And the old heretic arose again, and answered: "I had supposed that the answer already made would be sufficient for any bishop, but being commanded by an unbaptized emperor to answer yet further, I have to say that I have no ’superior’ but Christ; as for the order of brother Alexander ’suspending’ me from the exercise of the functions of a presbyter, all the clergy here assembled well know that it is void. The day hath not yet come when any one brother in the Church can ’suspend’ another. I suppose that, under the legal religion which is to replace the gospel of Christ, a bishop will have some such authority over a presbyter as a legionary hath over a centurion, or a centurion over a soldier; but we have not quite reached that condition! As to the differences of opinion between myself and the brother Alexander and others, I will simply state that our good city of Alexandria hath a population marvelously intellectual, and greatly addicted to the study of philosophy. Hence it hath happened that many of the brethren, and some even of the bishops and presbyters, have added, unconsciously perhaps, to their faith in the facts set forth in the Gospels certain philosophical notions intended for the explanation of these facts, which notions they have derived from many teachers--chiefly from the great heathen Plato, and from his followers, the neo-Platonists, and from the school of Philo the Egyptian. The learned and pious Bishop Alexander derived from some such source (I know not what) certain philosophical views which seemed to deny utterly the separate existence of the Son of God; and which savored strongly of the heresy of Sabellius that had been condemned by more than one Christian council, and which did tend directly to the subversion of the primitive Christian communities, and to the overthrow of ’the kingdom of heaven’ which Jesus did ordain, and to the substitution therefor of some such ecclesiastical system as I am told the emperor hath established in the Western Empire, in which the emperor, not Christ, is head of the Church, and in which the law prescribes what a man may believe or not believe (just as the pagan laws have always done), instead of the Scriptures. So long as brother Alexander held these erroneous opinions privately, I meddled not with them; but when he afterward saw proper to come and preach these heresies to mine own congregation, I guarded my community against this pernicious philosophy; for the Gospels and the Acts furnish the only authority concerning Christ and faith in him; and not the opinions of Sabellius, Alexander, Hosius, or Constantine. As for mine own philosophical opinions concerning Deity, I never learned them of Plato, nor of Philo, nor of Sabellius, but of the most wise and pious Am-nem-hat, who was for many years high-priest of the pagan temple at Ombos, holding there the same position which the Emperor Constantine as Pontifex Maximus hath so