Cerinthus

We have learned that at the time we are describing, Cerinthus became the founder of another heresy. Gaius, whose words I have already quoted, writes this about him in the Disputation that circulates under his name: [a] “Cerinthus too, by means of revelations he pretends were written by a great apostle, brings in tales of wonders, falsely claiming they were shown to him by angels. He says that after the resurrection the kingdom of Christ will be on earth, and that the flesh, dwelling in Jerusalem, will once again be a slave to cravings and pleasures. And being an enemy of the Scriptures of God, and wishing to lead people astray, he says there will be a period of a thousand years of wedding festivity.” [b]

Dionysius too, who held the office of bishop of the church at Alexandria in our own time, mentions the same man in the second book of his work On the Promises, where he says certain things about the Revelation of John that come down from the old tradition. These are his words: [c] “Some say that Cerinthus, who founded the heresy called Cerinthian after him, wanted to fix a name people would trust to his own invention. [d] For this, they say, was the teaching he gave: that the kingdom of Christ will be an earthly one. And since he was himself in love with the body and wholly carnal, he dreamed that it would consist in the things he longed for: in filling the belly and what lies below the belly, that is, in food and drink and marrying, and in the things by which he thought he could get these under a more respectable name, festivals and sacrifices and the slaughter of victims.”

So far Dionysius. Irenaeus, in the first book of his work Against Heresies, sets out some still more unspeakable false teachings of the same man, and in the third book he has handed down in writing a story that does not deserve to be forgotten. He says, on the authority of Polycarp’s tradition, that the apostle John once went into a bathhouse to bathe. But when he learned that Cerinthus was inside, he sprang out of the place and fled out of the door, unable to bear being under the same roof with him. He urged those with him to do the same, saying, “Let us flee, or the bathhouse may fall in, since Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is inside.” [e]