Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol III: Tertullian: Part II: Present Heresies (Seedlings of the Tares Noted by the Sacred Writers) Already Condemned in Scripture. This Descent of Later Heresy from the Earlier Traced in Several Instances.

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Chapter XXXIII.—Present Heresies (Seedlings of the Tares Noted by the Sacred Writers) Already Condemned in Scripture. This Descent of Later Heresy from the Earlier Traced in Several Instances.

Besides all this, I add a review of the doctrines themselves, which, existing as they did p. 259 in the days of the apostles, were both exposed and denounced by the said apostles. For by this method they will be more easily reprobated, 2191 when they are detected to have been even then in existence, or at any rate to have been seedlings 2192 of the (tares) which then were. Paul, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, sets his mark on certain who denied and doubted the resurrection. 2193 This opinion was the especial property of the Sadducees. 2194 A part of it, however, is maintained by Marcion and Apelles and Valentinus, and all other impugners of the resurrection. Writing also to the Galatians, he inveighs against such men as observed and defend circumcision and the (Mosaic) law. 2195 Thus runs Hebion’s heresy. Such also as “forbid to marry” he reproaches in his instructions to Timothy. 2196 Now, this is the teaching of Marcion and his follower Apelles. (The apostle) directs a similar blow 2197 against those who said that “the resurrection was past already.” 2198 Such an opinion did the Valentinians assert of themselves. When again he mentions “endless genealogies,” 2199 one also recognises Valentinus, in whose system a certain Æon, whosoever he be, 2200 of a new name, and that not one only, generates of his own grace 2201 Sense and Truth; and these in like manner produce of themselves Word 2202 and Life, while these again afterwards beget Man and the Church. From these primary eight 2203 ten other Æons after them spring, and then the twelve others arise with their wonderful names, to complete the mere story of the thirty Æons. The same apostle, when disapproving of those who are “in bondage to elements,” 2204 points us to some dogma of Hermogenes, who introduces matter as having no beginning, 2205 and then compares it with God, who has no beginning. 2206 By thus making the mother of the elements a goddess, he has it in his power “to be in bondage” to a being which he puts on a par with 2207 God. John, however, in the Apocalypse is charged to chastise those “who eat things sacrificed to idols,” and “who commit fornication.” 2208 There are even now another sort of Nicolaitans. Theirs is called the Gaian 2209 heresy. But in his epistle he especially designates those as “Antichrists” who “denied that Christ was come in the flesh,” 2210 and who refused to think that Jesus was the Son of God. The one dogma Marcion maintained; the other, Hebion. 2211 The doctrine, however, of Simon’s sorcery, which inculcated the worship of angels, 2212 was itself actually reckoned amongst idolatries and condemned by the Apostle Peter in Simon’s own person.