Cerinthus was an early Gnostic teacher who flourished around A.D. 100.
Cerinthus, again, was a man who was educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians. He taught that the world was not made by the primary God, but by a certain Power far separated from Him. . . . He denied that Jesus was born of a virgin. Instead, he represented Him as being the son of Joseph and Mary. Irenaeus (c. 180, E/W), 1.351, 352.
There are also those who heard from [Polycarp] that John, the disciple of the Lord, went to bathe at Ephesus. But realizing that Cerinthus was within [the bath house], John rushed out of the bath house without bathing. Instead, he exclaimed, “Let us fly, lest even the bath house falls down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.” Irenaeus (c. 180, E/W), 1.416.
John, the disciple of the Lord, preached this faith. And he sought, through the proclamation of the Gospel, to remove that error that Cerinthus had disseminated among men. Irenaeus (c. 180, E/W), 1.426.
Cerinthus, too, through written revelations by a great apostle (as he would have us to believe!) brings before us fantastic things. And he pretends these things were shown him by angels. He alleges that after the resurrection, the kingdom of Christ is to be on earth and that the flesh dwelling in Jerusalem is again to be subject to desire and pleasures. And being an enemy to the Scriptures of God and wishing to deceive men, he says that there is to be a space of a thousand years for marriage festivals. Eusebius, quoting Caius (c. 215, W), 5.601.
A certain Cerinthus, himself being disciplined in the teaching of the Egyptians, asserted that the world was not made by the primal Deity, but by some virtue that was an offshoot from that Power. Hippolytus (c. 225, W), 5.114.
The doctrine taught by Cerinthus is this: that there will be an earthly reign of Christ. Since Cerinthus was himself a man devoted to the pleasures of the body, and completely carnal in his dispositions, he imagined that the kingdom would consist in those kinds of gratifications on which his own heart was set. Dionysius of Alexandria (c. 262, E), 6.82
They are not to be heard who assure themselves that there is to be an earthly reign of a thousand years. They think like the heretic Cerinthus. For the kingdom of Christ is already eternal in the saints—even though the glory of the saints shall be manifested after the resurrection. Victorinus (c. 280, W), 7.360; see also 5.147.