St. John Cassian on Heresy

 

One after another, heresies give rise to heresies, and all teach things different from each other, but equally opposed to the faith… In our own days, we saw a most poisonous heresy spring up, and though there was no doubt about its error, yet there was a doubt about its name, because it arose with a fresh head from old stock… It is the best thing never to fall into error; the second best is to make a good repudiation of it… [The heretic must acknowledge] clumsiness and pride and foolish ignorance together with wrong notions, zeal combined with indiscretion, and a weak faith which gradually fails — all these must be admitted and cast out of the soul…

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There has never been anyone who quarreled with this faith without being guilty of unbelief; for to deny what is right and proved is to confess what is wrong. The agreement of all ought then to be, in itself, already sufficient to confute heresy, for the authority of all shows undoubted truth, and a perfect reason results where no one disputes it, so that if a man endeavors to hold opinions contrary to these, we should in the first instance rather condemn his perverseness than listen to his assertions, for one who impugns the judgment of all announces beforehand his own condemnation, and a man who disturbs what has been determined by all is not even given a hearing. For when the truth has once for all been established by all men, whatever arises contrary to it is by this very fact to be recognized at once as falsehood, because it differs from the truth… For this purpose, God willed to be born on earth and among men, namely, that there might be no more room for falsehood…

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As the new heretic is but an offshoot from ancient stocks of heresy, the due condemnation of the earlier heretics ought to be enough to secure a sentence of due condemnation for him. For as he has the same roots and grows up out of the same fallow, he has already been amply condemned in the persons of his predecessors, especially as those who went wrong immediately before these men very properly condemned the very thing which these men are now asserting, so that the examples of their own party ought to be amply sufficient for them in both directions; namely, that of those who were restored and that of those who were condemned. For if they are capable of amendment, they have their remedy set forth in the correction of their own party. If they are incapable of it, they receive their sentence in the condemnation of their own folk.

But that we may not be thought to have prejudged the case against them instead of fairly judging it, we will produce their actual pestilent assertions, or rather I should say their blasphemous folly, taking "above all the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God" (Eph. 6:16-17), that when the head of the old serpent rises once more, the same sword of the Divine Word which formerly severed it in the case of those ancient dragons may even now cut it off in the persons of these new serpents. For since the errors of these is the same as that of those former ones, the decapitation of those ought to be counted as the decapitation of these; and as the serpents revive and emit pestilent blasts against the Lord's Church, and through their hissing cause some to fail, we must on account of these new diseases add a fresh remedy to those older cures, so that even if what has already been done prove insufficient to heal the malady, what we are now doing may be adequate to restore those who are suffering from it…

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The scheme of the mysteries of the Church and the Catholic faith is such that one who denies one portion of the Sacred Mystery cannot confess the other. For all parts of it are so bound up and united together that one cannot stand without the other, and if a man denies one point out of the whole number, it is of no use for him to believe all the others…

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But we will not fear the pitfalls which crafty heretics have dug in front of us, nor the paths thickly strewn with horrid thorns. For as they make our road difficult but do not close it, there is before us the trouble of clearing them away, rather than the fear of not being able to do so. We lay our hands upon that monstrous head of the deadly serpent, and we pray that our Lord Jesus will grant us to bruise its gaping mouths and its neck that swells with deadly poison, to remove its foul and deadly pollution, to pour upon all whose eyes have been blinded by heretical obstinacy the light of His compassion and truth, that they may with clear and unveiled sight behold the great and life-giving mysteries…

 

Source: The Struggler, October 2000 - January 2001.