EXAMPLES TAKEN FROM THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH
Saint John the Apostle, this man so marvellous in charity, was inflexible against the heresy that destroys charity in its own source, by spoiling the faith. From him the Church has received the teaching to flee heresy like the plague: Do not even address him with a greeting, says the friend of Christ in his second Epistle, because he who greets him participates in his works of malice. One day, when he entered a public bath, he realized that the heresiarch Cerinthus was also there, and he left immediately as if it were a cursed place. Cerinthus’s disciples tried to put poison into a glass he used, but when the holy Apostle made the sign of the cross over the drink, a snake came out, showing the malice of the sectarians and the sanctity of the disciple of Christ. This apostolic firmness guarding the deposit of faith made him the terror of the heretics of Asia, and thus justified the prophetic name of Son of Thunder that the Saviour had given him, as he had also given to his brother James the Greater, the Apostle of Spain (Dom Guéranger, The Liturgical Year). 85
