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Refutation of All Heresies
St Hippolytus of Rome, ANF 5
Book 9, 1. An Account of Contemporaneous Heresy
A lengthened conflict, then, having been maintained concerning all heresies by us who, at all events, have not left any unrefuted, the greatest struggle now remains behind, viz., to furnish an account and refutation of those heresies that have sprung up in our own day, by which certain ignorant and presumptuous men have attempted to scatter abroad the Church, and have introduced the greatest confusion1 among all the faithful throughout the entire world. For it seems expedient that we, making an onslaught upon the opinion which constitutes the prime source of (contemporaneous) evils, should prove what are the originating principles2 of this (opinion), in order that its offshoots, becoming a matter of general notoriety, may be made the object of universal scorn.
Notes
- [1 Cor. xi. 19. These terrible confusions were thus foretold. Note the remarkable feeling, the impassioned tone, of the Apostle’s warning in Acts xx. 28 — 31.]
- [The Philosophumena, therefore, responds to the Apostle’s warnings. Col. ii. 8; 1 Tim. vi. 20; Gal. iv. 3, 9; Col. ii. 20.]