The first evil angel is Tatian, with his Encratites, who forbade marriage and wanted to become righteous by their works, like the Jews. For the doctrine of works-righteousness had to be the first doctrine in opposition to the gospel; and it also remains the last, except that it is always getting new teachers and new names, such as the Pelagians, etc.
The second [evil angel] is Marcion, with his Cataphrygians, Manichaeans, Montanists, etc., who extol their own spirituality above all the Scriptures, and who move—like this burning mountain [8:8]—between heaven and earth, as, for example, Münzer and the fanatics in our day.
The third is Origen, who embittered and corrupted the Scriptures with philosophy and reason, as the universities have hitherto done among us.
The fourth is Novatus, with his Cathari, who denied penance and claimed to be purer than others. Of this same sort were, later, the Donatists. Our clergy, however, are all four [of these evil angels] at once. The scholars who know history will be able to figure this out, for it would take too long to relate and prove everything [here].*
Scholars of our own day will recognize that every heresy ever to assault the Church has been around since the beginning. From the Montanists to the Pentebabbleists and from the Origenists to the Emergents and from the Novations to the Osteenites and everything in between. When it comes to heresy, there really is nothing new under the sun and every new evil is just an old evil renewed.
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*Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 35: Word and Sacrament I (ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann; vol. 35; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 402–404.
Zwinglius Redivivus 