Against All Heresies

St. Irenaeus of Lyons

  1. 1. Earliest Heretics: Simon Magus, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, Nicolaus. (The Work Begins as a Fragment.)
  2. 2. Ophites, Cainites, Sethites
  3. 3. Carpocrates, Cerinthus, Ebion
  4. 4. Valentinus, Ptolemy and Secundus, Heracleon
  5. 5. Marcus and Colarbasus
  6. 6. Cerdo, Marcion, Lucan, Apelles
  7. 7. Tatian, Cataphrygians, Cataproclans, Catæschinetans
  8. 8. Blastus, Two Theodoti, Praxeas

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. 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; 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. He had the hardihood to call himself the Supreme Virtue, that is, the Supreme God; and moreover, (to assert) that the universe had been originated by his angels; that he had descended in quest of an erring dæmon, which was Wisdom; that, in a phantasmal semblance of God, he had not suffered among the Jews, but was as if he had suffered.

After him Menander, his disciple (likewise a magician ), 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 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; 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; 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, by whom was created Mind, which in Greek he calls Νοῦς; that thence sprang the Word; that of Him issued Providence, Virtue, and Wisdom; that out of these subsequently were made Principalities, powers, and Angels; that there ensued infinite issues and processions of angels; that by these angels 365 heavens were formed, and the world, 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, he places the God of the Jews latest, that is, the God of the Law and of the Prophet