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Tertullian - Appendix: Against All Heresies
Chapter I.--Earliest Heretics: [8331] Simon Magus, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, Nicolaus. [The Work Begins as a Fragment.]
Of which heretics I will (to pass by a good deal) summarize some few particulars. For of Judaism's heretics I am silent--Dositheus the Samaritan, I mean, who was the first who had the hardihood to repudiate the prophets, on the ground that they had not spoken under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Of the Sadducees I am silent, who, springing from the root of this error, had the hardihood to adjoin to this heresy the denial likewise of the resurrection of the flesh. [8332] The Pharisees I pretermit, who were "divided" from the Jews by their superimposing of certain additaments to the law, which fact likewise made them worthy of receiving this very name; [8333] and, together with them, the Herodians likewise, who said that Herod was Christ. To those I betake myself who have chosen to make the gospel the starting-point of their heresies.
Of these the first of all is Simon Magus, who in the Acts of the Apostles earned a condign and just sentence from the Apostle Peter. [8334] He had the hardihood to call himself the Supreme Virtue, [8335] that is, the Supreme God; and moreover, (to assert) that the universe [8336] had been originated by his angels; that he had descended in quest of an erring dæmon, [8337] which was Wisdom; that, in a phantasmal semblance of God, he had not suffered among the Jews, but was as if he had suffered. [8338]
After him Menander, his disciple (likewise a magician [8339] ), saying the same as Simon. Whatever Simon had affirmed himself to be, this did Menander equally affirm himself to be, asserting that none could possibly have salvation without being baptized in his name.
Afterwards, again, followed Saturninus: he, too, affirming that the innascible [8340] Virtue, that is God, abides in the highest regions, and that those regions are infinite, and in the regions immediately above us; but that angels far removed from Him made the lower world; [8341] and that, because light from above had flashed refulgently in the lower regions, the angels had carefully tried to form man after the similitude of that light; that man lay crawling on the surface of the earth; that this light and this higher virtue was, thanks to mercy, the salvable spark in man, while all the rest of him perishes; [8342] that Christ had not existed in a bodily substance, and had endured a quasi-passion in a phantasmal shape merely; that a resurrection of the flesh there will by no means be.
Afterwards broke out the heretic Basilides. He affirms that there is a supreme Deity, by name Abraxas, [8343] by whom was created Mind, which in Greek he calls Nous; that thence sprang the Word; that of Him issued Providence, Virtue, [8344] and Wisdom; that out of these subsequently were made Principalities, powers, [8345] and Angels; that there ensued infinite issues and processions of angels; that by these angels 365 heavens were formed, and the world, [8346] in honour of Abraxas, whose name, if computed, has in itself this number. Now, among the last of the angels, those who made this world, [8347] he places the God of the Jews latest, that is, the God of the Law and of the Prophets, whom he denies to be a God, but affirms to be an angel. To him, he says, was allotted the seed of Abraham, and accordingly he it was who transferred the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt into the land of Canaan; affirming him to be turbulent above the other angels, and accordingly given to the frequent arousing of seditions and wars, yes, and the shedding of human blood. Christ, moreover, he affirms to have been sent, not by this maker of the world, [8348] but by the above-named Abraxas; and to have come in a phantasm, and been destitute of the substance of flesh: that it was not He who suffered among the Jews, but that Simon [8349] was crucified in His stead: whence, again, there must be no believing on him who was crucified, lest one confess to having believed on Simon. Martyrdoms, he says, are not to be endured. The resurrection of the flesh he strenuously impugns, affirming that salvation has not been promised to bodies.
A brother heretic [8350] emerged in Nicolaus. He was one of the seven deacons who were appointed in the Acts of the Apostles. [8351] He affirms that Darkness was seized with a concupiscence--and, indeed, a foul and obscene one--after Light: out of this permixture it is a shame to say what fetid and unclean (combinations arose). The rest (of his tenets), too, are obscene. For he tells of certain Æons, sons of turpitude, and of conjunctions of execrable and obscene embraces and permixtures, [8352] and certain yet baser outcomes of these. He teaches that there were born, moreover, dæmons, and gods, and spirits seven, and other things sufficiently sacrilegious. alike and foul, which we blush to recount, and at once pass them by. Enough it is for us that this heresy of the Nicolaitans has been condemned by the Apocalypse of the Lord with the weightiest authority attaching to a sentence, in saying "Because this thou holdest, thou hatest the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which I too hate." [8353]