Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 6.djvu/29

Rh and of having thoroughly mastered the relations and affinities, each to other, of the various heresies of the first two and a quarter centuries. These heresies, whether deducible from attempts to christianize the philosophy of Paganism, or to interpret the Doctrines and Life of our Lord by the tenets of Gnosticism and oriental speculation generally, or to create a compromise with the pretensions of Judaism,—these heresies, amid all their complexity and diversity, St. Hippolytus reduces to one common ground of censure—antagonism to Holy Scripture. Heresy, thus branded, he leaves to wither under the condemnatory sentence of the Church.