Note 358 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
Cerinthus is the same Gnostic—a contemporary of John the Evangelist—of whom Irenæus invented the following anecdote: “There are those who heard him (Polycarp) say that John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed forth from the bath-house ... crying out, ‘Let us fly, lest the bath-house fall down, Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, being within it’” (Irenæus: “Adv. Hær.,” iii., 3, § 4).