It is only right that I should point out from what sources they have derived this impiety. Simon, Menander, Cerdo, and Marcion absolutely deny the incarnation, and call the birth from a Virgin fable. Valentinus, however, Basilides, Bardesanes, and Harmonius and their following, accept the conception of the Virgin and the birth; but they deny that God the Word took anything from the Virgin, but made as it were a transit through her as through a conduit, and appeared to mankind in semblance only, and seeming to be a man, in like manner as He was seen by Abraham and certain others of the ancients. Arius and Eunomius on the contrary held that He assumed a body, but that the Godhead played the part of the soul, in order that they may attribute to it what was lowly in His words and deeds. Apollinarius did indeed assert that He assumed a soul with the body, not the reasonable soul, but the soul which is called animal or phytic. Their contention is that the Godhead took the part of the mind. He had learnt the distinction of soul and of mind from the philosophers that are without while divine Scripture says that man consists of soul and body. For we read “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” And the Lord in the sacred Gospels said to His apostles “Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul.”