And in the same reign, while the heresies were multiplying, in Mesopotamia Bardesanes, a most capable man and most skilled in dialectic in the Syrian tongue, composed dialogues against the followers of Marcion and certain others who championed differing doctrines, and delivered them in his own language and writing, together with very many other of his works; which his acquaintances—and they were very many, since he stood forth powerfully in argument—translated from the Syrian into the tongue of the Greeks.
Among these is also his most capable dialogue On Fate, addressed to Antoninus, and whatever other things they say he composed on the occasion of the persecution of that time.
Now this man had formerly belonged to the school of Valentinus; but having condemned it, and having refuted very much of the myth-making according to that man, he seemed indeed to himself somehow to have gone over to the more correct opinion; yet he did not entirely wash off the filth of the old heresy. And in this same period the bishop of the church of the Romans, Soter, also died.