The Heresy of the Audians

So the illustrious emperor paid heed to the decrees of the apostles. But at that time Audaeus, a Syrian by race and by language, appeared as the inventor of new decrees. He had long been hatching wicked ideas, and now he showed himself in his true character. To begin with, he took the passage “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” in an absurd sense. Because he did not grasp the meaning of the divine Scripture, he supposed that the Divine Being has a human form, and imagined it to be clothed in bodily parts. For holy Scripture often describes the works of God under the names of human parts, since in this way God’s providence is made easier to understand for minds unable to grasp anything that has no body. To this impiety Audaeus added others of a similar kind. Picking and choosing, he took up some of the doctrines of Mani, and denied that the God of the universe is the creator of fire or of darkness. But these and all similar errors are kept hidden by the members of his faction. [a]

They claim that they have separated themselves from the assemblies of the church. Some members of the church, they say, charge accursed interest, and some live unlawfully with women without the bond of marriage, while those who are innocent of these practices live in free fellowship with the guilty. By explaining in this way why they live by themselves, they hide the blasphemy of their doctrines. But the excuse is a shameless one, and the natural fruit of the Pharisees’ teaching. For the Pharisees found fault with the Physician of souls and bodies when they asked the holy apostles, “How is it that your Master eats with tax collectors and sinners?” And through the prophet God says of such men, “Those who say, ‘Do not come near me, for I am pure’: this is the smoke of my wrath.” But this is not the time to refute their unreasonable error, so I pass on to the rest of my narrative. [d]