Codex 114

[Lucius of Charinus, Circuits of the Apostles: Acts of Peter, Acts of John, Acts of Andrew, Acts of Thomas, Acts of Paul]

Read a book entitled Circuits[1]of the Apostles,comprising the Acts of Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas, and Paul, the author being one Lucius Charinus,[2] as the work itself shows. The style is altogether uneven and strange; the words and constructions, if sometimes free from carelessness, are for the most part common and hackneyed; there is no trace of the smooth and spontaneous expression, which is the essential characteristic of the language of the Gospels and Apostles, or of the consequent natural grace. The contents also is very silly and self-contradictory. The author asserts that the God of the Jews, whom he calls evil, whose servant Simon Magus was, is one God, and Christ, whom he calls good, another. Mingling and confounding all together, he calls the same both Father and Son. He asserts that He never was really made man, but only in appearance; that He appeared at different times in different form to His disciples, now as a young, now as an old man, and then again as a boy, now taller, now shorter, now very tall, so that His head reached nearly to heaven. He also invents much idle and absurd nonsense about the Cross, saying that Christ was not crucified, but some one in His stead, and that therefore He could laugh at those who imagined they had crucified Him. He declares lawful marriages to be illegal and that all procreation of children is evil and the work of the evil one. He talks foolishly about the creator of demons. He tells monstrous tales of silly and childish resurrections of dead men and oxen and cattle. In the Acts of St. John he seems to support the opponents of images in attacking their use. In a word, the book contains a vast amount of childish, incredible, ill-devised, lying, silly, self-contradictory, impious, and ungodly statements, so that one would not be far wrong in calling it the source and mother of all heresy.