Priscillian

It was the first of Nicholas of Myra over again, except that after the days of Ambrose the sword of the executioner and the fires of the book burner were added to the weapon of the human voice.

Priscillian was the first human sacrifice formally offered up under these improved conditions to the greater glory of the reinforced Trinity.

Thereafter, the blood of the heretics was the cement of Christian unity.

It is with these things in mind that those who profess the new faith are becoming so markedly anxious to distinguish God from the Trinitarian's deity.

It was the first of Nicholas of Myra over again, except that after the days of Ambrose the sword of the executioner and the fires of the book burner were added to the weapon of the human voice.

Priscillian was the first human sacrifice formally offered up under these improved conditions to the greater glory of the reinforced Trinity.

Thereafter the blood of the heretics was the cement of Christian unity.

It is with these things in mind that those who profess the new faith are becoming so markedly anxious to distinguish God from the Trinitarian's deity.

He says, someone perhaps will ask, since the canon of scripture is complete and sufficient of itself for everything and more than sufficient, what need is there to join it with the authority of the church's interpretation, right? Hey, we got the Bible.

Why do we need the church's interpretation? So this church father goes on, he says, "...for this reason, because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another, so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters." And then he goes on and says, Novation says one thing, Sibelius another, Donatus another, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian.

And we could say Calvin says one thing and Luther another and Wesley another and name all of the founders of our different groups in our current day.

And it would be the same thing.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

The Heresy of Priscillian, the Conduct of Martin, the Progress of Superstition.

I join these subjects together to connect the ecclesiastical information of Sulpitius Severus, a historian who belongs to this period, an Aquitanian of great learning who wrote a summary of church history, which he extended to his own times.

What he records of transactions which passed within his own memory, and also what he collected by information of other parts of the empire, may deserve to be very briefly reviewed.

Very little shall we find adapted to our purpose.

The deep decline of evangelical purity will be the chief discovery we shall make, and he will thus make my apology for evidencing so little of the spirit of Christianity at this period, because so little is to be found.

The Priscillianists, a heretical sect who seem to have combined all the most pernicious heresies of former times, had already appeared in the time of Gratian and infected the greatest part of Spain.

Priscillian himself, whose character is described by the classical pen of Sulpitius with much elegance and energy, was exactly fitted for the office which he filled.