Panarion (Against Heresies) 1 part 8/82

for he immediately goes on and shows that he is speaking about those who dream in the sense of speaking their own words as though through dreams, and not in the sober wakefulness of right reasoning.

For indeed Isaiah also speaks concerning the teachers in Jerusalem: 'All are dumb dogs, unable to bark, dreaming of their bed,' and so forth; and here too, in the epistle of Jude, he shows this, saying: 'dreaming of the bed, they speak of things they do not know.'

And he showed that he is not speaking about the dreaming of sleep, but about their fabulous tragedy and nonsense, as being spoken through sleep and not from a sound mind.

I am truly at great pains to tell everything.

For it belongs to God alone to close up the depth of this foul stench.

And I will pass on from this place, having prayed to God the King of all that no one may become mired in the mud, nor even have his mind partake of this foul-smelling uncleanness.

For first of all the apostle Paul cuts off every root of their wickedness, giving instruction concerning younger widows, saying: 'Refuse younger widows;'

'for when they have grown wanton against Christ, they wish to marry, incurring condemnation, because they have set aside their first faith;'

'but let them marry, bear children, manage the household,'

But if the apostle says to bear children and manage the household, and these people refuse childbearing, this is the undertaking of the serpent and of evil teaching.

For being overcome by the pleasure of fornication, they devise for themselves pretexts of impurity, so that they may seem to give full assurance to their own licentiousness.

And truly these things ought neither to be spoken nor deemed worthy of being written in treatises, but ought to be buried like some stinking, plague-bearing corpse breathing out pestilence, lest even through hearing it should corrupt men.

And if indeed such a heresy had already passed away and no longer existed in this life, it would have been good to bury it and not to speak of it at all.

But since it both exists and is practiced, and since we were urged by your honored selves to speak concerning all things, I have, under constraint, recounted portions of it, so that I might not suppress my love of truth, but might expound it, both for the deterrence of those who hear and for the rescue of those who practice it.

For how could we fail to point out the murders among them, and their monstrous deeds, and the rites of the devil, given by the inspiration of that same devil to those struck with madness?

And they are immediately refuted in that which they imagine and put forward as a pretext concerning the tree spoken of in the first psalm, that: 'it will give its fruit in its season, and its leaf will not wither.'

For above it is stated that his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he will meditate day and night.

But these people deny the law and the prophets.

And if they deny the law of the Lord, then together with the law they also slander him who spoke in the law;

and they wander according to their own opinion, and have fallen from the truth, neither believing in judgment nor confessing the resurrection.

And whatever they do in the body, being filled with pleasure, this they reap, raging madly in the pleasures and desires of the devil, so that they are refuted in every way and everywhere by the word of truth;

For John says: 'If anyone comes to you,' he says, 'and does not bring this teaching...'

'And what teaching?' he says: 'If anyone does not confess that Christ has come in the flesh, he is antichrist,' and now many antichrists have arisen, since those who do not confess that Christ has come in the flesh are antichrists.

But the Savior himself also says: 'Those who are counted worthy of the kingdom of heaven neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels.'

In order to show manifest chastity and the sanctity that comes through keeping apart, he says to Mary: 'Do not touch me;'

'for I have not yet ascended to the Father,' in order to show a purity untouched by bodies and unmixed.

But also in another place the Holy Spirit, prophesying beforehand both for those before and those afterward, says: 'Blessed is the barren undefiled woman who has not known a bed in transgression, and the eunuch who has done no lawless deed with his hands,' so as to refute the shameful deeds committed by hand through their myth.

And how many other things could be said, as when the apostle says: 'the unmarried man and the virgin are anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord' — and this he says in order to show chastity in truth, not carelessly, but as authorized by the Holy Spirit — and then, concerning those who hold the honorable estate of marriage, saying: 'marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled, but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.'

But he also cries out against them, writing to the Romans, uncovering the shameful deeds of those who commit evil practices, saying: 'For even their women exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature,' and concerning the males, that 'males committing shameless acts with males...'

But also in the epistle to Timothy he speaks concerning these, that: 'In the last days perilous times will come;'

'for men will be lovers of pleasure,' and again, 'forbidding to marry,' 'their conscience seared,' since they forbid marrying with self-control and bearing children, while burning in conscience — being lustful and corrupted, yet forbidding the bearing of children.

For indeed their so-called 'sacrifice,' being a filthy thing, has already even been indicated from of old through the prophet as being the flesh of the serpent, and not — God forbid — of the Lord, who speaks thus: 'You broke the heads of the dragon, and gave him as food to the Ethiopian peoples.'

For all the heresies, having gathered their error to themselves out of Greek myths, have transformed it, remaking it into another, worse sense.

But no one would swallow an infant, as also the holy Clement, mocking the shameful deeds of the gods of the Greeks, said that in swallowing Metis he was not able to swallow the infant, but signified his own seed.

What else might I say? Or how shall I shake off this mire-laden labor, both wishing to speak and not wishing to, yet being compelled, lest I seem to conceal something of what exists, and fearing lest, in uncovering their terrible deeds, I either defile or wound [the hearer], or incite those led away by pleasures and desires to inquire further into this matter?

Nevertheless, may I myself be guiltless, and may all the hope of the holy catholic Church, and all who come upon this writing, be kept from such sowing and evil scheming of the devil;

For if I should undertake to relate the other things said and done among them — as many and as great as they are, and greater than these, and lesser — and should also wish, as a healing remedy, to set in opposition to each expression a kind of antidote, I would drive the treatise of this composition into a great bulk.

For, beloved, I myself also encountered this heresy, and was informed, face to face and in person, by the very mouths of those who by their nature attempt these things;

but he who then stood by the holy Joseph also stood by us.

And having called upon him who delivered that man in that place, we, though unworthy and unfit, having received mercy and having fled from their destructive hands, were able ourselves too, after singing a hymn to the all-holy God, to say the words: 'Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously glorified; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.'

For it was not by any power equal to that man's righteousness, but by a groaning to God that we, having received mercy, were saved.

For, being reproached by those very destructive women, I laughed at them, as such women, mocking one another as it were, insinuated that we had not been able to save the young man, but had left him to perish in the hands of the ruler;

since whichever of them was more beautiful would put herself forward as a bait, so that through her the deceived might be proclaimed as saved rather than destroyed.

And thereafter reproach falls upon the unlovely woman from the more beautiful ones: 'I,' she says, 'am a vessel of election, able to save those who are deceived, but you were not able.'

Now those who propounded this seductive myth were, in the form of their outward appearance, most fair-faced, but in the mind of their depravity, they possessed the whole deformity of the devil.

But the merciful God delivered us from their wickedness, so that after we had read their books, and had applied our mind to the truth, and were not carried away with them, but escaped and were not enticed, we then made haste to point them out to the bishops in that place, and to expose the names hidden in the church, so that these men too were driven out of the city — names to the number of about eighty — and the city was purged of their tare-like and thorny growth.

Now someone, remembering our promise made above, might perhaps even commend us, since we had announced beforehand that we had personally encountered some of them, had learned some things from their writings, and some through reports and the testimonies of trustworthy men able to show us the truth — so that here too, out of love of truth, we have not passed over the subject, but have shown that this is one of the heresies we have encountered.

As then, having encountered them and having escaped, and having read, known, and condemned them, we passed on safely, so we also urge you, the reader, having read and condemned, to pass on, so that you may not fall into the venom of the wickedness of these creeping things.

But if ever you should encounter any of those from this serpentine school, at once take up the wood prepared for us by the Lord, on which our Lord Christ was fastened, and strike immediately at the head of the serpent, saying that Christ was crucified for us, thereby leaving us a pattern of salvation;

for he would not have been crucified, if he did not have flesh.

But having flesh, and having been crucified, he crucified our sins.

I hold fast to the truth by faith, and I am not led away by the error of the serpent's bastard teaching and the whispering of his doctrine,

which leads to eternal life — nor do I abandon it for the broad and spacious road, thorny and full of stumbling-blocks, muddy and filled with licentiousness and fornication, the like of which fornication and licentiousness may be seen in that most terrible creeping thing to which the ancients gave the name 'the viper that knows no birth-pangs.'

For the nature of such a viper is like the wickedness of these people.

For by committing this shameful act through the male or the female nature, they forbid the emission of seed, doing away with the childbearing given by God to his creatures — just as the Apostle says: 'receiving in themselves the due recompense of their error,' and so on.

For, he says, in this manner the viper that has no birth-pangs, being enchanted by the passion of desire — the female toward the male and the male toward the female — the two being entwined together, the female opens her mouth wide and the male inserts his head into it, and she, being seized by passion, bites off his head; and thus, having swallowed the venom that dripped from his mouth, she conceives within herself such a pair, male and female;

which pair, having grown to maturity in the belly and having no way to be born, wound the mother's side and are thus born, so that both their father and their mother perish.

For this reason they gave her the name 'apeirodinos' ('one who knows no birth-pangs'), because she does not experience labor pains.

She is terrible and fearsome beyond all other creeping things, working her own destruction within herself and receiving her shame through her mouth — a creature to which this mindless heresy is like. Having here crushed its head and body and its offspring with the wood of life, let us proceed to examine the other heresies, calling upon God as our helper, to whom be honor and power for ever and ever, amen.

Against the Carpocratians, 7 [in this category], but 27 in the overall sequence.

There arises a certain other Carpocrates, who established for himself an unlawful school of his falsely-named opinion, this man having acquired ways worse than all the others.

For from all these — Simon and Menander, Saturnilus and Basilides and Nicolaus and Carpocrates himself, and further, on the pretext of Valentinus — there sprang up the heresy of the falsely-named 'knowledge,' which named its followers 'Gnostics'; concerning these Gnostics I have already given an account, they being condemnable in their manner of life.

This man again wishes to introduce, like the others, on high a single first principle and father of all things, unknown and unnameable; but he holds that the world and the things in the world were made by angels who are far inferior to the unknown Father;

for he says that these, having revolted from the power above, made the world in this way.

He says that Jesus our Lord was begotten from Joseph, just as all other men are begotten from the seed of a man and a woman.

He says that Jesus was like all men, but differed in his manner of life, in self-control and virtue and a life of righteousness.

...his soul, having passed through all deeds and having been set free, should go up above to him, the unknown Father.

But not only that: souls like his, which have embraced the same things as it did, are likewise set free in the same manner and fly up to the unknown Father, since, having performed all deeds and having been released likewise from all things, they are thereafter set free.

But the soul of Jesus, having been brought up in the customs of the Jews, despised them, and for this reason received powers, by which — being able (the text here is corrupt) to undergo the sufferings attached to the punishments besetting men — it had strength to transcend the world-making angels.

And not only was the soul of Jesus able to do this, but also any soul that is able to pass through all deeds is able to transcend these very world-making angels;

and it too, if it receives powers and performs the same things, just as the soul of Jesus did, as I have said before.

Hence these men, having been driven into great arrogance, deceived by this deceiver, consider themselves to be preferred even above Jesus himself.

But others among them say that they are superior not to Jesus, but to Peter and Andrew and Paul and the rest of the apostles, on account of the surpassing greatness of their knowledge and the greater extent of their performance of various courses of conduct;

And others among them claim to differ in nothing from our Lord Jesus Christ.

For their souls are of the same revolution as his, and have likewise made a contempt of all things after the manner of Jesus.

For, he says, all souls have been deemed worthy of the same power of which the soul of Jesus also was deemed worthy;

Therefore they say that these souls too pass through every deed, just as, indeed, the soul of Jesus also passed through.

But if anyone should again be able to show contempt beyond that of Jesus, he will be more distinguished than he.

Those of this unlawful school undertake all manner of attempts at terrible and destructive deeds.

For magical arts have been devised among them, and they have invented various incantations for every kind of contrivance, for love-charms and enticement-spells.

Moreover, they also draw to themselves attendant demons, so that through much sorcery they might come into great power over all things, so that, he says, each of them might have mastery over whatever he wished, and might dare to undertake whatever deed he pleased;

thereby deceiving themselves, to the full persuasion of their blinded minds, supposing that souls which have undertaken such things, having gained mastery through such deeds and having despised the world-making angels and the things in the world, transcend the authority of these same myth-makers — for I would not call them world-makers — so that they might embrace the freedom above and obtain the flight above.

But they have been prepared by Satan, and put forward as a reproach and stumbling-block to the church of God.

For they have taken upon themselves the name 'Christians,' this being contrived by Satan so that the nations should be scandalized on their account and turn away from the benefit of the holy church of God and from the true preaching, on account of the unlawful practices and incurable wickednesses of those men — so that the nations, observing their repeated deeds of unlawful practice, and supposing that those of the holy church of God are of the same sort, might turn away their ear, as I said before, from God's teaching according to truth, or, seeing certain of them, blaspheme all of us alike.

And for this reason, most of the nations, wherever they see such people, neither approach us for fellowship, whether of dealings or of opinion or of hearing the divine word, nor do they lend an ear, being frightened away by the impious wickedness of these lawless men.

These men continue in debauchery, doing absolutely anything for the gratification of their bodies, and they do not approach us at all, except perhaps in order to entice unstable souls with their evil teaching.

But their judgment, according to what is written, is just, as the holy apostle Paul said:

'For because of their evil deeds, recompense will be rendered to them.'

For, having recklessly given over their mind to a frenzy of lust, they have handed themselves over to the passions of countless pleasures.

For they say that whatever is thought by men to be evil is not evil, but is good by nature; for nothing is evil by nature, but such things are merely considered base by men.

And if anyone performs all these things in this one lifetime, his soul is no longer reincarnated so as to be cast down again into a body, but having accomplished every deed in this one life, it will be released, set free, and no longer owing anything with regard to action in the world.

But what sort of deed they mean, I am again afraid to say, lest I uncover a covered sewer of filth, as it were, and seem to some to be producing a surfeit of pestilential stench.

But nevertheless, since we are constrained by the truth to reveal the things among those who have been deceived, I will constrain myself to speak more decorously, and not to step outside the truth.

What then shall I say, but that these men commit every unspeakable act and unlawful deed, which it is not lawful to bring to one's lips, and every kind of homosexual acts and more lustful intercourse with women, using every member of the body;

Practicing magic and sorcery and idolatry, they claim that this is the work of paying off the debts incurred in the body, so that one is no longer accused, nor is any further deed of action required of him; and for this reason, they say, the soul, after its departure from here, does not turn back and go again into reincarnation and transmigration.

For their treatises are such that the intelligent reader, upon reading them, is amazed and astonished, and disbelieves that such things could actually be done by human beings — not only by those who dwell in cities like ours, but even by those who live among wild beasts, and are like beasts and cattle, and, one might almost say, dare to do the things of dogs and swine.

For they say that one must by all means make use of every one of these things, lest, having departed and having fallen short in some deed, souls be turned back again into bodies for this reason, in order to do again the things they did not do before.

And this, they say, is what Jesus said in the gospel through the parable: 'Agree with your adversary quickly while you are with him on the way, and make an effort to be rid of him, lest the adversary hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison;'

'Truly I say to you, you shall by no means come out from there, until you have paid the last penny.'

But these same men fashion a certain myth for the interpretation of this parable, and say that that 'adversary' is one of the angels who made the world, and that he has been appointed for this very purpose: to lead away the souls that depart from bodies here to the judge, where they are examined;

and if they have not performed every work, they are handed over by the ruler to the officer.

And they say that the officer is an angel, who serves the world-making judge in order to carry the souls back again and enclose them in various bodies.

For they say that the prison is the body, and they wish the 'last penny' to be reincarnation;

so that at each incarnation of bodies the soul accomplishes a final deed, and no longer has anything remaining by which to commit any unlawful act.

For, as we said before, they say that the soul, having passed through all things and having performed each thing, and having been set free, must ascend to the unknown One above, having transcended the world-making angels and the world-maker himself.

And again they say that it is necessary, even if in a single incarnation of reincarnation, having performed all deeds, souls should thereafter, being set free, depart upward;

having accomplished the practice of every unlawful deed, the soul is thereafter set free.

And again they say: 'We deem it right to relate these things to those who are worthy, so that they may do the things that seem to be evil but are not evil by nature, that having learned them, they may be set free.'

These followers of Carpocrates place a mark, by branding, or by skillful use of a razor or a needle, upon the right earlobe of those whom they have deceived.

Now a certain Marcellina, deceived by them, once came to us in a way, who did harm to many in the time of Anicetus, bishop of Rome, who succeeded after Pius and those before him.

For in Rome, the first were the apostles themselves, Peter and Paul, who were also bishops; then Linus, then Cletus, then Clement, who was contemporary with Peter and Paul, whom Paul mentions in the Epistle to the Romans.

And let no one marvel that others succeeded to the episcopate from the apostles before him, even though he was contemporary with Peter and Paul;

for he too was a contemporary of the apostles.

Whether, then, while they the apostles were still alive, he received the laying on of hands for the episcopate from Peter, and having declined it, ceased from office — for he says in one of his letters, 'I withdraw, I depart; let the people of God be established,' advising certain persons of this (for we found this recorded in certain memoirs) — or whether, after the death of the apostles, he was appointed by Cletus the bishop, we do not know very clearly.

Nevertheless, even so, it was possible, while the apostles — I mean those around Peter and Paul — were still alive, for other bishops to be appointed, because the apostles often set out on journeys to other lands for the preaching of Christ, and the city of the Romans could not be without a bishop.

For Paul indeed also reached as far as Spain, while Peter often visited Pontus and Bithynia.

It was possible after Clement had been established [as bishop]—and had declined, if indeed this is how it happened;

for I am setting forth an opinion, not laying down a certainty, that afterward, after Linus and Cletus had died, each having served as bishop about twelve years after the death of the holy Peter and Paul, which took place in the twelfth year of Nero, this man was again compelled to take hold of the bishopric.

Nevertheless, the succession of the bishops in Rome runs as follows:

Peter and Paul, Linus and Cletus, Clement, Evarestus, Alexander, Xystus, Telesphorus, Hyginus, Pius, Anicetus—the one mentioned earlier above in the list.

And let no one be surprised that we have gone through each of these matters so precisely;

for through these details, clarity is always demonstrated.

In the times, then, of Anicetus, as we said, the aforementioned Marcellina, having come to Rome and vomited forth the corruption of Carpocrates' teaching, ruined and destroyed many of the people there.

And from this arose the beginning of those who are called Gnostics.

They possess images painted in colors, and also some made of gold and silver and other material, which they claim are likenesses of Jesus and that these were made by Pontius Pilate—that is, likenesses of that same Jesus from the time when he sojourned among the race of men.

They keep such images secretly, and also images of certain philosophers—Pythagoras and Plato and Aristotle and the rest—alongside which philosophers they also set up other likenesses of Jesus; and having set these up, they worship them and perform the mysteries of the pagans.

For having set up these images, they then proceed to carry out the customs of the pagans.

And what are the customs of the pagans but sacrifices and the rest? They claim that salvation belongs to the soul alone, and not to bodies.

For let no one despise reasoned argument, especially when directed against deceivers;

let the mind that has been trained in the truth be present [and attend to this].

Since this man too, then, has fallen into the sorcery of Simon and of the rest, we shall overturn him too by the same arguments.

For if the unknown and unnameable power became the cause of other angels, then either there is ignorance present in that very being—that is, in the Father of all—if he did not know what the angels fashioned by him were going to do, being ignorant that they would revolt and do what he himself did not wish; or else he made these beings knowing that they would do what he himself does not wish, and it has come about from them, and he himself will thereby be, through his foreknowledge and good pleasure, the very one who did the things which those beings have dared to do.

If, then, as I said before, he knew what they would do, yet did not wish that they should do it, by what reasoning did he make those who did the deeds, so that they might do what he himself did not wish? But if he himself made the angels precisely so that they might do the things that came about through them, then indeed he wished these things to happen;

and therefore he also prepared beforehand the angels who did these deeds.

And if he prepared them beforehand for the purpose of doing this, yet forbids the things that came about through them, then there would be a false accusation involved.

But if he permitted them to act, while yet wishing to take back to himself again—against their will—the things that came about through them, that is, human beings and souls, then there would be nothing else in it but greed, since men are being seized from the angels by the One above, against the angels' own will;

moreover there would also be weakness [involved], since he himself, being unable to make [souls] for himself, seizes what was made by those who were made by him.

And then it would all become a myth and foolish talk: those below being able to overstep those in the middle, while those in the middle are punished as being the cause of those below, and those below, above those in the middle, are saved and set free unto the One above—I mean, of course, the souls of those within this creation.

And in that case, the One above would be judged weak for not being able to do it, while those made by him would be powerful, being able to do what he himself did not wish—or else he did wish it and was not able.

For it is not possible that the things which that one longs for should be evil to him, nor that they came to be from evil beings.

For if it were evil, it ought to perish.

But if any part of the work at all is saved, then the work is no longer base; and even if only a part of it is found to be saved, neither are those who made it base—those who fashioned the part that is saved.

But if the soul is entirely from the angels and, having been brought forth, receives power from above, then indeed the angels would attain salvation all the more, since the soul that comes from them is saved, even though it comes from base beings.

And once it is saved, then neither is the soul itself, which came into being through the angels, any longer base, nor are the angels, from whom that very soul derives its existence.

Everyone whose mind is sound should know that this whole thing is nothing but a charlatan's workshop of folly.

And these men will again be put to shame by their other statements as well.

For if Jesus was not from the virgin Mary, but from the seed of Joseph and that same Mary, and yet this one is saved, then those who begot him will also be saved.

And if Mary and Joseph exist from the Demiurge, then they have thereby declared that the Demiurge is also the creator of Jesus, and he who made Joseph and Mary—from whom Jesus derives, according to them, from the unknown Father above—will no longer be in a state of deficiency.