By Water & Blood

Cerinthus cannot be the author of John

And from the very first thrust they are immediately refuted, “understanding neither what they say nor about what they make assertions.” For how can writings that speak against Cerinthus be Cerinthus’s?

For Cerinthus says that Christ is a recent and bare man, but John has always proclaimed him as the Word (Λόγος) who exists, who came from above and was made flesh. From the very opening, then, their vain slander is exposed as a foolish thing that does not understand whence it is refuted.

For they too seem to believe the same things as we do; but since they do not hold fast the secure things of the preaching arranged for us by God through holy John, they will be found refuted in what they do not know—how they raise their voice against the truth.

And if they are willing to sober up and take thought, they will come to know; for we do not cast aside the teachings that come from the Holy Spirit, which are worthy and securely held.

For they assert—against themselves, for I would not say against the truth—that his books do not agree with the other apostles. And so they seem next to seize upon the holy and inspired teaching.

And what, they say, did he say? That “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of an only-begotten from the Father,

full of grace and truth”; and immediately, “John bears witness and cries out, saying, ‘This is he of whom I said to you,’” and that “This is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”; and next he says, “And those who heard said to him, ‘Rabbi, where are you staying?’”

And at the same time, in the same place: “On the next day,” he says, “he wanted to go out into Galilee, and he finds Philip, and Jesus says to him, ‘Follow me.’”

And a little after this he says, “And after three days there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding feast, and his mother was there.”

But the other evangelists say that he spent forty days in the wilderness, being tempted by the devil, and then, returning, took the disciples.

And those who do not follow carefully do not know that it has been the care of each evangelist to speak in harmony with the others about what those others have said, and at the same time to reveal what was not said by them but left aside; for it was not their will, but from the Holy Spirit came the sequence and the teaching.

For if they want to seize upon this, let them learn that the other three did not begin from the same sequence. For Matthew begins first to proclaim the gospel—for to him it was entrusted to preach the gospel from the beginning, as we have also said at length about this in another heresy. And it will not trouble us to treat the same things again, for the confirmation of the truth and the refutation of those who have gone astray.