Note 69 — BOOK VIII THE DOCETAE, MONOIMUS, AND OTHERS

Of this Hermogenes we know already from Tertullian’s tract against him to be found in the second volume of Oehler’s edition of Tertullian’s works. The date of this tract is said on good authority to be 206 or 207 A.D., and as it speaks of Hermogenes as then living, gives us his approximate date also. It is further said that he was a painter, probably of mythological subjects, that he lived at Carthage, and that he was several times married. Clement of Alexandria also mentions him, and it is suggested that both Tertullian and Clement drew from a tract against him said by Eusebius to have been written by Theophilus of Antioch. The heretical tenets with which he is charged are his contention that God could not have created the world from nothing and that Matter must therefore be co-existent with Him, that Christ on His Ascension left His body in the Sun, and that Adam was not saved. The first of these Tertullian would derive from Stoic teaching, while he does not touch on the second, which is, however, recorded by Clement, nor on the third, which Irenæus (I, xxviii) attributes to the Encratites. It is probable, however, that all three may be derived from the Western Asian tradition, which later gave birth to Manichæism, of which therefore Hermogenes’ heresy may prove to have been a forecast.