This is the first instance which we have of historical criticism being exercised in the Church with reference to the biblical books. § 33.3. =The Theodotians and Artemonites.=--Epiphanius describes the sect of the Theodotians at Rome as an ἀπόσπασμα τῆς ἀλόγου αἱρέσεως. The main source of information about them is the Little Labyrinth (§ 31, 3), and next to it Hippolytus in his Syntagma, quoted by the Pseudo-Tertullian and Epiphanius, and in his Elenchus. The founder of this sect, =Theodotus= ὁ σκυτεύς, _the Tanner_, a man well trained in Greek culture, came A.D. 190 to Byzantium where, during the persecution, he denied Christ, and on this account changed his residence to Rome and devoted himself here to the spread of his dynamic Monarchianism. He maintained ψιλὸν ἄνθρωπον εἶναι τὸν Χριστόν,--_Spiritu quidem sancto natum ex virgine, sed hominem nudum nulla alia præ cæteris nisi sola justitæ auctoritate_. He sought to justify his views by a one-sided interpretation of scripture passages referring to the human nature of Christ.[91] But since he acknowledged the supernatural birth of Christ as well as the genuineness of the Gospel of John, and in other respects agreed with his opponents, he could still represent himself as standing on the basis of the Old Catholic _Regula fidei_ (§ 35, 2). Nevertheless the Roman bishop Victor (A.D. 189-199) excommunicated him and his followers. The most distinguished among his disciples was a _second_ =Theodotus= ὁ τραπεζίτης, the _Money-changer_. By an exegesis of Heb. v. 6, 10; vi. 20; vii. 3, 17, he sought to prove that Melchisedec was δύναμις τίς μεγίστη and more glorious than Christ; the former was the original type, the latter only the copy; the former was intercessor before God for the angels, the latter only for men; the origin of the former is secret, because truly heavenly, that of Christ open, because born of Mary. The later heresiologists therefore designate his followers Melchisedecians. Laying hold upon the theory φύσει τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν ἰδέᾳ ἀνθρώπου τότε τῷ Ἀβραὰμ πεφηνέναι which, according to Epiphanius, was held even by Catholics, and also, like the Shepherd of Hermas, identifying the Son of God with the Holy Spirit that descended in baptism on the man Jesus, Theodotus seems from those two points of view to have proceeded to teach, that the historical Christ, because operated upon only dynamically by the Holy Spirit or the Son of God, was inferior to the purely heavenly Melchisedec who was himself the very eternal Son of God. The reproaches directed against the Theodotians by their opponents were mainly these: that instead of the usual allegorical exegesis they used only a literal and grammatical, that they practised an arbitrary system of Textual criticism, and that instead of holding to the philosophy of the divine Plato, they took their wisdom from the empiricists (Aristotle, Euclid,