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.