Philosophumena Or The Refutation Of All Heresies. Vol. 2

Book VI: Simon Magus, Valentinus, and their followers

1. These are the contents of the 6th (book) of the [p. 242 Cruice.] Refutation of all Heresies.

2. What Simon has dared, and that his doctrine is confirmed (by quotations) from magicians and poets.

3. What Valentinus has laid down, and that his doctrine is not framed from the Scriptures, but from those of the Platonists and Pythagorists.

4. And what is thought by Secundus, Ptolemy and Heracleon, and how they have used as their own, but with different words, the thoughts of those whom the Greeks (think) wise.

5. What has been held by Marcus and Colarbasus [and their disciples] and that some of them gave heed to magic arts and Pythagorean numbers.

6. Now such opinions as belong to those who have taken their principles from the serpent^[1] and, when the time arrived, of their own accord brought their doctrines into light, we have set forth in the Book before this, being the Vth of the Refutation of all Heresies. Here, however, I will [p. 243.] not keep silence as to the opinions of those who come after (them),^[2] but will leave not one unrefuted, if it be possible to keep them all in mind, together with their secret rites which are justly to be called orgies, inasmuch as those who dare such things are not far from God’s wrath^[3] – to use the word in its etymological sense.

1. About Simon

7. It seems then right now to set forth also the (doings) of Simon,^[4] the man of Gitto,^[5] a village of Samaria, whereby we shall show that those also who followed (him) taking hints from other names have ventured upon like things. This Simon, being skilled in magic arts and having played upon many, sometimes by the Thrasymedean^[6] process in the way we have set forth above, but sometimes working iniquity by means of devils, designed to deify himself, (although only) a human sorcerer filled with desperation whom the Apostles refuted in the Acts.^[7] Than whom Apsethus [p. 244.] the Libyan was much wiser and more modest when he ambitiously attempted to be considered a god in Libya. Whose story as it is not very different from the vain desire of Simon, it seems fitting to narrate as one worthy to have been attempted by Simon himself.

8. Apsethus the Libyan yearned to become a god. But since, after making himself very busy, he utterly failed (to accomplish) his desire, he wished at all events to appear to have become one, and seemed as if he might really effect this in course of time. For the foolish Libyans sacrificed to him as to some divine power, thinking that they must give faith to a voice from heaven above. For he collected and shut up in one and the same cage a great many of the birds called parrots; there being many parrots in Libya who imitate quite clearly the human voice. For some time he fed the birds and taught them to say “Apsethus is a god”: and when the birds bad been trained for a long time, and repeated the saying which he [p. 245.] thought would make Apsethus be considered a god, he opened the cage and let the parrots out in all directions. The noise of the flying birds went forth into all Libya, and their words reached as far as the land of the Greeks.^[8] And thus the Libyans being wonderstruck by the voices of the birds and not understanding the trick played by Apsethus, held him for a god. But a certain Greek having carefully studied the clever device of the so-called god, not only refuted him by the (mouth of the) same parrots but removed from the earth that human quack and rascal. The Greek shut up many of the parrots and taught them to say instead (of their former speech): “Apsethus shut us up and forced us to say: ‘Apsethus is a god.’” And the Libyans hearing the parrots’ recantation (and) all assembling with one mind burned Apsethus.^[9]

9. This (sort of man) one must suppose Simon the magician (to be), so that we would far sooner liken him to the Libyan who was born a man than to (Him) who is really God.^[10] But if the details of the likeness be held accurate and the magician had some such passion as Apsethus, we will undertake to teach Simon’s parrots that Simon who stood, stands and will stand was not Christ, but [p. 246.] a man (sprung) from seed, born of a woman^[11] begotten from blood and fleshly desire like the rest, and that he knew this to be so, we shall easily show as the story goes on.^[12] But Simon, stupidly and clumsily garbling the Law of Moses – for when Moses has said that God was “a burning and consuming fire,”^[13] – he, not having received Moses’ saying rightly, says that fire is the principle of the universals, and not having comprehended the saying that God is not Fire, but a burning and consuming fire, (thereby) not only rends in twain the Law of Moses, but steals from Heraclitus the Obscure.^[14] But Simon proclaims that the principle of the universals is a boundless power, speaking thus: – “This is the writing of the Announcement^[15] of Voice and Name from the Thought of the great power of the Boundless One. Wherefore it will be scaled up, hidden, concealed and will be in the dwelling-place where the root of the universals is founded.”^[16] But he says that the dwelling-place is the same man who has been begotten from blood and that the Boundless Power dwells in him, which (power) he says is [p. 247.] the root of the universals. But the Boundless Power, the fire according to Simon, is not simple as the many say who think that the four elements are simple and that fire is simple; but there is a certain double nature of fire, and of this double nature he calls one part hidden and the other manifest. But the hidden (parts) have been hidden in the manifest parts of the fire, and the manifest have come into being by the hidden. This it is which Aristotle calls potentiality and action, and Plato the comprehensible and the perceptible.^[17]

And the manifest (part) of the fire contains within itself all which one can perceive^[18] or which can escape one, but remains visible; but the hidden (part) contains everything which one can perceive as something intelligible but which evades the sense or which as not being thoroughly understood one passes over. But it must be said generally that of all things which are perceptible and intelligible, which Simon calls hidden and manifest,^[19] the supercelestial fire is the Treasure-house,^[20] like unto the great tree which was seen by Nebuchadnezzar in a dream, from which all flesh is fed.^[21] And he considers the trunk, the boughs, the leaves, and the [p. 248.] bark on the outside of it to be the manifest part of the fire. All these things which are attached to the great tree the flame of the all-devouring fire causes to vanish. But the fruit of the tree, if it be made a perfect likeness^[22] and has received its own shape, is placed in a storehouse and not in the fire. For the fruit, he says, has been produced that it may be put in a storehouse, but the chaff that it may be cast into the fire, which (chaff) is the trunk which has not been produced for its own sake, but for that of the fruit.

10. And this is, he says, what is written in the Scripture: “The vine of the Lord Sabaoth is the house of Israel, and a man of Judah his beloved plant.”^[23] But if a man of Judah is his beloved plant, it proves, he says, that a tree is nothing else than a man. But of its secretion and dissolution, he says, the Scripture has spoken sufficiently, and for the instruction of those who have been made completely after (its) likeness,^[24] the saying is enough that: “All flesh is grass and all the glory of the flesh as the flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower fadeth away: but the word [p. 249.] of the Lord abideth for ever.”^[25] But the word, he says, is the word and speech of the Lord born in the mouth, save which there is no other place of generation.

11. But, to be brief, since the fire is such according to Simon, and all things are seen and unseen as they are heard and unheard, numbered and unnumbered, in the Great Announcement he calls a perfect intellectual^[26] every one of those (beings) which can be boundlessly conceived by the mind in a boundless way^[27] and can speak and think and act, as says Empedocles: –

For earth by earth we see, and water by water

And (divine) æther by æther, yet destroying fire by fire,

And (love) by love, and strife in gloomy strife. –

(Karsten, v. 321.)

12. For, he says, he considered all the parts of the fire which are invisible to have sense and a share of mind.^[28] [p. 250.] Therefore the cosmos, he says, came into being begotten by the unbegotten fire. But it began to be, he says, after this fashion: – He who was produced from the beginning from that fire took six roots, the first ones of the principle of generation.^[29] And he says that the roots came from the fire in pairs, which roots he calls Mind and Thought, Voice and Name, Reasoning and Passion,^[30] but that the whole of the Boundless Power together is in these six roots potentially, but not actively. The which Boundless Power he says is He who Stood, Stands, and will Stand. Who if he be made into a complete image (of the fire) will be in substance, power, greatness, and effect one and the same with that Unbegotten and Boundless Power, and lacking nothing possessed by that unbegotten and unchanging and infinite power. But if he remains potentially only in the six powers and is not made into a complete image (of the fire), he is done away with and is lost like as the capacity for grammar or geometry in man’s soul. For power taking to itself skill becomes a light of the things which are: [p. 251.] but if it does not take unto itself (skill) it is unskilfulness and darkness and as if it were not, it perishes^[31] with the man at his death.

13. But of these six powers and the seventh which is with the six, he calls the first pair, (to wit) Nous and Epinoia, Heaven and Earth. And (he says) that the masculine (partner) looks down from on high upon and takes thought for his spouse and that the Earth below receives the intellectual fruits proper to her brought down from Heaven to Earth. Wherefore, he says, the Logos beholding often the things born from Nous and Epinoia, that is from Heaven and Earth, says: “Hear, О Heaven, and give ear, О Earth, for the Lord has spoken. I have begotten and raised up sons, but they have disregarded me.”^[32] He who thus speaks, he says, is the Seventh Power who Stood, Stands and will Stand. For he is the cause of those fair things which Moses praised and said that [p. 252.] they were very good. And Phone and Onoma are the Sun and Moon, and Logismos and Enthymesis Air and Water. But with all these is mingled and compounded, as I have said, the great and Boundless Power, He who has Stood.^[33]

14. Since, therefore, Moses spake: “In six days God created Heaven and Earth and the seventh day he rested from all his works,”^[34] Simon after re-arranging the passage, makes himself out a god. When then they say that three days passed before the Sun and Moon existed,^[35] they shadow forth Nous and Epinoia and the Seventh Power, the Boundless One. For these three powers were born before all the others. When they say: “Before all the Aeons He has begotten me,”^[36] (Simon) says that this was spoken of the Seventh Tower. But the same Seventh Power, which Was a power existing in the Boundless Power which was begotten before all the Aeons, this is, he says, the Seventh Power of whom Moses said: “And the Spirit of God was borne above the water,”^[37] that is, he says, the spirit containing all things within itself, an image of the Boundless Power, [p. 253.] of whom Simon says “image of the imperishable form which alone orders all things.” For that power which was borne above the water having come into being, he says, from the imperishable form, alone orders all things. Now when some such and like preparations of the cosmos had come to pass, God, he says, moulded^[38] man, taking dust from the earth. But he fashioned him not simple but twofold^[39] according to image and resemblance. But the spirit which was borne above the water is an image, which spirit if it is not made a complete likeness,^[40] perishes with the world, as it abides only potentially and does not exist in activity. This, he says, is the saying, “Lest ye be judged with the world.”^[41] But if it be made a complete likeness and is born from an Indivisible Point as it is written in the Announcement, the small will become great. But it will be great in the Boundless and Unchanging Aeon, being born no more.

How then and in what manner, he says, did God form man in Paradise? For this is his opinion. Let, he says, Paradise be the womb, and that this is true the Scripture teaches when it says: “I am he who fashioned thee in thy mother’s womb.”^[42] For this also he wishes to be thus written. Moses, he says, speaking in allegory, calls [p. 254.] Paradise the womb if we are to believe the word. But if God fashions man in the womb of his mother, that is, in Paradise, as I have said, let Paradise be the womb and Edem the placenta: “And a river went forth from Edem and watered Paradise”^[43] (this is) the navel-string. The navel-string, he says, separates into four heads. For on each side of the navel are set two arteries, conduits of breath, and two veins, conduits of blood. But when he says, the navel-string goes forth from the placenta it takes root in the infant by the epigastrium which all men commonly call the navel. And the two veins it is through which flows and is borne from Edem (the placenta) the blood to the so-called gates of the liver whence the child is fed. But the arteries as we have said, are the conduits of the breath^[44] which pass behind on either side of the bladder round the pelvis and make connection with the great artery by the spine called the aorta, and thus through the ventricles the breath flows upon the heart and causes [p. 255.] movement of the embryo. For the embryo in course of formation in Paradise neither takes food by the mouth, nor breathes through the nostrils. For, as it exists amid waters, death is at its feet if it should breathe. For it would then draw in the waters and die. But it is girt about almost wholly by the envelope called the amnion and is fed through the navel, and through the aorta which is by the spine, it receives, as I have said^[45] the substance of the breath.

15. Therefore, he says, the river flowing forth from Edem separates into four heads (or) four conduits, that is, into the child’s four senses, sight, smell, taste, and touch. For the infant while being formed in Paradise has these senses only. This, he says, is the Law which Moses laid down; and agreeably with that same Law each of the Books is written, as their titles clearly show. The first book (is) Genesis (and) the title of the book, he says, suffices for the knowledge of the universals. For, he says, this is genesis, that is sight into which one of the sections of the river separates; for the world is seen by sight. The title of the second [p. 256.] book is Exodus. For that which is born after crossing the Red Sea comes into the Desert – he calls the blood, he says, the Red Sea – and tastes bitter water. For bitter, he says, is the water which comes after the Red Sea, which (water) is the way of knowledge of life pursued through painful and bitter things. But when changed by Moses, that is by the Logos, that bitter (water) becomes sweet. And that this is so, can be known by all in common in the saying of the poets.: –

Black was it at the root, but the flower was like milk

The gods call it Moly, but hard it is to dig

For mortal men, but to the gods all things are possible. –

(Homer, Odyssey, X, 304 ff.)

16. What has been said by the nations, he says, suffices for the thorough knowledge of the universals to those who have cars to hear. For not only he who has tasted this fruit is not turned into a beast by Circe; but those also who have been already brutified by use of the powers of [p. 257.] such fruit, he moulds again into their first and proper form and restores them to type and recalls their (original) impress. And the faithful man and he who is beloved by that witch is, he says, revealed through that milk-like and divine fruit. Likewise Leviticus the third book which is the smell or inspiration.^[46] For this book is of sacrifices and oblations. For where there is a sacrifice there comes a certain savour of fragrance from it through the incense, of which fragrance the sense of smell (ought to be a test).^[47] Numbers, the fourth book he calls taste...^[48] where speech operates. But Deuteronomy, he says, is written with reference to the sense of touch of the child in course of formation. For as the touch, touching the things perceived by the other senses, sums up and confirms them, teaching us whether (anything) be hard or hot or cold,^[49] so the fifth book of the Law is the summary of the four books written before it. All the unbegotten things, then, he says, are in potentiality not in activity, like the grammatical or [p. 258.] geometrical art. If then one should chance upon the fitting word and doctrine, and the bitter should be changed into sweet, that is, the spears into reaping-hooks and the swords into ploughshares,^[50] (the child) will not be chaff and sticks for producing fire, but a perfect fruit made in semblance (of), as I have said (and) equal and like to, the Unbegotten and Boundless Power. But should he remain only a tree and should not make a perfect fruit fashioned in complete resemblance, he will be removed. For the axe is near, he says, to the roots of the tree. Every tree, he says, which maketh not fair fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.^[51]

17. There is then, according to Simon, that blessed and incorruptible thing hidden in everything, potentially not actively, which is He who Stood, Stands and will Stand. It stood above in the Unbegotten Power, it stands below amid the rush of the waters having been begotten in likeness, and it will stand on high beside the blessed Unbegotten Power if it be made in (his) perfect semblance. For there are, he says, three who have stood, and unless there are [p. 259.] three Aeons who have stood, then the Unbegotten One who according to them is borne over the water, who by resemblance has been fashioned again perfect (and) heavenly, who in one thought alone^[52] is more lacking than the Unbegotten Power, is not in its proper place.^[53] This is what they say: “I and thou, thou one before me, I after thee, am I.” This, he says, is one power, divided above, below, begetting itself, increasing itself, seeking itself, finding itself, being its own mother, its own father, its own sister, its own spouse, its own daughter, its own son, a mother-father,^[54] being one root of the universals.

And that, he says, the beginning of the generation of things begotten is from fire, he understands in some such fashion as this: In all things whatever which have birth, the beginning of the desire of generation comes from fire. As, for instance, the desire for mutable generation^[55] is called “being inflamed” [with love]. But the fire from being one, turns into two. For in the man, he says, the blood which is hot and yellow as fire is depicted, turns into seed; but in the woman the self-same blood (turns) into milk. And from the turning in the male comes generation and [p. 260.] from that in the female the nourishment of that which is generated.^[56] This, he says, is the flaming sword turning about to guard the path to the Tree of Life. For the blood is turned to seed and milk and the same power becomes father and mother of those which are born and the increase of those which are nourished, itself lacking nothing and being sufficient unto itself. But the Tree of Life is guarded he says, through the turning of the flaming sword, as we have said, which (sword) is the Seventh Power which is from itself, which contains all things (and) which lies stored up in the six powers. For if the flaming sword did not turn about, that fair tree would perish and be destroyed. But if the Logos which is lying stored up potentially therein, is turned into seed and milk, being lord of its proper place wherein is begotten a Logos of souls, – then from the smallest spark it will become great and increase in every sense and will be a boundless power unchangeable in the aeon which changes not until it is in the Boundless Aeon.^[57]

18. By this argument, then, Simon avowedly became a god to those of no understanding, like that Apsethus the Libyan, being (said to be) begotten and subject to suffering [p. 261.] when he existed potentially, but (becoming) impassible (from passible, and unbegotten)^[58] from begotten when he was made in perfect semblance and becoming perfect came forth from the first two powers, that is Heaven and Earth. For Simon speaks explicitly of this in the Announcement, thus: –

“Unto you I say what I say, and I write what I write. The writing is this. There are two stems^[59] of all the Aeons, having neither beginning nor end, from one root, which is Power-Silence^[60] unseen and incomprehensible. One of them appears on high, who is a great power, the mind of the universals, who orders all things and (is) a male. And the other below is a great Thought, a female giving birth to all things. These, then, being set over against each other^[61] form a pair and show forth the middle space, an incomprehensible air having neither beginning nor end. In this (space) is a Father who upholds all things and nourishes those which have a beginning and end. This is He who Stood, Stands, and will Stand, being a masculo-feminine power after the likeness of the pre-existing Boundless Power^[62] which has neither beginning nor end but exists in oneness. For the thought which came forth from the (power) in oneness was two. And that was one. For he [p. 262.] when he contained her within himself was alone, nor was he indeed first although he existed beforehand, but having himself appeared from himself, a second came into being. But he was not called Father until she named him Father. Just as then he, drawing himself forth from himself, manifested to himself his own thought, so also the thought having appeared did not create him; but beholding him, hid the Father – that is Power – within herself;^[63] and there is a masculo-feminine Power-and-Thought when they are set over against each other. For Power does not differ at all from thought, they being one. From the things on high is discovered Power; from those below Thought. Thus then it is that that which appeared from them being one is found to be two, a masculo-feminine having the female within it. This is Mind in Thought for they being one when undivided from one another are yet found to be two.”

19. Simon then having discovered (all) this, fraudulently interprets as he wishes not only the (words) of Moses, but also those of the poets. For he turns into allegory the [p. 263.] Wooden Horse and Helen with the Torch and other things, altering which to the affairs of himself and his Epinoia, he leads astray many. And he says that she is that sheep which was lost, whoever dwelling in many women^[64] troubles the powers in the cosmos by her transcendent beauty. Wherefore also the Trojan War occurred on account of her. For Epinoia herself dwelt in Helen at that time, and all the authorities suing for her (favours), faction and war arose among the nations in which she appeared. Wherefore indeed Stesiehorus having railed at her in his verses had his eyes blinded, but having repented and written the Palinode, was restored to sight.^[65] She, being changed from one body to another by the angels and authorities below who made the world, came at last to stand in a brothel^[66] in [p. 264.] Tyre, a city of Phcenicia, coming to which (Simon) found her. For at her first enquiry, he said he had come to her aid, that he might free her from her bonds, and when he had redeemed her she went about with him pretending that she was the lost sheep, and he saying that he was the Power above all things. But the rogue having fallen in love with the hussy, the so-called Helen, and having bought her enjoyed her, and being ashamed (before) his disciples made up this story. But they who became (in time) the imitators of the error and of Simon Magus do like things, pretending that they ought to have (promiscuous) intercourse like beasts, saying: “All earth is earth and it matters not where one sows, so long as one sows.” And they also bless this intercourse saying that the same is perfect love and the “Holy of Holies” and that “ye shall sanctify one another.” For they say that they are not overcome by what any one else would call evil, for that they have been redeemed. And that Simon having redeemed Helen has in like manner [p. 265.] brought salvation to men through his own discernment.^[67] For since the angels misgoverned the world through love of rule, he says that he came to set it straight, having changed his shape and making himself like the rulers^[68] and authorities and angels, and that he appeared as a man, though he was not a man and seemed to suffer in Judaea, though he did not suffer.^[69] But he appeared to the jews as Son, in Samaria as Father, and among the other nations as Holy Spirit. And that he submitted to be called by whatever name men wished to call him. And that the Prophets were inspired by the world-making angels to utter their prophecies. Wherefore they who have believed on Simon and Helen do not heed them,^[70] and to this day do what they will as being free. For they claim that they have been saved by his grace. For no one is liable to judgment if he does anything evil; for evil exists not by nature, but by [p. 266.] law. For he says it is the angels who made the world who made the Law whatever they wished, thinking to enslave those who hearkened to them. And again they say that (there will be) a dissolution of the world for the redemption of their own men.^[71]

20. Therefore the disciples of this (man) practise magic arts and incantations, and send out love-philtres and charms and the demons called dream-bringers for the troubling of whom they will. But they also do reverence to the so-called Paredri.^[72] And they have an image of Simon in the form of Zeus, and (another) of Helen in the form of Athena, and they bow down to them calling the one “Lord” and the other “Lady.”^[73] But if any one among them seeing these images should call them by the name of Simon or Helen, he is cast out as being ignorant of their mysteries. This Simon when he had led astray many in Samaria by magic arts was refuted by the Apostles, and having been laid under a curse as it is written in the Acts, [p. 267.] afterwards in desperation designed these things^[74] until having come to Rome, he withstood the Apostles. Whom Peter opposed when he was deceiving many by sorceries. He at length coming into t......te,^[75] taught sitting under a plane-tree. And finally his refutation being very near^[76] through effluxion of time, he said that if buried alive he would rise again the third day. And having given orders that a grave should be dug by his disciples, he bade them bury him. And they having done what he commanded, he remains there to this day; for he was not the Christ. This then is Simon’s story, taking hints from which Valentinus calls (the same things) by other names. For Nous and Aletheia, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia are Simon’s six roots, Nous-Epinoia, Phone-Onoma, Logismos-Enthymesis. But since we have sufficiently set forth Simon’s fable making, let us see what Valentinus says.^[77]

2. Concerning Valentinus

21. The heresy of Valentinus,^[78] then, exists, having a [p. 268.] Pythagorean and Platonic foundation. For Plato in the Timæus modelled himself entirely on Pythagoras, as is seen also by his “Pythagorean stranger” being Timæus himself. Wherefore it seems fitting that we should begin by recalling^[79] to mind a few (points) of the theory of Pythagoras and Plato, and should then describe the (teaching) of Valentinus. For if the opinions of Pythagoras and Plato are also included in the (books) painfully written by us earlier, yet I shall not be unreasonable in recalling in epitome their most leading tenets^[80] in order that by their closer comparison and likeness of composition, the doctrines of Valentinus may be more intelligible. For as (the Pythagoreans and Platonists) took their opinions of old from the Egyptians and taught them anew to the Greeks, so (Valentinus) while fraudulently attempting to establish his own teaching by them, carved their system into names and numbers, calling them [by [p. 269.] names] and defining them by measures of his own. Whence he has constructed a heresy Greek indeed, but not referable to Christ.

22. The wisdom of the Egyptians is, then, the beginning of Plato’s theory in the Timæus. For from this, Solon^[81] taught the Greeks the whole position regarding the birth and destruction of the cosmos by means of a certain prophetic statement, as Plato says, the Greeks being then children and knowing no older theologic learning. In order then that we may follow closely the words which Valentinus let fall, I will now set out as preface what it was that Pythagoras of Samos taught as philosophy after that silence praised by the Greeks. And then [I will point out] those things which Valentinus takes from Pythagoras and Plato and with solemn words attributes to Christ, and before Christ to the Father of the universals and to that Sige who is given as a spouse to the Father.

23. Now Pythagoras declared that the unbegotten monad was the principle of the universals^[82] and the parent of the dyad and of all the other numbers. And he says that the [p. 270.] monad is the father of the dyad and the dyad the mother of all engendered things (and) a bearer of things begotten. And Zaratas,^[83] also, the teacher of Pythagoras, calls the one father, but the two, mother. For the dyad has come into being from a monad according to Pythagoras, and the monad is masculine and first, but the dyad female and second. From the dyad, again, as Pythagoras says, (come) the triad and the other numbers one after the other up to 10. For Pythagoras knew that this 10 is the only perfect number.^[84] For (he saw that) the 11 and 12 were an addition to and re-equipment of the decad, and not the generation of some other number. All solid bodies beget what is given to them from the bodiless.^[85] For, he says, the Point which is indivisible is at once a point and a beginning of the bodies and the bodiless together. And, he says, from the point comes a line, and a superficies extended in depth makes, be says, a solid figure. Whence the Pythagoreans have a certain oath as to the harmony of the four elements. And they make oath thus: –

[p. 271.] “Yea by the Tetractys handed clown to our head

A source of eternal nature containing within itself roots.”^[86]

For the beginning of natural and solid bodies is the Tetractys as the monad is of the intelligible ones.^[87] But that the Tetractys gives birth to the perfect number as among the intelligibles the (monad) does to the 10, they teach thus. If one beginning to count says 1, and adds 2, and then 3 in like manner, these will make 6. (Add) yet another (i.e.) 4 and there in the same way will be the total 10. For the 1, 2, 3 and 4 become 10, the perfect number. Thus, he says, the Tetractys will in all things imitate the intelligible monad having been thus able to bring forth a perfect number.

24. There are, therefore, according to Pythagoras, two worlds, one intelligible which has the monad as its beginning, but the other the perceptible. This last is the Tetractys containing Iota,^[88] the one tittle, a perfect number. Thus the Iota, the one tittle, is received by the Pythagoreans [p. 272.] as the first and chiefest, and as the substance of the Intelligible both intelligibly and perceptibly. Belonging to which are the nine bodiless accidents which cannot exist apart from substance, (viz.) Quantity, Quality, Wherefore, Where, and When, and also Being, Having, Doing and Suffering.^[89] There are therefore nine accidents to substance reckoned in with which they comprise^[90] the perfect number, the 10. Wherefore the universe being divided, as we have said, into an intelligible and a perceptible world, we have also reason from the intelligible in order that by it we may behold the substance of the intelligible, the bodiless and the divine. But we have, he says, five senses, smell, sight, hearing, taste and touch. By these we arrive at a knowledge of perceptible things, and so, he says, the perceptible world is separated from the intelligible; and that we have an organ of knowledge for each of them, we learn from this. None of the intelligibles, he says, can become known to us through sense: for, he says, eye has not seen that, nor ear heard, nor has it become known, he says, by any other of the senses whatever. Nor again by reason can one come to a knowledge of the perceptible; but one must see that a thing is white, and taste that it is [p. 273.] sweet, and know by hearing that it is just or unjust; and if any smell is fragrant or nauseous, that is the work of the sense of smell and not of the reason. And it is the same with the things relating to touch. For that a thing is hard or soft or hot or cold cannot be known through the hearing, but the test of these things is the touch. This being granted, the setting in order of the things that have been and are is seen to come about arithmetically. For, just as we, beginning by addition of monads (or dyads) or triads and of the other numbers strung together, make one very large compound number, and on the other hand work by subtracting from the total strung together and by analysing by a fresh calculation what has been brought together arithmetically; – so, he says, the cosmos is bound together by a certain arithmetical and musical bond, and by its tightening and slackening, its addition and subtraction, is ever and everywhere preserved uncorrupted.

25. For instance in some such fashion as this also do the Pythagoreans describe the duration of the world: –

[p. 274.] “For it was before and will be. Never I ween

Will the unquenchable aeon be devoid of these two.”

What are these (two)? Strife and Love.^[91] But their love makes the cosmos incorruptible and eternal, as they think. For substance and the cosmos are one. But strife rends asunder and diversifies, and tries by every means to make the world divide. Just as one cuts arithmetically the myriad into thousands and hundreds and tens and drachmas, and obols, and quarters by dividing it into small parts, so Strife cuts the substance of the cosmos into animals, plants, metals and such like things. And Strife is according to them, the Demiurge^[92] of the generation of all things coming to pass, and Love governs and provides for the universe, so that it abides. And having collected into one the scattered and rent (things) of the universe and leading them forth from life, it joins and adds them to the universe so that it may abide and be one. Never therefore will Strife cease from dividing the cosmos, nor Love from attaching together [p. 275.] the separated things of the cosmos. Something like this it seems is the “distribution”^[93] according to Pythagoras. But Pythagoras says that the stars arc fragments^[94] of the sun and that the souls of animals arc borne (to us) from the stars. And that the same (souls) are mortal when they are in the body being buried as it were in a tomb; but that they will rise again and become immortal when we are separated from our bodies. Whence Plato being asked by some one what Philosophy is, said: “It is a separation of soul from body.”

26. Pythagoras, then, becoming a learner of these opinions, declared some of them by means of enigmas and such like phrases, (such as “If you are away from home, turn not back. Otherwise, the Furies the helpers of justice will punish you.”^[95] (For) he calls your home the body and the passions the Furies. If then, he says, you are away [p. 276.] from home, that is: if you have come forth from the body, do not seek after it; but if you return to it, the passions will again shut you up in a body. For they think there is a change of bodies (μετενσωμάτωσις); as also Empedocles, when Pythagorizing, says. For the pleasure-loving souls, as Plato says,^[96] if they do not philosophize when in man’s estate, must pass through the bodies of all animals and plants and again return to a human body. Hut if (such a one) does philosophize,^[97] he will in the same way go on high thrice to his kindred star; but if he does not philosophize will return again to the same things. Thus he tells us that the soul is at once mortal if it be ruled by the Furies, that is, by the Passions, and immortal if it flees from them.

27. But seeing that we have picked out for narration the things darkly uttered to his disciples under the veil of symbols, it seems fitting to recall other sayings (of his), because the heresiarchs attempt to deal in symbols in the same way; and these not their own, but using the words of Pythagoras. Now Pythagoras teaches his disciples saying “Bind up the [p. 277.] bed-sack,” since they who are setting out on a journey make their clothing into a bundle, so as to be ready for the road. Thus he wishes his disciples to be ready, as if at any moment death might come upon them, so that they may not be caught lacking anything. Wherefore he is obliged to enjoin the Pythagorean every morning to bind up the bed-sack, that is to prepare for death. “Do not stir the fire with a sword,” meaning do not provoke angry men; for he likens an angry man to a fire and speech to a sword. “Do not tread on sweepings,” that is, do not look down upon trifles. “Do not grow a palm in a house,” that is, do not make a cause of strife in it. For the palm is a symbol of fighting and strife. “Eat not from a stool” (that is), practise no ignoble art, that you may not be a slave to the corruptible body, but make your livelihood by lectures. For it is possible at once to nourish the body [p. 278.] and to improve the soul. “From a whole loaf bite off nought,” (that is) diminish not that which belongs to you, but live on the income and keep the capital like a whole loaf. “Eat not beans” (that is) Take not the rule of a city. For by beans the rulers^[98] were then elected.^[99]

28. These and such like things, then, the Pythagoreans say, imitating whom the heretics think they declare great things to certain men. The Pythagorean doctrine says that the Great Geometrician and Reckoner^[100] the Sun is the Demiurge of all things that are, and is fixed in the whole cosmos like the soul in bodies, as says Plato. For the Sun like the soul is fire, but the earth a body. But if fire were absent, nothing could be seen, nor could there be any solid perceptible to the touch; for there is no solid without earth. Whence God having put air in the midst, fashioned the body of the universe from fire and earth.^[101] But the Sun reckons and measures the cosmos in some such fashion as this. The cosmos is that perceptible one of which we are now speaking. But (the Sun) divides it as an arithmetician and geometrician into twelve parts. And the names of these [p. 279.] parts are: – Ram, Bull, Twins, Crab, Lion, Virgin, Scales, Scorpion, Archer, Нe-goat, Waterbearer and Fishes. Again, he divides each of the twelve parts into thirty which are the thirty days of the month. And again he divides each of the thirty parts into sixty minutes and (each) minute into yet smaller and smaller parts. And thus ever creating without ceasing, but gathering together from these divided parts and making a cycle, and again dissolving it and separating that which has been put together, he perfects the great deathless cosmos.^[102]

29. Something like this, as I have just summarily said, is the teaching framed by Pythagoras and Plato. From which and not from the Gospels, Valentinus has drawn his own heresy, as we shall show, and should therefore be reckoned a Pythagorean and a Platonist, but not as a Christian. Accordingly he and Heracleon and Ptolemy and all their school, the disciples of Pythagoras and Plato copying their teachers, have framed an arithmetical doctrine of their own. For indeed an unbegotten, incorruptible, incomprehensible [p. 280.] fruitful Monad is to them the beginning of all and the cause of the birth of all things that are. Vet a certain wide difference is found among them. For some of them, that they may keep wholly pure the Pythagorean teaching of Valentinus, consider the Father to be unfeminine,^[103] spouseless, and alone: whereas the others, thinking it absolutely impossible that there could be a birth of all things that have been born from any single male, are compelled to reckon Sige^[104] as a spouse to the Father of the universals in order that he may become a father. But as to whether Sige is a spouse or not, let them fight it out with each other.^[105] We, keeping steadfast at present to the Pythagorean (doctrine of) the beginning and remembering what others teach, say that He is one, without spouse, without female, in need of nought. In a word (Valentinus) says at the beginning nothing was begotten, but the Father was alone, unbegotten, having neither place, nor time, nor counsellor, nor any other thing that by any figure of speech could be understood as essence.^[106] But lie was alone and solitary, as they say, and resting alone within Himself. And when He was filled with fruit, He saw fit to beget and bring forth the most [p. 281]. beautiful and perfect thing He had within Himself. For He did not love to be alone.^[107] For He, Valentinus says, was all Love and love is not love unless there be something to be loved. Then the Father himself projected and engendered, as He was alone, Mind and Truth,^[108] that is a dyad, which became the lady and beginning and mother of all the aeons reckoned by them as being within the Pleroma. But Nous and Aletheia having been projected by the Father, a fruitful (projection) from the fruitful, imitating the Father projected also the Word and Life;^[109] and Logos and Zoe projected Man and the Church.^[110] But Nous and Aletheia when they saw that their own special progeny had become fruitful, gave thanks to the Father of the universals and offered to him a perfect number, ten Aeons. For than this, he says, Nous and Aletheia could offer to the Father no more perfect number. For the Father being perfect ought to be glorified with a perfect number. And the ten is perfect because as the first of things that came into being by addition, it is complete.^[111] But the Father is more perfect because he [p. 282.] alone is unbegotten, and by the first single syzygy of Nous and Aletheia supplied the projection of all the roots of the things that are.

30. Then when Logos and Zoe saw that Nous and Aletheia had glorified the Father of the» universals in a perfect number, Logos himself with Zoe^[112] also wished to glorify his own father and mother, Nous and Aletheia. But since Nous and Aletheia were begotten and did not possess the complete paternal unbegotten nature,^[113] Logos and Zoe did not glorify their father Nous with a perfect number, but with an imperfect one: for Logos and Zoe offer twelve Aeons to Nous and Aletheia. For the first roots of the Aeons according to Valentinus were Nous and Aletheia, Logosand Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia. But there are twelve Aeons two of which are the children of Nous and Aletheia and ten those of Logos and Zoe, in all twenty-eight. And these are the names by which they call (the ten): Profound and Mixture, Who-grows-not-old and Oneness, Self-grown and Pleasure, Unmoved and Blending, Unique and Blessedness.^[114] [p. 283.] Of these ten Aeons some say that they are by Nous and Aletheia and others by Logos and Zoe; and there are twelve others which some say are by Anthropos and Ecelesia and others by Logos and Zoe. To whom they give these names: Paraclete and Faith, Fatherly and Hope, Motherly and Love, Ever-thinking and Union, Of the Church and blessed, Beloved and Wisdom.^[115] Of the twelve the twelfth and youngest of all the twenty-four Aeons who was a female and called Sophia,^[116] perceived the multitude and power of the Aeons who had been begotten and shot up into the Height of the Father. And she comprehended that all the other begotten Aeons existed and had been brought forth in pairs, but that the Father alone produced without a partner. She wished to imitate the Father and gave birth by herself and apart from her spouse, so that she might work no work lacking anything more than did the work of the leather, [p. 284.] being ignorant that only the Unbegotten principle and root and height and depth of the universals can possibly bring forth alone. For in the Unbegotten, he says, all things exist together; but among the begotten the female is the projector of substance, but the male gives form to the substance^[117] which the female projects. Therefore Sophia projected only that which she could, a substance shapeless and unformed.^[118] And this, he says, is what Moses said: “Now the earth was invisible and unformed. She, he says, is the good or heavenly Jerusalem into which God declared he would lead the children of Israel, saying: “I will lead you into a good land flowing with milk and honey.”^[119]

31. Ignorance, then, having come about within the Pleroma by Sophia, and formlessness by the offspring of Sophia, confusion came to pass within it. For the Aeons (feared) that what was born from them would be born [p. 285.] shapeless and imperfect, and that corruption would before long destroy them. Then all the Aeons took refuge in prayers to the Father that he would give rest to the sorrowing Sophia. For she was weeping and mourning over the Abortion^[120] brought forth by her – for so they call it. Then the Father took pity on the tears of Sophia, and hearkened to the prayers of the Aeons and commanded a projection to be made. For he himself did not project, but Nous and Aletheia projected Christ and the Holy Spirit for the giving form to and the separation of the Ectroma and the relief and intermission of the groans of Sophia. And thirty Aeons came into existence with Christ and the Holy Spirit. But some of them will have it that there is a triacontad of Aeons, but others that Sige co-exists with the Father, and wish the Aeons to be counted in with those (two). Then, when Christ and the Holy Spirit had been projected^[121] by Nous and Aletheia, he straightway separates from the complete Aeons Ectroma, the shapeless and unique^[122] thing which had been brought forth by Sophia apart from her spouse, so that the perfect Aeons might not be troubled by [p. 286.] the sight of her shapelessness. Then, that the shapelessness of Ectroma might no way be apparent to the perfect Aeons, the Father again projected one Aeon (to wit) the Cross, who having been born great from the great and perfect Father and projected as a guard and palisade to the Aeons, becomes the limit of the Pleroma containing within him all the thirty Aeons together: for they were projected before him. And he is called Horos because he separates from the Pleroma the Void^[123] without; and Metocheus^[124] because he partakes also in the Hysterema; and Stauros because he is fixed unbendingly and unchangeably, so that nothing from the Hysterema can abide near the Aeons who are within the Pleroma. And when Sophia Without had [p. 287.] been transformed and it was not possible for Christ and the Holy Spirit, the projections of Nous and Aletheia, to remain outside the Pleroma, they returned from her who had been transformed, to Nous and Aletheia within Horos, so that he with the other Aeons might glorify the Father.

32. Since then there was a certain single peace and harmony of all the Aeons within the Pleroma, it seemed good to them not only to have glorified the Father in pairs, but also to glorify him by the offering to him of fitting fruits. Therefore all the thirty Aeons were well pleased to project one Aeon, the Common Fruit of the Pleroma, so that he might be the (fruit) of their unity and likemindedness and peace. And as He alone was projected by all the Father’s Aeons, He is called by them the Common Fruit of the Pleroma. Thus then were things within the Pleroma. And the Common Fruit of the Pleroma was projected, (to wit) Jesus – for that is His name – the Great High Priest. But Sophia without the Pleroma seeking after Christ, who [p. 288.] had given her shape and the Holy Spirit, stood in great fear, lest she might perish when separated from Him who had given her shape and had established her. And she mourned and was in great perplexity considering who it was that had given her shape, who the Holy Spirit was, whence she had gone forth, who had hindered them from coming near her, (and) who had begrudged her that fair and blessed vision. Brought low by these passions, she turns to beseeching supplication of Him who had left her. Then Christ who was within the Pleronia had compassion on her beseeching, as had all the Aeons of the Pleronia, and they send forth outside the Pleronia its Common Fruit to be a spouse to Sophia Without and the corrector of the passions which she suffered while seeking after Christ.^[125] Then the Fruit being outside the Pleroma and finding her amid the first four passions (to wit) in fear and grief and perplexity and supplication, corrected her passions, but did not think it seemly in correcting them that they should be destroyed, since they [p. 289.] were eternal and special to Sophia, nor yet that Sophia should be among such passions as fear and grief, supplication and perplexity. He, therefore, being so great an Aeon and the offspring of the whole Pleronia, made the passions stand away from her and He made them fundamental essences.^[126] And He made the fear into the essence of the soul,^[127] and the grief into that of matter, and the perplexity into (that) of demons, but the conversion and entreaty and supplication He made a path to repentance and (the) power of the soul’s essence, which (essence) is called the Right Hand or Demiurge from fear. This, he says, is the Scripture saying: “The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord.”^[128] For it was the beginning of the passions of Sophia. For she feared, then she grieved, then she was perplexed, and [p. 290.] then she took refuge in prayer and supplication. And the essence of the soul, he says, is fiery and is called a (supercelestial) Place and Hebdomad and Ancient of Days.^[129] And whatever things they say of him, he says, the same belong to the psychic one whom they declare to be the Demiurge of the Cosmos; but he is fiery. And Moses also, he says, spake, “The Lord thy God is a burning and consuming fire.”^[130] And truly he wishes this (text) to be thus written. But the power of the fire, he says, is in some sort double; for it is an all-devouring fire (and) cannot be quenched. And according to this, indeed, a part of the soul is mortal, being a certain middle state: for it is a Hebdomad and Laying to Rest. For below (the soul) is of the Ogdoad where is Sophia, a day which has been given shape, and the Common Fruit of the Pleroma; but above it is of Matter wherein is the Demiurge.^[131] If it makes itself completely like those who are on high in the Ogdoad, it becomes immortal and comes to the Ogdoad, which is, he says, the heavenly Jerusalem; but if it makes itself completely like matter, that is to the material passions, it is corruptible and is destroyed.

33. As therefore the first and greatest power of the psychic essence becomes an image [of the only-begotten [p. 291.] Son, so the power of the material essence] is the devil, the ruler of this world, and (that) of the essence of demons, which is from perplexity, is Beelzebud.^[132] But it is Sophia on high who works from the Ogdoad up to the Hebdomad. They say that the Demiurge knows absolutely nothing, but is according to them mindless and foolish and knows not what he does or works. And for him who knows not what he makes, Sophia creates all things and strengthens them. And when she had wrought it, he thought that he had by himself accomplished the creation of the cosmos; wherefore he began to say: “I am God, and beside me there is none other.”

34. The Tetractys of Valentinus is then at once: –

“A certain source containing roots of eternal nature.”

(Pyth., Carm. Aur., l. 48.)

and Sophia by whom the psychic and material creation is now framed. And Sophia is called Spirit, but the [p. 292.] Demiurge Soul, and the Devil the ruler of the world, and Beelzebud that of the demons. This is what they say, and beside this, they make their whole teaching arithmetical; [and] as is said above, they (imagine) that (the) thirty Aeons within the Pleroma again projected other Aeons by analogy with themselves, so that the Pleroma may be summed up in a perfect number. For, as it has been made clear that the Pythagoreans divide (the circle) into 12 and 30 and 60 (parts) and that these have also minutes of minutes, thus also do (the Valentinians) subdivide the things within the Pleroma. But subdivided also are the things in the Ogdoad, and there rules^[133] (there) Sophia who is according to them the Mother of All Living, and the Logos, the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma, (and) there are (there) supercelestial angels, citizens of the Jerusalem on [p. 293.] high, which is in heaven. For this Jerusalem is Sophia Without and her bridegroom the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma. (But) the Demiurge also projected souls; for he is the essence of souls. This is according to them Abraham and these are the children of Abraham. Then, from the material and devilish essence the Demiurge has made the bodies of the souls. This is the saying: “And God made man, taking dust from the earth, and breathed into his face a breath of life, and man became a living soul.”^[134] This is, according to them, the inward psychic man who dwells in the material body which is material, corruptible, and formed entirely of devilish essence. But this material man is (according to them) like unto an inn, or the dwelling-place, sometimes of the soul alone, sometimes of the soul and demons, and sometimes of the soul and logoi, who are logoi sown from above in this world by the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma, and by Sophia, and who dwell in the earthly body with the soul when there are no demons dwelling with it. [p. 294.] This, he says, is what was written in Scripture: “For this cause I bow my knees to the God and Father and Lord of our Lord Jesus Christ, that God would grant you that Christ should dwell in the inner man, that is the psychical not the somatic, that you be strengthened to comprehend what is the depth” which is the Father of the universals “and what is the breadth,”^[135] which is Stauros the Limit of the Pleroma, “or what the length,” which is the Pleroma of the Aeons. Wherefore, he says, the psychic man does not receive the things of God’s spirit; for they are foolishness unto him. But foolishness, he says, is the power of the Demiurge, for he was senseless and mindless and thought that he fashioned the cosmos, being ignorant that Sophia, the Mother, the Ogdoad, wrought all things with regard to the creation of the world for him who knew it not.

35. All the prophets and the Law, then, spake from the (inspiration of the) Demiurge, a foolish god,^[136] he says, being themselves foolish and knowing nothing. Wherefore, he says, the Saviour declared: “All who came before me are thieves and robbers.”^[137] The Apostle also: “The mystery which was not known to the first generations.”^[138] For none of the prophets, he says, declared anything concerning the [p. 295.] things of whereof we speak; for all (of them) were ignored in what was said by the Demiurge alone.^[139] When, therefore, creation was brought to completion,^[140] and the revelation of the sons of God, that is of the Demiurge, at length became necessary, which had before been concealed, he says, the psychic man was veiled and had a veil upon his heart. Then when it was time that the veil should be taken away, and that these mysteries should be seen, Jesus was born through Mary the Virgin^[141] according to the saying: “(The) Holy Spirit shall come upon thee” – the Spirit is Sophia – “and a power of the Highest shall overshadow thee” – the Highest is the Demiurge. “Wherefore that which is born from thee shall be called holy.”^[142] For He was born not from the Highest alone, as those created after the fashion of Adam were created from the Highest, that is from the Demiurge. But Jesus was the new man (born) from the Holy Spirit (and the Highest),^[143] that is from Sophia and the Demiurge, so that the Demiurge supplied the mould and constitution of His body, but the Holy Spirit supplied [p. 296.] His substance,^[144] and thus the Heavenly Logos came into being, having been begotten from the Ogdoad through Mary. Concerning this there is a great enquiry among them and a source of schisms and variance. And hence their school^[145] has become divided and one part is called by them the Anatolic and the other the Italiote. Those from Italy, whereof are Heracleon and Ptolemy, say that the body of Jesus was born psychic, and therefore the Spirit descended as a dove at the Baptism, that is the Word which is of the mother Sophia on high and cried aloud to the psychic man^[146] and raised him from the dead. This, he says, is the saying: “He who raised Christ from the dead, shall quicken your mortal bodies (and your psychic).”^[147] For earth, he says, has come under a curse. “For Earth,” he says, “thou art, and to earth thou shalt return.”^[148] But those from the East, whereof are Axionicus and Bardesanes,^[149] say that the body of the Saviour was spiritual. For [p. 297.] (the) Holy Spirit came upon Mary, that is Sophia and the Tower of the Highest is the demiurgic art,^[150] so that that which was given by the Spirit to Alary might be moulded (into form).

36. These things then let these men enquire after in their own way, and if they should happen to do so in any other, so let it be. But (Valentinus) also says that as the false steps among the Aeons had been put straight^[151] and also those in the Ogdoad or Sophia Without, so also were those in the Hebdomad. For the Demiurge was taught by Sophia that he is not the only God as he thought, and that beside him there is none other; but he knew better after being taught by Sophia. For he was schooled by her and was initiated and taught the great mystery of the Father and the Aeons and told it to none. This, he says, is what he spake to Moses: “I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, and my name I have not announced to them,”^[152] that is to say: “I have not told the mystery nor have I explained who is God, but I have kept to myself the mystery which I have heard from Sophia.” It was necessary, then, that the things on high having been put straight, in the same sequence,^[153] correction should come to those here. For this cause was Jesus the [p. 298.] Saviour born through Mary, that He might put straight things here, as the Christ, who on high was projected by Nous and Aletheia, put straight the passions of Sophia Without, that is, of the Ectroma. And again the Saviour who was born through Mary came to set straight the passions of the soul. There are, then, according to them three Christs, the one projected by Nous and Aletheia along with the Holy Spirit; and the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma the equal yoke-fellow^[154] of Sophia Without who is called and is herself a Holy Spirit (but) inferior to the first; and third, He who was born through Mary for the restoration^[155] of this creation of ours.

37. I consider I have now by means of many (explanations) sufficiently sketched the heresy of Valentinus, it being a Pythagorean one; and it seems to me that the refutation of these doctrines by exposition should stop. Plato, moreover, when setting forth mysteries concerning the universe writes to Dionysius in some such way as this:^[156]

“ I must speak to you in enigmas, so that if the tablet [p. 299.] should suffer in any of its leaves on sea or land, whoso reads may not understand.^[157] For things are thus. As regards the king of all, all things are his, and all are for his sake, and he is the cause of all that is fair. A second (cause exists) concerning secondary things and a third concerning those things which come third.^[158] But respecting the king himself there is nothing of this kind of which I have spoken. But after this the soul seeks to learn of what quality these are, since it looks towards the things which are germane to itself, of which it has nought sufficiently. This is, О son of Dionysius and Doris, your question as to what is the cause of all evils. But it is rather that anxiety about this is inborn, and if one does not remove it, one will never hit upon the truth.^[159] But what is wonderful about it, hear. For there are men who have heard these things, able to learn and able to remember,^[160] and who have yet grown old while straining to form a complete judgment. They say that what (once) appeared believable is now unbelievable, and that what was then unbelievable was then the opposite. Looking therefore to this, beware, lest you repent what has unworthily fallen [p. 300.] from you. Wherefore I have written none of these things, nor is there anything (upon them) signed Plato, nor will there ever be. But the sayings now attributed to Socrates were (said by him)^[161] when he was young and fair.”^[162]

(Now) Valentinus having chanced upon these (lines) conceived the king of all, of whom Plato spoke, to be Father and Bythos and the primal source of all the Aeons.^[163] And when Plato spoke of the second (cause) concerning secondary things, Valentinus assumed that the secondary things were all the Aeons being within the limit of the Pleroma and the third (cause) concerning the third things, he assumed to be the whole arrangement without the limit and (outside) the Pleroma. And this Valentinus made plain in the fewest words in a psalm, beginning from below and not as Plato did from above, in these words: –

“I behold all things hanging from air, [p. 301.]

I perceive all things upheld by spirit,

Flesh hanging from soul,

Soul standing forth from air,

And air hanging from aether,

But fruits borne away from Bythos

But the embryo from the womb.”^[164]

Understanding this thus: – Flesh is, according to them, Matter, which depends from the soul of the Demiurge. But soul stands out from air, that is the Demiurge from the Spirit outside the Pleroma. But air stands out from other, that is Sophia Without from that which is within (the) limit and the whole Pleroma. Fruits are borne away from Bytbos, which is the whole emanation of Aeons coming into being from the Father. The opinions of Valentinus have therefore been sufficiently told.^[165] It remains to tell of the teachings of those who have been obedient to his school, another having different teaching.

3. About Secundus and Epiphanes^[166]

[p. 302.] 38. A certain Secundus, who was born at the same time as Ptolemy, says that there exist a right hand and a left hand tetrad like light and darkness. And he says that the Tower which fell away and is lacking^[167] came into being not from the thirty Aeons, but from their fruits. But there is a certain Epiphanes, a teacher of theirs, who says: “The First Principle^[168] was incomprehensible, ineffable and unnameable” which he calls Solitude^[169] and that a Power of this co-exists with it which he names Oneness.^[170] The same Monotes and Henotes preceded [but] did not send forth^[171] an unbegotten and invisible principle over all which he calls^[172] a Monad. “With this Power co-exists a power of the same essence with itself, which same power I also name the One.” These four Powers themselves sent forth the remaining projections of the Aeons. Put others of them again have called the first and primordial Ogdoad by these [p. 303.] names: first, “Before the Beginning,” then “Inconceivable,” third “Ineffable” and the fourth, “Invisible;”^[173] and (they say) that from the first Proarche was projected in the first and fifth place Beginning; from Anennoetos, in the second and sixth (place) Unrevealed, from Arrheton in the third and seventh place, Unnameable and from Aoratos, Unbegotten.^[174] (This is the) Pleroma of the first Ogdoad. And they will have these powers to have existed before Bythos and Sige. But yet others understand differently about Bythos himself, some saying that he is spouseless and neither male nor female, and others that Sige exists beside him as his female and that this is the first syzygy.

4. About Ptolemy^[175]

39. But the adherents of Ptolemy say that he [Bythos] [p. 304.] has two partners whom they call also (his) predispositions^[176] (i.e.) Thought and Will. For he first had it in mind to project something, and then he willed (to do so). Wherefore from these two diatheses and powers, that is, from Ennoia and Thelesis as it were blending with one another, the projection of Monogenes and Aletheia as a pair came to pass. The which types and images of the two diatheses of the Father came forth visible from the invisible, Nous from Thelema^[177] and Aletheia from Ennoia. Therefore also the male image was born from the later-begotten Thelema, but the female from the unbegotten Ennoia, because Thelema came into being like a power from Ennoia. For Ennoia has ever in mind projection, but she is not able by herself to project what she has in mind. But when the power of Thelema [came into being later],^[178] then she projected what she had in mind.

5. About Marcus^[179]

40. And a certain other teacher of theirs, Marcus, an [p. 305.] expert in magic, depending now on trickery and now on demons, leads astray many. For he says that there is in him the greatest power from the invisible and unnameable places. And often he takes a cup, as if consecrating it,^[180] and prolonging the words of consecration, causes the mixture to appear purple and sometimes ted, so as to make his dupes think that a certain grace has come down, and has given a blood-like power^[181] to the draught. But the rogue, though he formerly escaped the notice of many, will, now that he has been refuted,^[182] have to stop. For he used secretly to insert a certain drug having the power of giving such a colour to the mixture, and then to wait while uttering much gibberish, until it dissolved by absorbing moisture and, mixing with the draught, coloured it. And the drugs which can thus give colour we have before described in our book against the Magicians,^[183] and have set forth how leading many astray, they utterly ruin them. Which (last), if they care to consider more carefully what has been said above, will know the fraud of Marcus.

41. Which (Marcus) also, mixing a cup by another hand, [p. 306.] (sometimes) gives it^[184] to a woman to consecrate, while he stands by her side holding a larger one empty: and when the dupe has made the consecration, he takes (the cup) from her, and empties it into the larger one and many times pouring (the contents) from one cup to the other, says these words over them: “May the Incomprehensible and Ineffable Charts who is earlier than the universals fill thy inner man, and make abundant in thee the knowledge^[185] of her, even as she scatters the mustard seed upon the good ground!” And as he speaks some such words over it, and (thereby) distracts the dupe and the bystanders, so that he is considered a miracle-worker, he fills the larger cup from the smaller so that it overflows. And we have set forth the trick of this in the above-named book, where we have pointed out many drugs which have the power of causing increase when thus mixed with watery substances^[186] especially when mingled with wine: the drug compounded before-hand, being hidden in the empty cup in such a way that this may be exhibited as containing nothing, and being poured backwards and forwards from one cup to the other, so as to dissolve the drug by mixture with the water,^[187] and so that [p. 307.] when it is inflated by air, an overflow of the water comes about, and it increases the more it is shaken, since such is the nature of the drug. If, however, one lays aside the cup when filled, the mixture will before long return to its former volume, the power of the drug being quenched by the continued moisture. Wherefore he hurriedly gives the bystanders to drink; and they being at the same time scared and thirsting for it as something divine and mingled by a god, hasten to drink.

42. Such like and other things, the deceiver undertakes to do. Whence he was glorified by those he duped and was thought sometimes to prophesy himself and sometimes to make others do so, either effecting this by demons or by trickery as we have said above. Further he utterly ruined many,^[188] and led on many of them to become his disciples (by) teaching them to be indifferent to sin^[189] as free from danger (to them) through their belonging to the Perfect Power and partakers of the Inconceivable Authority. To whom also after baptism they promise another which they call Redemption,^[190] and thereby turn again to evil those [p. 308.] who remain with them in the hope of deliverance, (as if) those who had been once baptized might again meet with acquittal. Through such jugglery,^[191] they seem to retain their hearers, whom, when they consider that they have been (duly) indoctrinated and are able to keep fast the things entrusted to them, they then lead to this (second baptism), not contenting themselves with this alone, but promising them still something else, for the purpose of keeping control over them by hope, lest they should separate from them. For they mutter something in an inaudible voice, laying hands on them for the receiving of Redemption which they pretend cannot be spoken openly unless one were highly instructed, or when the bishop should come to speak it into the ears of one departing this life.^[192] And this jugglery is practised so that they may remain the bishop’s disciples, eagerly desirous to learn what has been said about the last thing^[193] whereby the learner would become perfect. Of which things I have kept silence for this cause, lest any should think I put the worst construction on them. For this is not what we have set before us, but rather the exposure of whence they have derived the hints^[194] from which their doctrines have arisen.

43. For the blessed elder Irenreus having come forward very openly for (their) refutation has set forth these baptisms [p. 309.] and redemptions saying in rounder terms what those who traffic^[195] with them do; and if some of these deny that they have thus received them (it is because) they learn to always deny.^[196] Wherefore we have been careful to enquire very sedulously and to find out minutely what they hand down in the first baptism as they call it, and what in the second which they call Redemption: and no unutterable doing of theirs has escaped us. But let us abandon^[197] these things to Valentinus and his school.

Marcus, however, imitating his teacher himself also concocts a vision, thinking thus to glorify himself. For Valentinus claims that he himself saw a new-born infant, hearing whom he enquired who he might be. And (the infant) answered declaring himself to be the Logos. Thereupon (Valentinus) having added a certain tragic myth, wishes from this to construct the heresy which he had already taken in hand.^[198] With like audacity, Marcus declares that the Tetrad came before him in feminine shape; because, he says, the cosmos could not bear its male form.^[199] And [p. 310.] she disclosed to him what she was, and the coming into being of all things, which she had never yet revealed to any either of gods or men (but) announced it to him aloud, saying thus: – when the First (Being) who has no father,^[200] the Inconceivable and Substanceless One, who is neither male nor female, willed the ineffable to be spoken and the invisible to take shape, lie opened His mouth and a Logos like unto Him went forth. Who, standing beside Him, showed Him what He was, Himself having appeared in the shape of the Invisible One. And the utterance of the name was on this wise. He spoke the first word of the name which was the beginning and was the syllable^[201] of four letters. And He added to it the second, and it also was of four letters. And He spoke the third, which was of ten letters and then the fourth, and this was of twelve. There came to pass therefore, the pronunciation of the whole name of thirty letters, but of four syllables. But each of the elements has its own letters^[202] and its own character,^[203] and its own pronunciation and figures and images, nor is there any of them Which perceives the form of another.

Nor does it see that it is an element, nor know the pronunciation [p. 311.] of its neighbour; but each sounds as if pronouncing the whole, and believes itself to be naming the [universe].^[204] For while each of them is a part of the universe, it thinks its own sound names as it were the whole, and docs not cease to sound until it has arrived at the last single-tongued letter of the last element. Then he says that the return of the universals (to the Deity)^[205] will come to pass when all things coming together into one letter shall echo one and the same sound. He supposes that the likeness of this sound is the Amen^[206] which we speak in unison. But (he says) that the vowels^[207] exist to give shape to the substance-less and unbegotten Aeon, and that they are those forms which the Lord called angels, which behold without ceasing the Father’s face.^[208]

44. But the names of the elements which are common (to all) and may be spoken, he calls Aeons and Logoi and Boots and Seeds^[209] and Pleromas and Fruits. And (he says) [p. 312.] that every one of them and what is special to each is to be comprehended as comprised in the name of Ecclesia. Of which elements, he says, that the last letter of the last element first sent forth^[210] its own sound, the echo of which going forth begot its own elements as being the images of the other elements. Wherefrom, he says, both the things here below were set in order and those which were before them were brought into being.^[211] He says nevertheless that the very letter the sound of which followed immediately upon the echo below was taken up again by its own syllable in order to fill full again the universe, but that the echo remained in the things below as if cast outside it.^[212] But the element itself wherefrom the letter with its pronunciation came down below, he says, is of thirty letters, and every one of the thirty letters contains within itself other letters whereby the name of the letter is named. And again others are named by other letters and yet others by these others, so that the total comes out to infinity, if the letters be written separately.^[213] You will more clearly [p. 313.] understand what has been said (if it be put) thus: – The element Delta contains in itself five letters, the Delta, the Epsilon, the Lambda, the Tau and the Alpha and the same letters (are written) by other letters.^[214] If then the whole substance^[215] of the Delta comes out to infinity, letters constantly giving birth to other letters and succeeding one another, how much greater than that one element is the sea of letters? And if the one letter be thus infinite, behold the depth^[216] of the letters of the whole name whereof the industry or rather the idiot labour^[217] of Marcus will have the Forefather to be composed. Wherefore, (he says) the Father, knowing well His unconfined nature, gave to the elements which He calls Aeons, the power for each to send forth the pronunciation of his own name, whereby none is capable of pronouncing the whole.

45. And [it is said that] the Tetrad having explained these things to him, said: – “I desire now to show to thee Aletheia^[218] herself; for I have brought her down from the dwellings on high in order that thou mayest behold her unclothed and learn her beauty, and may also hear her [p. 314.] speak and admire her wisdom. See then the head on high the first Alpha-Omega, and the neck Beta-Bsi, the shoulders (together with the hands) Gamma-Chi, the breast Delta-Phi, the waist Epsilon-Upsilon, the belly Zeta-Tau, the privy parts Eta-Sigma, the thighs Theta-Rho, the knees Iota-Pi, the legs Kappa-Omicron, the ankles Lambda-Xi, the feet Mti-Nu.” Such is the body of Aletheia according to Marcus, this the form of the element, this the impress of the letter. And he calls this clement Anthropos^[219] and says that it is the fountain of all speech and the principle of every sound, and the utterance of everything ineffable, and the mouth of the silent Sigc.^[220] “And this is her body. But do thou raising on high the understanding of the intelligence,^[221] hear the Self-Begotten and Forefather Word from the lips of Truth.”

46. When (the Tetrad) had thus spoken (says Marcus), Aletheia looking upon him and opening her mouth spake a word. But that word was a name and the name was that which we know and speak (to wit) Christ Jesus, having spoken which, she straightway became silent. And when [p. 315.] Marcus expected her to say something more, the Tetrad again coming forward said: “Holdest thou simple the word which thou hast heard from the lips of Aletheia? Yet that which you know and seem to have possessed of old is not the name. For you have its sound only, and know not its power. For Jesus is an illustrious name having six letters^[222] invoked by all the Elect. But that which occurs among the (five)^[223] Aeons of the Pleroma has many parts (and) is of another shape and of a different type, being known by those of (His) kindred whose magnitudes^[224] are ever with Him.”

47. “Know ye that the twenty-four letters among you are emanations in the likeness of the Three Powers encompassing the universe^[225] and (the) number of the elements on [p. 316.] high. For suppose that the nine mute letters^[226] are those of the Father and of Aletheia, because they are mute, that is, ineffable and unutterable; and the semi-mute which are eight,^[227] those of Logos and Zoe, because they exist as it were half-way between the mute and those which sound,^[228] and they receive the emanation from those above them and the ascension of those below; and the vowels–and they are seven^[229] – are those of Anthropos and Ecclesia, since it is the sound going forth from Anthropos which has given form to the universals. For the echo of the sound has clothed them with shape.^[230] There are then Logos and Zoe having the 8 and Anthropos and Ecclesia the 7 and the Father and Aletheia the 9. But since the reckoning was deficient,^[231] He who was seated in the Father came down, having been sent forth from that wherefrom he had been separated for the rectification of the things which had been done, so that the unity of the Pleromas which is in the Good One might bear as fruit one power which is in all from all. And thus the 7 recovered the power of the 8, [p. 317.] and the three places became alike in numbers, being three ogdoads. Which three added together show forth the number of 24.” In fact the three elements (which he says exist in the syzygy of the three powers, which are 6, the flowing-forth of which are the 24 elements) having been quadrupled by the Word of the Ineffable Tetrad make the same number for themselves which he says is (that) of the Unnameable One. But they were clothed by the 6 powers in the likeness of the Invisible One, of the images of which elements the double letters are the likeness, which added to the 24 elements by analogy make potentially the number 30.^[232]

48. He says that the fruit of this reckoning and arrangement^[233] appeared^[234] in semblance of an image (to wit) He who after the six days went up to the mountain^[235] as one of four persons and became one of six. Who came down and bore [p. 318.] rule in the Hebdomad, Himself becoming the illustrious^[236] Ogdoad and containing within Himself the whole number of the elements. Which the descent of the dove coming upon Him at the baptism made plain, which (dove) is Alpha and Omega, the number being plainly 801.^[237] And because of this Moses said that man came into being on the 6th day. But according to the economy of the Passion on the 6th day, which is the Preparation,^[238] the last man appeared for the regeneration of the First Man. Of this economy, the beginning and the end was the 6th hour, wherein lie was nailed to the Cross. For, (he says) that the perfect Nous, knowing that number 6 possesses the power of creation and regeneration^[239] made apparent to the Sons of Light the regeneration which had come through Him who appeared as Episemon. For the illustrious number^[240] when blended with the other elements completes the 30-lettered name.

[p. 319.] 49. But He has made use as His instrument of the greatness of the 7 numbers, in order that the Fruit of the self-inspired (Council)^[241] might be made manifest. Consider, he says, this Episemon here present, which has taken shape from the Illustrious One who has been, as it were, cut into parts and remains without. Who, by His own power and forethought, by means of His own projection which is that of the Seven Powers, imitated the Seventh Power and gave life to the cosmos^[242] and set it to be the soul of this visible universe. He therefore uses this same work also as if it came into being by Him independently; but the rest being imitations of that which is inimitable minister to the Enthymesis^[243] of the Mother. And the first heaven sounds the Alpha, and that following it the Epsilon, and the 3rd the Eta, and the 4th and middle one of the 7 the power of the Iota, and the 5th the Omicron, and the 6th the Upsilon, [p. 320.] and the 7th the Omega. And all the heavens when locked together into one, give forth a sound and glorify Him by whom they were projected. And the glory of the sounding is sent on high into the presence of the Forefather.^[244] And, he says, that the echo of this glorifying being borne to the earth becomes the Fashioner and begetter of those upon the earth. And there is a proof of this in the case of newly born children, whose breath immediately they come forth from the womb, cries aloud likewise the sound of each one of these elements. As then the Seven Powers, he says, glorify the Word, so does the complaining soul among infants. Wherefore, he says, David declared: – “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise.”^[245] And again: – “The heavens declare the glory of God”.^[246] When also the soul is in pain it cries aloud nothing else than the Omega in which it is grieved, so that the soul on high recognizing its kindred may send it help.

50. And so far as to this.^[247] But concerning the beginning [p. 321.] of the 24 elements, she speaks thus: – Henotes existed along with Monotes^[248] from which (two) came into being two projections: Monad and the One which, as twice 2, became four. For twice 2 is 4 and again the 2 and the 4 being added together the number 6 is manifested, but when these 6 are quadrupled, 24. And these names of the first Tetrad are understood to be the holiest of holy things, and cannot be spoken, but are known by the Son alone. The Father knows also what they are. Those named by Him in silence and faith are: Arrhetos^[249] and Sige, Pater and Aletheia. And the total number of this Tetrad is 24 elements. For Arrhetos has 7 elements, Sige 5^[250] and Pater 5 and Aletheia^[251] 7. In like manner also the second Tetrad, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia, show forth the same number of elements. And the spoken name of the Saviour, that is Jesus, consists of 6 letters; but [p. 322.] His unspoken (name)^[252] from the number of letters taken one by one, is of 24 elements, but Christ (the) Son of 12.^[253] But the unspoken (element) in the Chreistos is of 30 letters and is that of the letters in it, counting the elements one by one. For the [name] Chreistos is of 8 elements: (^[254]for the Chi^[255] is of 3, and the Rho of 2, and the Ei of 2 and the Iota of 4, the Sigma of 5 and the Tau of 3, while the Ou is of 2 and the San of 3). Thus they imagine that the unspoken element in “Chreistos” is of 30 elements. Wherefore also, say they, He said “I am Alpha and Omega,” thereby indicating that the Dove has this number, which is eight hundred and one.^[256]

51. But Jesus has this ineffable generation.^[257] For from the Mother of the Universals the first Tetrad came forth, as if it were a daughter, and the second Tetrad and an Ogdoad thus came into being, wherefrom the Decad [p. 323.] proceeded. Thus an Eighteen^[258] came into being. Then the Decad having united with the Ogdoad and making it tenfold, [the number] 80 [proceeded; and the 80]^[259] being again multiplied by 10, gives birth to the number 800. So that the total number coming forth from the Ogdoad to the Decad is 8 and 80 and 800, which is Jesus. For the name Jesus according to the number in the letters is 888. And the Greek Alphabet has eight monads and eight decads and eight hecatontads indicating the cipher of the eight hundreds as 88, that is the (word) Jesus (made up) from all the constituent numbers. Wherefore also He is named Alpha and Omega as signifying the birth from them all.

52. But concerning His fashioning^[260] (Marcus) speaks thus: Powers which emanated from the Second Tetrad [p. 324.] fashioned the Jesus who appeared upon earth, and the angel Gabriel filled the place^[261] of the Logos and the Holy Spirit that of Zoe, and the power of the Highest^[262] (that) of Anthropos and the Virgin that of Ecclesia. Thus by incarnation^[263] a man was generated by Himself through Mary. But when He came to the water, there descended upon Him as a dove he who had ascended on high and had filled the 12th number,^[264] in whom existed the seed of those who had been sown together^[265] in Him, and had descended together and had ascended together. But this Power which descended on Him, he says, was the seed of the Pleroma having within it the Father and the Son, which through them was known to be the unnamed power of Sige, and (to be) all the Aeons. And that this was the Spirit which in Him spake through the mouth of the Son, confessed Himself to be Son of Man, and manifested the Father, yet veritably descended into Jesus (and) became one with Him. The Saviour from the Economy,^[266] destroyed death, they say, but Christ Jesus made known the Father. He says therefore that Jesus was the name of the [p. 325.] man from the Economy, but that it was set forth in resemblance and shape of the Anthropos who was to come upon Him; and that when He had received he retained the Anthropos himself and the Father himself and Arrhetos and Sign and Aletheia and Ecclesia and Zoe.^[267]

53. I hope then that these things are clearly to all of sane mind without authority and far from that knowledge which is according to religion, being (in fact) fragments of astrological inventions and of the arithmetical art of the Pythagoreans, as you who love learning will also know from those their doctrines which we have exposed in the foregoing books. But in order that we may exhibit them more clearly to the disciples, not of Christ, but, of Pythagoras, I will also set forth so far as can be done in epitome, the things which they have taken from (this last) concerning the phenomena of the stars. For they say that these universals are composed from a monad and a dyad, and counting from a monad up to four, they bring into [p. 326.] being a decad. And the dyad^[268] again going fonh up to Episemon, for example, two and four and six show forth the dodecad. And, again, if we count in the same way from the dyad up to the decad, the triacontad appears, wherein are the ogdoad and decad and dodecad. Then they say that the dodecad through its containing the Episemon and because the Episemon closely follows it, is Passion.^[269] And since through this, the lapse with regard to the 12th number occurred, the sheep skipped away and was lost.^[270] And in like manner from the decad: and on this they tell of the drachma which the woman lost and lamp in hand searched for and of the loss of the one sheep;^[271] and having contrasted with this the (number) 99, they make a fable for themselves of the numbers, since of the 11 multiplied by 9 they make the number 99, and thanks to this they say that the Amen contains this number.^[272]

[p. 327.] And of another number they say this the element Eta with the Episemon is an ogdoad, as it lies in the 8th place from the Alpha. Then again counting the numbers of the same elements together without the Episemon and adding them together as far as the Eta, they display the number 30. For if one begins the number of the elements with the Alpha (and continues) up to the Eta (inclusive) after subtracting the Episemon, one finds the number 30.^[273] Since then the number 30 is made from the uniting of the three powers, the same number 30 occurring thrice made 90 – for three times 30 are 90 [and the same triad multiplied into itself brought forth 9]. Thus the ogdoad made the number 99 from the first ogdoad and decad and dodecad. The number of which (ogdoad) they sometimes carry to completion^[274] and make a triacontad and sometimes deducting the 12th number they count it n and likewise make the 10th (number) 9. And multiplying and decupling^[275] these (figures) they complete the number 99. And since [p. 328.] the 12th Aeon left the 11 [on high] and fell away from them and came below, they imagine that these things correspond one to the other. For the type of the letters is instructive. For the 11th letter is the Lambda which is the number 30 and is so placed after the likeness of the arrangement on high,^[276] since from the Alpha apart from the Episemon, the number of the same letters up to Lambda when added together makes up the number 99.^[277] But (they say) that the Lambda which is put in the 11th place^[278] came down to seek for what is like unto it so that it may complete the 12th number, and having found it did (so) complete it is plain from the very shape of the element.^[279] For the Lambda succeeding as it were in the search for what was like unto itself and finding, seized it, and filled up with it the place of the 12th element Mu, which is composed of two Lambdas.^[280] Wherefore they avoid by this gnosis the place of the 99 that is to say the Hysterema^[281] as the type of the [p. 329.] left hand, but follow the One which added to the 99, brings them over to the right hand.

54.^[282] But they declare that first the four elements which they say are fire, water, earth (and) air, were made through the Mother and projected as an image of the Tetrad on high. And reckoning in with them their energies, such as heat, cold, moisture, and dryness they exactly reflect the Ogdoad. Next, they enumerate ten powers, thus: Seven circular bodies which they also call heavens, then a circle encompassing these which they call the Eighth Heaven and besides these, the Sun and Moon.^[283] And these making up the number 10, they declare to be the image of the invisible decad which is from Logos and Zoe. And (they say) that the dodecad is revealed through the circle called the Zodiac. For they declare that the twelve most evident signs shadow forth the dodecad which is the daughter of Anthropos and [p. 330.] Ecclesia. And since they say the highest heaven has been linked to the ascension of the universals, the swiftest in existence, which (heaven) weighs down upon the sphere itself, and counterbalances by its own weight the swiftness of the others, so that in thirty years it completes the cycle from sign to sign – this they declare to be the image of Horos encircling their thirty-named Mother.^[284]

Again the Moon traversing the heavens completely in 30 days, typifies (they say) by these days the number of the Aeons. And the Sun completing his journey and terminating his cyclical return to his former place in 12 months shows forth the Dodecad. And that the days themselves, since they are measured by 12 hours, are a type of the mighty^[285] Ogdoad. And also that the perimeter of the Zodiacal circle has 360 degrees and that each Zodiacal sign has 30. Thus by means of the circle, they say, the [p. 331.] image of the connection of the 12 with the 30 is observed. And again also they imagine that the earth is divided into 12 climates, and that each several climate receives a single power from the heavens immediately above it^[286] and produces children of the same essence with the power sending down [this influence] by emanation [which is they say] a type of the Dodecad on high.

55. And besides this, they say that the Demiurge of the Ogdoad on high,^[287] wishing to imitate the Boundless and Everlasting and Unconfined and Timeless One and not being able to form a model of His stability and permanence, because he was himself the fruit of the Hysterema, was forced to place in it for rendering it eternal, times and seasons and numbers, thinking that by the multitude of times he was imitating the Boundless One. But they declare that in this the truth having escaped him, he followed the false; and that therefore when the times are fulfilled, his work will be dissolved.^[288]

56. These things, then, those who are from the school [p. 332.] of Valentinus declare concerning Creation and the Universe, every time producing something newer^[289] (than the last). And they consider this to be fructification, if any one similarly discovering something greater appears to work wonders. And finding in each case from the Scriptures something accordant with the aforesaid numbers, they prate of Moses and the Prophets, imagining them to declare allegorically the dimensions of the Aeons. Which things it does not seem to me expedient to explain as they are senseless and inconsistent, and already the blessed elder Irenæus has marvellously and painfully refuted their doctrines. From whom also [we have taken] their so-called discoveries and have shown that they, having appropriated these things from (the) trifling^[290] of the Pythagorean philosophy and the astrologies, accuse Christ of having handed them down. But since I consider that their senseless doctrines have been sufficiently set forth, and that it has been already proved whose disciples Marcus and Colarbasus^[291] by becoming the successors of the school of Valentinus (really) are, let us see also what Basilides says.^[292]

[p. 333.]

Book VII: Basilides, Saturnilus, and others

1. These are the contents of the 7th (Book) of the Refutation of All Heresies.

2. What is the opinion of Basilides, and that he, having been struck with the doctrines of Aristotle, constructed his heresy from them.

3. And what things Satornilus, who flourished at the same time as Basilides, says.

4. How Menander set himself to declare that the world came into being by angels.

5. What was the madness of Marcion, and that his doctrine is neither new nor (taken) from the Holy Scriptures, but comes from Empedocles.

6. How Carpocrates talks foolishness, and thinks existing things to have been produced by angels.

7. That Cerinthus in no way framed his opinion from Scripture, but out of the teachings of the Egyptians.

[p. 334.] 8. What are the Ebionites’ opinions, and that they prefer to cleave to the Jewish customs.

9. How Theodotus also erred, having borrowed some things from the Ebionites [but others from the Gnostics].

10. And what was taught by Cerdo, who both declared things (taken) from Empedocles and wickedly put forward Marcion.

11. And how Lucian, becoming a disciple of Marcion, did not blush to blaspheme God.

12. Of whom Apelles becoming a disciple, did not teach the same things as (the rest of) the school, but being moved by the doctrines of the physicists, supposed an essence for the universe.

1. About Basilides^[293]

13. Seeing that the doctrines of the heretics are like a [p. 335.] sea lashed into waves by the force of the winds, their hearers ought to sail through them in quest of the calm harbour. For such a sea is both wild and hard to over-pass, as the Sicilian (sea) is said to be, wherein are fabled to be Cyclops and Charybdis and Scylla and... the Sirens’ rock.^[294] Which sea the Greek poets make out that Odysseus sailed through, skilfully availing himself of the terror of those fierce beasts: for their cruelty to those sailing among them was notorious. But the Sirens, singing clearly and musically for the beguiling of those sailing past, persuaded with their sweet voices those who listened to approach them. And they say that Odysseus, hearing this, stopped with wax his companions’ ears, but having had himself bound to the mast sailed without danger past the Sirens while listening to their song. Which I advise those who meet with them to do, and either having on account of weakness stopped their ears with wax to sail through the teachings of the heretics without listening to what, like the shrill song of the Sirens, might easily persuade them to pleasure; or else to bind themselves to the Cross of Christ, hearkening faithfully (to Him) and (thus) not to be harassed, being persuaded (only) by Him to whom they [p. 336.] are bound and standing upright.^[295]

14. Since now we have set forth in the six Books before this, the (opinions) which have gone before, it seems now that we should not keep silent about those of Basilides which are those of Aristotle the Stagirite, and not of Christ. But although the doctrines of Aristotle have been before expounded, we shall not shrink from now setting them forth in epitome, so that the teacher by their closer comparison may readily perceive that the sophisms of Basilides are those of Aristotle.

15. Aristotle, then, divides being^[296] into three. For one part of it is genus, another, as he says, species,^[297] and another something undivided.^[298] But the atom is so called, not be [р. 337.] cause of the smallness of its body, but because by its nature it can in no way be cut. But the genus is, as it were, a heap composed of many different seeds. From which heap-resembling genus, all the species of existent things are severed;^[299] and it is (one) genus which is sufficient for all things which have come into being. In order that this may be clear, I will point out an example whereby the whole theory of the Peripatetic can be retraced.

16. Let us say that there exists simply “animal,”^[300] not any particular animal. This “animal” is neither ox, nor horse, nor man, nor god, nor anything else that can anyhow be apparent, but simply “animal.” From this “animal” the species of all animals have their substance.^[301] And the undifferentiated^[302] “animal” is the substance of the animals who have been produced in species^[303] but is yet none of them. For an animal is man, who takes his beginning from that “animal,” and an animal is horse who does like [p. 338.] wise. The horse and ox and dog and each of the other animals takes its beginning from the simple “animal” which is none of them.

17. But if that “animal” is not one of these, (then) the substance of the things which have been produced has, according to Aristotle, come into being from the things which are not: for the “animal” whence these have severally received it is not one (of them). But, while being none (of them), it has become the one beginning of things which are. But who it is who has sent down this beginning^[304] of the things which have been produced later, we shall see when we come to its proper place.

18. Since the threefold essence is, as he says, genus, species and atom, and we have granted^[305] “animal” to be genus, and man to be species already differentiated from the multitude of animals, but at the same time commingled with them and not yet transformed into a species of substantial being,^[306] – I, when I give form to the man taken apart from the genus, call him by the name of Socrates or of Diogenes or any one of the many names (there are), [p. 339.] and when I (thus) restrict with a name the man who from genus has become species, I call such being an individual.^[307] For the genus is divided into species and the species into an atom; but the atom when restricted by a name cannot by its nature be divided into anything else, as we have divided each of the things aforesaid.

This Aristotle calls essence in its first, chief, and strictest sense, nor is it said of any subject nor as existing in any subject.^[308] But he speaks of the subject as if it were genus when he said “animal” of all the animals severally ranged under it, such as an ox, a horse, and the rest, describing them by a common name. For it is true to say that man is an animal, and a horse is an animal and an ox is an animal and all the rest. This is subjective, the one (name) being likewise capable of being said of many [p. 340.] and different species.^[309] For neither a horse nor an ox differs from man qua animal; for the definition of animal fits all the aforesaid animals alike. For what is an animal? If we define it, a common definition will include all the animals. For an animal is a living,^[310] feeling being, such as a man, a horse and all the rest. But, “in the Subject,” he says, is that which exists in anything, not as part of it, but as being incapable of existing apart from that wherein it is, (and is) each^[311] of the accidents of being. The which is called Quality because by it we say what certain things are, as, for instance, white, green, black, just, unjust, prudent and such like. But none of these (qualities) can come into being by itself, but must needs be in^[312] something. But, if neither the “animal,” which is the word I use for all living beings taken severally, nor the “accidents” which are found to occur in all of them, can come into being of themselves, then from those things which do not exist, the individual things^[313] are developed and the triply-divided essence is not compounded^[314] from other things. Hence Being^[315] so called in its first and chiefest and strictest sense, [p. 341.] exists according to Aristotle from those things which do not exist.^[316]

19. About Being^[317] then enough has been said. But Being is called not only genus, species and individual; but also matter, form and privation. But there is no difference among these while the division stands. And Being being such as it is, the ordering of the cosmos came about automatically in the same way. The cosmos is according to Aristotle divided into many [and different] parts; [and] the part of the cosmos which exists from the earth as far as the moon is without providence or governance and has its rise only in its own nature. But that which is beyond the moon, is ordered with all order and providence and is (so) governed up to the surface of heaven. But the (same) surface is a certain fifth essence renewed from all the elements of nature wherefrom the cosmos is made up, and this is Aristotle’s “Quintessence,” being as it were a hypercosmic essence. And his system of philosophy is divided so as to agree with the division of the cosmos. For [p. 342.] there is by him a treatise on physics called Acroasis, wherein he has treated of the doings of Nature, not of Providence, from the Earth to the Moon. And there is also his Metaphysics, another special work thus untitled, concerning the things which take place beyond the Moon. And there is also his work On the Quintessence, wherein he theologizes.^[318] Like this also is the division of the universals as they are defined by type in Aristotle’s philosophy. But his work On the Soul is puzzling; for it would be impossible in three whole books to say what Aristotle thinks about the soul. For what he gives as the definition of the soul is easy to say; but what is explained by the definition is hard to find. For, he says, the soul is an entelechy of the physical organism. What this is would need many words and great enquiry. But the God who is the cause of all these fair beings is one, even to one speculating for a very long time, more [p. 343] difficult to be known than is the soul. Yet the definition which Aristotle gives of God, is not hard to be known, but impossible to be understood. For He, he says, is a conception of conception which is altogether non-existent. But the cosmos is according to Aristotle imperishable and eternal; for it contains nothing faulty and is governed by Nature and Providence. And Aristotle has not only put forth books on Nature and the Cosmos and Providence and God,^[319] but there is also a certain treatise by him on ethics which is called The Ethical Books wherein he builds up a good ethics for his hearers out of a poor one. If, then, Basilides be found not only potentially but in the very words and names to have transferred the doctrines of Aristotle to our evangelical and soul-saving teaching, what remains but by restoring these extraneous matters to their (proper) authors to prove to Basilides’ disciples that, as they are heathenish, Christ will profit them nothing?

[p.344.] 20. Now Basilides and Isidore, Basilides’ true son and disciple, say that Matthias recounted to them secret^[320] discourses which he had heard from the Saviour in private teaching.^[321] We see then how plainly Basilides together with Isidore and their whole band belie not only Matthias but also the Saviour. There was, he says, [a time] when Nothing was, not even the nothing of existing things, but baldly and unreservedly and without any sophism, nothing at all. But when I say, says he, that [this] was, I do not say that this existed, but I speak thus to signify what I wish to indicate. I say then that nothing at all existed. For, says he, that which is named is plainly not ineffable; for at any rate we call one thing ineffable, but another not ineffable. For truly that which is not even ineffable is not named ineffable, but is, he says, above every name which is named. For neither are there names enough for the cosmos, he says, so diverse is it, but there is a lack of them. Nor do [p. 345.] I undertake, says he, to find proper names for everything; but one must silently understand in the mind not their names, but the properties of the things named. For identity of names has made confusion and error concerning things^[322] among those who hear them. And they who first made this appropriation and theft from the Peripatetic lead astray the folly of those who herd with them. For Aristotle who was born many generations earlier than Basilides, was the first to set forth in the Categories a system of homonyms which these men expound as their own and as a novelty [derived] from the secret discourses of Matthias.

21. When nothing [existed], neither matter, nor essence, nor the simple nor the compound, nor [that which is conceived by the mind] nor that which cannot be [so] conceived, [nor that which is perceived by the senses]^[323] nor that which cannot be [so] perceived, nor man, nor angel nor God, nor generally any of the things which are named or apprehended by sensation, or of things^[324] which can be conceived by the mind but can be thus and even more [p. 346.] minutely described by all: – (then) [the] God-who-was-Not – whom Aristotle calls Concept of Concept, but (Basilides) Him-who-is-Not, without conception, perception, counsel, choice, passion or desire willed to create a cosmos. But I say (only) for the sake of clearness, says he, that He willed. I signify that he did this without will or conception or perception; and the] cosmos was not that which later became established in its expanse and diversity,^[325] but a Seed of a cosmos. And the Seed of the cosmos contained all things within itself, as the grain of mustard (seed) collects into the smallest space and contains within itself all things at once: – the roots, stem, branches and the numberless leaves, with the seeds begotten by the plant, and often again those grown by many other plants. Thus the God-who-was-Not made the cosmos from things which were not,^[326] casting down and planting^[327] a certain single seed containing within [p. 347.] itself the whole seed-mass^[328] of the cosmos. But in order that I may make clearer what these (men) say, it was even as an egg of some gorgeous and parti-coloured bird such as a peacock or some other yet more variegated and many-coloured, contains within it, though one, many patterns^[329] of multiform and many-coloured and diversely-constructed beings^[330] – so, says he, the non existent seed of the cosmos cast down by the God-who-was-Not contained (a Seed-mass) at once multiform and (the source) of many beings.^[331]

22. All things, then, which arc to be described, and those which not having yet been discovered must be left out of the account, were destined to be fitted for the cosmos which was to come into being at the proper time by the help given to it by such and so great a God, whose quality^[332] the creature can neither conceive nor define. And these things existed stored within the seed, as, in a new-born [p. 348.] child, we see teeth and the power of fatherhood and brains accrue later; and those things which belong to the man but do not at first exist, evolve gradually out of the child. For it would be impossible to say that any projection by the God-who was-Not became something non-existent, – since Basilides entirely shuns and has in horror [the notion of substances of things begotten [arising] by way of projection.^[333] For what, says be, is the need of projection or of any substructure of matter in order that God may fashion a cosmos as the spider makes webs, or mortal man takes brass or wood or some other portion of matter to work with?). – But He spoke, says he, and it came to pass; and this is, as these [heretics] say, what Moses spake: – “Let there be light and there was light.”^[334] Whence, says he, came the light? From nothing. For it is not written says he, whence it came, but only that it came forth from the word of the speaker. For the speaker, says he, was not, nor did that which was spoken [formerly] exist. The seed of the cosmos, he says, came into being from non-existent things [and this seed is the word which was spoken: “Let there be light.” And this, says he, is the saying in the Gospels: “This is [p. 349.] the true light which lightened every man who cometh into the world.”^[335] It takes its beginnings^[336] from that seed and gives light. This is the seed which contains within itself all the Seed-Mass which Aristotle says is the genus divided into boundless species, since we divide from the nonexistent animal ox, horse [and] man. Further, of the underlying cosmic seed, they say, “whatever I may say came into being after this, seek not to know whence it came.” For it contained all seeds stored and shut up within itself, as it were things which were not, but which were foreordained to exist by the God-who-was-Not.

Let us see then what they say came into being in the first, second or third place from the cosmic seed. There existed (Basilides) says within the seed itself, a Sonhood, threefold throughout, of the same essence^[337] with the God-who-was-Not and begotten of the things that were not. Of this triple divided Sonhood, one part was subtle, (one coarse) and one wanting purification. Now the subtle (part) straightway and as it became the first emission of the seed [p. 350.] by the One-who-was-Not, escaped and ascended and went on high from below with the speed described by the poet –

“like wing or thought,”^[338]

and came, he says, before the One-who-was-Not. For towards him every nature strains on account of his exceeding beauty and bloom,^[339] but each differently. But the coarser part still remaining in the seed, although resembling the other,^[340] could not go on high, for it lacked the fineness of division which the ascending Sonhood had of itself, and was (therefore) left behind. Then the coarser Sonhood wings itself with some such wing as that wherewith Plato, Aristotle’s teacher, equips the soul in the Phaedrus,^[341] and Basilides calls the same not a wing but Holy Spirit, clothed wherewith the Sonhood both gives and receives benefit. It gives it because a bird’s wing taken by itself and severed from the bird would neither become uplifted nor high in [p. 351.] air, nor would the bird be uplifted and high in air if deprived of the wing. This then is the relation which the Sonhood bears to the Spirit and the Spirit to the Sonhood. For the Sonhood borne aloft by the Spirit as by a wing bears aloft the wing, (that is the Spirit) and draws nigh to the subtler Sonhood and to the God-who-was-Not and fashions all things from the non-existent. But [the Spirit] cannot abide with the Sonhood for it is not of the same essence,^[342] nor has it the same nature as the Sonhood. But just as dry and pure air is naturally fatal to fishes, so naturally to the Holy Spirit was that place, more ineffable than the ineffable ones and higher than all names, which is the scat at once of the God-who-was-Not and of the [first] Sonhood. Therefore the Sonhood left the Spirit near that blessed place which cannot be conceived nor characterized^[343] by any speech, [yet] not altogether alone nor [completely] severed from the Sonhood. For just as when a sweet perfume is poured into a jar, even if the jar is carefully emptied a certain fragrance of the perfume still remainsand is left behind, and although [p. 352.] the perfume be removed from the jar, the jar retains the fragrance, but not the perfume – so the Holy Spirit remained bereft of and severed from the Sonhood. And this is the saying: “As the perfume on Aaron’s head ran down to his beard.^[344] This is the savour carried down by the Holy Spirit from on high into the Formlessness^[345] and Space of this world of ours, whence the Sonhood first went on high as on the wings of an eagle and borne on his loins. For all things, he says, strain upward from below, from the worse to the better. But there is thus nothing of those things which are among the better which is immovable, so that it cannot come below. But the third Sonhood, he says, which is in need of purification, remains in the great heap of the Seed mass giving and receiving benefits. And in what manner it does this, we shall see later in the fitting place.^[346]

23. Now when the first and second ascensions of the [p. 353.] Sonhood^[347] had come to pass, and the Holy Spirit remained by itself in the way described, being set midway between the hypercosmic firmaments and the cosmos – for Basilides divides the things that are into two first made and primary divisions, one of which is called by him an ordered world,^[348] and the other hypercosmic things – and between these two [he places] the Boundary Spirit,^[349] which same is at once Holy and holds abiding in it the savour of the Sonhood, it being the firmament which is above the heaven.^[350] [When these ascensions had taken place], there escaped тот and was engendered from the cosmical seed and the Seed-mass, the Great Ruler, the head of the cosmos, a certain beauty and greatness and power which cannot be spoken.^[351] For he is, says [Basilides], more ineffable than the ineffable ones, mightier than the mighty, and better than all the fair ones you can describe. He, when engendered, burst through, soared aloft, and was borne right up on high as far as the firmament, but stayed there thinking that the firmament was the end of all ascension and uplifting and not imagining that there was anything [p. 354.] at all beyond this. And he became wiser, mightier, more eminent, and more luminous and everything which you can describe as excelling in beauty all the other cosmic things which lay before him, save only the Sonhood left behind in the Seed-mass. For he knew not that [this Sonhood] was wiser and mightier and better than he. Therefore he deemed himself Lord and King^[352] and wise architect, and set about the creation in detail^[353] of the ordered world. And in the first place he did not think it meet for him to be alone, but created for himself and engendered from the things which lay below’ him a Son much better and wiser than himself. For all this the God-who-was-Not had foreordained when he let fall the Seed-mass. When, therefore, the Great Ruler] beheld his Son, he wondered, and was died with love and astounded: for so [splendid] did the beauty of the son appear to the Great Ruler. And the Ruler seated him at his right hand. This is what is called by Basilides the Ogdoad where sits the Great Ruler. Then the Great Wise Demiurge fashioned the whole of the [p. 355.] heavenly, that is, the aethereal creation. But the Son begotten by him set it working and established it, being much wiser than the Demiurge himself.^[354]

24. This [creation] is according to Aristotle, the “entelechy”^[355] of the organic natural body, the soul activating the body, without which the body can effect nothing, a something greater and more manifest and wiser than the body. The theory therefore which Aristotle first taught regarding the soul and the body, Basilides explained as referring to the Great Ruler and his so-called son. For the Ruler according to Basilides begat a son; and Aristotle says that the soul is an entelechy, the work and result^[356] of the organic natural body. As, then, the entelechy controls the body, so the son, according to Basilides, controls the more ineffable God of the Ineffables. All things soever then which are in the aether up to the Moon are foreseen and controlled by the majesty^[357] of the Great Ruler; for here [i.e. at the Moon] the air is divided from the aether. Now when all aethereal things had been set in order, yet another Ruler ascends from the Seed-Mass, greater than all [p. 356.] the things which are below him, save only the Sonhood which is left behind, but much inferior to the first Ruler. And this one is called by them “able to be named.”^[358] And his place is called Hebdomad, and he is the controller and Demiurge of all things lying below him, and he has created to himself from the Seed-Mass a Son who is more foreseeing and wiser than he in the same way as has been said about the first [Ruler]. And in this space,^[359] he says, are the heap and the Seed-Mass, and events naturally happen as they were (ordained) to be produced in advance by Him who has calculated that which will come to pass and when and what and how it will be.^[360] And of these there is no leader nor guardian nor demiurge. For that calculation which the Non-Existent One made when he created them suffices for them.

25. When, then, according to them, the whole cosmos and the hypercosmic things were completed, and nothing was lacking, there still remained in the Seed-Mass the [p. 357.] third Sonhood which had been left behind to give and receive benefits in the Seed. And the Sonhood left behind had to be revealed and again established on high above the Boundary Spirit in the presence of the subtler Sonhood and the one that resembles it and the Non-Existent One, as, says he, it is written, “All creation groans and is in travail in expectation of the revelation of the sons of God.”^[361] We spiritual men, he say, left here below for the arrangement and perfect formation and rectification and completion of the souls which by nature have to remain in this [Middle] Space, are the “sons [of God].” “Now from Adam to Moses sin reigned”^[362] as it is written. For the Great Ruler reigned who held sway up to the firmament, thinking that he alone was God, and that there was nothing higher than he. For all things were kept hidden in silence. This, says he, is the mystery which was not known to the earlier generations; but in those times the King and Lord, as it seemed to him, of the universals was [p. 358.] the Great Ruler, the Ogdoad. Yet of this [Middle] Space the Hebdomad was King and Lord, and the Ogdoad is ineffable but the Hebdomad may be named. This Ruler of the Hebdomad, says he, it was who spoke to Moses, saying, “I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the name of God was not made known to them:”^[363] for thus they will have it to have been written – that is to say [the name] of the Ineffable Ogdoad, Ruler, God. All the prophets therefore who were before the Saviour, spoke from that place.^[364] When then, he says, the sons of God had to be revealed to us, about whom, he says, creation groaned and travailed in expectation of the revelation, the Gospel came into the cosmos and passed through every Dominion^[365] and Authority and Lordship and every name which is named. And it came indeed, although nothing descended from on high, nor did the Blessed Sonhood come forth from that Incomprehensible and Blessed God-who-was-Not. But as the Indian naphtha, when only kindled from afar off, takes fire, so from the Formlessness of the heap below do [p. 359.] the powers of the Sonhood extend upward. For as if he were something of naphtha, the son of the Great Ruler of the Ogdoad catches and receives the concepts from the Blessed Sonhood which is beyond the Holy Spirit. For the Power in the midst of the Holy Spirit in the Boundary of the Sonhood distributes the rushing and flowing concepts to the Son of the Great Ruler.^[366]

26. Therefore the Gospel came first from the Sonhood, he says to the Ruler, through his Son who sits beside him, and the Ruler learned that he was not the God of the universals, but was a generated [being] and had above him the outstretched Treasurehouse of the Ineffable and Un-nameable God-who-was-Not and of the Sonhood.^[367] And he was astounded and terrified when he perceived in what ignorance he had been, and this, says [Basilides] is the saying: “The fear of [the] Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”^[368] For he began to be wise when instructed by the Christ seated beside him, and learned what was the Non-Existent One, what the Sonhood, what the Holy Spirit, and what was the constitution^[369] of the universals and how these will be restored.^[370] This is the wisdom spoken of [p. 360.] in mystery, as to which, says he, the Scripture declares: “Not in the words taught by human wisdom, but in the teachings of [the] Spirit.”^[371] Then, says he, the Ruler when he had been instructed and made to fear, confessed thoroughly the sin he had committed in magnifying himself. This, says he, is the saying: “I acknowledge my sin and I know my transgression; upon this I will make full confession for ever.”^[372]

Now when the Great Ruler had been instructed, and every creature of the Ogdoad had been taught and had learned, and the mystery had been made known to those above the heavens, it was still necessary that the Gospel should come to the Hebdomad also, so that the Ruler of the Hebdomad might be instructed in like manner and be evangelized.^[373] The Son of the Great Ruler [therefore] enlightened the Son of the Ruler of the Hebdomad, having caught the light which he had from the Sonhood on high, and the Son of the Ruler of the Hebdomad was enlightened, and the Gospel was announced to the Ruler of the Hebdomad, and he in like manner as has been said was both terrified and made confession. When then all things in the [p. 361.] Hebdomad had been enlightened, and the Gospel had been announced to them – for according to them, the creatures belonging to these spaces are boundless and are Dominions and Powers and Authorities, concerning whom they have a very long story told by many [authors]. And] they imagine that there are there 365 heavens, and Habrasax is their Great Ruler, because his name comprises the cipher 365, wherefore the year consists of that number of days^[374] – but when, says he, these things had come to pass, it was still necessary that our Formlessness should be enlightened and that the mystery unknown to the earlier generations should be revealed to the Sonhood left behind in the Formlessness as if he were an abortion. As, says he, it is written: “By revelation was made known to me the mystery;”^[375] and again, “I heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for man to utter.”^[376] [Thus] the light came down from the [p. 362.] Hebdomad, which had come down from the Ogdoad on high to the Son of the Hebdomad, upon Jesus the son of Mary, and He, having caught it, was enlightened by the light shining upon Him.^[377] This, says he, is the saying: – “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee,” [that is], that which passed from the Sonhood through the Boundary Spirit into the Ogdoad and Hebdomad down to Alary, “and the Power of the Highest shall overshadow thee,”^[378] [that is] the power of the unction^[379] from the Height of the Demiurge on high unto the creation which is of the Son. But, he says, up till that [time] the cosmos was thus constituted, until [the time] when the whole Sonhood left behind in the Formlessness to benefit souls and [itself] to receive benefits should be transformed and follow Jesus, and should go on high and come forth purified, and should become most subtle as it might do by ascension like the First [Sonhood]. For it possesses all the power of attaching itself naturally to the light which shines downward from on high.

27. When therefore, he says, every Sonhood shall have come [forth] and shall be established above the Boundary Spirit, the creation shall then receive pity. For up till now, [p. 363.] he says it wails and is tortured and awaits the revelation of the sons of God, so that all the men of the Sonhood shall ascend from this place. When this shall have come to pass, he says, God shall bring upon the whole cosmos the Great Ignorance, so that all things shall remain as they are by nature, and none shall desire any of those things beyond [its] nature. For all the souls of this space which possess a nature enabling them to remain immortal in this [space] alone, will remain convinced that there is nothing different from nor better than this [space]. Nor will any tidings or knowledge of higher things abide in those below, so that the lower souls shall not be tormented by yearning after the impossible, as if a fish should desire to feed with the sheep on the hills. For, says he, such a desire should it happen to them^[380] would be [their] destruction. Therefore, he says, all things which remain in their own place are imperishable; but perishable if they wish to overleap and rise above [the limits] of their nature. Thus the Ruler of the Hebdomad will know nothing of the things above him. For the Great Ignorance will lay hold of him, so that grief and pain and [p. 364.] sighing will stand off from him, for he will neither desire anything impossible nor will he grieve. And in like manner this Ignorance will lay hold of the Great Ruler of the Ogdoad, and similarly all the creatures subject to him, so that none of them shall grieve and mourn for anything outside his own nature. And this shall be the Restoration of all things established according to nature in the seed of the universals at the beginning, but they shall be restored [each] in their proper season. But [to prove] that everything has its proper season, it is enough to mention the saying of the Saviour: – “Mine hour is not yet come”^[381] and the Magi observing the star. For, says [Basilides] He himself was foretold by the nativity^[382] of the stars and of the return of the hours into the great heap. This is according to them, the spiritual inner man conceived in the natural man – which is the Sonhood who leaves the soul, not to die but to remain as it is by nature, just as the first Sonhood^[383] [p. 365.] left the Holy Spirit which is the Boundary in its appropriate place and then did on his own special soul.^[384]

In order that we may omit nothing of their [doctrines], I will set forth what they say also about (a) Gospel.^[385] Gospel is according to them the knowledge of hypercosmic things, as has been made plain, which the Great Ruler^[386] did not understand. When then there was manifested to him what are the Holy Spirit that is the Boundary, and the Sonhood and the God-who-is-Not the cause of all these, he rejoiced at the words and exulted,^[387] and this according to them is the Gospel. But Jesus according to them was born as we have before said. And He having come into being by the Birth before explained, all those things likewise came to pass with regard to the Saviour as it is written in the Gospels. And these things came to pass [Basilides] says, so that Jesus might become the first-fruits of the sorting-out of the things of the Confusion.^[388] For when the Cosmos was divided into an Ogdoad which is the head of the whole ordered world, [the head whereof is] the Great Ruler, and into a Hebdomad which is the head of the Hebdomad, the Demiurge of the things below him, and into this space of [p. 366.] ours, which is the Formlessness, it was necessary that the things of the Confusion should be sorted out by the discrimination of Jesus.

That which was His bodily part^[389] which was from the Formlessness, therefore suffered^[390] and returned to the Formlessness. And that which was His psychic part which was from the Hebdomad also returned to the Hebdomad. But that which was peculiar to the Height of the Great Ruler ascended and remained with the Great Ruler. And He bore aloft as far as the Boundary Spirit that which was from the Boundary Spirit and it remained with the Boundary Spirit. But the third Sonhood which had been left behind to give and receive benefits was purified by Him, and traversing all these places went on high to the Blessed Sonhood.^[391] For this is the whole theory,^[392] as it were a Confusion of the Seed-Mass and the discrimination [into classes] and the Restoration of the things confused into their proper places. Therefore Jesus became the firstfruits of the discrimination, and the Passion came to pass for no other reason than this discrimination.^[393] For in this manner, he says, all the Sonhood left behind in the Formlessness to give and receive benefits separated into its components in [p. 367.] the same way as [the person] of Jesus was separated. This is what Basilides fables after having lingered in Egypt, and having learned from them [of Egypt] such great wisdom, he brought forth such fruits.^[394]

2. Satornilus^[395]

28. And a certain Satornilus who flourished at the same time as Basilides, but passed his life in Antioch of Syria, taught the same things as Menander.^[396] He says that one father exists unknown to all, who made Angels, Archangels, Powers [and] Authorities. And that from a certain seven angels the cosmos and all things therein came into being. And that man was [the] creation of angels, there having [p. 368.] appeared on high from the Absolute One^[397] a shining image which they could not detain, says Saturnilus, because of its immediate return on high. [Wherefore] they exhorted one another, saying: “Let us make man according to image and resemblance.”^[398] Which, he says, having come to pass, the image could not stand upright by reason of the lack of power among the angels, but grovelled like a worm. Then the Power on high having pity on it, because it had come into being in his likeness, sent forth a spark of life which raised up the man and made him live.^[399] Therefore, says he, the spark of life returns at death to its own kindred and the rest of [man’s] compound parts is resolved into its original elements.^[400] And he supposed the unknown Father^[401] to be unbegotten, bodiless, and formless. But he says that He showed Himself as a phantom in human shape, and that the God of the Jews is one of the angels. And, because the Father wished to depose all the angels, Christ came for the putting-down of the God of the Jews and for the salvation of those who believe on him; and that these [believers] have the spark of life within them. For he says that two [p. 369.] races of men were formed by the angels, one bad and one good. And that since the demons help the bad, the Saviour came for the destruction of the bad men and demons, but for the salvation of the good. And he says that to marry and beget [children] is from Satan. Many of this man’s adherents abstain from things that have had life, through this pretended abstinence (leading astray many).^[402] And they say that the Prophecies were uttered, some by the world-creators, some by Satan whom he supposes to be an angel who works against the world-creators and especially (against) the God of the Jews.^[403] Thus then Satornilus.

3. Concerning Mardon^[404]

[p. 370.] 29. Marcion of Pontns, much madder than these, passing over many opinions of the majority and pressing on to the more shameless, supposed that there were two principles of the All,^[405] one good and the other bad. And he, thinking that he was bringing in some new [doctrine], manufactured a school filled with folly and of Cynic life, being himself a lewd one.^[406] He thought that the multitude would not notice that he chanced to be a disciple not of Christ, but of Empedocles, who was very much earlier, and he laid down and taught that there were two causes of the All, [i.e.] Strife and Love.^[407] For what says Empedocles on the conduct of the cosmos? If we have said it before,^[408] yet I will not now keep silence, if only for the sake of comparing the heresy of this plagiarist^[409] [with the source]. He says [p. 371.] that all the elements of which the cosmos was compounded and consists are six, to wit: – two material, [viz.] Air and Water; two instruments, whereby the material elements are arranged^[410] and changed about, [viz.] Fire and Air; and two which work with the instruments and fashion matter, [viz.] Strife and Love. He says something like this: –

Hear first the four roots of all things:

Shining Zeus and life-bearing Here and Aidoncus.

And Nestis who wets with tears the source of mortals.^[411]

Zeus is fire and life-bearing Here the earth which bears fruits for the support of life. But Aidoneus is the air, because while beholding all things through it, it alone we do not see. And Nestis is water, since it is the only vehicle of food, and therefore the becoming cause of all growing things,^[412] yet cannot nourish them by itself. For if it could so give nourishment, he says, living things^[413] could never die of hunger, for there is always abundance of water in the cosmos.^[414] Whence he calls water Nestis, because it is a becoming cause of nourishment, yet cannot itself nourish growing things. These things then are, to sum them up in outline, those which comprise the foundation^[415] of the cosmos [i.e.] water and Earth from which all things come, Fire and Spirit^[416] the tools and agents, and Strife and Love [p. 372.] which fashion all things with skill. And Love is a certain peace and even mindedness and natural affection,^[417] which determines that the cosmos shall be perfect and complete; but Strife ever rends asunder that which is one and divides it and makes many things out of one. Therefore the cause of the whole creation is Strife, which [cause] he calls baneful, that is deadly.^[418] For it takes care that through every aeon, its creation persists. And Strife the deadly is the Demiurge and maker of all things which have come into being by birth; but Love, of their leading-forth from the cosmos and transformation and return to unity.^[419] Concerning which, Empedocles [says] that there are two immortal and unbegotten things which have never yet had a source of existence. He speaks, however, somehow like this: –

For it was aforetime and will be; never, I ween,

Will the unquenchable aeon lack these two.^[420]

[p. 373.] But what are these two? Strife and Love. For they had no source of existence, but pre-existed and ever were, being through their unbegotten nature incorruptible. But Fire [and Water] and Earth and Air die and again come to life. For when the things which have come into being through Strife die, Love takes them and leads them and adds and attaches them to the All,^[421] so that the All may remain One, being ever marshalled by Love in one fashion and form. Yet when Love creates the One from many things, and arianges the things which have been scattered in the One, Strife again rends them away from the One, and makes them [into] many, that is, Fire, Whiter, Earth [and] Air, whence are produced animals and plants and whatever parts of the cosmos we perceive. And concerning the form^[422] of the cosmos as ordered by Love, he speaks somehow like this: –

For not from the back do two arms^[423] spring

[p. 374.] Nor feet nor active knees, nor hairy genitals,

But it was a sphere and everywhere alike.^[424]

Such things [does] Love, and turns out the most beautiful form of the world as One from many; but Strife rends gradually from that One the principle of its arrangement, and again makes it [into] many. This is what Empedocles says of his own birth: –

Of whom I also am now a fugitive and an exile from the gods.^[425]

That is, he calls the One divine, and says that the. unity formerly existing in the One was rent asunder by Strife and came into being in these many things, existing according to Strife’s ordering. For, says he, Strife is the furious and troublous and unresting Demiurge of this cosmos, whose [fashioner] Empedocles calls it. For this is the judgment [p. 375.] and compulsion of the souls which Strife rends away from the One and fashions and works up, which process [Empedocles] describes somehow like this: –

Who having sinned swore falsely

And demons are allotted long-drawn out life.^[426]

calling the long-lived souls “demons” because they are immortal and live through long ages.

For three myriad seasons they wandered from the blessed,^[427]

calling “blessed” those whom Love has made from the many into the oneness of the intelligible^[428] cosmos. Therefore, says [Empedocles] they wandered

Putting on in time all mortal forms^[429]

Interchanging the hard ways of life.^[430] [p. 376.]

He says that the transmigrations and transmutations of the souls into bodies are “hard ways.” This is what he says: –

Interchanging the hard ways of life.

For [the souls pass from body to body] being changed about and punished by Strife and are not allowed to remain in the One, but are punished in all punishments by Strife. This is what he says: –

For actherial might drives souls seawards.

And sea spits them upon Earth’s surface; and Earth into the beams

Of the radiant Sun, and he casts them into the whirls of aether

Each takes them from the other, but all hate them.^[431]

[p. 377.] This is the punishment wherewith the Demiurge punishes, just as a smith forging iron, taking it from the fire, dips it in water. For Fire is the aether, whence the Demiurge casts the souls into the Sea; and the Earth is the ground. Whence he says, from water to Earth, from Earth to Air. This is what he says: –

into the beams

Of the radiant Sun. and he casts them into the whirls of aether

Each takes them from the other, but all hate them.

Therefore, according to Empedocles, Love gathers the hated and tortured and punished souls together into this world. For [Love] is good and has pity on their wailing and the disorder and wickedness created by furious Strife. And she hastens and toils to lead them forth quickly out of the world and to settle them in the One, so that all things brought together by her may come to oneness. It [p. 378.] is then by reason of this arrangement of this much-divided^[432] world by deadly Strife, that Empedocles exhorts his disciples to abstain from all things which have life. For he says that the bodies of animals which are eaten are the dwellings of punished souls, and he teaches those who hear such [his] words to refrain^[433] from companying with women, so that they may not cooperate and help in the deeds which Strife effects, ever undoing and rending asunder the work of Love.

Empedocles says that this is the greatest law of the government of the All, speaking somehow thus: –

There is a thing of Necessity, an ancient decree of the gods.

Eternal and sealed with broad oaths.^[434]

thus calling Necessity the change by Strife of the One into many and that by Love of many into the One. He says, indeed, that there are four mortal gods, Fire, Water, Earth and Air; and two immortal unbegotten and enemies one to the other for ever [viz.] Strife and Love; and that Strife is ever unjust and grasping and rends asunder what belongs to Love and takes it to itself; and that Love is ever [p. 379.] good and anxious for unity and calls back to herself and leads and makes one the things rent asunder from the All and tortured and punished in creation by the Demiurge. In some such way does Empedocles philosophize for us on the genesis of the Cosmos and its destruction and its constitution established from good and evil.

And he says that there is a certain conceivable^[435] third power which may be conceived^[436] from these, speaking somehow like this:–

For if having fixed these things with knowing mind^[437]

You behold them favourably with pure attention

They all will be present with you throughout the age

But many others will come forth from these. For they will increase

Each into a habit as is the nature of each.^[438]

And if you desire such other things as are among men

A myriad woes arise and dull the edge of care

Take heed lest they leave you suddenly as time rolls on. [p. 380]

Yearning to join their own beloved race

For know that all things have perception and an allotted share of mind.^[439]

30. When therefore Marcion or any of his dogs shall bay against the Demiurge, bringing forward arguments from the comparison of good and evil, they should be told that neither the Apostle Paul nor Mark of the maimed finger^[440] reported these things. For none of them is written in the Gospel [according] to Mark; [and] Marcion, having stolen them from Empedocles of Agrigentum, the son of Meto, thought until now to conceal the fact that he had taken the whole arrangement of his heresy from Sicily, [after] having transferred the actual words of Empedocles to the Gospel discourses. For now, О Marcion, since you have [p. 381.] made antithesis^[441] of good and evil, I also to-day, following up the teachings you have secretly borrowed^[442] set them over against [the originals]. Thou sayest that the Demiurge of the cosmos is wicked.^[443] Dost thou not then feel shame in teaching to the Church the words of Empedocles? Thou sayest that there is a good God who destroys the creations of the Demiurge. Dost thou not then clearly preach as good news^[444] to thy hearers the good Dove of Empedocles? Thou dost forbid marriage and the begetting of children and [lost order thy hearers] to abstain from the meats which God has created for the participation of the faithful and of those who know the truth,^[445] having purposely forgotten that thou art teaching the purifications of Empedocles. For, following him as you truly do throughout, you teach your own disciples^[446] to avoid meats, lest they should eat some body covering a soul punished by the Demiurge. You dissolve marriages joined by God, [thus] following the teachings of Empedocles so that you may preserve the work of Love undissevered. For marriage according to Empedocles dissevers the One and creates many as we have shown.^[447]

31. The earliest and least altered^[448] heresy of Marcion, [p. 382.] comprising the mingling of good and evil, has been shown by us to be that of Empedocles. But since in our own time, a certain Prepon the Assyrian,^[449] a Marcionite, in a book addressed to Bardesianes the Armenian, has undertaken discourses on this heresy, I will not keep silence about this either. Considering that there is a third principle, just and set between good and evil, Prepon also does not thus succeed in escaping the teaching of Empedocles. For Empedocles says that the cosmos is governed by wicked Strife, and the other conceivable [world] by Love, while between the two opposed^[450] principles is a just Logos, by whom the things severed by Strife are brought together and are attached by Love to the One. But this same just Logos, who fights on the side of Love, Empedocles proclaims as [p. 383.] a Muse and invokes her to fight on his side, speaking somehow thus: –

If for creatures of a day, О deathless Muse.

Thou art pleased to relieve our cares by thought,

Be propitious once more to my prayer, Calliope!

For I show forth a pious discourse of [the] blessed gods.^[451]

Following this up, Marcion repudiates altogether our Saviour’s Birth, thinking it out of the cjuestion that a creature^[452] of destructive Strife should become the Logos fighting on the side of Love, that is of the Good. But he said that without birth, in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, He came down from on high to teach in the synagogues, being between evil and good. For if He is [p. 384.] a Mediator,^[453] he says, He is freed from all nature of evil, for evil, as he says, is the Demiurge and all his works. But He was freed also, he says, from the nature of good, so that He might be a Mediator, as Paul says,^[454] which he himself confessed fin the saying] “Why callest thou me good? there is one Good.”

These then are Marcion’s doctrines, whereby he has caused many to err by making use of the words of Empedocles and transferring the philosophy stolen from that person to his own teaching. Thus] he has compounded a godless heresy which I think has been sufficiently refuted by us. Nor [do we think] that we have omitted anything of those who, having stolen [opinions] from the Greeks, insolently oppose the disciples of Christ, as if these last had become their teachers of these things. But since it seems to us that the opinions of this [Marcion] have been sufficiently exposed,^[455] let us see what Carpocrates says.

[p. 385.]

4. Carpocrates^[456]

32. Carpocrates says that the cosmos and the things which are therein, came into being by angels much below the unbegotten Father, but that Jesus was begotten by Joseph and was born like other men, though more just than the rest. And that His soul having been born strong and pure remembered what it had seen in the sphere of the unbegotten God;^[457] and that therefore a power was sent down to it from that [Deity], so that by its means it might escape from the world-making angels. And that this [soul]^[458] having passed through them all and having been freed from them went on high to the presence of the unbegotten Father, and so will the souls^[459] [go] who cleave to similar things. And they say that the soul of Jesus, although lawfully trained in Jewish customs, disdained them and therefore received the powers whereby He made of none effect^[460] the passions attached to men for their punishment. And that therefore the soul which like that of Christ can [p. 386.] disdain the world-making rulers, receives in the same way power to do like things. Whence also they reach such [a pitch of] vanity as to say they are like unto Jesus, and even that they are mightier than man, and some of them more excellent than His disciples, such as Peter and Paul and the rest of the Apostles, and that they are in nothing behind Jesus. Put that their souls having come from the Transcendent Authority^[461] and therefore similarly disdaining the world-makers, are worthy of the same power [as He] and will go to the same place. But that if anyone should disdain more than He the things below, he might become more excellent than He.

They practise, then, magic arts, and incantations and [use] [p. 387.] philtres and love-feasts, and familiar spirits and dreamsenders and other evil works, thinking that they already have authority to lord it over the rulers and makers of this world, nay even over all created in it. Who have themselves been sent forth by Satan for the dishonour^[462] of the divine name of the Church before the Gentiles, so that men hearing in one way or another of their doctrines and thinking that we are all even as they, may turn away their ears from the preaching of the Truth, for] beholding their deeds, may speak evil of ns all.

And they consider that [their] souls will change their bodies until they have fulfilled all their transgressions; but that when nothing is left undone, they will be set free to depart to the presence of the God who is above the world-making angels, and that thus all souls will be saved. But if any anticipating matters should combine all transgressions [p. 388.] in one advent,^[463] they will no longer change their bodies, but as having paid all penalties at once, will be freed from further birth in a body. Some of them also brand their disciples in the back part of the lobe of the right ear. And they make^[464] images of Christ saying that they were made [in the time] of Pilate.^[465]

5. Cerinthus^[466]

But a certain Cerinthus, having been trained in the schooling of the Egyptians, said that the cosmos did not come into being by the First God, but by a certain Power derived from the Authority set over the universals, which is yet ignorant of the God who is over all. And he supposed Jesus not to have been begotten from a virgin, but to have been born the son of Joseph and Mary like all other men, [p. 389.] and to have been more wise and just than they. And that, at the Baptism, the Christ in the form of a dove descended upon Him from the Absolute Power^[467] which is over the universals. And that then He announced^[468] the unknown Father and perfected His own powers; but that in the end the Christ stood away from Jesus, and Jesus suffered and rose again;^[469] but that the Christ being spiritual remained impassible.

6. Ebionaei^[470]

34. But the Ebionaei admit that the cosmos came into being by the God who is; and concerning Christ they invent^[471] the same things as Cerinthus and Carpocrates. They live according to Jewish customs, thinking that they will be justified by the Law and saying that Jesus was justified in practising^[472] the Law. Wherefore He was named by God Christ and Jesus, since none of them has fulfilled the Law. For if any other had practised the command [p. 390.] ments which are in the Law, he would be the Christ. And they say it is possible for them if they do likewise to become Christs; and that He was a man like unto all [men].

7. Theodotus the Byzantian^[473]

35. Put a certain Byzantine named Theodotus brought in a new heresy, asserting things about the beginning of the All which partly agree with [the account of] the True Church, since he admits that all things came into being by God. But having taken^[474] his [idea of] Christ from the school of the Gnostics and from Cerinthus and Ebion,^[475] he considers He appeared in some such fashion as this: – Jesus was a man begotten from a virgin according to the Father’s will, living the common life of all men. And having become most pious,^[476] He at length on His baptism in Jordan received the Christ from on high, who descended in the [p. 391.] form of a dove. Wherefore the powers within Him did not become active, until the Spirit which came down was manifested in Him, which [Spirit] declared Him to be the Christ. But some will have it that He did not become God on the descent of the Spirit; and others that [this took place] on His resurrection from the dead.

8. Another Theodotus

36. But while different enquiries were taking place among them^[477] a certain man who was also called Theodotus, a money-changer by trade, undertook to say that a certain Melchizedek was the greatest power, and that he was greater than Christ. After the image of whom they allege that Christ happened [to come]. And they like the Theodotians before mentioned say that Jesus was a man, and in the same words [declare] that the Christ descended upon Him.

But the opinions^[478] of Gnostics are varied, and we do not [p. 392.] deem it worth while to recount in detail their foolish doctrines, composed of much absurdity and charged with blasphemy, the most respectable of which those Greeks who philosophized on the Divine have refuted. But one cause of the great conspiracy of these wicked ones was Nicolaus, one of the seven appointed to the diaconate by the Apostles.^[479] He, having fallen away from the right doctrine, taught that it was indifferent how men lived and ate: whose disciples having waxed insolent, the Holy Spirit exposed in the Apocalypse as fornicators and eaters of things offered to idols.^[480]

9. Cerdo and Lucian^[481]

37. But a certain Cerdo taking in like manner his starting point from these [heretics] and from Simon, says that the God announced by Moses and [the] Prophets was not the [p. 393.] Father of Jesus Christ. For that this God was known, but the Father of the Christ unknowable; and that the first-named was [only] just, but the other, good. The doctrine of this [Cerdo] Marcion confirmed when he took in hand the Antitheses^[482] and everything which seemed to him to speak against the Demiurge of all things. And so did Lucian his disciple.

10. Apelles^[483]

38. Now Apelles who [sprang] from among these men, says thus: – There is a certain good God as Marcion supposed; but he who created all things is [only] just; and there is a third [God] who spoke to Moses, and yet a fourth, a cause of evil. And he names these angels and speaks ill of the Law and the Prophets, deeming the Scriptures of human authorship and false. And he picks out of the Gospels and Epistles the things favourable to him. Yet he clings to the discourses of a certain Philumena as the manifestations^[484] [p. 394.] of a prophetess. And he says that the Christ came down from the powers on high, i.e. from the Good One and was the son of that One, and was not begotten from a virgin, nor did He appear bodiless;^[485] but that taking parts from every substance^[486] of the All, He made a body, that is from hot and cold and wet and dry. And that in this body He lived unnoticed by the cosmic authorities during the time that lie spent in the cosmos. And moreover that having been crucified^[487] by the Jews He died, and after three days rose again and appeared to the disciples showing the marks of the nails and [the wound in his side, and thereby convinced them that He existed and was not a phantom but was incarnate. The flesh [Apelles] says, which He showed, He gave back to the earth whence was its substance, and He desired nothing of others, but merely used [the flesh] for a season. He gave back to each its own, having loosed again the bond of the body, i.e. the hot to the hot, the cold to the cold, the wet to the wet and the dry to the dry,^[488] and thus passed to the presence of the good Father, leaving the seed of life to the world to those who believe through the disciples.^[489]

39. It seems to us that we have set forth sufficiently these [p. 395.] things also. But since we have decided to leave unrefuted no doctrines taught by any [heretic], let us see what has been excogitated by the Docetae.

Book VIII: The Docetae, Monoimus, and others

[p. 396.] 1. These are the contents of the 8th [Book] of the Refutation of all Heresies.

2. What are the opinions of the Docetae,^[490] and that they teach things which they say are from the Physicist Philosophy.^[491]

3. How Monoimus speaks foolishly, giving heed to poets and geometricians and arithmeticians.

4. How Tatian’s [heresy] sprang from the opinions of Valentinus and Marcion wherefrom he compounded his own. And that Hermogenes has made use of the teachings of Socrates, not of Christ.

5. How those err who contend that Easter should be celebrated on the 14th day [of the month].

6. What is the error of the Phrygians, who think Montanus and Priscilla and Maximilla to be prophets.

7. What is the vain doctrine of the Encratites, and that [p. 397.] their teachings are compounded not out of the Holy Scriptures, but from their own [views] and from those of the Gymnosopbists among the Indians.^[492]

1. The Docetae

8. Since the many, making no use of the Lord’s counsel, while having the beam^[493] in their eye, yet give out that they can see, it seems to us that we should not be silent as to their doctrines. So that they, being brought to shame by our forthcoming refutation, shall recognize how the Saviour counselled them to take away the beam from their own eye, and then to see clearly the straw which was in their brother’s eye. Now, therefore, having set forth sufficiently and adequately the opinions of most of the heretics in the seven books before this, we shall not now be silent upon those which follow. Exhibiting the ungrudging grace of the Holy Spirit, we shall also refute those who seem to have attained security. They call themselves Docetae and teach [p. 398.] thus: – The first God^[494] is as it were the seed of a fig, in size altogether of the smallest, but in power boundless, a magnitude unreckoned in quantity, lacking nothing for bringing forth, a refuge for the fearful, a covering for the naked, or veil for shame, a fruit sought for, whereto, he says, the Seeker came thrice and found not.^[495] Wherefore, he says, He cursed the fig-tree,^[496] so that that sweet fruit was not found on it, [i.e.] the fruit that was sought for. And [the seed being, so to speak briefly, of such a nature and so old [yet] small and without magnitude, the cosmos came into being from God, as they think, in some such way as this: – The branches of the tree becoming tender, put forth leaves, as is seen, and fruit follows, wherein is preserved the [p. 399.] innumerable [and] stored-up seed of the fig. We think, therefore, that three things first come into being from the seed of the fig, the stem which is the fig-tree, leaves, and the fruit or fig, as we have before said. Thus, says he, three Aeons came into being as principles from the First Principle of the universals.^[497] And on this, he says, Moses was not silent, when he said that the words of God were three: “Darkness, cloud and whirlwind and he added no more.”^[498] For, he says, God added nothing to the Three Aeons, but they sufficed and do suffice for all things which come into being. But God Himself abides by Himself and far removed from all the Aeons.^[499]

When, therefore, each of these Aeons, he says, bad received a principle of generation, as has been said, it little by little increased and grew great and became perfect. Now they think that the perfect number [is] ten.^[500] Then the Aeons having come into being equal in number and perfection, as they think, they were thirty Aeons in all,^[501] each of them being complete in a decad. But they are divided and the three having equal honour among themselves, differ in position only, because one of them is first, [p. 400.] another second, and another third. But this position produced a difference of power. For he who is nearest to the First God – to the seed as it were – chances to have a power more fruitful than the others, he who is the Immeasureable One having measured himself ten times in magnitude. And the Incomprehensible One, who has become second in position to the first, comprehended himself six times. And the third in position, becoming removed to an infinite distance by reason of his brethren’s dilatation, conceived^[502] himself three times and, as it were, bound himself by a certain eternal bond of unity.^[503]

9. And this they think is the Saviour’s saying: – “The sower went forth to sow and that which fell upon good and fair ground made some 100, some 60, and some 30.”^[504] And hence, says he, He said, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” because this is not what all understand.^[505] All these Aeons [to wit] the Three and all the boundlessly boundless ones [who come] from them, are masculo-feminine ones.^[506] Therefore having increased and become great, and all of them being from that one first seed of their concord and unity, and all becoming together one Aeon, they all [p. 401.] begat from the one Virgin Mary, the begettal common to them all, a Saviour in the midst of them all,^[507] of equal power in everything with the seed of the fig, save that He was begotten. But that first seed whence is born the fig is unbegotten. Then those three Aeons having been adorned^[508] with all virtue and holiness, as these teachers think, all the conceivable, lacking-nothing, nature of that Only-Begotten^[509] Son – for He alone was born to the boundless Aeons by a triple generation: for three immeasureable Aeons with one mind begot Him – was adorned also. But all these conceivable and eternal things were Light; but the Light was not formless and idle, nor did it lack anything superadded to it: but it contained within itself the boundless forms of the various animals here below corresponding in number to the boundlessly boundless after the pattern of the fig-tree. And it shone from on high into [p. 402.] the underlying chaos. And this [chaos], being at once illuminated and given form from the various forms on high, received consistence^[510] and took all the supernal forms from the Third Aeon who had tripled himself.^[511] But this Third Aeon, seeing all the types^[512] that were his at once intercepted in the underlying darkness beneath, and not being ignorant of the power of the darkness and the simplicity and generosity^[513] of the light, would not allow the shining types from on high to be drawn far down by the darkness beneath. But he subjected [the Firmament] to the Aeons. Then, having fixed it below, he divided in twain the darkness and the light.^[514] “And he called the light which is above the firmament, Day, and the darkness he called Night.”^[515] Therefore, as I have said, when all the boundless forms of the Third Aeon were intercepted in this lowest darkness, and the impress^[516] of that same Aeon was stamped upon it along with the rest, a living fire came from the light whence the Great Ruler came into being [p. 403.] of whom Moses says: “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth.”^[517] Moses says that this fiery God^[518] spoke from the bush, that is from the darksome air, for batos [bush] is the whole air which underlies the darkness. But it is batos, says Moses according to him, because all the forms of light go from on high downwards, having the air as a passage.^[519] And the word from the bush is no less recognized by us. For a sound significant of speech is reverberating air, without which human speech could not be recognized. And not only does our word from the bush, that is from the air, make laws for and be a fellowcitizen with us, but also odours and colours manifest their powers to us through the air.

10. Then this fiery God – the fire born from the light – made the cosmos, as Moses says, in this manner, he being substanceless,^[520] [and] darkness having the substance and being ever silent towards the eternal types of the light which are intercepted below.^[521] Therefore, until the Saviour’s manifestation, there was a certain great wandering of souls by reason of the God of the Light, the fiery Demiurge. For the forms are called souls, having been cooled down^[522] from the things above and they continue in darkness to change about from body to body under the supervision of the Demiurge. And that this is so, we may know from [p. 404.] the words of Job: “And I also am a wanderer from place to place and from house to house.”^[523] The Saviour also says: “And if you will receive it, this is the Elias who shall come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”^[524] But by the Saviour, change of bodies has been made to cease; and faith is preached for the putting-away of transgressions.^[525] In some such way that Only-Begotten Son beholding from on high the forms of the Aeons changing about in the darksome bodies willed to come down for their deliverance. When He saw that the multitude of Aeons could not bear to behold without ceasing the Pleroma of ah the Aeons, but remained as mortals dreading corruption,^[526] being held by the greatness and glory of power, He drew Himself together as a very great flash in a very small body, or rather, like the light of the eye drawn together under the eyelids, and goes forth to the [p. 405.] heaven and the shining stars. And there He again withdraws Himself under the eyelids at His pleasure. Thus does the light of the eye, and although it is everywhere present and is all things to us, it is invisible; but we see only the lids of the eye, the white corners, a broad membrane of many folds and fibres, a horn-like coat, and under this a berry-like pupil, both net-like and disk-like, and if there are any other coats to the light of the eye, it is enwrapped and lies hidden within them.

Thus, he says, the Only-Begotten Son, eternal on high, did on Himself (a form) corresponding to each Aeon of the Three Aeons, and being in the triacontad of Aeons, came into the world of the Decad^[527] being of such age and as little as we have said, invisible, unknown, without glory and not believed upon. In order then, say the Docetae,^[528] that he might do on also the Outer Darkness which is the flesh, an angel came down with Him from [p. 406.] on high and made announcement^[529] to Mary as it is written, and He was born from her as it is written. And He who came from on high put on that which was born, and did all things as it is written in the Gospels; and was baptized in Jordan. And he was baptized, receiving the type and seal in the water of the body born from the Virgin, in order that when the Ruler should condemn the form which was his to death, to the Cross, that soul which had grown up within the body should strip off that body and affix it to the Tree. And thus (the soul) having triumphed by its means over the Principles and Authorities would not he found naked, but would put on that body reflected in the likeness of that flesh in the water when He was baptized. This he says, is the Saviour’s saying: “Unless a man be born of water and of [the] Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of the heavens; because that which is born of the flesh is flesh.”^[530]

From the thirty Aeons, then, He did on thirty forms. Wherefore that Eternal One was thirty years on the earth, every Aeon being manifested in his own year. And souls are all the forms which have been intercepted from each of the thirty Aeons, and each of them possesses a nature [p. 407.] capable of understanding the Jesus who exists according to nature which that Only-Begotten One from the eternal places puts on. But these places are different. Therefore so many heresies contending [with each other] about it, seek Jesus. And He is claimed^[531] by them all, but is seen differently by each from the different places. Towards whom, he says, each [soul] is borne and hurries, thinking that she is alone. Who is indeed her kinsman and fellowcitizen. Whom she beholding for the first time recognizes as her own brother and all the rest as bastards. Those then who have their nature from the lower places cannot see the forms of the Saviour above them. But those on high, he says, from the middle Decad and the most excellent Ogdoad^[532] – whence, say they, we are – know Jesus the Saviour not in part but wholly, and are alone the Perfect from above, while the others are only partly so.

11. I think then that this is for right-thinking persons [p. 408.] sufficient for the knowledge of the complicated and inconsistent heresy of the Docetae – those who attempt to make arguments about inaccessible and incomprehensible matter calling themselves thus. Certain of whom do not only seem^[533] to be mad; and we have proved that the beam from such matter has entered their own eye, if they are anyhow able to see clearly; and, if not, they will be unable to blind others. Whose dogma the early sophists of Greece anticipated in many points of sophistry, as our readers will understand. These then are the teachings of the Docetae.^[534] It seems right also that we should not keep silence as to the [teachings] of Monoimus.

2. Monoimus

Monoimus the Arab^[535] was a long way off^[536] the glory of the great-voiced poet; for he thinks that some such man as Oceanus existed, of whom the poet speaks somehow like this: –

Oceanus, the birth of gods and birth of man.^[537] [p. 409.]

Turning this into other words, he says that a Man is the All which is the source of the universals, [being] unbegotten, incorruptible, and eternal; and that there is a Son of the aforesaid Alan, who is begotten, and capable of suffering, being born in a timeless, unwilled, and previously undefined way. For such, says he, is the Power of that Man. And when it was so, the son of the Power came into being more quickly than reasoning or counsel. And this is, he says, the saying in the Scriptures: “He was and came into being,”^[538] which is: Man was and his son came into being, as if one were to say: Fire was and Light came into being in a timeless, unwilled, and previously undefined way, while being at the same time fire. Put this Man is a single monad, uncompounded [and] undifferentiated, [and yet] compounded [and] differentiated, loving and at peace with all things, [and yet] fighting with and at war with all things before him,^[539] unlike and like, as it were a certain musical harmony which contains whatever one may say or leave [p. 410.] unsaid, showing all things and giving birth to all things. “This is Father, this is Mother, Two Immortal names.”^[540] But for the sake of an instance, conceive, he says, as the greatest image of the Perfect Man, the one tittle which is one tittle uncompounded, simple, a pure monad having no composition whatever from anything, [yet] compounded of many forms, of many parts. That undivided One, he says, is the many-faced and myriad-eyed and myriad-named one tittle of the Iota,^[541] which is an image of that Perfect and Invisible Man.

13. The one tittle, he says, is then the monad and a decad. For by this power of the one tittle of the Iota [are produced] also [the] dyad and triad and tetrad and pentad and hexad and heptad and ogdoad and ennead up to the ten. For these are the diversified numbers dwelling within that simple and uncompounded tittle of the [p. 411.] Iota. And this is the saying: – “Because it pleased the whole Pleroma to dwell within the Son of Man bodily.”^[542] For such compounds of numbers from the simple and uncompounded one tittle of the Iota become he says bodily hypostases. Therefore, he says, the Son of Man was born from the Perfect Man, whom none know. But, he says, every creature who is ignorant of the Son, represents Him as the offspring of a woman. Of which Son some shadowy rays come very close to this world and secure and control change [of bodies and] birth. And the beauty of that Son of Man is till now unrevealed to all men who are misled as to the offspring of a woman. Nothing then of the things here come into being, he says, from that Man, nor will they ever do so; but all things that have come into being have done so not from the whole, but from some part of the Son of Man. For, says he, the Son of Man is one Iota, one tittle flowing from on high, full, and filling full all things, and containing within itself whatever the Man, Father of the Son of Man possesses.^[543]

14. Now the cosmos, as Moses says, came into being in six days, that is, in six powers which are in the one tittle of the Iota.^[544] [But] the seventh, a rest and a Sabbath, came into being from the Hebdomad which is over Earth and Water and Fire and Air, out of which the cosmos came into being by the one tittle. For the cubes and the octahedrons, and [the] pyramids and all the figures like these of which Fire, Air, Water, [and earth] consist, came into being from the numbers which are comprised in that single tittle of the Iota, which is a Perfect Son of a Perfect Man. When then, says he, Moses says that (the) rod was turned about in different ways for the plagues on Egypt,^[545] these [plagues], he says, are symbols allegorizing the Creation. [For] he does not use the rod which is one tittle of the Iota, duplex and varied, as a figure^[546] for more plagues than ten. This Creation of the world, he says, is the ten plagues.^[547] For everything struck produces and bears fruit as, for instance, [p. 413.] vine-shoots. Man, he says, has burst forth from Man, and was severed from him by a certain blow,^[548] so that he might be born and might declare the Law which Moses laid down after having received it from Cod. The Law is according to that one tittle, the Decalogue which allegorizes the divine mysteries of the words. For, says he, the Ten Plagues and the Decalogue^[549] are the whole knowledge of the universals which none has known who has been misled concerning the offspring of the woman. And if you say that the whole Law is a Pentateuch, it is [still] from the pentad which is comprised in the one tittle. But the whole Law is for those who have not thoroughly crippled their understanding [a] mystery, a new feast not yet grown old, legal and eternal, a Passover of the Lord God kept unto our generations by those who can see [and] beginning on the 14th [day] which is the beginning, he says, of the decad from which they reckon.^[550] For the monad up to 14 is the sum total of the one tittle of the perfect number. And one + two + three + four become ten, wherefore it is the [p. 414.] one tittle. But from fourteen up to twenty-one, a hebdomad subsists in the one tittle, the unleavened creature of the world in all these.^[551] For what, says he, should the one tittle want of any substance like leaven for the Passover of the Lord, the eternal feast which is given for generations. For the whole cosmos and all the causes of creation are the Passover Feast of the Lord. For God rejoices in the transmutation of creation which is wrought under the strokes of the one tittle. The which is the rod of Moses given by God, which strikes the Egyptians and changes the bodies, as did the hand of Moses, from water into blood. And the other [plagues] are in nearly the same way [such as that of the] locusts, wherefore change of the elements he calls flesh into grass: “for all flesh is grass,”^[552] he says. [p. 415.]. But none the less do these men in some such way receive the whole Law. Following, perhaps, as it seems to me, the Greeks who say that there are Substance and Quality and Quantity and Relation and Position and Action and Possession and Passion.^[553]

15. So for example Monoimus himself says distinctly in his letter to Theophrastus:^[554] “Leave aside enquiry concerning God and Creation and the like, and enquire about Him from thyself, and learn who it is who simply makes His own all that is within thee, saying ‘My God, my mind, my understanding, my soul, my body.’ Learn also what are grief and rejoicing, and love and hate, and undesired watching and sleep, and undesired anger and love. And if,” says he, “thou dost carefully seek out this, thou wilt find Him in thyself [as both] one and many things after the likeness of that one tittle, he finding the outlet for Himself.”^[555] This then is what these [men] say, which we are under no necessity to compare with what has been before excogitated by the Greeks. Since it is plain from [p. 416.] their statements that they have their origin from the geometrical and arithmetical art, which the disciples of Pythagoras set forth more excellently. As the reader may learn in the passages where we have before explained all the wisdom of the Greeks.

But since we have sufficiently refuted Monoimtis,^[556] let us see what others have elaborated who wish thereby to raise for themselves an idle name.

3. Tatian

16. But Tatian, although himself, a disciple of Justin Martyr, was not of like mind with his master, but attempted something new. He says that there were certain Aeons [about whom] he fables in the like way with the Valentinians. But in the same way as Marcion he says that marriage is destruction. And he asserts that Adam will not be saved, through his becoming a leader of rebellion. And thus Tatian.^[557]

4. Hermogenes

17. A certain Herinogenes^[558] thinking also to devise some [p. 417.] thing new, says that God created all things from co-existent and ungenerated matter. For he held it impossible that God should create the things that are from those that are not. And that God is ever Lord and Maker, but Matter ever a slave and [in process of] becoming. But yet not all [matter], for, as it was being borne about violently and disorderly, He set it in order in this manner. Beholding it boiling like a pot on the fire, He divided it into parts; and that part which he took from the All He reclaimed, and the other He allowed to be borne about disorderly. And the reclaimed part, he says, is the cosmos; and that the other remains waste and is called acosmic^[559] matter. He says that this is the essence^[560] of all things, as if he were [p. 418.] introducing a new doctrine to his disciples: but he does not consider that this fable happens to be Socratic, and is better worked out by Plato than by Hermogenes. But he confesses that Christ is the Son of the God who created all things, and that He was begotten of the Virgin and of Spirit according to the [common] voice of the Gospels. Who after He had suffered rose again in a body and appeared to His disciples, and ascending to the heavens, left His body in the Sun, but Himself went on into the presence of the Father. And in witness of this,^[561] be thinks he is corroborated by the word which David the Psalmist spake: “In the Sun he set up his tent, and like a bridegroom coming forth from his bridal chamber, he will rejoice like a giant to run his course.”^[562] This then is what Hermogenes attempts.^[563]

5. About the Quartodecimans^[564]

18. But certain others, lovers of strife by nature, unskilled in knowledge, very quarrelsome by habit, maintain [p. 419.] that the Passover ought to be kept on the 14th day of the First Month, according to the ordinance of the Law, on whatever day [of the week] it may fall. They have regard [merely] to that which has been written in the Law: [that is] that he will be accursed who does not keep it as it is laid down. They pay no attention to the fact that it was enacted for the Jews, who were to kill the True Passover. Which [Law] has spread to the Gentiles and is understood by faith, not kept strictly in the letter. They pay attention to this one commandment, but do not regard the saying of the Apostle: “For I bear witness to every man who is circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole Law.”^[565] In other matters they agree concerning all things handed down to the Church by the Apostles.

6. Phrygians^[566]

19. But there are others also very heretical by nature, Phrygians by race, who have fallen away after being deceived by certain women, Priscilla and Maximilla by name, whom [p. 420.] they imagine to be prophetesses. Into these they say the Spirit Paraclete has entered and they likewise glorify [even] above these one Montanus as a prophet. Having endless books of their own, they are not judging what is said in them according to reason, nor giving heed to those capable of judgment; but, carried along heedlessly by the faith that they have in them, imagine that they learn more through them than from the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospels. They glorify these wenches^[567] above Apostles and every grace,^[568] since some of them dare to say that there are those among them who have become greater than Christ. They confess that God is the Father of the universals, and the creator of all things in the same way as [does] the Church, and also [confess] whatever the Gospel testifies concerning Christ. But they innovate in the matter of feasts and fasts and the eating of vegetable food and roots,^[569] thinking that they have learned this from the women. And some of them, agreeing with the heresy of the Noetians, say that the Father is the Son, and that He by being born, under [p. 421.] went both suffering and death. Concerning these, I shall later explain more minutely; for to many their heresy has become the starting-point of evils. We judge then that what has been said is sufficient, we having proved briefly to all that their many absurd books and attempts are feeble and not worth consideration, whereto those of sound mind need pay no heed.^[570]

7. Encratites

20. But other calling themselves Encratites^[571] confess the [facts] about God and Christ in like manner with the Church. But with regard to the way of life, they having become puffed up,^[572] have reverted [to earlier opinions]. They think themselves glorified through food by abstaining from things which have had life, drinking water, and forbidding marriage, and in the other things of life are austerely careful. Such as they are judged to be rather Cynics than Christians, seeing that they pay no heed to what was said to them aforetime through the Apostle Paul, who prophesied the innovations that would come by the folly of some, saying thus: – “The Spirit says expressly: In the last times [p. 422.] some will fall away from the wholesome teaching,^[573] giving heed to deceiving spirits and the teachings of demons, through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies, branded in their own consciences as with a hot iron, forbidding to marry and (commanding) to abstain from meats, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected which is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified through the words of God and prayer…”^[574] This saying then of the Blessed Paul is sufficient for the refutation of those who live thus and honour themselves as righteous men, and to show that this also is a heresy.^[575]

But although some other heresies are named [to wit those] of the Cainites, Ophites or Noachites^[576] and others such as they, I do not think it necessary to set forth their sayings and doings, lest they should thereby think themselves somebody or worthy of argument.^[577] But since what [p. 423.] has been said about them seems to be sufficient, we will come to the source of all evils, the heresy of the Noetians, and having disclosed its root and proved plainly the poison lurking within it, we will hold back from such error those who have been swept away by a violent spirit as by a torrent.

[p. 424.]

Book IX: Noetus, Callistus, and others

1. These are the contents of the 9th (Book) of the Refutation of All Heresies.

2. What is the blasphemous folly of Noetus and that he gave heed to the doctrines of Heraclitus the Obscure and not to those of Christ.

3. And how Callistus having mingled the heresy of Cleomenes, Nottus’ disciple, with that of Theodotus, set up another and newer heresy, and what was his life.

4. What was the fresh invasion^[578] of the stranger spirit Elchesai and that he covers his own transgressions by appearing to keep to the Law, while he in fact devotes himself to Gnostic opinions [entirely], or to astrological and magical ones in addition.

5. What are the customs of the Jews and how many their differences.

6. A long fight has now been fought by us concerning all [early] heresies, and we have left nothing unrefuted. There still remains the greatest fight of all, [to wit] to thoroughly describe and refute the heresies risen up in our [p. 425.] own day, by means whereof certain unlearned and daring men have attempted to scatter the Church to the winds, [thereby I casting the greatest confusion among all the faithful throughout the world. For it seems fit that we should attack the opinion which was the first cause of [these] evils and expose its roots, so that its offshoots, being thoroughly known to all, may be contemned.

1. About Noetus

7. There was a certain man, Noetus^[579] by name, by birth a Smyrnæan. He introduced a heresy from the opinions of Heraclitus. Of which [Noetus], a certain man named Epigonus becomes the minister and pupil, and on his arrival at Rome sowed broadcast the godless doctrine. Whose teaching Cleomenes, by life and manners alien to the Church, confirmed, when he had become his disciple.^[580] [p. 426.] At that time Zephyrinus, an ignorant and greedy man, thought that he ruled the Church, and, persuaded by the gain offered, gave leave to those coming to him to learn of Cleomenes.^[581] And himself also being in time beguiled, ran into the same errors, his fellow-counsellor and comrade in this wickedness being Callistus, whose life and the heresy invented by him, I shall shortly set forth. The school of these successive teachers continued to grow stronger and increased through the help given to it by Zephyrinus and Callistus. Yet we never yielded, but many times withstood them to the face, refuted them, and compelled them perforce to confess the truth. They being ashamed for a season, and being brought by the truth to confession, before long returned to wallowing in the same mire.^[582]

8. But since we have pointed out the genealogical succession of these [men], it appears left to us to set forth their evil mode of teaching their doctrines. The opinions of Heraclitus the Obscure being first explained, we shall then make evident the parts of [their doctrines] which are Heraclitan, but which, perhaps, the present chiefs of the [p. 427.] heresy do not know to be those of the Obscure, but think to be those of Christ. Should they meet with these [words], they might, thus being put to shame, cease from their godless blasphemy.^[583] And although the teachings of Heraclitus have been before expounded by us in this [our] Phifosophumena,^[584] yet it seems expedient to repeat them now, so that by their closer refutation, those who think they are disciples of Christ may be plainly taught that they are not His, but are those of the Obscure.

9. Now Heraclitus says that the All is (one),^[585] divided [and] undivided, originated [and] unoriginated, mortal [and] immortal, reason [and] eternity,^[586] Father [and] Son, a just God. “It is wise,” says Heraclitus, “that those who listen, not to me, but to reason,^[587] should acknowledge all things to be one.” And because all men do not know nor acknowledge this, he reproves them somehow thus: “They do not understand how anything that is diverse can agree with itself. It is an inverse harmony, like that of a bow [p. 428.] and a lyre.” But that the All is ever Reason^[588] and exists by it, lie thus declares: – “That this Reason ever exists, men do not understand either before they hear it or when they hear it first. For while all things come to pass according to this Reason, they seem to be ignorant of it, although they seem to have attempted endlessly^[589] by words and deeds such a description as I now give by analysis of their nature and by saying how things are.” But that the All is a Son and for ever an eternal being of the universals, he says thus: “A boy playing at tables^[590] is Eternity; the kingdom is a boy’s.” That he is father of all things that have been generated, begotten and unbegotten, the creation and [its] Demiurge, we have his saying; “War is father of [p. 429.] all, but king of all; and it displays some men as gods, others as men; some it makes slaves, others free. Because [this]^[591] is a harmony like that of bow and lyre.” But that the unapparent, the unseen and unknown by men is [better],^[592] he says in these words: “An unapparent harmony is better than an apparent.” He thus commends and admires that which is unknown to him before that which is known, and the invisible before that which can be [seen]. And that it is to be seen of men and is not undiscovcrable, he says in these words: “Whatever sight, hearing [and] learning can receive,^[593] I honour before all,” he says, that is, [I prefer]^[594] the things seen to those unseen. From such phrases of his it is easy to comprehend his argument. He says that men are deceived in regard to the knowledge of things apparent like Homer, who was the wisest of all the Greeks. For children when killing lice, tricked him by [p. 430.] saying: “What we see and clutch we leave behind; but what we neither see nor clutch, we take away with us.”

10. Thus Heraclitus supposes the apparent to have an equal lot and honour with the unapparent, as if the apparent and the unapparent were admittedly one. “For,” he says, “an unapparent harmony is better than an apparent,” and “Whatever sight, hearing [and] learning [these are the organs] can receive, this, he says, I honour above all,” thus not honouring by preference the unapparent. And so Heraclitus says that neither darkness nor light, nor good nor evil are different,^[595] but are one and the same. Therefore he blames Hesiod that he did not know Day and Night, for Day and Night, he says, are one, speaking somehow like this: “Hesiod is the teacher of most things, and they feel sure that he knew most things, who did not [however] know Day and Night. For they are one.” And [as to] good and evil: – “Now the surgeons,” says Heraclitus, “usually cut, burn, and in every way torture the sick, and complain that they receive from them no fitting reward for their labours, although they do these good works on the diseases.” And both straight and crooked, he says, are [p. 431.] the same. “The way of wool-carders, he says, is both straight and crooked, [because] the revolution of the tool called cochleus^[596] is both straight and crooked; for it revolves and moves upwards at the same time. It is, he says, one and the same.” And upward and downward are, he says, one and the same: “The way up and down is one and the same.” And he says that the polluted and the pure are one and the same, and the drinkable and the undrinkable also. “The sea,” he says, “is at once the purest and the most polluted water, for to fish it is drinkable and salutary, but to man undrinkable and hurtful.”^[597] And in the same way, he says, admittedly the immortal is mortal and the mortal immortal, in such words as these: “Deathless are mortals, and mortals are deathless, when the living take death from these, and the dead life from those.” But he speaks here of the resurrection of this visible flesh wherein we have been born. And he knows God to be [p. 432.] the cause of this resurrection, saying thus: “Those here will rise again and will become the busy guardians of living and dead.” And he says also that the judgment of the ordered world and of all therein will be by fire, speaking thus: “Thunder governs all things,” that is, it corrects them, meaning by “thunder” the everlasting fire. But he says also that this fire is discerning and the cause of the government of the universals, and he calls it Need^[598] and Satiety. Now Need is according to him the Ordering [of the world],^[599] but Satiety the Ecpyrosis. For “Fire,” he says, “coming suddenly will judge and seize all things.”^[600]

In this chapter [entitled] “All Things 'Together,” the peculiar thought of Heraclitus is set forth.^[601] But I have also shown briefly that it is that of Noetus’ heresy, he being a disciple not of Christ, but of Heraclitus. For that the created world was its own Demiurge and creator, he declares thus: “God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger.” “All things are contraries.” This is the thought “but there is a change, as when one [p. 433.] incense is mixed with others; which [incense] is named according to the pleasure of each.”

But it is plain to all that the intelligent^[602] successors of Noetus and the chiefs of the heresy, although you may say that they were not [actual] hearers of Heraclitus, yet by openly choosing^[603] the opinions of Noetus, acknowledge the same things. For they say this: One and the same God is the Father and Demiurge of all, having been pleased, though invisible, to appear to the righteous men of old. For when He is not seen He is invisible [but when seen visible].^[604] And when He wishes to be uncontained, He is uncontainable,^[605] and when He is contained, He is containable. Thus by the same reasoning, He is unconquerable^[606] [and conquerable], unbegotten [and begotten], immortal and mortal. How can such as they be shown not to be disciples of Heraclitus? Did not the Obscure long ago philosophize in these very words?

Now that [Noetus] says the Father and Son are the same, no one is ignorant. These are his words. When, then, the Father had not been born, He was rightly proclaimed Father. And when He was pleased to undergo birth, He having been begotten, became the Son of [p. 434.] Himself and not of another. For thus [Noetus] seems to establish Monarchia^[607] by asserting the Father and the Son so-called are one and the same, not another from another, but Himself from Himself. And that He is called by the name of Father [or Son] according to the change of times. But that One was He who appeared and underwent birth from a Virgin and dwelt as a man among men. And acknowledged Himself to those who saw Him to be a Son by reason of the birth that had taken place, but did not conceal from those who could receive it that He was also Father. And that He also suffered, being nailed to the Tree and gave up His Spirit to Himself, and died and did not die. And that He raised Himself again the third day after having been buried in a tomb and pierced with a spear and nailed with nails. This One Cleomenes and his band say was God and Father of the universals, thereby drawing a Heraclitan darkness over many.^[608]

2. About Callistus

11. To this heresy Callistus^[609] gave strength – a man artful in evil and versatile in falsehood, who was seeking after the [p. 435.] bishop’s throne. And he led whither he liked Zephyrinus,^[610] an ignorant man, unlearned and unskilled in the Church’s rules, whom [Callistus] persuaded by gifts and extravagant demands. [And as Zephyrinus] was a receiver of bribes and a money-lover, he induced him to be ever making faction between the brethren, while he himself by crafty words contrived that at the last both parties should be friendly to himself. And sometimes he deceived those who thought truly, by saying that he thought for his own part like things with them; and again he said likewise to those [who held] the opinions of Sabellius, whom, when he might have brought him into the right way, he abandoned. For Sabellius did not harden [his heart] to our^[611] admonitions, but when he got alone with Callistus, he was urged by him to relapse towards the doctrine of Cleomenes, alleging that he was of like opinions. [Sabellius] did not then understand his trickery, but knew’ it afterwards, as 1 will shortly explain.^[612]

Now’ [Callistus] bringing forward Zephyrinus himself, persuaded him to say publicly: “I know one God, Christ Jesus, and beside Him I know no other, begotten and susceptible [p. 436.] of suffering.” And at one time he said: “The Father did not die but the Son,” and thus maintained without ceasing the faction among the people.^[613] Knowing whose designs, we did not give way to him, but refuted and withstood him for the Truth’s sake. He also, advancing towards madness, through everyone concurring with him – though we did not – called us ditheists,^[614] thus violently spitting forth the concealed poison within him. It seems good to us then to set forth the lovable^[615] life of this man since he was born at the same time as ourselves, in order that by the mode of life of such a one being made apparent, the heresy which he has taken in hand may become well and quickly known to those who have right mind. He bore witness^[616] when Fusciantis was Prefect of Rome;^[617] and the manner of his martyrdom was on this wise.

12. [Callistus] chanced to be a house-slave of a certain Carpophorus,^[618] a man of the faith who was of Cæsar’s household. To him as to one of the faith Carpophorus entrusted no little money on his promising to bring in profit from the business of a money-dealer. Who taking it, set up a moneychanger’s stall in the place called the Piscina Publica,^[619] to whom in course of time not a few deposits were entrusted by [p. 437.] widows and brethren on the strength of Carpophorus’ name. But he having made everything disappear,^[620] was in difficulties. When he had done this, one^[621] was not lacking to tell Carpophorus: and Carpophorus said that he required accounts from him. Callistus being aware of this and suspecting danger from his master,^[622] took flight and made for the sea. Who finding a ship at Portus^[623] ready to sail when she should have her cargo, went on board intending to sail. But he could not thus escape; for one was not lacking to tell Carpophorus what had happened. And he having halted at the harbour according to the news given him, tried to hurry to the ship. But she was lying in the middle of the harbour, and the ferryman being slow, Callistus saw his master afar off, and knew that as he was in the ship he would be taken. So he disregarded life and thinking that his end had come, cast himself into the sea.^[624] But the sailors, jumping down into the boats, dragged him out [p. 438.] against his will amid a great shouting from the shore. And thus he was handed over to his master and taken away to Rome, whence his master sentenced him to the Pistrinum?^[625]

But time having gone on, some brethren, as generally happens, came forward and besought Carpophorus that he would set free the runaway from punishment, affirming that he had admitted having gold laid up with certain persons.^[626] And Carpophorus like a pious man said that he did not care about his own [money], but that he was concerned about the deposits. For many cried to him with tears that they had trusted to his name when confiding money to Callistus, and [Carpophorus] being persuaded, ordered him to be released. But he having nothing to pay back and not being able to run away again because he was watched, devised a scheme for [obtaining] death. On a Sabbath day, pretending to go forth to his debtors, he rushed into the synagogue of the assembled Jews, and stayed there factiously opposing them.^[627] But when they were factiously opposed by him, they abused and rained blows upon him and haled him before Fuscianus, who was then Prefect of the City. And this was their accusation: – “The Romans have conceded to us the right to read aloud publicly the law’s of our fathers. But this man coming in forbade it, making a faction against us, and affirming that he was a Christian?” [p. 439.] And as Fuscianus chanced to be on the judgment-scat, and was angered by the words of the Jews against Callistus, one was not lacking to tell Carpophorus what was being done. And he, hastening to the judgment-seat, cried out to the Prefect, “I beseech you, О Ford Fuscianus, do not believe this man, for he is not a Christian, but seeks occasion of death, having made away^[628] with much money of mine, as I will prove.”^[629] But the Jew’s thinking this to be a fetch, as if Carpophorus were seeking by this speech to get him set at liberty, cried out against him to the Prefect with increased fury. And he being moved by them, had [Callistus] scourged and sent him to a mine in Sardinia.

But after a time, there being other martyrs there, Marcia, being a God-loving woman and a concubine of Commodus and having wished to do some good work, summoned [p. 440.] before her the blessed Victor, who was Bishop of the Church at that time,^[630] and enquired what martyrs there were in Sardinia. And he gave her the names of all, but did not give her that of Callistus, knowing what he had dared to do. Then Marcia, having succeeded in her petition to Commodus, gave the liberating letter to an elder named Hyacinthus, a eunuch,^[631] who took it and sailed for Sardinia, and having handed it to the Administrator^[632] of the place for the time being, set free all the martyrs with the exception of Callistus. But he, on his knees and weeping, besought that he also might be set free. Then Hyacinthus was moved by entreaty and required the Administrator [to do this] affirming that he was the foster-father of Marcia and arranging to hold the Administrator harmless. And he being persuaded [in turn], set free Callistus also.^[633] Upon whose coming [to Rome], Victor was much annoyed at what had befallen; but, as he was a compassionate man, held his peace. But to guard against the reproach of many [p. 441.] – for the audacities of Callistus were not a long way off – and Carpophorus was still an obstacle, he sends him to abide in Antium, making him a certain monthly allowance for his support.^[634] After [Victor’s] falling asleep, Zephyrinus having had [Callistus] as a coadjutor in the management of the clergy, honoured him to his own detriment, and sending for him from Antium, set him over the cemetery.^[635] And Callistus being ever with [Zephyrinus], and as I have said before, serving him with guile,^[636] put him in the background^[637] as neither able to judge what was said to him nor to comprehend all the counsels of Callistus when talking to him of what things pleased him. Thus, after the death of Zephyrinus, [Callistus] thinking that he had succeeded in his pursuit,^[638] put away Sabellius as one who does not hold right opinions. For [Callistus] was afraid of me and deemed that he could thus wipe off the charge [against him] before the Churches,^[639] just as if he held no different opinions from theirs.

Now Callistus was a sorcerer^[640] and a trickster and in time snatched away many. And harbouring the poison in his [p. 442.] heart, and devising nothing straight, besides being ashamed to declare the truth because he had reproached us in public, saying: “Ye are ditheists,”^[641] but especially because he had often been accused by Sabellius of having strayed from his first faith, he invented some such heresy as this: – He says that the Word is the Son and that He is also the Father, being called by that name, but being one undivided Spirit.^[642] And that the Father is not one thing and the Son another; but that they subsist [as] one and the same. And that all things above and below are filled with the Divine Spirit, and that the Spirit which was incarnate in the Virgin was not other than the Father, but one and the same. And that this is the saying: “Dost thou not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me?”^[643] For that which is seen, which is a man, that is the Son; but the Spirit which is contained in the Son, that is the Father. “For I do not,” he says, “say that there are two Gods, Father and Son, but [p. 443.] One. For the Father who existed in Him, having taken on Him the flesh, made it God by union with Himself and made it one [Being] so that He is called Father and Son, one God. And that this [God] being one Person cannot be two.”^[644] And so he said that the Father had suffered with the Son; for he did not like to say that the Father suffered and was One Person, [so as] to avoid^[645] blasphemy against the Father. [Thus this] senseless and shifty fellow, scattering blasphemies high and low, so that he may only seem [not] to speak against the Truth, is not ashamed to lean now towards the doctrine of Sabellius and now towards that of Theodotus.^[646]

The sorcerer having dared such things, set up a school against that of the Church,^[647] thus to teach. And first he contrived to make concessions to men in respect of their pleasures, telling every one that their sins were remitted by himself. For if any one who has been received^[648] by another and calls himself Christian should transgress, he says, the transgression of him will not be reckoned against him if he hastens to the school of Callistus. And many were pleased with this proposition,^[649] having been stricken with conscience as well as cast out of many heresies. And [p. 444.] some even after having been cast by us out of the Church by a [regular] judgment, joining with these last, filled the school of Callistus. He laid it down that if [even] a bishop commits any sin, though it should be one unto death, he ought not to be deposed. In his time bishops and priests and deacons who had married twice and even thrice began to keep their places among the clergy.^[650] For if any one who was in the clerical order^[651] should marry, he [decided] that he should remain in the order as if he had not sinned, saying that what was spoken by the Apostle was said with regard to this [viz.:] “Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant?”^[652] And also the Parable of the Tarus, he says spoke as to this: “Let the tares grow to the harvest,”^[653] that is, let the sinners remain in the Church. But he also said that the ark of Noah was made into an image^[654] of the Church, wherein were dogs and wolves and crows and all clean and unclean [animals]. Thus, he affirms, ought the Church to do likewise; and as many things as he could bring together on this point, he thus interpreted.

Whose hearers being attracted by these doctrines continue [to exist], deluding themselves and many others, crowds of whom flock into the school. Wherefore they arc multiplied [p. 445.] and rejoice in the crowds, by reason of the pleasures which Christ did not permit. Whom slightly regarding, they forbid no one to sin, affirming that they themselves remit sins to those with whom they are well pleased. For [Callistus] has also permitted women, if they, being unmarried and in the prime of life, turned towards some one unworthy of their station, or did not wish to lessen it by [marriage], to hold any bedfellow they might choose as lawfully married to them, whether he was a house slave or free,^[655] and to consider this person although not married by law as in the place of a husband.^[656] From this the so-called faithful women began to make attempts with abortifacient drugs and to gird themselves tightly so that they might cast out what they had conceived, through their not wishing on account of their family or superabundant wealth to have a child by a slave or some mean person. See now what impiety the lawless one has reached when be teaches [p. 446.] adultery and murder at the same time! And in the face of these audacities the shameless ones attempt to call themselves a Catholic Church, and some think that they do well to join with them.

Under this [Callistus, too], a second baptism has been ventured upon by them for the first time.^[657] These things the most amazing Callistus has set on foot, whose school still persists and preserves the customs and tradition [of the Church], nor does it discriminate as to whom it should hold communion with, but offers communion indiscriminately to all. From whom also they are called by a name that they share with him, and, by reason of the protagonist of such works being Callistus, are called Callistians.^[658]

3. Concerning Elchesaites^[659]

13. When the teaching of this [Callistus] had been dispersed [p. 447.] over the whole world, a certain man called Alcibiades dwelling at Apamea in Syria, who was crafty and full of impudence, and having looked into the matter, deemed himself forcible and expert in tricks than Callistus, arrived in Rome bringing with him a book.^[660] He pretended that a righteous man (called) Elchasai, had received the same from the Seres^[661] of Parthia and gave it to one called Sobiae,^[662] as having been revealed by an angel. The height of which angel was 24 schoeni,^[663] which is 96 miles; but the girth was 4 schoeni, and from shoulder to shoulder 6 schoeni; and his footprints were 3½ schoeni in length, which is 14 miles,^[664] their width 1½ schoeni, and their depth half a schoenus. And that there was with him also a female whose measure, he says, accorded with those aforesaid. And that the male is the Son of God, and that the female is called the Holy Spirit. Describing these portents, he is wont to distract the foolish by this address: “A new remission of sins was brought as good news to men in the third year of the reign of Trajan.” And he prescribes (therefore) a baptism which I will explain (later). He affirms that of those wrapped in all licentiousness and pollution and breaches of the Law, if any such be a believer and turns again and hearkens to and believes on the book, he determines that he shall receive by baptism remission of sins. [p. 448.]

These tricks he audaciously elaborated, starting from the doctrine before described which Callistus had brought forward. For he, having understood that many rejoiced at such an announcement,^[665] thought that his enterprise would be timely.^[666] Yet we withstood him also, and did not permit very many to go astray, refuting them^[667] [with the argument] that this was the work of a spurious^[668] spirit and of a puffed-up heart; and that the man like a wolf had risen up among the many stray sheep which the false guide Callistus had scattered abroad. But, since we have begun, we shall not be silent regarding the doctrines of this man also; and we shall bring to light the (mode of) life (he advocates),^[669] and shall then prove that his supposed discipline is a make-believe. And then again I will explain the chief of his sayings, so that the reader who has studied [p. 449.] his writings may know thoroughly what and of what quality is the heresy on which he has ventured.

14. He puts forward as a bait, conformity with the Law,^[670] claiming that those who have believed ought to be circumcised and to live according to the Law while clutching at something from the heresies aforesaid. And he says that Christ was a man born in the way common to all; and that He was not now begotten for the first time from a virgin, but that both in the first instance and then many times since, He had been begotten and born, appeared and grown up, alternating births and changing one body for another, wherein He makes use of the Pythagorean teaching.^[671] But [the Elchesaites] are so vainglorious as to say that they themselves foretell the future, starting evidently from the measures and numbers of the Pythagorean art before described. And they give heed to mathematics and astrology and magic as if they were true, and they use these things to astonish the weak-minded, so that they may think themselves partakers in a mighty matter. They give also incantations and spells^[672] to those bitten by dogs and to possessed and other diseased persons concerning which we shall not be silent. Having then sufficiently detailed the [p. 450.] sources and causes of their audacities, I will proceed to repeat their writings, whereby the reader may know at once their folly and their godless endeavours.

15. To his catechumens, then, [Alcibiades] administers baptism, speaking such words as these to those whom he deceives: “If, therefore, any one has gone in unto a child, or to any kind of animal, or to a male or to a brother or to a daughter, or has committed adultery or fornication, and wishes to receive remission of sins, immediately he hears this book, let him be baptized a second time in the name of the Great and Highest God and in the name of His Son, the Great King. And let him be purified and be chaste and call to witness the seven witnesses who are written in this book [to wit], the Heaven and the Water, and the Holy Spirit and the Angel of Prayer and the oil and the salt and the Earth.”^[673] These are the wonderful mysteries of Elchasai, the hidden and great things which he hands down to the disciples who are worthy. And the lawless one [p. 451.] is not content with these, but before two or three witnesses puts the seal on his own crimes, again speaking thus: “I say again, О adulterers and adulteresses and false prophets, if you wish to turn again so that your sins may be remitted unto you, peace shall be yours, and a portion with the just, if immediately you hearken to this book and are baptized a second time with your garments.”

But since we have said that these persons use incantations over those bitten by dogs and over others, we shall point out [these also]. Thus he speaks: “If a furious and mad dog in whom is the breath of death,^[674] bite or tear or touch any man or woman or man-child or maid-child, in the same hour let [the bitten one] run with all his clothing and go down to a river or a pool where there is a deep place, and let him be baptized there with all his clothing, and let him pray^[675] to the Great and Highest God in faith of heart, and then call to witness the Seven Witnesses who are written [p. 452.] in this book, saying: ‘Lo ! I call to witness the Heaven and the Water and the Holy Spirit and the Angel of Prayer and the oil and the salt and the Earth. I call to witness these Seven Witnesses that I will no more sin, nor commit adultery, nor steal, nor do injustice, nor be greedy, nor cherish hatred, nor break faith, nor take pleasure in any evil deeds.’ Then upon saying this, let him be baptized with all his clothing in the name of the Great and Highest God.”

16. But in most other matters he talks nonsense, and teaches [the repetition of] the same spells over the phthisical, and the baptizing of them in cold water forty times a week. And in the same way with those possessed of devils. О wisdom inimitable and incantations filled full of powers! Who will not be struck at such and so great a power of words? But since we have said that they also make use of the error of the astrologers, let us prove this out of their own mouths. Thus he says: “There are evil stars of impiety. This is now spoken unto you, О God-fearing [p. 453.] men^[676] and disciples. Beware of the days of their authority,^[677] and begin no works on these days, and baptize not man nor woman in the days of their authority when the moon goes forth with them and journeys with them.^[678] Be ye ware from that day until the moon leaves them utterly and then baptize and begin in every beginning of your works. Honour also the Sabbath Day for it is one day out of these.^[679] But beware of beginning ought in the third day from the Sabbath, because when three years of the reign of Trajan Cæsar were fulfilled, he brought the Parthians under his sway.^[680] And when three years more are completed war will rage between the angels of the impiety of the North,^[681] and thereby all the kingdoms of iniquity will be troubled.”^[682]

17. Since, now, he believes it would be unreasonable that these great and secret mysteries should be trampled underfoot or delivered to many, he advises that they should [p. 454.] be preserved as if they were costly pearls,^[683] saying thus: “Read not these words to all men and keep their commandments carefully, since not all men are faithful nor all women straight.” But these things neither the sages of the Egyptians, nor Pythagoras the sage of the Greeks withdrew within their sanctuaries. For had Elchasai chanced to live at the time, what need would there have been for Pythagoras, or Thales, or Solon, or Plato the wise, or the rest of the Greeks to learn of the priests of the Egyptians, seeing that they would have had so much and so great wisdom from Alcibiades, the most wonderful interpreter of the wretched Elchasai? Now therefore it seems that enough has been said for persons of sound mind to have a complete knowledge of the madness of these [heretics], wherefore it does not seem fit to make use of any more of their sayings, which are many and laughable.

But since we have not passed over the things which have sprung up among ourselves, and have not been silent on those which |happened] before our time, it seems proper, so that we may go into everything and leave nothing un- expounded, to say something of the [customs] of the Jews [p. 455.] also, and what are the differences among them; for I think that up till now this has been passed over.^[684] [And] when 1 shall have spoken of these,^[685] I shall proceed to the exposition of the Word of Truth.^[686] So that after the lengthy struggle of the discourse against all heresies, we, firmly pressing forward to the crown of the kingdom, and believing on the things which are true, may not be confounded.^[687]

4. Jews^[688]

18. Originally there was one nation of Jews. For one teacher had been given them by God [namely] Moses, and through him was given one Law. And there was one desert and one mountain [namely] Sinai; for one God was their legislator. But after they had crossed the river Jordan and had divided by lot the land won by the spear, they rent asunder in different ways the Law of God, each understanding the precepts differently. And thus they set up teachers for themselves and found out heretical opinions and advanced in schism. Whose diversity I shall set forth; but although for a long time they have been scattered in many divisions, yet I will expose [only] the chief of them, whence the lovers of learning^[689] may easily know the rest. For three sects^[690] are distinguished among them, and the [p. 456.] adherents of one of these are Pharisees, of another Sadducees, and the others^[691] are Essenes. These [last] practise the more holy life [of the three], loving one another and observing continence. And they turn away from every deed of concupiscence, holding it hateful even to listen to such things. They renounce marriage, but take the children of others and bring them up in their customs, thus adopting^[692] them and impelling them to the sciences, [but] not forbidding them to marry, although they themselves abstain from it. But they admit no women, even those who are willing to devote themselves to the same policy, nor give heed to them, for they distrust women altogether.

19. And they despise wealth and do not shrink from sharing with those who lack [it], although none of them is richer than another. For it is a law among them that any one entering the heresy must sell his possessions and offer [p. 457.] the price to the common stock, which the ruler receives and distributes to all for their needs. Thus there is no want among them. And they use not oil, thinking anointing their bodies pollution. But there are stewards appointed by vote who look after all their property in common, and all of them wear white garments always.

20. And there is not one city of them, but many of them dwell in every city. And if one of the practisers of the heresy^[693] should arrive from a strange country, they hold all things in common for him, and those whom they knew not before they receive as guests and intimates. And they travel about their native land, and when they go on a journey they carry nothing with them except arms. And they have in every city a ruler who spends what is collected for the purpose of providing clothes and food for them. And their dress and its fashion are modest. They do not possess two tunics or a double set of footgear; but when those in use become old, they take others. And they neither buy nor sell anything at all; but if one possesses ought, he gives it to him who lacks, and what he has not, he receives [in its stead].^[694]

[p. 458.] 21. But they lead a well-ordered and regular life, and always pray at dawn, not speaking before they have praised God. And thus they all go forth and do what work they will, and after working until the fifth hour, leave off. Then, assembling again in one place, they gird themselves with linen cinctures so as to conceal their privities, and thus wash in cold water. And after having thus purified themselves, they gather together in one dwelling – but no one who thinks differently from them is with them in the house – and they get to breakfast. And sitting down in order, they are offered bread in silence, and then some one kind of food from which each has a sufficient portion. But none of them tastes anything till the priest has blessed and prayed over it. And after breakfast, when he has again prayed, they offer up praises to God. Then, laying aside as holy the garments with which they are clothed while indoors – and these are of linen – and receiving again the others in the vestibule, they hasten to their favourite work [p. 459.] until the afternoon. And they take supper in all respects as before described. And none ever shouts, nor is any other uproarious sound heard, but each one speaks quietly, every one decently yielding the conversation to the other, so that to those without the silence of those within seems somewhat of a mystery. And they are at all times sober, eating and drinking everything by measure.^[695]

22. Now all give heed to the president^[696] and what he commands they obey as law. For they are zealous to pity and help the downtrodden. And before all things they abstain from rage and anger and such-like, judging that these betray mankind. And none takes oath to the other, but what each one says is judged stronger than an oath. And if any one takes an oath, he is condemned as one not to be believed (without God).^[697] And they are diligent concerning the recital of the Law and the Prophets, and also if there should be any summary^[698] [of these] [made by one] of [p. 460.] the faithful, [they listen to it?] And they are very curious concerning plants and stones, being very inquisitive as to their operation, as they think that these did not come into being in vain.

23. But to those who wish to become disciples of the heresy, they do not straightway impart the traditions, until they have first made trial of them. For a year they set before them the same sort of food as [is served] to themselves, but outside their assembly and in another house. And they give them a hatchet and the linen cincture and white garments. When they have during this period given proof of continence, they draw nearer to the way of living [of the others] and are purified more thoroughly than at first, but they do not take their food with them. For after they have shown that they can practise continence, for another two years’ trial is made of such a one’s character, and on his appearing worthy, he is adjudged so [to be received] by them. Before, however, he can eat with them, he is sworn with fearful oaths; first, that he will show piety towards the Divine, then that he will observe justice towards men, and will in no way wrong any, nor hate anyone who [p. 461.] wrongs him or who is an enemy to him, but will pray for him. And that he will fight on the side of the just and will keep faith with all, especially with those who bear sway, nor be disobedient to them. For it happens to none to rule save by God. And if [the aspirant] should bear rule, that he will never be arrogant in authority, nor make more use than is customary of any ornament; but is to love the truth, [p. 462.] to refute the liar, and not to steal, nor soil his conscience with unlawful gain, nor hide ought from his fellow-heretics. And will tell nothing [of their secrets] to others even if he shall suffer violence unto death. Besides this, he swears to them to impart none of the doctrines [of the sect] otherwise than as he himself received them. By such oaths, therefore, do they bind those who come unto them.^[699]

24. But if any should be convicted in any transgression, he is cast out of the order, and he that is east out sometimes perishes by a fearful fate. For, being bound by the oaths and customs, he cannot take food with other people. Therefore sometimes they utterly destroy the body by famine. Wherefore in the last extremity they sometimes take pity on many already dying, thinking the penalty unto death sufficient for them.^[700]

25. Concerning their judgments, they are most careful and just. They deliver judgment after assembling not less [p. 463.] than a hundred and what they determine is irrevocable. And they honour the Lawgiver [next] after God, and if anyone blasphemes him, he is punished. And they are taught to give ear to the rulers and elders; and if ten are sitting in the same place, one will not speak unless the others wish. And they are careful of spitting in front of them or on the right side; and more than all the Jews, they arrange to abstain from work on the Sabbath. For not only do they prepare their food one day before, so as not to light a fire, but they neither move an implement nor relieve, nature. And some of them will not even get out of bed. But on other days, when they wish to evacuate, they dig a pit a foot long – with the hoe – for such is the hatchet which they give their adherents when first becoming disciples^[701] – and covering it on all sides with their cloak, sit down, affirming that they must not insult the rays [of the Sun]. Then they throw back the excavated earth into the pit. And this they do choosing the most deserted places, [and] when they have done this they straightway wash, as if the secretion were polluting.^[702] [p. 464.]

26. But in course of time they have drawn apart and do not [all] observe the discipline in the same way,^[703] being divided into four parts. Tor some of them are more austere than they need be, so that they will carry no coin, saying that they must not bear any image, nor look upon it, nor make it. Wherefore none of them goes into a city, lest he shall enter in through a gate whereon are statues, as they think it unlawful to pass under an image. And others, if they hear anyone holding forth about God and His Law, will watch such an one until he is alone in some place, and threaten to kill him if he be not circumcised. Whom, if he does not consent, he does not spare, but slays him. Whence from this occurrence they take their name, being called Zealots, but by some Sicarii. And yet others of them name none Lord but God, even if any should torture or slay them. And those who succeeded them became so much worse than their discipline that they would not touch those who remained in the ancient customs: [or] if they [p. 465.] did so [by accident] they straightway washed themselves as if they had touched one of another sect. And the majority are long-lived, so that they live more than a hundred years. Now they say that the cause of this is their consummate piety towards God, and their condemning the serving [of food] without measure and to their being continent and slow to anger. And they despise death rejoicing that they can make an end with a good conscience. But if any one should torture such [men] to make them speak ill of the Law or to eat food offered to idols, they would not do so, suffering death and supporting tortures so that they may not go beyond their conscience.^[704]

27. But the doctrine of the Resurrection is also strong among them. For they confess that the flesh rises again and will be immortal in the same way that the soul is already immortal. Which soul when it departs from the body, abides in an airy and well-lighted place until judgment, which place the Greeks hearing of it called [the] Islands of the Blessed. But there are other opinions of them which [p. 466.] many of the Greeks appropriated and maintained as their own teaching. For the discipline among them concerning the Divine is earlier than all nations, as is proved by all that the Greeks have ventured to say about God or the fashioning of the things that are starting from no other source than the Jewish Law. Wherefrom especially Pythagoras and those of the Porch took much, having been instructed in it by the Egyptians. And [the Essenes] say also that there will be a judgment and a conflagration of the All, and that the unjust will be punished everlastingly. And prophecy and the foretelling of things to come are practised among them.^[705]

28. Now there is another order of Essenes making use of their customs and way of life, but they differ from these [just described] in the one [point of] marriage: saying that those who reject marriage do a fearful thing. And they declare that this comes to the taking away of life, and that one must not cut off the succession of children, and that if everyone thought like this, the whole race of men might easily be cut off. They certainly try their wives for a period of three years; but when they have had three purifications, so as to prove that they can bear children, they wed them. But they do not company with them when pregnant, proving [p. 467.] [thereby] that they do not marry for pleasure but from need of children. And the women wash themselves in the same way and don linen garments in the same way as the men with their cinctures. This, then, concerning the Essenes.^[706]

But there are others also disciplined in the customs of the Jews, and called both legally and generically Pharisees. The majority of whom are [to be found] in every place, and all call themselves Jews, but on account of the special opinions held by them are called besides by specific names.^[707] Now they, while holding fast the ancient tradition, continue to enquire methodically into what things are clean and what unclean according to the Law. And they interpret the things of the Law, putting forward teachers for that purpose. And they say that Fate is, and that some things are due to freewill and some to Fate, so that some [come] by ourselves and some by Fate. But that God is the cause of all, and that nothing is arranged or happens without His will. And they confess the Resurrection of the Flesh and that the soul is immortal, and [admit] a judgment to come and a [p. 468.] future conflagration, and that the wicked will be punished in unquenchable fire.

29. But the Sadducees eliminate Fate, and confess that God neither does nor contemplates anything evil; but that man has the power to choose the good or evil. But they deny not only the Resurrection of the Flesh, but also consider that the soul does not survive. But that its [function] is to live and that that is why man is born. And that the doctrine of the Resurrection is fulfilled by leaving children on earth when we die. But that after death there will be no hope of suffering either evil or good. For [they say that] there will be a dissolution of soul and body and that man will go to that which is not in the same way as the other animals. And that if a man has great possessions, and having become rich is [thereby] glorified, he is so far the gainer; but that God does not take care of the affairs of [p. 469.] any one individual. And while the Pharisees love one another, the Sadducees love [only] themselves. The same heresy was especially strong round about Samaria. And they give heed to the customs of the Law, saying that one ought to do so that one may live well and leave children behind on earth. But they pay no attention to the Prophets, nor to any other wise men, but only to the Law [given] through Moses. Nor do they interpret anything. This then is the heresy of the Sadducees.^[708]

30. Since now we have set forth the differences among the Jews, it seems proper not to pass over in silence the discipline of their service of God. Now there is a fourfold system with regard to the service of God among all Jews [to wit] Theological, Physical, Moral and Ceremonial.^[709] And they say that there is one God, the Demiurge of the All and the Maker of all things that before were not,^[710] nor did He make them from any subordinate essence, but He willed and created. And that there are angels and that they have come into being for the service of creation; but that there is also a Spirit having authority ever standing beside Him for the glory and praise of God. And that all things in the creation have sensation and that nothing is without soul.^[711] And they pursue customs tending to a holy [p. 470.] and temperate life as is to be recognized in their Law. But these things were of old carefully laid down by those who originally received a God-made Law, so that the reader will be astonished at so much moderation and care in the customs prescribed for man. But the ceremonial service offered in becoming fashion was excellently performed by them as it is easy for those who wish to learn by reading the Book discoursing on these matters.^[712] [There they will see] how reverently and devoutly they offered to God the things given by Him for the use and enjoyment of man, obeying Him orderly and constantly. Some of these [doctrines] the Sadducees reject; for they hold that neither angels nor spirit exist.^[713]

But all alike wait for Christ, the Coming One foretold by [p. 471.] the Law and the Prophets. But the time of the Coming was not known of the Jews, [so that] the supposition endured that the sayings which appeared to concern the Coming were unfulfilled. But they expect that Christ will presently come, since they did not recognize His presence. And seeing the signs of the times of His having come already, this troubles them, and they are ashamed to confess that He has come, since with their own hands they became His murderers, through anger at being convicted by Him of not having hearkened to their Laws. And they say that He who was thus sent by God is not Christ. But they confess that another will come who as yet is not, and will bear some of the signs which the Law and the Prophets foreshowed; but some things they imagine wrongly. For they say that his birth will be from the race of David, but not from a Virgin and [the] Holy Spirit, but from a woman and a man, as it is a rule for all to be begotten from seed. And they declare that he will be a king over them, a man of war and a mighty one, who, having gathered together the whole nation of Jews, will make war on all the nations and re-establish for them Jerusalem as the royal city. Where [p. 472.] unto he will gather in the whole nation, and again will restore the ancient customs, while [the nation] is king and priest^[714] and dwells in security for a sufficient time. Then shall again spring up against them a war of [the nations] gathered together. In this war the Christ shall fall by the sword and not long afterwards the end and conflagration of the All shall draw near, and thus their conjectures about the Resurrection shall be fulfilled, and everyone shall be recompensed according to his works.^[715]

31. It seems to us that the opinions of all Greeks and Barbarians have been sufficiently set forth, and that nothing has been left undemonstrated either of the philosophizings^[716] or of the things imagined by the heretics. To those among them [who read this], the refutation from what has been set forth is clear [viz.] that either plagiarizing from or laying under contribution what the Greeks have elaborated, they have put them forward as divine. Now, having run through all [these systems] and having declared with much labour in the nine books [above] all these opinions, thereby leaving to all men a little guide through life, and furnishing to the [p. 473.] readers a study of no little joy and gladness, we think it reasonable to present as the conclusion of the whole [work] a discourse on the Truth.^[717] And we shall write this in one book, [viz.] the Tenth. So that the reader, having recognized the overthrow which the heresies of these audacious men have sustained, may not only despise their follies, but by also recognizing the power of the Truth, [and] by worthily believing in God, can be saved.

Book X: Summaries, and the Word of Truth [p. 474.]

1. These are the contents of the 10th [Book] of the Refutation of all Heresies.

2. An epitome of all the philosophers.

3. An epitome of all [the] heresies.^[718]

4. And what is in all things the Word of Truth.

5. Having broken through the labyrinth^[719] of the heresies without violence but rather having dissolved them by our single refutation in the power of Truth, we now draw near to the demonstration of the Truth itself. For then the manufactured sophistries of the error will appear inconsistent, when the definition of the Truth has shown that it has not taken its beginnings from the philosophy of the Greeks. Nor [has it taken] from [the] Egyptians [the] doctrines (and) the follies which arc adored among them as worthy of faith – as [the] mysteries have taught – nor has it been devised out of the inconsistent jugglery of [the] Chaldeans, nor been forged by the unreasoning madness of [the] Babylonians through the activity of demons.^[720] In whatever shape, however, the definition subsists, it is true, unguarded, and unadorned,^[721] and by its appearance alone will refute the [p. 475.] error. Concerning which, although we have many times made demonstrations, and have pointed out the Rule of Truth sufficiently and abundantly for those who are willing to learn, yet once again we judge it reasonable on the top of all the doctrines of the Greeks and heretics, to place as if it were [the] crown of the books [preceding], this demonstration by means of the tenth book.

6. Now having brought together the teachings of all the sages among [the] Greeks in four books,^[722] and those of the heresiarchs in five, we shall point out the Doctrine concerning the Truth in one, after having first made a summary of what has been the opinions of all. For the teachers of the Greeks, dividing philosophy into three parts, so philosophize, some preaching Physics, some Ethics and some Dialectic.^[723] And those who preached Physics thus declared, some that all things were horn from one, others from many. And of those who said [they came] from one, some [said they came] from what had no Quality, and others from that which had Quality. And of those who [said they came] from that which had Quality, some [said that they came] from fire, others from air, others from water and yet others [p. 476.] from earth. And of those who [said they came forth] from many things, some [said that they came] from numerable things [others from boundless ones. And of those who said they came from numerable things], some [say that they came] from two, others from four, others from five, and others from six. And of those [who say] that they came from the boundless things, some [say that they came] from things like generated things, others from those unlike. And some of them say that they came from things impassible, others from things passible. The Stoics indeed would establish the birth of the universals from that which has no Quality and one body. For according to them, matter unqualified and capable of change by means of the universals is their source. And when it is transformed, fire, air, water and earth come into being. And those who will have all things to come into being from that which has Quality are the followers of Hippasus and Anaximander and Thales the Milesian. Hippasus the Metapontian^[724] and Heraclitus the Ephesian declared the genesis of things to be from fire, but Anaximander from air, Thales from water, and Xenophanes from earth.

“For all things [came forth] from earth and all end in earth.”^[725]

7. Of those who would derive the universals from [the] [p. 477.] many and [the] numerable, the poet Homer declaies that the universals have been composed of earth and water when he says: –

“Ocean source of Gods and mother Tethys.”^[726]

and again: –

“But turn ye all to water and earth.”^[727]

And Xenophanes the Colophonian seems to agree with him, for he says

“All we are sprung from earth and waler.”^[728]

But Euripides says from earth and aether, as he lets us see from his saying: –

“I sing aether and earth, mother of all.”^[729]

But Empedocles from four, saying thus: –

[p. 478.]“Hear first the four roots of all things;

Shining Zeus and life-bearing Here and Aidoneus

And Nestis who wets with tears the human source.”

But from five, Ocellus the Lucanian^[730] and Aristotle. For with the four elements they include the fifth and rotating body whence, they say, are all heavenly things. But from six, the followers of Empedocles derived the birth of all things. For in the verses where he says: –

“Hear first the four roots of all things”

he makes everything come from four. But when he adds to this: –

“And baleful Strife apart from these [and] equal everywhere,

And Love with ihem equal in length and breadth,”^[731]

he is handing down six things as sources of the universals [i.e.] four material: earth, water, fire, [and] air and two, [p. 479.] the agents Love and Strife. But the followers of Anaxagoras the Clazomenian and Democritus and Epicurus and very many others whose [opinions] we have before recorded in part, taught that the genesis of all things was from the boundless. But Anaxagoras says they came from things like those produced; but the followers of Democritus and Epicurus, from those unlike and impassible, that is from the atoms; and those of Heraclides the Pontian^[732] and Asclepiades^[733] from those which are unlike, but passible, such as disconnected corpuscles. But the followers of Plato say that they came from three, and that these are God, Matter and Exemplar; but he divides matter into four principles: fire, water, earth, air; and says that God is the Demiurge of Matter, but Exemplar the Mind.

8. Now, having been persuaded that the system of Natural Science^[734] is confessedly found unworkable by all these [philosophers], we ourselves shall unhesitatingly say concerning the examples of the Truth what they are and how we believe in them. But in addition we will first set forth in epitome the [opinions] of the hcrcsiarchs, so that the opinions of all being thereby easy to discern, we may [p. 480.] display the Truth as clear and easy to discern also.

1. Naassenes

9. But since this seems fitting, we will begin first with the ministers of the serpent. The Naassenes call the first principle of the universals a man and also Son of Man,^[735] and him they divide into three. For part of him, they say, is intellectual, part psychic, and part earthly. And they call him Adamas and think the knowledge of him is the beginning of the power to know God. And they say that all these intellectual and psychic and earthly [parts] came into Jesus, and that the three substances spoke together through Him to the three races of the All. Thus they declare that there are three races, [the] angelic, psychic [and] earthly, and that there are three Churches, angelic, psychic and earthly; but that their names arc [the] Called, Chosen, [and] Captive. These are the heads of their doctrine in so far as it can be briefly comprehended. They say that they were handed down by James the Brother of [p. 481.] the Lord to Mariamne, thereby belying both.^[736]

2. Peratæ

10. But the Peratæ, Ademes the Carystian and Euphrates the Peratic^[737] say that a certain cosmos – this is what they call it – is one divided into three. But of this threefold division of theirs, there is a single source, as it were a great fountain, capable of being cut by the reason into boundless sections. And the first and most excellent section is according to them the triad and the one part of it is called Perfect flood [and] Fatherly Greatness. But the second part of the Triad is, as it were a certain boundless multitude of powers, and the third is that of form. And the first [of the Triad] is unbegotten (since it is good: but the second good and self-begotten and the third, begotten).^[738] Whence they say explicitly that there are three gods, three words, [p. 482.] three minds [and] three men. For to each part of the cosmos when the division was made, they assign Gods and Words and Men and the rest. But from on high, from the unbegotten state and from the first section of the cosmos, when the cosmos had already been brought to completion, there came down in the time of Herod a certain triple-natured and triplc-bodied and triple-powered man called Christ, having within Him all the compounds and powers from the three parts of the cosmos. And this they will have to be the saying: “In Him dwells all the Fulness of the Godhead bodily.” For [they say that] there came down from the two overlying worlds, namely from the unbegotten and the self-begotten, to this world in which we are, all sorts of seeds of powers. And that Christ came down from the Unbegottenness in order that through His descent all the things triply divided may be saved. For the things, he says, brought down from on high shall ascend through Him; but those who take counsel together against those brought down shall be ruthlessly rejected and having been lunishcd shall be sent away. And he says that those [worlds] which will be saved are two, the overlying onesreleased from corruption. But the third will be destroyed, [p. 483.] which is the world of form.^[739] And thus the Peratæ.

3. The Sethiani

11. But to the Selhians it appears that there are three definite principles of the universals. And that each of these principles (has boundless powers... everything which you perceive by your mind or which you pass over for lack of thought)^[740] is formed by nature to become [each of the principles] as in the human soul every art is to be learned. As if [they say] there should come to a boy spending some time with a pipe-player, the power of pipe-playing, or with a geometrician the power of measurement, or in like manner with any other art. But the substances of the principles, they say, are light and darkness. And between them is pure spirit. But the spirit which is set between the darkness which is below and the light which is above is, they say, not spirit like a gust of wind or any small breeze which may be perceived, but resembles some faint fragrance of balsam or of incense artificially compounded as a power penetrating [p. 484.] by force of fragrance and better than words can say. But because the light is above and the darkness below and the spirit between them, the light, like a ray of the sun on high, shines on the underlying darkness, and the fragrance of the spirit holding the middle place is borne and spread abroad as the odour of incense on the fire is borne. And as the power of the triply divided is such, the power of the spirit and the light together are below in the darkness beneath. But, they say, the darkness is a fearful water into which the light is drawn down with the spirit and changed into a similar nature. Now the darkness is sensible, and knows that if the light is taken away from it, the darkness will remain desolate, viewless, without light, powerless, idle and weak. In this way by all its wit and foresight it is forced to retain within itself the brilliance and scintillation of the light along with the fragrance of the spirit.

And with regard to this, they bring in this image, saying that as the pupil of the eye appears dark because of the [p. 485.] waters underneath it, but it is made light by the spirit, thus the light seeks after the spirit and retains for itself all the powers which wish to withdraw and to depart. But these are ever boundless, wherefrom all things are modelled and become like mingled seals. For, as the seal coming into conjunction with the wax, makes the impress, while itself remains by itself whatever it was, so the powers coming into conjunction with each other elaborate all the boundless races of living things. Therefore [they say] came into being fiom the first conjunction of the three principles, the form of a great seal [i.e.] of heaven and earth, which had a shape like a womb with the navel in the midst. Thus also the rest of the models of all things were modelled resembling a womb like heaven and earth. But they say that from the water came into being the first born principle, a violent and rushing wind the cause of all generation, which sets in action a certain heat and movement in the cosmos from the movement of the waters. And [they say] [p. 486.] that this was changed into a complete form like the hissing of a serpent, beholding which the cosmos is driven to generation, being excited like a womb, and therefrom they will have it the generation of the universals is established. And they say that this wind is a spirit and that a perfect god came into being from the waters and from the fragrance of the spirit and from the brilliance of the light. And that there is also the begetting of a female, Mind, the spark from on high which is mingled with the accretions of the body and hastens to flee away so that it may escape and not find dissolution through being enchained in the waters. Whence it cries aloud from the mingling of the waters according to the Psalmist, as they say. “Thus the whole eare of the light on high is how it shall draw the spark beneath from the Father who is below,” [that is], from the wind which puts in action heat and disturbance and creates for himself Mind (a perfect son) who is not (peculiar) to himself, [whom] they declare, beholding the [p. 487.] perfect Word of the light from on high, changed Himself into the form of a serpent and entered into a womb, so that He might take again that mind which is a spark of the light. And this, [they say] is the saying: “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” And this the unhappy and wicked Sethians will have to be the [servile] form.^[741] This then is what they say.

4. Simon

12. And the all-wise Simon says thus. There is a boundless power and this is the root of the universals. The boundless power is, he says, fire. According to him, it is not simple, as the many say the four elements are simple and therefore think fire is simple; but [he says] that the nature of the fire is double, and of this double [naturé he calls one part hidden and the other manifest. Anc that the hidden parts are concealed within the manifest [p. 488.] parts of the fire, and the manifest parts of the fire are produced by the hidden, but, he says, that all the seen and unseen parts of the fire are to be considered as having sense.^[742] Therefore, he says, the begotten world came into being from the unbegotten fire. But it began to come into being, he says, thus. The begotten [cosmos] took from the principle of that fire the first six roots of the principle of generation. For these six roots were born from the fire by pairs, which he calls Nous and Epinoia, Phone and Onoma, Logismos and Enthymesis. And [he says] that in these six roots [taken] together, the Boundless Power exists (potentially but not actively, which Boundless Power) he says is the “He who Stands, Stood, and will Stand,” which if it be exactly reflected will be within the six powers in substance, powers, greatness and influence, being one and the same as the Unbegotten and Boundless Power, and in no way inferior to that Unbegotten and Unchangeable and Boundless Power. But if it remains only potentially in the Six Powers and is not exactly [p. 489.] reflected, it, he says, vanishes and will die away like the grammatical or geometrical power in the mind of a man, when he does not receive technical teaching in addition. And Simon says that himself is the He Who Stands, Stood, and will Stand, being the Power which is above all.^[743] Thus, then, Simon.

5. Valentinus

13. But Valentinus and those from his school say the Source of the All is a Father and yet are carried into conflicting opinions [about him]. For some of them [think] that he is alone and capable of generation, while others hold that he is incapable of bringing forth without a female, and give him as a spouse Sige, calling him Bythos. From whom and from his spouse some say that six projections came into being, [viz.] Nous and Aletheia, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia, and that this is the first Ogdoad which brings forth.^[744] And, again, [they say] that the projections which were first born within the Limit^[745] are called the things within the Pleroma; but those second, those [p. 490.] without the Pleroma; and those third, those without the Limit, the offspring of which last exists as the Hysterema.^[746] But he says that there was born from that which was projected in the Hysterema, an Aeon, and that this is the Demiurge, for he does not wish him to be the First God, but speaks ill both of him and of what came into being by him. And [he says] that Christ came down from that which was within the Pleroma for the salvation of the Spirit that went astray, which dwells in our inner man, which they say will be saved for the sake of the indwelling one. But [Valentinus] will not have it that the flesh will be saved, calling it a “coat of skin” and a corrupter of mankind. I have described this in epitome, as one meets with much matter [concerning it] and differing opinions among them. This then is what Valentinus’ school thinks.^[747]

6. Вasilides

14. But Basilides also says that there is a God-Who-Is-Not who, being non-existent [made] the created world out of the things that are noh [He says] that a certain seed, [p. 491.] like a grain of mustard-seed was cast down, which contained within itself the stem, the leaves, the branches [and] the fruit; or, like a peacock’s egg, contains within itself a varied multitude of colours, and they say that this is the seed of the cosmos, from which all things were produced. For [he says] the seed contained all things within itself, inasmuch as thus the things that were not were preordained to come into being by the God-Who-Is-Not. Then there was, they say, in that seed a Sonhood, tripartite and in all things of the same substance with the God- Who-Is-Not, being begotten from the things that were not. And of this tripartite Sonhood, one part was [itself] finely divided, another coarsely so, while the other part needed purification. But the finely-divided part, straightway and concurrently with the happening of the first casting-down of the seed by the God-Who-Is-Not, escaped and went on high and came into the presence of Him-Who-Is-Not. For every nature yearns for Him because of His superabundance of beauty, but each in a different way. But the more coarsely divided [part] abode in the Seed and being merely imitative could not go on high, for it was much inferior to the finer part.^[748] And it was given wings by the Holy [p. 492.] Spirit, for the Sonhood putting them on, both gives and receives benefit.^[749] But the third Sonhood has need of purification. It remains in the heap of the Panspermia and it gives and receives benefit. And [he says] that there is something called [the] Cosmos and something hypercosmic for (the things that are) are divided by him into these two primary divisions. And what is between them, he calls [the] Boundary Holy Spirit, having the fragrance of the Sonhood.

From the Panspermia of the heap of the cosmic seed, there escaped and was brought forth the Great Ruler, the chief of the Cosmos, [a being] of unspeakable beauty and greatness. And he, uplifting himself to the firmament thought there was none other above him. And he became brighter and mightier than all below him, save the Sonhood left behind whom he did not know to be wiser than he. This [Rulet] having turned to the fashioning of the Cosmos, first begat for himself a Son better than he, and made him sit at his right hand. And this [place of the Ruler] they declare the Ogdoad. He then builds the whole [p. 493.] heavenly creation. But another Ruler ascended from the Panspermia, greater than all those lying beneath save the Sonhood left behind, but much inferior to the first, and he is called Hebdomad. He is the Creator and Demiurge and Controller of all below him; and he also made for himself a son more foresighted and wiser than he. But all these, they say, are according to the predetermination of that One-Who-Is-Not, and are worldsand boundless spaces.^[750] And [Basilides] says that on Jesus who was born of Mary the power of [the] Gospel came, which descended and illumined the Son of the Ogdoad and the Son of the Hebdomad for the illumination and separation and purification of the Sonhood left behind that he might benefit and receive benefits from the souls. And they say that themselves are sons [of God], who for this purpose are in the world, [viz.] that they may purify the souls by their teaching and go on high together with the [third] Sonhood to the presence of the Father above, from whom the first Sonhood proceeded.^[751] And they declare that the cosmos shall endure until all the souls together with the Sonhood shall withdraw [from it]. And BasiIides is not ashamed to narrate these portents.^[752]

7. Justinus^[753] [p. 494.]

15. Justinus also daring to [advance] things like these, says thus: “'There are three unbegotten principles of the universals, two male [and] one female. Of the male, one is a certain principle called the Good, and is alone thus called, having foreknowledge of the universals. But the other [male] is the Bather of all begotten ones, and has no foreknowledge and is unknown and unseen and is called, they say, Elohim. [But] the female is without foreknowledge, inclined to passion, double-minded, double-bodied, as in the stories about her^[754] which we have above related in detail, the upper parts of her down to the groin being a virgin and those [below] a viper. The same is called Edem and Israel. And he declares that these are the principles of the universals wherefrom all things came into being. And [he says] that Elohim came without foreknowledge to desire for the composite virgin, and, companying with her, begat twelve angels. The names of these are...^[755] And of [p. 495.] these the paternal ones take sides with the (father); but the maternal ones with the mother. The same are (the trees of Paradise)^[756] whereof Moses, speaking allegorically, wrote in the Law. And all things were made by Elohim and Edem; and the animals together with the rest of [creation] come from the beast-like parts, but man from those above the groin. And Edem deposited in [man] the soul which is her power (but Elohim the spirit). But he declares that Elohim having learned [of the light above him] ascended to the presence of the Good One and left Edem behind. Whereat she being angered makes every plot against the spirit of Elohim which is deposited in man. And for his sake, the Father sent Baruch and commanded the Prophets (to speak) so that he might set free the spirit of Elohim and draw all men away from Edem. But he [p. 496.] declares that Heracles became a prophet and that lie was worsted by Omphale, that is by Babel, whom they name Aphrodite. And at last in the days of Herod Jesus became the son of Alary and Joseph, to Whom he declares Baruch to have spoken. And that Edem plotted against Him, but could not beguile Him, and therefore made Him to be crucified. Whose spirit [Justinus] says went on high to the Good One. And thus (the spirits) of all who believe these silly and feeble stories will be saved; but the body and soul belonging to Edem, whom the foolish Justinus calls the Earth,^[757] will be left behind.^[758]

8. The Docetae

16. But the Docetae say things like this: That the first God is as the seed of the fig-tree from whom have come three Aeons, like the stem and the leaves and [p. 497.] the fruit. And that these have projected thirty Aeons, each of them (ten). But all are linked together in tens and only differ in arrangement by some being before others.^[759] And they projected infinitely boundless Aeons and are all masculo-feminine. And having taken counsel they all came together into one and from this intermediate Aeon was begotten from the Virgin Mary the Saviour of all, like in all things to the seed of the fig-tree, but inferior to it in that He was begotten. For the seed whence the fig-tree [comes] is unbegotten.^[760] This then was the great light of the Aeons, complete, receiving no setting in order,^[761] containing within itself the forms of all the animals. And [they say] that this [light] shining into the underlying chaos provided a cause to the things which have been and are, and descending from on high impressed [on the] chaos below the forms of the Aeonic exemplars.^[762] For the third Aeon which had tripled itself, seeing that all his types were drawn down into the darkness below and not being ignorant of the terrible nature of the darkness and the simplicity of the light, created heaven and having fixed it between, divided in twain the darkness and the light.^[763] Then all the forms of the third Aeon having been overcome, they say, by the darkness, his likeness^[764] subsisted [p. 498.] as a living fire coming into being by the light. From which, they say, the Great Ruler came to be, of whom Moses talks when he says that this God is a fiery God and a Demiurge who ever transfers the forms^[765] of all (Aeons) into bodies. But they declare that it is these souls for whose sake the Saviour came,^[766] and showed the way whereby those that had been overcome may escape. And [they say] that Jesus did on that unique power, wherefore He could not be gazed upon by any by reason of the overpowering greatness of His glory. And they say that all things happened to Him as is written in the Gospels.^[767]

9. Monoimus.

17. But the followers of Monoimus the Arab say that the principle of the All is a First Man^[768] and Son of Man, [p. 499.] and that the things which have come to pass as Moses says, came into being not by the First Man but by the Son of Man, and not from the whole, but from part of him. And that the Son of Man is Iota, which is the Decad, a dominant number wherein is tHe substance of all number, whereby every number subsists, and is the birth of the All [viz.] Fire, Air, Water [and] Earth. But this being so, Iota is one and one tittle, a perfect thing from the Perfect, a tittle flowing from on high, having within itself whatever also has the Man the Father of the Son of Man. Therefore [Monoimus] says that the world of Moses came into being in six days, that is, in six powers, from which the cosmos came forth from the one tittle. For cubesand octohedrons and pyramidsand all the equal-sided figures like these, whence are made up Eire, Air, Water [and] Earth, have came into being from the numbers left bchinc in that simple tittle of the Iota which is the Son of Man. When therefore, he says, Moses speaks of a rod [p. 500.] turning towards Egypt he is attributing allegorically the woes^[769] of the world to the Iota, nor does he figure more than the ten woes. But if, he says, you wish to understand the All, enquire within thyself who it is who says, “My soul, my flesh, my mind,”^[770] and who within thee makes each thing his own as another does to him. Understand that this is a perfect thing from the Perfect who considers all the so called non-existent and all the existent as peculiar to himself.^[771] This then is what Monoimus thinks.

10 Tatian

18. But Tatian, like Valentinus and the others, says that there are certain unseen Aeons, by one of whom below the cosmos and the things that are, were fashioned. And he practises a very cynical mode of life, and hardly differs from Marcion in his blasphemies and his rules about marriage.^[772]

11. Marcion[773] [p. 501.]

19. Marcion the Pontian, and Cerdo his teacher, also determined that there are three principles of the All, a Good One, a Just One, and Matter. But certain disciples of theirs add to this, saying that there are a Good One, a Just One, a Wicked One, and Matter. But all [agree] that the Good One created nothing wholly;^[774] but they say that the Just One, whom some name the Wicked One, but others merely the Just, made all things out of the underlying Matter. For he made them not well but absurdly.^[775] For things must need be like their creator. Wherefore they make use of the parable in the Gospels, saying, “A good tree cannot make evil fruits,”^[776] and so on, declaring that in this it is said that things were devised wickedly by [the Just One], And he says that Christ is the son of the Good One and was sent for the salvation of souls. Whom he calls [the] inner man, saying that He appeared as a man, but was not man, and as incarnate, but was not incarnate, [p. 502.] and was manifested in appearance [only], but underwent neither birth nor suffering, but seemed [to do so]. And [Marcion] does not wish that [the] flesh shall rise again. And, saying that marriage is destruction, he leads his disciples to a very Cynical life, thinking thereby to vex the Demiurge by abstaining from the things brought into being or laid down by him.^[777]

12 Apelles

20. But Apelles, the disciple of [Marcion] displeased with what was said by his teacher, as we have before said, proposed by another theory that there are four Gods, declaring that one is (good) whom the Prophets knew not, but of whom Christ is the Son. And that another is the Demiurge of the All, whom he does not wish to be a god, and another a fiery one who is manifest, and yet another a wicked one: [all of] whom he calls angels. And adding Christ to these, he says that He is the fifth. But he gives heed to a book which he calls Manifestations of a certain Philumene whom he thinks a prophetess. And he says [p. 503.] that Christ did not receive the flesh from the Virgin, but from the adjacent substance of the cosmos. Thus he has written treatises^[778] against the Law and the Prophets attempting to discredit them as false speakers and ignorant of God. And he says, like Marcion, that [all] flesh will be destroyed.^[779]

13. Cerinthus

21. But Cerinthus, who had been trained in Egypt, would have it that the cosmos did not come into being by the First God, but by a certain angelic power far removed and standing apart from the Authority [set] over the universals and ignorant of the God over al things. And he says that Jesus was not begotten from a Virgin, but was the son of Joseph and Mary in the same way as the rest of mankind, and that He excelled all other men in righteousness, moderation and intelligence. And that at the Baptism, there descended upon Him from the Authority over the universals, the Christ in the form of a dove, and that He then preached the unknown God and perfected his powers;^[780] [p. 504.] but that at the end of the passion the Christ fell away from Jesus. And Jesus suffered, but the Christ remained passionless, being a spirit of [the] Lord.^[781]

14. Ebionæi

22. But the Ebionæi say that the cosmos came into being from the true God; but speak of the Christ as does Cerinthus. And they live in all things according to the Law of Moses, thus declaring themselves justified.^[782]

15. Theodotus

23. Theodotus the Byzantian brought in another heresy such as this, declaring that the universals came into being by the true God. But he says, like the Gnostics before described, that the Christ appeared in some such fashion [as this]. He said that the Christ was a man akin to all, but He differed [from others] in that He by the will of God was born from a Virgin who had been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. And that he was not incarnate in the Virgin, [p. 505.] but at length at the Baptism the Christ descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove, whence they say lie did not before then exercise powers. But he will not have the Christ to be God. And so Theodotus.^[783]

16. Оther Theodotians

24. And others of them say all things like those aforesaid, altering one single thing only in that they accept Melchizedek as some very great power, declaring him to exist above every power. After whose likeness they will have the Christ to be.^[784]

17. Phrygians

25. But the Phrygians take the beginnings of their heresy from one Montanus and Priscilla and Maximilia, thinking the wenches prophetesses and Montanus a prophet. But [p. 506.] they are considered to speak rightly in what they say about the beginning and the fashioning of the All, and they receive not otherwise the things about the Christ. But they stumble with those aforesaid to whose words they erringly give heed rather than to the Gospels, and they prescribe new and unusual fasts.

26. But others of them approaching the heresy of the Noetians think in like manner concerning the wenches and Montanus, but blaspheme the Father of the universals saying that He is at once Son and Father, seen and unseen, begotten and unbegotten, mortal and immortal. These take their starting-points from one Noetus.^[785]

18. Noetus

27. And in the same way Noetus, being a Smyrnman by birth, a garrulous and versatile man, brought in this heresy, which from one Epigonus reached Cleomenes and has so remained with his successors until now. It says that the [p. 507.] Father and God of the universals is one and that He made all things, and became invisible to the things which are when He willed, and then appeared when he wished. And that He is invisible when He is not seen; but visible when He is seen; and unbegotten when He is not begotten, but begotten when He is begotten from a Virgin; and passionless and immortal when He does not suffer and die, but that when [the] Passion comes, He suffers and dies. They think this Father is Himself called Son according to times and circumstances.^[786] The heresy of these persons Callistus confirmed, whose life we have faithfully set forth. Who himself gave birth to a heresy, taking starting-points from them, while himself confessing that this Fashioner the All is the Father and God; but that He is spoken of by name and named Son, while in substance He is (one Spirit). For God, he says is a Spirit not other than the Logos nor the Logos than God, and therefore this Person is divided in name indeed, but not in substance. And he names this one God, and says that He was incarnated. And he wishes the Son to be He who was seen and overcome according to the flesh, but the Father to be He who dwelt within [Him], [p. 508.] He sometimes branches off to the heresy of Noetus and sometimes to that of Theodotus, but holds nothing steadfastly. This now Callistus.

19. Hermogenes

28. But one Hermogenes having also wished to say something [new] said that God made all things out of coexistent and underlying matter. For that it is impossible to hold that God created existing things from those which are not.^[787]

20. Elchasaitae

29. But certain others, as if bringing in something new [and] collecting things from all heresies, prepared a foreign book bearing the name of one Elchasai. These in the same waj [as their predecessors] confess that the principles of tiie All came into being by God, but do not confess Christ to be one. But they say that there is one on high who is often transferred^[788] into [many] bodies, and that he [p. 509.] is now in Jesus. Likewise that at one time, this one was born from God, and at another became [the] Spirit, and sometimes was born from a Virgin and sometimes not. And that thereafter he is ever transferred into [many] bodies, and is manifested in many according to [the] times. And they use incantations and baptisms for their confession of the elements.^[789] And they arc excited about astrology and mathematics and (give heed) to magic (acts). And they say they foreknow the future.^[790]

21. [Title Iacking]^[791]

30. (Abraham being commanded) by God, migrates from Mesopotamia and the city of Harran to the part now called Palestine and Judrea but then Canaanitis, concerning which we have in part but not without care banded down the [p. 510.] account in other discourses.^[792] Through this occurred the beginning of [the] increase [of population] in Judma, which got the name from Judah the fourth son of Jacob, of whom it was also called the kingdom, through the royal race being from him. (Abraham)^[793] migrates from Mesopotamia (being 75 years old) and being in his hundredth year (begat Isaac). (And Isaac being) 60 years old begat Jacob. And Jacob [when] 87 years old begat Levi. But Levi when 40 years old begat Kohath.^[794] And Kohath [was 4] years old when he went down with Jacob into Egypt. Therefore the whole time which Abraham and all his race by Isaac dwelt in the land then called [the] Canaanitis was 215 years.^[795] And his (father) was Terah. This one’s [father] was Nahor, his Serug (his Zeu, his Peleg, his Eber) whence (the Jews) are called Hebrews. There were 72 (sons of Abraham from [p. 511.] whom also were 72) nations, whose names also we have set forth in other books.^[796] Nor did we omit this in its place as we wished to show to the learned^[797] our affection concerning the Divine and the accurate knowledge concerning the Truth which we have painfully acquired. But the father of this Eber was Shelah, and his Canaan, and his Arphaxad, who was born to Shem; and his father was Noah in whose time the flood over the whole world came to pass, which neither Egyptians, nor Chaldmans, nor Greeks record. For to them the floods in the time of Ogyges and Deacalion were [only] in places. Now in their time^[798] were 5 generations, or 435 years.^[799] This [Noah] being a most pious man and one who loved God, alone with [his] wife and children and their three wives escaped the coming flood, being saved in an ark, the measurements and remains of which, as we have set forth^[800] [elsewhere], are shown to this day in the mountains called Ararat which are near the land of the [p. 512.] Adiabeni. It is then to be observed by those who wish to give a painstaking account how plainly it is shown that the God-fearing race are older than all Chaldmans, Egyptians, [or] Greeks. But what need is there to name here those before Noah who both feared and spake with God, when to what has gone before the witness of antiquity is sufficient?

31. But since it seems not unreasonable to show that those nations who occupy themselves with philosophy^[801] are later in date than they who feared God, it is right to say both where their race came from, and that when they migrated to these countries, they did not take a name from them, but themselves gained [one] from those who first ruled^[802] and dwelt [there]. The three sons of Noah were Shem, Ham and Japhet. From them the whole race of men multiplied and dwelt in every country. For the word of God^[803] was confirmed by them which said, “Increase and multiply and fill the earth.”^[804] So mighty was this one saying, that 72 children were begotten by the 3 sons, family [p. 513.] by family, of whom 25 were Shorn’s, 15 Japhet’s, and 32 Ham’s. And the sons of Ham were, as has been said 32: – his were Canaan, from whom the Canaanites, Misraim, from whom the Egyptians, Cush, from whom the Ethiopians, Phut, from whom the Libyans. These in their own speech unto this day are called by the common name of their ancestors and even in the Greek are named by the names by which they have just been called. But if it were shown that there were formerly none to inhabit their countries, nor a beginning of [any] race^[805] of men, yet there are still these sons of Noah, a God-fearing man who was himself a disciple of God fearing men, thanks to which he escaped the great although temporary threat of [the] waters. How then can it be denied that there were God-fearing men earlier than all Chaldmans, Egyptians [and] Greeks,^[806] the father of which [last] was born to that Japhet [and had the] name Jovan, whence [the] Greeks and lonians? And if the nations who occupy themselves with matters of philosophy are shown to be altogether of much later date than the God-fearing race and the Flood, will not the Barbarian [p. 514.] and whatever races in the world are known and unknown, appear later than these? Wherefore now, do ye Greeks, Egyptians and Chaldaeans and every race of men master this argument and learn what is the Divine and what His well-ordered creation from us, the friends of God, who have not been trained in dainty phrase, but in the knowledge of Truth and the practice of moderation find words for His demonstration.^[807]

32. One God is the First and Only One and Creator and Ruler of all. He has no comval, neither boundless chaos, nor immeasureable water, nor solid earth, nor compact air, nor hot fire, nor subtle spirit, nor the blue canopy of great heaven.^[808] But He was One, alone with Himself, who when He willed created the things which are, which at first were not, save that He willed to create them as knowing of what they would be. For foreknowledge also is present with Him. He fashioned first the different principles of things to come – fire and spirit,^[809] water and earth, – from which different [principles] He made His creation. And some things He [made of] one substance and some he bound [p. 515.] together out of two, others of three and yet others of four. And those that are of one were immortal, for dissolution does not dog them, for that which is one will never be dissolved. But those [made] from two or three or four [substances] are dissoluble, wherefore they are called mortal. For death is called this, the dissolution of what is bound together. We think we have now answered sufficiently those who have sound perception, who, if for love of learning they will enquire further into these substances and the causes of the fashioning of all things, they will learn them by reading our book, treating of “the Substance of the All”^[810] And I think that it is here enough to set forth the causes from ignorance whereof the Greeks glorified with dainty phrase the parts of the creation, but ignored the Creator. Starting wherefrom the heresiarchs, transfiguring into like expressions what was formerly said by [the Greeks] have composed laughable heresies.

33. This God, then, One and Over All having first conceived in His mind begat [the] Word, not a word in the [p. 516.] sense of a voice, but the indwelling Reason^[811] of the All. He begot Him alone from the things which are. For the Father Himself was what is, from Whom was the Word, the cause of the begetting of things coming into being, bearing within Himself the will of His begetter, not ignorant of the thought of the Father. For from the time^[812] of His coming forth from Him who begat Him, becoming His first-born voice, He holds within Himself the ideas conceived in His Father’s mind. Whence, on the Father ordering the world to come into being, the Word completed it in detail,^[813] [thus] pleasing God. And the things which multiply by generation, He formed male and female; but all those for service and ministry he made either males who have no need of females or neither male nor female. For when the first substances [p. 517.] of these came into being [namely] Fire and Spirit, Earth and Water, from the things that were not, neither male nor female things existed. Nor eould male and female have come forth from each of these, unless the God who gave the command had whiled that the Word should do this service.^[814] I confess that angels are [formed] of fire and I say that no females are present with them. But I consider that Sun and Moon and stars wrere in like manner [formed] of fire and spirit and are neither male nor female. But I say that swimming animals were [formed] of water and that winged ones are male and female.^[815] For thus God willed and commanded that the waatery substance should be fruitful. In like manner, serpents and wild beasts and all sorts of animals were [formed] from earth and are male and female; for this the nature of begotten things allowed. For whatever things He willed, those God created. These He fashioned by the Word, for they would not have come into being otherwise than they did. But when as He had willed He also created, He called and designated them by name. Thereafter He fashioned the ruler of them all, and equipped him from all substances brought together. Nor did He wish to make a God and fail, nor an angel – be not deceived – [p. 518.] but a man. For had God willed to make thee a God, He could: thou hast the example of the Word. But He willed a man and created thee a man. But if thou dost wish also to become a God, hearken to the Creator and withstand Him not now, so that being found faithful over a little, thou mayest be entrusted w’ith much.^[816]

Only the Word of this [God] is from Him. Wherefore He also is God, being the substance of God. Rut the world is from nothing. Wherefore it is not God and it will be dissolved^[817] when the Creator wills. But God who created makes nothing evil; but he creates it fair and good. For He who creates is good. But man when he came into being was an animal with free-will,^[818] not having a ruling mind, nor dominating all things by reflection and authority and power, but a slave^[819] and full of all contrary [desires].^[820] Who, in that he is free to choose produces evil, which when it is completed by accident is nothing unless thou dost make [it].^[821] For it is by the thinking and willing something evil, that it is named evil; which was not from the [p. 519.] beginning, but came into being later. [And] as man was free to choose, a Law was laid down by God, not vainly. For if man were not free to will or not to will, what need of a Law?^[822] For the Law is not decreed for a dumb beast, but a bridle and a whip; but to man was appointed a commandment and a penalty in respect of what he was to do and not to do. And [the] Law as to this was laid down of old through righteous men. Nearer to our own times, a Law full of majesty and justice was laid down through the Moses aforesaid, a steadfast man and one who loved God.

All these things, the Word of God directs, the First born Son of [the] Father, the light-bringing voice before dawn.^[823] Thereafter there came into being righteous men who loved God. These were called prophets from their showing beforehand the things to come.^[824] To whom word came not at one season [only], but through all generations the utter ances of things foretold was most clearly brought forward.^[825] [p. 520.] Nor did they merely give an answer to those present theie at the time, but through several generations also the things to come were foreshadowed. [And this] because speaking of things past they recalled them to mankind; but by showing what was then happening they put away carelessness, and by foretelling the future have made every one of us fearful by the sight of the fulfilment of prophecies and the expectation of the future. Such is our faith, О all ye men who are not persuaded by vain speeches, nor captured by sudden movings of the heart, nor enchanted by plausible and eloquent words, but have not been obdurate to words uttered by Divine power. And these things God commanded [the] Word: and the Word speaking through [the prophets], uttered them for the turning of man from disobedience and emancipating him from the force of Fate, but calling him to liberty by his free choice.^[826]

The Father in the last days sent forth this Word, not speaking through a prophet, and not wishing that the Word when proclaimed should be darkly guessed at, but that He should be manifested to the very eyes of all. He, I say, [p. 521.] (sent Him forth) that the world when it beheld Him should be put to shame. For He did not give commandment through the person of prophets, nor affright [the] soul by an angel, but was Himself present and spake. Him we know to have taken body from a Virgin and to have moulded^[827] the old man through a new formation. [We know] that hie passed in life through every age,^[828] so that He might become a law for every age, and that His presence might show forth His manhood as an example^[829] to all men; and that through Him it might be proved that God makes nothing evil, and that man as master of himself can will or not will [evil], being capable of both. We know, too, that this man came into being out of the same material^[830] as ourselves; for were He not of the same [matter] it would be vain to order that the Teacher be imitated. For had that Man chanced to be of another substance [than ours] why should he order me who am weak by nature to do things like Himself? And [in that case] how is He good and just? But in order that He might not be thought different from us, He underwent toll, and was willing to hunger, and denied not thirst,^[831] and was stilled in sleep, and renounced not suffering, and submitted to death, and manifested resurrection, sacrificing [p. 522.] in all this His own manhood, so that thou when suffering may not be faint-hearted, but inayst confess thyself a man and expect also what the Father promised Him.

34. Such is the true word about the Divine.^[832] О all ye men, Greeks and Barbarians, Chaldmans and Assyrians, Egyptians and Libyans, Indians and Ethiopians, Celts and ye army-leading Latins,^[833] and all ye dwellers in Europe, Asia and Libya.^[834] To you I am become a counsellor, being a disciple of the Word who loves man and myself a lover of mankind, so that you may hasten to be taught by us who is the real God and what His well-ordered creation. And that you give not heed to the sophistries of artificial discourses,^[835] nor to the crazy promises of plagiarizing heretics, but to the august simplicity of unboastful truth. Through the knowledge of which, you shall escape the coming menace of the judgment of fire, and the unlighted vision of gloomy Tartarus unillumined by the voice of the Word, and [p. 523] the boiling of the Lake of the eternal Gehenna of flame, and the ever-threatening eye of the angels punished in Tartarus,^[836] and the worm which through the filth of the body turns towards the body which threw it forth as for food. And these things thou shalt escape when thou hast been taught the God Who Is. And thou shalt have an immortal body together with an incorruptible soul. And thou shalt receive the kingdom of the heavens, who whilst on earth didst also I ecognize the heavenly King. But thou shall speak with God and be joint heir with Christ, not enslaved by desires nor sufferings nor diseases.^[837] For thou [wilt] have become God. For whatever sufferings thou underwent as man, thou hast shown that thou art a man; but whatever is appurtenant to a God, that God has promised to bestow, because thou hast been made divine, since thou hast been begotten immortal. This is the [true] “Know Thyself,” the knowledge of the Creator God. For to him who knows himself has occurred the being known to Him by whom [p. 524.] he is called. Wherefore now, О men, be not your own enemies, nor hesitate to turn again. For Christ is the God over all, Who has arranged to wash away iniquity from among men, and to make anew the old man who from the beginning was called His image, thus showing forth His love towards thee. Having hearkened to Whose august precepts, and having become a good imitator of the Good One, thou wilt be like unto and be honoured by Him. For God asks no alms,^[838] and has made thee God for His own glory.