.—The Heresy of Tatian.
1. is the one whose words we quoted a little above in regard to that admirable man, Justin, and whom we stated to have been a disciple of the martyr. Irenæus declares this in the first book of his work Against Heresies, where he writes as follows concerning both him and his heresy:
2. “Those who are called
Encratites, and who sprung from Saturninus and Marcion, preached celibacy, setting aside the original arrangement of God and tacitly censuring him who made male and female for the propagation of the human race. They introduced also abstinence from the things called by them animate, thus showing ingratitude to the God who made all things. And they deny the salvation of the first man.
3. But this has been only
recently discovered by them, a certain Tatian being the first to
introduce this blasphemy. He was a hearer of Justin, and expressed no
such opinion while he was with him, but after the martyrdom of the
latter he left the Church, and becoming exalted with the thought of
being a teacher, and puffed up with the idea that he was superior to
others, he established a peculiar type of doctrine of his own, inventing certain invisible æons like the followers of Valentinus, while, like Marcion and Saturninus, he pronounced marriage to be corruption and fornication. His argument against the salvation of Adam, however, he devised for himself.” Irenæus at that time wrote thus.
4. But a little later a certain
man named Severus put new
strength into the aforesaid heresy, and thus brought it about that
those who took their origin from it were called, after him, Severians.
5. They, indeed, use the Law and
Prophets and Gospels, but interpret in their own way the utterances of
the Sacred Scriptures. And they abuse Paul the apostle and reject his
epistles, and do not accept even the Acts of the Apostles.
6. But their original founder, Tatian, formed a certain combination and collection of the Gospels, I know not how, to which he gave the title Diatessaron, and which is still in the hands of some. But they say that he ventured to paraphrase certain words of the apostle, in order to improve their style.
7. He has left a great many
writings. Of these the one most in use among many persons is his
celebrated Address to the Greeks, which also
appears to be the best and most useful of all his works. In it he deals
with the most ancient times, and shows that Moses and the Hebrew
prophets were older than all the celebrated men among the Greeks. So much in regard to these men.