Book II

Book II

preface

§ 1. As to the first Book which precedes this,²⁴⁸* detecting the knowledge falsely so called; we have therein proved to thee, dearly beloved, concerning the imposture of the Valentinians, that it hath been devised by them in manifold and contradictory ways. We have also set forth the opinions of such as were before them, pointing out how they differ from one another, and much sooner from Truth itself. And the opinion too of Mark the sorcerer, he being one of them, with his deeds, we have set forth very diligently: and whatsoever things they select from the Scriptures and try to accommodate to their own device, we have carefully set down; and the way how by numbers and by the twenty-four letters of the Alphabet, they are busy and bold to maintain their Truth, we have particularly gone through. And their statement that the creature is made after the image of their invisible Pleroma, and all their opinions and doctrines concerning the Artificer of it, we have reported: and have declared the doctrine of their progenitor, Simon the Samaritan Sorcerer, and of all those who came after him. We have stated also the number of those who are of him, being Gnostics; and their differences, and doctrines, and successions we have noted, and the heresies founded by them, we have expounded them all. And we have shewn that they all, taking their beginnings from Simon, have brought into this life impious and irreligious tenets; and their way of Redemption we have declared, and how they initiate such as are made perfect, and their modes of address, and their mysteries. And that there is one only God, the Creator, and that He is not the offspring of Defect, and that neither above Him nor after Him is any thing.

§ 2. But in this Book we will establish what our own case requires,²⁴⁹* and what the time permits: and we will overthrow the whole of their Rule by its principal heads: and accordingly, this our work being a detection and subversion of their view, we have given that title to the writing which contains it. For the various sorts of hidden communion they speak of must be done away by exposing and overturning those which they affirm openly: and The Deep of whom they talk must submit to have it proved that he neither was at any time, nor is now.

Chap. I. § 1. It is well then to begin from the first and chiefest head, from God the Artificer and Maker of Heaven and earth,²⁵⁰* and of all things that are therein; Whom they blaspheming call the offspring of Defect and to shew that neither above Him nor after Him is any thing: and that not moved by any, but of His own mind He freely made all things, He being the only God and the only Lord and the only Creator and the only Father, and alone upholding all things, and Himself giving to all things their existence.

§ 2. For how shall there possibly be above Him any other Fulness, or Beginning, or Power, or any other God:²⁵¹* since God, the Fulness of all these things, must contain them all in infinite space, and Himself be contained by none? But if there is any thing without Him, then He is not the Fulness of all, nor doth He contain all. For there will be wanting to the Fulness, i.e., to Him Who is God over all, so much as they say is without Him. But that which is deficient, and is parted off from something, is not the Fulness of all things. Yea, and He will have a limit, and a middle and an end, with respect to those who are without Him. Now if He have an end towards the parts below, He will have also a beginning towards the parts above. And in like manner on the other sides too this must of absolute necessity befal Him, and He must be comprehended, and limited and inclosed by those who are without. For that which is His limit downwards necessarily must in every way circumscribe and surround Him Who is limited thereby. Yea, by their account, the Father of all (whom forsooth they call also the First of Beings and of Principles), with the Fulness they talk of, and Marcion’s “good God,” will have a position in something, and will be inclosed, and surrounded externally by some other principle; which must needs be greater than it, since that which contains is greater than the thing contained. Now that which is greater is also more stable, and more truly the Lord; and that which is greater, and more stable, and more truly the Lord, that same must be God.

§ 3. For, there being according to them some other thing too, which indeed they say is without the “Fulness,” and into which they think some higher Power, wandering, descended; it follows of course either that the said external Being comprehends, and the “Fulness” is comprehended;—(otherwise it will not be without the “Fulness” [or Pleroma]; for if there be aught without the Pleroma, the Pleroma will be within that same thing which they say is without it, and will be comprehended by that which is without: now with the Pleroma we are to understand the original God also:)—or again these two, i.e., the Pleroma, and that which is without it, must be indefinitely distant and parted off from one another. But if they affirm this latter, there will be some third thing, which parts off at that indefinite distance the Pleroma from that which is without it; and this third must circumscribe and contain both, and it will be greater both than the Pleroma and than that which is without it, as containing both in its own bosom: and the argument about the spaces contained and containing will go on to infinity. For if this third is to have its beginning upwards and its end downwards, it is absolutely necessary that it be limited also on its sides, both beginning and leaving off in some other things: and those again and others which are above or below, will have their beginnings in some other things: and so on to infinity: So that their device can never stay itself upon One God, but as a result of seeking more than is, must fall into that which is not, and depart from the true God.

§ 4. And all this suits equally well for a reply to Marcion’s sect also.²⁵²* For his two Gods also will be comprehended and circumscribed by an indefinite interval, separating them one from another: And in this way we must needs imagine in every direction many Gods parted by an indefinite interval, having as towards each other both beginnings and terminations; and by the argument by which they try to shew that there is some Pleroma or God above the Framer of Heaven and Earth, by use of that same argument one may make out, that above the Pleroma there is another Pleroma, and above that again another, and above the Deep another Ocean of Godhead, and that the same exist on the several sides of them in like manner: and so their view will lose itself in infinity, i.e., they will be forced continually to be imagining other Pleromata and other Deeps, and nowhere at any time to stay themselves, ever seeking fresh ones besides those which have been mentioned. And it will be uncertain, whether these parts, whereabouts we are, are below, or whether the same be the higher regions, the parts which they call Above, whether they be above or below: so will there be nothing stationary nor fixed to limit our conception, but it will be forced to go forth among immense worlds and indefinite Gods.

§ 5. Moreover, such being the case, each God will be content with his own,²⁵³* and will not be busy about what is another’s: else will he be unjust, and greedy, and ceasing to be that which God is. And each several creation will glorify its own framer, and will be contented with him, and will know no other: else being most justly accounted rebellious by all, it will incur most merited punishment. For there must needs either be One Who comprehends all, and Who in His own dominions made each one of the things which are made, according to His own will: or again many and indefinite Makers and Gods, having on every side both beginning and ending with respect to one another: so shall we be compelled to allow that all the rest are outwardly comprehended by something else which is greater, and are as it were shut up and abiding in their own home every one of them; and that none of these all is God. For to every one of them there will be somewhat wanting, occupying as it does a very small part in comparison of all the rest; and the title of Omnipotent will be abolished; so this way of thinking must needs end in Atheism.

Chap. II. § 1. But they who say that the world was framed by Angels, or by some other fabricator thereof contrary to His mind Who is Father above all:²⁵⁴* sin first in the mere circumstance of affirming such and so great a creation to have been wrought by Angels, contrary to the will of the First God. As though Angels were more powerful than God, or again as though He were negligent, or defective, or without care of what is done in His own dominions, whether it be done ill or well, to scatter and restrain the one, the other to approve with joy: now this no one would attribute even to a man of any skill: how much less to God!

§ 2. Moreover, let them in the next place tell us, whether these things were framed in the regions which are comprehended by Him,²⁵⁵* and are His own; or in regions not His own, and situated without Him. But if they say, without Him; all the above-mentioned absurdities will just as much stand in their way, and the First God will be inclosed by him who is without Him, in whom also He will of necessity terminate. But if in the regions which are His own: it will be very futile to say that against His mind, in His own regions, a world was framed, by Angels who are also in His power, or by any other; or as though He did not Himself look out on all things that are in His own place, so as not to know what the Angels will do.

§ 3. But if it were not contrary to His will, but with His consent and knowledge,²⁵⁶* as some think: no longer will the Angels, nor any Artificer of the World be the cause of this work, but the Will of God. For if there be a Framer of the World, He Himself made the Angels, or however was Himself the cause of their being created; and it will be seen that He was the Maker of the world, Who pre-arranged the causes of its formation. Though they say that the Angels or the Artificer of the world were made by a long succession downwards from the First Father, as Basilides says: nevertheless the real cause of the things that were made will be traced back²⁵⁷¹ as a stream even to Him from Whom that kind of succession emanated: as the success of a war is referred to the King who provided those things which are the cause of the victory; and as the founding of any state, or of any work, is referred to him who provided the means for the accomplishment of what was done in the inferior department²⁵⁸². Just as we say not that the axe hews the wood or the saw cuts it, but one would very properly say that the hewing and cutting was the work of a man: of him who made the very axe and saw for that purpose, and long before that made all the tools, whereby the axe and saw were manufactured. Thus then, by their argument, the Father of all will justly be termed the Artificer of this world, and not the Angels, nor any other maker of the world, except Him Who was the Producer, and Who first became a cause of what led to the aforesaid creation.

§ 4. Such a way of talking may perhaps be persuasive or beguiling to those who know not God,²⁵⁹* and liken Him to men who are poor, and who cannot immediately make any thing out of what is at hand, but need many tools for their manufacture: but it is altogether incredible with those who know that the God of all, needing nought, builded and made all by His Word, neither wanting Angels to help Him in His productions, nor any Virtue greatly inferior to Him and not knowing the Father, nor any defect nor ignorance, for the making of Man who might come to know Him: but Himself within Himself, in that way unspeakable and inconceivable by us, predestinating all, made them at His will; giving to all their proper harmony and order and beginning of existence: a substance spiritual and invisible to spiritual beings, heavenly to those which are above the heavens, and Angelical to Angels, and animal to animals, and watery to such as swim, and earthly to the earthborn, to all becoming their quality. All things moreover which were made, He made by His unweariable Word.

§ 5. For this is proper to the transcendent excellency of God,²⁶⁰* not to need other instruments for the creation of the things which are made; and His own Word is meet and able to form all things: as John also the Lord’s Disciple saith of Him;²⁶¹* All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made. Now the word All comprehends this world also of ours. Wherefore this too was made by His Word, as the Book of Genesis saith, that all that we are concerned with, God made by His own Word. In like manner David too expresses it: For He spake and they were made;²⁶²* He commanded and they were created. Which then shall we rather believe about the making of the world; these before-mentioned heretics, chattering so foolishly and inconsistently; or the Disciples of the Lord, and Moses God’s faithful Servant and the Prophet? Who also in the first place related the birth of the world, saying,²⁶³* In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth; and all the other things afterwards in order: God, not inferior gods, nor Angels.

§ 6. Now that this God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Paul also the Apostle hath said it:²⁶⁴* There is one God, the Father, Who is above all things, and through all things, and in all of us. We have now indeed shewn that there is one God: and from the same Apostles and from our Lord’s discourses we will further shew it. For what sort of thing is it, leaving the words of the Prophets, and our Lord, and the Apostles, to regard these who say nothing that is wholesome!

Chap. III. § 1. Wherefore the Deep which they talk of is a thing incongruous^265a; as is also this man’s^266b Pleroma, and Marcion’s God:²⁶⁷* if at least, as they say, it hath without itself somewhat which is a base to it, which they call Void, and Shadow: and this void is proved greater than their Pleroma. And this statement again is incongruous—that while it contains all within itself, yet something else was the artificer of the Creation. For they must necessarily confess that there is something void and without form, wherein was made this now existing Universe, beneath the spiritual Pleroma: and that this space without form, was left by him on purpose, the First Father either knowing or not knowing what would take place in it. And if indeed He was ignorant, God will of course not have foresight of all things. Yea, and they will have no cause to assign, why He left this space for so many ages unemployed. But if He foreknow, and did mentally consider the creation which was to be in that space, He Himself made it, forming it as He did beforehand within Himself.

§ 2. Let them cease therefore to say, that the world was made by another:²⁶⁸* for at one and the same moment did God conceive it in His mind, and that was wrought which He had mentally conceived. It not being even possible for one to conceive in his mind and for another to make what the first had so conceived. But God conceived the world in the way supposed by these Heretics, either eternal, or temporal: both of which is incredible. If however He had conceived it in His mind to be Eternal and spiritual, and an object of contemplation, such also would it have been made. But being such as it is, the Being Who made it such was of course the same Who had conceived it such in His mind. Or with the cognizance of the Father that Being willed it to exist according to the said mental idea, both compounded, and changeable, and transitory: and that being such as the Father had sketched out within Himself, it should be a work worthy of the Father. Now that which was mentally conceived by the Father of all, and formed before, as it was also made, to call this the fruit of defect, and an emanation from ignorance, is a word of great blasphemy. For according to them we shall have the Father of all, in the Idea of His own mind within His own bosom, giving birth to emanations from defect and fruits of ignorance; for such as He had conceived things in His mind, such also were they made.

Chap. IV. § 1. We may inquire into the cause of the Divine arrangement of which we have been speaking, but we may not attribute to another the framing of the world:²⁶⁹* and we are to say, that God prepared all things beforehand that they might come into being as they actually did; but we are not to be framing devices about a Shadow and a Void. Yea, and it may be asked, Whence is the Void? Whether is it also according to them produced by the Father and Producer of all, and equal in honour, and akin to the other Æons, perhaps too even elder than they? Now if it emanated from the same, it resembles Him from Whom and those with whom it emanated. It will follow then of absolute necessity, that the Deep whom they talk of, with their Silence, must resemble the Void, i.e., must be void: and that the other Æons, as brothers of The Void, must have their substance also void.—If on the other hand it be no emanation, it is self-born and self-begotten, and equal in time to that Deep the Father of all Whom they speak of: and so the Void will be of the same nature and honour with Him Whom they speak of, the Father of all. For it must either emanate from something, or be self-born and self-begotten.—But now if that which emanates be Void, the Producer of it too, Valentinus, is empty and void, void also are his followers. But if it be no emanation, but self-begotten: then that which is void is like, and as a brother, and equal in honour to the Father Whom Valentinus had before spoken of: but more ancient and greatly exceeding in age and honour all the other Æons of Ptolemy himself, and of Heracleon, and the rest who are of the same way of thinking.

§ 2. But if, being at a loss herein, they confess that the Father of all contains all things,²⁷⁰* and that there is nothing without the Pleroma (for else He must of absolute necessity have limits, and be compassed about by some greater Being): and that they use the terms “without” and “within,” to express knowledge and ignorance, not local distance: and that the things made by the inferior Creator, or by Angels, whatsoever we know to have been made, being within the Pleroma, or in the parts comprehended by the Father, are themselves comprehended by that Unspeakable Greatness, as a centre within a circle, or as a spot in a vesture: first of all, what sort of a being will The Deep prove, suffering a spot to take place within his own bosom, and permitting some other to create or produce, in his own regions, contrary to his own mind? A thing which would bring discredit upon the whole Pleroma, seeing that He might have cut off Defect from the beginning, and all the emanations which took their origin therefrom, and not allow things to receive any order of Creation with ignorance, or passion, or defect. For he who afterwards corrects a defect, or cleanses it out as a blot, might much sooner have taken care, that no such blot might at all occur in the things which are his. Or if he allowed it in the beginning, because what was made could not be made otherwise; they must needs take place always in like manner. For the things which admit not of correction at first, how are they to admit of it afterwards?

Or how say they that men are called out to perfection, when the very beings which are the efficient causes of men, whether it be the Creator himself, or certain Angels, are said to be in Defect? And if because He is kind, He pitied men in the last times, and is giving them perfection; He ought first to pity those who were the makers of men, and give them perfection. In which case man too of course would have received mercy, being made perfect by beings that were perfect. Since if He pitied their work, much more ought He to pity them, and not to permit them to come to so great blindness.

§ 3. Also their discourse about the Shadow and the Void will be refuted,²⁷¹* (wherein they say was made this creation which we belong to), if all this took place in the regions which are comprehended by the Father. For if they suppose that paternal light of theirs to be such as to have the power of filling all things and enlightening all things which are within Him; how could there be void or shadow in those parts which are comprehended by the Pleroma and the paternal light? For they must point to some place within the First Father, or within the Pleroma, not enlightened nor occupied by any thing, wherein either the Angels or the Creator made whatsoever he would. It being no small space, wherein such and so great a creation was made. It will be absolutely necessary then, that locally within the Pleroma,²⁷²* or within their Father they must make themselves something void and shapeless and dark, wherein were made whatsoever things were made. Also blame will fall on their Paternal Light, as though He were unable to enlighten and fill the parts that are within Him. And calling it all Fruits of Defect, and the Work of Error, they will be still introducing defect and error within the Pleroma, and into the bosom of the Father.

Chap. V. § 1. Against them therefore who maintain that this world was made without the Pleroma, or under “the good God,” what we said a little before^273c is appropriate; and the said persons with their Father will be shut up as in a prison by that which is without the Pleroma: in which they also must of necessity terminate.

But those who say that within the regions comprehended of the Father this world was made by certain other beings, will be met by all the absurdities and incongruities now mentioned: and they will be forced either to own that all that is within the Father is luminous, and full, and active; or to speak ill of the paternal Light, as not being able to enlighten all things; or as one part, so the whole of their Pleroma must be acknowledged to be empty and disordered and dark. And all other things as many as belong to creation, they speak ill of, as though they were but for a time^274d, or, if eternal, were made of matter. Whereas they must be free from all censure, being within the Pleroma and in the Bosom of the Father: otherwise the censures will spread in like manner over the whole of the Pleroma.

And their Christ is found to be a cause of ignorance. For by their account, he having in substance formed their Mother, cast her out beyond the Pleroma, i.e., cut her off from knowledge. He was himself therefore the cause of ignorance in her, who cut her off from knowledge. How then could he, the very same person, give knowledge to the other Æons, who existed before him, while to his Mother he caused ignorance. For he put her out of knowledge, throwing her out of the Pleroma.

§ 2. Yet further:²⁷⁵* if the phrases “within and without the Pleroma” are used by them, as some of themselves say, to express knowledge and ignorance; because he who is in knowledge is within that which he has cognizance of: the Saviour Himself (whom they affirm to be all things) they must needs allow to have been in ignorance. For they say that he, having come out beyond the Pleroma, formed their Mother. If then being without is in their speech ignorance of all things; and the Saviour went out to form their Mother; He came to be without the limits of the knowledge of all things, i.e., in ignorance. How could He furnish her with knowledge, being Himself without the borders thereof? For so we, being without the borders of their knowledge, are, they say, without the Pleroma. And again: If therefore the Saviour went out beyond the Pleroma to search for the Lost Sheep, and the Pleroma is knowledge, He came to be without the limits of knowledge; which means, “in ignorance.” For either they must allow something locally without the Pleroma, and so all the aforesaid incongruities will confront them; or if they use “within” in the sense of knowledge and “without” of ignorance, the Saviour they speak of, and long before him Christ, will have come to be in ignorance, when they went out of the Pleroma to form their Mother: i.e., out of knowledge.

§ 3. Now all this will apply in like manner against all who affirm the world to have been made either by Angels or by any other but the true God.²⁷⁶* For the fault they find about Fabricator of it, and about the things which were made material and temporal, will recoil upon the Father. For how come things to exist in the womb of the Pleroma, whose final dissolution was to begin presently? by the consent of the Father, and at His good Pleasure. Now then it is no more the Creator who is the cause of this work, thinking himself to be making it particularly well: but He Who in His People permits and approves emanations of Defect and deeds of error to take place, and among eternal things temporal, and among incorruptible things corruptible, and among the things of truth, those which are of error. If on the other hand these things were made without the permission and approbation of the Father of all: the other, who wrought in the Father’s own dominions any thing without His leave, is mightier, and stronger, and more sovereign than He. Again: if their Father, as some say, permitted without approving it; He permitted for some constraining cause, either when He had power to forbid, or when He had not power. If He had not power, He is weak and infirm; if He had, He is a deceiver and pretender, and a slave of necessity; not consenting, yet permitting as if He consented. And allowing error in the first instance to have substance and growth, in after times He tries to do it away, when now many have grievously perished because of this defect.

§ 4. But it is unmeet to say that He who is God over all, free as He is and independent, was a slave to any necessity,²⁷⁷* so as that somewhat should exist by allowance contrary to His decree: else they will make Necessity greater and more absolute than God, since what hath more power is before all in dignity. And he ought immediately in the beginning to cut off the causes of that necessity, and not to shut himself to the endurance of necessity, allowing something otherwise than becomes Him. Yea, much better and more consistent and more godlike were it, to cut off at first the very ground of that kind of necessity, than afterwards, as it were upon change of mind, to try to root out such abundant produce of necessity. And if the Father of all is to be the slave of necessity. And if the Father of all is to be the slave of necessity, and to be subject to fate, displeased with what is done, but unable to do anything contrary to necessity and fate:—(like the Homeric Jupiter, who says upon compulsion

²⁷⁸*For willing, when I gave, was I,

And yet I gave unwillingly:)

I say, by this rule, The Deep whom they talk of will be found the slave of necessity and fate.

Chap. VI. § 1. Further: how were either the Angels or the Maker of the world ignorant of the First God, being as they were in His own regions, and creatures of His, and preserved by Him? He might indeed be invisible to them,²⁷⁹* by reason of His excellency, but unknown He could in no wise be, by reason of His Providence. Yea, and however widely they might be separated from Him (as they say) in a downward line; yet, His Dominion being spread over all, they must needs have known Him ruling over them and have been aware of this at least, that He Who created them is Lord of all. For the combination in Him of Invisibility and Power helps all greatly to realize and perceive His most mighty and Almighty excellence.²⁸⁰* Wherefore, although no man knoweth the Father, save the Son, nor the Son, save the Father, and those to whom the Son hath revealed Him; yet thus much all know, the reason fixed in their minds acting upon them, and instructing them:—that there is One God, the Lord of all.

§ 2. And for this cause all things submit, when appeal is made to the Most High and Almighty One:²⁸¹* and by Invocation of Him, even before our Lord’s Advent, men used to be saved both from the worst of spirits, and from all kinds of dæmons, and from the whole apostate Power. Not as though the earthly spirits or dæmons had seen Him, but because they knew of the existence of Him Who is God over all, the Invocation of Whom did and doth cause trembling in every creature, in Principality, and Power, and every inferior Virtue. Or shall we say, that while those who are subject to the Roman Empire, though they have never seen the Emperor, but are widely separated from him by sea and land, recognize, because of his dominion, him who has the chief place in sovereignty over them; the Angels on the other hand who were above us, or he whom they call Artificer of the world, fail to recognise the Almighty, when even dumb animals tremble and give way at that invocation? And they are all subject to the name of our Lord, though of course they have not seen Him: so also are they subject to the appellation^282e of “Him Who made and ordered all,” He being no other than the very Creator of the world.²⁸³* And accordingly the Jews even to this day expel dæmons by this very form of address, because all things fear, when He is invoked Who made them.

§ 3. Except therefore they will have the Angels more irrational than the dumb animals,²⁸⁴* they will find that although they had not seen Him Who is God over all, yet they must needs have been aware of His Power and Dominion. For it will seem ridiculous indeed, if they affirm themselves who are on earth, to know the God above all Whom they never saw; and suffer not Him Who by their account made them and all the world, being as He is in the highest and above the Heavens, to know what is known to themselves, whose place is in the regions below. Unless haply they say that the Deep whom they talk of is under the earth in Tartarus, and that accordingly they first knew him, before the Angels who dwell on high: going on to such great folly, as to pronounce the Artificer of the world beside himself. Yea, they are indeed to be pitied, affirming that he in so extreme madness knew neither his Mother, nor her seed, nor the Pleroma of the Æons, nor the First Father, nor what his own handyworks were: but that they are images of the things which are within the Pleroma, the Saviour having secretly wrought upon him that they should be so made in honour of those who are on high.

Chap. VII. § 1. And so, whereas the Demiurge was ignorant of all, the Saviour, they say, did honour to the Pleroma in the Creation which He wrought by that mother,²⁸⁵* emitting similitudes and images of the things above. We however have shewn it impossible that there should be any thing without the Pleroma, wherein they say the images of the Beings within the Pleroma are formed: as also that this world should be framed by any but the First Deity. But if we took delight in overthrowing them on every side, and convicting them of falsehood, we might allege against them, That if things here were made by the Saviour in honour of things above, after their similitude, they ought to continue for ever, that the objects of honour might for ever receive that honour. But if they pass away, what is the use of this very short space of honour: of an honour which once was not, and again shall not be? At this rate we make out the Saviour to be rather a seeker of vain glory, than an honourer of the things above. For what honour to the eternal and everlasting things are those which are temporal? to the enduring, those which pass away? to the incorruptible, those which see corruption? Since even among men, who are but for a time, there is nothing delightful in that honour which quickly passes by, but in that which endures as long as possible. Whereas the things which are got rid of as soon as made, might be justly said to be made rather by way of insult to the supposed objects of honour: and the eternal to be injuriously treated by the spoiling and scattering of its image.

But what? except their Mother had wept, and laughed, and been at her wits’ end, would the Saviour have lacked means of honouring His Fulness, because that utter state of confusion had no substance of its own^286f, whereby to honour the First Father?

§ 2. O vain-glorious honour, presently passing away, and appearing no more! Suppose some Æon,²⁸⁷* in whose case no such honour is said to have been; then the things above will be unhonoured; or another Mother again must be sent forth, in tears and perplexity, for the honour of the Pleroma! O incongruous^288g yea also blasphemous Image! Ye talk to me of an Image of the Only Begotten, emanating from the Maker of the world, and you will have it to be the Mind of the Father of all, yet that this Image knows not either itself or the creation; neither indeed doth it know the Mother, nor any whatsoever among existing things, and those which were made by Him. And do ye not blush against yourselves, making Ignorance extend even to the Only Begotten? For if things here were made by the Saviour after the likeness of the things above; there being so much ignorance in him who is made after a certain pattern, the aforesaid ignorance must needs exist in and concerning Him also, in whose likeness the ignorant one is made. It not being possible, when both are spiritual emanations, not framed, nor put together, that he should have preserved in some respects, but in others have marred the resembling image²⁸⁹³, which was sent forth for this very end, to be like that emanation which is on high. Yea, and any want of resemblance therein will be a charge brought against the Saviour, for producing an image without likeness, like an artist whose works will not stand the test. For they may not speak as though the Saviour, whom they affirm to be All, had not power over His own production. If then the Image be unlike, the artist is a bad one, and it is, by their account, the Saviour’s fault. If on the other hand it be like, there will be the same ignorance found in the mind of their First Father, i.e., the Only Begotten: and the Father’s Mind knew not either itself or the Father, nor yet the things made by Him. But if He knows, then the person whom the Saviour made in His likeness must also know the things which bear His likeness: and we do away with the greatest blasphemy they have in their rule.

§ 3. And moreover, how is it possible for all creatures that are, so various and many and past numbering,²⁹⁰* to be images of those thirty Æons which are within the Pleroma, the same whose names (according to their statement) we have set down in the preceding book? And I say not the whole creation in its variety, but even any single part, either in the Heaven or the Earth or the Waters, will be found beyond their power to measure by the scanty reach of their Pleroma. For that their Pleroma consists of thirty Æons, themselves bear witness: and that in any single portion of the aforesaid there are^291h, not thirty but many thousand kinds, should men enumerate them, every one whatever will affirm without qualification. How then may things of such manifold formation, existing in contrary natures, and mutually opposed, and one destroying another, be images and similitudes of the thirty Æons of the Pleroma, since these by their statement are of one nature, of equal and like origin, and have no difference? Whereas if one are images of the other, it must follow that as some men, they say, are naturally bad, others naturally good, so we might point out like differences in the very Æons, and say that some of them are naturally good emanations, others naturally bad, to make their contrivance of an image suitable to their Æons. Once more, because there are in the world some things tame and others wild, some harmless, others mischievous and apt to spoil the rest: and again some earthly some watery, some in the air some in the heaven: in like manner they ought to maintain that their Æons are affected in the same way, if at least the one are images of the other.²⁹²* Yea, and the “eternal fire which the Father prepared for the Devil and his Angels,” they ought to to make out which it represents of the Æons that are above: for it too is counted as part of the Creation.

§ 4. But if they say, “Things here are images of the Thought of that Æon who suffered:”²⁹³* first they will be treating their mother with irreverence, ascribing to her the beginning of evil and corruptible images. And next, how should things so many and unlike and contrary in nature be images of one and the same Being? Should they further say, that there are many Angels in the Pleroma, and that those many things are images of them; neither so will their scheme hold together. For first they must point out distinctions, mutual contrarieties, in the Angels of the Pleroma, even as the images depending²⁹⁴⁴ on them are of a nature contrary to each other. Next, there being around the Creator many, yea innumerable Angels, as all the Prophets set forth—ten thousand times ten thousand stand before Him,²⁹⁵* and many thousand thousands minister unto Him:—by their account again the Creator’s Angels will be Images of the Angels of the Pleroma, and the entire Creation remains to be the image of the Pleroma, those thirty Æons no longer proving adequate to the manifold variety of Creation.

§ 5. Yet again: if this set of things was made after the likeness of that,²⁹⁶* in what other likeness shall the latter in its turn be made? For if the Framer of the world did not make these of himself, but like a workman of no consequence, and as a boy learning his first lesson, transferred them from patterns not his own; whence had he whom they call The Deep the forms of that order which first emanated from him? It follows then, that he received his standard from some other who is above him: and that other again from another. And just as before, the doctrine of images will sink in a sort of endless void, just as will the doctrine of gods, except we fix our thoughts upon one Sole Artificer, as upon one sole God, Who of Himself made all that was made. Or, while one permits men to have discovered of themselves something useful to life, doth he refuse leave to that God Who completed the world, to have been Himself the Maker of the Form of the things that are made, and the Inventor of the scheme of them with its accompaniments?

§ 6. Moreover, whence are one the images of the other,²⁹⁷* being contrary to them, and in nothing capable of participating with them? For contraries may indeed be destructive of their contraries, but images of them they can in no wise be: as water and fire, and light again and darkness, and so many other things, may by no means be images to each other. So neither may the corruptible and earthly and compound and transitory things be images of the spiritual things which answer to them: except they confess these latter too to be compound, and circumscribed, and figured, and no longer spiritual, and at large²⁹⁸⁵, and inexhaustible, and incomprehensible. For they must be figured and circumscribed, in order to be true images: and it is quite plain that such things are not spiritual. But if they affirm the first sort to be spiritual, and at large, and incomprehensible; how can such things as are figured and circumscribed be images of those which are without figure and incomprehensible?

§ 7. But if they say that these things are images, not in respect of figure and form,²⁹⁹* but in number and order of emanation: first, these ought not to be called Images and Similitudes of the Æons which are above. For how are those their images,³⁰⁰* which have neither their habit nor figure? Then again, what numbers and modes of emanation belong to the superior Æons, the same and like to them they ought to adapt to those Æons which belong to the creation. Whereas now, pointing out as they do thirty Æons, yet affirming the so great multitude of created things to be their images, we may justly charge them with folly.

Chap. VIII. § 1. If again they say that the one sort are the shadow of the other, as some of them do venture to say, so that in this sense they are images,³⁰¹* they must needs confess that the things too above are bodies. For it is those bodies which are above, which cast a shadow, not at all those things which are spiritual, since they cannot overshade any. Yea, and though we grant them this (which indeed is impossible) that the spiritual and bright things do cast a shadow, whereinto, they say, their Mother descended; nevertheless they being eternal, the shadow also which they cast remains to eternity; and so the things which are here do not pass away, but abide together with those which cast the shadow over them. If on the other hand these pass, those also must needs pass away, whereof these are the shadow: but if they endure, their shadow likewise endures.

§ 2. But if they say it is a shadow, not in that the light is intercepted,³⁰²* but in that these are widely separated from those; they will be blaming the littleness and infirmity of their paternal Light, as though it could not reach to things here, but failed in supplying the void, and dissolving the shadow, and that when there was no man to stand in the way. For by their account, their paternal Light will be changed into darkness, and blinded, and will fail in those parts which belong to the void, not being able to fill all things. No longer then let them call their Deep Pleroma of all things; since that which is void and shadow, He hath not filled, nor enlightened: Or again, let them give up their shadow and void, if indeed their paternal Light fills all things.

§ 3. Neither therefore external to the First Father, i.e., God over all, or to the Pleroma,³⁰³* can there be anything, into which,³⁰⁴* they say, the thought of the Æon which was somehow affected came down; lest the said Pleroma, or First God, be limited and circumscribed by that which is without; nor will it hold that there should be a Void or a Shadow, the Father before existing, lest His light fail and be limited by the Void. And it is irrational and impious to devise a place where He ceases and hath an end, Who by their account is First Father, and First Principle, and Father of all, yea of this Pleroma. Nor again is it lawful to say that within the bosom of the Father some other framed this great Creation, whether with or without His consent: and that for causes which have been stated.³⁰⁵* It being alike impious and foolish to say, that so great a creation was framed by Angels, or by some Emanation which knew not the true God, within the regions which belong to Him. And it is impossible that within their Pleroma, which is all Spiritual, things earthly and material were made: impossible, again, that beings of manifold creation, and contrary to each other, should be made after the image of those others, few as they are said to be, and of like formation, and all one. Moreover that part of their statement which relates to the Shadow of the Vacuum or Void, hath also been made out altogether false. And so, empty hath their device been proved, and incongruous their teaching; yea, and they too are empty who pay regard to them, going down verily into the depth of perdition.

Chap. IX. § 1. Now that God is the Artificer³⁰⁶⁶ of the world, themselves also hold, who in many ways contradict Him, yet confess Him, calling Him Artificer,³⁰⁷* and using the term Angel³⁰⁸ⁱ. Not to mention that all the Scriptures cry aloud, and the Lord teaches, that This is Our Father which is in Heaven,³⁰⁹* and not another: as we shall shew in the progress of our discourse. But for the present that witness is enough, which they bear who contradict us: all men in effect agreeing herein: first the ancients, both keeping especially this persuasion by tradition from the first-made Man, and honouring with hymns One God, Maker of Heaven and Earth, then the rest who came after them, receiving from God’s Prophets the commemoration of the same: and lastly the Gentiles learning it from the Creation itself. For the Creation of itself points to Him Who created it, and the thing made gives intimation of Him Who made it, and the world manifests Him Who set it in order. Moreover, the whole Church in all the world hath received this tradition of the Apostles.

§ 2. It being then agreed concerning this God as we have said,³¹⁰* and testimony given by all to His existence; doubtless that other, the Father whom they devise, hath no settled being, nor any to witness him: Simon the Sorcerer first affirming himself to be the God over all, and the world to be made by his Angels; and his followers afterwards, as we shewed in the first book, in their diverse opinions propagating impious and irreligious doctrines against the Creator: and these being their disciples, make their adherents worse than Gentiles.³¹¹* For they, serving as they do the Creature more than the Creator,³¹²* and them which are not Gods, do nevertheless give the first place in Deity to the God Who made this Universe. But these, denominating Him “the fruit of Decay,” and calling Him Animal, and ignorant of the Power which is above Him: affirming too that in the saying, I am God, and besides Me there is no other God, He lieth (while themselves are the liars): associating Him with all that is bad, and feigning that there is one (which there is not) above Him:—these are convicted by their own statement of blaspheming Him Who is really God, and feigning him to be God who is not, to their own condemnation. And they who call themselves perfect, and say they have exact knowledge of all things, are found worse than the Heathens, and more blasphemous in their way of thinking, even of their own Maker.

Chap. X. § 1. It is therefore utterly unreasonable, passing by Him Who is truly God, and is witnessed by all, to inquire whether there be this one above Him—who is not,³¹³* nor hath ever been announced by any one. For that nothing is expressly said of him, themselves too give testimony: and that parables, the sense of which is itself matter of inquiry, are by them unwarrantably shaped to suit him whom they have devised, and that so they produce another [God] now, who before was never looked alter: this is evident. Thus by their wanting to solve doubtful Scriptures (doubtful, I mean, not as to another God, but as to the ordained ways³¹⁴⁷ of God), they have framed another God: twining, as we said before; ropes out of sand, and producing a greater question out of a less. Whereas no question is to be solved by another point, which is itself questioned, nor will one ambiguity be done away by another, in the judgement of those who have understanding, nor one riddle by another greater riddle: but all such things receive their explanations from evident, congruous and clear considerations.

§ 2. But these men, seeking to explain Scriptures and Parables, introduce another,³¹⁵* a greater, yea an impious question, Whether there be another God above the God Who made the world: Thus they do not solve questions (how should they?) but to a lesser question they annex a great one, and insert a knot which cannot be disentangled. Thus, to make themselves sure that they know this, namely, that Our Lord at thirty years came to the Baptism of the Truth—a thing which they were never taught;³¹⁶* they impiously scorn God the Creator Who sent Him to save men. And that they may be supposed able to explain whence comes the substance of matter, not believing that God out of things that were not made all things that were made to be as He would, using His own Will and Power in the Place of Substance, they have put together vain discourses, truly declaring their own faithlessness. And because they believe not the things which are, they have sunk into that which is not.

§ 3. So as to their statement, that from the tears of Achamoth proceeded the moist part of matter,³¹⁷* and from her smile the bright part, and from her sadness the solid, and from her fear the moveable, and as to their being hereupon high-minded and puffed up; how can this be other than matter of Scorn and truly ridiculous? that men who believe not God’s creating matter itself, mighty and rich as He is in all things, because they know not the power of a spiritual and Divine Substance;—should yet believe that their Mother, whom they call a female born of a female, did by the aforesaid affections produce this great mass of creation! That while they make it a question, Whence the Creator was supplied with the substance of Creation, they made no question, whence their Mother, whom they call the Conception and effort of a wandering Æon, had so many tears, such sweat, so much sadness, or other ways of parting with her substance.

§ 4. For to ascribe the substance of the things which are made to the Power and Will of Him Who is God of all,³¹⁸* is credible, and approveable, and consistent: and to this subject may be well applied,³¹⁹* The things which are impossible with men are possible with God. Because although men have no power to make any thing out of nothing, but only out of some subject matter, God on the contrary excels men in this first of all, that Himself devised the material of His work, which did not exist before. But to say that Matter was produced of the Conception of a wandering Æon, and that Æon widely separated from its own Conception, and again that the passion and affection of this latter take place even without its own substance, this is incredible, and foolish, and impossible, and inconsistent.

Chap. XI. § 1. And whereas on the one hand they refuse to believe that He Who is God over all did in the regions which belong to Him make by His Word at His own will things various and unlike,³²⁰* He being the Maker of all, as a wise Master builder, and very mighty King, while on the other hand, they believe that Angels, or some Virtue separate from God, and ignorant of Him, made this Universe:—in this way, you see, disbelieving the truth and wallowing in a lie, they have lost the Bread of true life, falling into a void and depth of shadow; like Æsop’s dog, which let go his bread, but rushed on the shadow of it, and lost his morsel. Now it is easy, even from our Lord’s very words, Who confesses one Father, and Maker of the world, and Framer of man, proclaimed also by the Law and the Prophets, and Who knows no other, to shew that the same is God over all: Who teaches also, and by Himself bestows on all just men, the adoption of sons to the Father, which is eternal life.

§ 2. Since however they love to find fault, and things which admit of no cavil they as cavillers disturb, bringing in upon us a multitude of Parables and Questions: we have thought it well in the first place to interrogate them in our turn concerning their doctrines, and to exhibit their want of probability and quite do away with their rashness: then afterwards to bring in the Lord’s discourses; that they be not simply amusing their leisure with statements, but upon their inability to answer orderly to the questions asked of them, seeing their own reasoning overthrown, may either return to the Truth, and humble themselves, and cease from their manifold imaginations, and so appeasing God for their blasphemies against Him, may be saved: or if they persevere in the vain boasting which has got hold of their minds, may change their way of reasoning.

Chap. XII. § 1. And first concerning their use of the number 30, thus we shall say, that it fails altogether in both respects, both in having too little and in having too much:³²¹* with a view to which number they say the Lord came to Baptism at 30 years’ old. And by this our statement, it will be plain that all their reasoning is overthrown. And in regard of defect, thus it is: first of all, by counting the First Father with the other Æons. For the Father of all ought not to be put in the same list with the rest, which come of emanation: He Who is not sent out, with that which is sent out: and the Unborn, with that which is born; and He Whom none comprehends, with that which is comprehended by Him (and therefore He is Incomprehensible): nor He Who is without form, with that which hath form. I mean, that in that respect wherein He is better than the rest, He ought not to be counted with them: and especially not with any Æon capable of suffering, and set in error, He Who is impassible and unerring. Because they, beginning from The Deep, reckon up their Thirty even unto Wisdom, whom they term the wandering Æon; as we have explained in the former book, and have set down the names of the same by their statement. But now if we count not Him, there come to be no longer, as they say, thirty emanations of Æons, but twenty nine.

§ 2. Afterwards again, in calling the first emanation Mind, which they also call Silence,³²²* from which again they say that Understanding and Truth emanated, in both they lose their way. For it is impossible that a person’s mind or silence should be conceived of as apart from himself or that it should emanate from the person and have a form of its own. But if they say it is not sent forth, but joined in one with the First Father; why do they reckon it with the other Æons, those which have no such union, and which therefore know not His greatness? And again, if it be thus united (this too we ought to consider) it is of absolute necessity,³²³⁸ the original Pair being united, and inseparable, and quite one thing, that the emanation also which takes place from it, should be undivided and united, not to be unlike that from which it emanated. And this being so, as The Deep and Silence are One, so also will be Understanding and Truth continually cleaving together. And since the one cannot be conceived of without the other, as neither can water without moisture nor fire without heat, nor a stone without hardness (for these things are mutually conjoined); therefore the one cannot be separated from the other, but must ever coexist with it. Thus both The Deep must be united with Mind, and Understanding in the same way with Truth. Again also The Word and Life having emanated from united beings, must be united, and one. Now according to all this, The Man also and and The Church and all that emanates from the other Æons, thus wedded together, must be united, and the one portion coexist always with the other. For the female Æon must exist along with the male, by their statement, being a kind of affection thereof.

§ 3. Yet for all these things, and for all these statements of theirs,³²⁴* they dare again shamelessly to teach, that the youngest Æon of the Twelve, whom also they call Wisdom, without access of her consort, whom they call The Desired, suffered I know not what, and apart from him bare fruit: which fruit they also term a Female, born of a Female. Wherein they have gone so far in madness, as to hold most evidently two contradictory opinions on the same thing. For if The Deep is united with Silence, and The Mind with Truth, and The Word with Life, and the rest in their order; how could Wisdom suffer or produce any thing unconnected with her consort? But if she suffered without him, the other pairs too must of course admit of mutual departure and separation: which is impossible, as we said before. Therefore it is also impossible for Wisdom to have suffered without The Desired; and their whole reasoning is again done away with. For of that which they say befel her without her consort’s embrace, they proceeded on to invent the whole plot (so to call it) of their Tragedy.

§ 4. But if they were shamelessly to say that the other several pairs also are separated from each other, because of the last pair, to prevent their vain talk from being refuted; first of all they urge a thing impossible. For how will they separate the First Father from His Thought, or The Mind from Truth, or the Word from Life, and the rest in like manner? And how do they say that both themselves are tending to unity, and that all are one, if even these pairs which are within the Pleroma keep no unity, but are at a distance from each other; so as even to suffer and to propagate their kind untouched by any other, as hens without the male bird?

§ 5. And after all, here is another way in which their first and original party of Eight will be broken up:³²⁵* There will be in their several modes of existence³²⁶⁹ in the same Pleroma, The Deep and Silence, The Mind and Truth, The Word and Life, The Man and the Church. But it is impossible that when the Word is present, Silence should be: or again that when Silence is present the Word should appear. For these things are mutually destructible. As Light and Darkness will by no means be in the same subject, but if it be light, it is not darkness, and where darkness is, light cannot be, for at the coming of the light, the darkness is dissolved: so, where silence is, the Word will not be; and where the Word is, of course silence is not. But if they speak of the Word as resting in the mind³²⁷¹, the Silence will be so too, and will be just as much done away with by the inward Word. However, that it is not merely inward, this very statement of the manner of their emanation implies.

§ 6. Now then let them not say that the first and chief Ogdoad consists of The Word and Silence, but let them do away with the one or the other of these: and so is their first and chief Ogdoad refuted. For if they say the pairs are blended, all their system falls to pieces. For how, they being blended, did Wisdom without a consort produce Defect? If on the contrary they say that as in emanation each of the Æons retains his own substance: how can Silence and The Word be manifested in the same? And thus much in the way of making out too little.

§ 7. Again in respect of making out too much, their party of thirty is again refuted as follows.³²⁸* There emanated, they say, from the Only-Begotten, as the other Æons, so Horus, whom they call by a great many names; as we said before in the preceding Book. Now this Horus, some say, emanated from the Only-Begotten, but others say, from the First Father Himself in His own likeness. A further emanation moreover, they say, took place from the Only-Begotten, Christ and the Holy Ghost, and these they count not in the number of the Pleroma, as neither do they the Saviour, whom they call besides The Whole. For this even a blind man can see, that by their account were sent out not thirty emanations only, but four likewise with those thirty. For they reckon the First Father Himself in the Pleroma, and those who by succession emanated one from another. Why, I ask, are these not to be counted with them, being in the same Pleroma and gifted with the same emanation? For what just cause can they lay down, why they number not with the other Æons, either Christ, whom they state to have emanated, with the Father’s consent, from the Only-Begotten: nor the Holy Spirit, nor Horus, whom they call also Redeemer: yea, not even the Saviour himself, who they say came to assist their Mother, and put her in form? Whether, as though these were far inferior to the other, do they therefore deem them unworthy to be even named and numbered as Æons; or as being better and more excellent? Nay, how should they prove inferior to all, sent out as they are for the very purpose of settling and correcting the rest? But on the other hand, they cannot be better than the first and principal quaternion, from which also they emanated; for that too is counted in the aforesaid number. But these too ought to be numbered in the Pleroma of the Æons; or else the other Æons should have the honour of the said title taken from them.

§ 8. Their Thirty being therefore once done away,³²⁹* as we have shewn, both in respect of defect and of excess (for in such a number if there be too much or too little, it will make the number fit to be rejected, how much more so many such faults!) the fable therefore about their Bands of Eight and of Twelve is ungrounded. Yea, and their whole rule is ungrounded, their very strong place being done away, and dissolved into The Deep, i.e., into that which is not. Let them therefore from this time forth seek other reasons to shew why the Lord at thirty years’ old came to Baptism: and also of the Twelve Apostles, and of her who suffered the issue of blood: and in whatsoever else they vainly toil and babble of.

Chap. XIII. § 1. Moreover, the first order itself of their Emanation is indefensible, as we thus prove. There emanated, they say, from The Deep and from His Thought,³³⁰* Mind and The Truth: which point is demonstrable the opposite way. For Mind is that very thing which is originative and chief, and in a manner the principle and fountain of all perception. But Thought, which comes from this, is a movement [thereof] of any kind or on any subject. It holds not therefore for Mind to be an emanation from the Deep and Thought: for it were more like truth, should they say, that of the Great Father and of this Mind, proceeded a daughter, Thought, by way of emanation. For Thought is not the mother of Mind, as they say, but Mind became the Father of Thought.

And how again did Mind emanate from the First Father,³³¹* occupying as it does the first and chiefest place of the hidden and invisible affection^332j which is within Him? From which capability are produced Sense, and Thought, and Conception, and such things: which are not other and apart from Understanding, but are the movements (such as they are) of that very faculty, as we said before, following each other in thought concerning any thing; receiving names from their continuation and increase, not from any substantial change, and limited for our knowledge’ sake, and all together communicated to the word: Perception abiding within and forming, and administering, and governing, freely and of its own power, and just as it will, the things which have been now mentioned.

§ 2. For the first motion thereof [i.e. of the Understanding] on any subject, is called a Thought; but when it goes on and spreads, and takes up the whole soul, it is termed an Imagination. But this Imagination dwelling long upon the same point, and being in a manner recognized, is named Reflection. And Reflection far extended becomes a purpose: and the growth of a purpose, and moving thereof far and wide, is mental Deliberation: which though it remain within the Mind is most properly called a Word; and from this proceeds the Emanative Word. Yet all the aforesaid are one and the same thing, receiving their beginning from the Understanding, and acquiring names as they are superadded. Much as the human body, now tender, now manly, now in old age, receives epithets from its growth and continuance, not from any change of substance, or loss of the Body itself: so is it here also. For what a man inwardly discerns, on that he also meditates; and what he meditates on, in that he is also skilled, and in what he is skilled, for that he also takes counsel, and for what he takes counsel, that he also plans in his mind; and what he plans in his mind, that he also speaks. But all these, as we said, are guided by Understanding: itself being invisible, and from itself by the aforesaid means, as by a ray, sending forth the Word, but itself not sent forth of any.

§ 3. And of men indeed it is allowable to speak thus,³³³* compound as they are in nature, and made up of body and soul. But those who say that Thought emanated from God, and Mind from Thought, and so from them in order, The Word; are first to be refuted as misapplying the notion of emanations; afterwards again as framing their descriptions from human affections and passions and energies, while of God they know nothing. Here for instance, they apply to the Father of all the conditions of human speech; to Him, Who all the while they say is unknown to all; and while they deny that He made the world, lest forsooth He should be thought insignificant, they nevertheless assign to Him the affections and passions of men. But if they had known the Scriptures, and been instructed by the Truth, they would know of course that God is not as men are, neither are His Thoughts as the thoughts of men.³³⁴* For very distant is the Father of all from these affections and passions, which befall mankind: and He is simple and uncompounded, and of like members, and Himself entirely like and equal to Himself; being as He is all Mind, and all spirit, and all perception and all thought and all reason, and all hearing, and all eye, and all light, and all over the fountain of all good things: such are the expressions concerning God, which suggest themselves to the devout and pious.

§ 4. Now He is beyond all expression in words, to a degree above all this,³³⁵* yet also because of all this. Thus He shall be well and rightly termed a Mind apt to receive all objects, but not like the Mind of men; and Very well shall He be called Light, but nothing resembling the light which is with us. So neither in any other respect will the Father of all resemble any weakness of men. And though for Love’s sake He is spoken of in these ways, yet for greatness we feel that He is above all these. If therefore even in men the Mind itself does not emanate, neither is that [faculty] separated from the living person, from which itself other things emanate, only its motions and affections come within observation; much less will God, Who is All Mind, be in any wise separated from Himself, nor will it be in Him as when one thing emanates from another.

§ 5. For if He in that way sent out Mind;³³⁶* the sender forth thereof, by their account, is understood to be a compounded and corporeal Person; and so we have a separate existence, on the one hand, of God, from Whom the emanation took place, on the other hand of the Mind which emanated. But if they say, Mind emanated from Mind; they cut in pieces and apportion the Mind of God. And whither, and whence, did it emanate? For that which emanates from any thing, emanates into some subject. But what subject was in existence earlier than the Mind of God, into which they affirm it to have emanated? Yea, and how great was the room, to receive and embrace the Mind of God? But if they say it was as the ray from the Sun: even as among us the air exists as a subject to receive the ray, and must be of elder existence than the ray itself: so in that region let them shew somewhat existing into which the Mind of God emanated; something apt to receive it and elder than it. Moreover it will be necessary, as we see the Sun, less in size than all things, sending out rays to a distance from itself, so to affirm of the First Father that He sent forth a ray without Himself and to a distance. But what can be imagined without God, or far from Him, into which He sent forth His Ray?

§ 6. But if they say, It emanated not without the Father, but is in the Father Himself:³³⁷* first of all the expression will be unmeaning, that it did at all emanate. For how did it emanate, if it was within the Father? For emanation is the manifestation of that which emanates exterior to him who sends it forth. Then again, after such emanation, the Word also which comes thereof will have his existence within the Father, and so too will the other emanations of the Word. Now then they will not be ignorant of the Father, being within Him; nor according to the scale of descending emanations will any one have less knowledge of Him, all being alike on all sides comprehended by the Father. Yea, and they will all alike abide impassible; being in the bowels of the Father, and no one of them will be in a state of deficiency. For the Father is not a Being in deficiency: except perchance, as in a great circle a lesser one is contained, and in this again another still less; or, as by some similitude of a sphere or of a square, they affirm the Father to comprehend within Himself all ways, in the likeness of a sphere, or in a quadrangular form, the rest of the emanating Æons, each one of them being circumscribed by that which is above it, being greater, and circumscribing that which comes after it, being less; and that accordingly the least and last of all being stationed in the centre, and far separated from the Father, knew not the first Father. If however they so speak, they will shut up in figure and outline Him Whom they call The Deep, as both circumscribing and being circumscribed: for they will be also forced to confess that there is somewhat also without Him, which circumscribes Him. And nevertheless their statement will lose itself in infinity concerning the Beings which contain and are contained, and all will evidently appear to be inclosed bodies.

§ 7. And besides this, they must either confess Him to be void, or whatsoever is within Him,³³⁸* all those beings will alike be partakers of the Father. As in the water if you make circles, or round or square figures, all these will alike partake of the water: as also what things are framed in the air must needs partake of the air: and those in the light, of the light: so also those who are within the Father, will all alike partake of Him, ignorance having no place among them. For where there is participation of the Father, filling all (if indeed He do fill all) there ignorance may not be^339k. Thus will be refuted their work of deterioration, and the emanation of matter, and the rest of their framing of the world; all which things they say had their being from passion and ignorance. If on the other hand they allow Him to be void, falling into exceeding blasphemy, they will deny His Spirituality. For how is he spiritual; who cannot even fill up the spaces³⁴⁰¹ that are within Himself?

§ 8. Now this which hath been said of the sending forth of Mind is equally suited for a reply to those who are on Basilides’ side; as also to the other Gnostics from whom these among others received the root of their doctrine of Emanations,³⁴¹* as has been proved against them in the first Book.

Now then that the first emanation of their Νοῦς,³⁴²* i.e., of their Mind, is open to refutation and impossible, we have evidently shewn. But let us consider of the rest also. For from him they say emanated The Word and The Life, framers of this Pleroma: adopting also from what befals man a certain mode of emanation of the Logos, i.e., of the Word, and making conjectures contrary to God; as though there were some great discovery in their statement, that the Word emanates from the Mind. Whereas all of course know, that in regard of men indeed this is properly said, but in Him Who is God over all, being as He is All Mind and All Word, as we have said before, and having in Himself nothing earlier or later, nor any thing belonging to another, but continuing altogether equal and alike and one, no such emanation in that kind of order is conceivable. As he sinneth not who calls Him all sight and all hearing (now wherein He sees, therein also He hears; and wherein He hears, therein also He sees); so likewise whosoever saith that He is all Mind and all Word, and that in Whom Mind is, in Him also is the Word, and that this Mind is His Word:—that man will indeed still have inadequate notions of the Father of all; more becoming however than these, who transfer to the eternal Word of God the mode of production of the uttered word of man, assigning also a beginning and a regular course to that production, even as to his own word. And how will the Word of God, yea rather God Himself, being the Word, differ from the word of men, if it had the same succession and emanation in its mode of being produced?

§ 9. And they erred also concerning Life, saying that it was sent forth in the sixth place;³⁴³* whereas the should set it before all, because God is Life, and Incorruption, and Truth. And they have undergone processes of emanation, not in the way of actual descent, or any such things; rather they are names given to those Virtues which are always with God, so far as it is possible and meet for men to hear and to speak of God. For together with the term God will be understood Mind, and the Word, and Life, and Incorruption, and Truth, and Wisdom, and Goodness, and all such things. And neither can one say that Mind is more ancient than Life (for Mind itself is Life); nor that Life comes later in comparison of Mind, lest we make Him at some time lifeless, Who is the Mind of all, i.e., God. But if they should say, Life was indeed in the Father, but it was put forth^344m in the sixth place, that the Word might live: much sooner surely ought it to have emanated in the fourth place, that Mind might live: nay yet before this, with The Deep, that their Deep might live. But to count Silence along with their First Father, and to assign her to Him for a wife, and not to include Life in the reckoning, how is it not above all folly?

§ 10. But concerning that which follows these, the second emanation of the Man and the Church,³⁴⁵* their very parents, the men of Knowledge falsely so called, contend with each other, claiming each their own rights, and convicting themselves of being bad thieves; saying (as is plausible) that it better suits the idea of emanation, for the Word to proceed from the Man, than the Man from the Word; and that there exists a man before the Word, and that this is He Who is God over all. And thus far, as we said before, all the affections of men, and movements of the mind, and productions of various kinds of thought and utterings of words they have made out by probable conjecture, but without probability have feigned them concerning God. That is, the things which befall men, and which they recognize as experienced by themselves, those they apply to the reason of God, and so appear to those who know not God to speak with propriety; and while by these human passions they pervert their understanding, while they talk of generation and emanation as befalling the Word of God in the fifth degree, they profess to be teaching wonderful mysteries, unspeakable, and high, and known to no one else; of which, they say, our Lord spake the words, Seek and ye shall find: that they might seek forsooth, how Mind and Truth proceeded from the Deep and Silence; whether again of these come the Word and Life; finally from the Word and Life the Man and the Church.

Chap. XIV. § 1. Much more naturally and more elegantly concerning the origin of all things spake one of the old Comic Poets, Antiphanes in his Theogony.³⁴⁶* For he said that of Night and Silence Chaos was produced, then from Chaos and Night, Desire, and from this Light, then in order the rest of that family of the gods, which is first in his account. After these again he brings in a minor generation of gods, and construction of the world; next from the minor gods he relates the formation of men. From this they have adopted their legend and have made it out as in a sort of phycal exposition, changing only the names of the Beings, but setting forth the very same origin and way of production for the generation of all. For Night and Silence, they use the names Bythus and Sige; for Chaos, Mind; and for Desire (by which, saith the Comic Poet, all things are ordered), these men have brought in the Word; and for the first and chiefest gods, they have formed Æons; and for the minor gods, they tell of that Œconomy of their Mother’s which is without the Pleroma, calling it the second Ogdoad; from which they relate, as he did, the making of the world and the moulding of men, professing to be alone aware of certain unspeakable and unknown mysteries. What Actors every where in theatres recite as actors in the most ornamented tones, that they transfer to their own subject: or rather they teach by the very same arguments, altering nothing but the names.

§ 2. And not only are they convicted of bringing forward as their own the statements of the Comic Poets,³⁴⁷* but also whatever is said among all who know not God, and who are called Philosophers, that they collect, and stitching it together like patchwork of many and very bad morsels of cloth, have contrived themselves a feigned cloke by their subtle talk: introducing a learning which is new, inasmuch as it is but now put in place of another by a new stroke of art; but which is also old and useless, seeing that these same additional bits are made up of old dogmas, smelling rank of ignorance and irreligion. Thales for instance, the Milesian, said that water is the origin and beginning of all things. But it is all one to say Water, and The Deep. The Poet Homer again hath laid it down that Ocean is the originator of the gods, and Thetis their Mother: which very saying these have transferred to the Deep and Silence. And Anaximander hath supposed for the beginning of all, Infinite Space, having in itself seminally the origin of all; of which space, he says, immeasurable worlds are made: and this too they have transferred to their Deep and Æons. And Anaxagoras, who was also surnamed the Atheist, taught for doctrine that animals were made by the seeds of them falling from Heaven to Earth: a thing which these too have transferred to the offspring of their Mother, and say that they are themselves this offspring: thus at once owning in the sight of sensible persons, that themselves are the very seeds of the irreligious Anaxagoras.

§ 3. But as to the Shadow and Void which they speak of, they took it from Democritus and Epicurus,³⁴⁸* and adapted it to themselves, those Philosophers having in the first place discoursed much of a Vacuum, and of Atoms: the one of which they said was something, while the other they called that which is not: much as these men proclaim those things to be, which are within the Pleroma, as those the Atoms, and those not to be, which are without the Pleroma, as those the Void. Themselves therefore in this world, being without the Pleroma, they have placed by conjecture in the place of non-existence. And as to their affirming that things here are the images of real Beings, again most evidently they set forth the opinion of Democritus and Plato. For Democritus first says, that many and various figures, copied from the Universe, descended into this world. But Plato again speaks of Matter and the Archetype, and God. And they, following them, have styled his Ideas and his Archetype, Images of the things on high: under this change of name boasting themselves to be inventors and framers of the aforesaid imaginary fiction.

§ 4. Again, their saying that the Fabricator made the world of pre-existing matter,³⁴⁹* had been said before them by Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Plato: who, as of course we are to understand, were themselves also inspired by those Men’s Mother. Moreover, that of necessity each thing withdraws itself towards the materials out of which by their account it was made, and that God is the slave of this Necessity, so that He cannot add immortality to the mortal, nor bestow incorruption on the corruptible, but that every person retires³⁵⁰ⁿ into that substance which is akin to his own nature: this both they affirm, who from the Porch are called Stoics, and all as many as know not God, whether Poets or other writers. Who cherishing the same temper of unbelief,³⁵¹* have assigned to them that are spiritual their proper country, that which is within the Pleroma; to the merely animal, the middle space; and to the corporeal, that which is earthly; and that beyond these limits they say God hath no power, but that each of the aforesaid kinds of persons must retire towards the portions of the same substance with himself.

§ 5. Again, whereas they say that our Saviour was made of all Æons,³⁵²* all depositing in Him (so to speak) the flower of their being: they bring nothing new, in addition to Hesiod’s Pandora. For what Hesiod says of her, these imply concerning our Saviour, bringing Him in for a kind of Pandorus, as though each one of the Æons had bestowed on Him the best thing he had. And even their indiscriminate opinion concerning meats and other actions, and their notion that nothing at all can pollute them because of their high origin, eat they or do what they will, these things they have inherited^353o from the Cynics, being of one and the same league with them. And frivolous talk, and subtilty of disputation, being of Aristotelian origin, they try to bring into the Faith.

§ 6. But as to their notion of translating this whole world into certain numbers, they took it from the Pythagoreans.³⁵⁴* For these laid down numbers as the first principle of all things, having again as their own principle the Even and the Odd; out of which they framed by conjecture both sensible things and things beyond sense. And the one set they said were principles in the way of furnishing matter, the other in the way of Thought and real essence; out of which as original elements they say all is made up, as a statue of its metal and mouldings. And this they applied to all things without the Pleroma. Now by Principles in the way of Thought they meant, in whatsoever cases the mind, taking note of the object which was first received into it, goes on seeking until wearied out it terminate in some one indivisible thing. Moreover, the beginning of all, they say, and the substance of all productive power, is the Unit, i.e., One; and after this the Duad and the Tetrad and the Pentad, and the manifold origination of the rest. All this, word for word, our men say of their Fulness and Deep. Whence also they strive to introduce their combinations which proceed out of absolute Unity; all which Mark boasting as his own, thought he had discovered as something rather new, apart from others, while he was setting forth Pythagoras’ way of producing the number Four as the origin and mother of all things.

§ 7. And we shall say in reply to them,³⁵⁵* Whether did all these before-mentioned, with whose sayings yours are proved identical, know the truth, or not know it? Since if they knew it, the descent of the Saviour into this world was superfluous. For to what end did He come down? To bring that truth which was already known within the cognizance of the persons who know it? If on the other hand they knew it not, how is it that ye, saying the same as these who knew not the Truth, boast that ye alone have the knowledge which is above all, which knowledge they also have, who are ignorant of God? By a sort of ironical contradiction, then, they call ignorance of the Truth, Knowledge:³⁵⁶* and well saith Paul, “Novelties in words belonging to a false kind of knowledge.” For their knowledge is indeed found false. But if they shamelessly rejoin hereto, That men indeed knew not the truth, but that their Mother, or the Seed of the Father, did by such men also, as also by the Prophets, declare the mysteries of the Truth, the Framer of the World knowing nothing of it; I answer, first, That the aforesaid statements were not such as to be understood by no one: for the men themselves knew what they said, and their disciples, and the successors of these. And secondly, be it either mother or offspring, if they knew and declared the sayings of Truth, and the Father is Truth, then the Saviour, according to them will have lied in saying,³⁵⁷* No man hath known the Father but the Son. For if He was known either by the Mother, or by her seed, that saying, That no man hath known the Father but the Son, is refuted: except they say that their seed or their Mother is No man.

§ 8. Now thus far, by impressions usual with men,³⁵⁸* and by statements akin to those of many who know not God, there has been a seeming plausibility in their mode of drawing off certain persons; they entice them, by means to which they have been used, to their mode of discourse on all subjects; setting forth a certain origin for God’s word and for Life, doing moreover a midwife’s part to the productions of Mind, and of God. But in what follows, without plausibility, and without proof, they have uttered all lies from all quarters. Like those who, to take some animal, throw out the usual baits and means of allurement, gently enticing it by its wonted kinds of food, until they take it; but once having made them captive, bind them with all bitterness, and lead and drag them off by force at their own will; even so do these; gradually and gently persuading men by plausible discourse to adopt the aforesaid [doctrine of] emanation, they make inferences not at all consistent, other kinds of emanations, for which the mind was unprepared. For first they speak of ten Æons emanating from the Word and from Life, then of twelve from the Man and the Church. I say having neither demonstration for all this, nor testimonies nor probability nor any such thing at all, but just simply and at random they would have you believe them, that of the Word and Life, being Æons, emanated The Profound and Commixture, The Undecaying and Union, The Natural [or Self-Originated] and Pleasure, The Unmoved and Incorporation, The Only-Begotten and the Blessed One. And that from the Man and the Church being in like manner Æons, emanated The Comforter and Faith, The Paternal One and Hope, The Maternal One and Love, The Ever-Intelligent and Understanding, The Ecclesiastical One and Blessedness, The Desired and Wisdom.

§ 9. But what they say as to the passions and wandering of this last,³⁵⁹* Wisdom, and how she was in danger of perishing through her search of the Father, and her doings without the pleroma, and from what kind of decay they say the Framer of the World emanated, we have expounded with all diligence in the former book, setting forth the opinions of the Heretics: about Christ also, or the Saviour whose emanation they say was by birth after all these; or, that he had his being from the Æons who fell into decay. Nor could we avoid reciting those names, thereby to manifest their absurd falsehood, and the confusion of their arbitrary nomenclature—yea, they themselves disparage their Æons by many of these their titles; while the Gentiles give probable and credible names to those who are termed their twelve gods:—whom indeed they will have to be also Images of the twelve Æons, whereas the names of the images are far the more apt and powerful of the two, being such as by their etymology they may connect with some divine association.

Chap. XV. § 1. But let us return to the aforesaid question of emanations. And first, let them give us some such account of the emanation of Æons,³⁶⁰* as not to touch upon grounds which belong to the Creation. For these things, they say, came not into being because of Creation, but Creation because of them. Neither do they call them the images of present things, but present things their images. As therefore they account for the images by saying, that the month (e.g.) has thirty days because of the thirty Æons, and the day twelve hours, and the year twelve months, because of the twelve Æons within the Pleroma, and whatever of like dotage they utter:—let them now give us a like account of the emanation of the Æons, why it took place so and so: and why was the first of all, the original emanation, a group of eight, and not of five, or three, or seven, or something limited by some other number? And why did ten Æons emanate from the Word and Life, and not more nor less? and again from the Man and the Church twelve, when they too might have proved more or fewer?

§ 2. The Whole Pleroma again, why is it in three parts, of eight, and ten, and twelve, and not in any other number besides these? And the division too itself, why is it made into three, and not into four, or five, or six, or some other number, without reference to any of those numbers which appertain to the Creation, conspiring towards its harmony? (For these, they say, are older than those, and they ought to have a principle of their own, that namely, which is before Creation, not that which is copied from Creation.)

§ 3. As for us, asserting this harmony concerning Creation,³⁶¹* we mean that things are adjusted by such and such a principle of order, such principle being convenient for the things that are made. But they not being able to allege any proper cause of those earlier results, which are perfect in themselves, must needs fall into extreme perplexity. For whereas they ask us, in our supposed ignorance, certain questions concerning the Creation, themselves being in reply asked the same questions concerning the Pleroma, will either tell us of such things as men are liable to, or will fall into discourse about the harmony of Creation; the latter answer being irrelevant, and the former unsuitable to them. For our question refers not to the harmony of Creation, nor to human affections: but since their Pleroma, of which they say the Creation is the image, is of eight, ten, or twelve forms, we want them to confess that it was made of that figure by their Father without cause or forethought, and they will array Him in confusion, if He made any thing thus irrationally. Or if, on the other hand, they will affirm that by the Father’s Providence the Pleroma was thus produced, for the Creation’s sake, He having well ordered by measure the being thereof; it follows that the Pleroma will not have been made for itself, but for the image which was afterwards to exist in the likeness thereof. Just as the statue of clay is not formed for its own sake, but for the sake of that which is to be made of brass or gold or silver. And so the Creation will be more honoured than the Pleroma, if for its sake those higher beings were produced.

Chap. XVI. § 1. But if they will not assent to either of these statements, because they will be refuted by us, not being able to render a reason of the aforesaid production of their Pleroma,³⁶²* they will be driven and shut up into a confession of some other order of things above their Pleroma, more spiritual and of more absolute authority, according to which their Pleroma was shaped out. For if the Fabricator did not of himself form the outline of the Creation so and so, but after the figure of the things above: from whom did that same Being whom they call The Deep, who of course wrought out the Pleroma to be of that figure—from whom did He receive the form of the things which were made before Himself? Thus the mind must either stay itself upon that God Who made the world, that of His own power and from Himself He received the model of the world’s formation: or if a man once swerve from this, there will be always need of inquiry, whence He Who is above the Creator had His pattern of the things which are made;—what was the number of emanations, and what the very archetypal substance. But if the Deep had power of himself to frame such and such an image for the Pleroma, why had not the Fabricator just as much power of himself to make the world in the same way? Again therefore [I ask], If the Creation is an image of those other existences, what hinders our saying that those are images of what is above them, and those above them again of others, and so to cast ourselves into endless images of images?

§ 2. This was the case with Basilides; who having fallen far short of the truth, yet thought to escape the aforesaid difficulty by an infinite series of things made in turn by one another: asserting as he did 365 heavens framed one by another in the way of succession and resemblance, and the token of them to be the number of days in the year, as we before said: and over these the Virtue which they call Unnameable, and the order adopted by the same. Yet neither so did he avoid the said difficulty. For if you ask him, “Whence has that heaven, which is above all, from which in succession he will have the others to be made, whence has it the pattern of its formation?”—he will say, “From the order which the Unnameable one adopted.” And he will either say that the Unnameable one made it of Himself, or he will be forced to allow that there is some other power above Him, from which his Unnameable one received this great model of the things which He hath ordered.

§ 3. How much safer, then, and more accurate, at once from the beginning to confess, that which is indeed true, that this God, the Framer, Who made such a world, is God alone, and there is none besides Him, Himself of Himself receiving the pattern and figure of the things which are made:—than to be compelled in very weariness, after such a range and round of impiety, to settle the mind upon some one Being, and to own that of Him is the formation of things made!

§ 4. For in truth what the Valentinians impute to us, saying that we “linger in the lowest Seven,”³⁶³* as though we raised not our mind on high, nor perceived the things above, because we do not receive their prodigious talk: this very same is laid to their charge by Basilides and his set, as though they were yet wallowing in the lower parts, as far as the first and second Ogdoad, and ignorantly thought that after thirty Æons they had presently found the Father Who is above all, not tracing Him onwards by thought into the Pleroma which is above the 365 Heavens, into more than the 45th Ogdoad. And these again one might justly blame, if one devised 4380 Heavens, or Æons, because the days of our year have so many hours. And if one add those of the nights too, doubling the aforesaid hours, imagining that he has invented a great crowd of fresh Ogdoads, and I know not what innumerable matter of Æons, in lieu of Him Who is Father over all, and this with a blind notion that he is himself more perfect than all:—still to all the rest he will impute the same errors; viz., that they attain not to the height of that multitude of heavens, or Æons, which he himself named, but falling short abide either in the lower or in the middle spaces.

Chap. XVII. § 1. Having then so great incongruities and perplexities in the order implied by their Pleroma, and especially in that part of it which relates to the first Ogdoad;³⁶⁴* let us go on to consider the rest; we too, because of their folly, inquiring about the things which are not: and doing this too of necessity, because the care of this subject is intrusted to us,³⁶⁵* and we would have all men to come to the knowledge of the truth: also because thou thyself hast requested to receive from us many and various topics for refuting them.

§ 2. It is enquired, then, how the other Æons were produced? Was it in union with Him who produced them,³⁶⁶* as the rays from the sun: or in real efficacy, and by separation, so that each of them may exist separately, and having his own form; as man is produced by man, and beast by beast: or in the way of growth; as boughs by a tree? Again: were they of the same substance with those who produced them, or did they have their substance from some other? Again: were they produced in the same point, so as to be contemporaneous; or in a certain order, so as for some of them to be older, others younger? And did they emanate like spirits and rays of light, simple and uniform and in all respects mutually equal and similar: or compounded and different, from want of resemblance in their parts?

§ 3. But now if each of them was produced,³⁶⁷* as men are, in real efficacy and by a birth of his own: the generations of the Father will either be of the same substance with Him, and like to Him who produced them; or if they be found unlike, we must needs confess them to be of some other substance. Again if the productions of the Father are like Him who produced them, they will remain impassible, as He is: but if they are of some other substance, capable of passions: whence came this incongruous substance within that Pleroma, which is all of Incorruption? And moreover, in this way each will be conceived of as divided from the other by a real separation, as men are; not mingled nor united together, but with distinct form and definite outline and a certain size will each of them be marked out; and these are properties of body, not of spirit. Let them not say then any longer that it is a spiritual Pleroma, nor that themselves are spiritual: since their Æons, like men, sit feasting with their father, who is himself too of the like figure; a fact disclosed concerning him by those who have emanated from him.

§ 4. If again, as lights kindled from another light, so the Æons are from the Word, and the Word from the Mind, and the Mind from the Deep, in the manner, for example, of tapers kindled from another taper; in origination perhaps and in magnitude they will indeed be separate from each other, but being of the same substance with Him from Whom their emanation began, either they all remain impassive, or their Parent also will share in what befalls them. Even as that taper which is later in being lit, will have no other light than that which was before it. For which cause also their lights when blended, hasten back to their original union, one only light ensuing, the same which was also from the beginning. But the terms “younger” and “more ancient” can neither be understood of the light itself (for the whole light is one), nor of the tapers which received the light (for these too in their material substance are of the same date, for the tapers are of one and the same material): but only of the enkindling, in that one was lit a short time before, another just now.

§ 5. The reproach therefore implied in suffering through ignorance will either befall their whole Pleroma alike,³⁶⁸* they being of the same substance; and their first Father will be in the reproach of ignorance, i.e., ignorant of Himself: or all the lights within the Pleroma will continue alike impassive. Whence then can any suffering befall the younger Æon, if there is a Paternal Light, out of which all the lights are formed, which is by nature impassive? And how can any Æon among them be called younger or older, when there is but one Light appertaining to the whole Pleroma? And should any one call them Stars, yet all will be found partaking of the same nature.³⁶⁹* For what if one star differeth from another star in glory? it is not in quality nor in substance, in respect of which a thing is passible or impassive: but either all appertaining to the paternal Light, must be naturally impassive and unchangeable; or all, with the paternal Light, are both liable to suffering, and capable of wasting changes.

§ 6. Moreover this same rule will hold, should they say that the emanation of the Æons originates from the Word as branches from a tree;³⁷⁰* the Word having his generation from the Father, whom they talk of. For all are found to be of the same substance with the Father, differing from each other in magnitude only, but not in nature, and completing the magnitude of the Father, as the fingers complete the hand. If therefore the Father is in suffering and ignorance, so of course are the Æons who are generated from Him. But if it is impious to ascribe ignorance and suffering to the Father of all, how say they that there was produced from Him an Æon liable to suffering? and that, calling themselves religious, while against the very Wisdom of God they devise the aforesaid impiety?

§ 7. But if, as rays from the sun, so they will say their Æons had their production:³⁷¹* they being all of the same substance and of the same origin, will either be all capable of suffering,³⁷²* together with Him who produced them: or will all continue impassive. For they cannot surely maintain that upon such production some would prove impassive, some liable to suffering. If then they say all are impassive, themselves do away with their own argument. For how did the younger Æon suffer, if all were impassive? If again they say that all shared in this suffering, as some dare to affirm that it began from the Word, but was derived onward into Wisdom; then by referring the suffering to the Word, the Mind of this their First Father, they are convicted of maintaining that the Mind of the First Father and the Father too Himself was in suffering. For the Father of all is not like some compound creature, excluding Mind (as we have shewn before); but The Father is Mind, and Mind is The Father. It follows therefore necessarily both that the Word which is from Him, or rather the Mind itself, being the Word [or Reason] should be perfect and impassive: and that those emanations which are of him, being of the same substance with himself, should be perfect and impassive, and continue always alike, with him who produced them.

§ 8. It could not be then that the Word, being in the third stage production,³⁷³* was ignorant of the Father, as these teach. For this may perhaps be thought probable in the birth of men, being they are often ignorant of their own parents; but in the Word of the Father it is altogether impossible. For if, being in the Father, he hath knowledge of Him in Whom he is, i.e., of himself, he is not ignorant: and the emanations which proceed from him, being Virtues of his, and always standing by him, will not be ignorant of him who produced them; as neither will the rays of the Sun.

It will not then hold that the Wisdom of God, that which is within the Pleroma, being of such origin, became liable to suffering, and underwent such ignorance. Though it be possible that the Wisdom which is of Valentinus, having its origin from the Devil, may fall into all kinds of suffering, and bring forth the fruit of deepest ignorance. Yea, since themselves bear witness of their Mother, saying that she is the production of a wandering Æon, we have no further need to inquire the cause, why the sons of such a Mother should be always swimming in the deep of ignorance.

§ 9. Now besides these modes of emanation I for my part do not understand how they can find any other to mention.³⁷⁴* Nor have I ever known themselves to state that any thing else belonging [to the Deity] became the subject of Emanation, although I have had very much discussion on the aforesaid kinds of it with them. But this only they affirm, That they were produced, each one of them, and each knew that other one only, from whom he was produced, but was in ignorance of the one next before the same. But they proceed not at all to explain, how they were produced; or how such a process is conceivable among spiritual beings. For whichever way they advance, they will be hampered, and will be going round and round the truth, away from right reason, so far as to affirm, that he who was produced as the Word from the Mind of their First Father, was produced in order to degradation: for that the perfect Mind begotten of the perfect Deep could not go on to make perfect the production which comes of it, but was blinded in respect of the knowledge and greatness of the Father: and that our Saviour shewed a token of this mystery in him who was blind from his birth, how that in like manner a blind Æon was produced from the Only Begotten, i.e., Ignorance. Thus in their lies they ascribe ignorance and blindness to the Word of God, emanating according to them in the second degree from the First Father. Admirable Sophists, and investigators of the depth of the unknown Father, and expounders of the mysteries which are above the Heavens,³⁷⁵* which the Angels desire to look into! to learn how that the Word Who is sent forth from the Mind of the Father Who is over all, was sent forth blind, i.e., ignorant of the Father Who sent him forth!

§ 10. And how, O ye vainest of Sophists, did the Mind of the Father,³⁷⁶* yea the Father Himself, being Mind and perfect in all things, produce His own Word as a blind and imperfect Æon,³⁷⁷* it being in His power at once to produce the knowledge also of the Father with him? Even as ye say that Christ, though begotten after the rest, was however produced perfect. Much more then would the Word, which is before him in time, be produced of course by the same Mind in perfection and not in blindness. Neither would he in his turn produce Æons blinder than himself, till at last the Wisdom you talk of growing continually blinder brought forth so great a body of evils.

And the cause of this mischief is your Father: for ye say that the greatness and might of the Father are the causes of ignorance, likening Him to a great Deep, and giving that Name to Him, the Father Who cannot be named. Now if ignorance is an evil (and you lay it down that all evils flourished therefrom) then you by saying that the cause thereof is the greatness and might of the Father, make Him out the framer of evils. For you say that the circumstance of one’s not being able to contemplate His greatness, is the cause of Evil. But now if it was impossible for the Father to make Himself known from the beginning to the things which He made: He could not be blamed as being unable to remove the ignorance of those who come after Him. But if afterwards, being so minded, He had power to remove the ignorance which had grown with the series of emanations, and which had become implanted in the Æons, much rather in the first instance, had He willed, might He forbid the existence of the ignorance, which as yet was not.

§ 11. Wherefore, since when He would, He was recognized, not by Æons only,³⁷⁸* but also by these men, coming as they did in the last times; but from His unwillingness to be recognized from the beginning, was unknown: the cause of the ignorance, by your account, is the will of the Father. I say, If He foresaw these results, why did He not of course cut off their ignorance before it took place, which afterwards, as though repenting Himself, He remedies by the production of Christ? For the same knowledge which by Christ He communicated to all, He was able to communicate long before by the Word, who was also the first-born of the Only Begotten.

Again, if foreseeing these things He willed them, then the works of ignorance endure for ever, and never pass away. For the things which were done by the will of your First Father, must needs continue, together with His will Who so decreed. Or if they pass away, His will must pass with them, Who decreed them to have being. For at what point did the Æons cease learning and acquire perfect knowledge? was it the immensity and incomprehensibility of the Father? Why, this knowledge they might have before any passions befell them; for the greatness of the Father would suffer no disparagement, though our men were aware from the first that He is immense and incomprehensible. For if through His immensity they knew Him not, yet because of His boundless Love He ought to have kept those born of Him impassive: since nothing hindered, but it was rather profitable to them, to have known from the beginning that the Father is immense and incomprehensible.

Chap. XVIII. § 1. Again, how is it not futile, their affirming His very Wisdom to have been in ignorance, and degradation, and passion?³⁷⁹* which things are foreign and contrary to Wisdom: they are no affections of hers. For where is improvidence and ignorance of expediency, there Wisdom is not. Wherefore let them no longer call Wisdom “the Æon which suffered;” either the name or the suffering they must give up. Neither again let them call the whole Pleroma “spiritual,” since this Æon had his station therein, while involved in such eager affections, as not even any courageous soul, much less spiritual substance, may admit.

§ 2. And how again could any Idea of his, going forth with passion, come to have a separate existence?³⁸⁰* For an Idea is understood in relation to some person, but never will come to be apart by itself: the good Idea displacing and swallowing up the bad one, as soundness does indisposition. For what was the Idea which preceded the passion? To search out the Father, and to consider His greatness. And what was it afterwards convinced of, and then recovered? That the Father is incomprehensible and undiscoverable. It was not therefore a good thing, its wishing to know the Father (and therefore also it was liable to suffering): but after it was persuaded that the Father is beyond search, and was recovering. Yea, that very Mind which was seeking the Father ceased by their account to seek any more, upon learning the Father’s incomprehensibility.

§ 3. How then could an Idea, parted [from the mind], conceive passions,³⁸¹* which were themselves in their turn affections of it? For an affection takes place towards some person: it cannot be, nor last, by itself apart. Yea, this is not only incongruous, but also contrary to our Lord’s saying, Seek and ye shall find.³⁸²* For the Lord by searching and finding the Father completes His disciples to perfection: but that Christ of theirs, who is above, made the Æons complete and perfect by directing them not to seek the Father, on the ground that such as they might labour, they would not find Him. And themselves indeed they call perfect in having found (as they say) that Deep of theirs; but their Æons in being convinced that he whom they sought after was unsearchable.

§ 4. An Idea, then, not being capable of separate existence without an Æon,³⁸³* they introduce again a yet greater falsehood concerning the Passion of the same, parting this off in its turn with a real separation, and maintaining it to be the substance of Matter. As if God were not Light: as if no Word were at hand with power to expose them and overturn their wickedness. For of course whatever any Æon perceived, by that it was affected, and what it was affected by, that it also perceived: and the Idea of the Æon in their view was nothing else than its affection, as it was devising how to comprehend the Incomprehensible, and such an affection was the Idea of the Æon: occasioned by its perception of impossibilities. How then could the affection be separated by actual division from the Idea, and so vast a substance of Matter be brought into existence, while the Idea and the Passion were in fact identical? Thus neither can the Idea have any separate substance apart from the Æon nor the affections without the Idea: and in this point also again their Canon is made void.

§ 5. And how again was an Æon either to be dissolved or to suffer?³⁸⁴* being of the same substance with the Pleroma and the whole Pleroma of the Father. For nothing is dissolved like and annihilated in a medium of like nature with itself, nor is in risk of perishing, but rather it perseveres and grows: as fire in fire, and spirit in spirit, and water in water; but it is from contrary media that things suffer, and are changed and done away. And so if it were an emanation of light, it would not suffer nor be endangered in a similar light, but would shine out and spread more and more, as the day because of the Sun: since in fact they say that The Deep is a resemblance of their parent. Whatever living creatures are foreign, and strange thereunto³⁸⁵², and of an opposite nature, these indeed are endangered, and decay: but those accustomed to the same, and akin to it, run no risk by being conversant therein, but rather acquire therefrom health and life. If therefore this Æon did so emanate from the Deep, as to be of the same substance with the Pleroma in general, he would never undergo any change, his conversation being in things like and accustomed to himself, a spiritual person among spirituals. For Fear and Shuddering, and Passion, and Dissolution, and such like, may perhaps arise, by intrusion of contrary things, in our regions, and among corporeal beings: but where all are spiritual, and have the light poured forth, they no longer incur such calamities. But they seem to me to have invested their Æon with the feeling of him in the play of Menander, who is full of love, yet hated. I say, the devisers of this story had a notion and idea rather of some unlucky lover among men, than of a spiritual and divine substance.

§ 6. And besides all this, to think much of searching out the perfect Father, and to wish to be brought within Him,³⁸⁶* and to have hold of Him;—this could not cause ignorance, nor passion,³⁸⁷* and that in a spiritual Æon, but rather perfection, and inviolability, and truth. For neither do they, being men, thinking deeply on Him Who is before them, and just laying hold as it were of Him in His perfection, and established in the knowledge of Him, speak of themselves as being in any feeling of astonishment, but rather in the acknowledgment and attainment of Truth. Yea, and they say that the Saviour did therefore tell His Disciples, Seek and ye shall find, that they might seek out Him whom they have feigned in their fancy, above the Framer of all, the inexpressible Deep. And they will have themselves to be perfect, because by searching they have found Him that is perfect, though they be yet on earth. But him who is within the Pleroma, an Æon, altogether spiritual, sank down, they say, into some calamity, by seeking the First Father, and endeavouring to be brought within His greatness, and desiring to have comprehension of the Father’s Truth: and the calamity was of such a nature, that had he not fallen in with the Virtue which confirms all things, he would have been melted into the general mass of being³⁸⁸³, and utterly done away with.

§ 7. This is frantic presumption, and belongs to men absolutely wanting in all true understanding.³⁸⁹* That this Æon is better and elder than they are, themselves, by their own rule confess, saying that they are the conception of the Idea of that Æon who suffered: so that this Æon is the father of their mother, i.e., their grandfather. And while to the latter, the grandchildren, by searching out the Father, truth results, and perfection, and assurance, and purification from corruptible³⁹⁰⁴ matter (so they say) and reconciliation with the Father: to their grandsire on the contrary this very inquiry brought ignorance and passion and shuddering and fear and astonishment: of which also they say proceeded the substance of matter. Accordingly, the search and investigation of the perfect Father, and the desire of communication and unity with Him, is by their account a thing wholesome to themselves, but to the Æon from whom they have their very birth, it was the cause of dissolution and perdition. How is all this other than absurd, and futile, and irrational? and such as assent to it, truly blind,³⁹¹* and using blind guides, justly fall into the deep of ignorance beneath.

Chap. XIX. § 1. And what sort of talk is it about their so-called Seed? that it was conceived by their Mother on representing to herself the Angels which belong to the Saviour,³⁹²* shapeless, and without form, and imperfect; and lodged with the Framer of the World without his knowledge, that being sown by his means in the soul which was from him, it might receive perfection and form.

In the first place one may say, that these Angels which belong to their Saviour are imperfect, without figure or form; since that sort of thing was produced on conception after their kind.

§ 2. And next, as to their saying that the Framer of the world knew not of the lodgment of the seed in himself, nor again the sowing of it in man which took place by him:³⁹³* it is a futile and empty word, incapable of any proof. For how was he ignorant of it, if the same seed had any substance and quality of its own? To be sure, if it was without substance or quality, i.e., nothing, he was of course ignorant of it. But things which have any motion or quality of their own, or difference, in respect of any heat, or velocity, or sweetness, or brightness, cannot be hidden even from men, when they exist among men, far less from the Framer of this Universe, God; although He may well be ignorant of the seed they talk of, void as it is of all useful qualities, and of all real energy, and being absolutely nothing. And with a view to this the Lord Himself appears to me to have said,³⁹⁴* Every idle word that man shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment: i.e., all such persons, who now pour their idle discourses into men’s ears, shall be present in the judgment, to give an account of their vain conjectures, and lyings against God: of their saying even, that while themselves, because of the substance of that seed, recognize the spiritual Pleroma, the man who is within shewing them the true Father (for the natural man, they say, needs to be first taught through the senses); the Maker of the world on the other hand even when receiving into himself the whole of this seed, lodged there by his Mother, knew nothing at all about it, nor had any sense of the things which belong to the Pleroma.

§ 3. And that they themselves are spiritual,³⁹⁵* because a certain particle of the Father’s entire nature is lodged in their soul, they having their souls of the same substance as the Framer of the World, by their own account; while he, having once for all received the entire seed from his mother, and retaining it in himself, continued merely animal in his nature, and had no understanding at all of the higher order of things, which these men boast that themselves understand while yet on the earth:—how is not this beyond every thing irrational? Surely, to imagine that one and the same seed communicated to their souls knowledge and perfection, but to the God Who made them, ignorance,—this belongs to men truly frantic, and altogether deprived of understanding.

§ 4. And this is again a most empty saying of theirs,³⁹⁶* that in this its lodging this aforesaid seed receives form and increase, and becomes prepared to admit the perfect reason. For so the mixture of matter, which they say had its being from ignorance and decay, will prove meeter and better for that purpose, than was the Paternal Light they speak of, since that which was born after the contemplation of this latter was without form and shape, but from the former it received regularity, and figure, and growth, and completeness. For if the light from the Pleroma caused the spiritual being to have neither form nor figure^397p nor size of its own; but the descent hither added all these things unto it, and led it to perfection, the abode here, which they also call darkness, will be made out much more efficacious and profitable, than was the paternal Light they speak of. And how is it not ridiculous, to say that while their Mother was in danger of almost choking, and within a very little of utterly decaying into Matter, had she not, though hardly, at that moment overstrained herself, and sprung out of herself, receiving aid from the Father:—her seed on the other hand in this same matter grows, and acquires form, and is completed into aptness for receiving the Perfect Word? and that among essences unlike itself, and unaccustomed, boiling up [after its manner]: according to their own saying, that the earthly is contrary to the spiritual, and the spiritual to the earthly? How then among contrary and unwonted essences, being small in size when produced (by their report), was it able both to grow, and be formed, and come to perfection?

§ 5. Yet further: on what hath been said the question will be asked,³⁹⁸* Whether the Mother was once for all delivered of this seed of theirs, on sight of the Angels, or at several times? If it were but once for all, then the produce of such conception will ere now have ceased to be a childish thing: its descending therefore upon the present race of men will be needless. But if at several times, then she did not conceive after the likeness of the Angels whom she saw, for so once for all seeing them, and conceiving, she should have travailed but once of those whose figures she had thereupon conceived once for all.

§ 6. Again, how is it, that seeing the angels together with the Saviour,³⁹⁹* she conceived their images, but not that of the Saviour, who is more beautiful than they? Did he not please her, and did she therefore not conceive by his pattern? And how was the Framer of the world, whom they call merely natural, produced, by their account, perfect according to his being, having a magnitude and form of his own; while that which is spiritual, requiring as it does more efficacy than the merely animal, was produced in imperfection; and had need to descend into the soul, to be formed therein, and so becoming perfect, might prove ready to receive the perfect Word? If accordingly it is formed in men of the earth, and in mere animal men, it no longer follows the likeness of the Angels, whom they call Lights, but of the men who are here. Because it will not have the likeness and image of the Angels, but of the souls in whom it is actually formed: as water put into a vessel will have the form of that vessel, and if it go on to freeze therein, will have the figure of the vessel in which it froze: since our souls themselves have the figure of the body; for they are fitted to the same as to a vessel: as we said before. If then the aforesaid seed too receives consistency and form here, it will be the figure of a man, it will not have Angels’ form. How then is that seed after the images of Angels, which is shaped in the likeness of men? And being spiritual, what need had it to come down into the flesh? For the flesh indeed needs that which is spiritual (i.e., if it is to be saved) in order to be sanctified and purified thereby,⁴⁰⁰* and for the mortal to be swallowed up of immortality: but the spiritual has no need at all of the things which are here. For we do not improve it, but it improves us.

§ 7. And yet more evidently is their discourse about their seed proved false,⁴⁰¹* and may be seen through by any one, in their saying that those souls, which have the seed from their Mother, become better than the rest: for which cause also they are honoured by the Framer of the world, and rank as Princes, and Kings, and Priests. For if this were true, of course Caiaphas first, the High Priest, and Annas, and the other Chief Priests and Doctors of the Law and Princes of the people, would have believed our Lord, hastening to acknowledge that kindred: and before them even, King Herod. But since neither he nor the chief Priests, nor the rulers nor distinguished ones of the people ran to Him, but contrariwise those who sat begging in the roads, the deaf and blind, and trampled on, and despised by all:—as Paul also saith,⁴⁰²* For behold your calling, brethren,⁴⁰³* that not many are wise among you, nor noble, nor brave; but the dispised things of the world God hath chosen:—it follows, that such souls were not better because of the seed’s lodging within, nor were they on that account honoured by the Maker of the World.

§ 8. Now for the weakness, and incongruity, and also the futility, of their rule, what hath been said is sufficient:⁴⁰⁴* there being no need (as the saying is) to drink up all the sea, in order to convince one’s self that its water is salt. But it is as if there were a statue of clay with a coloured surface, to make the clay accounted gold: whoever will take any little portion of it, and lay it open, and shew it to be clay, will rid the enquirers after truth of the false notion: so we too, analysing no small part, but those heads which are the very principal matters of their rule, have exhibited to all but those who wish to be led knowingly into error, what guilt and fraud and insidiousness and fatal tendency belongs to the school of the Valentinians, and of the rest of the Heretics, as many as deal amiss with the Demiurge, i.e., the Framer and Maker of this universe, Who is in fact the only God:—we have shewn how their way is to be refuted.

§ 9. For who that hath understanding, and that touches the truth ever so little,⁴⁰⁵* will endure them saying, that there is another Father above God the Framer of the world: and that there is both another Only Begotten, and another Word of God, whom also they affirm to have been produced in inferiority; and another Christ, who they say was made, with the Holy Ghost, later than the other Æons; and another Saviour who is not even of the Father of all, but is contributed to and put together by those Æons who were made in inferiority, and was produced by a kind of fatality, because of their low estate; so that had the Æons not been in ignorance and inferiority, by their account neither would Christ have emanated, nor the Holy Ghost, nor the Power of Order, nor the Saviour, nor the Angels, nor their Mother, nor her seed, nor the rest of the framing of the world, but all had been deserted and destitute of so many blessings. Not only therefore do they deal irreligiously with the Creator, calling Him the offspring of decay, but also with Christ and with the Holy Ghost, saying that Decay caused them to be produced; and that the Saviour as well came after decay. Yea, who can bear the rest of their futile talk, which they cunningly endeavour to adapt to the Parables, whereby they have perverted both themselves and such as believe them into very great impiety?

Chap. XX. § 1. Moreover, that they bring into their device the parables and acts of the Lord improperly and incongruously, we proceed to shew.⁴⁰⁶* Thus, they try to indicate the affection, which they say befell the twelfth Æon, by the fact that the Saviour’s Passion was brought about by the twelfth Apostle, and in the twelfth month: for they say He preached but for one year from His Baptism. Yea, and they say it was evidently signified in the woman with an issue of blood: since the woman suffered twelve years, and touching the hem of our Saviour’s garment, obtained health by that virtue which went out of the Saviour, and which they say hath the first place. For the virtue which suffered, in that it was drawn out and flowing away into immensity, so as to be in danger of dissolution in its whole being, was staid, and ceased from its suffering, when it had touched the first quaternion [of Æons] which is signified by “the Hem of His Garment.”

§ 2. Now as to this their assertion, that the passion of the twelfth Æon is indicated by Judas;⁴⁰⁷* how can Judas be adapted to this comparison seeing he was cast out of the twelfth station and not restored to his own place? For the Æon, whereof they say Judas is the type, was restored, or recalled, after its Conception had been parted off from; it but Judas was deposed and cast out, and Matthias ordained in his place,⁴⁰⁸* as it is written, and his Bishoprick let another take. They ought therefore to say, that the twelfth Æon was cast out of the Pleroma, and another produced or emitted in his place; if he is at all signified by Judas. And again, this same Æon, they say, suffered, but Judas they say is the traitor. Now it was Christ Who by suffering came to His Passion, not Judas; as themselves confess. How could Judas then, the betrayer of Him Who had to suffer for our salvation, be the type and image of the Æon who suffered?

§ 3. But neither is the passion of Christ like the passion of their Æon,⁴⁰⁹* nor wrought under like circumstances. For the passion which the Æon suffered was one of dissolution and destruction,⁴¹⁰* so that the sufferer was in danger even of being wasted away. But our Lord Christ’s Passion which He suffered was mighty and unyielding^411q; far from any hazard of corruption on His part, He did on the contrary, when man was corrupt, confirm him by His own strength, and recall him to incorruption. And the Æon’s passion took place by his seeking himself after the Father, and not being able to find Him: but the Lord suffered that He might lead those who wandered from the Father unto Knowledge and nearness to Him. And whereas to him the search after the Father’s greatness proved a passion that caused ruin, to us the Lord by His Passion, bestowing the knowledge of the Father, gave salvation. And while the fruit of his passion was as they say female,—weak, and infirm, and shapeless, and ineffective,—This Man’s Passion bare to us the fruit of courage and virtue. For the Lord by His Passion ascending up on high, led captivity captive,⁴¹²* gave gifts unto men, and granted to such as believe in Him to tread on serpents and scorpions,⁴¹³* and on all the power of the enemy; i.e., of the Prince of the Apostasy. And the Lord indeed by His Passion destroyed death: yea, He did away with error, and drave out corruption, and destroyed ignorance; but life He made manifest, and demonstrated truth, and bestowed incorruption. But their Æon after he had suffered, introduced⁴¹⁴⁵ ignorance, brought forth a shapeless substance, from which were produced all material works, according to them: death, corruption, error, and the like of these.

§ 4. Judas therefore, the twelfth disciple, was no type of an Æon who suffered;⁴¹⁵* nor yet was the suffering of our Lord such: for this has been proved throughout incongruous and inconsistent with itself, not only in the aforesaid particulars, but also in the very number: Since all allow that the traitor Judas was the twelfth, twelve Apostles being named in the Gospel: but this Æon is not the twelfth but the thirtieth, for not twelve Æons only, as by this account, were produced by the will of the Father, nor did he emanate the twelfth in order, since they account him to have emanated in the thirtieth place. How then can Judas, being twelfth in order, be type and image of the Æon who is in the thirtieth place?

§ 5. If again they say that Judas perishing was a type of the Æon’s Conception, neither in this way will the Type resemble the Truth to which it appertains. For the Conception, they say, having been severed from the Æon, was afterwards itself put in form by Christ, and then made wise by the Saviour, and having framed all things without the Pleroma after the pattern of those which are within, was finally received back into the Pleroma, and after the manner of the other pairs united to that Saviour, who was compounded of them all. Whereas Judas, once expelled, never returns into the number of the Disciples, else would not any other be reckoned in his place. And the Lord also said of him,⁴¹⁶* Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man shall be betrayed; and, Good were it for that man if he had not been born;⁴¹⁷* and He called him, The son of perdition. But if they say, Judas is not a type of the Conception separated from the Æon, but of the affection connected therewith; neither so can the number twelve be a type of things which in number are three. For in the one case Judas was cast out and Matthias ordained in his place; but in the other case they say the Æon was in danger of dissolution and of perishing, and its Conception, and the aforesaid affection;—for they separate the Conception too, as something entirely distinct from the aforesaid affection; and they make it out that while the Æon is restored, the Conception acquires form, but the Affection, severed from these, becomes Matter. These then being three, the Æon, I mean, the Conception, and the Affection, Judas and Matthias, being but two, cannot be the Type of them.

Chap. XXI. § 1. But if they say that the twelve Apostles are the type of that emanation only, of twelve Æons, which proceeded from the Man and the Church;⁴¹⁸* let them for a type of the other ten Æons, who, as they say, were produced by the Word and the Life, exhibit to us some other Apostles, to the number of ten. For it were unreasonable that while those Æons which are younger, and so far inferior, are indicated by the Saviour in His Election of the Apostles, those who are elder and therefore better, should want the like previous indication of themselves: whereas the Saviour (if He at all chose the Apostles with the view of indicating by them the Æons which are in the Pleroma) might choose some other ten also for Apostles, and before them again eight others, by way of indicating that principal and first Ogdoad, by the number of His Apostles, thus made typical^419r × × × × ×. For after the twelve Apostles our Lord, we find, sent seventy others before Himself:⁴²⁰* but seventy cannot be the type either of eight, or of ten, or of thirty. What then is the reason, that while the inferior Æons, as I said before, are indicated by the Apostles, the better sort, out of whom these were themselves made, have nothing to prefigure them? Yea, and if the twelve Apostles were therefore elected, that by them the number of the twelve Æons might be signified; the seventy also ought to have been elected for a figure of some seventy Æons: let them accordingly say that the Æons have arrived at the number not of thirty but of eighty two. For He Who makes His Election of Apostles after the pattern of the Æons in the Pleroma, would never do so in the case of some but not of others, but through the whole company of Apostles would have endeavoured to keep the image and exhibit the type of the Æons who are in the Pleroma.

§ 2. But neither must we be silent concerning Paul,⁴²¹* but must get them to tell us, of which of the Æons that Apostle was set forth to us for a type: except you will say, It was the Saviour they talk of, as a compounded Being, who is made up of a gathering from all, whom also they denominate All, because he is made up of all. Of whom Hesiod also, the Poet, hath given a brilliant description, naming him Pandora, i.e., the Gift of all, because all of them lodged in him the best thing they had to give. In which history this is the course of things: “Hermes (so the Greek words run) established within them words of craft and a guileful temper,” to seduce the foolish among men and make them believe their devices. For their mother, i.e., Latona, secretly stirred them up (whence also she was called Leto according to the signification of the Greek word, from her secretly moving men) to utter, without the knowledge of the Creator, deep mysteries and unspeakable to men who had itching ears. And not by Hesiod only did their mother contrive that this mystery should be uttered, but also by Pindar the Lyric Poet, very cleverly, to hide it from the Creator, in the case of Pelops, whose flesh was cut in pieces by his father, and gathered up from all the gods and brought together, and reconstructed. In this way she signified Pandora. And from this their mother those hardened persons deriving the same statements as the Greeks, are of the same sort and spirit as they.

Chap. XXII. § 1. But that the whole of their doctrine about the number Thirty fails,⁴²²* and that obviously, since by their account sometimes few and sometimes more Æons are found in the Pleroma; this we have shewn. There are not then thirty Æons, nor did the Saviour at the age of thirty come to Baptism, that He might signify their thirty silent Æons: otherwise they will have first of all to separate Him in His own Person, and cast Him out of the Pleroma. But they say that He suffered in the twelfth month, thus making Him preach one year only after His Baptism: and they try to confirm this out of the Prophet;⁴²³* for it is written, To proclaim the accepted year of the Lord, and the day of recompence;) so truly blind are they, who say they have discovered the obscure things of The Deep, yet understand not the acceptable year of the Lord spoken of by Isaiah, nor the day of recompence. For the Prophet spake not of a day having the space of twelve hours, nor of a year having the measure of twelve months. For the Prophets themselves confess that they spake many things in parables and allegories, and not after the very sound of the words.

§ 2. The Day then of Recompence is a name given to that day,⁴²⁴* in which the Lord will recompense every man according to his deeds, i.e., to the judgment. And the acceptable year of the Lord is this time wherein those are called by Him who believe Him, and become acceptable to God. That is, it is the whole time from His coming to the consummation, wherein He wins to Himself, as fruits, such as are saved. For the day of Recompence by the Prophet’s saying, follows the year: and the Prophet will have uttered a lie, if the Lord preached for a year only, and if he speak of Him. For where is the day of recompence? since the year is past, and the day of recompence is not yet,⁴²⁵* but He still maketh His sun to rise on the good and the bad, and sendeth rain on the just and unjust. And while the righteous suffer persecution, affliction, slaughter, sinners are in abundance,⁴²⁶* and they drink with harp and psaltery, but regard not the works of the Lord. But they ought, by the manner of speaking, to be close conjoined: the day of recompence should follow on the year. For it is said, To proclaim the accepted year of the Lord, and the day of recompence. It is well therefore to understand by the accepted year of the Lord, this time in which men are called and saved by the Lord, which is followed immediately by the day of recompence, i.e., the judgment.

And indeed this time is called not only a year, but also a day, both by the Prophet, and by Paul; I mean where the Apostle, remembering the Scripture, saith in the Epistle to the Romans, As it is written,⁴²⁷* For Thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Now here all day is spoken for this whole time, wherein we suffer persecution and are slaughtered as sheep. As therefore this word Day signifies not that which consists of twelve hours, but the whole time during which believers in Christ suffer and are slain for His sake: so also the Year spoken of in the other passage is not that of twelve months, but the whole time of faith, during which men hear the preaching and believe, and those who join themselves to the Lord become acceptable unto Him.

§ 3. And one may greatly wonder, how while they say they have found the deep things of God,⁴²⁸* they have failed to search out in the Gospels, how often at the time of the Passover the Lord after His Baptism went up to Jerusalem, according to the custom which the Jews had of assembling every year from the whole country at Jerusalem, and there celebrating the Paschal feast-day. And first, when He made wine out of water in Cana of Galilee, He went up to the Paschal feast day;⁴²⁹* when also it is written, That many believed in Him, seeing the signs which He did, as John the Lord’s disciple mentions. Thence again withdrawing Himself He is found in Samaria, where He was both disputing with the Samaritan woman, and cured in His absence the Centurion’s son with a word,⁴³⁰* saying, Go, thy son liveth. And after this again the second time He went up to the feast of the Passover to Jerusalem, when He cured the paralytic, who was lying by the pool thirty eight years, bidding him rise,⁴³¹* and take up his bed, and walk and again departing from thence over the sea of Tiberias,⁴³²* whither also a great multitude having followed Him, He satisfied that whole company with five loaves, and there remained twelve baskets’ full of fragments. Lastly when He had raised Lazarus from the dead, and a conspiracy was made by the Pharisees,⁴³³* He withdrew into the city of Ephraim;⁴³⁴* and thence, six days before the Passover, it is written that He came to Bethany, and from Bethany went up to Jerusalem, and ate the Passover, and suffered on the following day. Now that these three times of the Passover are not one year alone, every person whatever will confess. And the very month too wherein the Passover is celebrated, wherein also the Lord suffered, is not the twelfth, but the first, which if they know not, boasting as they do that they know all, they may learn it of Moses. Their explication therefore both of the year and of the twelfth month is proved false, and they must either reject their own explication, or the Gospel: else how did the Lord preach for one year only?

§ 4. The fact is, being thirty years old when He came to Baptism,⁴³⁵* afterwards at the complete age of a teacher He came to Jerusalem, so as to be properly called by all men Master. For He did not seem one thing while He was another, as they say who bring in an imaginary Christ, but what He was, that He also seemed. Being then a Teacher, He had also a Teacher’s age: not rejecting nor over-passing Man, nor breaking in His own case the law of mankind, but sanctifying every age by there semblance which it bore to Himself. For He came to save all by Himself: all, I mean, who through Him are newborn unto God: infants, and little ones, and boys, and youths, and elder men. Therefore He passed through every age, being first made an infant unto infants, to sanctify infants: among little ones, a little one, to sanctify such as are of that same age, being made to them an example both of piety, and of righteousness, and of obedience: among youths, a youth, becoming a pattern to youths, and sanctifying them in the Lord. Thus also He was an Elder among elders, in order to be a perfect Master in all things, not in setting forth the truth only, but in age too, sanctifying the elder persons as well, becoming an example to them also. Lastly He came even unto death, that He might be the first-born from the dead,⁴³⁶* having Himself the preeminence in all things, the Prince of Life, first of all, and going before all.

§ 5. But they, to maintain their own device concerning that which is written, to proclaim the accepted year of the Lord,⁴³⁷* say that He preached for one year only, and suffered in the 12th month. They have been forgetful, against their own cause, doing away with the whole of His task, and taking away the most indispensable and most honourable part of His life; that elder part of it, I mean, wherein He was before all as a Teacher also. For how had He disciples, if He did not teach? And how did He teach, if He had not a Master’s age? For He came to Baptism as one Who had not yet fulfilled thirty years, but was beginning to be about thirty years old; (for so Luke, who hath signified His years,⁴³⁸* hath set it down; Now Jesus, when He came to Baptism, began to be about thirty years old:) and He preached for one year only after His Baptism: completing His thirtieth year He suffered, while He was still young, and not yet come to riper age. But the age of thirty years is the first of a young man’s mind, and that it reaches even to the fortieth year, every one will allow: but after the fortieth and fiftieth year, it begins to verge towards elder age: which our Lord was of when He taught, as the Gospel and all the Elders witness, who in Asia conferred with John the Lord’s disciple, to the effect that John had delivered these things unto them: for he abode with them until the times of Trajan. And some of them saw not only John, but others also of the Apostles, and had this same account from them, and witness to the aforesaid relation. Whom ought we rather to believe? These, being such as they are, or Ptolemy, who never beheld the Apostles, nor ever in his dreams attained to any vestige of an Apostle?

§ 6. Yea, and the Jews also, who were then disputing with our Lord Jesus Christ,⁴³⁹* did most clearly signify this. For when the Lord said to them, Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day,⁴⁴⁰* and he saw it, and was glad, they answered Him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?⁴⁴¹* Now this is with consistency said to him who hath now got beyond forty years, but hath not yet reached his fiftieth year, though he be not far distant from it. Whereas to one of thirty years old, of course it would be said, Thou art not yet aged forty years. For they who wanted to prove Him deceitful, would not surely lengthen His years far beyond that age, which they saw Him to have arrived at. But they were stating His age as nearly as they could, either truly knowing it by the Taxation-Enrolment, or gnessing it by the age which they saw He was of;—more than forty but not anything like thirty years. For it is quite unreasonable, that they should falsify by twenty years, when they wanted to prove Him later than the times of Abraham. But what they saw, that also they spake: while He on Whom they looked was no imaginary person, but the Truth. He was not therefore far from fifty years: and therefore they said unto Him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham? He preached not therefore one year only, nor did He suffer in the twelfth month of the year. For the time from the thirtieth year to the fiftieth can never be made out one year only, unless haply amongst their Æons the years are accounted of that length to those, who sit in order with the Deep in the Pleroma: concerning whom also Homer the Poet; himself inspired by the mother of their error,⁴⁴²* said, “The gods sitting by Jupiter held council on the golden platform.”

Chap. XXIII. § 1. Neither is their ignorance less manifest in regard of that woman, who labouring with an issue of blood, touched the hem of the Lord’s garment, and was healed.⁴⁴³* (For they say that by her is indicated the suffering of that twelfth virtue, and its melting away into infinity: I mean, the twelfth Æon.) First, because, according to their sect, this Æon is not the twelfth, as we have shewn. But let this be granted them over and above: still, whereas, out of twelve Æons, eleven are said to have remained impassible, and the twelfth to have suffered, this woman on the contrary, being healed in her twelfth year, plainly had her suffering to endure for eleven years together, but in the twelfth year was healed. Now if eleven Æons were stated to have been in uncurable suffering, and the twelfth healed, then it were plausible to call this woman a type of them. But inasmuch as she after suffering eleven years without cure, was cured in the twelfth year; how can she be a type of the twelfth of the Æons whereof eleven suffered nothing, and the twelfth only partook of suffering? For the type and image in matter and substance does sometimes differ from the reality, but in habit and feature should keep its resemblance, and by things present, in the way of likeness, indicate those which are not present.

§ 2. And not only in the case of this woman, were so many years of infirmity set down, as to suit by their account, the things they have devised;⁴⁴⁴* but behold also another woman in like manner enfeebled eighteen years, was healed; of whom the Lord saith,⁴⁴⁵* But this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan bound eighteen years, ought she not to be loosed on the Sabbath day? If then the former was a type of the twelfth Æon, which suffered; this also ought to be a type of the eighteenth Æon, which suffered. But they cannot prove; otherwise their first and principal set of Eight will be reckoned along with the Æons that shared the suffering. And besides, there is a certain other person healed by the Lord, thirty eight years in his affliction:⁴⁴⁶* let them also tell us of a thirty eighth Æon which suffered. For if they affirm the things done by the Lord to be types of those which are in the Pleroma, the Type ought to be kept throughout. But they cannot suit to their device either her who was cured after eighteen years, or him who was cured after thirty eight years. And it is altogether absurd and inconsistent to say that in some things the Saviour kept the type, and in other things kept it not. The type therefore of the woman is also proved unlike the affair of the Æons.

Chap. XXIV. § 1. And again their invention is proved false, and their device unstable, by this circumstance; that they try to make out their proofs sometimes by numbers and by syllables of names,⁴⁴⁷* sometimes by the letters also of syllables, and sometimes again by the numbers, which the letters by the Greeks’ account contain. They most evidently prove their own perplexity and confusion, and the instability of their knowledge, and its violent perversion. Thus Jesus being a name in another language, they transfer to the catalogue⁴⁴⁸⁶ of the Greeks, and sometimes they say it is the ϛʹ, having six letters, sometimes the Fulness of the Ogdoads, having the number 888. But as to His Greek Name, which is Soter, i.e., Saviour, they say nothing of it, because it suits not their device, either in number or in letters. Yet surely, had they received the Lord’s Names from the Father’s Providence, signifying by their number and letters the number in the Pleroma, then Soter being a Grecian Name, ought to indicate the mystery of the Pleroma, according to the rules of the Greek language, both by letters and by numbers. But it is not so, for it has five letters, but the number 1408. But these things have in nothing any respect to their Pleroma: the business therefore which they talk of in the Pleroma is not real.

§ 2. But the name Jesus, in the proper tongue of the Hebrews,⁴⁴⁹* has two letters and a half, as their scholars say, signifying that Lord, Who contains Heaven and Earth: because Jesus in the old language of the Hebrews is the Heaven, and the earth again is called Sura user. The word therefore which the Heaven and Earth contains, is Jesus Himself. Their explanation therefore of the ϛʹ, (as they call it), is untrue, and the number they assign is clearly refuted. For in their proper tongue, the Greek word Soter hath five letters: but Jesus in Hebrew hath two and a half letters. The number therefore of their calculation fails, which is 888.

And throughout indeed the letters of the Hebrews do not agree with the number of the Greeks: yet those letters, being older and more settled, ought more especially to make good the reckoning of the names. For the real ancient and first letters of the Hebrews, which are also called sacerdotal, are indeed ten in number (but are written as ten and five) the last letter being coupled to the first. And therefore too they write some regularly onward as we do, others backward, turning the letters from the right side back to the left. And Christ too ought to have a name which may be so calculated as to Æons of their Pleroma, seeing that as they say He was produced to settle and amend their Pleroma. And the Father too in like manner both in letters and in number ought to have contained the number of the Æons, who were produced from him; yea, and the Deep likewise, and not less too the Only Begotten, and most of all the Name above all which is called God, which in Hebrew is also called Baruch, and has two and a half letters. From this circumstance, therefore, that the principal names in the Hebrew and Greek languages suit their device neither by the number nor by the value of their letters, it is plain that their calculation is shamelessly forced from the rest.

§ 3. For from the Law too, selecting whatever numerical details suit their sect,⁴⁵⁰* they endeavour to make out proofs by violence. But if their mother, or the Saviour, had purposed to exhibit by means of the Demiurge the types of the things in the Pleroma, they would have caused the types to take place in holier and truer things; and most of all in the very ark of the Covenant, for the sake of which indeed the whole Tabernacle of Witness was framed. Now this was made,⁴⁵¹* first in length two and a half Cubits, then in breadth a cubit and a half, and in height a cubit and a half: but the number of those Cubits, by which chiefly the type ought to be shewn, suits their device in nothing. And the Mercy Seat again in like sort doth in no respect suit their expositions.⁴⁵²* And besides there is also the Table of the Shewbread,⁴⁵³* two Cubits is its length, and one Cubit its width, and its height a cubit and a half: (these are in front of the Holiest of Holies:) and in these not so much as one amount of number contains any intimation of repeating the number of four or of eight, or of the rest of their Pleroma.⁴⁵⁴* And what means the Candlestick, having both seven pipes and seven lamps? Whereas if things had been made by way of type, it ought to have eight small pipes and as many lights, for a type of the first set of eight, which shines chief among the Æons, and enlightens the whole Pleroma.⁴⁵⁵* The curtains^456s again, being ten, they have diligently numbered, calling them a type of the ten Æons:⁴⁵⁷* but the hides they have no longer numbered, being eleven. Nor again have they measured the size of the curtains themselves, each curtain having the length of twenty eight cubits.⁴⁵⁸* And the length of the columns, being ten cubits they expound by the ten Æons. But the saying, Each column was a cubit and a half wide, they give no explanation to; nor to the number of all the columns, and of their bars: because it has nothing to do with their argument.⁴⁵⁹* What again of the anointing oil, which sanctified the whole tabernacle? Perhaps it was unknown to the Saviour, or while their mother was asleep the Creator of his own head gave directions about the weight: whereby again he is in discord with their Pleroma;⁴⁶⁰* having five hundred shekels of myrrh, of casia five hundred, of Cinnamon two hundred and fifty, of calamus two hundred and fifty, and besides this, oil: so that there is a mixture of forms five in number.⁴⁶¹* And incense again in like manner is of stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, and mint, and frankincense; things which cannot have anything to do with their argument, either in their mixtures or in their weight. It is then an unreasonable thing, and altogether clownish, that the type should not be kept up in the lofty and more elegant portions of the Law, while in the others, should any number agree with what themselves say, they affirm those things to be types of what are in the Pleroma: whereas every number is set down in Scripture in many relations: so that whoever will, may be able to make out by scripture, not only the repetition of Eight, and the Ten, and the Twelve, but any other: and may hold it as a type of the error he hath devised.

§ 4. And that this is true, may admit of being proved out of Scripture by the number which is called Five;⁴⁶²* in that it enters not at all into their argument, nor agrees with their invention, nor corresponds with any typical exhibition of the things which are in the Pleroma:—it may be proved as follows. Saviour [in Greek] is a word of five letters, and Father too hath five letters, yea, and the term Love is of five letters, and our Lord blessing five loaves, satisfied five thousand men; five wise Virgins were spoken of by the Lord, and likewise five foolish ones. Again, five men are said to have been with the Lord, when He met with the Father’s testimony, namely Peter, and James and John and Moses and Elias: the Lord too with four others went in where the dead maiden was, and raised her:⁴⁶³* For none, it is said^464t, did He suffer to go in, save Peter and James and the Father and Mother of the damsel. That rich man in hell states himself to have five brethren, to whom he begs that one rising from the dead may go. The swimming pool had five porches; from which the Lord bade the paralytic depart whole to his own house. And the very form of the Cross^465u hath ends and points to the number of five, two in length and two in width, and one in the middle, on which the person who is nailed to it rests. Each of our hands hath five fingers; and again we have five senses; and the parts within us may be numbered in five, Heart and Liver, Lungs, Spleen, and Kidnies. Once more: the whole Man may be divided into this number: Head, Breast, Belly, Thighs, Feet. The human race passes through five ages: one is first an infant, then a boy, then a youth, and after this a young man, then lastly an Elder. In five books Moses gave the Law to the people. Each table which he received from God, had five precepts^466v.⁴⁶⁷* The veil which hid the Holy of Holies had five pillars. And the altar of burnt offering, its height⁴⁶⁸⁷ was five cubits. Five were chosen Priests in the wilderness, namely Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. The Long Robe, and the Oracle, and the rest of the Priest’s Apparel was woven out of five materials:⁴⁶⁹* for they had gold, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen. And five Kings of the Amorites were shut up in caves by Joshua the son of Nun,⁴⁷⁰* and their heads given to be trampled on by the people. And many thousand more instances of the same kind, both in this number and in any other number which one might select, one may collect either out of the Scriptures, or of any works of nature which come in one’s way: but we do not the more on that account say that there are five Æons above the Demiurge, nor do we hallow the number Five, as something divine, nor do we endeavour to establish vanities and drivellings by this vain labour, nor do we force the creature, so well ordained by God, to become ill-suited types of unreal things, and to further impious and nefarious doctrines, liable to be detected and overthrown by all sensible persons.

§ 5. For who would grant to them that the year has only 365 days,⁴⁷¹* to make out twelve months of thirty days, for a type of the twelve Æons; the very type wanting resemblance? For while each Æon is a thirtieth part of the whole Pleroma, the month is called by them a twelfth part of the year. If now the year were divided into thirty parts, and the month into twelve, the figure might be thought suitable to their false statement. But now on the contrary, while their Pleroma is divided into thirty, and a certain part of it into twelve, here on the other hand the whole year is divided into twelve parts, but a certain portion of it into thirty. Foolishly then did this Saviour of theirs cause the month to prove a type of the whole Pleroma, and the year of that Twelve, which is contained in the Pleroma: since it were more suitable to divide the year into thirty, even as the whole Pleroma, and the month into twelve, as are also the Æons in their Pleroma. And while they divide the whole Pleroma into three, i.e.,⁴⁷²* an eight, a ten, and a twelve,—the year on the other hand is divided into four, i.e., Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. But neither do the Months, which they say are a type of the number thirty, contain exactly thirty days, but some more, some less, because five days are added on to them. And the day too hath not always precisely twelve hours, but mounts from nine up to fifteen, and again declines from fifteen to nine. It follows, that the thirty Æons were not the cause of the months being made of thirty days, else they would have precisely thirty days, nor again the days of so many hours⁴⁷³⁸, to represent the twelve Æons by twelve hours; for they too would always have precisely twelve hours.

§ 6. Yet again, in that they denominate material things, the Left Side,⁴⁷⁴* and say that of necessity what things are on the left go away into corruption, and that the Saviour came for the Lost Sheep, to transfer it to the right, i.e., to those who belong to salvation, the ninety nine sheep who did not perish but abode in the fold:—they must needs grant them not to be of salvation, counted as they are by the lifting up of the left hand. And by the same rule, whatever thing does not attain to that number, they will be forced to own, belongs to the Left Hand, i.e., to corruption: and the name which in Greek is called Agape, according to those letters of the (Greeks, whereby counting among them is betokened, having 93 as its number is in like manner subject to the lifting of the Left Hand; and Truth too [Alethia] in like manner, by the aforesaid mode of reasoning, having 64 as its number, stops short among the things material: and in a word, all names of Saints not filling up the number of one 100, but having the numbers on the Left Side also, those they will be forced to own corruptible and material.

Chap. XXV. § 1. But should any one say to this, “What then? doth all come to vanity, and is all at random, both in the assigning of names,⁴⁷⁵* and in the election of the Apostles, and in the working of the Lord, and in the forming of the things which are made?”—we shall say to them, “Not so: but and with great wisdom and care, exactly arranged and adorned, are all things which God hath made, both anciently, and whatever in the last times His Word hath wrought. And they ought to connect them, not with the number of thirty, but with their proper subject matter, or reason. Nor ought they to admit an inquiry about God, which proceeds upon numbers and syllables and letters (for this were weak, because of their many and diverse relations, and because any matter this day devised by any one may just as well obtain testimonies, contrary to the truth, from those sources, they being transferable to sundry objects): but the numbers themselves, and the things that are made, we ought to adapt to the part of the Truth which is in hand. For the rule depends not on the numbers, but the numbers on the rule: God depends not on His works, but His works on God. For all are of one and the same God.

§ 2. But inasmuch as the things which are made are various and many,⁴⁷⁶* and although in respect of the whole Creation they are well fitted, and of good accordance, yet as far as regards each one of them, they are contrary one to another, and out of harmony: as the sound of the harp produces one consistent melody, made up as it is of many and contrary sounds, each having its proper interval:—this being so, the lover of truth must not be argued down on account of the wide intervals of the several sounds, nor must he suspect them to be the works of several artists and framers; nor as though one had arranged the sharper tones, another the more ample^477w, a third the middle ones, but as though it were One only, and He for the manifestation both of wisdom and righteousness and of goodness and of bounty, in the whole work. But those who hear the melody, ought to praise and glorify the Artist, and to admire how some sounds are made intenser, while they mark the relaxation of others, and listen to a third sort as attempered between the two; of others again they have to regard the figurative drift, and to search out the relation of each one, and their principle: in no case ascribing the rule to another, nor straying from the Artist, nor casting away their faith in One God, Maker of all things, nor blaspheming our Creator.

§ 3. And if so be a man find not the principle of all that he searches into,⁴⁷⁸* let him consider that man is infinitely less than God, as having but in part received grace, and as not yet equalling or resembling his Maker, and as unable, like God, to try and understand all things. Yea, by how much He that is unmade, and always the same, is above him who was made to-day, and received a beginning to his existence, by so much must he fall short of his Maker in respect of knowledge, and in tracing the principles of all things. For thou art not uncreated, O man, nor wast thou ever coexistent with God, as His own Word was: but receiving at this time the beginning of thy creation because of His eminent goodness, thou art gradually learning from the Word the ordinances of God, Who made thee.

§ 4. Keep therefore the station of thine own knowledge, and do not, as ignorant of things truly good,⁴⁷⁹* ascend higher than God Himself; for He cannot be overpassed: neither do thou inquire what is above the Creator; for thou wilt find nothing. Because He Who framed thee cannot be limited; neither must thou be devising another Father above Him, as though thou hadst measured Him throughout, and hadst passed through all His handywork, and hadst contemplated all the depth that is in Him, His height also and His length. Why, thou wilt find no such device, but having thoughts contrary to nature, wilt be senseless. And if thou go on so, thou wilt fall into madness, making account that thou art higher and better than thy Maker, and art passing through all His Kingdoms.

Chap. XXVI. § 1. It is better and more profitable, to be simple and scantily learned, and by love to approach unto God, than while we seem full of learning and experience,⁴⁸⁰* to be found blasphemers against our own Lord, inventing another God and Father. And therefore Paul cried out, Knowledge puffeth up, but Charity edifieth: not as blaming the true knowledge of God, otherwise he would be accusing himself in the first place: but because he knew that certain persons lifted up on pretence of knowledge, were falling away from the Love of God, and therefore thought themselves perfect, while they were bringing in an imperfect Creator; cutting off the arrogance they felt from this same knowledge, he saith, Knowledge puffeth up, but Charity edifieth. Now, there can be no greater “puffing up” than this, for a man to think himself better and more perfect than Him Who made and framed him, and gave him the breath of life, and granted him this very thing, To be. Better then is it, as I said before, for one to know nothing at all, no not so much as one single cause why any of the things that are made was made, but to believe God, and so that they should abide in love⁴⁸¹⁹;—than to be puffed up by that kind of knowledge, and fall from love which quickens the man;⁴⁸²* better, to search out nothing for knowledge,⁴⁸³* save Jesus Christ the Son of God, Who was crucified for us, than by subtle questionings and frivolous talk to fall into impiety^484x.

§ 2. For what if any one, somewhat elated by these efforts, upon the Lord’s having said,⁴⁸⁵* The very hairs of your head are all numbered, chose curiously to enquire into the number of hairs in each man’s head, and seek out the cause why one has so many hairs, another so many; all not having them alike, but this or that number being found by many thousands above former thousands,⁴⁸⁶* because some men’s heads are greater, others less; and some have always thick heads of hair, others thin, and others again very few hairs; and what if those, who think they have found out the number of men’s hairs, should endeavour to bring the same to bear in attestation of the particular school, which themselves have devised? Or again, should any one, because of this saying in the Gospel,⁴⁸⁷* Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father’s will, want to reckon up the sparrows which are taken every day, or in every place, and to search out the cause why yesterday it was so many, and the day before so many, and to day again so many, which were taken; and should he connect the numbers of the sparrows with his own argument; doth he not altogether deceive himself, and urge those who agree with him into great madness; men being always eager in such things to be thought to have discovered something beyond their teachers?

§ 3. And what if any one should ask us, “Whether the whole number of all things which have been made, and which are made, is known unto God, and whether by His Providence each one of these numbers received the quantity which properly belongs to it?” and upon our allowing and acknowledging that not one of all the things which have been, and are made, or shall ever be so, escapes the knowledge of God, but that by His Providence each one of them doth and did receive both its form, and order, and number, and quantity; and that nothing at all was or is made vainly or at random, but with great fitness and high consciousness, and there is something admirable and truly divine, in the reason which can both distinguish such things, and set forth their proper causes:—what if he, receiving from us the aforesaid testimony and consent, should proceed so far, as to reckon up the sand, and the pebbles of the earth, yea, also the waves of the sea and the stars of Heaven, and to devise ways of accounting for the number supposed to be found?—shall not such a person be justly affirmed by all who have sense, to be labouring in vain, as a doting and irrational person? And the more entirely beyond all others he is taken up with the aforesaid questions, and the more he thinks he is discovering beyond others, calling the rest unskilful, and untaught, and unspiritual⁴⁸⁸¹, for not receiving the fruit of his so vain labour, so much the more frantic and senseless is he, like one thunder struck, in nought yielding to God; rather by the knowledge which he thinks he has acquired, he changes^489y perhaps even his God, and darts forth his own opinion beyond the greatness of his Maker.

Chap. XXVII. § 1. The sound, and safe, and cautious, and truth-loving mind,—whatsoever things God hath put within the power of man,⁴⁹⁰* and hath submitted to our knowledge, in those it will into throughly exercise itself with all readiness, and in them will make progress, by such daily exercise facilitating its own improvement. And these are, partly, such as fall under our very sight, partly such as are openly and unambiguously expressed in terms in the Divine Scriptures. And therefore Parables ought to be expounded by things not in themselves ambiguous. For so both he who solves the question, runs no risk in doing so, and the Parables will receive like solution from all, and the body of truth remains entire, its members harmoniously arranged, and no shock incurred. But as to connecting with solutions of Parables, invented by each man according to his will, what is neither openly said, nor set before men’s eyes;—why, in that way the rule of truth will be found with no one, but according to the number of expounders of Parables, so many truths shall we see contending with each other, and setting up contradictory doctrines, much like the questions of the Heathen Philosophers.

§ 2. And so on this plan a man will be always seeking but will never find,⁴⁹¹* because he will have cast away the very rule of discovery. And when the Bridegroom is come, he who hath his lamp unprepared, shining with no radiance of open light, hath recourse to such as distort in the dark their solutions of parables, forsaking him who by open proclamation bestows free admission where He is, and so is excluded from His marriage Chamber. Since then all the Scriptures, both Prophecies and Gospels may be heard openly, and unequivocably, and alike, by all, though not all believe; since they set forth one only God, exclusive of others, Who made all by His Word, visible and invisible, in heaven and in earth, in water and under the earth;—as we have demonstrated from the very words of the Scriptures, the creature itself also wherein we are, witnessing the same by what comes in sight, viz. that there is One Who made and governs it:—very dull must they appear, who against so clear revelation close their eyes, and will not see the Light of preaching, but chain themselves back and think each of them to have found a god of his own by their dark solutions of Parables. For that concerning the imaginary Father of those who hold opposite opinions nothing is said openly or incontrovertibly in any Scripture at all, even they themselves witness, in saying, that the Saviour taught all the aforesaid in secret, not to all, but to some of the disciples, who are able to receive it; and to such as understand His meanings in arguments and riddles and parables. And they go so far as to say, that the God who is preached is not the same as the Father, who by parables and riddles is signified to be the Father.

§ 3. Now since the Parables may receive many solutions, to affirm out of them concerning the investigation of God,⁴⁹²* leaving what is certain and undoubted and true, this is the part of persons quite throwing themselves headlong into peril, and wanting all reason; as who that loves truth will not confess? And what is this, but building one’s house not upon the firm and strong and conspicuous rock,⁴⁹³* but upon the shifting sand? Whence also to overturn the aforesaid building is easy.

Chap. XXVIII. § 1. Having therefore the very rule of Truth, and the witness concerning God openly set forth, we ought not by solutions of questions,⁴⁹⁴* still swerving away further and further, to cast out the firm and true knowledge of God. Rather it becomes us, directing our resolution of difficulties by this outline⁴⁹⁵², while we practise ourselves in enquiry concerning the mystery and ordinance of the Living God, to grow also in love of Him, Who did and doth so great things for us, and never to fall away from that conviction, whereby it is most expressly declared, that This alone is truly God and Father, Who both created this world, and formed Man, and bestowed upon His Creation the gift of increase, and calleth it from its lower conditions to the greater things which are with Him; even as He both brings out the infant, conceived in the womb, into the sun’s light, and lays up the wheat in the garner, when He hath strengthened it in the stalk. Now it is One and the same Creator, Who both framed the womb, and created the sun; and One and the same Lord, Who both gave the stalk growth, and increased and multiplied the wheat, and prepared the garner.

§ 2. And if we cannot discover solutions of all the questions which are raised in Scripture,⁴⁹⁶* yet let us not be seeking out another God, besides Him Who is. For this is very great impiety. But such things we ought to leave to God, Who made us also, being aware, as the very truth is, that the Scriptures indeed are perfect, as uttered by God’s Word and His Spirit, while we, in such measure as we are inferior, and very far removed from God’s Word and His Spirit, just so far are we wanting in the knowledge of His Mysteries. And no wonder if this befall us in spiritual and heavenly things, and in such as require revelation, since even of those things which lie close in our way—(I mean those which make part of this creation, which are both felt and seen by us, and are with us);—many have escaped our knowledge, and these same we commit unto God. For He must be high over all. Thus, what if we try to explain the cause of the rising of the Nile? Many things indeed we say, perhaps persuasive, perhaps also not persuasive: but what is true, and certain, and fixed, is laid up with God. Again, the dwelling of those birds which come to us in spring time, and in time of autumn presently retire, though it likewise take place in the world, escapes our knowledge. Again, what account can we give of the flow and ebb of the Ocean, though we know there is a definite cause? Or what can we affirm of the quality of the regions beyond the same? Or what are we able to say of the manner in which rains, and lightnings, and thunders, and gatherings of clouds, and mists, and blasts of winds, and the like, are produced?⁴⁹⁷* how declare the treasures also of the snows and of the hail and of what come next to them; or what is this array of clouds or settlement of mist and what is the cause of the moon’s waxing and waning, and of the difference of water and metals, and stones, and the like of these? In all these matters our words indeed will be many, while we seek out their causes, but only the God Who makes them speaks absolute Truth.

§ 3. If among the very things of Creation some are laid up with God,⁴⁹⁸* while some have come also to our knowledge; what hardship is it, if of the points questioned in the Scriptures also, (the whole of the Scriptures being spiritual), some by the grace of God we solve, while others must be laid up with God? and that not only in this world, but also in that which is to come? so that God may always be teaching, and Man throughout learning of God. As also said the Apostle, that the other sorts being done away, these three do afterwards abide, namely, Faith, Hope, and Charity.⁴⁹⁹* For Faith, which is in our Master, abides ever firm, assuring us that He only is truly God: also that we truly love Him always, because He is the only Father; and that We hope from time to time, to receive and learn something more of God, because He is good,⁵⁰⁰* and hath unbounded wealth, and a Kingdom without end, and an uncircumscribed moral government. If then, in the sense which we have now stated, we refer some of the questionings to God; we shall both keep our faith entire, and remain out of peril; and all Scripture given us of God will be found in harmony with ourselves,⁵⁰¹* and the parables will harmonize with the things expressly uttered, and the open sayings will solve the Parables, and through the variety of tone in our sayings He will perceive in us one harmonious strain;—extolling in Hymns God the Creator of all things. As, for instance, should any one ask, Before God made the world how was He employed? we say that the answer to this rests with God. That this world was indeed made fully complete by God, having a beginning in time, the Scriptures teach us; but what were the workings of God before this, no Scripture declares. This answer then rests wholly with God: neither oughtest thou to be after inventing such foolish emanations, so rudely blasphemous; nor to reject God Himself, the Maker of all, because thou thinkest thou hast discovered the emanation of matter.

§ 4. For consider, O all ye who are busy with such inventions:—whereas He alone is called God the Father,⁵⁰²* Who really is so, Whom you call Artificer; whereas the Scriptures also know Him only as God; whereas again the Lord acknowledges Him only as His own Father, and knows no other (as we shall shew from His very words):—when that very same Being is called by you the fruit of decay, and the emanation of ignorance, and said not to be aware of the things which are above Him, and whatever else you say of Him:—consider the greatness of the blasphemy against Him Who is truly God. You seem indeed to say, seriously and rightly, that you believe in God: the next thing is, that not being able to point out any other God, you affirm Him, in Whom you say you believe, to be the offspring of Defect, and the production of ignorance. Now this blindness and foolish talking you derive from this, that you keep nothing back for God. Yea, and you would fain relate in words the births and productions both of God Himself, and of His Thought, and Word, and Life, and of Christ; and that, understanding them no other way, than by what happens to men. Nor do you understand, that of man indeed, who is a compound animal, one may speak in this way: as we before spoke of the sense of man and the thought of man; and that of Sense comes Thought, and of Thought Notion, and of Notion Discourse: (but in which sense do we say “Discourse?”⁵⁰³* for among the Greeks there is a difference between discourse, as being the original faculty which devises things, and the instrument by which the said Discourse is uttered:)—and that man sometimes rests and is silent, sometimes again speaks and works:—But God being all mind, all reason, and all active spirit, and all light, and always the same and of the same mode of being;—as it is expedient for us to think of God, and as we learn from the Scriptures:—the aforesaid affections and distinctions may not properly be inferred when we come to speak of Him. For the tongue is not fully capable of waiting upon the rapidity of human sense, because of the spiritual nature thereof, as being itself carnal. Whence also our word is choked within us, and is uttered not at once, as it is conceived by the thought, but in parts, according as the tongue is able to wait on it.

§ 5. But God being all Mind, and all Discourse⁵⁰⁴³, what He thinks that He also speaks,⁵⁰⁵* and what He speaks that He also thinks. For His Thought is Discourse, and His Discourse Mind, and the Mind which includes all, is the Father Himself. He therefore who speaks of the Mind of God, and attributes to that mind production properly so called, declares Him to be made up of parts, as though God were some one Being, and another the original really existing Mind. And the same he does again concerning the Word, ascribing to Him an Emanation in the third degree from the Father (from which it follows that His greatness is unknown to him), moreover also, he hath parted the Word widely from God. And whereas the Prophet saith of Him, Who shall declare His generation?⁵⁰⁶* you framing conjectures about His generation from the Father, and transferring to God’s Word the production of the word of men, wrought by the tongue, are convicted by yourselves of knowing neither human things nor divine.

§ 6. And ye, absurdly puffed up, say boldly that ye know the unutterable mysteries of God:⁵⁰⁷* whereas even the Lord, the very Son of God, allowed that the Father Himself alone knows the day and hour of judgement, saying expressly, Of that day and hour no man knoweth, nor yet the Son, but the Father only. If therefore the Son felt no shame⁵⁰⁸⁴ to refer to the Father the knowledge of that day, but spake what is true: neither let us be ashamed to reserve unto God those points in our enquiries which are too great for us.⁵⁰⁹* For no man is above his master. Should any one therefore say to us, How then is the Son produced of the Father? we tell him, that this production, or generation, or utterance, or manifestation, or by what name soever one may denote His Generation, which cannot be declared,—no man knoweth: not Valentinus, not Marcion, nor Saturninus, nor Basilides, nor Angels, nor Princes, nor Powers, but the Father only Who begat, and the Son Who was born. Since therefore His generation cannot be declared, whosoever strive to declare generations and emanations, are not in their right senses, professing to declare things which cannot be declared. For that a Word is produced from thought and sense, this of course all men know. They have not therefore discovered any great thing, who have devised the Emanations: nor is it a hidden mystery, if what is understood by all, that they have transferred to the Only Begotten Word of God; and Whom they affirm to be beyond expression or naming, Him, as though they had themselves assisted at His birth, they describe in the production and generation of His first Birth, likening Him to the word of human utterance⁵¹⁰⁵.

§ 7. And if we say the same again of the substance also of matter, we shall not err: viz., that God produced it.⁵¹¹* For we have learned from the Scriptures that God holds the ruling place over all. But whence or how He produced it, neither hath any Scripture set forth, nor ought we to indulge in fancying, forming infinite conjectures about God, according to our own opinions: but this knowledge must be left to God. So again the reason also, why, all things being created of God, some transgressed and departed from obedience to God, while some, yea most, did and do persevere in submission to Him Who made them:—and what is the nature of those which transgressed, what again of those which persevere:—we must leave to God and His Word; to Whom alone also He said,⁵¹²* Sit Thou on My Right Hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool. Whereas we have yet our conversation on Earth, not yet sitting near His Throne. For although the Spirit of the Saviour, which is in Him, searcheth all things, even the depths of God:⁵¹³* yet in respect of us there are diversities of graces and diversities of administrations,⁵¹⁴* and diversities of operations; and we upon earth, as Paul also saith, know but in part,⁵¹⁵* and in part prophesy. As therefore we know in part, so also ought we concerning all questions to give way to Him, Who gives us grace in part.⁵¹⁶* That eternal fire is prepared for sinners, both the Lord openly affirmed, and the other Scriptures prove. And that God foresaw that this would be, in like manner the Scriptures prove, even as He prepared from the beginning eternal fire for those who should transgress: but the cause itself of the nature of the transgressors, neither hath any Scripture related, nor Apostle said, nor hath the Lord taught. We must therefore leave this knowledge to God, as the Lord Himself doth that of the Hour and Day: and not adventure ourselves so far, as to leave nothing even to God: and that, receiving grace as we do but in part: nor should we through seeking what is above us and whereto we may not reach, proceed to so great boldness, as to be unfolding God, and as if we had now made out things yet undiscovered, by vain talk about emanations assert that God Himself the Maker of all had His being both of decay and of ignorance; and so form an argument full of impiety towards God.

§ 8. And next, they have no testimony of the device which they have lately invented,⁵¹⁷* sometimes by any given numbers, sometimes again by syllables, and sometimes by names: occasionally too by the letters which are in the letters⁵¹⁸⁶, and sometimes again by parables not rightly solved, or by certain suspicions endeavouring to establish that fabulous recital which they may have framed. For so, should any one ask the cause, why the Father, in all communicating with the Son, is declared by the Lord alone to know the day and hour; none either more suitable nor more dignified, nor any other safe one may he find at the present, than this: (since the Lord alone is the only veracious teacher:—) viz., that we might learn by Himself that the Father is above all. For the Father, saith He, is greater than I.⁵¹⁹* Wherefore in respect of knowledge also the Father is declared by our Lord to be set in the first place, to the end that we too, so far as we are in the fashion of this world,⁵²⁰* may give up perfect knowledge, and all such questionings, to God; and that we may not by any chance, while seeking to explore the deeps of the Father, fall into the great danger, of enquiring whether there be another God above God.

§ 9. But should any one loving contention, dispute what we have said,⁵²¹* and what the Apostle hath set down, that we know in part, and we prophesy in part, and imagine that he himself, not in part, but universally, hath won entire knowledge of all things that exist, he being some Valentine, or Ptolemy, or Basilides, or any one of those who say they have sought out the deep things of God: let him not boast that he has acquired more knowledge than all others in those things which are invisible, or which admit of no evidence, adorning himself with vain boasting: but let him, upon diligent search, and instruction from the Father, tell us the causes of the things which are in this world, which we know not: as for instance the number of the hairs of his own head, and of the sparrows which are taken daily, and of the other things unaccountable to us: that we may believe him in greater things also. But if the things which are in hand, and about our feet, and in our eyes, and in earthly places, and especially the arrangement of the hairs of their own head, are as yet unknown to them that are perfect; how shall we believe them touching things spiritual and supercelestial, and what they vainly imagining, affirm concerning God? Let thus much then be spoken by us of their numbers, and names, and syllables, and questions which are too high for us, and of their abusive exposition of Parables: since thou mayest say more for thyself.

Chap. XXIX. § 1. And now let us return to what remains of their theory: how they, affirming that their own mother returns in the consummation within the Pleroma,⁵²²* and receives the Saviour as her spouse; while themselves (because they say they are spiritual), stripped of their souls and made purely intellectual spirits, are to be brides of spiritual Angels; and the Creator (because they say he is merely animal), must retire into their Mother’s place: and the souls of the righteous repose in an intermediate place and state: maintaining (according to the natural understanding) that like things are gathered unto like, spiritual to spiritual, but that material things abide among material; in this they lay down what contradicts themselves, when they come to say that souls mount upwards to their like in the middle state, not because of their substance, but of their conduct; for those of the righteous, they affirm, find shelter there, while those of the wicked await the fire. For if because of their substance all souls ascend to refreshment, then all belong to the intermediate state, inasmuch as they are souls, being of the same substance; and it is superfluous to believe, superfluous also is the descent of the Saviour. But if because of their righteousness, it is no longer as they are souls, but as they are righteous. Now if the souls would perish if they were not righteous, righteousness is able to save bodies also. Why, I ask, should it not save them, participating, as they too have done, of righteousness? For if nature and substance save, all souls will be saved; but if righteousness and faith, why saveth it not those bodies which together with their souls are beginning to advance unto incorruption? since herein will righteousness appear either powerless or unjust, if, because they are partakers of her, she save some beings, and not others.

§ 2. For that in bodies are wrought the works of righteousness, is evident.⁵²³* Either then all souls will necessarily mount into the middle place and state, and judgement is nowhere, or the bodies too, which have partaken in righteousness, with the souls which have alike partaken of it, will obtain a place of refreshment; that is, if Righteousness hath power to guide thither those beings which have partaken with her. So will our discourse of the Resurrection prove true and firm. And this we indeed believe: namely, that such of our mortal bodies as keep righteousness, God will raise up, making them incorrupt and immortal. For God is mightier than Nature, and with Him is the Will, because He is good; and the power, because He is able; and the accomplishment, because He is rich and perfect.

§ 3. But these altogether contradict themselves in laying down that not all souls pass into the Middle State,⁵²⁴* but only those of the righteous. For they say that from their Mother proceeded three kinds, naturally and in substance: first that which is of perplexity, and disgust, and fear, which thing is Matter; next that of impulse, which is merely animal: but what she brought forth at sight of those Angels who surround the Christ, that is spiritual.⁵²⁵* Now if the fruits of her travail do assuredly enter within the Pleroma, because that is spiritual; and if what is material sink downwards, because it is material, and be to be entirely consumed when the fire that is in it breaks out; why is not the whole animal part to retire into the intermediate place, whither also they send the Creator? Moreover, what is it of theirs which is to pass into the Pleroma? For souls they say continue in their middle state; but bodies, because they have a material substance, being resolved into matter, burn through the fire which is therein. Their body then being destroyed, and their soul remaining in the middle state, nothing further remains of the Man to pass within the Pleroma. For the apprehension of the man, his mind, and reflection, and the purpose of his heart^526z, and whatever is of that sort, are not some other being besides the soul, bat motions and operations of the soul itself, having no substance without the soul. What then shall it be of them, to pass into the Pleroma? For even themselves, so far as they are souls, abide in their middle state, but so far as they are body, they will burn with the rest of matter.

Chap. XXX. § 1. And this being so, they in their folly say they mount up above the Creator, and in that they pronounce themselves better than that God,⁵²⁷* Who made and adorned Heaven and Earth and the seas and all things that are therein, and will have themselves to be spiritual in some low sense⁵²⁸⁷, while their so great impiety makes them carnal;—as also of Him Who made His Angels spirits,⁵²⁹* and is clad with light as a cloke, and holds as it were in hand the circle of the earth,⁵³⁰* before Whom its inhabitants are accounted as grasshoppers, and Who is the Creator and God of all spiritual Being;—by saying that He is merely animal, they unquestionably and really betray their own frenzy, and are as persons more truly thunderstruck than those Giants whom fables tell of, lifting up their minds against God, puffed up with vain presumption and fleeting glory: for whom all the Hellebore in the world is not sufficient to purge them, causing them to vomit out their so great folly.

§ 2. For the better person must be shewn such by his works.⁵³¹* Whence then do they shew themselves better than the Creator? (that we too may deviate towards impiety, our argument compelling us, by making a comparison between God and frantic men, and descending to their way of reasoning, in our often refutation of them by their own doctrines: but may God forgive us, for we say not this comparing Him to them, but to expose and overthrow their madness.) Many of the senseless look astonied at them, as though they could learn from them something more than the Truth itself.⁵³²* And where it is written, Seek and ye shall find, they interpret it as said to this purpose, that they may find themselves above the Creator, calling themselves greater and better than God, and themselves spiritual, but the Creator merely animal: and therefore they say they mount up above God, and that they pass into the Pleroma, but God is in the intermediate place. Let them then shew better than the Creator by works. For the better person must be proved such, not by what he is said to be, but by what he is.

§ 3. What work, accordingly, will they point to, wrought by themselves through their Saviour or their Mother,⁵³³* either greater or brighter or more full of reason than those wrought by Him Who set all these things in order? What Heavens have they set fast? what earth have they made solid? what stars have they sent forth? or what lights have they kindled? and by what circles have they restrained them? Or what rains or frosts, either general in their season, or suited to the need of each particular country, have they brought upon the Earth? And what heat and drought have they set to counteract these? or what rivers have they caused to overflow? and what fountains to break out? or with what flowers and trees have they adorned the space under the Heaven? or what variety of animals have they framed, some rational and some irrational, all with their proper form? And all the other things which by the power of God were established, and are guided by His Wisdom, who shall be able separately to enumerate, or to search out the greatness of the wisdom of the God Who made them? And what shall I say of the beings which are above the Heavens, and which may not pass away? how great are they, Angels, Archangels, Thrones, Dominions, Powers without number! Against which one work, then, of all these, do they set themselves as rivals? What have they like them to shew, wrought through themselves, or by themselves? Since even themselves are His work and His framing. For whether it were their Saviour, or their Mother (to repeat their own statements, by their own words proving them liars) who employed him, as they say, to form an image of things within the Pleroma, and of all which met her eyes around the Saviour: she employed him, as better and fitter, to do her own will by him. For the images of so great originals she framed of course not by an inferior but by a better person.

§ 4. For they too even themselves were at that time,⁵³⁴* by their own account, in existence, a spiritual conception, following on the contemplation of those who were set as guards about Pandora. And they indeed remained empty (the Mother by the Saviour accomplishing nought through them)—a useless conception, and fit for nothing: for nothing appears done by them. But he who was produced, as they say, being God, though inferior by their theory to themselves (for they will have him to be merely animal) was to all things a workman, energetic, and skilful, so that by him were made images of all. And not only these things which are seen, but the invisible too, Angels, Archangels, Dominions, Powers, and Virtues, all were made by Him of course as by a better, and as one who can be guided by Will. But it seems not that the Mother did anything by them, as themselves also confess. So that one might justly account them to have been an abortion of their Mother in her travail. For the midwives waited not upon her, and therefore as an abortion they were cast out, for nothing useful, made to help the Mother in no work. Withal they call themselves better than him, by whom such and so great things were made and ordered: while even by their own reasoning they are very very inferior.

§ 5. As if there were two working tools or instruments,⁵³⁵* one of which the artizan has always in hand and in use, and doth by it what he will, and displays his art and skill, while the other abides empty and inactive, and without doing anything—the artificer appearing to do nothing at all thereby, and employing it for no action:—and then one should say that this useless and empty and inactive thing is better and more valuable than that which the artist useth in working, whereby also he is himself glorified: such a man thereupon will justly be thought dull, and not master of his own mind. Now these too in like manner, calling themselves spiritual and of the better sort, and the Creator merely animal; and therefore talking of getting up higher, and penetrating within the Pleroma to their own husbands (for they are women, as themselves confess) while they speak of God as inferior and as therefore abiding in the middle space; and bringing no proof of it (for he who is better is shewn by his works; now all the works are made by the Creator); but of themselves having no work of any account to shew:—these are mad, with an extreme and incurable madness.

§ 6. But if they go on to say,⁵³⁶* that all material things indeed, e.g., the Heaven and the whole world which is contained beneath it were made by the Creator, but that as many as are more spiritual than these, those which are above the Heavens, as for instance, Principalities, Powers, Angels, Archangels, Dominations, Virtues, were made by a kind of spiritual travail, (which they identify with themselves): first of all, we shew from the Divine Scriptures, that all the aforesaid things, visible and invisible, are made by one God. For these men are not more competent than the Scriptures; nor ought we leaving the words of the Lord, and Moses, and of the other Prophets, proclaimers of the truth, to trust these men, who say nothing sound, but are restless and doting. Further again; if by them were made the things which are above the Heavens, let them tell us what is the nature of things invisible, let them declare the number of the Angels, and the order of the Archangels; let them shew us the sacraments of the Thrones, and teach us the distributions of Dominions, Principalities and Powers and Virtues. But they cannot tell us: therefore by them they were not made. If on the other hand these things were made by the Creator, as indeed they were made, and are spiritual and holy: He is not then merely animal, Who hath wrought spiritual things in perfection: and a great blasphemy of theirs is done away.

§ 7. For that there are in the Heavens spiritual creatures, all the Scriptures cry aloud; and Paul too bears witness that they are spiritual,⁵³⁷* signifying that he himself was caught up to the third Heaven; and again, that he was borne away into Paradise, and heard unspeakable things, which it was not lawful for a man to utter.⁵³⁸* And what avails him either his entrance into Paradise, or his assumption even to the third Heaven (since all those regions are under the power of the Creator), if he were beginning, as some are bold to say, to become a contemplator and hearer of those mysteries which are said to be above the Creator? For if it were that he might learn that system which is above the Creator, he would not surely have tarried within the Creator’s portion^539a, and that without perfect sight of the whole even of that (for there still remained to him by their account a fourth Heaven, so that he might draw near to the Creator, and see the whole sevenfold series under him): but he would be received, we will say, at the least up to the middle region, that is, to their Mother, to learn from her the things within the Pleroma. For his Inner Man, which also spake in him, being invisible, as they say, might attain not only to the third Heaven, but even unto their Mother. For if they say that they themselves, i.e., the Man that belongs to them, straightway overpasses the Creator, and departs to the Mother; this of course would happen much more to the Man that belonged to the Apostle: for neither would the Creator have impeded him, being now himself, as they say, subject to the Saviour. And if he had impeded him, it would have been in vain. For he cannot be mightier than the Providence of the Father; and that, while the Inner Man, as they say, is invisible even to the Creator.⁵⁴⁰* But since he has related, as some great and remarkable thing, how he was assumed even to the third Heaven, these men do not surely ascend above the seventh Heaven: for they are not better than the Apostle. If they call themselves better, they will be refuted by their works: for no such pretension has been advanced by them.⁵⁴¹* And he added, Whether in the body, or out of the body, God knoweth: that neither might the body be imagined to be partaker of that vision, as though it also would have a share in the things which he had seen and heard; nor again might it be said, that the weight of his body was the reason why he was not taken up further: but as though he were permitted so far even without the body to behold the spiritual mysteries⁵⁴²⁸, which are works of the God Who made the Heavens and the Earth, and formed Man, and set him in Paradise, to the end that such as, like the Apostle, are very perfect in the love of God, might become sharers in the contemplation.

§ 8. He therefore made also the spiritual things, whereof the Apostle became a contemplator,⁵⁴³* even to the third Heaven, and the unspeakable words, which it is not allowed a man to speak, because they are spiritual; and He, the very same Being, bestows them at His will on those worthy of them, for to Him belongs Paradise; and the Creator is truly the Spirit of God, and not merely animal, else never would He have accomplished things spiritual. But if he is merely animal, let them tell us by whom the spiritual things were made. Nor yet are they able to prove that anything was made by the travail of their Mother, as they say they were themselves. For they cannot accomplish the making, I say not of any one among spiritual things, but not so much as of a fly, or a gnat, or any of those contemptible little animals: apart from that method whereby animals naturally have been and are made, by deposition of seed in those of the same kind, which method came in the beginning from God. Nay, not even by their Mother alone was any thing made; as they say, this Creator and Lord of all kinds of operation was produced. And while they call him merely animal, Who is Creator and Lord of all working, themselves they say are spiritual, who are neither framers nor rulers of any work: not even of their own bodies, much less of those without them. Lastly, they suffer often and much against their will in the body, they who call themselves spiritual and better than their Creator.

§ 9. Truly then shall we convict them of having far and wide swerved from the truth.⁵⁴⁴* For whether the Saviour made the things which were made by him: it proves him not inferior to them, but better, in that He is found to be Maker of these very men themselves among the rest; for they too are of the things which were made. How then is it congruous, that they should be spiritual, and the very person by whom they were made, merely animal? Or if (what alone is true, and we have shewn as by clearest demonstration in a great many ways,) He did of Himself and by His own power freely make, ordain, and accomplish all, and if by His will all subsist; He is found to be the only God, Who made all:—the only Almighty, and the only Father, founding and making all things, both visible and invisible, sensible and insensate,⁵⁴⁵* in Heaven and in earth, by the Word of His Power: Who constructed and ordained all by His own Wisdom: Who comprehends all, and alone can of none be comprehended: Himself the Framer, Himself the Founder, Himself the Inventor, the Maker, the Lord of all: and there is not beside Him, nor above Him, either such a Mother, as they feign; or another God, whom Marcion devised: or Pleroma of thirty Æons, which has been proved vain; nor Deep, nor First Beginning, nor Heavens; nor virginal Light, nor unnameable Æon; nor any at all of the things which they and all Heretics dote about. But the one only God is our Creator, He Who is above all Principality, and Power, and Dominion, and Virtue: He is Father, He God, He Founder, He Maker, He Framer, Who made them by Himself, i.e., by His Word and His Wisdom, Heaven, and Earth, and Seas, and all that in them is; He is just, He is good; He it is Who made man, Who planted Paradise, Who framed the world, Who brought on the flood, Who saved Noah;⁵⁴⁶* He, the God of Abraham and the and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the God of the living; Whom also the Law announces, Whom the Prophets proclaim, Whom Christ reveals, Whom the Apostles teach, Whom the Church believes. He the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by His Word, Who is His Son:—by Him He is revealed and manifested to all, to whom He is revealed: for those know Him, to whom the Son shall reveal Him.⁵⁴⁷* And the Son, ever co-existing with the Father, from of old and from the beginning ever reveals the Father, even to the Angels and Archangels, and Powers, and Virtues, and all to whom God will reveal Him.

Chap. XXXI. § 1. The Valentinians then being overthrown, the whole multitude of the Heretics is cast down. For whatever we have said, and in whatever degree, against their Pleroma,⁵⁴⁸* and concerning the parts which are without it, shewing that the Father of all will be shut up and circumscribed by the space which is without Him, (if indeed there be aught without Him); and that there must needs be in every direction many Fathers, and many Pleromata, and many creations of worlds, begun by one sort, and revolting to others; and that all of them, continuing in their own precincts, refrain from busying themselves about others, in which they have neither share nor interest; and that there is no other Who is God of all, the title of Almighty being broken up:—all this being spoken against Marcion’s set also, and Simon, and Menander, and whosoever else in like manner separate the creation which we are concerned with from the Father, will equally apply to them. And whatsoever again we have spoken against those, who affirm that the Universal Father comprehends indeed all things, but that the Creation of which we are part is not His work, but that of some other Power or of Angels who knew not the First Father, shut up like a centre in the boundless space of the universe, like a spot in a robe:—shewing that it is not probable that any other made this our Creation, than the Father of all:—this same shall be stated against those also who hold with Saturninus, and Basilides, and Carpocrates, and against the other Gnostics, who in like manner affirm the same. Again, what has been said of Emanations, and Æons, and Decay, and of their Mother being so unreal, in like manner overthrows Basilides, and all who are falsely called Gnostics⁵⁴⁹⁹, who maintain just the same things in other words, and who even go beyond our men in transferring notions from without the truth, into the framework of their system. And whatever we may have said about Numbers, will hold against all who refer the details of the Truth to that sort of measure. And all that hath been said of the Creator, to prove that He alone is God and Father of all, and all that is yet to be said in the following books, I say against all the Heretics.⁵⁵⁰* Such of them as are milder and more humane, thou wilt warn off and put to shame, that they blaspheme not their Creator, and Maker, and Nourisher, and Lord, nor make out His origin to have been of Decay and Ignorance. But the fierce, and abominable, and frantic, thou wilt chase far off from thee, lest thou bear with too much of their long harangues.

§ 2. After this will be refuted the party of Simon and Carpocrates,⁵⁵¹* and whoso beside are said to work miracles: as doing what they do by no divine virtue, nor in truth, nor as workers of good unto men: but for ruin and error, by magical deceits, and by all kinds of delusion, hurting rather than helping such as believe them, by leading them astray. For neither can they give sight to the blind, nor to the deaf hearing, nor drive away any devils, except those whom themselves set on (if indeed they do such a thing), nor heal the maimed, the lame, or the palsied, or those who are tormented in some other part of the Body, (as it often cometh to pass in bodily infirmity); or restore good health after those sicknesses which befall us from outward accidents. And so far are they from raising the dead, as the Lord raised some, and the Apostles by prayer, and in our Brotherhood often because of its near relationship, upon the petition of the whole Church in any place with much fasting and supplication, the spirit of the dead hath returned, and the man hath been granted unto the prayers of the Saints:—that they do not so much as believe this at all possible: but think that “Resurrection from the dead” means acknowledgement of the truth which they speak.

§ 3. Since therefore among them is impiously wrought in sight of men error, and deceit, and magical fancy;⁵⁵²* but in the Church mercy and compassion, and soundness and truth, for men’s help; and since this is done not only without fee or reward, but with payment of our own on our part for the health of the men, and what things they need who are cured, they in their poverty very often receive of us: surely under this head also are they convicted of being altogether alien to the Divine Being, and the mercy of God, and spiritual Virtue; but filled throughout with all kinds of fraud, and with the inspiration of Apostates and with the working of dæmons, and with a vain shadow of idolatry. And they are forerunners of that Dragon who by this sort of imagination will cause by his tail the third part of the stars to leave their places,⁵⁵³* and will cast them down to the earth: whom we ought to avoid as we would him, and by how much the greater shew they are said to work with, so much the more should we guard against them, as having received a greater spirit of wickedness. And if one will give heed to this Prophecy, he will find in it the daily course of their behaviour:—that their conversation is one and the same with the Dæmons’.

Chap. XXXII. § 1. Moreover the following impious maxim of theirs concerning actions is refuted by the doctrine of the Lord: that which saith,⁵⁵⁴* that they ought to be versed in all deeds, even ever so bad ones. But with Him not only the adulterer is cast out, but even he who wishes to be such; and not only will the slayer be guilty of murder unto damnation, but he also who is angry with his brother without a cause. He bade men not only not hate, but even love their enemies: He forbade not only perjury, but swearing at all: and not only ill speaking of neighbours, but even for any one to say Racha and Fool,⁵⁵⁵* or else, that such persons are guilty even to Hell fire: and that one should not only refrain from striking, but when stricken themselves should offer the other cheek also: and be so far from denying another man’s ownership in things, as even to refrain from demanding our own back from such as may have taken them: and so far from hurting our neighbours, and doing them any evil, that even those who are ill-used, should be great-hearted, and practise kindness towards them, and pray for them that they may repent and be saved: we in no respect imitating other men’s insolence and lust and pride. Since then He Whom they boast to be their Teacher, and say that He had a much better and braver soul than others, gave very careful order that some things should be done as good and noble, and that from others we should abstain, not only from the works, but also from such thoughts as lead to the works, as being bad, and hurtful, and depraved: how is it that they, styling such a Teacher braver and better than the rest, and then evidently ordaining things contrary to His doctrine, are not confounded? And yet if there were nothing really bad, nor again good, but in men’s opinion alone some things unjust, some just; He would not of course have said in His doctrine,⁵⁵⁶* But the righteous shall shine as the Sun in the kingdom of their Father: but the unjust and those who do not works of righteousness He will send into everlasting fire,⁵⁵⁷* where their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched.⁵⁵⁸*

§ 2. And again, while they say, that they must take part in every work and in all kinds of conversation,⁵⁵⁹* in order that, if it be possible, they may accomplish all in one visit unto life, and so pass into the perfect state: nevertheless those among things which appertain unto virtue, which have in them labour, and honour, and skill, which also all approve as good, those we find not that they have at all endeavoured to perform. For if all work and every sort of working must be gone through; first, they had need learn all arts, whatever they be, which are either completed in discoursing by words, or in works done, and again such as are learned by self-restraint, and are acquired by labour and thought and perseverance, as for instance every kind of Music, and Calculation, and Geometry, and Astronomy, and whatsoever is conversant in discoursing by words: and again the Whole of Medicine, and the science of herbs, with such other sciences as have been wrought out for the health of man; and painting, and statuary, and brass-founding, and cutting of marble, and the like of these: after these again every kind of rural skill, of farriery, and of the shepherd’s art, and those of manufacturers, (which are said to pervade all arts); and those which relate to the sea, or wait on the body; the hunter’s skill again, and the soldier’s, and the King’s, and whatever there are; whereof, though they work all their life long, they cannot learn fully the tenth, nay, nor the 1000th part. And whereas of all these they try not to learn any,—they who say that in their own persons men must be conversant in every kind of work,—they go aside into pleasures and wantonness, being thus judged by themselves according to their own doctrine; i.e., wanting as they do all that I have now said, they will pass into the chastisement of fire. Yea, and while they emulate the philosophy of Epicurus, and the Cynic’s denial of all moral differences, they boast of having Jesus for their Master: Who, as we have shewn, withdraws His Disciples not only from works, but from words too and thoughts of evil.

§ 3. And whereas they say,⁵⁶⁰* that they have their souls of the same orb (so to speak) with Jesus, and are like Him, and sometimes even better; when they are brought into comparison with the works, which He wrought for the benefit and confirmation of man, nothing equal, nor like, nor second, are they found to work, which may come into the comparison. If by any chance they do anything, they do it, as we said, by magic, and so fraudfully endeavour to mislead the unthinking: furnishing no profit or advantage to those on whom they say they work miracles, but bringing in boys as yet ungowned⁵⁶¹¹, and deluding men’s eyes, and shewing visions which presently cease, and last not for the least drop of time, they prove themselves not like our Lord Jesus, but rather like Simon the Sorcerer. And it is indisputable too from the fact of our Lord’s rising from the dead on the third day, and shewing Himself to His Disciples, and in their sight being taken up into Heaven, that they dying, and not rising again, and not being manifested to any, are convicted of having souls in nothing like unto Jesus.

§ 4. And if they will say that the Lord did such works in mere phantasy,⁵⁶²* we will refer them to the Prophets, and from them make it plain, that all things concerning Him were so foretold, and so happened, and that He alone is the Son of God. Wherefore also in His Name those who are truly His Disciples, having received the grace from Him, fulfil the same for the benefit of the rest of men, according as each of them hath received the gift from Him. For some cast out devils really and truly, so that often those same persons, who are purged of the evil spirits, become believers, and are in the Church. Others again have foreknowledge of things future, and visions, and prophetic sayings: And others heal the sick by the imposition of their hands, and restore them whole. And before now, as we have said, dead persons have been raised, and have abode with us a good number of years. And what shall I say? There is no numbering the gifts, which in all the world the Church hath received from God, and in the name of Jesus Christ crucified under Pontius Pilate, exercises daily for the benefit of the nations, neither deceiving any, nor stripping them of their money.⁵⁶³* For as she hath freely received of God, so also she freely ministers.

§ 5. Nor doth she work anything by Angelical invocations,⁵⁶⁴* nor by incantations, nor by any other evil inquisitiveness: but in cleanness, and purity, and openness directing her prayers to the Lord Who made all things, invoking also the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, she works miracles, for the good of men, not to beguile them. If therefore even now the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ worketh benefits, and cureth most substantially and truly all men everywhere believing in Him; and not so the name of Simon, nor of Menander, nor of Carpocrates, nor of any other: it is clear that He being made man had His conversation with His own creation;—that He truly wrought all things by the power of God, as seemed good to the Father of all, as the Prophets foretold. But what those things were will be specified in those proofs which are taken from the Prophets.

Chap. XXXIII. § 1. But their transmigration from body to body we may overthrow by this circumstance, that souls remember not at all any of what was before.⁵⁶⁵* For if they were sent out with this view, that they might pass through every kind of working, they ought to remember the things that were done before, in order to fulfil what was wanting, and not toil in wretchedness, always wallowing in the same things without intermission. For the admixture of body could not entirely blot out all memory and contemplation of what they had had before: especially, such being the purpose of their coming. For as now, the man being asleep and his body at rest, whatsoever the soul by herself beholds within herself, and performs in fancy, most of these things she also remembers, yet still has her portion with the body; and sometimes after ever so long an interval, whatever one hath seen in a dream, he reports when awake: so I suppose she would remember the things which she did before she came into this body. For if what was seen for the very shortest moment, or conceived in fancy, she though alone in her dream, remembers after she is blended with the body, and spread through every limb: much more would she remember the objects, wherein she spent so much time,—a whole age of past life.

§ 2. For this, Plato that old Athenian, who was also the first introducer of this opinion,⁵⁶⁶* not being able to find an excuse, brought in the Cup of Oblivion, thinking so to escape the aforesaid difficulty: he brings indeed no proof, but dogmatically replies, that souls on their entrance into this life, before they take their places in bodies, are drenched with oblivion by the Dæmon which is at the entrance. And he fell unawares into a new and greater difficulty. For if the cup of oblivion, being once drunk up, hath power to blot out the memory of all the past; how knowest thou, O Plato, this very thing, thy soul being now in the body; viz., that before its entering the body, the dæmon gave it to drink the medicine of Oblivion? Why, if thou remember the Dæmon, and the Cup, and thine entrance, thou must needs know all the rest too: but if thou art ignorant of them, neither is the Dæmon real, nor the cup of oblivion, so artfully mingled.

§ 3. But to those who say that the Body itself is the medicine of oblivion we will reply as follows:⁵⁶⁷* “How then doth the same soul remember and report to such as are at hand whatever she sees by herself alone, whether in dreams, or in reverie, i.e., abstraction^568b of the mind, while the Body is at rest? Yea, and those things too, which were formerly known, either by sight or by hearing, the soul existing in the body would not remember, if the body were oblivion: but as soon as ever the eye departed from the objects, What memory there might be of them would also of course be taken away. For the soul being in that oblivion could know nothing but that only, which she was at the moment looking upon. And how, being in the body, should she either learn divine things, or remember the same, were the body, as they say, of itself oblivion? Yea, and the Prophets too themselves, being as they are on Earth, whatever they see or hear spiritually in their visions of heavenly things, they, I say, remember it all when they have returned to their Humanity, and declare it to all others: and the body causes not the soul to forget what they have seen in spirit; rather the soul teaches the body, and imparts to it of the spiritual vision which it hath received.

§ 4. For the body is not stronger than the soul, having breath therefrom, and life, and growth, and articulation:⁵⁶⁹* but the soul is owner and governor of the body. Only it is so far abated of its quickness, as the body partakes of its movements: but it loses not its power of knowing. For the body is like an instrument, but the soul stands in the workman’s place. As therefore the workman quickly contrives the operation within himself, but realizes it more slowly in the instrument, because of the rigidity of the subject-matter, and the quickness of his mind tempered by the slowness of the instrument makes the work go on moderately: so also the soul, communicating with its body, though it be a little clogged by the blending of its speed with the slowness of the body, yet loses not altogether its own powers, but communicating as it were life to the body, ceases not itself to live. Thus also communicating to the same of other things, it neither loses the knowledge thereof, nor the memory of what it has seen.

§ 5. Wherefore, if it remember nothing past, but receives knowledge of things as they are here,⁵⁷⁰* we conclude that it never was in other bodies; never did the things, which it does not even recognize; has no acquaintance with what it fails even to discern. But as each one of us receives his own body by the skill (so to call it) of God; so also hath each his own soul. For God is not so poor and unprovided, as not to have bestowed on each body its proper soul, as well as its proper figure. And therefore, when the number is complete which He hath foreordained within Himself, all who are enrolled for life will arise, with their very own bodies, with their very own souls also, and their very own spirits, wherein they have pleased God. But those who deserve punishment will go away into the same, having also themselves their own souls and their own bodies, wherein they fell away from the grace of God. And both sorts will cease from propagating any more, and from being propagated; from marrying and being married: that the race of mankind, completed to the just proportion according to God’s predestination, may preserve the harmony framed by the Father.

Chap. XXXIV. § 1. Moreover our Lord hath taught very fully, that souls besides their continuance without passing from body to body,⁵⁷¹* keep likewise the very same bodily form, in which they are moulded; and that they remember the deeds which they have done here, and from which they have ceased; in the Scripture narrative of the rich man and that Lazarus who was refreshed in Abraham’s bosom^572c:⁵⁷³* wherein He saith that the rich man knows Lazarus after death, and Abraham too as well, and that each one of them remains in his own station, and how he asks for Lazarus to be sent to his aid, to whom he used not to impart even crumbs from his table; and concerning Abraham’s answer, who was aware not only of his own condition but also of that of the rich man; and enjoined that such as would not rather come into that place of torment should assent unto Moses and the Prophets, receiving also the preaching of Him Who rose from the dead. For hereby it was clearly declared, first that souls continue, next that they pass not from one body to another; also that they have the figure of a man, so as to be both known and to remember the things which are here: likewise that there abides in Abraham something prophetic: and that each sort of people receives its meet habitation, even before the judgment.

§ 2. But should any say here, that such souls as began to exist but a little before cannot last any long time,⁵⁷⁴* but must either be unborn to be undying: or if they receive any beginning of birth must die together with the body: let them be told, that God alone is without beginning and without end, really and evermore the same, and alike disposed, He Who is Lord of all. But all things beneath Him, as many as have been and are made, admit of a beginning to their production, and are inferior to their Maker in this, that they are not uncreated; but they continue and are drawn out into length of ages, according to the will of their Maker, God: I mean that they are so framed at the beginning, and that He afterwards gives them their being.

§ 3. For as the Heaven which is above us, the firmament, and the Sun and Moon and other Stars,⁵⁷⁵* and all their furniture, were made when before they were not, and last a long time according to the will of God: so if a man think of souls also and of spirits, and of all things which are made, he will in no wise be wrong: since all things which are made both have a beginning of their production and last as long as God shall have willed them both to be, and to abide. To these opinions the Prophetic spirit too bears witness, saying, For He spake and they were made,⁵⁷⁶* He commanded and they were created. He made them fast for ever and ever. And again about saving man thus He speaks,⁵⁷⁷* He asked Life of Thee, and Thou gavest Him length of days for ever and ever—as though the Father of all bestowed continuance for ever and ever upon those that are saved. For Life is not of ourselves, nor of our own nature: but is given according to the grace of God. Wherefore he who shall have preserved the gift of life, and been thankful to the Giver, shall receive also length of days for ever and ever. But whoso shall have cast it away, and become unthankful to his Maker, even because he was made, and will not recognize Him That bestoweth it, that man deprives himself of perseverance for ever.⁵⁷⁸* And therefore did the Lord say to them that were ungrateful towards Him, If ye have not been faithful in a little, who will give you that which is great? meaning that they who in the short temporal life, have proved ungrateful to Him That gave it, will justly fail to receive from Him length of days for ever and ever.

§ 4. But as the living body is not itself the soul, but partakes of the soul as long as God willeth,⁵⁷⁹* so too the soul is not itself Life, but partakes of the Life bestowed on it by God. Whence also the Prophetic Word saith concerning the first made-Man, He was made a Living Soul;⁵⁸⁰* teaching us that the soul was made living by participation of life: the soul being understood severally as one thing, the life which belongs to it, as another. God therefore being the Giver both of life and of perpetual duration, it is possible that souls also, though at first not existing, continue afterwards, because of God’s will that they should both exist and continue. For first in all things, and sovereign, ought to be the will of God: and all other things must yield to It, and be subject, and given up to serve Him. Now of the Creation and Continuance of the soul let thus much be said.

Chap. XXXV. § 1. But as for Basilides in particular, he will be forced to affirm, over and above what has been said, that by his rule not only 365 different heavens were made in succession by different Beings,⁵⁸¹* but that I know not what immense and innumerable multitude of them has been, is, and will be made, and that this framing of Heavens, so to call it, never ceases. For if a second heaven was made by that which flowed down from the former one, in the likeness thereof, and a third in that of the second; and in like manner all the rest in their order; it follows of course with respect to this also, which appertains to us, which also they call the last, that from its drainings another resembling it should be made, and another again from it; and so there should be no end, either to the drainings of those previously made, or to the formation of the Heavens, but we shall be cast upon an immense, not a limited number of Heavens.

§ 2. And the rest too who are falsely called Gnostics,⁵⁸²* who say that the Prophets made their prophecies according to their several gods, will be easily overthrown by this, that all the Prophets set forth one only God and Lord, and Him the Maker of Heaven and Earth, and of all things therein, as also that they intimated the advent of His Son; as we shall prove out of the Scriptures themselves in the following books.

§ 3. But if any object the various use of certain Scriptural terms in the Hebrew language,⁵⁸³* such as Sabaoth, and Eloe and Adonai, and whatever such there are besides, by these endeavouring to prove divers Powers and Gods: let them learn that to one and the same belong all the aforesaid, being tokens and appellations of Him. For that which is sounded Eloe, in the Jewish speech signifies God; and Eloe True; and Eloeuth^584d, in the Hebrew tongue means that which containeth all things. And by the term Adonai, sometimes He means that which may be pronounced, and which is the same as “Wonderful,” sometimes, doubling the letter D, with an aspiration, as thus, Addhonai, Him Who sets bounds, and parts the earth from the water, that the water may not mount up over it. Likewise “Sabaoth” is both written with the Greek Ω in the last syllable,⁵⁸⁵* meaning “voluntary;” and by the Greek O, as thus, “Sabaoth,” it expresses the first Heaven. In the same way Jawth again, the last syllable being lengthened with an aspiration, signifies “a foreordained measure”; but when it is shortened by the Greek O, as thus, Jaoth, it means Him that gives flight from evils. And the other terms are all of one and the same application: as in the Latin, Lord of Hosts, and Father of all, and God Almighty, and Most High, and Lord of the Heavens, and Creator, and Fabricator, and the like of these, do not belong to one and another, but are names of one and the same, and are as names by which is signified One God and Father, Who comprehends all, and gives being to all.

§ 4. And that with our sayings agrees the preaching of the Apostles,⁵⁸⁶* and the teaching of the Lord, and the announcement of the Prophets, and that which is put into our mouths by the Apostles, and the ministration of the Jewish Code;—all of them praising one and the same God of all, the Father; and not now one and now another, nor as having had substance from various Gods or Powers; but all are of one and the same Father (adapted however by Him to the natures and state of the several subjects): and that neither by Angels, nor by any other virtue, but by God the Father alone, were made things both visible and invisible, and all things whatsoever: hath been indeed, as I think, sufficiently shewn hereby, many as the points are, in that we have proved that there is one God, the Father, Maker of all. But that we may not be thought to shrink from that mode of proof which the Scriptures of Christ furnish; although those Scriptures of themselves do much more distinctly and clearly declare the same;—to such as are rightly considerate we will present a special book, tracing out those Scriptures: so out of the Divine writings will our arguments be set within reach of all who love the Truth.

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