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"From Cyril of Jerusalem we learn that Samnaism was, more or less, Manichaean, Manichaeanism being, more or less, Samanist. Terebinthus, the preceptor of Manes, took the name Baudas. In Epiphanius, Terebinthus is the pupil of Scythianus. "Suidas makes Terebinthus a pupil of Baudda, who pretended to be the son of a virgin. "Be this as it may, there was, before A.D. 300,
'I have been, as you know, at Cusanus' library, and found there many Hebrew books which were quite unknown to me; also a few Greek. I remember the names of the following: Epiphanius against heresies, a very big book; Dionysius on the Hierarchy; Athanasius against Arius; Climacus.
Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, St. Epiphanius, Theodoret, and others, long before the time of St. Augustine, the last of them. Gnosticism was prevented from any longer imparting a wrong tendency to Christian doctrines, and it died out, until restored during the Crusades to revive in the middle ages in its most malignant form.
The Arians, notwithstanding they were heretics, yet bragged they that they alone were Catholics, calling all the rest now Ambrosians, now Athanasians, now Johannites. Ebion, though he agreed in opinion with the Samaritans, yet, as saith Epiphanius, he would needs be called a Christian.
Olshausen and others: subsequent to the birth of Jesus, Joseph, though then the husband of Mary, relinquishes his matrimonial rights. Epiphanius, Protevangelium, Jacobi, and others: Joseph a decrepit old man, no longer to be thought of as a husband; the children attributed to him are of a former marriage.
Epiphanius said that the Church was based upon virginity as upon a corner-stone. Augustine was of opinion that celibates would shine in heaven like dazzling stars. Married people were declared, by another authority, to be incapable of salvation. The most powerful and most influential of writers concurred that the sexual relation was an almost fatal obstacle to religious salvation.
Fusions so complete as this are usually the result of unconscious acts of the mind, i.e. of memory. Another example of Epiphanius' manner in skipping backwards and forwards from one Synoptic to another may be seen in 218 D, which is made up of Matt. xv. 4-9 and Mark vii. 6-13. It should be remembered that these are not by any means selected examples.
Saint Epiphanius, in the third century, claimed that they used first to tickle each other, the men and the women; that then they gave each other very immodest kisses, and that they judged the degree of their faith by the voluptuousness of these kisses; that the husband said to his wife, in presenting a young initiate to her: "Have an agape with my brother," and that they had an agape.
It would be a fairer inference to argue from their silence, and still more from that of the 'malleus haereticorum' Epiphanius, that he did not in this depart from the orthodox custom; otherwise the Fathers would have been sure to charge him with it, as they did Marcion.
In the ecclesiastical history of Nicephorus Gallixtus, he has inserted a description of the person of Mary, which he declares to have been given by Epiphanius, who lived in the fourth century, and by him derived from a more ancient source.
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