Prescription against Heretics 24

I am not so well off, or rather not so badly off, as to set the apostles against each other. But since these most perverse people put forward that rebuke in order to make the earlier teaching suspect, I will answer as if for Peter: Paul himself said that he had become all things to all, a Jew to the Jews, not a Jew to those who were not Jews, in order to win all. So they rebuked certain things according to times, persons, and circumstances, which they themselves likewise did according to times, persons, and circumstances; just as if Peter had also rebuked Paul because, while forbidding circumcision, he himself circumcised Timothy. Let those look to it who sit in judgment on the apostles. It is well that Peter is made Paul's equal in martyrdom too. But even though Paul, caught up to the third heaven and carried into paradise, heard certain things there, they cannot be thought to have been things that would equip him for another, better-instructed doctrine, since their character was such that they were not to be disclosed to any man. And if that something, whatever it was, leaked out to someone's knowledge, and some heresy claims to follow it, either Paul is guilty of betraying a secret, or someone else must be shown to have been caught up into paradise later, who was allowed to speak out what Paul was not permitted even to mutter.