"The motionless and sterile nothingness is in your own stupid head!" growled an Arian bishop, striding straight up to Triphon.
The Gnostic, according to his custom, became silent, locking his lips in a contemptuous smile, and raising a forefinger--
"Wisdom! Wisdom!" he ejaculated, and vanished in the crowd.
The prophetess of Papusa, among her anxious Copts, stood up, terrible, pale, half-swooning, and groaned, as if her troubled eyes saw nothing, as if her ears heard nothing--
The disciples of the youth Epiphanes, a Pagan demi-god or Christian martyr, worshipped in the oratories of Cephalonia, were declaiming brotherhood and equality--
"There are no laws but these: Destroy all; let all be in common--women, lands, riches, like earth, air, and sun!"
The Ophites, serpent-worshippers, raised above their heads a cross, round which a tame adder was coiling--
"The wisdom of the Serpent," they said, "gives man a knowledge of good and evil; behold the saviour, Ophiomorphos, the serpentiform! Fear nothing! Hearken to him! Taste the forbidden fruit, and ye shall be even as gods!"
A perfumed and curled Marcosianist, lifting on high a crystal cup full of water with the skilful gestures of a juggler, invited curiosity--
"Look at this miracle! the water's going to boil and be turned into blood!"
Colabasians were there, counting their fingers with inconceivable celerity, and demonstrating that all the numbers of Pythagoras, every mystery of heaven and earth, were comprised in the letters of the Greek alphabet--
"Alpha, Omega--the beginning and the end, and between them the Trinity; Beta, Gamma, Delta--the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! You see how simple it is!"
Fabionites, gluttonous Carpocratians, debauched Barbelonites stood up, preaching such follies that hearers possessing a vestige of morality put their fingers in their ears. Many strove to move their audiences by the attractive force over the imagination possessed by madness and monstrosity. Every man was certain of his own gospel. Yet all were enemies. Even the minute sect, hidden in remote provinces of Africa, the Rogationists, were certain that Christ returning upon earth would find the true comprehension of the Gospel only amongst themselves, in a few Mauritanian villages, and nowhere else.