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During the first three centuries, Christianity was effectively outlawed by requirements to worship the Roman emperor and Roman gods. Consequently, when the Church labeled its enemies as heretics and cast them out of its congregations or severed ties with dissident churches, it remained without the power to persecute them. However, those called "heretics" were also called a number of other things (e.g. "fools," "wild dogs," "servants of Satan"), so the word "heretic" had negative associations from the beginning, and intentionally so.
In the middle of the 2nd century, three unorthodox groups of Christians adhered to a range of doctrines that divided the Christian communities of Rome: the teacher [[Marcion]], the pentecostal outpourings of ecstatic Christian prophets of a continuing revelation, in a movement called "[[Montanism]]" because it had been initiated by [[Montanus]] and his female disciples, and the [[Gnosticism|gnostic]] teachings of Valentinus. Early attacks upon alleged heresies formed the matter of [[Tertullian]]'s ''Prescription Against Heretics'' (in 44 chapters, written from Rome), and of [[Irenaeus of Lyons|Irenaeus]]' ''Against Heresies'' (''ca'' 180, in five volumes), written in Lyon after his return from a visit to Rome. The letters of [[Ignatius of Antioch]] and [[Polycarp of Smyrna]] to various churches warned against false teachers, and the ''[[Epistle of Barnabas]]'' accepted by many Christians as part of Scripture in the 2nd century, warned about mixing Judaism with Christianity, as did other writers, leading to decisions reached in the [[First Ecumenical Council]], which was convoked by the Emperor Constantine at [[Nicaea ]] in 325, in response to further disruptive polemical controversy within the Christian community, in that case [[Arianism|Arian]] disputes over the nature of the Trinity.
Irenaeus was the first to argue that the "proto-orthodox" position was the same faith that [[Jesus]] gave to the [[apostle]]s, and that the identity of the apostles, their successors, and the teachings of the same were all well known public knowledge. This was therefore an earlier argument on the basis of [[Apostolic succession|Apostolic Succession]]. Irenaeus' opponents claimed to have received secret teachings from Jesus via other apostles which were not publicly known. ([[Gnosticism]] is predicated on the existence of hidden knowledge, but brief references to private teachings of Jesus have also survived in the canonic Scripture.) Irenaeus' opponents also claimed that the wellsprings of divine inspiration were not dried up, the doctrines of continuing revelation.