Various disputes having arisen among them, another man, also called Theodotus, a money-changer by trade, undertook to say that Melchizedek was a certain very great power, and that he is greater than Christ, whose image, they claim, Christ happens to be; and they too, like the aforementioned Theodotians, say that Jesus was a man, and that in the same manner the Christ descended upon him.
As for the various opinions of the Gnostics, we have judged it not worthwhile to enumerate their nonsensical doctrines, which are many, irrational, and full of blasphemies — doctrines concerning which those [philosophers] descended from the Greeks, who philosophized far more reverently about the divine, have [already] been refuted.
The cause of much accumulation of evils for them was Nicolaus, one of the seven appointed to the diaconate by the apostles, who, having departed from the straight teaching, taught indifference of life and of food; and John, through the Revelation, reproved his disciples for insulting the Holy Spirit by committing fornication and eating things sacrificed to idols.
A certain Cerdo, himself likewise having derived starting-points from these men and from Simon, says that the God proclaimed by Moses and the prophets is not the Father of Jesus Christ. For the former, he says, is known, but the Father of Christ is unknown; and the one is just, the other good.
Marcion strengthened this man's doctrine, undertaking the Antitheses and speaking ill, as much as seemed good to him, against the demiurge of all things. Likewise also Lucian, his disciple [did the same].
Apelles, who arose from these [Marcionites], speaks thus: that there is a certain good god, as Marcion also supposed, and that the one who created all things is just, who fashioned the things that came to be, and a third, who spoke to Moses — this one being fiery — and there is also a fourth, different one, the cause of evils; these he calls "angels."
He speaks ill of the Law and the Prophets, claiming that the things written are human and false; and of the Gospels or the Apostle he chooses whatever pleases him. He attends to the words of a certain Philumene as to the manifestations of a prophetess. And [he says] that Christ descended from the power above, that is, from the Good, and that he is the son of that [power].
He says that this one was not born of a virgin, nor was the one who appeared without flesh, but that, having taken a share of the parts of the substance of the universe, he made for himself a body — that is, of hot and cold and moist and dry — and that in this body, unnoticed by the cosmic powers, he lived out the time he lived in the world.
And [he says] that afterward, having been crucified by the Jews, he died, and after three days, having been raised, appeared to the disciples, showing the marks of the nails and of the side, persuading them that it was he himself and not a phantom.
But he was fleshly. Having shown the flesh, he says, he gave it back to the earth, from whose substance it was, taking nothing foreign for himself as gain, but having used each of the elements for a time, he gave back to each what was its own, again dissolving the bond of the body — the hot to the hot, the cold to the cold, the moist to the moist, the dry to the dry — and thus he journeyed to the good Father, leaving behind the seed of life in the world, through the disciples, for those who believe.
It seems to us that these things too have been sufficiently set forth; but since we have judged that nothing among the doctrines held by certain people should be left unrefuted, let us see also what has been devised by the Docetae.