Section 244
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 213 the interpretation which each gives of the sacred Scriptures shows ; yet they are not known to us, because the works them selves do not give their authors. CHAPTER XXVIII. Those that followed the heresy of Artemon, in the beginning. Their character and conduct; and their attempt at corrupting the Scriptures. IN a work written by a certain one of these authors against the heresy of Artemon, which Paul of Samosata again attempt ed to revive among us, there is a narrative well adapted to the history we are now investigating. This writer, not long since, in refuting the heresy mentioned, which asserts that Christ is a mere man, since its leaders wish to boast as if it were the ancient doc trine, besides many other arguments that he adduces in refuta tion of their impious falsehood, he gives the following account : " For they assert," says he, " that all those primitive men and the apostles themselves, both received and taught these things as they are now taught by them, and that the truth of the gospel was preserved until the times of Victor, who was the thirteenth bishop of Rome from Peter. But that from his successor Zephyrinus, the truth was mutilated. And perchance what they say might be credible, were it not that the holy Scriptures contra dict them ; and then, also, there are works of certain brethren older than Victor's times, which they wrote in defence of the truth, and against the heresies then prevailing. I speak of Justus and Miltiades, and Tatian and Clement, and many others, in all which the divinity of Christ is asserted. For who knows not the works of Irenaeus and Melito, and the rest, in which Christ is an nounced as God and man ? Whatever psalms and hymns were written by the brethren from the beginning, celebrate Christ the word of God, by asserting his divinity. How then could it hap pen, that since the doctrine of the church has been proclaimed for so many years, that those until the times of Victor, preached