Prescription against Heretics 39

These were the contrivances of the spiritual forces of wickedness with whom we wrestle, brothers: rightly to be considered, necessary to faith, so that the elect may be made manifest and the reprobate exposed. And so they have strength and facility in devising and equipping errors; not so much to be wondered at, as if it were difficult and inexplicable, since an example of such facility is at hand in secular writings too. You see today a wholly different story composed out of Virgil, the material fitted to the verses and the verses to the material. Hosidius Geta, for instance, sucked out a complete tragedy, Medea, from Virgil. A certain relative of mine, among other leisure products of his pen, unfolded the Tablet of Cebes from the same poet. Those too are usually called Homerocentones who, out of the poems of Homer, patch together works of their own into one body, in the manner of a patchwork, from many pieces taken here and there. And the divine writings are certainly more fertile for furnishing any material. Nor am I afraid to say that the Scriptures themselves were so arranged by the will of God as to supply material for heretics, since I read that there must be heresies, which cannot exist without the Scriptures.