Moreover, it often happens that those who are condemned by some of these Fathers as heretics were not only censured for their heresies, but sometimes for the truths which they held. For example: Papias, a Bishop and Christian Father in the second century, is condemned by Eusebius for saying that he received from Apostolic men—meaning thereby men who were associated with the Apostles—the fact that there would be a corporeal reign of Christ on earth with the saints, after the resurrection, which would continue through a thousand years.[[78]]

Prodicus is censured by Clement of Alexandria for holding that men are by nature the children of Deity.[[79]]

Marcion, besides being condemned for his many errors, is also censured by Irenaeus for believing in salvation for the dead, concerning which, it must be acknowledged, Marcion did hold peculiar views; but that is no reason why the general principle should be condemned.[[80]] He taught that Jesus Christ went to Hades and preached there, and brought hence all that believed on him. "The ancients," continue Irenaeus, as quoted by Lardner, "being of opinion that eternal life is not to be obtained but through faith in Jesus Christ, and that God is too merciful to let men perish for not hearing the Gospel, supposed that the Lord preached also to the dead, that they might have the same advantage with the living." He further adds, "In the language of Marcion and the fathers, hell does not necessarily mean the place of the damned; in that place is Tartarus, the place of torment, and Paradise, or the bosom of Abraham, a place of rest and refreshment. In that part of Hades Jesus found the just men of the Old Testament. They were not miserable, but were in a place of comfort and pleasure." "For Christ," he continues, "promiseth the Jews after this life, rest in Hades, even in the bosom of Abraham." This far the doctrine of Marcion is in strict agreement with the New Testament, though denounced as blasphemy by his opponent. The unfortunate part of Marcion's doctrine on this head is that he taught that Cain and the wicked of Sodom and the Egyptians, and in fact all the nations in general, though they had lived in all manner of wickedness, were saved by the Lord, but that Abel, Enoch, Noah, and the patriarchs and prophets and other righteous men who walked with God and pleased Him in their earth life, did not obtain salvation because they suspected that in the preaching of Christ in the spirit world there was some scheme of deception to lead them away from their present qualified acceptance with God, and therefore they would not come to Christ nor believe in him, for which reason, as he says, "their souls remained in hell."[[81]]

Marcion is also condemned for believing in the eternity of matter.[[82]] So, too, Hermogenes is censured by Tertullian for the same cause, and for arguing that God made the world out of matter and could not have made it out of nothing.[[83]]

And so throughout there is censure and counter censure between the orthodox and the heretics, and it is difficult at times to determine which are the orthodox and which heretics, so frequently do they change places. Nor was there any improvement in the ages that succeeded these that have been briefly considered. The editor of Dr. Jortin's learned work on ecclesiastical history, William Trollope, on a passage of Jortin's on the early fathers, says of the fathers of the fourth century:

After the counsel of Nice,[[84]] a class of writers sprung up, greatly inferior to their predecessors, in whatever light their pretensions are viewed. Sadly deficient in learning, prejudiced in opinion, and inelegant in style, they cannot be admitted for a moment into competition with those who were contemporary with the Apostles and their immediate successors.[[85]]

The whole tenor of his remarks is to the effect that while the fathers of the second and third centuries, are not to be relied upon in their interpretations of scripture, were frequently deceived in opinions, and not always to be depended upon in matters of tradition, yet they were greatly to be preferred in all respects to the fathers of succeeding centuries.

The Development of False Doctrines After the Death of the Apostles.

Here, too, I shall rely very largely upon the conclusions of the learned. Dr. Lardner, referring to the development of the heresies, the seeds of which were sown in the days of the Apostles, says:

Eusebius relates that Ignatius, on his way from Antioch to Rome, exhorted the churches to beware of heresies which were then springing up, and which would increase; and that he afterwards wrote his epistles in order to guard them against these corruptions, and to confirm them in the faith. This opinion that the seeds of these heresies were sown in the time of the Apostles, and sprang up immediately after is an opinion probable in itself and is embraced by several learned moderns; particularly by Vitringa, and by the late Rev. Mr. Brekel of Liverpool.[[86]]