Tatian and the Encratites

He is the one whose words about the admirable Justin we quoted a little earlier, and whom we described as a disciple of the martyr. Irenaeus makes this plain in the first book of his work Against Heresies, where he writes about both the man and his heresy as follows: [a] “Those called Encratites, who sprang from Saturninus and Marcion, preached celibacy. They set aside God’s original handiwork and quietly accused him who made male and female for the begetting of human beings. They brought in abstinence from what they call living things, showing ingratitude to the God who made all things. And they deny the salvation of the first-formed man. This has only now been invented among them, a certain Tatian being the first to bring in this blasphemy. He had been a hearer of Justin, and as long as he was with him he showed nothing of the kind; but after Justin’s martyrdom he broke away from the Church. Elated by the conceit of being a teacher, and puffed up as though he were superior to the rest, he set up a school of his own peculiar stamp. He told tales of certain invisible aeons, like the followers of Valentinus; like Marcion and Saturninus, he declared marriage to be corruption and sexual immorality; and his argument against Adam’s salvation he made up for himself.” So Irenaeus wrote at that time. [b]

A little later a man named Severus strengthened this heresy, and so became the reason why those who sprang from it were called Severians, after him. These people use the Law, the Prophets and the Gospels, but interpret the meaning of the sacred Scriptures in their own way. They blaspheme Paul the apostle and reject his letters, and they do not accept even the Acts of the Apostles. [c] Their first founder, Tatian, put together a sort of combination and collection of the Gospels, I do not know how, and gave it the name Diatessaron; it is still current among some. They say that he dared to recast some of the apostle’s words, as though correcting the arrangement of their wording. [d] He left a great number of writings. The one most remembered by many is his famous Address to the Greeks. In it he goes back to the earliest times and shows that Moses and the Hebrew prophets were older than all the famous men of the Greeks; and it seems to be the finest and most useful of all his writings. So much for these men. [e]