diversity of doctrine, which each one of his own will has either brought forth or received against the apostles? XXXVIII.

There, therefore, the adulteration both of the Scriptures and of their expositions must be reckoned, where the diversity of doctrine is found. Those whose purpose it was to teach otherwise, necessity constrained to arrange otherwise the instruments of doctrine. For otherwise they could not have taught differently unless they had different means by which to teach. Just as corruption of doctrine could not have befallen them without corruption of its instruments, so too integrity of doctrine would not have belonged to us without integrity of those means through which the doctrine is handled. For indeed, what is there in our writings contrary to us? What have we introduced of our own, that we should have to remedy by subtraction or addition or alteration something contrary to it and detected also in the Scriptures?

What we are, that are the Scriptures from their very beginning. We are of them, before there was anything otherwise than we are; what indeed was there, before they were interpolated by you? But since every interpolation must be believed to be later, coming assuredly out of a motive of rivalry—which is never either prior to, or native to, that which it rivals—it is as incredible to any wise man that we, who are both first and of the Scriptures themselves, should seem to have introduced an adulterating pen into the Scriptures, as it is that those did not introduce it who are both later and hostile. One man perverts the Scriptures by his hand, another by the exposition of their sense. For even if Valentinus seems to use the whole instrument, he laid hands upon the truth with no less cunning an ingenuity than Marcion.

For Marcion openly and manifestly used the sword, not the pen, since he carried out a slaughter of the Scriptures to suit his own subject-matter. Valentinus, however, spared them, since he devised not his subject-matter to suit the Scriptures, but the Scriptures to suit his subject-matter. And yet he took away more and added more, taking away the proper meanings even of individual words and adding arrangements of things that do not appear. XXXIX. These are the devices of the spiritual forces of wickedness, with which is our wrestling, brethren—devices deservedly to be contemplated, necessary to the faith, so that the elect may be made manifest, so that the reprobate may be exposed.

And therefore they have force, and a facility in devising and constructing errors, not so very much to be wondered at as though it were difficult and inexplicable, since an example of such facility is at hand even from secular writings. You see today a wholly different story composed out of Virgil, the subject-matter fitted to the verses and the verses to the subject-matter. Indeed Hosidius Geta drew out most fully his tragedy Medea from Virgil. A certain relative of mine, out of the same poet, among the other leisure-works of his pen, unfolded the Tablet of Cebes. They are wont too to be called Homerocentones, those who out of the poems of Homer patch together their own works in the centonizing manner, into one body from many pieces composed here and there.

And assuredly the divine literature is more fruitful for the composition of any subject-matter whatsoever. Nor do I risk anything in saying that the Scriptures too have been so arranged by the will of God as to furnish materials for heretics, since I read that 'there must be heresies,' which cannot exist without the Scriptures. XL. But the question is asked: by whom is the understanding perverted of those things which make for heresies? By the devil, of course, whose part it is to pervert the truth, who in the very rites of the divine sacraments rivals them by the mysteries of idols. He too baptizes certain ones, namely his own believers and faithful; he promises the putting away of sins by a washing; and, if I still remember Mithras, he there seals his soldiers on their foreheads.

He celebrates too the offering of bread, and introduces an image of the resurrection, and under a sword redeems a crown. What of the fact that he even establishes a supreme pontiff bound to a single marriage? He has his virgins too, he has his continent ones. Moreover, if we roll back the superstitions of Numa Pompilius—if we consider the priestly offices and insignia and privileges, the ministries and instruments and vessels of those who sacrifice, the scrupulous minutiae of the very sacrifices and expiations and vows—has not the devil manifestly imitated that fastidiousness of the Jewish law?