Now when the churches throughout the world were already shining like most brilliant luminaries, and faith in our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ was flourishing among the whole race of mankind, the demon that hates what is good, being ever the enemy of truth and most hostile to the salvation of men, turned all his devices against the Church. Formerly he had armed himself against her with persecutions from without;
but now, being shut out from these, he employed wicked men as deadly instruments of souls and ministers of destruction, and waged his campaign by other methods, devising every kind of ruin, so that sorcerers and deceivers, assuming the same name as our doctrine, might at once lead into the depth of perdition those of the faithful whom they caught, and at the same time, by the deeds which they themselves committed, might turn away from the path to the saving word those who were ignorant of the faith.
Accordingly, from Menander, whom we have already mentioned before as the successor of Simon, there proceeded a certain serpentine power, as it were two-mouthed and two-headed, which set up the leaders of two different heresies: Saturninus, an Antiochene by race, and Basilides of Alexandria; of whom the one established schools of God-hated heresies in Syria, the other in Egypt.
Irenaeus makes plain that Saturninus for the most part uttered the same falsehoods as Menander, but that Basilides, under the pretext of more secret doctrines, stretched his speculations out into the infinite, fabricating for himself monstrous fictions for his impious heresy.
Now since very many men of the Church at that time were contending earnestly for the truth, and were fighting with greater reasoning on behalf of the apostolic and ecclesiastical glory, some also by their writings provided for those who came after defensive resources against these very heresies that have been mentioned.
Of these there has come down to us a most effective refutation of Basilides by Agrippa Castor, one of the most renowned writers of that time, which lays bare the cleverness of the man’s imposture.
In exposing his secret teachings he says that Basilides composed twenty-four books on the gospel, and that he named as his own prophets Barcabbas and Barcoph, and set up certain others who had never existed, devising for them barbarous names to astonish those amazed at such things; that he taught men to be indifferent about tasting things sacrificed to idols and about denying the faith without scruple in times of persecution; and that, after the manner of Pythagoras, he enjoined a five-year silence upon those who came to him.
And having set down other things similar to these concerning Basilides, the aforesaid writer not ignobly brought to open view the error of the heresy that has been described.
Irenaeus also writes that Carpocrates was a contemporary of these, the father of another heresy, that called the heresy of the Gnostics. These men thought fit to transmit the magic of Simon not, like him, in secret, but now openly, almost glorying as in great things in the love-charms wrought by them through their meddling arts, and in dream-sending and certain attendant demons and other practices of like kind. In accordance with these things they taught that those who intended to come to the perfection—or rather the foulness—of their mystic initiation must perform all the most shameful deeds, since in no other way could they escape the cosmic rulers (as those people would say) except by rendering to all of them the dues exacted through unspeakable practices.
Using these as his ministers, then, it came to pass that the demon who rejoices in evil thus pitiably enslaved unto destruction those who were deceived by them, and afforded to the unbelieving Gentiles abundant occasion for slander against the divine word, since the report that started from them was poured out into a calumny against the whole nation of the Christians.
Thus indeed it came about that for a very long time there was spread abroad among the unbelievers of that day an impious and most absurd suspicion concerning us, namely, that we practised unlawful unions with mothers and sisters and partook of unholy foods.
For straightway the contrivances of the enemies were extinguished, being refuted by the very working of the truth; and though one heresy after another was newly devised, the earlier ones continually flowed away and perished in various ways at different times into manifold and multiform shapes. But the splendour of the catholic and only true Church went on increasing in greatness, ever holding to the same things in the same manner, and radiating to every race of Greeks and barbarians the dignity, sincerity, and freedom, the sobriety and purity, of its divine polity and philosophy.
Thus with the lapse of time the calumny against the whole teaching was also extinguished, and our doctrine alone remained prevailing and acknowledged to excel above all in dignity and sobriety and in its divine and philosophical tenets, so that no one of the present day dares to bring any shameful slander against our faith, nor any such calumny as those formerly opposed to us were once wont to employ.
Nevertheless, in the times spoken of, the truth again brought forward into the midst more champions of itself, who campaigned against the godless heresies not only by unwritten refutations but also by written demonstrations.