Sophia Scriptura

Church History 4.7.2

Eusebius of Caesarea · Church History · ca. 300–325 · Caesarea · Read in context

Summary: He used heretics bearing the Christian name to destroy believers and repel outsiders.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:141

τότε γε μὴν τούτων ἀποκεκλεισμένος, πονηροῖς καὶ ἀνδράσιν ὥσπερ τισὶν ὀλεθρίοις ψυχῶν ὀργάνοις διακόνοις τε ἀπωλείας χρώμενος, ἑτέραις κατεστρατήγει μεθόδοις, πάντα μόρον ἐπινοῶν, ὡς ἂν ὑποδύντες γόητες καὶ ἀπατηλοὶ τὴν αὐτὴν τοῖ δόγματος ἡμῖν προσηγορίαν ὁμοῦ μὲν τῶν πιστῶν τοὺς πρὸς αὐτῶν προσηγορίαν εἰς βυθὸν ἀπωλείας ἄγοιειν, ὁμοῦ δὲ τοὺς τῆς πίστεως ἀγνῶτας διʼ ὧν αὐτοὶ δρῶντες ἐπιχειροῖεν ἀποτρέποιντο τῆς ἐπὶ τὸν σωτήριον λόγον παρόδου.

English · Claude translation

but then, shut out from these, he used wicked men as destructive instruments of souls and ministers of perdition and campaigned by other methods, devising every kind of scheme, so that sorcerers and deceivers, taking on the same name as our doctrine, might at once lead those of the faithful whom they caught into the abyss of destruction, and at the same time, by what they themselves did, turn away those ignorant of the faith from the approach to the saving word.

About this passage

Source
Dindorf 4:141 · Wilhelm Dindorf, ed., Eusebii Caesariensis Opera, vol. 4: Historiae ecclesiasticae libri I–X (Leipzig: Teubner, 1871) · Greek text: W. Dindorf, Eusebii Caesariensis Opera 4 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1871), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0
Text
As printed in Dindorf, Eusebii Opera 4. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.
Translation
Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Dindorf, Eusebii Caesariensis Opera 4 (Teubner, 1871); made independently of existing English translations.
Compare
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 1 (1890) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)
Topics
Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

  • The digital text repeats προσηγορίαν for “whom they caught”; translated as the sense requires.

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.7.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/4/7/2/).

Plain text
Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.7.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/4/7/2/).

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