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?
He, then, who so enviously strove to express, in the affairs of idolatry, the very things by which the sacraments of Christ are administered, assuredly also longed for, and was able to accomplish, with the same and by the same ingenuity, the tempering of the instruments too of divine things and of the holy things of Christians—sense from senses, words from words, parables from parables—to a profane and rival faith. And therefore no one ought to doubt either that the spiritual forces of wickedness were sent by the devil, from which heresies also come, or that heresies are far removed from idolatry, since they are both of the same author and of the same work as idolatry too. They either feign another god against the Creator, or, if they confess the Creator alone, they discourse of Him otherwise than He is in truth.
And so every lie which they tell about God is, in a certain manner, a kind of idolatry. XLI. Nor will I omit a description of the heretical mode of life itself—how futile, how earthly, how merely human it is, without gravity, without authority, without discipline, as befits its faith. In the first place, it is uncertain who is a catechumen, who a believer: they approach alike, they hear alike, they pray alike; even the heathen, if any should chance in, will cast the holy thing to the dogs and pearls—though false ones—before the swine. They wish the overthrow of discipline to be 'simplicity,' while the care of it in our keeping they call 'pandering.' They mingle peace, too, indiscriminately with all.
For it makes no difference to them, even though they handle diverse things, so long as they conspire to the overthrow of the one truth. All are puffed up, all promise knowledge. The catechumens are perfect before they are taught. And the heretical women themselves—how forward they are! For they dare to teach, to dispute, to perform exorcisms, to undertake cures, perhaps even to baptize. Their ordinations are rash, frivolous, inconstant. Now they appoint neophytes, now men bound to the world, now our apostates, that they may bind them by glory since they cannot by truth. Nowhere is advancement easier than in the camps of rebels, where the mere being there is a merit. And so one man is bishop today, another tomorrow; today a deacon who tomorrow is a reader;
today a presbyter who tomorrow is a layman. For they lay priestly duties even upon laymen. XLII. But what shall I say of the administration of the word, when this is their business—not to convert the heathen, but to subvert our own? This glory they rather catch at, if they work ruin for those who stand, not raising for those who lie fallen. Since their very work comes not from any building of their own, but from the destruction of the truth: they undermine our things in order to build their own. Take away from them the law of Moses, and the prophets, and God the Creator, and they have not even the means to speak an accusation. [Thus it comes about that they more easily work the ruins of standing buildings than the constructions of fallen ruins.] For these works alone they act humble and coaxing and submissive.
For the rest, they know not even reverence toward their own overseers. And this is why schisms scarcely exist among heretics, because, even when they exist, they do not appear: for schism is their very unity. I lie if they do not even vary from their own rules among themselves, while each one modulates according to his own judgment what he has received, just as the one who handed it down composed it according to his own judgment. The nature of the thing, once launched, acknowledges its own character and the manner of its origin. The same was permitted to the Valentinians as to Valentinus, the same to the Marcionites as to Marcion—to innovate the faith according to their own judgment. In short, all heresies, thoroughly examined, are found to dissent in many points even from their own authors.
Very many have not even churches; without a mother, without a see, bereft of the faith, exiles, they wander about as though hissed off the stage. XLIII. Noted too are the dealings of heretics with sorcerers in the greatest number, with mountebanks, with astrologers, with philosophers—devoted, that is, to curiosity. Seek and you shall find: everywhere they are mindful of these. Thus even from the manner of their conversation the quality of their faith can be estimated: discipline is the index of doctrine. They deny that God is to be feared: and so all things are free and unbound for them. But where is God not feared, except where He is not? Where God is not, there is no truth either; where there is no truth, deservedly there is also such a discipline. But where God is, there is fear toward God, which is the beginning of wisdom.
Where there is fear toward God, there is honorable gravity, and vigilant diligence, and anxious care, and well-tested selection, and deliberate communion, and merited promotion, and religious subjection, and devoted attendance, and modest procession, and a united church, and all things of God. XLIV. Accordingly, these testimonies of a stricter discipline among us accede to the proof of the truth, from which it is expedient for no one to turn aside who remembers the future judgment, at which we all of necessity must stand before the tribunal of Christ, rendering an account first of all of the faith itself. What then will they say who have defiled with heretical adultery the virgin handed down by Christ?
I believe they will plead that nothing was ever foretold to them by Him or His apostles concerning savage and perverse doctrines to come, nor any precept given about things to be guarded against and abominated. Let them rather acknowledge their own fault than that of those who did not build up beforehand. They will add, besides, much about the authority of each heretical teacher: that these men above all confirmed faith in their doctrine by signs, raised the dead, restored the infirm, foretold things to come, so that they might deservedly be believed to be apostles. As though it were not written that many would come who would even perform the greatest mighty works to fortify the deceit of a corrupted preaching. And so they will earn pardon.
But if, mindful of the Lord's and the apostles' denunciations, they had stood fast in the entire faith, I believe they would be imperiled as to their pardon, with the Lord answering: 'I had plainly foretold that there would come teachers of deceit in my name, and in the name of the prophets and apostles too, and I had commanded my disciples to preach the same things to you. Once for all I had entrusted the gospel and the doctrine of the same rule to my apostles. But since you would not believe, it pleased me afterwards to change some things therefrom. I had promised the resurrection even of the flesh, but I reconsidered, lest I should be unable to fulfill it. I had shown myself born of a virgin, but afterwards it seemed shameful to me. I had said that He was the Father who made the sun and the rains, but another and better father adopted me.'
'I had forbidden you to lend an ear to heretics, but I erred.' Such things do those get to imagining who go astray and do not guard against the peril of the faith of the truth. But now indeed we have acted generally against all heresies, that they must be repelled by fixed and just and necessary prescriptions from a collation of the Scriptures. As for the rest, if the grace of God assent, we shall reply also specially to certain ones. Edited by R.F. Refoule, Sources Chretiennes, 1957. Transcribed by Roger Pearse, 2001.
「我曾禁止你們側耳聽異端徒，可是我錯了。」凡誤入歧途、不防備真理之信德所面臨危險的人，就會落到揣想這一類事的地步。然而如今我們已就一切異端作了通盤的處置，即必須以確定、公正而必要的抗辯，把它們從對聖經的比對中拒之於外。至於其餘的，倘若神的恩典應允，我們也將對某些異端一一作出回應。由 R.F. Refoule 編訂，載於《基督教泉源叢書》，1957 年。由 Roger Pearse 抄錄，2001 年。