Tertullian-----

1. The times we live in provoke me to remark that we ought not to be surprised either at the occurrence of the heresies, since they were foretold, or at their occasional subversion of faith, since they occur precisely in order to prove faith by testing it.To be scandalized, as many are, by the great power of heresy is groundless and unthinking. What power could it have if it never occurred? When something is unquestionably destined to come into existence, it receives, together with the purpose of its existence, the force by which it comes to exist and which precludes its non-existence.

Fever, for example, we are not surprised to find in its appointed place among the fatal and excruciating issues which destroy human life, since it does in fact exist; and we are not surprised to find it destroying life, since that is why it exists. Similarly, if we are alarmed that heresies which have been produced in order to weaken and kill faith can actually do so, we ought first to be alarmed at their very existence. Existence and power are inseparable.

Faced with fever, which we know to be evil in its purpose and power, it is not surprise we feel, but loathing; and as it is not in our power to abolish it, we take what precautions we can against it. But when it comes to heresies, which bring eternal death and the heat of a keener fire with them, there are men who prefer to be surprised at their power rather than avoid it, although they have the power to avoid it. But heresy will lose its strength if we are not surprised that it is strong. It hap- pens either that we expose ourselves to occasions of stumbling by being surprised, or else that in being made to stumble we come to be surprised, supposing the power of heresy to spring from some inherent truth. It is surprising, to be sure, that evil should have any strength of its own--though heresy is strongest with those who are not strong in faith! When boxers and gladiators fight, it is very often not because he is strong or invincible that the victor wins, but because the loser is weak. Matched subsequently against a man of real strength, your victor goes off beaten. Just so, heresy draws its strength from men's weakness and has none when it meets a really strong faith.

3. Those who are surprised into admiration are not infre- quently edified by the captives of heresy-edified to their down- fall. Why, they ask, have so-and-so and so-and-so gone over to that party, the most faithful and wisest and most experienced members of the Church? Surely such a question carries its own answer. If heresy could pervert them, they cannot be counted wise or faithful or experienced. And is it surprising that a person hitherto of good repute should afterwards fall? Saul; though good beyond all others, was afterwards overthrown by jealousy. David, a good man after the Lord's heart, was after- wards guilty of murder and adultery. Solomon, whom the Lord had endowed with all grace and wisdom, was led by women into idolatry. To remain without sin was reserved for the Son of God alone. If then a bishop or deacon, a widow, a virgin or a teacher, or even a martyr, has lapsed from the Rule of Faith, must we conclude that heresy possesses the truth? Do we test the faith by persons or persons by the faith? No one is wise, no one is faithful, no one worthy of honour unless he is a Christian, and no one is a Christian unless he perseveres to the end.

You are human, and so you know other people only from the outside. You think as you see, and you see only what your eyes let you see. But "the eyes of the Lord are lofty." "Man looketh on the outward appearance, God looketh on the heart." So "the Lord knoweth them that are his" and roots up the plant which he has not planted. He shows the last to Be first, he carries a fan in his hand to purge his floor. Let the chaff of light faith fly away as it pleases before every wind of temptation. So much the purer is the heap of wheat which the Lord will gather into his garner.

Some of the disciples were offended and turned away from the Lord himself. Did the rest at once suppose that they too must leave his footsteps? No, convinced that he is the word of life, come down from God, they persevered in his company to the end, although he had gently asked them whether they also wished to go. It is of less consequence if some, like Phygelus and Hermogenes, Philetus and Hymenaeus, deserted his apostle.6 It was an apostle that betrayed Christ. Are we sur- prised that some desert the Church when it is our sufferings after Christ's example that show us to be Christians? "They went out from us," the Bible says, "but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us."

4. Instead of dwelling on such things let us keep in mind the Lord's sayings and the apostles' letters, which warned us that heresies would come and ordered us to shun them. Feeling, as we do, no alarm at their occurrence, we need not be surprised at their ability to perform that which compels us to shun them. The Lord teaches that many ravening wolves will come in sheep's clothing. What is this sheep's clothing but the outward profession of the name "Christian"? The ravening wolves are the crafty thoughts and impulses lurking within to attack Christ's flock. The false prophets are the false preachers, the false apostles the spurious evangelists, the antichrists, now as ever, the rebels against Christ. Today heresy plays this part. The assaults of its perverse teaching upon the Church are no whit less severe than the dreadful persecutions which the anti-christ will carry out in his day. In fact they are worse. Persecution at least makes martyrs: heresy only apostates.

There had to be heresies so that those who are approved might be made manifest, those who did not stray into heresy as well as those who stood firm in persecution, in case anyone should want those who change their faith into heresy to be counted as approved simply because he says somewhere else: "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good," words which they misinterpret to suit themselves. As if it were not possible to "prove all things" wrongly, and so fasten erroneously upon some evil choice!

5. Again, when he blames party strife and schism, which are unquestionably evils, he at once adds heresy. What he links with evils, he is of course proclaiming to be itself an evil. Indeed in saying that he had believed in their schisms and parties just because he knew that heresies must come, he makes heresy the greater evil, showing that it was in view of the greater evil that he readily believed in the lesser ones. He cannot have meant that he believed in the evil things because heresy is good. He was warning them not to be surprised at temptations of an even worse character, which were intended, he said, to "make manifest those who are approved," that is, those whom heresy failed to corrupt. In short, as the whole passage aims at the preservation of unity and the restraint of faction, while heresy is just as destructive of unity as schism and party strife, it must be that he is setting heresy in the same reprehensible category as schism and party. So he is not approving those who have turned aside to heresy. On the contrary, he urges us with strong words to turn aside from them, and teaches us all to speak and think alike. That is what heresy will not allow.

6. I need say no more on that point, for it is the same Paul who elsewhere, when writing to the Galatians, classes heresy among the sins of the flesh, and who counsels Titus to shun a heretic after the first reproof because such a man is perverted and sinful, standing self-condemned. Besides, he censures heresy in almost every letter when he presses the duty of avoiding false doctrine, which is in fact the product of heresy. This is a Greek word meaning choice, the choice which anyone exercises when he teaches heresy or adopts it. That is why he calls a heretic self-condemned; he chooses for himself the cause of his condemnation. We Christians are forbidden to introduce anything on our own authority or to choose what someone else introduces on his own authority. Our authorities are the Lord's apostles, and they in turn chose to introduce nothing on their own authority. They faithfully passed on to the nations the teaching which they had received from Christ. So we should anathematize even an angel from heaven if he were to preach a different gospel. The Holy Ghost had already at that time foreseen that an angel of deceit would come in a virgin called Philumene, transforming himself into an angel of light, by whose miracles and tricks Apelles was deceived into introducing a new heresy.

7. These are human and demonic doctrines, engendered for itching ears by the ingenuity of that worldly wisdom which the Lord called foolishness, choosing the foolish things of the world to put philosophy to shame. For worldly wisdom cul- minates in philosophy with its rash interpretation of God's nature and purpose. It is philosophy that supplies the heresies with their equipment. From philosophy come the aeons and those infinite forms--whatever they are--and Valentinus's human trinity. He had been a Platonist. From philosophy came Marcion's God, the better for his inactivity. He had come from the Stoics. The idea of a mortal soul was picked up from the Epicureans, and the denial of the restitution of the flesh was taken over from the common tradition of the philo- sophical schools. Zeno taught them to equate God and matter, and Heracleitus comes on the scene when anything is being laid down about a god of fire. Heretics and philosophers per- pend the same themes and are caught up in the same dis- cussions. What is the origin of evil, and why? The origin of man, and how? And-Valentinus's latest subject-what is the origin of God? No doubt in Desire and Abortion!18 A plague on Aristotle, who taught them dialectic, the art which destroys as much as it builds, which changes its opinions like a coat, forces its conjectures, is stubborn in argument, works hard at being contentious and is a burden even to itself. For it reconsiders every point to make sure it never finishes a discussion.

From philosophy come those fables and endless genealogies and fruitless questionings, those "words that creep like as doth a canker." To hold us back from such things, the Apostle testifies expressly in his letter to the Colossians that we should beware of philosophy. "Take heed lest any man circumvent you through philosophy or vain deceit, after the tradition of men," against the providence of the Holy Ghost.19 He had been at Athens where he had come to grips with the human wisdom which attacks and perverts truth, being itself divided up into its own swarm of heresies by the variety of its mutually antago- nistic sects. What has Jerusalem to do with Athens, the Church with the Academy, the Christian with the heretic? Our principles come from the Porch of Solomon,20 who had himself taught that the Lord is to be sought in simplicity of heart. I have no use for a Stoic or a Platonic or a dialectic Christianity. After Jesus Christ we have no need of speculation, after the Gospel no need of research. When we come to believe, we have no desire to believe anything else; for we begin by believing that there is nothing else which we have to believe.

8. I come then to the point which members of the Church adduce to justify speculation and which heretics press in order to import scruple and hesitation. It is written, they say: "Seek, and ye shall find." But we must not forget when the Lord said these words. It was surely at the very beginning of his teaching when everyone was still doubtful whether he was the Christ. Peter had not yet pronounced him to be the Son of God, and even John had lost his conviction about him. It was right to say: "Seek, and ye shall find," at the time when, being still unrecognized, he had still to be sought. Besides, it applied only to the Jews. Every word in that criticism was pointed at those who had the means of seeking Christ. "They have Moses and Elijah," it says; that is, the law and the prophets which preach Christ. Similarly he says elsewhere, and plainly: "Search the Scriptures, in which ye hope for salvation, for they speak of Me." That will be what he meant by "Seek, and ye shall find."

The following words, "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you," obviously apply to the Jews. At one time inside the house of God, the Jews found themselves outside when they were thrown out because of their sins. The Gentiles, however, were never in God's house. They were but a drop from the bucket, dust from the threshing-floor, always outside. How can anyone who has always been outside knock where he has never been? How can he recognize the door if he has never been taken in or thrown out by it? Surely it is the man who knows that he was once inside and was turned out, who recognizes the door and knocks? Again, the words, "Ask, and ye shall receive," 24 fit those who know whom to ask and by whom something has been promised, namely the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, of whose person and promises the Gentiles were equally ignorant. Accordingly he said to Israel: "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." 25 He had not yet begun to cast the children's bread to the dogs nor yet told the apostles to go into the way of the Gentiles. If at the end he ordered them to go and teach and baptize the Gentiles, it was only because they were soon to receive the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who would guide them into all truth.

This also supports our conclusion. If the apostles, the appointed teachers of the Gentiles, were themselves to receive the Para- clete as their teacher, then the words, "Seek, and ye shall find," were much less applicable to us than to the Jews. For we were to be taught by the apostles without any effort of our own, as they were taught by the Holy Spirit. All the Lord's sayings, I admit, were set down for all men. They have come through the ears of the Jews to us Christians. Still, many were aimed at particular people and constitute for us an example rather than a command immediately applicable to ourselves.

9. However, I shall now make you a present of that point. Suppose that "Seek, and ye shall find" was said to us all. Even then it would be wrong to determine the sense without refer- ence to the guiding principles of exegesis. No word of God is so unqualified or so unrestricted in application that the mere words can be pleaded without respect to their underlying meaning.

My first principle is this. Christ laid down one definite system of truth which the world must believe without qualification, and which we must seek precisely in order to believe it when we find it. Now you cannot search indefinitely for a single definite truth. You must seek until you find, and when you find, you must believe. Then you have simply to keep what you have come to believe, since you also believe that there is nothing else to believe, and therefore nothing else to seek, once you have found and believed what he taught who bids you seek nothing beyond what he taught. If you feel any doubt as to what this truth is, I undertake to establish that Christ's teaching is to be found with us. For the moment, my confidence in my proof allows me to anticipate it, and I warn certain people not to seek for anything beyond what they came to believe, for that was all they needed to seek for. They must not interpret, "Seek, and ye shall find," without regard to reasonable methods of exegesis.

10. The reasonable exegesis of this saying turns on three points: matter, time, and limitation. As to matter, you are to consider what is to be sought; as to time, when; and as to limita- tion, how far. What you must seek is what Christ taught, and precisely as long as you are not finding it, precisely until you do find it. And you did find it when you came to believe. You would not have believed if you had not found, just as you would not have sought except in order to find. Since finding was the object of your search and belief of your finding, your acceptance of the faith debars any prolongation of seeking and finding. The very success of your seeking has set up this limitation for you. Your boundary has been marked out by him who would not have you believe, and so would not have you seek, outside the limits of his teaching.

But if we are bound to go on seeking as long as there is any possibility of finding, simply because so much has been taught by others as well, we 'shall be always seeking and never believ- ing. What end will there be to seeking? What point of rest for belief? Where the fruition of finding? With Marcion? But Valentinus also propounds: "Seek, and ye shall find." With Valentinus? But Apelles also will knock at my door with the same pronouncement, and Ebion and Simon and the whole row of them can find no other way to ingratiate themselves with me and bring me -over to their side. There will be no end, as long as I meet everywhere with, "Seek and ye shall find," and I shall wish I had never begun to seek, if I never grasp what Christ taught, what should be sought, what must be believed.

11. We may go astray without harm if we do not go wrong -though to go astray is to go wrong; we may wander without harm, I mean, if no desertion is intended. However, if I once believed what I ought to believe and now think I must seek something else afresh, presumably I am hoping that there is omething else to be found. But I should never have hoped that, unless I had either never believed, though I seemed to, or else had stopped believing. So in deserting my faith I am shown up as an apostate. Let me say once for all, no one seeks unless there is something he did not possess or something he has lost. The old woman in the parable had lost one of her ten pieces of silver, and so she began to seek it. When she found it, she stopped seeking. The neighbour had no bread, so he began to knock. When the door was opened and he was given the bread, he stopped knocking. The widow kept asking to be heard by the judge because she was not being granted an audi- ence. When she was heard, she insisted no longer.

So clear is it that there is an end to seeking and knocking and asking. For to him that asketh, it shall be given, it says, and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened, and by him that seeketh, it shall be found. I have no patience with the man who is always seeking, for he will never find. He is seeking where there will be no finding. I have no patience with the man who is always knocking, for the door will never be opened. He is knocking at an empty house. I have no patience with the man who is al- ways asking, for he will never be heard. He is asking one who does not hear.

12. Even if we ought to be seeking now and always, where should we seek? Among the heretics, where everything is strange and hostile to our truth, men we are forbidden to approach? What slave expects his food from a stranger, let alone his master's enemy? What soldier hopes to get bounty or pay from neutral, let alone hostile, kings? Unless of course he is a deserter or a runaway or a rebel! Even the old woman was seeking the piece of silver inside her own house. Even the man who was knocking hammered at his neighbour's door. Even the widow was appealing to a judge who, though hard, was not hostile. Instruction and destruction never reach us from the same quarter. Light and darkness never come from the same source. So let us seek in our own territory, from our own friends and on our own business, and let us seek only what can come into question without disloyalty to the Rule of Faith.