藥箱（駁八十異端） 第 1 章 第 4/82 段

For if the previous day's baptism had not died, they would not have needed another on the following day for the cleansing of sins.

And if they do not refrain from sinning at all, supposing that the water will cleanse those who sin continually every day, their supposition is vain, and their practice futile and stale.

For neither Ocean, nor all the streams and seas, nor ever-flowing rivers and springs, nor the whole rain-bearing nature of things combined together, are able to blot out sins, since this does not take place according to reason nor by God's command;

for it is repentance that cleanses, and the one baptism, through the naming of the mysteries.

I shall now pass over this heresy as well, having considered it sufficient to have shown briefly the remedy for their mental derangement, as it has been set out here for those who read this.

Against the Nasaraeans, the fifth heresy stemming from Judaism, the eighteenth in the sequence.

Next I shall undertake to relate the matters concerning the heresy called, after the Hemerobaptists, that of the Nasaraeans, who are Jews by race, coming from Gilead and Bashan and the regions beyond the Jordan, as the account that has come down to us relates; being themselves of Israel, they judaized in every respect, holding views scarcely different from those already mentioned.

For they likewise practiced circumcision, kept the same sabbath, adhered to the same feasts, yet they did not introduce fate or astrology.

And they accepted as fathers those in the Pentateuch from Adam to Moses who were distinguished for excellence in piety toward God — I mean Adam, Seth, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Levi, Aaron, Moses, and Joshua the son of Nun — but they did not accept the Pentateuch itself; rather they confessed Moses and believed that he received a law, yet not this one, they say, but another.

Hence, being Jews, they observe all the practices of the Jews, yet they offered no sacrifice nor partook of living creatures; rather it was unlawful among them to partake of meat or to offer sacrifice.

For they asserted that these books had been fabricated, and that none of these things had been done by the fathers.

This was the difference of the Nasaraeans from the others, so that the refutation against them too is evident not in one place only, but in many.

First, in that they confess the fathers and patriarchs and Moses;

For since no other scripture speaks about these matters, whence do they have their knowledge of the names and excellences of the fathers, if not from the very scriptures of the Pentateuch? And how is it possible for the same thing to be at once true and false, and for the scripture to be true in part and false in part, when the Savior says: 'Either make the tree good and its fruits good, or the tree corrupt and its fruits corrupt'?

For a good tree cannot bear corrupt fruit, nor can a corrupt tree bear good fruit.

Vain, then, is their thinking and their proposal, refuted from many quarters, since even to this day not only are the things recorded in the scriptures still celebrated, but also the very places of the wonders are preserved;

Mount Zion is called by this same name to this day; and likewise the place of the oak of Mamre, where the calf was set before the angels.

But if Abraham set before the angels a preparation of meat, he himself was surely not lacking in partaking of the same.

Moreover, concerning the sheep that was sacrificed in the land of the Egyptians, the tradition is still celebrated among the Egyptians, and even among the idolaters.

For at the time when the Passover took place there — this being the beginning of spring, when the first equinox occurs — all the Egyptians, out of ignorance, take red ochre and anoint their sheep with it, and they also anoint the trees, the fig trees and the others, proclaiming and saying that, as they put it, fire once burned up the world on this very day;

and the appearance of the blood, being fire-red, is a protective charm against so great and so terrible a calamity.

And whence can we not show, concerning what follows, that even to this day the remains of Noah's ark are shown in the land of the Cardyaeans?

And assuredly, if anyone should seek and search diligently, since it is consistent, he would also find the remains of the altar at the foot of the mountain, where Noah remained after coming out of the ark, and offered from the clean animals and from the fat portions to the Lord God, when he heard, 'Behold, I have given you all things as the green plants of the field; sacrifice and eat.'

And I shall likewise pass over the imported and foolish character of this heresy as well, being content with the few words already stated, sown here by our brevity in opposition to the error of the aforementioned heresy.

Against the Ossaeans, the sixth heresy stemming from Judaism, the nineteenth in the sequence.

After this again there is another heresy interwoven with these, called that of the Ossaeans.

These, like the aforementioned ones, are Jews, hypocritical in manner, cunning in their thinking.

These came, as the tradition that has reached us relates, from the land of the Nabataeans and Ituraea, Moabitis and Arielitis, the regions lying beyond the Salt Valley, so called in divine scripture.

This is what is called the Dead Sea.

And this race of the Ossaeans, when the name is interpreted, means 'the sturdy race.'

There was later joined to them the one called Elxai, in the times of the emperor Trajan, after the coming of the Savior, who became a false prophet;

He composed a book, supposedly by way of prophecy, or as though by divinely inspired wisdom;

And they say there was also another, Iexaeus, who was his brother.

This man was one erring in manner, deceitful in mind, coming from the Jews and holding Jewish opinions, yet not conducting himself according to the Law; introducing one thing in place of another, and fashioning his own heresy for himself, he appointed for them, unto worship, an oath by salt and water and earth and bread and heaven and ether and wind;

and at other times again appointing seven other witnesses — I mean heaven and water and spirits, as he calls them, holy ones, and the angels of prayer, and oil, and salt, and earth.

He is hostile to virginity, hates continence, and compels people to marry;

He introduces certain fantastical notions as though supposedly from revelation, and he teaches hypocrisy, saying that it is not a sin if someone should happen, at a time when persecution has arisen, to worship idols, provided only he does not worship in his conscience — and whatever he should confess with his mouth, so long as not in his heart.

So that everything about him is false and vain.

This man, then, as has been said above, was joined to the aforementioned heresy called that of the Ossaeans, remnants of which still exist to this day in the same land of the Nabataeans, also called Peraea, near Moabitis;

which race is now called that of the Sampsaeans.

They fancy that they are supposedly calling this one 'power revealed,' since 'El' is said to mean 'power,' and 'xai' means 'hidden.'

But the whole arrogant pretension of this practice has been exposed, and it has fallen into great shame among those able to discern and verify the truth.

For even to this day, in the days of Constantius and of the emperors now reigning...

For until the time of Constantius, two sisters of the race of this Elxai, a certain Marthous and Marthana, were worshiped as gods in their own land, on the ground that they supposedly belonged to the seed of the aforementioned Elxai.

Marthous died a short time ago, but Marthana was still living until this present time.

And the deluded heretics in that region would carry away even these women's spittle and the other impurities of their bodies, supposedly as a remedy against diseases.

But that which is deluded is always haughty and ready for deceit;

for wickedness is blind, and error is without understanding.

And for how long shall I wear myself out speaking about this sorcerer, and all the things he falsely devised against the truth — first of all teaching denial of God and hypocrisy, teaching people to partake of the abominable sacrifices of idolatry, to deceive those who listen, and to deny one's own faith with the mouth, claiming that in this there is no sin?

so that their malady is incurable and cannot be corrected.

For if the mouth that confesses the truth is prepared beforehand for falsehood, would anyone indeed believe that their heart is not deceived? — since the divine word declares explicitly, teaching in the Holy Spirit, that with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses unto salvation.

But again, he supposedly confesses Christ by name, saying that Christ is the great king;

yet I have not at all clearly grasped, from the deceitful and falsified composition of his book of nonsense, whether he was indeed speaking of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For he does not define this, but simply says 'Christ,' meaning or expecting, as far as we have understood, some other person.

For he forbids praying toward the east, saying that one ought not to attend to it in that way, but rather to have one's face toward Jerusalem from every quarter: those from the east are to face west, toward Jerusalem; those from the west, east, toward the same; those from the north, south; and those from the south, north — so that from every direction the face is set directly opposite Jerusalem.

And observe the derangement of mind of this deceiver.

For he anathematizes sacrifices and priestly rites as being alien to God and as never at all having been offered to God by the fathers or by the law, and yet he says that one must pray there, toward Jerusalem, where the altar and the sacrifices were — he who denies the eating of meat practiced among the Jews and the other observances, and denies that the altar and the fire belong to God, calling them alien to him, while saying that the water is favorable but the fire is alien, declaring this in these words:

'Children, do not go toward the appearance of the fire, for you are being led astray;'

'for such a thing is delusion.'

'For you see it,' he says, 'very close at hand, yet it is far away;'

'do not go toward its appearance, but go rather toward the voice of the water.' And many are his mythical fabrications.

That its length was twenty-four schoinoi, that is about ninety-six miles, and its breadth six schoinoi, that is twenty-four miles, and telling monstrous tales likewise of its thickness, and of its feet, and his other fables.

And that the Holy Spirit itself, too, is female, resembling Christ, standing like a statue above a cloud and between two mountains.

The rest I will pass over in silence, lest I fill the hearing of my readers with fantastic mythology; but as for the words and empty utterances with which he later deceives in his book, saying, 'Let no one seek the interpretation, but let him only recite these things in prayer' — and these he pretends to have rendered from the Hebrew language, though, as far as we have partly understood, what he imagines is nothing at all.

For he says one must recite: 'abar anid moib nochile daasim ane daasim nochile moib anid abar selam,' which, when interpreted, have this plain meaning:

'Let the humiliation that is from the fathers pass away — from their condemnation, and their trampling, and their toil; trampled in condemnation through my fathers, from humiliation that has passed away in the mission of perfection.' And in him all these things are fulfilled.

For his power and his delusion have been emptied out.

But if anyone should wish to hear this interpreted word for word with precision, we would not hesitate to do this either; but, as is altogether fitting for those who wish to hear it in minute detail, we shall set out plainly his very words themselves together with their interpretations, and it is as follows:

moib, 'that which is from my fathers';

nochile, 'of their condemnation';

daasim, 'and their trampling';

moib, 'through my fathers';

selam, 'in the mission of perfection.'

This, then, is the heresy of the Ossenes mentioned above, which follows the manner of life of the Jews in keeping the Sabbath, practicing circumcision, and doing all that the law requires;

only in forbidding the books of Moses, like the Nasaraeans, does it create a schism, setting itself apart from the other six of these seven heresies.

It will suffice, then, for its overthrow, that it is alien to God, since the Lord clearly says that the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath.

And what is this profanation of the Sabbath but this: that no one was to do work on the Sabbath, yet in the temple the priests, in performing sacrifice, broke the Sabbath, profaning it through the continual sacrifice of animals? And I will pass over this heresy as well.

For this Elxai is joined again to the Ebionites who came after Christ, and also to the Nazoraeans who arose afterward.

And four heresies make use of him, since they are enchanted by his delusion:

that of the Ebionites who came afterward, and of the Nazoraeans, and of the Ossaeans who were before him and contemporary with him, and of the Nasaraeans mentioned by me above.

After the capture of Jerusalem, this same heresy, along with the other heresies that had for a short time been renowned, persisted — I mean the Sadducees, the Scribes, the Pharisees, the Hemerobaptists, the Ossaeans, the Nasaraeans, and the Herodians — until, each in its own time and season, they were scattered and dissolved.

...so that every sensible person might prepare for himself an antidote against the poisonous venom of their preaching, having condemned their trashy teaching and talk, and especially since the Lord says plainly, both in the law and in the gospel, 'You shall have no other gods,' 'you shall not take the name of another upon an oath,' and again says in the gospel that one must swear neither by heaven nor by earth nor by any other oath, but 'let your yes be yes, and your no, no;'

'for whatever is more than these is from the evil one.'

And I think the Lord decreed this because he foresaw that some would propose an oath in other names;

first, then, that one must not swear either by the Lord himself or by any other oath;

for swearing is from the evil one.

And evil indeed, then, was he who spoke in Elxai, who compelled people to swear not only by God, but also by salt, and by water, and by bread, and by ether, and by wind, and by earth, and by heaven.

It is enough, as in passing, for whoever wishes to be healed to use these two arguments as an antidote against his delusion.

Having passed over this man's wrangling and the hidden deceit of this heresy, I shall next make my refutation of the seventh heresy, that which was then observed among the same people.

Against the Herodians, the seventh heresy stemming from Judaism, and the twentieth in the whole sequence.

After this one, and after these others, there was again a seventh, called that of the Herodians.

These had nothing at all distinctive, but were entirely Jews, idle and hypocritical.

These held Herod to be the Christ — supposing that Herod was the very Christ awaited in all the scriptures of the law and the prophets — and, deceived about him, they exalted themselves through Herod, carried away by the saying, and also seeking, out of vanity, to flatter the king of that time by the saying, 'A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from between his thighs, until he comes to whom it is reserved' — or, as the other copies have it, 'until he comes to whom the things laid up belong.'

Since Herod happened to be the son of Antipater, a certain Ascalonite belonging to the temple of the idol Apollo;

whose father, the father of this Antipater, was himself named Herod, and was in turn the son of an Antipater.

This same Antipater was led away captive by the Idumaeans, and, residing there in Idumaea, begot Herod.

And since his father was poor and unable to ransom his son — I mean Antipater — he remained for a long time in slavery;

but afterward he was ransomed by a collection from the citizens, together with the child Herod, and returned to his own country.

For this reason some call him an Idumaean, while others know him to be an Ascalonite.

He was king in Judea, subject to King Augustus, being bound to him by treaty.

For those of the line of Judah had failed, and this man belonged not to the tribe of Judah, nor indeed to Israel at all;

yet to such a one, they supposed, was reserved the honor of being the Christ.

But the sequel refutes them, declaring that he is 'the expectation of the nations, and in him shall the nations hope.'

Does 'the expectation of the nations' eagerly look for Herod? And how was it fulfilled among them, 'He couched, he lay down as a lion, and as a lion's whelp — who shall rouse him up?' And where did Herod wash his robe in blood, or his garment in the blood of the grape, as did our Lord Jesus Christ, who sprinkled his own body with his own blood, and washed his garment in the blood of the grape? But understand what I am saying.

For the Lord will give you understanding in all things. For in order to show forth the purification of the condition of the Lord's people, he came, through the blood of his own teaching, to cleanse the teeth of men who were defiled with the blood of sacrificial fat and unlawful sacrifice.

And why should I speak of the many other instances? For they are numerous, and time does not allow me to prolong my discourse in refutation of the aforementioned heresies.

But these seven existed in Israel, in Jerusalem and in Judea, while the four mentioned before existed among the Samaritans, in Samaria;

but most of them have now been abolished.

For there are no longer Scribes, no longer Pharisees, no longer Sadducees, no longer Hemerobaptists, no longer Herodians;

only some are found here and there, rarely — perhaps one or two Nasaraeans beyond upper Thebaid and beyond Arabia — and the remnant of the Ossaeans, no longer Judaizing but joined to the Sampsaeans, who by succession dwell on the far side of the Dead Sea, in the highlands beyond it;

but now they have been joined to the heresy of the Ebionites.

And it has come about that, having ceased from Judaism, it is as though a root were cut, or the body of a serpent, and from it there grew forth a two-headed, rootless snake, sprung from one half-body and hanging attached to it.

And among the Jews there are no longer any but a few separated Ossaeans and Nasaraeans.

The Ossaeans, however, passed over from Judaism into the heresy of the Sampsaeans, who are no longer either Jews or Christians.

Let this suffice, then, from me concerning what has been said up to this point.

The Sojourn of Christ, and the Face of the Incarnate Presence and of Truth;

the one and only faith of God.

Immediately thereafter, close upon their heels, the incarnate presence of our Lord Jesus Christ came to sojourn among men, which overtook the aforesaid seven heresies in Jerusalem.

And his power extinguished them and scattered them abroad.

Furthermore, all the heresies that arose afterward came into being after his sojourn — I mean after Mary was given the good news in Nazareth through Gabriel, and after the whole incarnate presence of the Lord, that is, quite simply, after his ascension.

He was embraced by Simeon, acknowledged by Anna the prophetess, daughter of Phanuel, carried away to Nazareth, came the following year to be presented before the Lord in Jerusalem, came to be in Bethlehem on account of the census by lineage, being carried by his mother, was carried back again to Nazareth, and in the second yearly cycle came again to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, likewise carried by his own mother; and in Bethlehem he came down to a house together with his own mother and Joseph, who was an old man, dwelling there with Mary; and there, in the second year after his birth, he was observed by the magi, was worshiped, and received gifts, and on that very night, Joseph having been warned by an angel, he was taken away into Egypt, and from there, after two years, he returned again, when Herod had died and Archelaus had succeeded him.

For in the thirty-third year of Herod, and the forty-second year of Augustus the emperor, the Savior was born in Bethlehem of Judea.

He went down into Egypt in the thirty-fifth year of Herod, and came up from Egypt after the death of Herod.

Therefore, in the thirty-seventh year of the same reign of Herod, the child was four years old, when Herod, having completed thirty-seven years, ended his life.

And Archelaus reigns for nine years; at the beginning of his reign, Joseph, going out of Egypt together with Mary and the child, having heard that Archelaus was reigning, withdrew into the parts of Galilee and then settled in Nazareth.

And Archelaus begets Herod the younger, and this Herod becomes king in the ninth year of the reign of his father Archelaus, by succession.

And there have come to be, by reckoning, thirteen years since the incarnate coming of Christ.

In the eighteenth year of Herod, who was also called Agrippa, Jesus began his preaching, and then received the baptism from John, and preached the acceptable year, being contradicted by no one — neither by Jews nor by Greeks nor by Samaritans nor by anyone else.

Then, being contradicted, he preached a second year, and it became the nineteenth year for the same Herod, and the thirty-second for the Savior.

And in the twentieth year of Herod, called the tetrarch, took place the saving Passion and the impassibility — the tasting of death, indeed the taste of death even unto the cross, suffering in truth, yet remaining impassible in his divinity. For, as the divine Scripture says, Christ having suffered for us in the flesh, and again, put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit, and so forth: he is crucified, is buried, descends into the regions under the earth in his divinity and in his soul, takes captivity captive, and rises on the third day with that same holy body, having united the body to the divinity, no longer to be dissolved, no longer to suffer, no longer to be lorded over by death, as the apostle says, 'death no longer has lordship over him.'

The very body truly, the very flesh, the very soul, the very whole of it all;

not something other than the body that was, but that very body which was, having empowered it and united it into one unity, into one divinity — the fleshly made incorruptible, the bodily made spiritual, the coarse made fine, the mortal made immortal — having in no way seen corruption, the soul not being left in Hades, the instrument not being divided toward sin, the mind not being defiled by turning; but having taken the whole of man, and having preserved it all perfect, since the divinity granted to the true incarnation whatever was needed for the reasonable necessities — I mean those that confirm the full assurance arising from body and soul and human mind, that is to say, hunger and thirst, weeping and dejection, tears and sleep, toil and rest.

— things existing apart from sin and from the forbidden mutability.

But he also rose, and entered while the doors were shut, so that he might show the coarse to be fine, the very same body that was, together with flesh and bones.

For after entering, he showed his hands and feet and his pierced side, bones and sinews and the rest, so that what was seen might not be an illusion;

he was making a pledge of our faith and hope, having through himself brought all things to completion.

And he ate together with them, not in appearance but in truth, and, instructing them, he taught them to preach the kingdom of heaven in truth, signifying to the disciples the great and most crucial thing, saying, 'Make disciples of the nations' — that is, 'turn the nations from wickedness to truth, from heresies into one unity' — baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, into the lordly appellation of the Trinity, the holy and royal seal, so that he might show from the name that there is no alteration of the one unity.

For where those being baptized are commanded by him to be sealed into the name of the Father, the doxology is secure;

into the name of the Son, the invocation is not deficient;

into the name of the Holy Spirit, the bond is neither divided nor estranged, bearing the seal of the one divinity.

And he was taken up into heaven in that same body and soul and mind, having united them into one unity and one spiritual hypostasis, and having made it divine; and he sat down at the right hand of the Father, having sent heralds into the whole world: Simon Peter, Andrew his brother, James and John the sons of Zebedee whom he had chosen long before, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, and Judas and Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot;

For Judas Iscariot, even though he was formerly counted among the twelve, having become a traitor, was cut off from the holy roll of the apostles.

And he also sent seventy-two others to preach, from among whom were the seven appointed over the widows: Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus; and before these, Matthias, who was numbered with the apostles in place of Judas;

and after these seven, and Matthias before them, Mark and Luke, Justus, Barnabas and Apelles, Rufus, Niger, and the rest of the seventy-two.

And after all these, and together with them, he chose Paul the holy apostle by his own voice from heaven, both apostle and herald of the nations, and fulfiller of the apostolic teaching;

who found the holy Luke, one of the seventy-two who had been scattered, and having turned him back and made him his own companion, showed him to be both a fellow-worker of the gospel and an apostle.

And thus was the whole evangelical undertaking completed up to this time.

My account up to this point, concerning the twenty heresies and their succession as far as I am able, has been stated by me in summary concerning the gospel's illumination that came to be in the world through Christ and his disciples; and to it one may gather and set alongside similar things — the predictions and prophecies from the Law and the Psalms and the rest — their sequences and courses, and may thereby grasp the accuracy of the matter, namely that the incarnate coming of Christ and the evangelical teaching is not spurious but true, foretold beforehand from the Old Testament, and beyond all doubt.

But so that I may not extend the labor of this composition into excessive bulk, I will be content with these things.

And proceeding in order, I shall likewise set forth the opinions that afterward grew upon life for an evil purpose, having already enumerated in moderate fashion the eleven heresies from the Jews and Samaritans, and before them the nine that arose from the Greeks and barbarians and others prior to the Lord's coming, down to that very time.

Against the Simonians: the first heresy after faith in Christ, which alone was pure; and in the order of succession, the twenty-first.

There arises the first heresy of Simon the magician, having begun from Christ onward, this being a heresy of those who believe in the name of Christ neither rightly nor purely, but who, according to the corruption falsified within them, work terrible things.

This Simon was a sorcerer, and he came from Gitthon, a city in Samaria, which is now a village.

He deluded the race of the Samaritans with his magic, deceiving and enticing them, and he said that he himself was the great power of God and had come down from above.

To the Samaritans he called himself the Father, but to the Jews he said he himself was the Son, and that though he suffered, he had not really suffered, but only in appearance.

This man ingratiated himself with the apostles, and he himself likewise, equally with the others, was baptized by Philip along with many.