Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/174

156 I. Cor. xv. 29. He had learned at Alexandria to distinguish between the different degrees of inspiration, and attributed to different Angels the dictation severally of the words of Moses and of the Prophets; in this agreeing with Saturninus and the Ophites. He insisted upon a partial observance of the "divine" law, such as circumcision and the ordinances of the sabbath; resembling, in this severance of the genuine from the spurious elements of the law, the school which produced the Clementina and the Book of Baruch. He did not even scruple (acc. to Epiph.) to call him who gave the law "not good," though the epithet may have been intended to express a charge of ethical narrowness rather than an identification of the Lawgiver with the πονηρός of Marcion. Epiphanius admits that the majority of these opinions rest upon report and oral communication. This, coupled with the evident confusion of the statements recorded, makes it difficult to assign to Cerinthus any certain place in the history of heresy. He can only be regarded generally as a link connecting Judaism and Gnosticism. The traditionary relations of Cerinthus to St. John have probably done more to rescue his name from oblivion than his opinions. In the course of time popular belief asserted that St. John had written his Gospel specially against the errors of Cerinthus, a belief curiously travestied by the counter-assertion that not St. John but Cerinthus himself was the author of both the Gospel and the Apocalypse. It is not difficult to account on subjective grounds for this latter assertion. The Chiliasm of Cerinthus was an exaggeration of language current in the earliest ages of the church; and no work in N.T. reproduced that language so ingenuously as the Apocalypse. The conclusion was easy that Cerinthus had but ascribed the Apocalypse to the Apostle to obtain credit and currency for his own forgery. The "Alogi" argued upon similar grounds against the Fourth Gospel. It did not agree with the Synoptists, and though it disagreed in every possible way with the alleged doctrines of Cerinthus, yet the false-hearted author of the Apocalypse was, they asserted, certainly the writer of the Gospel.

The Cerinthians (known also as Merinthians) do not appear to have long survived. If any are identical with the Ebionites mentioned by Justin (Dial. c. Tryph. 48), some gradually diverged from their master in a retrograde direction (Dorner, p. 320); but the majority were engulfed in sects of greater note. One last allusion to them is found in the ecclesiastical rule applied to them by Gennadius Massiliensis: "Ex istis si qui ad nos venerint, non requirendum ab eis utrum baptizati sint an non, sed hoc tantum, si credant in ecclesiae fidem, et baptizentur ecclesiastico baptismate" (de Eccles. Dogmatibus, 22; Oehler, i. 348).

The following primary and secondary authorities upon Cerinthus may be mentioned: Irenaeus, adv. Haer.; S. Hippolytus, ''Refutatio omn. Haeres.'' ("Philosophumena"); Theod. ''Haeret. Fab. Comp.; Epiphanius, Epit. Panar., Haer.; Philastrius, de Haeret., Corp. Haeresolog.; Augustine, de Haer.'' lib. viii.; Pseudo-Tertullian, ''Lib. adv. omn. Haeres.'' x.; Eus. ''Hist. Eccles.; Neander, Ch. Hist.; Ewald, Gesch. d. Volk. Israel; Gieseler, Eccles. Hist.; Lipsius, Zur Quellen-Kritik d. Epiphanius; Dorner, Die Lehre v. d. Person Christi; Milman, Hist. of Christianity; Robertson, Hist. of Christ. Ch.; Westcott, Canon of N.T., p. 243 (ed. 1866); Zahn, Gesch. der N.T. Canons,'' vol. i. 220‒262, vol. ii. 973 etc. [J.M.F.]  Christopher, St. (Χριστοφόρος), a martyr of universal fame, baptized by St. Babylas, the martyr-bp. of Antioch, who suffered (c. 250) under Decius in Lycia. From early times the untrustworthy character of some of the popular stories of him has been acknowledged. Usuard (A.D. 876) thus commemorated him (July 25) after St. James, according to the common Western use, in his Martyrologium: "At Samos in Licia. After he had been scourged with iron rods, and then delivered from the broiling flames by the virtue of Christ, his head was at last severed from his body, which had fallen full of arrow-wounds, and the martyr's witness was complete."

For the legends respecting him (including the very familiar, but quite unauthentic, one of his bearing the Christ-child), see D. C. B. (4-vol. ed., s.v.), and two simple works written respectively by the late Archd. Allen and W. G. Pearse (S.P.C.K.). [E.B.B.]  Chromatius, bp. of Aquileia, one of the most influential Western prelates of his day, the friend and correspondent of Ambrose, Jerome, Rufinus, and other leading ecclesiastics, and a warm supporter of Chrysostom against his Oriental assailants. He was a native of Aquileia, where he resided under the roof of his widowed mother, together with his brother Eusebius and his unmarried sisters. Jerome, writing  c. A.D. 374, congratulates the mother on her saintly offspring (Hieron. Ep. xliii. [vii.]). He was still a presbyter when he took part in the council held at Aquileia, against the Arians Palladius and Secundianus, A.D. 381 (Ambrose, Gest. Concil. Aquil. tom. ii. pp. 834, § 45; 835, § 51; 843, § 76). On the death of Valerian, Chromatius became bishop of his native city. The date is placed by Baronius towards the end of A.D. 388.

It was at his request that St. Ambrose expounded the prophecy of Balaam in an epistolary form (Ambros. Ep. lib. i. ep. 50, § 16). To his importunities, together with those of Heliodorus, bp. of Altino, and the liberality with which they both contributed to the expenses, we owe several of Jerome's translations of and commentaries on the books of O.T. (e.g. Tobit, Prov., Eccl., Cant., and Chron.). In A.D. 392 he dedicated to Chromatius his two books of Commentaries on Habakkuk (Prolog. ad Habacc.), and c. 397 yielded to his urgency and undertook the translation of Chronicles (Praef. in Paralip.).

Chromatius was also an early friend of Rufinus, who, whilst an inmate of the monastery at Aquileia, received baptism at his hands c. A.D. 371 (Rufin. Apolog. in Hieron. lib. i. p. 204). When, on the publication of Rufinus's translation of Origen's de Principiis, the friendship between Jerome and Rufinus was exchanged for violent animosity, Chromatius maintained his friendship with both, and did his best to reconcile them. Chromatius imposed on Rufinus the task of translating the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius into Latin, 