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| Chapter II. Description of the different heretical monsters which spring from one another.
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Chapter II.
Description of the different heretical monsters which
spring from one another.
For these shoots of an
unnatural seed are no new thing in the churches. The harvest of the
Lord’s field has always had to put up with burrs and briars, and
in it the shoots of choking tares have constantly sprung up. For hence
have arisen the Ebionites, Sabellians, Arians, as well as Eunomians and
Macedonians, and Photinians and Apollinarians, and all the other tares
of the churches, and thistles which destroy the fruits of good faith.
And of these the earliest was Ebion,2365
| 2365 The earliest
writer to allude to an “Ebion” as the supposed founder of
the Ebionites is Tertullian (Præscriptio c. xxxiii.). He is
followed in this by Epiphanius (I. xxx.); Rufinus (In Symb. Apost. c.
xxxix.), and others; but the existence of such a person is more than
doubtful, and the name is now generally believed to have been derived
from the Hebrew “Ebhion”=poor. | who while
over-anxious about asserting our Lord’s humanity2366
robbed it of its union with Divinity.
But after him the schism of Sabellius burst forth out of reaction
against the above mentioned heresy, and as he declared that there was
no distinction between the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, he impiously
confounded, as far as was possible, the Persons, and failed to
distinguish the holy and ineffable Trinity. Next after him whom we have
mentioned there followed the blasphemy of Arian perversity, which, in
order to avoid the appearance of confounding the Sacred Persons,
declared that there were different and
dissimilar substances in the Trinity. But
after him in time though like him in wickedness came Eunomius, who,
though allowing that the Persons of the Holy Trinity were divine and
like2367
| 2367
Cassian’s statement here is scarcely accurate, as Eunomius
is best known from his bold assertion that the Son was unlike
(ἀνόμοιον) to the
Father. | each other, yet insisted that they
were separate from each other; and so while admitting their likeness
denied their equality. Macedonius also blaspheming against the Holy
Ghost with unpardonable wickedness, while allowing that the Father and
the Son were of one substance, termed the Holy Ghost a creature, and so
sinned against the entire Divinity, because no injury can be offered to
anything in the Trinity without affecting the entire Trinity. But
Photinus, though allowing that Jesus who was born of the Virgin was
God, yet erred in his notion that His Godhead began with the beginning
of His manhood;2368
| 2368 Photinus, the
pupil of Marcellus of Ancyra, appears to have taught a form of
Sabellianism, teaching that Christ Himself, the Son of God, had not
existed from all eternity but only from the time when He became the Son
of God and Christ; viz., at the Incarnation. | while
Apollinaris through inaccurately conceiving the union of God and man
wrongly believed that He was without a human soul. For it is as bad an
error to add to our Lord Jesus Christ what does not belong to Him as to
rob Him of that which is His. For where He is spoken of otherwise than
as He is—even though it seems to add to His glory—yet it is
an offence. And so one after another out of reaction against heresies
they give rise to heresies, and all teach things different from each
other, but equally opposed to the faith. And just lately also, i.e., in
our own days, we saw a most poisonous heresy spring up from the
greatest city of the Belgæ,2369
| 2369 Et maxima
Belgarum urbe (Petschenig). Gazæus edits: Et maxime
Beligarum urbe. The city must be Trêves
and the allusion is to the heresy of Leporius, which was an outcome of
Pelagianism. Leporius was apparently a native of Trêves who propagated Pelagian views in Gaul,
ascribing his virtues to his own free will and his own strength; and
going to far greater lengths than his master in that he connected this
doctrine of human sufficiency with heretical views on the Incarnation;
thus combining Pelagianism with what was practically Nestorianism,
teaching that Jesus was a mere man who had used His free will so well
as to have lived without sin, and had only been made Christ in virtue
of His Baptism, whereby the Divine and Human were associated so as
virtually to make two Christs. He taught further that the only object
of His coming into the world was to exhibit to mankind an example of
virtue; and that if they chose to profit by it they also might be
without sin. For these errors he was rebuked by Cassian and others in
Gaul and on his refusal to abandon them was formally censured by
Proculus Bishop of Marseilles and Cylinnius (Bishop of Fréjus?). He then left Gaul and came to Africa, where
he was convinced by Augustine of the erroneous character of his
teaching, and under his influence signed a recantation, which was
perhaps drawn up by Augustine himself, and from which Cassian quotes
below (c. v.). This recantation was read in the Church of Carthage, and
subscribed by four bishops as witnesses (including Augustine). It was
then sent to the Gallican Bishops accompanied by a letter from the four
attesting bishops (Epp. August. no. ccxxix.) commending the treatment
which Leporius had previously received, but recommending him once more
to their favour as having retracted his errors. See further Fleury H.
E. Book XXIV. c. xlix. and Dictionary of Christian Biography, Art.
Leporius. | and
though there was no doubt about its error, yet there was a doubt about
its name, because it arose with a fresh head from the old stock of the
Ebionites, and so it is still a question whether it ought to be called
old or new. For it was new as far as its upholders were concerned; but
old in the character of its errors. Indeed it blasphemously taught that
our Lord Jesus Christ was born as a mere man, and maintained that the
fact that He afterwards obtained the glory and power of the Godhead
resulted from His human worth and not from His Divine nature; and by
this it taught that He had not always His Divinity by the right of His
very own Divine nature which belonged to Him, but that He obtained it
afterwards as a reward for His labours and sufferings. Whereas then it
blasphemously taught that our Lord and Saviour was not God at His
birth, but was subsequently taken into the Godhead, it was indeed
bordering on this heresy which has now sprung up, and is as it were its
first cousin and akin to it, and, harmonizing both with Ebionism and
these new ones, came in point of time between them, and was linked with
them both in point of wickedness. And although there are some others
like those which we have mentioned yet it would take too long to
describe them all. Nor have we now undertaken to enumerate those that
are dead and gone, but to refute those which are
novel.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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