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AS we began by setting down in the first book some things by which we
showed that our new heretic is but an offshoot from ancient stocks of
heresy, the due condemnation of the earlier heretics ought to be enough to
secure a sentence of due condemnation for him. For as he has the same roots
and grows up out of the same fallow he has already been amply condemned
in the persons of his predecessors, especially as those who went wrong
immediately before these men very properly condemned the very thing which
these men are now asserting, so that the examples of their own party
ought to be amply sufficient for them in both directions; viz., that of
those who were restored and that of those who were condemned. For if they
are capable of amendment they have their remedy set forth in the correction
of their own party. If they are incapable of it they receive their sentence
in the condemnation of their own folk. But that we may not be thought to
have prejudged the case against them instead of fairly judging it, we will
produce their actual pestilent assertions, or rather I should say their
blasphemous folly: taking "above all the shield of faith, and the sword
of the Spirit which is the Word of God," that when the head of the old
serpent rises once more, the same sword of the Divine Word which formerly
severed it in the case of those ancient dragons may even now cut it off in
the persons of these new serpents. For since the error of these is the same
as that of those former ones, the decapitation of those ought to be counted
as the decapitation of these; and as the serpents revive and emit pestilent
blasts against the Lord's church, and cause some to fail through their
hissing, we must on account of these new diseases add a fresh remedy to
those older cures, so that even if what has already been done prove
insufficient to heal the malady, what we are now doing may be adequate
to restore those who are suffering from it.
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