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He is the one whose words we quoted a little above in regard to that
admirable man, Justin, and whom we stated to have been a disciple of
the martyr. Irenaeus declares this in the first book of his work
Against Heresies, where he writes as follows concerning both him and
his heresy: "Those who are called Encratites, and who sprung from
Saturninus and Marcion, preached celibacy, setting aside the
original arrangement of God and tacitly censuring him who made male and
female for the propagation of the human race. They introduced also
abstinence from the things called by them animate, thus showing
ingratitude to the God who made all things. And they deny the
salvation of the first man? But this has been only recently discovered
by them, a certain Tatian being the first to introduce this
blasphemy. He was a hearer of Jus-tin, and expressed no such
opinion while he was with him, but after the martyrdom of the latter he
left the Church, and becoming exalted with the thought of being a
teacher, and puffed up with the idea that he was superior to others,
he established a peculiar type of doctrine of his own, inventing
certain invisible aeons like the followers of Valentinus, while, like
Marcion and Saturninus, he pronounced marriage to be corruption and
fornication. His argument against the salvation of Adam, however,
he devised for himself." Irenaeus at that time wrote thus. But a
little later a certain man named Severus put new strength into the
aforesaid heresy, and thus brought it about that those who took their
origin from it were called, after him, Severians. They, indeed,
use the Law and Prophets and Gospels, but interpret in their own way
the utterances of the Sacred Scriptures. And they abuse Paul the
apostle and reject his epistles, and do not accept even the Acts of
the Apostles. But their original founder, Tatian, formed a certain
combination and collection of the Gospels, I know not how, to which
he gave the title Diatessaron, and which is still in the l hands of
some. But they say that he ventured to paraphrase certain words of the
apostle, in order to improve their style. He has left a great many
writings. Of these the one most in use among many persons is his
celebrated Address to the Greeks, which also appears to be the best
and most useful of all his works. In it he deals with the most ancient
times, and shows that Moses and the Hebrew prophets were older than
all the celebrated men among the Greeks. So much in regard to these
men.
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