Read a book entitled _Circuits[591] of the Apostles_, comprising
the Acts of Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas, and Paul, the author being
one Lucius Charinus,[592] as the work itself shows. The style is
altogether uneven and strange; the words and constructions, if
sometimes free from carelessness, are for the most part common
and hackneyed; there is no trace of the smooth and spontaneous
expression, which is the essential characteristic of the language
of the Gospels and Apostles, or of the consequent natural grace.
The contents also is very silly and self-contradictory. The author
asserts that the God of the Jews, whom he calls evil, whose servant
Simon Magus was, is one God, and Christ, whom he calls good, another.
Mingling and confounding all together, he calls the same both Father
and Son. He asserts that He never was really made man, but only in
appearance; that He appeared at different times in different form
to His disciples, now as a young, now as an old man, and then again
as a boy, now taller, now shorter, now very tall, so that His head
reached nearly to heaven. He also invents much idle and absurd
nonsense about the Cross, saying that Christ was not crucified, but
some one in His stead, and that therefore He could laugh at those
who imagined they had crucified Him. He declares lawful marriages
to be illegal and that all procreation of children is evil and the
work of the evil one. He talks foolishly about the creator of demons.
He tells monstrous tales of silly and childish resurrections of dead
men and oxen and cattle. In the Acts of St. John he seems to support
the opponents of images in attacking their use. In a word, the book
contains a vast amount of childish, incredible, ill-devised, lying,
silly, self-contradictory, impious, and ungodly statements, so that
one would not be far wrong in calling it the source and mother of all
heresy.