Prodicus Taught That It Was Lawful To Deny The Faith To Avoid Death

4. Prodicus taught that it was lawful to deny the faith to avoid death; he rejected the worship of an invisible God, and adored the four elements and the sun and the moon ; he condemned all prayers to God as superstitious, but he prayed to the elements and the planets to be propitious to mankind (8). This impious worship he always performed naked. Noel Alexander and Theodoret assign to this heretic the institution of the sect called Adamites ; these always performed their religious exercises in their churches, or rather brothels, as St. Epiphanius calls them, naked, pretending by this to imitate the innocence of Adam, but, in reality, practising every abomination (9). 

(8) Bern. loc. cit. 

(9) N. Alex. t. 6, c. 3, ar. 12; Gotti, 1, /. 4, n. 8 ; Baron. An. 174, n, Ver. Eel. t. 2, c, 27, s. 1 ; Bernin. 3, 4 ; N. Alex. t. 6, c. 3, ar. 7. loc. cit.