About the times indicated we have received that Cerinthus became the founder of another heresy. Gaius, whose words I have already quoted before, in the disputation circulated under his name writes thus concerning this same man.
'But Cerinthus too, by means of revelations purporting to have been written by a great apostle, falsely introduces among us marvel-mongering tales, as though shown to him through angels, saying that after the resurrection the kingdom of Christ will be on earth, and that the flesh, dwelling again in Jerusalem, will be in bondage to lusts and pleasures. And being an enemy to the Scriptures of God, in his desire to deceive he says that there will be a span of a thousand years spent in wedding festivity.'
And Dionysius too, who in our own day obtained the bishopric of the diocese at Alexandria, in the second book of his 'Promises,' having said certain things about the Revelation of John as from the tradition handed down from of old, makes mention of this same man in these words:
'Cerinthus, who also founded the heresy named Cerinthian after him, wishing to attach a name worthy of credit to his own fabrication. For this was the doctrine of his teaching, that the kingdom of Christ would be earthly;
and that it would consist in those very things which he himself craved, being a lover of the body and altogether carnal: in the gratifications of the belly and of what is below the belly, that is, in foods and drinks and weddings, and—by means of which he supposed these could be procured under a more respectable name—in feasts and sacrifices and the slaying of victims.'
These things Dionysius says. But Irenaeus, in the first book of his work 'Against the Heresies,' set forth certain more secret false doctrines of this same man, and in the third book handed down to writing a story not unworthy of remembrance, declaring, as from the tradition of Polycarp, that John the apostle once entered a bathhouse to bathe, but on learning that Cerinthus was within, sprang away from the place and fled out of doors, not enduring even to be under the same roof with him; and he said that he urged this same thing also upon those who were with him, saying, 'Let us flee, lest the bath also fall in, since Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.'