Compendium of Heretical Fables 5.23–5.27

It is necessary, however, to add to what has been said that before the Lord's appearance the scourge of humankind, the God-opposing demon, the robber of the divine name, will come, having put on human nature. As long ago he stole the name God and put it on himself and the workers of his wickedness, and persuaded people to offer him divine worship through hand-carved images, so, appropriating the name of Christ the Master, he will deceive practically everyone, and will cheat many even of those who bear the venerable name, saying that he is Christ, whom the divine … He will entice the easily caught, using certain deceitful wonders. Many of the prophets foretold this in riddles in the Old [Testament]; the divine Daniel prophesied about him more broadly and clearly. If any of these things need clarifying, we have already unfolded them, having interpreted the whole prophecy word by word. And having interpreted what the divine Paul wrote to the Thessalonians together with the other letters, we used longer words than usual about …. The divine Apostle necessarily taught that the world must first be lit up by the rays of the knowledge of God, the nurslings of the faith become manifest, and those who contradict be separated from those who have believed; and then the craftsman of falsehood will appear, to convict those who did not receive the preaching of the truth. For this [the Lord also said to the Jews]: “I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me; another comes in his own name, and him you will receive.” The divine Apostle said the same thing: “Because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved, therefore God will send them a working of error, so that they believe the lie, in order that all may be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness.” So the father and teacher of wickedness will come to convict those who disbelieved the preaching of the truth. For since the Jews, supposedly fighting for God, nailed the Master to the cross as opposed to God, the coming of the Antichrist will be the greatest conviction of their impiety. For Christ the Master, though true God and Son of the true God, called himself Son of man and man, giving himself titles from the visible nature, and only rarely named himself Son of God. But the all-wicked demon will name himself the greatest god. For this the holy angel taught the prophet Daniel: “He will not regard the gods of his fathers, and he will glorify the god Maozim in his place,” that is, he will call himself the strong and mighty god. Yet those who crucified the Master for naming himself Son of God will believe this one when he appears, showing by this that they are the bitterest enemies of the truth and workers of falsehood. For this reason the all-wise one permits the accursed one to appear; for it is clear that he would not appear if God did not will it. We do not, however, call the will an activity; for God is not the cause of evils, as even the wise men outside agree. He did not himself make Cain a murderer because he did not prevent him when he wished to kill his brother; nor did he himself bring Jacob's sons to sell Joseph because he did not stop their attempt. One can find that they misused the free choice of their will, while the all-wise Master, through their wickedness, showed the truth of the dreams. So too he permits this one to appear, exposing his wickedness and convicting the depravity of the Jews. And he brings on very swiftly … for this one, and [sends the forerunner] announcing his saving coming. The adversary of the truth will imitate the Lord's coming in every respect, and choosing a human vessel worthy of his own working, he will thus deceive people …. The divine Apostle taught this expressly in what he wrote to the Thessalonians. He speaks thus: “We ask you, brothers, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering to him, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit, or by word, or by letter as from us, as though the day of the Lord had come.” By these words he showed that some had deceived them, saying that the Apostle had said that the Lord's coming was near. Hence he forbade not only deceit through words and letters, but also through supposed prophetic prediction; for this is what he meant by “nor by spirit.” Then he adds: “Let no one deceive you in any way; for unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against everything called god or object of worship, so that he sits in the temple of God as God, proclaiming himself that he is God.” He calls the coming of the Antichrist itself apostasy; for many, deceived by the wonders to come, will depart from the truth and embrace falsehood. He called him man of sin and son of perdition, both showing the visible nature and revealing the manifold working of sin. He showed also his tyranny, conceit and boastfulness, calling him the one who opposes and exalts himself, and showing that he will name himself higher not only than the falsely named gods, but will also sit in the divine temple as God. He calls the churches the divine temple. Then he reminds them of what he had often taught: “Do you not remember that while I was still with you I told you these things? And now you know what restrains, so that he may be revealed in his own time.” He would already have appeared, he means, had not divine grace prevented him and allotted his coming to the fitting time. “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.” By these words he hints at the heresies that had sprung up at that time. “Only the one who now restrains, until he is out of the way.” The divine decree, he means, holds him back from appearing; for, according to the divine prediction, the gospel must be preached to all the nations, and then he will be seen. “And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the appearance of his coming.” He showed clearly that the Master, as soon as he appears, will make the destroyer vanish and hand him over to eternal punishments; “whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceit of unrighteousness among those who are perishing.” For he will not catch all for destruction, but those whose minds are fickle and easily deceived. He taught too that he will receive the working of Satan the devil. For as the only-begotten Son of God distributed the gifts of the all-holy Spirit to the holy prophets, the sacred apostles and the other saints, but when he became man gave the nature he assumed not some partial grace, but, according to the Apostle, all the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell in him; so the devil did not put every form of wickedness into the other people he persuaded to become workers of wickedness, but, wholly joined to this one, he will display through him all the devices of his wickedness. Then he states the reason for the permission: “Because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. Therefore God will send them a working of error, so that they believe the lie, in order that all may be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness.” This is what we have been taught by the divine Scripture about the Antichrist. We have written about him in summary, since in interpreting the prophet Daniel and the Apostle we used longer words about his coming, and it is easy for anyone who wishes to read those commentaries and find there anything we have left out here. These things the church [has learned] from the God-inspired men, I mean the prophets and apostles and their successors, [believing not human] reasonings but divine words. But since the utterly foul men also corrupted moral teaching and devised paths opposed to one another (for some called marriage sexual immorality, while others embraced every lawless and unholy licentiousness), come, let us show the [moderation] in the church's moral teaching too ….

Cerdo and Marcion legislated virginity in their war against the Creator, so as not to increase his creation through marriage. Mani called marriage a helper of matter and for this reason ordered virginity. Satornilus and Tatian openly named marriage the devil's. But the Lord God laid down no laws about virginity, for he knows the thing is beyond nature; but by praising it he urged those who wish to the contest. For when the apostles said, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry,” the Lord answered: “Not all can receive this saying, but those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God.” He said this not of cutting off parts of the body, but of cutting off unseemly thoughts. Then he added: “Let him who is able to receive it receive it.” For this reason the divine Apostle too, introducing the subject of virginity, says: “I have no command of the Lord” (for the Lord laid down no law about virginity) “but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy.” I counsel, he means, I do not legislate; and this not out of boldness, but having received the ministry of preaching by divine vote. “I think, then, that this is good for a person, to remain as he is.” He put “I think” not doubting about what he counseled, but tempering his word, lest it become a law. For a law admits transgression, and transgression brings punishment. For this reason he added “I think,” to show that his word was counsel and not law. Then he shows what he called good: “Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek release. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife.” Foreseeing the poisonous drugs of the heretics, he prepares the preventive remedy. That is why he first confirmed the law of marriage and only then introduced the counsels about virginity. So that no one might suppose that he was legislating chastity by accusing marriage, he necessarily strengthened the law of marriage, saying, “Do not seek release”; and having laid down the same about chastity, saying, “Do not seek a wife,” he did not stop at that rule but added: “But if you marry, you have not sinned; and if the virgin marries, she has not sinned.” I do not urge you to flee marriage as lawlessness, he means, but exhort you to a better life. He also shows the gain of virginity. For of those who marry he said: “Such will have affliction in the flesh.” For the married man is distracted by many cares, looking after not only his wife but also children, servants and maids; and indicating this he said, “Such will have affliction in the flesh.” He also lays bare his own affection, for he said: “But I spare you.” And a little later: “I want you to be free from care.” Then he makes a comparison and examination of the married man and the one who embraces celibacy: “The unmarried man cares for the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man cares for the things of the world, how to please his wife. The wife and the virgin are divided. The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman cares for the things of the world, how to please her husband.” In these words he taught expressly the usefulness of virginity. For he does not order flight from [marriage] as lawless, …. For the mind of the married, divided among many things, is hindered from achieving the exact and perfect life, while those who choose the solitary life give all their care to divine things. He continues, showing the advantage and removing legal compulsion from his word: “I say this for your own benefit, not to lay a noose upon you.” For [he does not] by compulsion [bind] the unwilling …; for this he added: “but for what is seemly and for undivided devotion to the Lord.” For one free of the marriage yoke easily draws the yoke of Christ, with nothing else [hindering] him from the good …, refuting the legislation of the heretics; for he says: “If anyone thinks he is behaving unseemly toward his virgin, if she is past her prime and it must be so, let him do as he wishes; he does not sin; let them marry.” He says this of those who have not yet made the commitments of virginity. “But whoever stands firm in his heart, having no necessity but having authority over his own will, and has determined this in his heart, to keep his own virgin, does well.” “Having no necessity” means not being under another's authority; for masters prevent servants from doing what they wish. So too to the one who wishes to betroth and the one who wishes to keep [his virgin] pure he [gave approval], adding: “So then he who gives in marriage does well, and he who does not give in marriage does better.” Such are the rules about virginity we have received from the men who spoke of God, not accusing marriage, but [urging] to the …

I think it to the point to go through the laws about marriage too, and to refute the audacity of those who accuse it. The very difference of the sexes suffices to show the reason for the creation. For this reason the Maker of all formed woman, and that is why he called her a helper: “Let us make,” he said, “for Adam a helper like him.” He not only formed her but also joined her to the man, and, according to the law now in force, brought her to the man; he himself became the one who escorts the bride and prepares the bridal chamber, and he himself offered this blessing to the marriage as a kind of gift, saying: “Increase and multiply and fill the earth and have dominion over it.” This was the first blessing the human race received from the God of all. And many [years later, bringing Noah into the ark …], not men only but women equal in number to the men to enter …, [after the] punishment he renewed the former blessing; for to them too he said: “Increase and multiply and fill the earth.” And bringing the patriarch Abraham out of his ancestral land, he ordered him to look at the stars of heaven and promised to make his descendants equal to them in number: “For I will make,” he said, “your seed like the stars of heaven in multitude, and like the sand on the shore of the sea.” If marriage were evil, the Lord God would not have legislated it from the beginning, nor called the begetting of children a blessing. For this very reason he did not prevent the men of old from having more wives, so that the human race might increase. For this reason the God-loving men were joined to two, three and more wives, desiring to become fathers of more children. That it was not from love of pleasure [that they took more wives is witnessed by Abraham, who], after Sarah's many entreaties, had relations with Hagar, and after the birth approached her no more. The all-wise Jacob also bears witness, who took Leah against his will, and because of his wives' rivalry put up with intercourse with the maidservants; and they, not slaves to pleasure but desiring to become mothers of more children, had their quarrel with one another. So the Old Scripture teaches the nurslings of the faith the purpose of marriage. Let those who do not accept the old laws learn the same from the New; for there too marriage is altogether among the things praised. The first of the apostles was called from the company of the married, [the evangelists] expressly teaching that the Master healed his mother-in-law of a fever. The Lord himself not only did not forbid marriage but was entertained at a wedding, and offered as a gift to the wedding wine that no vine had grown. He so strengthened the law of marriage that by another law he prevents even one who wishes to dissolve the marriage apart from sexual immorality: “For everyone,” he says, “who puts away his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery.” Then, when the Pharisees said that the old law had commanded to give a certificate of divorce, he interpreted the [law] for them: “[Because of] your [hardness of heart he] wrote you this commandment; but from the beginning of creation God made them male and female.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and [the two shall become one flesh].” And having read out [the law] which he himself had given, he added: “So they are no longer two. What therefore God has joined together, let man not separate.” All this shows that marriage is lawful. The great Peter did not separate Ananias and Sapphira, who were joined in marriage, but he refuted them very sharply for their theft; for the one was lawful, the other utterly lawless. The divine apostle Paul wrote a whole letter to Philemon and Apphia, joined by the law of marriage. To the Corinthians, who wished to learn whether those who had believed in the Lord should prefer chastity to marriage, he made this plain: “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote to me: it is good for a man not to touch a woman; but because of sexual immoralities let each man have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” Having laid down this law, he charges them to keep their goodwill toward one another firm: “Let the husband render to the wife the goodwill due to her, and likewise also the wife to the husband.” Since it was likely that either husband or wife would prefer continence to union, and, if this did not happen by agreement, that the one unable to endure would fall into sexual immorality, he forbids continence without agreement, and says: “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband; and likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife.” You are under each other's authority, he means; you cannot do what you wish without the one who draws the yoke with you. And strengthening the law, he added: “Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to fasting and prayer, and come together again.” He called deprivation the cessation of intercourse that happens against the other's will; for when one practices continence, the other thinks himself deprived of the fellowship. He teaches also why he ordered them to come together again after prayer and fasting, for he added: “so that Satan may not tempt you.” And showing that he takes the occasions of his war from us, he necessarily added: “because of your lack of self-control.” For if you struggle, he means, he will have no power at all. Then, urging them to better things, he says: “I say this by way of concession, not of command. I wish that all people were as I myself am, in continence; but each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.” If the thrice-blessed Paul named marriage with self-control a gift of God, the lawless laws of the ill-named heretics are exposed. What follows keeps to the same sense: “To the married,” he says, “I give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not be separated from her husband; but if she is separated, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband; and that the husband should not put away his wife.” So far is he from forbidding marriage that he holds together by the Lord's laws even the marriage being torn apart. For it is not I, he means, who write this law, but the Lord God, who added it in the divine Gospels; and he ordered the woman who is separated to remain unmarried, by this compelling her to return to her husband. Moreover, he charges women who have unbelieving husbands, and men joined to unbelieving wives, not to dissolve the marriage: “For if any brother,” he says, “has an unbelieving wife, and she consents to live with him, let him not put her away; and if any woman has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, let her not put him away.” If he did not dissolve a marriage lacking agreement in faith, it is clear that he knows marriage to be lawful, not unlawful.

And why do I speak of the first marriage? He also legislated a second union. “For I say,” he said, “to the unmarried and to the widows: it is good for them if they remain as I am; but if they do not exercise self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.” By burning he meant not the troubling of desire but defeat by it. And a little later he confirms the law; he says thus: “A wife is bound by law as long as her husband lives; but if her husband falls asleep, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord,” that is, chastely and lawfully, to a godly and believing man. And he counsels about continence: “But she is more blessed if she remains as she is, in my judgment.” “For I think,” he said, “that I too have the Spirit of God.” I do not legislate using human reasonings, he means, but …. One must note that he called the woman who remains continent not blessed but more blessed, teaching by this that the woman who embraces a second marriage is not wholly without blessedness, provided she accepts the yoke according to the established law. Writing to the Romans too, and teaching the difference between law and grace, he set down the example of a second marriage: “Or do you not know, brothers (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a person as long as he lives?” Then the example: “For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives; but if the husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband. So then, if while her husband lives she becomes another man's, she will be called an adulteress; but if the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she becomes another man's.” Here too, then, while arguing something else, he showed that a second marriage is not to be rejected. And writing to the blessed Timothy and legislating about the orders of the church, he added: “But refuse younger widows.” And having stated the reasons, he adds: “So I wish younger widows to marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for reproach.” But when Paul says “I wish,” Novatus dares to say “I do not wish.” But let us follow Paul's laws, and [reject] the arrogance of Novatus ….

Sexual immorality and all licentiousness we forbid as lawless deeds. For we hear the most divine Paul crying: “But sexual immorality and impurity must not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints.” And again: “Let no one be sexually immoral or profane like Esau.” And: “Let marriage be honored among all and the marriage bed be undefiled; for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.” And in the Letter to the Corinthians: “If anyone named a brother is sexually immoral, or greedy, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a robber, do not even eat with such a one.” Because of this licentiousness he also handed over to Satan the man who had committed sexual immorality, and he cries expressly: “If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him; for the temple of God is holy, which you are.” For this reason he orders them to flee licentiousness headlong: “Do you not know,” he says, “that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For the two, it says, shall become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man commits … sins against his own body.” He offered the same teaching to the Galatians: “Now the works of the flesh are evident: adultery, sexual immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, heresies, murders, drunkenness, carousing and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” These things Basilides, Carpocrates, Epiphanes, Prodicus and the other teachers of licentiousness and lawlessness read, but brought in an opposing legislation, openly setting themselves against the laws of the Spirit. In harmony he wrote to the Ephesians: “I say this,” he said, “and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the other Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; who, having become callous, have given themselves up to licentiousness for the practice of every impurity with greed. But you did not so learn Christ, if indeed you heard him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off, concerning your former way of life, the old man, corrupted according to the desires of deceit,” and what follows. And a little later: “For this you know, that no sexually immoral or impure person, or greedy person, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” He wrote this to the Philippians too: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is good, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any virtue and if there is any praise, think on these things, which you also learned and received and saw in me.” Likewise he writes to the Colossians: “Put to death, therefore, your members that are on earth: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed, which is idolatry, on account of which the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” The Old Scripture too legislated in harmony with the New. For God himself says: “Be holy, as I am holy.” And: “Do not give heed to a worthless woman; for honey drips from the lips of a harlot, which for a time sweetens your throat, but afterwards you will find it more bitter than gall.” Countless other passages can be found condemning this licentiousness. But the utterly foul and ill-named men even called licentiousness a mystical communion.