Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 42

What can I say about their handling of the Word, when their real business is not converting Gentiles but overthrowing our own people? They chase glory by wrecking those who stand firm rather than raising up those who have fallen, because their very work does not come from building something of their own but from destroying the truth. They undermine ours so they can build theirs. Strip them of the law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Creator God, and they have no accusation left to speak. That is why they find it easier to turn standing buildings into ruins than to raise constructions from ruins already lying on the ground. Only for this purpose do they play the humble, flattering, and submissive. Otherwise, they do not even know reverence for their own leaders. And that is why schisms among heretics are practically non-existent: when they arise, no one obeys them. To them, schism is unity. I would be lying if I said they do not even vary among themselves from their own rules, each one reshaping what he received according to his own judgment, just as the one who handed it down composed it according to his own judgment. The movement itself acknowledges its own nature and the habit of its origin, because it proceeded from that very source. The same license was granted to the Valentinians as to Valentinus, and to the Marcionites as to Marcion: to innovate the faith according to their own judgment. In the end, every heresy, thoroughly examined, is caught disagreeing with its own author on many points. Most of them do not even have churches; motherless, seatless, with an orphaned faith, they wander as exiles without a home.