The following are the contents of the ninth book of the Refutation of all Heresies: -- What the blasphemous folly is of Noetus, and that he devoted himself to the tenets of Heraclitus the Obscure, not to those of Christ. And how Callistus, intermingling the heresy of Cleomenes, the disciple of Noetus, with that of Theodotus, constructed another more novel heresy, and what sort the life of this (heretic) was. What was the recent [956] arrival (at Rome) of the strange spirit Elchasai, and that there served as a concealment of his peculiar errors his apparent adhesion to the law, when in point of fact he devotes himself to the tenets of the Gnostics, or even of the astrologists, and to the arts of sorcery. What the customs of the Jews are, and how many diversities of opinion there are (amongst them). Footnotes: [956] Or, "fruitless;" or "unmeaning." |