Chapter Five
Objection based on Christ's words that many should come in His name, saying, I am Christ (Matt. xxiv. 4, 5).
And there is another dubious little saying which one may manifestly take hold of, when Christ says: "Take heed that no man deceive you; for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many." And behold! three hundred years have passed by, and even more, and no one of the kind has anywhere appeared. Unless indeed you are going to adduce Apollonius of Tyana, a man who was adorned with all philosophy. But you would not find another. Yet it is not concerning one but concerning many that He says that such shall arise.
Chapter Fifteen
Answer to the objection based on Christ's words that many should come in His name, saying, I am Christ (Matt. xxiv. 4, 5).
[You only speak thus from ignorance. I can tell you of many men who in Christ's name deceived many, and finally deceived themselves to their ruin.]
At once then I can tell you of Manes in Persia, who imitated the name of Christ, and corrupted by his error many a satrapy and many a country in the East, and up to this day pollutes the world by creeping over it with his injurious seed.1 And another is Montanus in Phrygia, who, bearing this name, underwent in the name of the Lord an ascetic and unnatural course of life, revealing himself as the abode of a baneful demon, and feeding on his error through all the land of Mysia as far as that of Asia. And so great was the power of the hidden demon which lurked within him, that he very nearly tainted the whole world with the poison of his error. And why should I tell you of Cerinthus and Simon, or Marcion or Bardesanes,2 or Droserius3 or Dositheus the Cilician,4>or countless others whose number I shrink from reckoning. All these and those who affected them, appropriating to themselves the name of Christianity, wrought unspeakable error in the world, and have taken numberless spoils and captives. Moreover, as these are Anti-christs, or contrary to God, their followers are no longer willing to bear the name of Christian, but like to be called, after the name of their leaders, Manichaeans, Montanists, Marcionists, Droserians, and Dositheans. Do you see the baneful armies of many Antichrists terribly inflamed against Christ and the Christians, and then do you say that none of the things has come of which the Saviour prophesied? Do you behold the armed array of those contrary to God, and then do you set aside the Saviour's prediction? It is not right to do so, but rather to assent to what was said by Him. So much for this objection.]
Footnotes:
2Harnack has used this as an argument for the late date of the Apocriticus. But as early as A. D. 290 the Manichaeans had so spread in Africa that the Proconsul of Africa was ordered to burn the leaders with their books.
3The Syrian Gnostic, who was born at Edessa in A. D. 155.
4Droserius appears in the dialogue called Adamantius (Pseudo-Origen). In Bk. IV. Droserius is made to suggest the Valentinian origin of evil, and is answered by Adamantius.
5Dositheus appears again in a similar list in iii. 43, p. 115, l. 16, where interesting details are given. He is not otherwise known to us.