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| The System of Saturnilus.
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Chapter
XVI.—The System of Saturnilus.
But one Saturnilus,854
| 854
See [vol. i. p. 348, this series, where it is Saturninus];
Irenæus, i. 24; [vol. iii., this series, p. 649]; Tertullian,
Præscript. xlvi.; Epiphanius, Hær., xxiii.;
Theodoret, Hær. Fab., i. 3; St. Augustine,
Hær., iii. Eusebius styles this heretic
Saturninus. | who flourished about the same period with
Basilides,855
| 855
Epiphanius makes Basilides and Saturnilus belong to the same
school. | but spent his time
in Antioch, (a city) of Syria, propounded opinions akin to whatever
(tenets) Menander (advanced). He asserts that there is one
Father, unknown to all—He who had made angels, archangels,
principalities, (and) powers; and that by certain angels, seven (in
number), the world was made, and all things that are in it. And
(Saturnilus affirms) that man was a work of angels. There had
appeared above from (the Being of) absolute sway, a brilliant856
| 856
φαεινῆς: Miller
reads φωνῆς. | image; and when (the angels) were not
able to detain this, on account of its immediately, he says, returning
with rapidity upwards, they exhorted one another, saying, “Let us
make man in our likeness and image.”857
And when the figure was formed,
and was not, he says, able, owing to the impotence of the angels, to
lift up itself, but continued writhing as a worm, the Power above,
compassionating him on account of his having been born in its own
image, sent forth a scintillation of life, which raised man up, and
caused him to have vitality. (Saturnilus) asserts that this
scintillation of life rapidly returns after death to those things that
are of the same order of existence; and that the rest, from which they
have been generated, are resolved into those. And the
Saviour858
| 858
Miller reads “the Father.” | he supposed to
be unbegotten and incorporeal, and devoid of figure.
(Saturnilus,) however, (maintained that Jesus) was manifested as man in
appearance only. And he says that the God of the Jews is one of
the angels, and, on account of the Father’s wishing to deprive of
sovereignty all the Archons, that Christ came for the overthrow of the
God of the Jews, and for the salvation of those that believe upon Him;
and that these have in them the scintillation of life. For he
asserted that two kinds of men had been formed by the angels,—one
wicked, but the other good. And, since demons from time to time
assisted wicked (men, Saturnilus affirms) that the Saviour came for the
overthrow of worthless men and demons, but for the salvation of
good men. And he
affirms that marriage and procreation are from Satan. The
majority, however, of those who belong to this (heretic’s school)
abstain from animal food likewise, (and) by this affectation of
asceticism (make many their dupes). And (they maintain) that the
prophecies have been uttered, partly by the world-making angels, and
partly by Satan, who is also the very angel whom they suppose to act in
antagonism to the cosmical859
(angels), and especially to the God of the Jews. These, then, are
in truth the tenets of Saturnilus.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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