By Water & Blood

On Prodicus

Prodicus, succeeding this man, established the heresy of those called Adamites. This man openly added lust to the doctrines of Carpocrates; for he legislated that women are common. For this reason, not only at their common dinners, putting the lamp-light out of the way, each mixed with whichever woman he happened upon; but they also supposed such license to be a mystical rite. And for this too I shall produce as witness Clement the Stromateus, a holy man, and one who left all behind in wide experience. He speaks thus in the third of the Stromateis: “There are those who name the common Aphrodite a mystical communion, insulting even the name.” Then, after saying certain things against their swinish license, he also adds these: “For the thrice-wretched initiate as hierophants the fleshly and sexual communion, and think that this leads them up into the kingdom of Christ. Such a communion, then, leads into the brothels, and swine and goats would be their fellow-partakers; and in their greater hopes would be the prostitutes who preside over the rooftop, shamelessly receiving all who wish.” And after adding other similar things, he brought on: “Such things also those from Prodicus dogmatize, falsely naming themselves Gnostics.”