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"I know...:)"

I don't doubt that for one instant, brother! :)

You know, along the lines of heresy and the early Church, I have of late been re-reading The Spiritual Meadow by +John Moschos. I've noticed something which I hadn't picked up on before and that is the multiplicity of heretical sects which were in existence at the time he wrote (late 6th early 7th century). He writes almost continually of encounters between monks of the holy catholic Church and monks or adhereants of heretic sects. Most of these people were Monophysites or variations on Monophysites, but there were others too. There seem to be two common threads among these heretical groups. First, they claim to celebrate a Eucharist with the Real presence and second, they are all hierarchial. They appear to exist side by side in the same towns or adjacent monasteries or even adjacent pillars (stylites) with The Church in a sort of snarling co-existence. He also speaks of a whole series of mini schisms as where he remarks that a certain abbot or bishop, "...at the time being out of communion with the Archbishop of Jerusalem." He doesn't seem to attach much opprobrium to those little schisms. I have yet to run across anything that looks like proto Protestantism.

I mention this because I think we in The Church have an image of the pre-schism days after so many of the big heresies had been suppressed or driven utterly, even geographically, from The Church, as being a sort of fully united Christendom when in fact it appears that that was not necessarily the case, at least in the Holy Land.

By the way, I again recommend that little book.