While almost all of the works in this vault use Victorian translations, due to the English translations of the Panarion being in copyright, these two sections were machine-translated (by Claude, 2026) from the public-domain Greek. It has not been checked by a human translator.
Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, Panarion (“Medicine Chest”) against eighty heresies, sections 78 and 79: on those who denied Mary’s perpetual virginity, and on the women who offered cakes to her. Section 78 is chiefly Epiphanius’s earlier letter to the Christians of Arabia. Where a word or more is lost in the manuscripts, the translation marks it with ”…”.
Against the Antidicomarians
The fifty-eighth heresy of this book, and the seventy-eighth of the whole.
- From the heresy which some call that of the Dimoerites, and which is known as the heresy that denies the mind in Christ’s incarnate coming, certain other things have sprung up, especially in Arabia; and they have been reported to our lowliness by some devout persons. We first wrote a letter on this subject. Nevertheless, to keep the order of the numbering, we shall here also give the whole of that letter as our treatment of the heresy, together with what has reasonably been added to it or taken from it. For certain Antidicomarians, as though they bore a grudge against the Virgin and wished to cheapen her renown, carried away by some envy or error, and wishing to defile the minds of men, have dared to say that holy Mary was joined to a man after the birth of Christ, to Joseph himself, I mean. It is said, as I have mentioned above, that this doctrine was put about by the aged Apollinarius himself, or by some of his disciples; and I am in two minds about it, but I am obliged to speak about those who say these things. So as not to put myself to the labour of writing it a second time, I shall set out below, in order, the letter which I said had been written to the country of the Arabians. It is as follows.
Epiphanius’s letter against the Antidicomarians
- To my most honoured lords, my most beloved children and true brethren, one with me in faith, the orthodox in Arabia, from priest to layman, and to the catechumens: Epiphanius, least of bishops, greeting.
In the present time there is cause both to wonder and not to wonder: to wonder, that in our generation all things are being fulfilled; and not to wonder, for they must be fulfilled. For every day now, from human reasonings and imaginings, some sophistical notion arises among us, one on top of another, and goes from bad to worse, forsaking the apostolic teaching; even as the most holy apostle foretold, that “some shall depart from sound doctrine, giving heed to fables and doctrines of devils,” and so on. For if there is any evil way to be searched out and devised, men are more eager for that than for fulfilling the commandment which bids us seek what is good and acceptable, and that our “speech be seasoned with salt, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” And if we were to consider why it is that evil is renewed among us every day, we should find ourselves like men untaught, who pay no heed to the divine and prophetic words. For these things must be fulfilled. In every part of the faith that saying must be accomplished: “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” For how far has “the imagination of man’s heart, which is evil from his youth,” not reached? What parts of the faith has it not destroyed? In what words has ill counsel not troubled what is profitable, even in things most seemly, and in the constitution of a rational nature, whose proper part it was rather to think of what is honourable, and to strive to add to it, even beyond nature if need be; and not rather to wrest the truth into what is dishonourable, forcing it towards the worse?
- For now that everything has been fulfilled in our generation, both the blasphemies and all that is outside the Holy Spirit, men are turning once more to other novelties. Some blaspheme the Father, the God and Maker of all things: those who are called the Gnostics; others again, those called Marcionites and Archontics, and the Manichaeans who follow them, who have received the maddest of names most justly, by a just dispensation of God. All these, together with more heresies (Cainites, I mean, and Sethians, Melchizedekians, Colorbasians, Cerdonians and the rest), blaspheme the Father of all, in denying that he is God who spoke in the law and in the prophets, and who is justly worshipped by all creatures as their Creator and Maker. With his worship they try to do away with his lordship too, denying him who truly is, and imagining in their fabulous notion another who is not, so that they fall from him who is, and do not find him whom they imagine. For such is the nonsense and the devil’s sowing of words: it is wont to cause this confusion and muddying, stirring up through blasphemous reasonings the minds of men who were created, to make war on their own Master with evil notions and denials of God.