In order for the minister to determine proper methods of meeting heresy, it is important for him to trace the development of heresy, and the ways heresy was dealt with during past years.
In Apostolic Times
The Christian religion was a reformatory religion when it was presented by the apostles to both Jews and pagans. "In all the history of the church, no reformation has been carried forward without encountering serious obstacles. Thus it was in Paul's day. Wherever the apostle raised up a church, there were some who professed to receive the faith, but who brought in heresies, that, if received, would eventually crowd out the love of the truth."1
John's advice to those meeting heresy is found in 2 John 7-11: "For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward. Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds."
The apostle here describes the heretic as one who "abideth not in the doctrine of Christ." His manner of dealing with the heretic was not to fellowship with such, or to wish him success. John did not want the Christians to have close social relationship with those denying Christ. Those members who denied Christ were here tics, and the believers should not associate with them.
An indication of the ways the first heretics worked is seen in this statement: "The apostles and their co-laborers in the early Christian church were constantly obliged to meet heresies which were brought in by false teachers in the very bosom of the church. These teachers are represented not as coming openly, but creeping in unawares, with the gliding motion of a serpent. They followed their own pernicious ways, but were not satisfied without drawing away others with them. They had no connected chain of truth, but taught a disjointed medley of ideas, supported by a passage of Scripture here and another there." 2
As an indication that the term heresy has been applied to any belief not agreed to by an other, we may consider the persecution in the first centuries, at which time error and heresy were introduced into the church. "When the early church became corrupted by departing from the simplicity of the gospel and accepting heathen rites and customs, she lost the Spirit and power of God; and in order to control the consciences of the people, she sought the sup port of the secular power. The result was the pa pacy, a church that controlled the power of the state, and employed it to further her own ends, especially for the punishment of 'heresy.'" 3 "It required a desperate struggle for those who would be faithful to stand firm against the deceptions and abominations which were disguised in sacerdotal garments and introduced into the church. The Bible was not accepted as the standard of faith. The doctrine of religious freedom was termed heresy, and its upholders were hated and pro scribed." 4
In the Time of the Church Fathers
The earliest mention of heresy in the church Fathers' writings occurred about A.D. 100, when Ignatius of Antioch wrote to the Trallians: "I exhort you, then, to leave alone the foreign fodder of heresy and keep entirely to Christian food. . . . For the heretics mingle poison with Jesus Christ, as men might administer a deadly drug in sweet wine, without giving a hint of their wickedness, so that without thought or fear of the fatal sweetness a man drinks his own death. Against such men be on your guard. This will be possible if you are not proud and if you keep close to Jesus Christ and the bishop and the ordinances of the Apostles. Anyone who is within the sanctuary is pure and anyone who is outside is impure, that is to say, no one who acts apart from the bishop and the priests and the deacons has a clear conscience." 5
To the Philadelphians, Ignatius wrote: "Make no mistake, brethren. No one who follows another into schism inherits the kingdom of God. No one who follows heretical doctrine is on the side of the passion." 6 "Being bom, then, of the light of truth, shun division and bad doctrines. Where the shepherd is, there you, being sheep, must follow." 7 Another translation reads: "You are children of truth; shun schism and heresies. Follow, as sheep do, wherever the shepherd leads." 8
Eleven various ideas and doctrines were promulgated during the early centuries of Christianity. These were: Arianism, denial of God head of the Son; Macedonianism, denial of the divine personality of the Holy Ghost; Apollinarianism, denial of perfection of human nature of Christ; Nestorianism, belief that Christ had two natures and was two persons Christ was born, and divinity united itself to humanity after ward; Eutychianism, belief that Christ had one nature compounded of divine and human; Gnosticism, belief that from a supreme deity there issued a series of emanations; Docetism, belief that the Lord's body was not a real human body, but only the appearance of it; Montanism, a belief combining Zoroastrianism and Christianity; Sabellianism, belief that the Trinity was not three persons but manifestations of one Person; and Photinianism, belief that Christ was a mere man actuated by the Logos.8 Some of the church Fathers who wrestled with these heresies included St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and St. Basil. In one of his sermons, St. Augustine used Luke 14:22, 23, as a basis for these remarks: "Whom thou shall find wait not till they choose to come, compel them to come in. I have prepared a great supper, a great house, I cannot suffer any place to be vacant in it. The Gentiles came from the streets and lanes: let the heretics come from the hedges, here they shall find peace. For those who make hedges, their object is to make divisions. Let them be drawn away from the hedges, 4et them be plucked up from among the thorns. They have stuck fast in the hedges, they are unwilling to be compelled. Let us come in, they say, of our own good will. This is not the Lord's order, 'Compel them,' saith he, 'to come in.' Let compulsion be found outside, the will will arise within." 10
During the time of Augustine, the First Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381, in Canon VI provided a definition of heresy which indicates the treatment accorded heretics. Canon VI states:
"And by heretics we mean both those who were aforetime cast out and those whom we ourselves have since anathematized, and also those professing to hold the true faith who have separated from our canonical bishops, and set up conventicles in opposition [to them]." 11
St. Chrysostom (c. 347-407) advised in homilies against persecution. He wrote: "And if you pray for the Heathens, you ought of course to pray for Heretics also, for we are to pray for all men, and not to persecute." M Jerome laid the basis for the persecution in which the Catholic Church later engaged, for when writing against the Pelagians, he has Atticus (a Catholic) engaging in the dialogue with Christobulus (a heretic).
Jerome's opinion is ex pressed in this conversation: "C. You force me to make an invidious remark and ask, Why, what sin have they committed? that you may immediately have me stoned in some popular tumult. You have not the power to kill me, but you certainly have the will. "A. He slays a heretic who allows him to be a heretic. But when we rebuke him we give him life; you may die to your heresy, and live to the Catholic faith." 14
It is admitted that persecution by the church was a mistake that caused punishment to be levied in the name of religion, and one of the grossest mistakes was that heresy should be stamped out by the state. As soon as paganism and Christianity became fused, the state was encouraged to make laws against heretics. The socalled Christian emperors from the time of Constantine made laws that were combined under the one title, De Haereticis, in the compiled Theodosian Code. Penalties for heresies were deprivation of all offices of dignity and profit, commerce with the heretics was forbidden, property could not be received by them or dis posed of, banishment, and corporal punishment. The church at the same time excommunicated them, forbade them to enter the church, hear sermons or Scriptures read, and prohibited others from joining them in religious exercises, conversing or eating with them, and the here tic's testimony could not be received in ecclesiastical causes."
During the Middle Ages
When the belief became prevalent that the Catholic Church was the divinely ordained depository of saving truth, the significance of heresy became most important. Anyone not adhering to that faith was a heretic, and heretics would destroy the church unless they were destroyed first. It was believed that heretics would destroy the creed. A Catholic spokesman says: "To undo the creed is to undo the Church. The integrity of the rule of faith is more essential to the cohesion of a religious society than the strict practice of its moral precepts. For faith supplies the means of mending moral delinquencies as one of its ordinary functions, whereas the loss of faith, cutting at the root of spiritual life, is usually fatal to the soul." 15
Such is Catholic opinion. This opinion leads to the punishment of the heretic in order to save his soul. The Fathers of the church treated with severity all departures from Catholic doctrine, for they believed that these were due to insubordination to the apostolic faith, and that such departures should be punished.16 "In the thirteenth century was established that most terrible of all the engines of the pa pacy, the Inquisition." 17 Cruel and horrible punishment was inflicted as the "heretic" was being forced by the church to renounce his be lief. Such is the result of the method used by the Catholic Church in meeting "heresy." "Death for the heretic," was the cry.
During and After the Reformation
One of the earliest of the Reformation leaders, Martin Luther, was accused by the Catholic Church of heresy. "When enemies appealed to custom and tradition, or to the assertions and authority of the pope, Luther met them with the Bible, and the Bible only. Here were arguments which they could not answer; therefore the slaves of formalism and superstition clamored for his blood, as the Jews had clamored for the blood of Christ. 'He is a heretic,' cried the Roman zealots. 'It is high treason against the church to allow so horrible a heretic to live one hour longer. Let the scaffold be instantly erected for him!'"18
The Protestants were soon to follow in the steps of the Papacy. Dissenting churches were persecuted in England. Quakers and Puritans, together with Anabaptists, suffered at the hands of the state church. Persecution was carried on there until the close of the seventeenth century.19 In an admonition for Quakers and Sabbatarians the case of a Mistress Trask, the wife of a "heretic," is recited. Said this writer of 1635:
"His wife Mistriss Trask lay fifteen or sixteen years a prisoner for her opinions about the Saturday Sabbath; in all which time she would receive no re lief from any body, notwithstanding she wanted much; alleging, that it was written, its a more blessed thing to give than to receive: Neither would she bor ow, because it was likewise written, Thou shall lend to many Nations, and shall not borrow: So she deemed it a dishonour to her head Christ, either to beg or borrow. Her dyet for the most part during her imprisonment, that is, till a little before her death, was bread and water, roots and herbs; no flesh nor wine, nor brewed drink. All her means was an annuity of forty shillings a year; what she lacked more to live upon, she had of such prisoners as did imploy her sometimes to do business for them: But this was only within the prison, for out of the prison she would not go: So she there sickened and died. She charged the Keeper of the prison not to bury her in Church, nor Church-yard, but in the fields only; which accordingly was so done. And in her person we see expressed to the life, not only the strange and inflexible obstinacy of a perverted spirit, but also the miserable and unhappy condition of all Hereticks, worse than that of all other common transgressors; whereby they not only separate themselves from the Church, as she did so far as not to be of any church, nor Christian Conmunion at all; but do pass sentence of Excommunication against themselves, and condemn themselves, according to that of the Apostle, Titus 3.10. A man that is an Heretick is subverted and sinneth, being condemned of himself."20 Such treatment as Mistress Trask received was not uncommon. "In every age there were witnesses for God, men who cherished faith in Christ as the only mediator between God and man, who held the Bible as the only rule of life, and who hallowed the true Sabbath. How much the world owes to these men, posterity will never know. They were branded as heretics, their motives impugned, their characters maligned, their writings suppressed, misrepresented, or mutilated."
1. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 396.
2. Ellen G. _White, "Erroneous^ Doctrines Dangerous," The Signs of the Times, March 27, 1884.
3. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 443.
4. Ibid., p. 45.
5. Ignatius, "To the Trallians," The Apostolic Fathers, tr. by Glimm, Marique, and Walsh, in The Fathers of the Church series (New York: Cima Publishing Company, Inc., 1947), vol. 1, pp. 103-104.
6. Ibid., p. 114.
7. The Epistles of St. Clement of Rome and St. Ignatius of Antioch, tr. by James A. Kleist (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Bookshop, 1946), pp. 85, 86.
8. Ignatius, op. cit., p. 113.
9. Frederick Meyrick, "Heresy," A Protestant Dictionary (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904), pp. 261-263.
10. St. Augustine, "Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament, No. LXII," tr. by R. G. MacMullen, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, ed. by Philip Schaff (New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1888), vol. 6, p. 449.
11. "The Seven Ecumenical Councils," The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, ed. by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900), vol. 14, p. 183.
12. St. Chrysostom, "Homilies on Timothy," Homily VII, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, ed. by Philip Schaff (New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1889L vol. 13, p. 430.
13. St. Jerome, "Against the Pelagians," Book III, 17, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, ed. by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1893), vol. 6, p. 481.
14. Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, vol. 4, pp. 200, 201, art. ''Heresy."
15. M J. Wilhelm, "Heresy," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7, p. 259.
16. P. HinschiuSj "Heresy," The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. 5, pp. 234, 235.
17. Ellen G. White. The Great Controversy, p. 59.
18. Ibid., pp. 132, '133.
19 Talbot Wilson Chambers, "Heresy," Concise Dictionary of Religious Knowledge (New York: The Christian Literature Company, _1891), p. 365.
20. Ephraim Pagitt, Heresiography (London: William Lee, 1662), pp. 196. 197.
21. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 61.
