By Water & Blood

On Carpocrates and Epiphanes

Carpocrates, being Alexandrian by race, said that the creation had come to be by angels also in his account; but that the Lord Jesus was born of Joseph and Mary similarly to the other human beings, yet excelled in virtue, and had a pure soul that remembered its life with the Unbegotten. He says that those also who similarly despise the world-making angels likewise receive power to do the same things. And if someone should have a still purer soul, he will surpass, he says, even the dignity of the Son. Into such a madness of conceit have men drifted who use sorcery and make invocations of demons, and who do not endure to cover over their licentiousness, but make lawlessness into a law. For by opinion, he says, not by truth, some of deeds seem to be evil and others good.

But having come to this point, I somehow do not know how I shall leap over the legislation of licentiousness. For having admitted the Pythagorean transmigrations of souls, they did not accept the accompanying account. For Pythagoras said that souls that have sinned are sent into bodies both so as to pay the penalty and so as to be purified with zeal. But these say that the cause of transmigration is diametrically opposite to the Pythagorean. For they say that souls are sent into bodies so as to perform every form of licentiousness; those, then, that have filled this out in the one descent have no need of another sending; but those that have sinned little are sent out even twice and thrice and many times, until they fulfill all the forms of evil.

And so that no one may suspect that I am inventing these things against them, I shall set beside them the testimony of Irenaeus, the apostolic man who enlightened the West. He says in the first book of those written by him against the heresies: “And whether the godless and unlawful and forbidden things are practiced among them, I would not believe; but in their writings it is so recorded, and they themselves so explain, saying that Jesus spoke these things in a mystery privately to his disciples and apostles, and charged them to hand these things on to the worthy and the obedient. For they say that people are saved through faith and love, and that the rest, being indifferent, are according to the opinion of human beings thought good in one place and evil in another, since nothing exists that is evil by nature.” These things, then, the admirable Irenaeus said about them. What follows I have not added; for it has an excess of madness. And Epiphanes, this man’s child, led through Platonic education, broadened this mythology. These too, while Hadrian was reigning, strengthened their wicked heresies.