Section 169
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138 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. knowledging his error, continued in this way, at one time secretly teaching his doctrines, at another renouncing them again, some times also, convicted of his perverse doctrines, kept aloof from assembling with the brethren." Such is the account of Irenaeus in the third book against the heresies. In the first, however, he relates the following respecting Cerdon : " A certain man, how ever, by name Cerdon, who derived his first impulse from the fol lowers of Simon, and who made some stay at Rome, under Hyginus the ninth, that held the episcopate in succession from the apostles, taught that the God who had been proclaimed by the law and prophets, was not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the latter was revealed, the other was unknown ; the former also, was just, but the other was good. Marcion, who was from Pontus, having succeeded Cerdon, augmented his school by utter ing his blasphemies without a blush. But the same Irenasus, having most dexterously unravelled the bottomless abyss of the errors enveloped in the Valentinian heresy, laid bare the wick edness concealed in it, like a serpent lurking in his nest." Be sides these, he says there was another (Marcus was his name,) about the same time, who was a most perfect adept in magic illu sions; and he describes also, their profane rites of initiation, and their abominable mysteries, in the following language : " Some of them," says he, " prepare a nuptial bed, and they perform the mystery of initiation with certain forms addressed to the initiated. This, they say, is the spiritual marriage that has taken place with them, bearing form and resemblance to the marriages above. Some conduct them to water, and baptizing them, repeat these words, ' unto the name of the unknown Father of the universe, unto the truth the mother of all, unto Jesus, unto him that descended.' Others, again, repeated Hebrew names in order the better to confound the initiated." But Hyginus dying after the fourth year of his office, Pius received the episcopate, but at Alexandria Marcus was appointed the pastor, after Eumenes had filled the office thirteen years in all. Marcus also dying, after ten years of his ministrations, Celadin had charge of the church of Alexandria, and Pius dying at Rome in the fifteenth year of his episcopate, the church there was governed by Anice