Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume V/Hippolytus/The Refutation of All Heresies/Book VII/Part 3

by Hippolytus

Chapter II.—The System of Basilides Derived from Aristotle.

Since, therefore, in the six books preceding this, we have explained previous (heretical opinions), it now seems proper not to be silent respecting the (doctrines) of Basilides,^[1] which are the tenets of Aristotle the Stagyrite, not (those) of Christ. But even though on a former occasion the opinions propounded by Aristotle have been elucidated, we shall not even now scruple to set them down beforehand in a sort of synopsis, for the purpose of enabling my readers, by means of a nearer comparison of the two systems, to perceive with facility that the doctrines advanced by Basilides are (in reality) the clever quibbles of Aristotle.

Footnotes

1. What Hippolytus now states in regard of the opinions of Basilides, is quite new (compare Irenæus, i. 24; Clemens Alexandrinus, Strom., iii. and vii.; Tertullian, Præscript., xlvi.; Epiphanius, Hær., xxiv.; Theodoret, i. 4; Eusebius, Ecclesiast. Hist., iv. 7; and Philastrius, c. xxxii.). Abbe Cruice refers us to Basilidis philosophi Gnostici Sententiæ, by Jacobi (Berlin, 1852), and to Das Basilidianische System, etc., by Ulhorn (Gottingen, 1855).