Note 189 — BOOK VII BASILIDES, SATURNILUS, AND OTHERS

This Cerdo is only known to us as a predecessor of Marcion, whose teaching he appears to have influenced, although in what measure cannot now be ascertained. His date seems to be fairly well settled as about the year 135 (see D.C.B., s.h.v.), which is that of his coming to Rome, and it was doubtless here that Marcion met him. According to Irenæus, his teaching was mainly in secret and he was always ready to make submission to the Church and recant his errors when publicly arraigned. His doctrine, so far as it has come down to us, does not seem to differ from that of Marcion, Tertullian (adv. Marcion) and the tractate Adv. Omn. Haer. giving the best account of it. Of Lucian, we know nothing, save that, while Epiphanius (Haer. XLII, p. 688, Oehl.) makes him out the immediate successor of Marcion and to have been succeeded by Apelles, Tertullian (de Resurrectione, c. 2) speaks of him—if he be the person there referred to as Lucanus—as an independent teacher with no apparent connection with Marcion’s heresy. He adds that he taught a resurrection neither of the body nor of the soul, but of some part of man which he calls a “third nature.” See Forerunners, II, p. 218, n. 2, and 220.