Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
No need to labor further over whether this is the same Paul who elsewhere, writing to the Galatians, lists heresies among the sins of the flesh, and who advises Titus that a heretical man, after a first rebuke, is to be rejected, since he is perverse of this kind and sins as one self-condemned. But in almost every letter, hammering on the need to flee adulterous doctrines, he takes aim at heresies, whose products are those adulterous doctrines: 'heresies,' a word taken from the Greek for 'choice,' since the man who follows them either sets them up or takes them up chiefly by his own choosing. That is why he calls the heretic 'self-condemned': because in the very thing for which he stands condemned, he chose for himself. But we are not permitted to bring in anything from our own choosing, nor even to choose what someone else has brought in from his. We have the apostles of the Lord as our authorities, and even they chose to bring in nothing from their own choosing, but faithfully assigned to the nations the teaching they had received from Christ. And so, even if an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than this, let him be accursed by us. The Holy Spirit had already foreseen that a certain virgin, Philumene, would one day play host to an angel of seduction transfiguring himself into an angel of light, by whose signs and tricks Apelles was led on to bring in his new heresy.