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FOR these shoots of an unnatural seed are no new thing in the churches.
The harvest I of the Lord's field has always had to put up I 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, who while over-anxious about
asserting our Lord's humanity 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 like 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; 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 Belgae, 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.
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