Book of Heresies

Concerning the various plague of heresies, and the various errors that arose from the beginning of the world, that flowed down among the Jews, and that have sprung up since our Lord Jesus the Saviour came in the flesh, it is necessary to speak and to set out their number little by little, and to recognize that the enemy of the human race [the devil] was not undeservedly compared by the holy prophet to a partridge:

for since it often suffers barrenness, [the partridge] … secretly sits on the brood of others and cherishes and claims them as its own young, until a certain time; but when the age of discernment has come upon them, then, leaving their false parents, recalling by their own sense the rights of their parents and seeing them plainly with their eyes, they no longer delay to follow them. For what reason was this likeness announced to us?

Because, leaving the devil, by reason of the impiety of him who supposed that he held the whole world under his rule and power, … but afterwards, when Christ the parent has been seen and recognized by us, every man, having lost the falsehood of that most lying parent, does not delay, recognizing him, to follow the footsteps of the true parent, Christ. For we see daily fulfilled, as in a riddle, the prophecy of the most blessed Jeremiah, which says: “The partridge cried out, it gathered what it did not bring forth, making riches for itself not with wisdom; in the midst of its days they will forsake it, and at the last it will be a fool,”

which is now seen, as all nations daily forsake the deadly idolatry of the enemy, hearing from the law and the prophets that Christ is now the true God, and believing and recalling that he is always with the Father, and likewise hasten in every way as suppliants to fly to him, so that the prophecy may be fulfilled: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord Christ.” THIS, THEN, IS THE NUMBER OF THE HERETICS FROM THE BEGINNING AND ORIGIN OF THE WORLD:

FIRST are the Ophites, who are also called Serpentines. They worship the serpent, that is, the snake, saying that it first brought us the beginning of the knowledge of good and evil. Hence they assert that God envied it, because, they say, it was the first to bring the woman the knowledge of good and evil, and through her this passed thus to the whole human race;

and for this reason, they say, it was cast down from the first heaven into another; hence they also say that it will come from heaven, and they consider it to be a certain power of God, and proclaim that it must be worshipped.

Others are the Cainites, who praise Cain the fratricide, the firstborn of our father, blessed Adam the first-formed, saying that from one

power, that is, the devil's, Cain was made, but from another the most blessed Abel was born, and that the greater power, which was in Cain himself, prevailed, they say, so that he killed his brother.

Another heresy is that of the Sethians, who venerate Seth, the son of Adam born later and so named, who was born after the killing of the most blessed Abel; from him they are called Sethians. They worship him and say that when two men had been created at the beginning and the angels were in discord, a female power in heaven prevailed; for among them males and females are thought to be gods and goddesses.

Seeing this, they say, the mother, because the righteous Abel had been killed, planned to bear the righteous Seth, in whom she also placed the spirit of great power, so that, they say, the hostile powers might be destroyed.

They say that Christ God derives his descent from Seth himself. Some of them, however, assert and hold not only that he derives his descent from him, but that he is Christ himself.

A certain Dositheus later, a Jew by birth, dared to say that one should live according to the flesh alone, not hoping from the law of God for a resurrection to come

nor believing that there is a Spirit of God or an angel, nor expecting from the law and the prophets a judgment to come.

After him the Sadducees, from Saddoc, a Jewish man who was called by this name — he was a disciple of that man, and he also established this heresy, so that from him they were called Sadducees — likewise preach that one should live only according to the flesh, be circumcised, and have the body washed,

but expecting nothing else from the divine law, following the madness of Epicurus rather than the ordinances of the divine law. Of them it is also written in the gospel, when the Lord taught and preached against this pestilent heresy.

Another is that of the Pharisees, which confesses a resurrection to come and accepts the law and the prophets, but they expect Christ as a righteous man.

They Judaize and do not accept the gospels, and assert that certain times are opposed to Christ our Lord.

Others are the Samaritans, so called from King Samareus. Others say they are named from a son of Canaan who was called by this name, Samareus, from whom the Samaritans were named. These accept the law of Moses, that is, only four books, not expecting a judgment to come, denying the resurrection, not believing that Christ God, the Son of God, was announced beforehand in the law and the prophets,

not holding, according to the law, that man has an immortal soul, but thinking that one lives only in this body, and supposing and preaching this vanity: that the resurrection to come is in the begetting of children, which takes place daily in this age; being compared indeed to senseless cattle, as it is written in the prophet: “Man, being set in honour, did not understand; he is compared to senseless cattle, and has become like them.”

Another is the heresy of the Jews who are called Nazoreans, which accepts the law and the prophets, yet affirms that one should live in a carnal way, and supposes that all justification consists

in carnal observance; they also let the hair of the head grow, thinking that all the power of righteousness consists in it, as though presuming this for themselves from the sign of that judge Samson, because they were called Nazirites; from whom the pagans later, taking over brave men after his pattern, named them Hercules.

Others again are the Essenes, who are called by this name. They practise the life of monks, not taking delicate foods, taking no care over clothing, owning nothing,

but devoting themselves to reading and good works, living also in separate places; yet they do not expect Christ God, the Son of God, nor recognize him as the Lord announced in the law and the prophets, but believe in and expect him only as a prophet or a righteous man.

Others are the Heliognostics, who are also called Deinvictiaci, worshipping the sun and saying that the sun knows all the things of God, that no one but the sun gives men light, and that the sun supplies them with all nourishment; not knowing that, set in servitude, it runs its course daily as appointed by God the Father through Christ the Lord in the Holy Spirit, of which it is written: “Who commands the sun to rise, and it rises, and not to rise, and it does not rise.”

That vain pagan Hermes Trismegistus taught that after the almighty God men ought to worship none but the sun itself; and when he had gone to the province of the Celts, he is known to have taught them himself and persuaded them to yield to this error. This sun the captive Jews worshipped, as the prophet Ezekiel condemns those same Jews, accusing them, and declares and convicts them, with solemn witness, as guilty of the crime of treason, as it is written.

Others are those who worship frogs, which the wrath of God at that time under Pharaoh poured out upon the land of the Egyptians, to wear out the Egyptians with their stench,

and they still persist in this wickedness, thinking that by this vain observance they can appease the wrath of God.

Others are called Musiritae, who worship mice: under Eli the priest, when the ark of the covenant had been captured by the Philistines and, by the wrath of God, the land had brought forth mice so that their crops perished, they, warned by their own people, made golden mice and sent them back, five, with the ark and golden seats, and the plague ceased from them.

These, then, accepting the law and the prophets, do not recognize that this is vain and abominable, which is despised by all and mocked in every way.

Others are those who worship the fly of Accaron, in the city so called, as it is written in the book of Kingdoms how Ozias, king of the Jews, being sick, had sent to the fly of the city of Accaron, to learn whether he could be healed of his bodily sickness;

for which reason blessed Elijah the prophet, angered with divine zeal, because the king of the Jews chose to hope for health not from God, from Christ, but rather from the fly and the city of Accaron, the blessed prophet, angered at this, at once pronounced by the divine Spirit that he would not escape but would die in his bed.

There are the Troglodytes, as they are called among the Jews, who, living in hidden caves, did not cease to worship idols, as the prophet Ezekiel says, when the Lord showed how the elders of the people, holding censers in hidden caves, sacrificed to idols and worshipped them with blind minds.

There is another heresy among the Jews, which [worships] the Queen, whom they also call the Fortune of Heaven … whom they also call Caelestis in Africa, and they do not hesitate to offer sacrifices to her, so that the Jews of that time even said openly to the prophet Jeremiah, when he warned them to turn from idols and serve the Lord, and that they ought to worship him alone:

they cried out in anger, saying that since they had not sacrificed to the Fortune of Heaven or the Queen, from that time all evils and dangers had befallen them. For this reason blessed Jeremiah, going out from the people and from their city, wrote the Lamentations in a book because of that impiety, and announced that ruin would come upon them and the city not long after.

Others among them, keeping in memory the name of Baal, king of the Tyrians, and worshipping his idol, sacrificed to him, as is contained in the book of Kingdoms, when Ahab, king of the Israelites, and Jezebel his wife did not cease to sacrifice to that idol. At this blessed Elijah the prophet, led by divine zeal, sent by Christ the Lord, said to them, who confessed the law under the name of Judaism but served deadly pagan impiety, and spoke thus to all the people:

“How long will you limp on both your knees? Either God, God, or Baal, Baal.” And nonetheless the king and queen, favouring the priests of the groves, perished by various punishments and torments. The people also, not turning from idols, perished in repeated captivities.

Others are those who venerated Asthar, a man, and Camoth, the abomination of the Canaanites and Sidonians, that is, idols of men and women, and offered them various sacrifices; because of them captivity often came upon those kings and the people at that time, the Lord permitting it, as is contained in the books of Kingdoms.

Except for David the blessed king, the holy Hezekiah, Josiah, and Jehu son of Nimshi, all the others allowed the peoples to sacrifice to idols, and often … they themselves were involved in their ruin, not destroying them but rather hastening to become patrons of their impiety, like the other kings, as the books of Kingdoms bear witness.

There is another heresy among the Jews, for which the Lord accused them through the prophets. And of it blessed Stephen the martyr rebuked them, saying: “Did you offer me slain victims and sacrifices for forty years, house of Israel, says the Lord almighty? And now you have taken up the tent of Moloch and the star of the god Rephan, the forms of fixed idols and graven images? For this reason the Lord says:

I will cause you to be taken captive in a deportation into the land of Babylonia and of the Persians, and to other inner and dry places, and to the farthest parts of all the earth.”

Others are those who, setting up an altar called Topheth after someone's name, in the valley of the son of Hinnom, sacrificed their sons and daughters there [the Jews] to demons. Of them the Lord says through the prophet Ezekiel:

“Behold, son of man, see what the people of Israel does: it sacrifices its sons and daughters to demons in the valley of Topheth, to whom I did not command this iniquity to be done among the people of Israel.”

Others are the Puteoritae, who worship wells, digging deep and drawing from them as if the water of salvation, hoping for something from it, though the Lord says through the prophet in warning: “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug for themselves broken cisterns, which cannot hold saving water.”

What he said before through the prophet, therefore, he fulfilled in his divine presence, saying: “Everyone who drinks of this earthly water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will not thirst for ever, but it will be in him springing up to eternal life.” This was indeed the Christian grace of saving baptism granted to the human race by the Lord the Saviour.

There is another heresy among the Jews which sacrificed to the serpent and celebrated this same impiety up to Hezekiah, the most blessed king of the Jews, [the impiety of the] serpent, as we read in the books of Kingdoms that up to Hezekiah the people of the Jews sacrificed to the bronze serpent which blessed Moses had been ordered to make at the departure of Israel from Egypt, when the murmuring Jews were bitten by serpents and were perishing:

and for this the Lord commanded Moses to make a bronze serpent and hang it on a pole in the midst of the people; and those who looked at it were saved from the plagues and various wounds. To that bronze serpent, then, the people of the Jews sacrificed up to King Hezekiah; they also carved figures on a great stone like an obelisk, which was set in the temple as a pillar, and the Jews cut on it engravings and impressions by human hand, like certain letters, and, taking up various little forms and putting them on a metal plate, they carried them on their necks:

teaching incantations too, and having as it were phylacteries, or rather practising them as sorcery, they cultivated these things diligently, and from this they carried, and still carry, bindings and protective charms on their bodies, which the Lord had everywhere forbidden in the law to be made, because this was the impiety of pagan blindness.

These impressions or carvings, then, the most blessed King Hezekiah ordered to be destroyed and thoroughly scraped away with iron and cut out, and he commanded that the bronze serpent too be taken down and broken: for this he was deservedly delivered by the Lord from the great siege of the Persians and Assyrians, who had come at that time to take the people and city of the Jews captive, so that on that night, when King Hezekiah feared

the barbarians, an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and in the silent night struck one hundred and eighty-five thousand of the foreigners besieging the city, and in the morning showed all the men lifeless and dead to the king and all the people of the Jews.

There is another heresy, as the prophet Ezekiel, at God's command, saw beneath the earth in a cave seventy men, elders

of the Jews, standing and holding censers, sacrificing to various carved images and worshipping them.

There is another heresy of the Jews, which the prophet is made to see, at God's command, in a cave: women sitting and mourning a certain man named Tammuz, who was the son of a king of the gentiles, whose

image the Jewish women worshipped with weeping, and, cultivating the impiety of the gentiles, did not cease to offer him sacrifices. For Tammuz was also what that Pharaoh was called, the king of the Egyptians who ruled the Egyptians in the time of blessed Moses.

There is another heresy among the Jews, which, worshipping the idols of the Baalites as of many men and many women, did not cease to offer them sacrifices in hidden caves, the Scripture saying that there was a number of many men and many women:

but this … or from King Belus, who held the East for a long time in mighty rule, and it showed that from his wife and his sons or daughters, thus born of these parents, all their offspring proceeded, so that from them they were called in the plural Baalites.

For as there is the family of the Greeks or of the Anicii and others, so from their parents all their offspring arose, an impious generation from one name, so that they were called Baalites. And so, when they died and were laid in tombs, their offspring, buried likewise in that place, came to be called by this name by their own people in later times, so that they were called Baalites after their ancient lineage.

Belus, whether from his own name or from strength in war, because he overcame many at that time, obtained this name or surname; and on this account the people of the Jews, following the impiety of the gentiles, is accused by the divine Scripture, because, sacrificing to them, that is, to the kings and their sons and all their following kindred, they were handed over to various captivities.

There is another heresy among the Jews, which [worships] the idol Baal … they assert that it took its name from Balaam the false prophet, who had come from Mesopotamia against the most blessed Moses, because Balak, king of the Moabites at that time, had asked him to go to him and curse the people of the Jews.

And because he was earlier called a prophet in the Scriptures, but later, despising the Lord's command, sank to the ruin of a false prophet by plotting against God's people, the Jews, like the pagans, made an idol of him under this name and did not cease to worship it.

There is another heresy … concerning the Pythoness, in that, covering a woman with garments, they hoped to obtain certain answers from her. Hence they say that the Pythoness raised the soul of blessed Samuel from the underworld, and very many people still suspect today that it can be believed most of all from this, because what the most blessed prophet, while alive, had said to King Saul, he is known to have said truly again at his raising, as if answers from God;

and since very many prefer to assent to this lie, they go down for ever to destruction, since the prophet says: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of the Lord, and death does not touch them.” How, then, could an impious soul raise a pious and holy soul, and above all a prophet's, from the underworld? But they do not know that souls that depart from faith in Christ the Lord make themselves now devoted to impiety and subject themselves to it with all zeal, because every man has free choice, to choose to do what he wills, God permitting; so that now, as … because he departed from the Lord, an unclean spirit now ruled him, as blessed Elijah said to those doubting and limping in the divine law: “Either God, God, or Baal, Baal.”

For he who cleaves to Christ is one body, and he who cleaves to an unclean spirit is one consent. And Ahab, king of the Jews, when he believed Zedekiah and the other false prophets and despised the true prophet of the Lord, Micaiah, the Lord questions the unclean spirit, a place for goodness being still granted to the king by Christ the Lord until a certain time, so that, if he wished to believe the true prophet, he might avoid the storm of danger; if he would not, and believed the false prophets instead, he would without doubt perish.

For thus the Lord questions the unclean spirit, saying: “Who will deceive Ahab, king of the Israelites, so that he goes into battle and is killed there?” And behold, the unclean spirit came, saying: “I will go and do it.” And the Lord said to the unclean spirit: “How will you do it?” And the unclean spirit said to the Lord: “I will make myself like an angel of light and speak words that seem true, and lead him into battle, and there I will desert him, and so he will die.” And the Lord said to him: “Go, so you shall do.” Therefore the apostle too says: “It is no great thing if Satan also transforms himself as an angel of light, since his servants are transformed.”

And so they deceive many by sight, word or persuasion of nothing else but what seems like the truth; so that, when men are willing to believe and cleave to them for a time because of words that seem alike and sights that seem good and not evil, they incur the inevitable sentence of eternal death, and after leaving the body are ruined by various punishments and torments. This danger also came upon the king of the Jews at that time, because he preferred to believe false prophets rather than the true prophets of God.

There is a heresy among the Jews which, worshipping Asthar and Astaroth after the death of Moses and the succession of Joshua son of Nun, was handed over to captivity by the gentiles. For they worshipped Asthar and Astaroth, men and women and their images, which were the names of kings of the Syrians and Egyptians: when their sons and daughters were worshipped by their peoples, and later temples were made for them, and after their death their offspring were buried there, they gave them the names of gods and goddesses, with sacrifices likewise.

For there is the Astartium in Syria … and various other and very many things, since all this impiety blazed up at that time from the race of the Canaanites, which race Moses, with all his people, was commanded by the Lord to root out.

Others are the Herodians, so called from Herod, king of the Jews. They confess the resurrection and accept the law and the prophets, but they hope for and expect Herod, king of the Jews, who was struck by an angel, as the Christ himself.

AFTER THE PASSION OF CHRIST OUR LORD AND HIS ASCENSION INTO HEAVEN there was a certain Simon Magus, a Samaritan by birth, a Gittite, from a place that is a village in Samaria so called: he, devoting himself to magic arts, deceived many, saying that he was a certain power of God, which, he said, is above all powers.

The Samaritans venerate him as a father and exalt him as the founder of their pernicious heresy, and strive to set him above others with many praises.

Baptized by the blessed apostles, he departed from their faith and sowed a wicked and pernicious heresy, saying that he had been transformed in appearance, that is, as through a shadow, and had thus suffered, though, he said, he did not suffer.

He also dared to say that the world was made by angels, and that the angels were made by [him] through certain thoughts endowed from heaven, and that they deceived … the human race.

He asserts that there is a certain other Thought, which came down into the world for the salvation of men: that Helen, he says, whom the most vain poets proclaim in the Trojan War.

And the powers, he says, which had made the world, led by desire for that Helen, stirred up strife. For she, he says, giving desire

to those powers, and appearing in female form, could not ascend into heaven, because the powers that were in heaven did not allow her to ascend; but she was waiting for another power, that is, the presence of Magus, Simon himself, which would save her by its coming.

He also asserts by allegory that the wooden horse, which the most vain poets say was in the Trojan War, that machine, was the ignorance of all the impious nations; although it is established that the Helen who was with Magus was a prostitute from Tyre, and that she followed this same Simon Magus and with him committed various acts of magic and various crimes.

When he fled from blessed Peter the apostle from the city of Jerusalem and came to Rome, and fought there with the blessed apostle before the emperor Nero, defeated on every side by the prayer of the blessed apostle and struck by an angel, he deserved so to perish that his magic and lie became evident to all men.

After him a certain Menander by name … who, having become his disciple, followed his impiety in all things.

After him a certain Saturnilus, himself taking from there the fuel of deadly teaching, asserted, saying that the world was made by angels, that the angels are distinct from that power, that the world was divided in order among the angels, and that they planned to make man.

So they made man, and man, he says, was their work; for a light was sent down from the power above, which illumined this world and drew the angels to desire, and at once went up into heaven.

But they, having become desirous of that light, longed to see its power; not prevailing, they said to one another: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” And when man had been made, because he was powerless, he could not be saved.

So the power above, seeing that they had done this, sent a spark, which set man right, raised him up, and made him live.

So they hold that the spark is saved, but suppose that the rest is let go and left behind to those powers that made it.

They affirm that Christ appeared as a shadow, not having taken true human flesh and a soul, and that he thus fulfilled the whole economy of the Saviour's mystery.

After them Basilides … who is also called a heresiarch by many, because, setting forth and speaking from the law, the prophets and the apostles, but thinking otherwise, he violated the ordinances of Christian truth.

When he came to Egypt, he taught, defining thus: that from the unbegotten and only God was born Mind, from Mind the Word, from the Word Thought, from Thought Power and Wisdom, and from Power and Wisdom were made Principalities and Powers and various angels.

For these angels, he says, made a heaven; after them other angels made a [second] heaven, and so others produced from others made a third heaven. And thus in order, he says, others made three hundred and sixty-five heavens.

And he gives those powers angelic names, and, himself devoting himself to magic in the same way, deceives many unlearned people. He asserts that man was made by angels; and he dares to call even the true almighty God an angel, and says that he received the race of the Jews as his inheritance and led them out of the land of Egypt.

This one, then, grown bolder, was lifted up, he says, against the other angels, and wishing to have the others in subjection, he had hostile nations, which the powers hostile to him stirred up.

Therefore, he says, various nations rose up against the Jews. He says that Christ suffered in appearance, as through a shadow. He also affirms that Simon of Cyrene came to the passion in his place. For he, he says, carried the cross.

He also permits living wickedly, and gives licence to cleave to worldly vices. He also forbids men to suffer martyrdom for the name of Christ the Lord, saying thus: “You do not know what you desire. For Christ did not suffer, he says, nor was he crucified.

How then can you confess this one as crucified, when he was not crucified, and you do not know who suffered?”

Let us see also by what madness Nicolaus, the proselyte of Antioch, was deceived. He lived under the apostles and was chosen by them as the seventh deacon, as it is written in the Acts of the Apostles, and later, departing from them and from sound doctrine, was ruined by various errors and deceits.

He was at first with the apostles and Stephen the most blessed martyr; he too says that there are very many powers; from whom also the Gnostics, who think they know something, chiefly arose. These venerate Barbelo and Nora

In the beginning, he says, there were only darkness and the deep and water, and from these a division was made in the middle, and the spirit separated these elements. Then the darkness, rushing upon the spirit, begot four Aeons, and these four begot four other Aeons.

This, then, is right and left, they say: light and darkness. They also say that someone lay with that woman and power, from whom were born gods and

men, and angels, and seven spirits of demons. They also add that certain prophets were born of her, Speciosus by name, and Barcaban.

Others say, raving, that they see a gospel of the consummation, and empty visions full of deceit, and various dreams.

a certain woman; others of them Ialdabaoth, a certain one; others the man Calacau. And setting forth their doctrine they say these things:

Others founded a heresy from Judas the traitor, saying that Judas did a good work in betraying the Saviour. For he, they say, became for us the author of all good knowledge, through whom the heavenly mysteries were revealed to us.

For since the powers in heaven, they say, did not want Christ to suffer, knowing that if he suffered he would give life to men, Judas, they say, knowing this, that if Christ suffered he would bring salvation to men, therefore betrayed the Saviour.

This evil of an impious assertion sometimes seems as if plausible to certain vain and senseless people, though it is contrary and accursed in every respect, since blessed David the prophet condemned him beforehand, and the Lord the Saviour, and the blessed apostles confirmed the Lord's sentence against him in their teaching.

After him there arose one named Carpocras, who also says that there is one first principle, from which principle, that is, from God, emanations were made, he says, of angels and powers; and the powers that are below made this visible creation where, he says, we dwell.

He says that Christ was not born of the Virgin Mary and the divine Spirit, but holds that he was born a man of the seed of Joseph, and supposes that he was born of him carnally, like all men.

After his passion, he says, he was found better among the Jews in uprightness of life and conduct;

they preach that his soul was taken up into heaven, but consider that his flesh was left on earth, and they hold that there is salvation of the soul alone, but no salvation of the flesh.

Cerinthus succeeded to his error and the likeness of his vanity, teaching likewise about the Saviour's birth and the creation by angels, differing from him in nothing except that he agrees with the law only in part, that it was given by God, and he considers the God of the Jews to be the one who gave the law to the children of Israel.

He teaches that one should be circumcised and keep the sabbath, and proclaims that Christ has not yet risen from the dead, but will rise.

He does not accept the blessed apostle Paul; he honours Judas the traitor; he accepts only the gospel according to Matthew and spurns the three gospels; he rejects the Acts of the Apostles; he blasphemes the blessed martyrs.

Under the blessed apostles he stirred up a dispute and sedition, saying that men ought to be circumcised; for which reason the blessed apostles decreed a sentence in their Acts against him and his heresy:

that those who, coming from the gentiles, believed in Christ our Lord and Saviour ought no longer to submit to Judaism, that is, to circumcision and other such carnal things of vain superstition.

Hebion, the disciple of that Cerinthus, erring like him in many things, considered our Saviour a man born carnally of Joseph, and taught that there was nothing of divinity in him, but

asserted that, like all the prophets, so he too had the grace of God; yet he did not believe that he was the God of majesty and the Son of God the Father, everlasting with the Father, although the divine Scriptures everywhere testify and proclaim him everlasting God with the true and everlasting Father.

After him there arose a certain Valentinus, a Pythagorean rather than a Christian, belching out a vain and pernicious doctrine and preaching as it were arithmetic, that is, a most deceitful knowledge of numbers, and he took captive the souls of many ignorant people. And at first he was indeed in the church.

But having later become more proud, he was deceived by no small error, and living in the province of Cyprus he began to define this:

There was nothing else before in the world, he says, but the Depth of the sea and Silence, which the vain poets in their teaching call Chaos; and from this Depth and Silence proceeded Mind and Truth, from Mind and Truth the Word and Life, from the Word and Life Man and Church:

and from Man and Church proceeded twelve Aeons, that is, Ages, and from the Word and Life ten Aeons proceeded, and from Mind and Truth eight Aeons, and this is the triacontad of Ages, that is, thirty Aeons of Aeons. So he raves that the thirty Aeons consist of the ogdoad, the decad and the dodecad.

He says that Christ was sent by the Father, whom he calls by the name Depth, for the salvation of the whole world,

and affirms that he brought his flesh down from heaven and took nothing from the holy Virgin, but passed through her as water through a channel. So he holds that the soul alone is saved, but the body of man is not saved.

Others are his successors: Ptolemy, who introduced an equally vain doctrine, saying that there are four Aeons and four others, wishing to decree something new of false invention beyond what his teacher Valentinus had falsely devised.

After him a certain man named Secundus, teaching Aeons in the same way, asserts that infinite ones were made, and supposes that Christ appeared as by a phantasm, that is, as a shadow to the human race, and did not have the true flesh of a man.

After him Heracleon his disciple arose, saying that there is one first principle, which he calls God, then that another was born of it, and from these two he asserts the generation of many principles, raving likewise with his teachers.

A certain Marcus, his successor after him, making number, measure and reckoning, and a method of computing letters, as if the discoverer of something plausible and new, since he thought he could be praised by some, likewise fell into no small madness of error. For he says thus:

There are twenty-four letters, he says, which hold the perfection of all things. For this reason Christ too, he says, said: “I am the A and the Ω.” He also said that in the last time Christ came down upon Jesus in the form and likeness of a dove, and taught that Christ himself was the dove, which

came down, he says, to the twelve Aeons, that is, to the twelve apostles, and he held that one of them fell, that is, Judas. He says that Christ appeared in appearance and suffered as through a shadow, but holds that he did not truly suffer in the body.

After him Colorbasus …, who likewise asserted that the life and generation of all men consist in letters and in the number of the elements and the seven stars, and did not see that the true salvation of men is to be hoped for in the majesty and power of Christ and in his bodily presence.

A certain Cerdon arose after these, preaching worse than his teachers; when he had come to Rome from Syria, he dared to say that there are two first principles, that is, one good god and one evil, and that the good god does good things and the evil one evil.

He asserts that Jesus the Saviour was not born of the Virgin, nor appeared in the flesh, nor came down from heaven, but was seen by men in appearance; he was not, he says, truly seen, but was a shadow: hence some thought that he suffered, but he did not truly suffer.

Marcion, his disciple, a Pontic by birth from the city of Sinope, came to the city of Rome, and living there sowed a wicked heresy, and, questioning the holy presbyters of the catholic church, he put to them the ideas of his deadly error, saying thus: What is it, he says, that is written in the gospel where the Lord says:

“No one will put a piece of rough cloth on an old garment, nor new wine into old wineskins, otherwise the skins burst and the wine is poured out”? And again: “There is no good tree that bears bad fruit, nor a bad tree that bears good fruit.”

And receiving the interpretation of this from the holy presbyters, he did not assent to the truth, but rather strengthened the lie of his teacher Cerdon, and he likewise announced one good god and one evil;

and he believed that Christ appeared in appearance, that is, as through a shadow, and that he suffered as a shadow, but not in true flesh.

He accepts only the gospel according to Luke, not the other gospels, nor the letters of the blessed apostle Paul, except to Timothy and Timothy;

for he passes over what the Scriptures say about Christ as about the true God, but accepts the chapters that the Scriptures speak as about a man, and he does not confess that Christ is the judge of all.

Defeated and driven out of the city of Ephesus by the blessed John the evangelist and by the presbyters, he sowed this heresy at Rome.

A certain Lucanus after him, establishing and decreeing things like Marcion, was false in all things, like Marcion his teacher.

Apelles was his disciple, preaching in some things like Marcion; asked by some how he thought about the faith, he replied: I do not need to say, following Marcion, that I assert two coeternal first principles:

for I preach that there is one first principle, whom I know as God; this God made the angels, and also made another power, whom I know to be a second god, who is also the power of God, which made the world.

But this god who made the world is not, he says, good, as is the one who made him; but he is subject to that God by whom he was made, and obeys his nod, command and precepts in all things.

The Arians are now his partners and supporters, preaching and thinking thus. He says that Christ appeared in the flesh, yet not, as Valentinus says, that he brought his flesh down from heaven.

He also says that after the passion it was not flesh that rose, but [that his body was] of the four elements,

that is, that Christ received it from the dry, the hot, the moist and the cold, and at the resurrection gave back again to the elements what he had received from the world and let it go into the earth, and he asserts that he himself ascended into heaven without flesh. These, then, in order, were the heresies under the apostles.

AFTER THE PERSECUTION OF DECIUS there was a certain Tatian, a disciple of the holy martyr Justin, who departed from the truth after his passion and despised in all things the teaching of so great a saint, a blessed martyr and teacher, saying that certain Aeons were put forth from heaven, adding this too, that Adam our father, the first-formed, is not saved.

He raved, announcing Aeons like Marcion. He also curses the begetting of men, rejects the lawful right of marriage, and does not confess that this right was established by God.

Others arose after these, the Cataphrygians, living in the province of Phrygia. These accept the prophets and the law, confess the Father, the Son and the Spirit, and expect the resurrection of the flesh, which the catholic church also preaches:

but they proclaim certain prophets of their own, namely Montanus by name, and Priscilla and Maximilla, whom neither the prophets nor Christ announced.

They add also that the fullness of the Holy Spirit was not granted through the blessed apostles by Christ's gift, but consider that it was imparted through those false prophets of theirs, and they separate themselves from the catholic church because of those false prophets and false teachers of theirs.

These baptize the dead, celebrate the mysteries publicly, and call their village Pepuza, so named in Phrygia, Jerusalem, where Maximilla, Priscilla and Montanus himself are known to have spent a vain and fruitless lifetime.

There too the Cynic mystery and the accursed impiety concerning an infant is celebrated. For they say that at Pascha they mix the blood of an infant into their sacrifice, and so send it everywhere to their pernicious and false followers.

After these a certain Theodotus, a Byzantine by birth, became a denier of Christ our God the Saviour in persecution; he began to say, teaching thus: Christ, he says, was a common man like all men.

He said this so that he might no longer suffer from men the reproach of denial, thinking that if anyone said to him: Why did you deny Christ, God and Lord?, he could say: I denied a man, not God.

These use the chapters of the Scriptures that teach about Christ as about a man, but those that speak of him as God they do not accept, reading and in no way understanding, and showing themselves partners of pagan impiety and Jewish blindness rather than sharers in Christian salvation.

There are others who speak of metangismos, that is, that the Son enters into the Father and is in him as a vessel in a vessel, not knowing what they assert, since the Saviour did not say that the Son enters into the Father, but taught equality in divinity and power, not entrance or containment, as those people madly think,

and not understanding that as the Father is infinite, so is the Son, so is the Holy Spirit, equal in all things,

so that the Trinity is unchangeable, infinite, almighty and everlasting everywhere, as is announced to us most plainly from the holy Scriptures, so that there are three persons living for ever and equal in all majesty and power, yet the Son and the Holy Spirit are properly from the Father.

After these others, departing from them, said similar things; they add also that Melchizedek the priest is a great power of God, and they assert certain various names of men, at variance with the catholic faith.

Others are the Noetians … from a certain senseless man named Noetus, who said that the almighty Father is himself Christ, and that he himself was born, himself suffered and himself died in the body. He also said that he was Moses, and his brother the prophet Elijah.

Sabellius after him, from Libya, his disciple, likewise followed the likeness and error of his teacher; hence they were afterwards called Sabellians, and also Patripassians, and Praxians from Praxeas and Hermogenes, who were in Africa; and those who thought thus were cast out by the catholic church.

What is this vanity of the Galatians, the heretics Seleucus and Hermias? Though they want God to be incorporeal, they assert that hyle, that is, the matter of the world, is coeternal with God; and the matter of the elements — which is without soul, being of course irrational,

and which was made by God the Father through the Son out of nothing, so that what did not exist before might exist — they do not accept in this way; and they say that the spirit of man, that is, the soul, was not made by God through the Son, but is from the earth;

they assert that evil is sometimes from God, sometimes from matter. They deny that the Saviour sits in the flesh at the right hand of the Father, but think that he stripped off the flesh and placed it in the sun, because the prophet said, though they do not know what he said: “In the sun he has set his tabernacle.”

They deny a visible paradise, following Plato, these too serving vanities, and holding that the souls of men are of fire and spirit. These do not use baptism, because of the word that blessed John the Baptist said: “He will baptize you in the Spirit and fire.”

These say that angels are the creators of our souls, not Christ the Saviour; they assert that this world is the underworld, and preach that the resurrection is this which takes place daily in the human race in the begetting of children, not proclaiming and expecting that future and glorious resurrection of immortality.

Others are their disciples, who are called Proclianites and Hermeonites. They add various errors too, teaching that what is written, they say, in the prophet Ezekiel about the four living creatures means that the lion bears the likeness of the king of the Parthians, the calf of the Egyptians, the eagle of the Romans, and the man of the most pious.

These use the book of Wisdom of that Sirach who wrote one book of Wisdom after Solomon, that is, long after; they deny that Christ came in the flesh, do not hope for the resurrection and judgment, and do not believe that he was born of a virgin.

They dwell in places of Galatia, and like foxes lurking they plunder very many, as Solomon testified, saying: “Catch for us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards of the Lord the Saviour.”

Others are those who are called Florians or Carpocratians, who are also called Soldiers, because they were from the military; they deny the judgment and resurrection, do not believe that Christ was born of a virgin, and think that the whole resurrection consists in the begetting of children by wicked intercourse, so that in their church, after sunset, with the lamps put out, they did not hesitate to have intercourse with women, thinking they fulfilled the precept of the law:

“Be born and multiply,” hastening to obey Judaism and accursed paganism rather than to assent to Christian truth, and keeping rather the life and senselessness of cattle; these Scripture too compared to the life of cattle.

Others are those who are in doubt about the most saving day of Pascha, asserting that Pascha should be celebrated on the fourteenth day of the moon, not as the catholic church celebrates it, and they assert that it should always be celebrated in the month of March;

and in doing this they do not always keep a Lord's day for Pascha, not reckoning the hours and days, but celebrate on the second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth day,

and in this error they do not recognize the one true and saving day of the Pascha of our Lord, appointed and confirmed for the whole world by the Lord through the course and number of the moon, the months and the intercalations; and since they do not reckon these, they do not know what they celebrate.

Another is the heresy of the Chiliasts, that is, of the thousand years, which teaches thus: When Christ comes from heaven, it says, there will be those thousand years for us again to live carnally, to beget and to eat, as happens now daily in this age; not knowing the heavenly food, that is, of immortality,

and that that reward will come, not this perishable and passing one, as the Lord too [said] in the gospel to certain Jews who supposed this:

“You do not know,” he says, “the Scriptures,” being ignorant of their power: “for on the day of judgment they will not marry nor be given in marriage, but will be like angels.” And again the apostle says: “The kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Spirit of the Lord everlasting.”

After these there are other heretics who do not accept the gospel according to John and his Apocalypse; and since they do not understand the power of Scripture and do not wish to learn, they remain in heresy and perish,

so that they even dare to say that [the gospel] is by that heretic Cerinthus … and likewise his Apocalypse, not by the blessed John the evangelist and apostle but by Cerinthus the heretic, who was then exposed as a heretic by the blessed apostles and cast out of the church.

The Manichees arose after these from Persia, from one named Mani, also called Turbo, taking pernicious fuel from those

earlier ones, asserting that there are two gods, one good and one evil, preaching a battle between god and god, and holding that the soul of man is properly from God,

but think that the body was made by the devil; they deny the resurrection, do not hope for the judgment, worship demons, adore the elements, invoke the names of gods and goddesses like the pagans, teach that there are certain man-women sharing both natures, and serve accursed shamefulness.

Defeated in a disputation by the holy bishop Archelaus, they were cast out and branded and exposed to all at that time, and like robbers, under the guise of the Christian confession, they do not cease to take captive the souls of many by lies and beastly shamefulness:

they are said to lurk in Spain and the Five Provinces, and to take many captive by this deceit daily.

Others are the Patricians, from a certain Patricius who was in the city of Rome. These assert that human flesh was not made by God, but hold that it was made by the devil.

They also decree that it is to be despised and rejected in every way, so that some of them did not even hesitate to bring death on themselves of their own accord.

Others, the Symmachians, his disciples, holding the same views in all things, not hoping for the judgment, preach that one should serve worldly vices and carnal desires.

After these there was a certain Paul of Samosata in Syria, who denied that the Word of God, that is, Christ, God, the Son of God, is substantial, personal and everlasting with the Father; he said rather that he was uttered, that is, as it were a kind of air, and taught that the Son is not to be believed a living person, everlasting with the everlasting Father.

He preached Christ as a righteous man, not true God, Judaizing rather, and he also taught circumcision; hence he himself taught a certain Zenobia, queen in the East at that time, to Judaize.

After him Photinus, following his teaching in all things, preached in the same way, and persisting in this lie he was cast out of the church of the city of Sirmium, overcome by holy bishops.

THERE ARE THE ARIANS, from Arius, a presbyter of the city of Alexandria, who lived under Alexander the bishop of good memory and Constantine the holy emperor of good memory, saying that the Son of God is like God:

but by saying he is like only in name, and not believing that he is from the very divine substance of the Father, he fell into a dangerous heresy. For a creature too is called like God, since Scripture says: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.”

Yet man or angel is not properly and naturally from God, that is, begotten of that ineffable and everlasting divine substance of the Father, as the only Son, who is properly begotten of the Father and everlasting; but man and angel were made out of nothing.

But since he is the true Son, he must be recognized as begotten of that divine substance of the Father. For the only Son cannot be true God in any other way unless he is properly begotten of that divine substance of the Father.

So the everlasting likeness of the Son is according to works, because as the Father does, so the Son likewise does all things, begotten of the divine substance of his quality, because he was born of him properly, everlasting, not made out of nothing like man and angel or any creature, which is perishing in all things.

Others are the Semi-Arians. These think rightly about the Father and the Son, believing that there is one substance of quality, one divinity; but the Spirit, they say, is not of the divine substance, nor true God,

but preach the Spirit as made and created, so as to join and compare him to the creature, although Christ the Lord joined him to the Father and himself in the faith of the baptism of eternal salvation, commanded that he be worshipped with the Father and the Son by all believers, and established that he be preached as true God in every age: not understanding that when the evangelist says:

“All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made,” he is not speaking about the Holy Spirit, as if the Spirit were made through the Son.

For the prophet defines that the Trinity made all things visible and invisible, saying: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and by the Spirit of his mouth all their power.” So in all creation, which was made through the Spirit, he left out nothing that was not made through him;

otherwise, in the faith, a servant would not be joined with the Lord, if the divine and Holy Spirit were a creature. For this reason all Scripture and the Lord pronounced by heavenly sentence that all sins are forgiven to men except blasphemy against the divine and adorable Spirit.

After these the Eunomians, from Eunomius, a disciple of Arius, enemies of the true faith in all things, say that there are three different substances of quality, as of gold, silver and bronze, and that the Father made the Son, and again that the Son, who is a creature, made, he says, the Holy Spirit:

and they assert that the Son is not like the Father, because he is a creature, nor the Spirit like the Son, because he was made by the Son, agreeing most openly with pagan impiety and Jewish iniquity rather than wishing to obey Christian doctrine and the catholic faith.

Others are those who go astray about the incarnation, saying that the Saviour did not take a true rational human soul, but only a human body; and since they take the soul away from the

body, they deny man's true salvation. How then can a soul be spoken of which was not assumed by the Saviour? For the Saviour says: “My soul is sorrowful even to death.”

Otherwise it could not be called a soul unless it were in him for whose … sake he had come. So both these were in the Saviour's incarnation, that is, body and soul, which he deigned to take for our salvation.

We should know that he had both a true human soul, having understanding, and a human body, with bodily sensation likewise, so that he could both feel pain in the body and die.

Yet this flesh is known to have been made by the Holy Spirit, and the soul, of course, created, as it is written in the gospel: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you”; and that he had a true soul … saying: “I lay down my soul for you”:

and of the flesh able to suffer, to Thomas: … “that a spirit does not have bones and flesh, as you see me have.” And the blessed apostle Peter testified about the Saviour, saying: “Whose soul was not left in the underworld, nor did his flesh see corruption.”

From the fact that he became incarnate, he is believed, known, worshipped and preached in the catholic church as both man, for the sake of our salvation, and true God.

Others are the Tropites, who say that the Word was changed into flesh, not understanding what the blessed apostle John says: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”; not attending to the fact that the Word is unchangeable and unalterable, that is, God the Son of God, while the flesh which he took for our salvation he himself formed and assumed and put on for the sake of our incapacity.

So these things joined into one for our salvation, so that he might be seen, declared not a change of the Word into flesh but rather the assumption of a visible thing, so that the invisible one might be seen through visible flesh, believed and known, and worshipped by the human race according to its capacity.

Others are heretics who go astray about the passion, saying that in the passion our Lord Christ laid aside the flesh and so ascended into heaven, and that divinity, they say, is no longer in it.

For neither, they say, did he rise in the flesh after the passion, nor ascend into heaven with the flesh; whereas all man's salvation consists in the passion of his flesh and in its resurrection and ascension into heaven, beyond doubt for us and for all believers;

since the blessed angels also said to the apostles, for our faith and joy, in the Acts of the Apostles: “As you saw him ascending into heaven, so hope that he will come again from heaven.”

Others are the Aerians, so called from a certain Aerius, who devote themselves to abstinence, and very many of them live in the province of Pamphylia; they are also called Encratites, that is, the abstinent.

These own nothing, abhor foods which God gave to the human race with blessing, and also condemn marriage according to the law, asserting that it was not instituted by God.

Another is the heresy of the Borborians, who, entangled in the vices of the world and serving evil desires, do not hope for a judgment to come, but rather praise the carnal desire of the world.

So these go into the mud and, smeared with mud from it, disfigure their faces and limbs, and show these to all as though the creation of God were to be blamed:

whereas that abyss of faults and vices, a pernicious condemnation, came down from the will of men, not by the permission of the divine law.

Others are the Artotyrites by name in Galatia, who offer bread and cheese, not what the catholic and apostolic church celebrates in its offering.

Others again are the Ascodrugites in Galatia, who set up an inflated wineskin and cover it in their church and go around it, raving rather and revelling like those pagan worshippers of Father Liber, raging with mad minds after the manner of the gentiles, and not understanding what the Saviour said, that new wineskins must be taken and new wine put into them, not into old.

And as they hasten to serve their blindness, they are found strangers in every way to Christian salvation, since the apostle casts down that Jewish justification and carnal vanity, but confirms the true and full judgment of Christ, saying: “The old things have passed away; behold, all things have been made new through Christ.”

For the Lord was speaking of the law and the shadow and of his grace of fullness, and of the two men … as the apostle says: “The first man was from the earth, earthy; the second man from heaven, heavenly.”

For what existed in shadow, and what was to be greater and better in the Lord's presence, this he announced by teaching and confirmed by the witness of events.

Others are the Passalorynchites, who, putting a finger into their nostrils and mouth and lips, practise as it were perpetual silence, devoting zeal to nothing but taciturnity.

In doing this they wish to imitate as it were the blessed prophets, because blessed David says: “Set, O Lord, a guard on my mouth, and a door of enclosure about my lips.”

And because the blessed prophets, devoting themselves to fasts, often practised silence, these, taking this over, think they are observing something, hastening to follow Pythagorean vanity rather than the heavenly life and wisdom of the prophets.

Others are the so-called Aquarians, who offer water in the heavenly sacraments, not what the catholic and apostolic church is accustomed to do.

Others are heretics who assert that there are prophets daily and preach that prophecies take place, not knowing that the law and the prophets were until blessed John the Baptist, and that the end of the law and the prophets was fulfilled and completed in the presence of Christ.

Others are the Colluthians, from a certain Colluthus so called in Egypt, who say that God is not the maker of evils. Another, on the contrary, opposed him, saying that God is the maker of evils, and he too was equally a heretic; and since both were carried away by empty contention, they did not know the force of reason.

For Scripture preached that God makes good things and nonetheless also makes evils, since the prophet says: “I am the Lord, who make peace and create evils.” And another prophet: “If there is evil in a city, which God has not done.”

But Scripture said that these evils are not made by God by nature, but arise from causes, namely those of men who sin against the Lord in the law; these are temptations, persecutions and various distresses which, God permitting, rise up against sinners, as it is written: “Who gave Israel up to plunder? Was it not the Lord, against whom they sinned, and they would not walk in his ways?”

But Scripture nowhere says that God made evils by nature: “For behold,” it says, “all things that God made are very good,” in the book of Genesis, that is, the creatures of the world. And elsewhere the prophet says: “For God did not make evil, nor does he delight in the destruction of the living.”

Since, then, evils are not naturally the cause of God the creator but of the will of men, which, subject to the law of God, is pressed by judgment and restrained by correction, these things are brought upon men daily by the Lord for the sake of their conversion. When, then,

these things are said, how they are said is not understood. For the evils charged to men as correction are full of instruction and benefit, which the perverse will of men deserves to suffer, since the apostle says: “Is God unjust, who inflicts his wrath on men?”

Yet all these things are not permitted to happen to the human race without benefit and future gain. For the righteous man, by enduring in tribulation, is proved more faithful and more righteous, while the sinner either ceases to sin, being corrected, or, persisting, is taken from the world, lest, remaining in the body, he should be seen to sin further.

So either, being corrected while he still remains in the body, he will not delay to do good works, or his mind is summoned so that he may cease from sin, as the apostle says: “He who has died is justified from sin.”

Another heresy is that which says that the world is not changed, but always remains in that state, even after the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ from heaven, though he himself says: “All things will pass away and be changed.”

But they do not understand that this was said by the Lord because of the change of the elements, so that when these are changed a new creation may be formed, as David also teaches: “They will perish,” he says, “but you yourself are for ever.” And the Lord: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

And: “I will make a new heaven and a new earth, says the Lord.” So he announces that the elements are to be restored rather than to perish; although it is not impossible for God, who made all things out of nothing, to be able to destroy all things again, as the most blessed Job says:

“If he destroys all things, who will say to him: What have you done?” If, then, you think thus, you recognize the almightiness of the Lord Christ; or if one considers that these are to be restored, he understands consistently. For even if Scripture shows that the seeds are to perish, that is, that the world itself can come to nothing, yet … because what he made does not perish.

For he made, as Solomon says, all things out of nothing, so that what did not exist might exist. And in the resurrection of men he shows that the seeds do not perish but come to greater glory, as the apostle says: “A natural body is sown, a spiritual body rises; it is sown in corruption, it rises in incorruption.” And again the most blessed apostle himself:

“For the expectation of the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God: for the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope of future glory and honour. Therefore the creation itself too,” he says, “will be set free from the bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God”; showing therefore that the elements will go forward to the glory of the sons <of God>, that is, men together with this very visible creation, as the Lord says:

“The sun will then shine sevenfold.” So the elements will pass into a greater glory, and remain in it with men, although the Lord who made all things can also bring them to nothing.

But in this the majesty and power of Christ is pre-eminent, that he promises that these same elements will pass into greater glory. For the apostle too announces and prophesies alike that these elements will melt and come to nothing.

Another heresy asserts that men ought to walk barefoot, because, it says, it was said to Moses: “Loose your sandals,” and because blessed Isaiah walked so for three years: but these things are rather human and of vain superstition, not of the tradition of the saints nor of the command, rule and authority of our Lord Jesus Christ.

THE NOVATIANS AROSE AFTER THE LAST PERSECUTION, from a certain Novatus, who earlier believed as the catholic church does, accepting the Old and New Testament.

But because in the persecution many of the faithful lapsed and were received into penance by the catholic church, they were angered, or rather, led by presumption and

pride, they tried to sow a vain doctrine, separating themselves from the catholic church and departing from the goodness and mercy of Christ, and saying that there is no place of repentance for a believer after baptism, not knowing that he cries through the prophet: “As I live, says the Lord:

do I will the death of the sinner, rather than that he turn back and live?” If, then, they say that Scripture said this of those who are to be baptized, not of the faithful, let them hear the Saviour, after the baptism of water, speaking of another baptism, namely that of the repentance of the passion. He says thus: “I have a baptism

to be baptized with, and how I hasten, if you knew,” showing us indeed that after the baptism which he had given earlier through water, another, of the passion and of repentance, is to be granted to the human race when it falls, by his goodness and clemency, and bestowed by the same Lord.

The apostles, understanding this of his most saving passion, preached that after that first grace he conferred this too on the human race. For as provider and almighty he grants to sinners too, through repentance, that one who has fallen, rising and fighting again and persevering in it, may hope to obtain from the Lord the longed-for victory.

For in Christ his clemency, justice and goodness abound daily for sinners and penitents, so that blessed Paul grieved over those who had not repented because of sin, as he said in his letter: “Who is weak, and I am not weak?” and again: “Lest I come to you and the Lord humble me again because of some who have not repented.” And the blessed apostle Peter had said to Simon Magus:

“Repent, if somehow what you have done may be forgiven you.” And Paul commanded that the one he had cast out be received again after a time. So such people may suffer the loss of rank, not the loss of salvation, as the Lord says: “There are many dwellings with my Father.”

Others are the Montenses, who rebaptize any people they lead astray, and madly promise a baptism of their own above the baptism of the catholic church; they are also called Donatists, from a certain Donatus living in Africa, who sowed this heresy; and they are now called Parmenians from a certain Parmenian, who recently succeeded to their errors and falsehood.

Others are in Gaul, Spain and Aquitaine, as it were Abstinents, who likewise follow a most pernicious portion of the Gnostics and Manichees and do not hesitate to preach the same things, separating people's marriages by persuasion and promising abstinence from foods, which not by a precept of the law,

but for the sake of heavenly advancement and honour, such a grace was granted by Christ to the will of men. For the Lord says to Peter: “Not all receive this word.” And again the same Lord says:

“Whoever puts away his wife without the cause of a crime makes her commit adultery.” … It is one thing, then, for this to be done by common consent for the sake of obtaining greater praise from the Lord, and another to urge it against the law and to act against the will of both.

And again: “Let not him who does not eat despise him who eats, and let not him who eats judge him who does not eat.” What is of the will, then, is praiseworthy, and is a desire for an ampler, or rather a heavenly, reward:

but what is outside the law was not handed down by God, by Christ, but was invented by the empty presumption and error of men. For it is written: “I have given you all things to eat like grass.”

They do this so that, gradually despising foods, they may say that they are not good, and so may assert that foods were not granted to men by God but made by the devil; this is how they think, and in this they now strive to preach that creation was not created by God but made by the devil, and by this lie they have taken captive the souls of many.

Others in Africa are the so-called Circumcellions. These go around the country, and those whom they find on the road they force to kill them, saying that they desire to suffer martyrdom; and under this pretext many sometimes turn to robbery.

Some of them die as suicides, throwing themselves over precipices, and undergo various kinds of ruinous death. Since they thus hasten to perish without cause, they suffer the loss of an honourable death, and entangle rather than free themselves before the judgment of God to come.

Others are those who will not take food with men, led by empty presumption, thinking they do something better, because, they say, the prophets also did this, not knowing that a different economy has been established for men by the disposition of Christ the Lord. These think rightly about the Father and the Son, but do not hold rightly about the Spirit, believing that the Holy Spirit was created and made, not God, as the Scriptures announce and the catholic church preaches.

Another heresy asserts that <we> ought to keep Pascha with the Jews. These live in Galatia, Syria and Phrygia and at Jerusalem, and since they follow the Jews, they perish in error together with them.

And by this the Jews also confirm their own lie, when they see certain unlearned Christians following the vanity of their law rather than the rule of catholic truth. And nonetheless those people celebrate together with these, so that they are shown and known by all to be partners of the Jews' crime and wickedness.

Another heresy is that which has only the Apocrypha, that is, the secret books, of the prophets and apostles, and does <not> accept the canonical Scriptures, that is, the law and the prophets, namely the Old and New Testament.

And since they want to read only those apocrypha diligently, they think things contrary to the canonical Scriptures, and gradually make dogmas, giving opinions against them, setting decrees against the law and the prophets and against the dispositions of the most blessed apostles:

among them are chiefly the Manichees, the Gnostics, the Nicolaitans, the Valentinians and very many others, who, having the apocrypha of the prophets and apostles, that is, separate Acts, despise reading the canonical Scriptures.

For this reason it was established by the blessed apostles and their successors that nothing else should be read in the catholic church but the law and the prophets and the gospels, and the Acts of the apostles and the thirteen letters of Paul, and seven others: two of Peter, three of John, one of Jude and one of James, which seven are joined to the Acts of the apostles.

The hidden Scriptures, that is, the apocrypha, though they ought to be read for the sake of morals by the mature, ought not to be read by all, because heretics, not understanding, added and took away much as they wished.

For the Manichees [have] the apocrypha of the blessed apostle Andrew, that is, the Acts which he did coming from Pontus into Greece … which the disciples who followed the blessed apostle then wrote; hence the Manichees and others like them have the Acts of blessed Andrew and of blessed John the evangelist, and likewise of Peter the most blessed apostle, and also of Paul the blessed apostle:

in which, because they performed great signs and wonders, so that even cattle, dogs and beasts spoke, the lost heretics claimed that the souls of men too are of this kind, like those of dogs and cattle.

There are others who do not assert that the letter of blessed Paul to the Hebrews is his, but say that it is either by Barnabas the blessed apostle or by Clement, bishop of the city of Rome,

while others say it is by Luke the most blessed evangelist; some also wish to read a letter to the Laodiceans written by the blessed apostle. And because some who did not think rightly added certain things to it, it is not read in the church; and even if it is read by some, yet nothing is read to the people in the church but his thirteen letters and, at times, that to the Hebrews.

And because he wrote it rhetorically, in a pleasing style, they do not think it is by the same apostle; and because in it he also says that Christ was made, it is not read on that account; and likewise because of what it says on repentance, because of the Novatians.

When, then, he says that Christ was made, he says it of the body; he did not say he was made in his divinity, since he teaches in the same place that the Son is of the divine substance of the Father: “Who is the radiance of his glory,” he says, “and the image of his substance.”

Nor does he exclude repentance in his teaching, but shows a different degree of rank between one who kept himself whole and one who sinned. In one who sinned, then, there is loss of rank, not loss of salvation.

For if someone fights bravely through martyrdom, he will recover his former soundness; or if he lives worthily in this age, he obtains what he desires to attain.

For in that letter he excludes rebaptizers; he does not deny that a baptism of repentance is to be conferred, which is sometimes found fruitless in many penitents:

for afterwards, by faith, life and good work, they were commended by the Lord even in this age, persevering now in good things and fruitful works, as the Lord had said through the prophet: “I will not remember his evils, but rather his good deeds, if he now remains in good works.”

Others are the Meletians, from a certain Meletius in Egypt, who had been of the Arian party and was cast out of the catholic church; afterwards, as if following the truth, he was received, and his disciples with him.

And again, wishing after this to act indifferently, they communicated both with heretics and with the catholic church. When the catholic church learned of their indifference, it put them out of its communion.

Others are in Egypt and Alexandria, from one named Rhetorius, who praised all heresies, saying that all think rightly and none of them errs, but that all of them walk well; and he did not think that they believe wrongly. If, then, he praised all, whom did he blame?

So he does not hold what is true. Then Photinus too is to be praised, the heretic who denies that Christ is God before the ages with the Father, and every heresy that blasphemes either against the Father or the Son or the Spirit.

Why then would he praise blasphemous heretics, when Christ the Lord has already condemned them from this age, saying that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not forgiven to men who blaspheme and persist, neither here nor in the future? For this reason it is clear that he too is a heretic, or rather knows nothing, who judged that they are to be praised, not blamed and cast out.

Another heresy says that the divinity felt pain when the flesh joined to the divinity suffered on the cross; they err, since not only can the divinity not by nature suffer, nor be held, nor be seen, but not even the soul of man, which was made by God, as the Lord says:

“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but fear rather him who can destroy soul and body in Gehenna.” So they err in every way who say that the divinity of Christ is by nature passible, and impiously think that it felt pain or wept or groaned; for Christ's passion is fleshly, <in the flesh> by nature, not with the divinity feeling pain.

And so he was not recognized by the Jews while he spoke in passible flesh, who was announced to them as true God from the law and the prophets, and was preached as coming openly into the flesh, as the prophet says: “God will come openly”; and again the same prophet David: “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup.” For what is the cup but his passion?

He who conferred the gift of such great goodness and clemency on the human race was not known by the most iniquitous people of the Jews. He suffered, then, in passible flesh, not in his divinity, impassible by nature; he is recognized and believed, the divinity not being absent, but joined with the body alike for the sake of the mystery of fulfilment appointed and defined beforehand.

Knowing this, the apostle did not separate the divinity from the flesh on the cross, saying: “For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty.” So blessed Paul joined both, to show us the fullest goodness and mercy of Christ. But the blessed apostle Peter taught openly what is passible by nature and what is impassible, saying: “He died indeed in the body, but was made alive in the spirit.”

So neither was the flesh absent from the divinity nor the divinity from the flesh when the human flesh suffered by nature; and in this, the divinity of Christ permitting it, the mystery was fulfilled by the Lord for our salvation, so that there might be a full defeat of the enemy, so that, in that he was seen to suffer as man, he who was God in the flesh might conquer the enemy, not for himself but for us, and, we having been defeated before, might open by his passion to those who believe in him the power to conquer, and bestow heavenly glory on those who follow him.

So there was not produced in his divinity a natural passion and pain of God, as some think: otherwise he would have been man only, not God and man, as it is written; but the mystery was being fulfilled for the sake of our eternal salvation, which had been announced beforehand by the law and the prophets alike.

ANOTHER IS THE HERESY THAT SAYS that GOD is as it were three-formed and composite, so that one part is the Father's, one the Son's, one the Holy Spirit's, and they assert that it should be believed so; and saying this they neither know nor understand the meaning of divine Scripture.

For by speaking of a kind of three-formed substance they blaspheme, worse than many, not knowing that the one who sent is other than the one who was sent. So there is a true person of the Father, who sent the Son, and a true person of the Son, who came from the Father, and a true person of the Spirit, who was sent by the Son and the Father.

Of these three persons, then, there is one truth, majesty and equal substance and everlasting divinity. For as the infinite, ineffable person of the Father is, so is that of the Son, so is that of the Holy Spirit, so that in the distinction of the names and of the three persons there is no diversity of nature.

This Trinity, then, is immeasurable, invisible and ineffable, known only by faith, yet not worthily expressed by the exposition of the human voice and by mortal sense.

For when he says that the Father sends the Son and the Son sends the Holy Spirit, he says it for the sake of the persons; he does not show them separated by distance of place, because of the heretics Sabellius and Photinus, who would not understand worthily about God, as the Lord says: “To whom do you make me like, says the Lord, and to whom shall I be like?” … “For as heaven is distant from earth, so your thoughts, reasonings and counsels are distant from my thoughts and reasonings, says the Lord.”

When, then, he says that the Father sent and the Son was sent, he says it for the sake of the persons, lest anyone, thinking that the Father himself was <sent> or the Son himself sent, … which Sabellius, not thinking so, raves about. And again, lest the Son sent from heaven be thought not to be everywhere with the Father, he said indeed that he was sent by the Father, yet showed that he is everywhere with the Father, saying: “The Father who sent me is with me.”

So he did not speak of a separation of place, since the Son himself, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, fills and contains all things; but so that we might believe the true person of the Father, and that of the Son such as the Father's, and that of the Holy Spirit as the Son's, a true person, and might know one substance of quality, majesty and power of these three persons, he deigned to teach these things thus:

and above all when set in the flesh, in which both his humility shone out to the world and his ineffable goodness and condescension to human frailty shone forth, in such abundant clemency and generosity that he might be manifested to the human race, he deigned so to act and speak for our salvation, that we might be able in some part to know, grasp and understand about God.

Another heresy is in doubt about the diversity of the heavens. For Scripture declares that on the first day heaven and earth were made, these two elements, and that on the second day the firmament of the water was made, and nonetheless testifies that the firmament itself was called heaven.

David speaks of the heavens thus: “Praise the Lord God, heaven of heavens, and the waters that are above the heavens.” So if anyone wishes to accept six heavens, according to David, and this firmament as the seventh, he does not err: for Solomon speaks of three heavens thus: “Heaven and the heaven of heaven.”

Paul, the blessed apostle likewise, confesses that he was caught up to the third heaven. So whether one accepts seven, like blessed David, or three, or two, he does not err, because the Lord too says: “Father who is in the heavens.”

For the most vain pagans too sometimes profess one heaven and the pole. So blessed David taught what is full; Solomon what is in part, and blessed Paul likewise. The book of Genesis announced two heavens to us.

Another heresy is in doubt about the earth, saying that this alone exists and there is no other, not knowing that there is another, which is as it were the womb of all things and contains all, and which is found in the Scriptures as hyle, that is, matter, which is invisible and unformed, which was made by God on the first day.

But this earth, on which we live, is shown to be founded upon the water, as David said: “You who founded the earth upon the water.”

For that first, immense earth, made on the first day, is the womb of all things, containing the water and this earth which is inhabited by us, which abundantly provides crops and fruits for the human race and for birds, serpents, cattle and all the others, at the command of Christ the Lord the Saviour, as it is written in the book of Genesis, <that is,> of creation.

Another heresy is in doubt about water, asserting that it was not made by God but always existed of itself, not knowing that if the greater element was made, that is, the earth, how much more the lesser, that is, water, which is contained by the earth; as the prophet Jonah says: “I am a servant of God, who made the sea and the earth.”

And David says the same, that water was made by the Lord, and the three young men likewise. So the earth that contains all things is one, and the earth founded upon the water is another, namely this one which is inhabited by us, of which the prophet says: “You who founded the earth upon the water.” … certainly not that first one.

This earth, then, must be renewed and purified, which we know is often moved by earthquake, of which the Lord says: “I make a new heaven and a new earth.” And again the Lord says in the gospel that heaven and earth pass away.

So this earth is known to have its substance as it were from the roots of that former one, and was commanded to stand above the water, and it abundantly provides food for the human race.

Another heresy says that man's body was made first, not the soul, and that the image of God is the body, not man's soul, and they think that the Lord spoke according to predestination, since Scripture says: “And God made man. In his image he made him; male and female he made them”; not knowing what the prophet said.

For when he says, “Let us make,” he promises that he will make; and when he says, “God made,” he shows the work already done, and declared that what was made was not flesh but the soul, which is rational.

For there is no doubt that flesh without a soul cannot speak; so the flesh is the instrument of the soul, a rational thing. When Scripture says that male and female were first <made>, it does not here declare the sex of bodies but signifies the ruling and the subject soul.

And it is not doubtful that bodies were not made first, lying there, as some imprudent people think, since the flesh of Adam and of the woman was made afterwards; for on the seventh day Scripture says of Adam thus: “And the Lord took earth from the clay and formed the man whom he had made.”

You see, then, how he shows first that the man was made, that is, that the soul, rational and immortal, was created by the Lord, which indeed is called the image of God. And he showed that the earth taken from the clay and joined to the soul, that is, the outer man, the fragile body, was formed on the following day; and so Scripture testifies and preaches that, after sleep had been sent upon Adam, the Lord then took from his rib and made the woman.

And it is not doubtful <that> the soul was made first, that is, on the sixth day, and on the seventh day the body of Adam was formed from the earth, and so he showed that the woman was made from the man's body, that is, from his side; and that the soul was made first and the flesh formed afterwards, and that so afterwards, by the breathing in of God, the spiritual grace was conferred at the end, so that man might now be shown by the Lord capable of the divine law and not powerless — this is the evident reason of the truth; which blessed David too said, that the soul was made

first, then the body formed: “Your hands,” he says, “made and formed.” And so he declared that the Spirit was poured in afterwards, saying: “And do not take your Holy Spirit from me.”

Another heresy says that the soul is the inbreathing, not that the inbreathing was given into the soul; not knowing that, if the inbreathing is the soul, how can what is properly poured in from God be discerned? For they do not attend to the fact that the inbreathing of the divine Spirit is a certain grace and advancement in rank, so that man may be capable of the heavenly law.

And that the inbreathing was given to Adam our father when he already had a soul, not that a soul was breathed into him, the Lord shows in the gospel. For as he had breathed into Adam before, so afterwards he himself breathed the greater grace of the divine Spirit into the apostles, who had souls, after the resurrection, saying: “Receive the Holy Spirit,” and so on. And he did not say, receive a soul, but the Holy Spirit.

He, then, who breathed into the made man Adam, who had a soul, also breathed afterwards into the blessed apostles, who had souls, so that it may be known that all things were made through him and without him nothing was made.

There is no reason, then, for anyone to wish to think that the inbreathing is the soul, since the soul is known to be made, and is found placed under the condition of the law and liable to judgment, of which he says: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but fear him who can destroy soul and body in Gehenna.”

So the inbreathing is not the soul but the grace of rank, coming to all from the divine Spirit by God, by Christ; those who have and keep it receive an increase of graces, like the apostles, prophets and all the righteous.

But the unrighteous, neglecting and despising it, lose so great a merit of rank, like that Saul of whom it was said: “The Spirit of the Lord departed from him, and an unclean spirit troubled him.” And Scripture testifies that the spirit of wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul.

Another heresy says that man's soul, not having been made by God, is called soul thus: but before, it says, it was called mind and was in heaven; afterwards, because it desired earthly things, it departed from heaven, and they think that from this it was named soul; not knowing that in the beginning, made by God and created after the angels, it was called soul by the Lord, and received this proper name from God, so that it should be called soul, not mind, as Scripture says: “His soul will dwell among good things.”

And again: “For you will not leave my soul in the underworld.” And again: “Return, my soul, to your rest.” And again: “My soul is greatly troubled.”

And again: “So my soul longs for you, O God.” And again: “Blessed is the Lord, who made my soul.” So those are the empty opinions of the philosophers that assert this; divine Scripture does not preach so.

Another heresy thinks that cattle, serpents and birds are rational like men, as the lost Manichees and Gnostics and certain most vain poets and Stoic philosophers suppose; not knowing that man, being rational, has understanding of mind from God, that is, the ability to know about God and believe, but has bodily sense <in common> with the cattle and other similar creatures,

which can indeed have bodily sense, but can in no way have understanding of mind concerning God, or an immortal and rational soul, like man, who is called the image <of God>, as Scripture says:

“Do not become like the horse and mule, which have no understanding.” And: “Man, when he was in honour, did not understand; he is compared to senseless cattle and has become like them.”

So the sense of cattle, birds and serpents is common with us in the body, but understanding belongs to men alone, that is, the power of the immortal soul poured into it from the Holy Spirit, which is called the image of God, which commands, rules and possesses all these things abundantly, as it is written: “I have given you all things under your power.”

Another heresy says that evil kings and false prophets do not come and arise by their own will, but are sent by God's command; not knowing that the Scriptures do not announce that they are made false prophets or evil kings by God, but declare that they come so by their own will and the suggestion of the enemy, against God's will,

as Jannes and Jambres came of their own will against blessed Moses and Aaron, priests of God, under Pharaoh, since Scripture says: “They reigned, but not through me, nor through my Spirit, says the Lord.” And of false prophets thus: “Thus says the Lord to the false prophets: I did not send them, and they went to prophesy in my name.”

For this reason the Lord also often decrees, by announcement, a fitting sentence of death against them even in this world. So false prophets are not sent by God, nor impious kings departing from the Lord; but even if evil men are sometimes raised up against evil men, the Lord permitting, this happens so that the evil may be consumed by the evil.

For the good, enduring persecution and having righteousness with the Lord, await the great promise of a future reward. But the evil are sometimes destroyed by the evil, not only by the good, so that their iniquity may be punished in part even in this age.

Another heresy holds that earthquakes take place not by God's command and indignation but from the very nature of the elements, not knowing what Scripture says: “Who looks upon the earth,” it says, “and shakes it with earthquake.” And again further: “I will move heaven and earth.”

Not attending to the power of God, they dare to ascribe motion to the power of the nature of the elements, like certain idly talking philosophers, who, ascribing this to the nature of things, did not know the power of God,

that in such things too the indignation and power of God works and moves his creation, for the sake of the conversion and indeed the benefit of many who sin and return to the Lord, the Saviour and Creator.

Another heresy, following the vanity of the pagans, professes various names of the stars, like that Hermes Trismegistus, who is to be judged vain rather than great, and certain poets like him, who, raving, assert comets and bearded stars and the Hyades, the Kids, and other names of this kind; whereas Scripture has told us few names of stars, as blessed Job the prophet says, before the pagans transferred the names of the stars from the holy Scriptures.

For Job himself says: “Who made the Pleiades and Arcturus,” he says, “and Hesperus and the treasury of the south and Orion and Lucifer.” These names, then, we receive as announced together from the holy Scriptures: Scripture did not give the names of all the stars, but reserved them to the power of God, declaring through the prophet and saying thus: “Who numbers the multitude of the stars, and calls them all by name.”

Reading these few names in the holy Scriptures, the poets and false philosophers afterwards dared, usurping them, to join very many others to their lies and to preach the seeds of impiety to the world, so that they thought they could hope from these to comprehend the names of all or most of the stars; whereas no one but God, Christ, through whom the Father made all things, has set and known the names of all the stars and called each by name, as it is written.

Another heresy is in doubt about tongue and tongues, since Scripture speaks both of one tongue and of tongues. If, then, there was one before, because people were few, or later many, because many men had already grown up, born into the world, it is not so useless to think this.

For after the fifteenth generation from Adam to holy Eber there are two thousand seven hundred years, under whom the confusion of tongues was sent, because of the sin they had committed in building the tower and the city, and they suffered this as rebels against God.

For, having an angelic grace, that is, the knowledge of many tongues, they did not recognize the Lord as the giver of such great wisdom, and, trying to advance against him, they lost the grace which they had been granted from God without any labour, and what had been given before by the Lord without study and naturally to all, as to the image of God.

But afterwards, through study and teaching, since forgetfulness had been sent by the Lord, not all could scarcely learn, nor many tongues, but scarcely a few, so that one could learn three or four and scarcely speak them.

Nevertheless, the whole knowledge of tongues which men had lost by offending two thousand seven hundred years before, the Lord, after his ascension, conferred again under the blessed apostles on believers through the Holy Spirit without any labour, as it is written in the Acts of the apostles.

For it belongs to angelic power to know the tongues of all men; but through faith in Christ the knowledge of all tongues is supplied to believers without labour, as we read that, the divine Spirit teaching, the apostles and likewise the gentiles who then believed in Christ the Lord the Saviour proclaimed the knowledge of all tongues given without labour,

as happened under Peter and Paul and others, when they taught that the Spirit of God had come from God upon the gentiles, and that they could speak in many tongues, so that the men who heard marvelled at the gentiles, that they too through faith in Christ had the knowledge of so many tongues granted without teaching.

Another heresy says that the name of language proceeded first from the Jews, others from the pagans, though both, thinking thus, were deceived by no small error. For man, when made, was a sharer in reason: … he, then, who spoke by reason, how was he a stranger to reason?

To share in reason and be called rational, then, comes before having a special and local name of some language and possessing anything from a man's name. For from Adam to Eber two thousand seven hundred years had passed.

So the name of the language of all men was one, and there was one tongue. But from the time that they plotted against God, that heavenly knowledge, that is, of all tongues, prudence and wisdom, was taken from them. And because holy Eber did not depart from God, according to his name, God willed that his race should multiply more, and be the first in the world to be called by this name, so that from Eber, who had not consented to the building of the rebels' tower, they should be called by the name of Hebrews.

So the most righteous Eber is known to have been earlier not only than the pagans but also than the Jews, that is, seven hundred years before; believing in God and separated from the conspiracy of wicked men, he deserved to obtain from the Lord this first naming after his own name.

Hence the vain poets too, transferring that building to their own lies, taught of the giants, that those Aloadae, rebelling, wished to climb into heaven by piling mountains up, and were therefore condemned. Their ravings did not remain hidden any longer from Christian knowledge and skill.

Another heresy is in doubt about the year announced, as the prophet Isaiah says: “To proclaim the acceptable year of God and the day of recompense.” So some think that from the time the Lord came until the end of the age there will be neither more nor less than the number of three hundred and sixty-five years, until the divine presence of Christ the Lord again from heaven. This is found contrary to fact if one thinks so.

For we know that four hundred years and more have already passed <and> been completed since the Lord came. How then will this reasoning about the year hold, as very many have wished to think so?

For the Lord commanded that only what he did and taught in one year should be written down, not what was done and said by him before in the first thirty years, according to blessed John, who says that the world could not contain them if all that he had done were written.

So the prophet Isaiah spoke of that year of the Lord the Saviour in which he taught up to his passion, resurrection and ascension into heaven, as the most blessed <apostles> too handed down, not of three hundred and sixty-five years, as some think, but of that year after his baptism, in which, preaching to believers, he opened the mysteries of salvation, bearing witness to and fulfilling what was said of old in the law and the prophets alike.

Another heresy asserts that the end of the age has not been appointed by God, Christ the Saviour, according to a definition of times, and supposes from this that the number of the end is certain, and holds neither more nor less, although the prophets everywhere announced that the end of the age would come about the five hundredth year, and so the Lord would come again from heaven.

For Daniel numbers seventy weeks, hearing from Christ the Lord: “Hear,” he says, “man of desires, that seventy weeks are appointed for your people until Christ the leader, so that all things may happen that were said would come upon the city of Jerusalem and the people.”

As this was said to Daniel before Christ came in the flesh and was almost fulfilled, so too the same number after the Lord's incarnation … up to the law which Moses received and up to the entry into the promised land, you will find not far distant from the number of five hundred years.

So the Lord, when he spoke of various signs coming near the end — famines, persecutions, floods, earthquakes, pestilences — also spoke to blessed Peter in a riddle about the number of years.

When Peter said: “Lord, how often shall I forgive a brother who sins?” the Lord said: “Not seven times, but seventy times

<seven>,” showing indeed that the infinite number of the daily sins of the human race ought to be forgiven to a man by a man, both to a Jew who returns and to a pagan, and that to others, carnal people returning from impiety to the faith of Christ and his catholic church, all debt ought to be forgiven to all believers by them.

For the Jewish historians too taught, saying that from Daniel four hundred and eighty and more years passed, and so the Lord came in the flesh. You also have the mystery announced most plainly in Genesis: vengeance sevenfold for Cain, but seventy times seven for Lamech; in which it is not doubtful that Scripture foretold without hesitation … the impiety of one and the iniquity of the other of the two peoples in two persons.

For the law is spiritual, according to the apostle, and “these,” he says, “are two covenants.” For we neither lose the history, that the people spent seventy years in Persia, nor despise the spiritual knowledge. So the seventy weeks spoken by Daniel, four hundred and ninety years, were then almost completed, and so Christ came in the flesh; and from Christ's presence to the end of the age you will find almost the same number of years to be completed.

For those first wise interpreters taught that the seventy weeks which Daniel saw are seven times seventy, that is, four hundred and ninety years …, which jubilee in the law the Jews — not these, but those of old who were skilled — <that is, the year of Christ's remission and pardon, … celebrating beforehand in figure his bodily presence, awaited with the highest joy, as is contained in Leviticus. For the lesser jubilee has fifty years, not less:

but it cannot have more; for the greater jubilee has five hundred years … the lesser jubilee fifty. So the greater has five hundred years less ten, so that from this one jubilee might declare Christ's presence and the end of the age.

Although the seventy years <of> the people's captivity in Persia are taken historically, and from their return to Jerusalem to the incarnation of Christ the Lord almost five hundred are found completed, yet this too is to be understood spiritually, that after seventy times seven, that is, after four hundred and about ninety years, the Jews must … under the Antichrist, when he has been found a deceiver by the Jews themselves, who will at first have thought him to be the Christ.

But not long after, when his perfidy and deceit have been recognized, then those who remain will repent and all will fly to the faith of Christ the Lord, and, repenting of their sins, will obtain pardon from Christ the Lord himself like the rest, so that what was said may be fulfilled:

“Amen I say to you, you will not see me again until you say: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”; and so that this may be fulfilled: “Until the fullness of the gentiles comes in, and so all Israel will be saved,” as it is written; and: “If the people of Israel is as the sand of the sea, a remnant will be saved.”

And that blessed Isaiah taught openly about Christ, that he will pardon all who return, the Lord himself said thus: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, sight to the blind, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of recompense.”

Of this the Lord, when he had taken the book in the temple and seen this Scripture, said to the apostles and to all that it had now been fulfilled in his presence. To this the most blessed Daniel too attended, what the Lord had said to him, saying: “Hear, man of desires, and attend from the going out of the word of God,” that is, from the incarnation of Christ, and his divine presence again from heaven and the end of the age, which will come with the angels.

Another heresy asserts about the giants that angels mixed with women before the flood, and they suppose that the giants were born from this; whereas Nimrod was born afterwards not of a spirit, that is, not of an angel, but of a man, Cush, who was the son of Ham; and he is the first in Scripture called a giant, because he began to be a hunter and a strong man, so that he was called a giant on the earth: hence, it says, they will say, “As Nimrod the giant, so he is strong,” if anyone was afterwards seen like him in strength.

So they were strong men, and from youth rapacious, ravagers, throwers of spears, runners, devoted to plunder; hence, as if strangers not only in morals but also in appearance, they were thought enormous by men, <so that>, committing such great crimes against the nature of other men, they were also called giants.

For “giant” by etymology means “monster of the earth”, a word compounded of two names, whether in form, life, appearance, strength or bulk of limbs. For that you may know that giants were born not of another nature but of human offspring: you have also the six-fingered ones in the books of Kingdoms, whom the books of Kingdoms announced, large in form, massive in limb and of huge strength, as of the race of giants, two thousand three hundred years after the flood:

like that Goliath whom the most blessed David, king and prophet, alone struck down in battle; of him and others like him [it says]: “Carts carried their equipment of arms.” Because such men were given to plunder from childhood after the manner of beasts, Scripture announced them as strangers, as it were, to human nature and morals.

For there is no doubt that those angels who were cast down from heaven are not like human nature, except only that they were able to suggest wicked things, contrary and against the law, as they do to men now, entering into men, that is, persuading them;

as the enemy of the human race persuaded the Jews to commit such crimes against the Lord and the holy prophets, as it is written: “Satan,” it says, “entered into Judas”; so, then, before too, the unclean spirits, entering into the souls of men and women, had spread the crimes of evil persuasion over the world.

But if anyone thinks it right that angels so sinned, transformed into flesh, so that they remained in that flesh, or believes that they were so made fleshly, he forces the history by violent reasoning, as the lies of the pagans and poets assert that gods and goddesses, transformed, committed wicked unions.

If it happened once, it will not be doubtful that it happens now; but what never happened is not shown to happen now either. But “giant” is also taken in a good sense, because of strength: “For he will exult like a giant to run his course.” This is shown proved and fulfilled in the divine presence of Christ.

Another heresy says that paganism was instituted by God, not devised by men's malice and the enemy's suggestion for the sake of producing vices and crimes. What, then, was instituted by God, how is it condemned by the same God? For there is no doubt that from the origin of the world the knowledge of God the almighty Father and of his Son and of the Holy Spirit was announced.

For you have it written in the book of the creation of the world, that is, in Genesis: “And God said, and God made”; and again: “God said: Let there be lights …” and on the sixth day God said: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.”

And it is manifest <that> God made man not, of course, with an angel as persuader, but [with] his Son, Christ our Lord, and the Holy Spirit. For you have in Genesis, that is, in the first book, the holy and adorable Trinity announced beforehand to men. For it says thus: “And the Lord rained from the Lord sulphur and fire.”

And again of the Spirit on the first day: “And the Spirit of God was borne over the water.” And Pharaoh, king of Egypt, says: “Who will interpret these things for us,” he says, “except one who has the Spirit of God?” And David: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and by the Spirit of his mouth all their power.”

But afterwards the depraved will of men, departing from such knowledge of piety, when it eagerly hastened to serve the lies and vanities of idols and chose to give itself to a most shameful life, was held liable to the judgment of condemnation, so that the prophets said beforehand: “He who sacrifices to gods will be rooted out.” And again: “The gods who did not make heaven will be rooted out.”

And therefore the Lord showed that his presence was not new, saying: “I who spoke in the prophets, behold, I am here.” So the Lord nowhere commanded that angels be worshipped, nor the elements of the world, nor any creature, nor idols, which the most wicked will of men chose to invent for the sake of committing its crime and shamefulness, so that, worshipping them, they might have unrestrained licence to do evil.

For the very name “idol” is named, by interpretation from the Greek, an appearance of deceit and a falsification of form. So the Trinity of Christianity was preached from the origin of the world, and the truth of piety was taught everywhere without interruption. For David too: “The Lord said to my Lord”; and: “Your good Spirit will lead me in the right way”; and again: “The Spirit of the Lord has filled the world”; and: “Where shall I flee from your Spirit, and from your face where shall I go?”

For blessed Solomon teaches that idolatry was instituted by a man who, once weeping long as a father for a son he had lost, made his image and took delight in seeing it; and that from this it was handed down to posterity, and various material of impiety then sprang up in the human race.

Another heresy says that Christians were created more recently and later than the Jews and pagans, not knowing that they were created earlier than the Jews and pagans in nature and faith, life and time, sacrifice and conduct.

In faith indeed, because from Adam to Moses, for three thousand seven hundred years, all the righteous, worshipping God and God, Lord and Lord, and also the Holy Spirit, announced the true Trinity, so that you can without labour know the Trinity itself, whole, from those blessed and ancient forerunners … and that this was afterwards made manifest to us too by the Lord. For when Scripture says:

“The Lord rained from the Lord sulphur and fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah,” what does it seem to announce there? Did it not declare that God the Father accomplished all signs and wonders through his Son, that is, Christ God? Knowing this, David announced the Lord the Father and the Lord Christ, that is, his Word, <with> the Holy Spirit, announcing indeed a Trinity of persons, yet an equal power of one majesty, substance and divinity.

Yet he showed that the Son is properly from God the Father, who is prior, and the Holy Spirit too, teaching: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and by the Spirit of his mouth all their power”; and again elsewhere: “The Lord said to my Lord.” And all the prophets announced the Word and the Spirit, saying everywhere thus: “And the word of the Lord came to me,” and: “The Spirit of the Lord,” it says, “was upon me.”

So Christianity is not temporary as regards faith, but was made manifest before the Jews and pagans to those who studied and sought in the law; but to those who did not grasp it, the knowledge of the almighty Father was scarcely announced by those holy and perfect teachers. In life too those earlier saints lived no other life than this in which we live.

For up to the most blessed Abraham, not having circumcision and not rejoicing in sacrifices, they pleased God and were declared righteous by him in all things. For David said: “A sacrifice to God is a contrite heart”; and: “Offer to God a sacrifice of praise.” And that temporary sacrifices, not perpetual nor true nor saving, were imposed on the Jews under the compulsion of necessity, the prophet says to the Jews: “Behold, I make new things,” and: “Before they come, they are announced to you.”

So Isaiah the prophet testified beforehand to the Jews: “For who has required these things from your hands?” And again: “Circumcise your hearts, and not your bodies.” And what kind of sacrifice Melchizedek first offered under Abraham, four hundred and thirty years before … the Jews were named or Judah was born, and before … they received, you see in the book of Genesis, <that is,> the mystery of Christianity, so that you may know that all that is in Christianity, whether faith or life or sacrament, is not temporary, but was appointed and announced and indeed celebrated from the origin of the world.

But in Christ and through Christ, through whom all things were made, we had to see and know … from him, and to receive from him more fully completed and fulfilled the greater mystery in the law announced beforehand about him.

For there is no doubt that a like chastity existed in very many prophets, as in blessed Elijah, holy Elisha, Daniel, Jeremiah, Ezra and the three young men, and many other most blessed ones: so that in Christ's presence both what was above the law, announced beforehand by them, might be known, and what was marriage according to the law might be confirmed by his divine sentence, and this grace might be known as granted to the will and zeal of men.

Therefore the Lord himself joined those earlier saints before the law to us, and us to those earlier ones, according to the faith of righteousness, but rejected the Jews and pagans, who were placed in the middle time between the commandment and grace: they are found ruined by a hostile and pernicious will in carnal vices, enemies and adversaries of the heavenly teaching, reserved for the eternal judgment of punishments.

Another heresy says that we are born pagans by nature, not Christians, that is, they think that by the nature of things man's body and soul are not created daily by God through Christ, but proceed so through pagan vanity; whereas from Adam to Abraham, and afterwards up to Judah, who is the fourth generation after Abraham, they were not pagans nor called Jews, but nations named from the names and diversity of provinces.

Pagans, after the Jews, were so called either from pagus, that is, a place, or one province, or from King Paganus, which is shown to be true, as Hesiod the Greek poet says. If, then, from pagus, it is an indication of place, as it is said even now, “from that pagus”; but if from idols, … because those who worshipped carved images were so named pagans, that is, gentiles.

These idols were invented not by God but by the most depraved will of men, as our Scripture and very many of the pagans' writings announced, that men invented them for the seduction and damnation of souls, because the people, looking on them, took delight in feasts, in whose vanity they brought destruction on their souls.

But there is a certain and greater proof, which the pagans themselves report in their histories, that the pagans were named from King Paganus, as Hesiod the Greek poet says; afterwards, from King Paganus, son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, holding his name as pleasing and lovable, or rather honouring his memory to the present day, they keep this lie of a name cultivating it until now.

So Hellen, that is, a Greek man, is named from the language and from the name of the king, who was the son of Deucalion and was so called, as the Itali took their name from Italus, the Romans from Romulus and the Latins from Latinus, not from the impiety of idols.

For idols, that is, the forms of carved images, the most wicked will of men invented later. But the Greek language was marked out as the property of one province, which the pagan king confirmed from his own name, as Romulus named the Romans, and, as Hesiod says, the Greeks were called after a Greek king, who, Graecus by name, was a son of Deucalion.

Another heresy says that the number of years from the origin of the world is uncertain and that men do not know the courses of the times; whereas from Adam to the flood there are ten generations and two thousand two hundred and forty-two years, and from the flood to the confusion of tongues under holy Eber, who had not consented to the building of the tower, is the fifth generation, almost six hundred years, when the names of the provinces were also divided, as of seventy-five tongues; and from then to Abraham the blessed patriarch is the fifth generation, five hundred and forty years.

And from Abraham to Moses seven generations, four hundred and thirty years, as the blessed apostle says; and from Moses to Samuel the judge six hundred and twenty-nine years; and from Samuel and David to the captivity of the Jews in Persia almost five hundred years; and from the captivity to the presence of our Lord almost five hundred years; and from the Lord to now four hundred and thirty years, more or less.

If, then, this faith which is in us was in those earlier saints, our fathers, and was handed down and preached by them before, that is, this divine knowledge of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, how is it temporary, as some think, and not this Christian knowledge announced before to all men from the origin of the world, which is shown manifested and preached in the commandment and the law?

But if, in the middle time under Moses, something was said less fully in shadow, this was certainly not from the envy of the Lord who gave, but rather the weakness of a people unable to grasp the heavenly mystery, incapable and feeble, men without strength, will be blamed.

Finally Christ the Lord himself confirmed and commanded afterwards what he had announced before through the holy prophets, saying: “Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” to declare not only that this is the ancient faith from the origin of the world, but also to approve the life in which we live today, in the circumcision of the heart, not in boasting of the flesh.

They err greatly, then, who dare to ascribe the birth of man either to pagan impiety or to Jewish vanity, since one may not be called a Jew unless one has received [circumcision] on the eighth day …, nor likewise a pagan, unless one has thought that vain gods made man.

So the nature of things is to be ascribed to God, not to the vanity of any of these; but teaching, which follows after nature, if it is true, is to be joined to faith in God and united to the most saving service, not departing from it, but rather recognizing its Lord through faith and naturally remembering its Creator.

So it is not the weakness of the soul's nature in men, but rather the depraved will that is to be blamed, as the Lord says: “And now, if you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land; but if you are unwilling and do not listen to me, the sword will devour you. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken this.” And the Lord: “Come to me, all you who are burdened, and I will relieve you.”

Another heresy says that the names of the days — of the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn — were so set by God from the origin of the world and not named by the vain presumption of men; whereas from the first origin up to the Greek kings and that most deceitful Hermes, who dared falsely to give these most vain and frivolous names, if you will inquire,

you will find that much time passed, and only then the pagans, that is, the Greeks, set these names, since with these names … they also said that the generation of men depends on the seven stars, as that raving man himself defines it. For the number of the days, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, was named by God, not announced or handed down at the beginning in this vanity of most shameful naming.

Another heresy says that there are infinite and innumerable worlds, according to the empty opinion of certain philosophers, although Scripture has spoken of one world and taught us about one; they took these things from the apocrypha of the prophets, that is, the secret books, as the pagans themselves said;

like that Democritus, who asserted that there are many worlds, and, preaching this from his own wisdom, stirred up the souls and doubtful minds of many with various errors.

There is a heresy which, when it reads in Genesis the word of the Lord about Adam: “Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he ever stretch out his hand and touch and taste of the tree of life and live for ever,” says that the Lord drove him out of paradise out of envy.

And first they think this, that one god made the soul and another the flesh, as the Manichees, Gnostics, Nicolaitans and other lost ones think, saying that one is a good god, but the other, they say, is evil, in this age.

And they think that this evil god said that he should be driven out of paradise, not attending to the fact that one and the same God the Father through the Son made Adam our father, and gave him a commandment, so that by keeping it he would remain immortal, and, the commandment having been transgressed, he would be driven out of paradise, as it is written;

and because he suffered this through the enemy's persuasion, when they do not attend to Christ's mercy, they go down into the abyss of everlasting death.

Here, then, God did not, out of envy, drive our father from paradise so that he should not stay there or not taste of the tree of life, but rather, caring for him, did not spare him when he sinned in a small matter, lest, by sparing him, he should find him going on to greater crimes at a riper age, and afterwards, made guilty in a criminal judgment, condemn him more harshly.

For between man and the devil Christ was both hearer and most just judge, and good in all things. Likewise he did not spare man when he sinned in a small matter, giving him nonetheless a fitting sentence according to the sin he had committed, and leaving the devil likewise a place of repentance.

But since the devil did not understand that he should repent of the suggestion of so great an evil, he reserved for him a greater judgment afterwards. And man indeed, when he is driven out of paradise, is found more ready for repentance; but the devil, since he is seen to be harder towards repentance, awaits a greater severity of the future judgment from Christ the Lord, as it was said: “He would not understand, so as to do well.”

And again: “But he did not hate malice.” Since, then, Adam, sinning in a small matter … received [it], persuaded by the devil to eat, and at once repented, he deserved to obtain pardon for his offence, and to return to paradise in the presence of Christ, through the begetting of children too.

But the devil, not repenting, and his followers are reserved for a greater judgment, as the Lord said: “Go from me into the eternal fire, which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels.”

There are some heretics who think that our father Adam and our mother Eve were blind before they tasted of the tree, and afterwards opened their eyes and then saw that they were naked; whereas Scripture said before that Eve saw, it says, with her eyes the tree and its fruit, that it was good to look at and pleasant to see, and stretching out her hand she tasted.

To think this, then, belongs to the madness of heretics and rather to the blindness of the Jews, since they do not understand the kind of nakedness … and it taught us this loss of immortality in the transgression of the commandment, not nakedness of the body.

This the apostle taught us, saying: “And if we have put on Christ,” he says, “we shall not be found naked”; and again: “Put on Christ Jesus”; and that the Lord in the gospel … rebukes, saying to him who did not have a wedding garment, who had been called to the wedding.

There is a heresy which, when it hears in Genesis that the Lord clothed our parents with tunics of skin after the transgression, thinks that he then made them bodies and so clothed them; whereas Scripture said that on the seventh day God took earth from the clay and formed their bodies, and so afterwards completed the woman's flesh from Adam's rib.

So here it was not announcing their bodies as tunics of skin, but declaring that by divine power he gave them wisdom to make themselves coverings for their bodies, as it is written: “Who gave women wisdom to weave tunics?”

But if anyone wishes to take it that the Lord made them tunics, and … the Almighty made [them] out of nothing, as it is written: “Who calls out of nothing the things that are not as though they were.”

If, then, they made the tunics by their own wisdom, as the prophet says, it is reasonable; or if God provided this for them by his own power, it is not invalid.

For in the temple women and virgins worked purple, fine linen, linen and other articles for the honour and covering of the temple, and likewise various and varied ornaments of the temple.

There is a heresy which, when it hears in Exodus that an angel met Moses at the lodging where they had stopped and wished to kill him, not his son who had not yet been circumcised, takes no small offence from this.

For if anyone wishes to think thus, that the angel threatened him because, when the appointed days, that is, eight, had passed, on the eighth of which a male had to be circumcised, they had not done it and had so despised God's command … And therefore the fault of children of a young age is not theirs so much as their parents', as it is written.

Hence, when she understood that the fault was the parents', not the infant's, “At once,” it says, “taking a stone, his mother circumcised the boy”; at the sight of whose blood the angel at once withdrew from him, and entirely removed the penalty of death which he threatened to inflict on him.

For Moses is not known to have been circumcised at that hour, as some think, but his son was circumcised, because what was commanded before under the patriarchs and the law was fulfilled by the people or by the parents of some with slow work, not swift, as it is written.

There are some heretics who are troubled about Deuteronomy, in which Moses, when he was leaving the body and wrote this book by repeating from the four books, in which he decrees as it were the foundations of the former law; because it bears more witness to the bodily presence of Christ, those who think otherwise are led into no small error. For what is in the law, that is, in Exodus, which was written before, is contained in the same terms in this very book too:

only this seems to have been said more by him, that he added: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from our brothers: as you heard me, you shall hear him. And if anyone does not hear him, he shall be rooted out.”

For some think that Deuteronomy is so called because in it too he received again on the mountain the written tablets of stone, whereas in Exodus he is known to have received them twice and to have gone up the mountain.

It is reasonable, then, that what belonged to the law and to grace should be made manifest concerning Christ the Lord, so that what was celebrated in the law in shadow might be announced, from among believers, as the heavenly grace poured out in the bodily presence of Christ, and, written in that very book, be handed down to all as a testimony.

There are some heretics who, when they hear that blessed David said in the fiftieth psalm, “In iniquity I was conceived, and in sin my mother bore me,” think that the prophet said this as if he called the lawful right of marriage iniquity and sin; whereas <God> said before in the book of Genesis: “Be born and multiply, and fill the earth”; and: “Marriage is to be honoured,” and so on.

For if anyone thinks so, then so many and such great righteous men were conceived in iniquity, though they were sanctified in the womb, like the patriarchs, prophets, judges, blessed Jeremiah and the most blessed John the Baptist, as it is written.

But they do not know that the blessed prophet David spoke in another sense, not of natural generation, but of the transgression of Adam our father and of Eve, who, driven out of paradise after the transgression of the commandment, had begotten children; and from this he taught that Eve, as the mother of all, conceived and bore thus after the iniquity of the transgression of the commandment.

For how would David say of himself that he was conceived in iniquity and born in sin, when he was born by lawful right and, chosen by God, was sought for such great glory of the kingdom, as it is written of him?

So he was not teaching here that he was conceived in iniquity or born in sin, but wished to point to our parents Adam and Eve, that, the sin having been committed before, that is, the transgression of the commandment, she afterwards bore children so, and from them we all are likewise born.

And therefore after the transgression: “In pain you shall bear children,” it says; because, then, we have from those first parents the iniquity of the transgression, common to the flesh and general, descending upon all from the first inheritance, as the apostle said: “As through one man death entered into all men.”

For this right of marriage, promulgated by God, is praised daily and blessed in the usual way. For he showed by sorrow what was first, and announced what great joy the heavenly grace of Christ would bring to believers, saying: “If anyone is not reborn of water and the Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

And therefore in that psalm, foreknowing the joy to come, he testified, saying: “You will sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be clean; you will wash me and I shall be made whiter than snow,” so that through him we believers too may rejoice with him alike in saving baptism.

There are some heretics who do not think rightly about the division of the world and the apportionment of its habitation, arguing that the Greeks or Egyptians or Persians began to describe the whole world, and not that blessed Noah, after the flood, divided it for his three sons, gave, defined and apportioned it in order.

Hence the historians afterwards, taking as it were certain paths, invented various falsehoods. So blessed Noah divided the whole world among his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and gave Shem the eastern parts, of India and the Persians, up to some part of the south, west and north, as far as Mount Lebanon, and confirmed by a fixed sentence that his firstborn would have his borders there.

To Ham, his second son, he assigned all the Syrias and the diocese of Egypt, Africa, and the vast breadth of Ethiopia stretching near the borders of the ocean and of the Spains, and foretold by the divine Spirit that he would possess and inhabit it; and he granted him borders in the middle as far as Cappadocia, that is, the Taurus mountain.

To the third, Japheth by name, he assigned, establishing it by divine command, the cold regions for those entering Cappadocia and leaving Cilicia, which are those of Armenia, the Bosporus, Pontus, Thrace, the Pannonias, Illyricum, Italy, and all the parts of the West. And from the first it numbers twenty-five generations descended, from the second thirty-five,

that is, from Ham. But to Japheth, to whom a smaller generation was counted at that time, that is, only fifteen, a larger one, to be wished for, was promised by blessed Noah to come in future, as Scripture says: “May the Lord enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem.”

To him, the younger son, though a smaller number of generations was found granted at that time, a greater number was afterwards to come, increasing beyond his two brothers, so that he would hold the empires of both the middle and the farthest places, that is, of the Canaanites, Egyptians, Africans and Persians.

From him afterwards the Romans were born, conquerors of the world and rulers of all nations. Hence we know that the Romans, Latins and Italians derive their descent from Japheth, and that they hold the world under their rule daily and often held it before.

But if anything is thought ancient by the falsehood of the Greeks, it is proved to be recent in every way by the testimony of their own authors, Solon testifying to the Athenians that he heard from an Egyptian priest, who said to him:

“Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always new and children. A Greek will never be old or ancient, nor do you have any ancient teaching or knowledge, but you have it seized and usurped from others, and you set it out changed by various lies, and so teach men.” For Plato says so in the Timaeus.

For after the confusion of tongues different names began to flow, and two or three Greek historians, taking from there and writing various records as it were, when they wish to obscure and hide their recentness, have been judged and proved most lying by their own witnesses.

For when fifty of them agree about our antiquity, that is, Greeks, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Syrians, and two or three disagree, it is right to assent to the many agreeing as one rather than to two or three dissenting historians, because those many spoke more truly than the two.

Another heresy says that the flood under Deucalion and Pyrrha was more ancient than that which took place under blessed Noah. The pagans, transferring this with changed names, assert in the same way that an ark too was in Greece after the flood, and what is recent in most vain paganism is by them as if

ancient preached with much falsehood; and what happened in Thessaly, in a small place, is taught by the thieving pagans as having happened everywhere, that is, in the whole world. What happens after some years in Thessaly, at times in a modest place, [is local]; but that flood took place in the whole world, as the writings of the gentiles themselves also testify.

Another heresy says that men are born according to the twelve signs of the zodiac, like those most vain astrologers, asserters of all error and wickedness; and very many unlearned people, hearing these things, sometimes do not hesitate to abandon the law of God and serve the vanities of the astrologers, whereby the apostolic sentence is fulfilled:

“They worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” And again: “See that no one deceives you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ; for in him dwells all the fullness of the divinity bodily.”

So they do not know that these twelve signs, as they call them, are different climates and different regions in the world arranged by God, so that they may be inhabited and different temperings of places and times may be established, as hot, cold, dry and moist from the four corners of the world:

from which, when, like springs full of quality, the winds overflow, blowing upon one another with great force properly inherent, and a healthy mixture results, then, as the mixture spreads everywhere, a pleasant temperateness of health is supplied from it to all the inhabitants; and so it is not unknown that by divine power a sweet and prosperous life has been granted and imparted to mortals by the Lord.

Another heresy says that the souls of poisoners, criminals, murderers and others like them pass into demons and cattle and beasts and serpents, not knowing that the soul of man, when it has left the world, whether good or evil, that is, pious or impious, is led by an angel to the appointed place, so that in the future it may receive according to what it did while set in this world.

If anyone thinks that this happens so, he seems to share in paganism and the vanity of the philosophers rather than in Christianity, since the apostle says: “We must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive what he did in this body.” And again: “For you will not leave my soul in the underworld.” <And again:> “But in the underworld who will confess you?”

So the nature of the soul is not turned into another nature; but when by will it despises and neglects God's precept and pretends not to cleave to lawful and saving pursuits, dedicating itself to the future judgment of punishments, it is known to be comparable in morals to nothing but cattle, not in nature but in morals, as it is written.

So men of this kind, pagans, Jews and very many others, are made like cattle in this age not in nature but in morals. For the Saviour too, when he said to the Jews, “You are of the devil your father,” showed by arguing and judging that they were like him not in nature but in wicked morals and beastly senses. And John said to the Jews: “Brood of vipers.”

Others are heretics who say that the Lord descended into the underworld and proclaimed to all there, even after death, so that those who confessed there might be saved; whereas this is contrary, the prophet David saying: “But in the underworld who will confess you?” And the apostle: “As many as sinned without the law will perish without the law.”

But when <the Lord> says: “It will be more tolerable for some than for that city which did not believe,” namely the teaching of the apostles and the gospel, he says, in comparison of many punishments, that they will endure lesser torments than those; yet he does not affirm that they are saved on this account.

For he who thinks that the false poets and vain philosophers, rebels against God, can be saved errs worse than they and dissents from the truth, since none but those vain poets and philosophers sowed the seeds of pagan impiety, the names of gods and goddesses, in the minds of men; while the prophet cries out about the future judgment, that he might be forgiven here in repentance, saying:

“Forgive me, that I may be refreshed, before I go and am no more.” If, then, the righteous who sinned, while still in this life, scarcely received pardon by repenting …, as Solomon says: “And if the righteous is scarcely saved, where will the impious and sinner appear?” For if they had believed that God exists, they would not have sown the shameful names of gods and goddesses, and would have obtained pardon at Christ's descent into the underworld.

Since, then, the impious and enemies of God are everywhere, how will they be saved by confessing there after death? For the apostle teaches that every man must die and after this be judged, as it is written, before the judgment seat of Christ, and receive according to what he did in this age.

The Saviour confirms it, saying of them that they did not believe even the Father; hence he declared that they too are to be judged: but he who believed in the Father before Christ came in the flesh passed from the judgment of the impious.

In comparing sinners and the impious there is a diversity of punishments and stripes; there is no full acquittal of both, but justice in judging and fitting recompense according to sin, even for those who were swallowed by the water under Noah, as Scripture has taught.

Another heresy is in doubt about the origin of the soul <and> thinks that it consists of the elements, as many most vain philosophers suppose that the soul of man is now of fire, now of water, now of spirit, now of matter, now of a spring, now of atoms, now as it were air; whereas the soul was made by the Lord, out of nothing of course, as it is written: “Who made all things out of nothing, so that what was not might be.”

So the soul, made by God, is called the image of God, after the creation of the angels of course; for man is less than the nature of angels, as it is written: “You made him a little less than the angels.”

But if it keeps the commandments of the law, then it will be like the angels. If, then, the angels, servants of God, are placed under law, how much more the soul of man under law, which is proclaimed …; if it keeps what is commanded it, then it ought to say what the Lord said to the apostles: “And if you have done all things, say: We are unprofitable servants; we have done what was commanded us.”

Another heresy says of the Saviour that he was first with the Father and then was born, and when they confess it so simply, they provide various stumbling blocks to men: for to be before, and afterwards to be born, is contrary in every way.

And although his generation is twofold — one of the divinity, without limit and everlasting, the other of the incarnation through the Virgin, in time — and this is not doubtful, yet according to the divinity we must know that he never ceased to be with the Father, and that he who was always with the Father was not from himself, and not known as not begotten of the Father, as some wrongly suppose.

So if both are set forth with good interpretation, the foundation of right faith is shown, so that we both know that this only Son was properly begotten of the Father, yet not in time, but know and believe, as is fitting, that he was properly begotten of the Father before all ages and all creation, and do not fail to know that he remains with the Father for ever and has always remained.

So there is no separation or contrariety between always being and having been and being begotten. For “always to be” is said because of everlastingness, lest the Son be thought temporary; but the church, in preaching, says “begotten” because it knows that he was born not from himself but from the Father.

So one is not to be separated from the other, but the everlastingness of the Son is to be joined, and his generation coupled with his everlastingness, and the confession about the Father is to be believed and held so that we know one Father the begetter and one only Son of the Father, properly begotten of the Father.

So it is right by pious faith that always to be and to be begotten [go together], so that his generation is everlasting, not temporary, and the true property and everlastingness of the only-begotten Son from the Father and with the Father is not unknown. But if anyone confesses first that he is unbegotten, and then afterwards was begotten of the Father, he does not know what he confesses.

For when he thinks he escapes one heresy, he falls into another worse one, by confessing an unbegotten Son, or rather by denying both Father and Son, preaching two unbegottens, and denying the distinction of one unbegotten Father and one only-begotten Son properly from the Father.

There are some heretics who think that the Lord said through Moses of Pharaoh: “For this I raised you up, to show my power in you”; and: “Hardening I will harden Pharaoh's heart, so that he will not let you go.” And the apostle says: “So it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy.”

But the apostle says these things not defining, but discussing and teaching what is true, lest anyone think that God spoke so; for he must attend to what the Lord says: “To show in you,” namely, all my power, that is, magnanimity, goodness, patience, which indeed is poured out on all in this age.

For when he speaks to him, he speaks to every man set in the body; he announces it, namely, in prosperity, wealth and temporal power: those who, when they attend to riches, become more sluggish and negligent concerning the fear and grace of God, of Christ, and so forget their salvation to the end and become unmindful of the fear of God.

For when Pharaoh himself was afflicted, he acknowledged God against his will, as it is written; and when he was released again by God, he returned like a dog to its vomit.

And therefore the souls of all pagans, Jews, heretics and rich men, and likewise of sinners, are sometimes found despisers of God in prosperity; therefore correction is useful and saving to the human race in all things, as the prophet says: “It is good for me, Lord, that you humbled me, that I may learn your statutes”; and again of reproof:

“When he slew them,” the Lord says of the Jews, “then they sought him and watched for him.” So the blessed apostle does not say either that we should not run or that we should not will to serve God; but first we must run by our own will, and then not with presumption and boasting, as though we deserved to be saved worthily by our own power and righteousness and not by Christ's clemency.

For he who runs with pride and presumption does not hope for protection from God, so much as he presumes righteousness for himself from his own conduct. So the blessed apostle teaches us both to run and to will, and that it is in our will to persevere in humility in that very course of good works, and only then to hope that salvation can be obtained from the Lord himself, as the Lord says:

“And when you have done all things, say: We are most worthless servants” …; “And if the righteous is scarcely saved, where will the sinner and impious appear?” So there are some things in us in which we must run. But there are greater things which are to be hoped for and obtained from God, as the apostle says:

“You do not know what you ask”; as, for example, if someone says: I can be a martyr, I can be an apostle, and does not say: If God, Christ, wills; because this increase of gift and grace is conferred by him, not acquired by the vain presumption and boasting of men. For such a will belongs to a man who tempts and presumes, not to one who seeks and supplicates that he may deserve to attain such great honour.

There are some heretics, like the Manichees, Gnostics, Nicolaitans and others, who dare to say of blessed David that he was not a prophet of Christ the Lord, nor a teacher and interpreter of all the divine Scriptures, but was a writer of human song and worldly matter; whereas he deserved before many to preach to the human race the mysteries of heavenly grace and of the saving secret of Christ the Lord.

For as Christ the Lord gave various grace to other saints, so he granted this one greater knowledge, as the Lord says: “I will give you,” he says, “the holy and faithful things of David”; and: “I have found David son of Jesse, a man who will do all that is in my heart, says the Lord.”

So they do not know that this David, king and prophet, was a swift and most able interpreter of the divine Scriptures, sent by the Lord, so that all that was said before, seen as present and announced as future, might be preached by him to the human race gathered in brief, and that in three verses of the first psalm he might set out the whole force of things, the truth of the past, present and future, announcing all the errors and various crimes of every people, when he says:

“Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the impious,” that is, of the pagans, “and has not stood in the way of sinners,” namely of the Jews, “and has not sat in the chair of pestilence,” that is, of the heretics; and from here, as from springs and abundant material, he taught the various seeds of iniquity that would come upon the human race, so that, these three evils — paganism, Judaism and every heresy — being despised and condemned, the one true faith, that of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, might be believed and practised by all.

For blessed David, led by divine zeal at that time, when he saw men sacrificing to demons, not to God, set up in the city of Jerusalem four choirs, according to the entrances of the world, seventy-two each, four men also being set over them from among the singers, and guarding God's courtyard on every side, with countless others outside as well.

And with these placed in the middle, the most blessed patriarch David himself sang psalms with the people, and, as so great a witness of the incarnation of Christ the Lord, predestined by the Lord, he rendered the various joys and praises of the psalms by singing to none other than Christ the Lord himself, and three times daily, with prayers and the singing of psalms resounding, he took delight with all the people, announcing the divine presence of Christ, and promising the world joys to come from it;

of whom the Lord too deigned to say that there were many prophets and wise men who desired to see and hear what the apostles deserved to hear and see. For it is clear to all from the chronology that what seems to be the very wisdom of the Greeks is from the law and the prophets, and especially from blessed David.

And therefore the poets and other wise men tried, imitating him, to fashion in verse what they wished to say; and since they took their themes from the law and the prophets, with names changed, while they hasten to violate the ordinances of truth, they have sown the various lies of their perfidy in the world.

Hence very many worldly and unskilled people, not knowing these things, desire to cultivate and follow the pagan lies of recent times rather than the ancient and true secrets and foundations of the saving Christian law.

So from their own vanities, that is, from the Greek historians, one can learn how recent the vain wisdom of the Greeks is; and when it is gradually recognized by its own people, it is without doubt spurned, trampled on and condemned daily.

There are other heretics who suffer no small error about the unevenness of the Psalter, thinking that the whole book of the Psalter is not by the most blessed David; and when they seek the history in order, they find unevenness, that is, they see that the latest are placed first and the first last, and they suffer no small offence.

For in the third psalm he suffers persecution from his son, and in the hundred and more it is told of his fighting against the Philistine, although we find that he first fought with Goliath in his youth, and afterwards in old age endured war from his son.

And although these things are to be understood spiritually of Christ, yet those who seek the history about the same blessed prophet diligently are troubled by no small stumbling block.

Since, then, the Scripture of the Psalms says that the hymns of David ended after seventy-two psalms, and afterwards his title is again announced in many psalms, they complain of this too, why it is so placed, not knowing that the various joys of the psalms were rightly imparted by the Lord to the blessed king and prophet. If, then, titles of others are also found in the psalms, yet the sum of praise was afterwards granted by Christ to this author and founder, as prophet, king and patriarch.

But about the unevenness of the psalms according to history, the most diligent authors who interpreted them said this: that when captivity often came upon the people of the Jews from the gentiles because of idolatry, since the Jews worshipped idols with them …, and in these the divine Scriptures too were searched out and burned by the gentiles:

but if anyone had hidden any of the psalms, when peace came afterwards the same divine Scriptures were sought out by a few holy men, and when they were found, those who were wise at that time — since there were no longer prophets, but priests — receiving them afterwards, held back by fear, arranged the text of the psalms as they received them from certain people, and ordered them to be set out in that order.

If, then, there is unevenness according to history, as many said, this seems to be the cause. For it is clear to the diligent that a spiritual and even knowledge of Christ is to be recognized in that very unevenness of the psalms, so that what is at the beginning is likewise about Christ in the middle, and what was to come later was said of him beforehand everywhere. Therefore the apostle says: “Christ yesterday and today, the same also for ever and ever.”

For there is no doubt that the psalms were spoken by spiritual power, so that what was done before through the devil by the impiety of idols might be shown committed under the Jews too by his seduction; and that the perversity of the heretics, springing up daily at the end, is also his, the catholic church in its preaching is not unaware.

There are heretics who think contrary things about the book of Genesis, that the Lord said to Cain: “You have sinned; be still; its turning is to you, and you will rule over it.” For when he says, “You will rule over it,” they think he said to him: You will be lord of your brother.

And although one might think so, because Cain was older than his most blessed brother Abel, and in the law too the elder by birth were greater in honour, that is, by the birthright, yet it does not say, “You will rule over him,” in the sense, “You will be his lord,” which is contrary in every way.

For if it were so, how did the Lord pass a sentence of death on him because he had killed his brother, as it is written? So Scripture does not say here that he should rule his brother so as to kill him, but: You will rule over your evil thought, certainly, which is in your choice and in the will of every man, so that he either casts out of his heart the evil thought sent by the devil, or by not casting it out incurs a perpetual crime.

For as Christ the Lord searched the hidden things of man's heart and mind, seeing him he reproved what he had planned, and warned him not to do that crime and so sow the way of murder of a kinsman in the world.

This is also said in the gospel: “If you have anger against your brother, go, be reconciled, and so afterwards offer your gift.” And David likewise says: “Be angry and do not sin.” And what the measure is of “Be angry and do not sin,” he himself goes on to explain: “What you say in your hearts and on your beds, be pierced with sorrow.”

Solomon too: “If the spirit of the enemy who rules rises in you, give him no place to dwell in you.” And the Lord says: “He who is angry with his brother without cause will be liable to judgment.” And therefore the Lord taught that the enemy's thought and suggestion must be driven out at once, lest, staying long in a man, it provoke him more readily to commit the crime.

There is a heresy which does not understand rightly about Cain, that after the fratricide he had committed he asks the Lord to die rather than to be forgiven, saying thus: “My case is too great, if I am forgiven,” and: “It will be that everyone who finds me will kill me.”

But the Lord, teaching through him alone as it were a general measure for the whole human race, granted the abundant pardon of his goodness through repentance, so that, the crime now ceasing, they might follow the fruitfulness of good works, and all might know [repentance] from him as certain and to be embraced …, as the Lord says:

“I do not will the death of the sinner, rather that he turn back and live,” so that through him repentance for so great a crime might be revealed to all, and in it pardon abundant alike, so that the good fruitfulness of penitents might now be shown to men by God's encouragement, so that, seeing it, they might desire to gain salvation for themselves rather than death. Hence, as it were

his own accuser and judge, when Cain in part became so, saying that he had committed fratricide, he deserved to hear from the Lord that, if the fruit of good works followed him henceforth, he would without doubt receive forgiveness for so great a crime, and need no longer suspect any fear of death to be inflicted on him by anyone.

Moreover he had also received a sign, so that he should not be killed by anyone, and it was decreed by heavenly sentence that anyone who dared lay hands on him would suffer twice seven penalties. For in him a feigned repentance, not a true one, was found, when he hears from the Lord: “Everyone who kills Cain will pay seven vengeances.”

Hence he deserved to receive the sign because of repentance, if only a worthy fruitfulness of good works followed him. But we nowhere find that there was good fruit of repentance in him, much less [that] all impiety sprang up from his race.

Those after him, heirs of their father's impiety and of the savagery of so great a crime, since they would not repent of their evils when blessed Noah preached to them, persisted in crime and perished by the dreadful destruction of death in the flood, except only eight souls at that time, who were born of the race of the saints, and who alone deserved to escape the storm of so great a danger.

There is a heresy which thinks that the stars are fixed in heaven, and not that they come forth suddenly at evening by divine command from treasuries and hidden places arranged by God, and recognize at the appointed hours the course and ministry enjoined on their light:

which is found contrary and foreign to the catholic faith, if anyone thinks so, and will be shown to share rather in pagan vanity and the empty opinion of the philosophers than in Christian knowledge.

For Scripture teaches the almightiness of God so as to announce that the stars quickly run together and apart from various treasuries, and are provided and lent in part by God as an ornament of heaven and for the sake of night and light, and at various intervals of hours

are appointed to return as it were to their places again, so that, from the places from which they are commanded to go out daily, they return again to those places, with an angel presiding and compelling, and can in no way pass beyond their due course; and hence the clemency of Christ poured out on the human race might be made manifest to all mankind, in that he granted equal grace of goodness to the just and the unjust in this world, announcing:

“Who makes his sun rise on the just and the unjust, and rains on the good and the evil”; and: “The stars know,” it says, “their treasuries and their course arranged daily.”

There are some heretics who reject much of the Old Testament, namely Solomon's Ecclesiastes, a book written in few sentences but containing the whole treasure of heavenly knowledge for those who seek it.

For the Saviour himself testified that he was wiser than all before him. When they read, then: “All is vanity of vanity, the things under heaven,” and: “I desired,” he says, “to have,” as was said, various things, and: “God gave to me,” he says, “and behold all is vanity of vanity,” he only adds afterwards that this is from God, that one should eat and drink and do good to his soul.

But if he said that only this food or this drink, which is fleshly, is useful in this age, but announced nothing else about the future immortal life …, then the labour of men is spent in vain. So what the apostle says of some: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” …

… for such a heresy is certainly that of the pagans and Epicureans, which is compared to the life of cattle. Therefore: “Man, when he was in honour, did not understand; he is compared to senseless cattle.” So Solomon both announced the fleshly life of men granted by God in many riches, and nonetheless preached that the future glory of angels is present in the diligent, the few who desire and believe.

For if a rich man too does well in this age, he must also attain fellowship in the future life there. For as this earthly food was given by God, so that heavenly food is to be desired more from the law, namely the faith of Christ the Lord, coming gloriously from the law and the prophets to those who desire it, which Mary rather than Martha had chosen, the Lord saying that Mary had chosen the greater portion, which will not be taken from her.

So if he said, “Vanity of vanity are the things in the world,” he preached that these things are passing, because of that future glory, eminent and perpetual, as the apostle says: “For the form of this world passes away, and its glory.” But if the form and life and honour and rank of this world will cease and be destroyed, then that heavenly

and angelic rank is to be desired, which will come to believers through the incarnation, passion and resurrection of Christ, which will not be temporary, fleshly and perishable, like that of the Jews according to the letter, and of others like them who perish, expecting nothing hereafter.

For this reason the Lord says: “Work for the food that does not perish,” that is, that you believe in me, whom my Father sent. So Solomon did not speak only of this fleshly food and pass over the other, but announced the different food and glory of holy men: first the fleshly life of men in the present age, and after death that heavenly and angelic rank coming to the just and faithful.

And he announced this fleshly [food] as vain and temporary, namely the justification of the Jews and others like them, and a life that will perish, so that they might know it to be a shadow, and not be unaware that the life of the body is temporary and soon falls away, in comparison with that heavenly and perpetual rank. Of this food the prophet says: “Taste and see that the Lord is sweet.”

There is a heresy which is in doubt about the Song of Songs …, thinking likewise of him that it was preached to men by him not by the divine Spirit but for the sake of human affairs and pleasures; whereas he taught the human race the truth of heavenly things compared to a human likeness, as it is written in the gospels and everywhere.

So he taught everyone about the divine presence of Christ in the flesh in such a way as to arouse them by divine love, soothe them by admonition, move them by mercy and bend them by goodness.

For he showed as God, admonished as a father, pointed out pasture as a shepherd, showed as a king that by conquering the enemy they should follow <his> footsteps, so that those who follow their brother, that is, the Lord Christ coming in the flesh, may rejoice with him alike in the triumph of immortal glory and heavenly merit.

And therefore it is called the Song of Songs, so that what was said before in the law in shadow, in part, might now be opened to believers in the light of Christ's presence, as a supplement, by the fulfilment of the mystery to be celebrated through the passion; so that, the shadow ceasing, the truth of the heavenly light might now shine out to the whole world, to kindle man's body and mind and stir his sense with heavenly love.

So vain men who serve the desires of the flesh pretend either that they cannot perceive this, or, if it is explained to them, scorn to learn, and, unwilling to recognize the force of the law, are to be judged no less than Jews or pagans.

Another heresy says that the commandment which Adam our father received is not to be accepted, and they think it is of no force or use; whereas without that commandment neither can the law of Moses be accepted nor the perpetual, outpoured and abundant grace of Christ be recognized.

For every man set in the body is instructed by the divine law with a threefold force, to be taught and admonished, so that in the first age he is under the commandment, in the second under the law, in the third under the grace of the Saviour. And therefore the law is rather an admonition, because of forgetfulness of the original commandment which our father Adam first received from Christ in paradise: for so it is written.

But in the law afterwards: “Lest,” it says, “forgetting the commandment of the Lord your God, you depart from him and perish.” Therefore the law is an admonition of the commandment and a confirmation of that first one. Again, the commandment and the law of Christ proclaim the full goodness of grace and the saving presence. And therefore the Lord says: “Behold, I who spoke in the prophets am here.”

So greater are the ancients who were under the commandment, who, not forgetting it, announced to their descendants the grace of Christ the Saviour and his mystery; and when forgetfulness of it arose among the Jews, the admonition of the letter followed again, so that in the letter too the spiritual knowledge of Christ and his bodily presence, illuminating the world, might be hoped for.

And therefore the law of Moses announced one thing in the sound of the voice and another in hidden form, containing the saving mystery of Christ. So neither the commandment without the law, nor the law without the commandment, nor the grace of Christ without the law and the commandment ought to be received or believed by anyone.

There are some heretics who, when they read Scripture where the Lord says, “Let us make man in our image and likeness,” fall into no small madness, not knowing first what the image and what the likeness of God is; and since they do not know what the image of God is by nature of property and what is by grace of position, they presume for themselves no small pride of rank.

For the image of God is the soul of every man, made out of nothing; but the likeness, unless it is recognized by God in faith and life, cannot be called a likeness of God's image. And when someone thinks himself to be more, he incurs the crime of presumption rather than acquiring for himself the merit of rank.

For since this soul is found sinning and is known to be held liable to judgment, how can it be the natural image of God, which is known to serve various sins?

since there can be no other natural image of God, divine and proper to the Father, not of angel or man, except Christ God the Son of God, who by nature of property is the undivided image of the Father's everlasting substance, properly begotten, not created out of nothing in the position of servitude, like man and angel.

And therefore Scripture declared that the soul of all pagans, Jews, heretics and all <men> can be called the image of God in common generation, and announced the substance of one quality of nature; but declared that the likeness is not of all, but only of the saints and Christians.

They, remaining in faith, life and good work, are promised that they will attain the heavenly merits of the angels in the future, like the patriarchs, prophets, priests, judges, apostles and evangelists and martyrs, who, believing in the Trinity and remaining in a glorious life, are announced to be joined by the Lord to the glory of the angels.

For the likeness is known to be true from the teaching of the law, from faith, life, zeal and work, so that, agreeing with the divine law of the God by whom it was made, and fulfilling the precepts laid down, it may hope to attain from him fellowship in the heavenly kingdom, as the apostle says:

“But our citizenship is in heaven”; and again the Lord: “Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.” And that he showed that on the day of judgment they would be like angels, the Lord <again> says of the heavenly kingdom: “Come, receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

So the likeness is shown to be present from faith in the holy Trinity, a good life and following works, so that on departing they may receive the promised fellowship in angelic rank, as John says: “Then we shall be like him”; and the Lord: “Be like your Father.”

There are some heretics who say: Why did God not always speak in one way, but preached to the human race in various ways and tongues? Whereas he spoke so and was seen by men according to the capacity of the men who saw and grasped, to see and hear.

When man had been cast out of paradise and clothed with death, he no longer appeared as before, but spoke from heaven, his voice being heard and kept; but in the course of time he deigned also to appear, as to the most blessed patriarch Abraham and to others in order. Under Moses, appearing in various things, he showed what belonged to fear and error on Mount Sinai,

and afterwards, in the figure of an angel and in the form of a man, with signs of his future incarnation running before, he announced his general clemency, and the Lord now showed himself to the just in visions through dreams, as it is written. But afterwards, appearing in the incarnation, he bore witness to the Jews, announcing what he had said before through the prophets.

Since, then, the capacity for seeing the Lord was different, like a good physician he conferred various remedies on men's infirmities as the infirmity required; and therefore he gave more medicine to the ailing world at the end, so that both the surpassing strength of those first ones might be shown and the dangerous infirmity of our race might be known, as the Lord says: “Those who are well do not need a physician, but those who are sick.”

So greater are those earlier ones who believed on hearing, like Seth, Enoch, Noah and the rest, than we who, both hearing and reading, despise the abundant mercy and goodness of Christ the Lord.

For because of the Jews too he spoke in other tongues, so that it might be fulfilled: “In other tongues and lips I will speak to this people, and even so they will not believe, says the Lord.” For through Isaiah he says: “I will send my word into Achaia.”

Another heresy, when it reads of the four living creatures in the prophets, falls into no small error, thinking that creatures endowed with different forms praised God, not knowing that irrational creatures, that is, those not capable of reason, cannot give praise to God like men.

For God does not seek the praise of cattle, because cattle were not made in the image of God, but rational men were created by God and placed for this. But because it is a vision of the prophets, proclaimed by the divine Spirit, here four different virtues and different contests of holy peoples were announced as coming to the world, in different teachings and virtues, in diversity and sublimity of eminence;

that of the lion, the calf, the man and the eagle, whose different teachings and shining merits ran before: first in the patriarchs royal authority, then in the prophets the fruitfulness of heavenly knowledge, in the priests strong labour and persistent contest might be seen:

in the apostles a sublime flight into heaven and eminent rank might be shown, so that what the diversity of forms announced before, namely the heavenly merits of different virtues, might be made manifest in the world in the presence of Christ, granted indeed by him, the Lord the Saviour.

For in the lion is recognized the kingdom of strength, in the calf surpassing labour, in the man unceasing passion, in the eagle sublime flight, namely of those who strive and serve as soldiers, as the apostle says: “Our citizenship is in heaven”; and: “We shall be caught up into heaven and shall be always with Christ,” he says. And the Lord deigned to say: “Father, where I am, I will that these too be with me.”

There are some doubting heretics about the day of the Epiphany of the Lord the Saviour, which is celebrated on the eighth day before the Ides of January, saying that they should celebrate only the Lord's birthday on the eighth day before the Kalends of January, but not the day of Epiphany; not knowing that under the law and according to … the Saviour fulfilled all things in himself and from himself in the flesh, so that he was both born on the eighth day before the Kalends of January and appeared, as he appeared to the magi twelve days later … in the temple, so that not a shadow but what was true might appear, and so he might be adored by the magi.

For in order, for our salvation, these four annual days of the greater feasts have been established: first that on which he was born; then that on which he appeared, that is, twelve days after; <afterwards> that on which he suffered, at Pascha; and finally that on which he ascended into heaven, around Pentecost, which is indeed the consummation of the conqueror.

So he who ignores one and passes it over can also doubt about the other days, not having the fullness of truth, that according to the four seasons of each year various joys have thus sprung up for us from Christ the Lord, that is, the day on which he was born, then that on which he appeared, third that on which he suffered and rose and was seen, fourth that on which he ascended into heaven,

so that we may celebrate these throughout the year without interruption, rejoicing all together, and may keep and hold them whole and inviolate. Some, however, think that the day of Epiphany is that of the baptism, others that of the transfiguration on the mountain.

There are other heretics who, not knowing the precepts of the law that were spoken through Moses in Leviticus to the Jews carnally and have been revealed in our time spiritually, pass over the sum of the festival and the number of them, of heavenly benefit, not knowing what they celebrate, thinking that Moses gave precepts only about sabbaths, Pascha and unleavened bread, and not about the eight festivals which the catholic church knows and keeps.

For blessed Moses speaks thus to the people of the Jews: first of the new moon and sabbaths, second of Pascha, third of unleavened bread, fourth of the sheaves, fifth of the trumpet-blowing, which in Greek are called salpinx, which the Jews celebrate solemnly through the year; sixth the fast, seventh the building of tabernacles, and the eighth is the last offering and completion of all, of the fullness of fruits and the vintage of the apples, in the month of October.

This variety, according to eight months, is celebrated by the Jews according to the letter and also according to spiritual knowledge: <for>, beginning in the month of March up to the eighth month, that is, October, all things completed in order are conferred by Christ the Lord, which are the full pledges of eternal salvation, to be completed and proved in the faith and works of Christianity.

For although at that time the Jews were commanded to offer God various gifts of these months, so that, departing from idols, they might know that all these were to be offered to God, yet they had signs of a spiritual offering, because men were to attain the eighth, the perfection of virtues, that is, the full grace of the fruits of the Lord's day, in faith in the Lord's resurrection, the immortal reward and pledge of the angelic rank to be undertaken, offering no longer the gifts of an earthly offering, that is, the sacrifices of carnal life, but hoping to obtain from Christ the Lord the Saviour a share in heavenly glory.

For offering annual gifts eight times, and recognizing the fullness of the eighth day, namely the Lord's day, girded with the strength of the divine Spirit, that is, endowed with the highest perfection, and departing from this world, they did not despair of being able to obtain there the promised glory of the resurrection and of being joined to the fellowship of heavenly rank, as the Lord deigned to say: “Then you will be like angels,” preaching this to all the just and perfect; which David too said, announcing it in the psalm “for the eighth”.

There are heretics who, like the Jews, rejecting the translation of the seventy-two holy and most wise men, accept the edition of one Aquila, a man of Pontus, who translated many years later. Since [the Seventy] were compelled by necessity at that time to pass over certain things, they are thought to have dictated discordant things, and [Aquila] is praised by some, chiefly the Jews, as having understood more, although he did not dictate about the Father and the Son as those earlier ones did from the law.

For the Seventy-two said: “Against the Lord and against his Christ”; but Aquila: “Against the Lord and against his anointed one.” And again: “Behold, a virgin in the womb will conceive and bear a son,” the Seventy-two said, “and his name (God with us).” But Aquila said: “Behold, a young woman will conceive and bear a son, and his name (Strong with men).”

If these are taken with a pious sense of reading, that none is strong and mighty but Christ God, the Son of God, one understands rightly; but if one doubts about him, such an edition is to be rejected and spurned. Hence the Jews do not have the translation of the Seventy-two, who, thinking rightly about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, announced one substance, divinity and majesty, but that of Aquila, because he did not think rightly about the Son of God, but announced him as a prophet.

Hence his translations are never placed in the middle of books, but are assigned to the right and left, as contrary, and are so read by very many as contrary and not full of truth. But the catholic church, reading the decrees and counsels of the Seventy-two, always has and holds them without hesitation, while it considers and judges his as superfluous.

For this, that is, the translation of the Seventy-two, was published for all under Ptolemy, king of the Egyptians, after Alexander of Macedon; and it was commissioned from the Jewish people in Jerusalem, when not many Jews lived <there>, being as it were placed already in subjection to the Egyptian king; and they <were> asked by Ptolemy himself that translators be sent to Alexandria.

When the seventy-two wise and prudent men came as translators, according to the king's order they translated the Hebrew language into the Greek tongue and published it in Greek letters, as was done.

And when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, had received them, wishing to test whether the Scripture which the Jews read was divine, he ordered each to be shut up separately in a room and to see no one but only the scribe who would take down the translator's dictation;

and afterwards receiving the translation of all daily, when he found the edition of all agreeing as one, he ordered it to be written out and placed in the temple, so that those who came from Achaia, from Greece and other provinces, philosophers, poets and historians, desiring to read it, should not be denied the opportunity.

Hence philosophers, poets, orators and historians, taking their themes chiefly from it, transferred them as they wished to the lies of their paganism, and, teaching the untrained souls of children with other names, hastened to make the divine law of God void for the world, and confirmed the seeds of impiety in the sound of words and in dangerous opinions; because of them the Lord too said that they were thieves and robbers, to be recognized in all things and by all.

There is a heresy which again, after Aquila, accepts the translation of the Thirty men, not that of those most blessed Seventy-two, who, thinking wholly and inviolately about the Trinity, handed down the most certain foundations of the catholic church by translating the Scriptures.

These Thirty, because they followed Aquila in many things too, therefore their translation is not received by the catholic church either, nor is it contained in the authentic books;

There is a heresy which again wishes to follow the translation of the Six men, published later, not that of those earlier and holy Seventy-two; and since they desire to interpret the decrees and counsels of the Seventy-two in other ways, they fall into no small error, likewise thinking differently about the catholic faith.

There are other heretics who likewise follow the translation of Theodotion and Symmachus, set out in a different way, not that of the most blessed earlier ones, which the catholic church honours and preaches.

There is another heresy which wishes to follow the books found in a jar, brought out after the captivity and after the burning, which do not agree with the first translation of the holy men; whereas the catholic church reads, honours and preaches the translation of the Seventy-two, and despises and rejects others as superfluous and contrary to so great an edition.

There are some heretics who do not understand what Scripture says: “You shall not curse foreign gods”; and they observe it so, thinking that it spoke of the vanity of the pagans, and, thinking so, they suffer no small loss to their salvation.

For since Moses says, “You shall destroy their temples, you shall break their idols,” and the most blessed Abraham was justified by breaking idols, and Gideon, burning idols by night and breaking them, deserved to obtain such great strength from the Lord Christ that with a few he conquered countless enemies, and all the just, like blessed Elijah and others likewise — how then does this imprudent man think that it spoke of the vanity of idols, and that they are not to be cursed? For David says: “Let those who worship them become like them.”

Here, then, when he says that foreign gods are not to be cursed, [he means] the just who from the origin of the world have practised true piety, that is, that angels and other saints devoted to the true faith are not to be cursed.

For that all the just cursed idols and broke them, and therefore deserved grace, as Moses did when coming down from Mount Sinai, and that the messengers of Christ are gods, as Moses was to Pharaoh and the Egyptians, since Scripture cries:

“I said, you are gods,” <is not doubtful,> namely those who, worshipping the holy and adorable Trinity, preach with strong faith; and all the just are truly blessed and holy, and are known as gods of the unbelievers, because the Lord says: “To whom the word of God came” …, and through whom it was preached, they themselves were called gods of the unbelievers, like Paul, Barnabas, and Moses to Pharaoh; these are not to be cursed,

but are to be praised, honoured and glorified in every way, as David said: “But he will glorify those who fear the Lord”; and the Lord: “Those who glorify me I will glorify.” So those who do not understand the force of the Scriptures agree with paganism from the letter and are found strangers to Christianity.

Since, then, the Jews did not believe the just prophets and others like them, they too were judged strangers like the pagans by the Lord through Scripture, and so it was announced that they should not curse their teachers and prophets, the just and others.

There are some heretics who read in Genesis about Melchizedek, priest and king, who was in the city then called Salem under the most blessed patriarch Abraham, of whom Scripture says that he was born without father, without mother, … while

it is contrary to think so. For Scripture did not deny that he was born by carnal generation, but declared that he was not born of righteous parents; by natural zeal from the original commandment he deserved to come to such knowledge of Christ that, though he had not heard it from his parents, he yet by his own zeal recognized the greater mysteries of Christ to be offered according to the commandment, since the Lord says through the prophets: “Behold, I make new things”; and: “Before they come, they are announced to you”; and: “Do not remember the former things,” which were said carnally in the law.

And the Saviour says: “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” For when it says of him that he was born without father, without mother, Scripture announced that he was a seeker without the tradition and teaching of parents, and declared him by nature powerful and capable of heavenly wisdom, that is, attending to the mystery of Christ through the commandment.

Knowing this, the apostle preached that human nature is in all respects capable of heavenly knowledge and piety, thus: “For when the gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature the things of the law,

these, not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts,” and so on. This the Lord also says to Peter, that flesh and blood had not revealed it to him, but the Father who is in heaven, pointing indeed to faith in the Lord the Saviour. And therefore the Lord himself again: “If anyone is not reborn of water and the Spirit, he will not enter,” he says, “the kingdom of heaven.” And again in the law:

“Those who said to father and mother, We do not know you, these kept my commandment,” <when> the Lord says, not that the begetting of parents is to be hated, but that their pagan impiety is to be spurned and condemned in every way … he praised, since he says: “If anyone does not renounce all his own, he will not be worthy in the kingdom of heaven.” This blessed

Melchizedek, then, though born of foreigners, that is, of the impious Canaanites, despising his parents' impiety, being by his own zeal capable of the heavenly divine law as the image of God, having sought out the mystery of Christ and despised his impious parents, deserved not only to know Christ the Lord beforehand in the commandment, but moreover, seeing and understanding, to celebrate his heavenly mystery. And therefore the apostle too said to the baptized:

“But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit.” So there was then a joining of fellowship into one of two peoples, Melchizedek and Abraham, a fitting relation of uncircumcision and circumcision, so that Melchizedek bore the person of the Christians,

as we live and celebrate in all things, while in the figure of Abraham <appeared> the circumcision of the Jews, subject indeed to the faith of Christ and serving his heavenly saving mystery, as blessed Abraham was subject to Melchizedek the great priest, to whom moreover he did not hesitate to offer tithes from his possessions …, as to a king and priest of God; as now the indocility of the Jews is subject to us, so that it may wish to learn and gradually recognize from us the mysteries of Christ from the law and the prophets, and hope in his passion for heavenly knowledge from the law and the prophets alike.

There are some who read in Zechariah what it says: “The fast of the fourth day, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth will be for the house of Israel joy and gladness.” What then? If anyone wishes to fast every week or for many months, will he incur condemnation?

Far from it. Rather he will have greater praise, as many prophets did and very many just men do daily. But when it speaks of four fasts, it decrees as it were four days to be fasted, but did not tell us of what month or year, but preached it so absolutely that we might recognize the mysteries of Christianity announced in those four fasts.

For through the year four fasts are celebrated in the church: first at the Nativity, then at Pascha, third at the Ascension, fourth at Pentecost. For at the birthday of the Lord the Saviour one must fast, then at Pascha, of Lent likewise, at the Ascension into heaven likewise, on the fortieth day after Pascha, and from then to Pentecost for ten days or afterwards:

as the blessed apostles did after the Ascension, persisting in fasts and prayers, as it is written, so that they deserved at Pentecost to obtain the fullness of the divine Spirit and the perfection of power, so that, with the watering of the divine Spirit flowing, now equipped with heavenly arms, setting aside all the doubt in which they had been before, they afterwards hastened daily to become unconquered teachers and glorious martyrs of the Lord himself, teaching Jews and pagans,

and proving to them from the law and the prophets by the testimonies of the prophets that Christ is everywhere God everlasting with the Father, and announcing his most saving bodily presence to the world. Others think that Scripture spoke according to the four seasons of each year,

others again assert that it spoke of Noah: <first,> when he heard and believed, then when he made the ark, afterwards when he entered it, fourth when he came out of the ark. Others think that Scripture spoke of Israel, of the Jews: that the people first heard in Egypt through Moses and believed at that time, being freed from Pharaoh and the Egyptians; then that it went out of Egypt; third that it went to the mountain and received the law from the Lord the Saviour; fourth that it entered the land of promise;

but not all entered, as it is written, except only two, Joshua and Caleb, as Scripture said. Others said that these four fasts are enjoined on the church in four books of Moses: first, because God made all things in Genesis and man, as it is written; second, in Exodus, because every man who believes in Christ God will go out freed from darkness; third, because in Leviticus he offers various sacrifices, which are all mysteries of Christianity; fourth, because after the offering of spiritual gifts every faithful one deserves to be enrolled in the book of Numbers, as the Lord too says: “Rejoice, because your names are written in the book of heaven.”

Therefore David too says of the Jews: “Let them be blotted out of the book, and not be written with the righteous.” And again he himself: “And in your book those who believe in you will be written.” We must also take these fasts as the four gospels, of the patriarchs, prophets, priests and apostles, which are to be fulfilled in us: first the faith of the patriarchs, then the virtue of the prophets, third the labour of the priests, fourth the perfection of the apostles in unconquered contest are announced; and these different virtues flourish, joined with one another in their times, and, teaching men, supply various joys of delight to those who desire and receive them,

There are heretics who, when they read in Solomon, “Sixty queens and eighty concubines and maidens without number,” think that he stated the number for the sake of women, maidens and concubines. And when they think so, they are judged fruitless, or rather impious like pagans and ignorant and untaught like Jews,

not knowing that these things were announced by him as rational and intelligible, which in the majesty and power of Christ were shown as different gifts of graces to come to the human race, and imparted by him at different times to the will and capacity of those who desire, not that God denies equal grace, but that the Lord himself grants and confers it on those who seek it diligently, according to what the will of men is known to be able to receive, as the blessed apostle Peter says: “In truth I have found that God is not a respecter of persons.” And Paul the apostle

likewise: “God,” he says, “does not accept the person of man.” So according to will, according to what each receives and desires, so it is granted and imparted to him daily by God, by Christ. So different ranks and different glories were announced to us by Solomon: namely what different gifts of rank of merits were conferred on peoples in the commandment, the law and the grace of Christ, and in every, that is, the first, second and last time: on the first people, then on that of the Jews, third on that of the Christians;

because, when we are taught by those earlier ones who were before the Jews, we see in the presence of Christ the various grace of God, of Christ, poured out daily on those who receive and seek it.

For it is clear that some souls were called to rule, others to union, others to growth in the perfection of age, into union with the future faith of Christ the Lord, as the apostle says: “He who cleaves to Christ the Lord is one body.” For where the name “queen” is spoken, the excellent sublimity of the nobility of the heavenly kingdom is shown; the Lord too, preaching the calling of many, announces that the election of few will come, in whom a threefold dignity of virtue shines out.

And in the gospel, when the Lord says to that man: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me, and you will have treasure in heaven,” he, it says, was saddened, as it is written.

So even if it happened before in general according to the division of time and peoples, yet in Christ's presence a threefold grace and dignity shines out, so that some might be shown perfect, others following, others to follow later, attaining not a single kind of dignity, that is, of finding the heavenly kingdom, but a fitting reward according to their faith and labour and various contests, as the Lord says: “There are many dwellings with my Father.”

Therefore David too praises in every way the soul called to rule, teaching: “The queen stood at your right hand.” He also exhorts another to follow: “Hear, daughter, and see, and forget your father's house, and the king will desire your beauty.”

As reason requires, then, it is fitting to know that some will be assigned in the future to the kingdom, others to paradise, others to life and the forgiveness of sins; which is not denied even now, as it should be, to those who run and are willing; but to those who pretend and do not run rightly these things will not be granted by the Lord.

There is a heresy which thinks that Joshua son of Nun circumcised the people of the Jews with stone knives; which neither the nature of things admits nor strength or reason persuades. For the Jews could more easily be endangered than cured; and although with God's power nothing is impossible, yet the nature of things does not allow it, nor does reason persuade.

So it does not say that the Jews were circumcised with knives of stone, but with the very hard and stony minds of the pagans, which earlier had been given to impiety, but afterwards, believing in the Lord, having lost their stony mind, deserved, likewise circumcised by the word of God, now strong in mind and heavenly teaching, to circumcise the Jews, that is, to instil in them the saving knowledge of Christ, announcing and proving it everywhere from the law and the prophets.

For although the Jews are circumcised daily by those who were formerly gentiles, that is, they are taught from the law and the prophets about faith in Christ the Lord, the Saviour …; if they believe, they too will receive the remedy of salvation; but persisting in the hardness of a stony mind, they will be held for eternal judgment.

And therefore the Lord too, in their persistent contradiction, said that their sons, that is, the pagans themselves, would be their judges and teachers, that is, the people of the gentiles, who formerly dwelt in a stony mind but afterwards through faith in Christ deserved to come to saving knowledge.

But Israel, running according to the law, as it is written, could not attain the power of the law, because it hastened to run not from faith but from works. For Jacob says that he will be the hope of the gentiles, not of the Jews. So all the gentiles must first believe, and then at last the Jews learn from the gentiles themselves and hear the teaching of Christ the Lord from the law and the prophets, and so assent, that it may be fulfilled: “Until the fullness of the gentiles comes in, and so all Israel will be saved,” as it is written. And another prophet says: “Take away from them the heart of stone, Lord, and give them a heart of flesh.” And the Lord: “If these are silent, the stones will cry out.”

Another heresy thinks that the breath which Adam received is as great as that granted by Christ to the apostles after the resurrection, not knowing that the breath is a certain grace of modest power, proper to many, in hearing God's law, while the Spirit is the fullness of perfection.

So the breath is given from infancy and to catechumens, but the Spirit, in the growth of teaching and faith, is the full grace of God of saving baptism, so that you can understand and come to greater knowledge. And therefore after baptism, like the apostles, he who is baptized into the Trinity receives the Spirit, no longer the breath.

For the breath is common to all, but the Spirit belongs to few, the faithful who believe and learn and who come as it were from honour to honour and from glory to glory to greater heavenly knowledge and grace, as the apostle says that we proceed from faith to faith and hasten to go from glory to glory.

Therefore he himself says: “The first man was from the earth, earthy; the second man from heaven, heavenly,” so that nature might be found not without a share in Christ's gift <nor> wholly foreign, that is, not even the catechumen, while faith, teaching, zeal and a glorious life might be known to abound in the will of the few faithful who desire it, as the Lord says: “To him who has will be given, and more will be added to him; but from him who does not have, even what he seems to have will be taken away.” This happened to the Jew, and likewise to very many others.

There is a heresy which, when it hears in the prophet Zechariah of the measuring line, of which the blessed prophet David too had spoken, that an angel went holding it to measure Jerusalem, thinks that Scripture spoke so according to the letter; whereas it was not announcing that Jerusalem, which was to be handed over to enemies, was to be measured, but that the election of those who believe rightly, a few perfect ones, would come through the angel, as it was said: “Many are called, but few chosen.”

So Jerusalem was measured with a measuring line, that is, it was preached in the world that both before, under a few, and after faith in Christ, an election of a few of the catholic faith was to arise. This the apostle too says: “There must be heresies, so that the approved may be made manifest.” Since, then, the cord of inheritance is woven with a threefold strength, that is, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, this union, when it is received in one and the same faith and belief, is known by the catholic church as a unity of equality and truth to be joined and a power to be worshipped, not preached as a substance to be believed different in majesty or quality, as certain heretics think.

This the Lord too deigned to say: “Do you think the Son of Man, when he comes, will find faith on the earth?” Because before, the prophet [announced] what was then among few, and after Christ's presence, passion and resurrection … and by divine sentence it was so announced that they would transgress, as there are heretics today who, departing from the Holy Spirit or from the Son, daily

preach, going astray, a different inequality of majesty and power; in this, then, we must recognize that the cord, as Solomon says, “threefold will not be broken,” which must be believed by us, that the Son and likewise the Holy Spirit are of the divine and proper substance, joined to the Father in all things, who must be known and worshipped by all. In this union of baptism the Saviour too deigned to confirm us, commanding: “Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

In this, joining the Son to the Father, and the Spirit with the Son and the Father, we are known to be about to obtain salvation, because we know that the remedy of salvation will come to the human race from nowhere else but from this faith. Hence we rejoice in this union of the holy and adorable Trinity, in which earlier Adam our father, Noah, Abraham, Moses and the prophets, priests, judges, apostles alike <and> evangelists, preaching it, deserved to attain angelic rank; in which the catholic church too exults, preaching and teaching it daily, and, destroying daily all this pagan impiety and Jewish iniquity, exults with all joy.

For even if the threefold cord is to be taken as first that of the commandment, then that of the law in the middle time, then <that of> the grace of the Saviour, it is of no small benefit; or if anyone wishes to take it of faith, hope and love, as the blessed apostle said, in this too there is no small understanding for the more prudent and for very many who desire spiritual things.

There are some heretics who think of blessed Elijah that the ravens brought him meat for food in the evening and bread in the morning, not attending to the fact that the holy and most blessed prophet never ate meat at all, having renounced all such food by voluntary abstinence; and because of this he deserved to obtain from God the honour of such dignity that he was caught up on high into paradise, where he was placed with all the saints.

For if someone speaks of bread, it is sometimes reasonable that the ravens brought it to him; but of meat it is found unfitting. For in this the beastly cruelty of the men who persecuted the most blessed prophet was shown, while in the birds, that is, the ravens, such great gentleness and mildness was shown that, in birds from which human reason was absent, who were not rational images of God but only birds created with sense like cattle — yet in those birds, to the reproach of men, of the Jews and the king who persecuted the prophet from a most wicked will, recognition and a gentleness of feeling was shown implanted in the work of so great a ministry, which was rendered daily to the blessed prophet, so that in those birds a certain reason of gentleness was found, granted by God by a certain impulse, as if rational.

For all things of this kind created by the Lord are subject to man, as king and rational being and lord of the world <of lands>, of all cattle, birds and serpents indeed, as is written and shown in the book of Genesis.

There is a heresy which, when it reads in the prophet Isaiah that the Cherubim and Seraphim, two living creatures endowed with six wings, with two covered the face of God, with two his feet, and with two cried out with exalted voice, praising God, is greatly troubled, and, now seeking the history, now searching out the intelligible meaning, is wearied by various doubts; whereas according to the letter there is no small benefit, and according to the intelligible meaning the heavenly knowledge of Christ resounds.

For according to the letter, first, Scripture, by teaching that God is invisible, condemned pagan impiety everywhere, in that their impious writings preach him visible and composite; then also that of the Jews: <for> it taught this so lest they too, covered by equal blindness, should perish corrupted in their senses like the impious gentiles.

But here too was to be announced the unbelief of the Jews of the future time in Christ's presence and the covering of the mystery, that, covered by excessive blindness, they would believe neither the prophet nor the Lord himself afterwards, when, sent to the people, he preaches openly: “With the ear you will hear, and with the eye you will see, and you will not perceive”; covered indeed by darkness, they would not recognize the light of eternal salvation, <that is,> Christ's bodily presence, as indeed happened.

This the apostle, teaching, affirmed: that a veil is laid on their hearts to this day, which will not be lifted until they believe in Christ the Saviour. But when they have turned, that is, believed in Christ the Lord, the veil will be taken from their hearts. And that the two living creatures announced, Cherubim and Seraphim, are the law and the prophets, witnesses of Christ and teachers of the world, is not doubtful.

They veiled the face and feet of the Lord, because the mystery was taught in parables, likenesses and riddles, as it is written: “I will open my mouth in a parable”; and David: “Unveil my eyes, and I will consider wonders from your law”; and the apostle: “The Father,” he says, “revealed his Son to me,” that is, showing him from the law and the prophets.

They had six wings: with two they covered the face and with two the feet, and with two they cried out, lest perhaps, since it speaks of the face and feet of the Lord covered, what is above and below, and length and breadth, should be supposed of God; for neither the height nor the depth nor the breadth nor the length of God can be worthily known or found by any creature, above all by man, or comprehended by the human senses of anyone: he who by creating made so immense a nature of the elements, how much more does he who is known to have made such things surpass them in every way? He is known only through faith;

because “power,” he says, “is made perfect in weakness,” in likeness and riddles, and is found. And when the immensity of God is spoken and announced, it is sung and preached with two wings, that is, by the Cherubim and Seraphim, by the law and the prophets. And the crying of the two wings day and night, that is, both here and in the future, is found as the unceasing belief of men's hearts and confession of the mouth, resounding daily, which was then sung by the angels and preached by men in the world; so that what they could not see in height, depth, breadth and length, believing with the heart and confessing with the mouth, singing with unceasing voice, they might rejoice at all times.

For that the divine substance of the nature of his quality is invisible and incomprehensible is shown in the law and the prophets, as John says: “No one has ever seen God.” He did not say “has not believed”, but “has not seen”. So the Lord granted only the power of believing and the confidence of confessing, so that his ineffable power, manifested in fleshly frailty, might be known; for the Lord everywhere holds out his faith to men, which he himself had given before and afterwards confirmed in his presence.

But the Cherubim and Seraphim are four-formed, that is, of the lion, calf, man and eagle: these are the various stronger contests of the saints and virtues, of their surpassing and varied dignity, namely of the patriarchs and prophets, of priests and apostles likewise, joined with the martyrs, so that, though in them earlier such great faith and abounding love of Christ was known, but later in some an unequal teaching was seen because of the time, yet an equal glory of faith and contest might be shown in the union of different virtue, granted and given by Christ, and be known in the whole Christian people;

so that, what we cannot see nor worthily define with human senses, believing with the heart and confessing with the mouth, we may not cease to preach this joy to Jews and gentiles by the powers of these two wings, and to fly on high by these powers, hoping for heavenly things, where Christ the Lord is, as the apostle says, and not doubting that in this sentence we can attain perpetual salvation, as the same teaches: “For if you believe in your heart and confess that Christ the Lord the Saviour, crucified in the body, has risen, you will be saved: for with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

Hence he says of Christ the Lord that the divine substance of his quality does not consist in any sight, measure or composition, but is fulfilled, abounding, in the faith of our virtue and confession. “What the breadth and length, height and depth is,” to know, he says, the most eminent and incomprehensible grace and power of Christ God — it is not for human frailty … to express this powerfully, but he taught that in faith and through faith it can easily be reached, what the mind of men cannot recount.

There are some who think … that, after the people's confession as sinners and the prayer which blessed Isaiah had poured out as a suppliant to God, one of the Cherubim came, sent by the Lord to the prophet, and took a coal with the tongs and touched his lips, and said to him: “Behold, now you are cleansed”; and they think that either one of the angels came to him or one of the living creatures, and took fire from the tongs and cleansed the most blessed prophet: which is not so much of saving knowledge, since here, when it speaks of one creature of the Cherubim or Seraphim, it speaks of the two testaments, from which the patriarchs, priests, prophets and apostles flowed, who showed the grace to come to the whole world, ministering gifts shining with fourfold power to those who take up the heavenly contests.

For when it speaks of the Cherubim <or of the Seraphim,> the fullness of knowledge is spoken of, and a fiery power passing through is named. These, then, having the fullness of spiritual knowledge and holding the riches of Christ's mystery, by the Lord's command send down and bring us various teachings, announcing them likewise to the whole world without any interruption; one of them was sent to the prophet Isaiah, announcing this teaching of Christ, the Saviour, that he would come in the flesh and bring abundant grace of the divine Spirit to believers.

Isaiah, then, had received from the patriarchs, the law and the prophets before him a stronger grace, that is, a greater power of the divine Spirit, from those earlier ones, so that he might announce Christ's mystery, that is, his incarnation, to the world as grace. Therefore the Lord too said to some: “O hard of heart and imprudent in mind, why do you not perceive that all that the law and the prophets had foretold would come concerning the Son of Man had to be fulfilled?”

For he meant that blessed Isaiah received from the patriarchs and the law, so that, taught by them, he might preach with strong spirit the bodily presence of Christ. And the fire which it says the angel took and purified his lips with showed, of course, the grace of the divine Spirit granted him by the Lord, as he says: “I came to cast fire on the world: how I wish it were kindled quickly!” And by the tongs, that is, the iron, he spoke of his invincible and divine nature and power, because the body of Christ was created and completed in the womb of the holy Virgin by the divine Spirit and divine power, as it is written: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of God will overshadow you,” … and appearing in that body he would conquer all, and be overcome by none.

For as all things are tamed and subdued by iron, from which the sword too is made, <so>, as it was said, the word of the Lord is like a two-edged sword, which can tame all things but cannot be tamed by any. And after the passion, in the resurrection, he was to give the blessed apostles the invincible power of the divine Spirit, as it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” and so on. And blessed Peter, <of> the promise received from the Father, saying to the Jews: “He has poured out,” he says, “this grace which you see and hear today.” And as we know that the tongs are formed by fire, so we know that the Lord's body was formed by the divine Spirit, and that so he gave his own in the body that promised grace and invincible power, as he says:

“I have given you power to tread upon all the power of the enemy.” And the apostle: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Through these things the divine Spirit was given in this world to all who now believe, as was said, through the laying on of the apostles' hands, to those who believe in Christ the Lord the Saviour. And as the two living creatures are taken as these two testaments of the law and the prophets, standing beside the Lord, as the apostles saw on the mountain, yet it will be reasonable that the two living creatures are also to be understood thus: the commandment, first, which was given, which can also be understood spiritually, as it is written, and which the Saviour did not abolish but rather confirmed; and the second creature contained the teaching of Christ, that is, his faith and the grace of the incarnation and the mystery of his testament, passion and resurrection.

Hence that of the letter is placed in the middle between the commandment and grace; if it is understood, it is accepted as agreeing about Christ in many things; but if anyone thinks he is saved by carnal justification, it is judged to be rejected; since about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, before the law, that is, three thousand seven hundred years before, those earlier just men, living under the commandment and worshipping the blessed Trinity and handing it on to their sons and kin, also preached it to the world and announced the mystery of Christ the Lord from that most ancient commandment.

So the law is an admonition of the commandment, which is also joined to it according to the faith of worshipping the Trinity, and again certain parts of it are separated because of Jewish and carnal justification, since the prophets had destroyed those things before, the Saviour rejected them, and the apostles forbade men to be circumcised. So the law came down from the commandment for a time, because carnal necessity compelled it; but the grace of Christ, that is, the mystery of his incarnation, passion, resurrection, faith and ascension into heaven, was known before the law by all the just and was not hidden from those who sought and received it, like Enoch, Noah and Melchizedek, Jacob and the other just and most blessed patriarchs, and the rest who lived before the law of Moses, placed under the commandment and justified by the Lord in all things.

But faith in Christ is also called a law, as the apostle says: “Through the law of the faith of Christ”; the carnal law is the justification of the Jews. And the commandment, though it is not thought to be a law, yet what is said and decreed by the lord to a servant has the character of law, so that he may choose what he wills, either to keep it as a friend and faithful one, or to despise it as a servant subject under the law. Hence the Saviour gave the apostles a commandment, as to friends and faithful ones, as he had likewise given to Adam our father before he sinned; but after the sin it was no longer a commandment of fellowship, closeness, love and brotherhood, but he decreed the judgment of a severity to be feared, namely in despising the sentences of the law, as Moses also says: “Cursed is everyone who does not remain in the ordinances of this book.”

Therefore the Saviour both admonished what had been said in the law, and approved what had been given before the law under those most blessed ones, so as to join his teaching to that of those earlier ones, and so to unite many believers, the circumcised alike and the natural ones likewise, that is, to associate the believing gentiles, and to condemn the unbelief of the unwilling Jews and others, and the ignorance joined of both.