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§ 4. Of the opinion of the heretic Aerius touching Prayers for the Dead.
By these things we may see what we are to judge of that which our adversaries press so much against us out of Epiphanius; that he
"nameth an obscure fellow, one Aerius, to be the first author of this heresy, that Prayer and Sacrifice profit not the departed in Christ."
For neither doth Epiphanius name this to be an heresy, neither doth it appear that himself did hold that prayers and oblalions bring such profit to the dead as these men dream they do. He is much deceived who thinketh every thing that Epiphanius findeth fault withal in heretics is esteemed by him to be an heresy; seeing heresy cannot be but in matters of faith: and the course which Epiphanius taketh in that work, is not only to declare in what special points of faith heretics did dissent from the catholic doctrine, but in what particular observances also they refused to follow the received customs and ordinances of the Church. Therefore at the end of the whole work he setteth down a brief, first of the faith, and then of the ordinances and observances of the Church; and among the particulars of the latter kind he rehearseth this:
"For the dead they make commemorations by name, performing," or "when they do perform, their prayers and divine service and dispensation of the mysteries:"
and disputing against Aerius touching the point itself, he doth not at all charge him with forsaking the doctrine of the Scriptures, or the faith of the Catholic Church, concerning the state of those that are departed out of this life, but with rejecting the order observed by the Church in her commemorations of the dead; which being an ancient institution, brought in upon wonderful good considerations, as he maintaineth, should not by this humorous heretic have been thus condemned.
