Against Heresies, Book 2

Preface

1 In the first book, which precedes this, exposing the knowledge falsely so called, we showed you, dearly beloved, that the whole was a falsehood invented in many contrary ways by the followers of Valentinus; we also set out the opinions of those who came before them, showing that they disagree among themselves and much earlier with the truth itself. And we set out with all diligence the opinion of Marcus the magician, since he is one of them, with his works; we reported carefully how much they pick out of the Scriptures and try to fit to their fiction; and we went through in detail how they try and dare to establish truth through numbers and the twenty-four letters of the alphabet. We reported how they say the creation was made after the image of the invisible Pleroma among them, and what they think and teach about the Demiurge; and we made known the doctrine of their forefather Simon the Samaritan magician and of all who succeeded him. We spoke too of the multitude of Gnostics who come from him, noted their differences, doctrines and successions, and set out all the heresies founded by them. And we showed that all the heretics, taking their beginnings from Simon, have brought impious and irreligious teachings into this life; we made known their redemption, how they initiate those who are made perfect, their invocations and their mysteries; and that there is one God the Founder, and that he is not the fruit of a deficiency, and that there is nothing above him or after him. In this book we shall set out what suits our purpose, as far as time allows, and overthrow their whole system under large heads; and so, since it is an exposure and overthrow of their opinion, we have so entitled the writing of this work. For their hidden conjunctions must be dissolved, and Bythus with them, by the disclosure and overthrow of the conjunctions now made plain, and so we must receive the demonstration that he neither ever was nor is.

1 It is right, then, for us to begin from the first and greatest head, from God the Demiurge, who made heaven and earth and all that is in them, whom these men blasphemously call the fruit of the hindmost; and to show that there is nothing above him or after him, and that he made all things moved by no one, but by his own decision and freely, since he alone is God, alone Lord, alone Founder, alone Father, alone containing all things, and himself giving being to all. 2 For how can there be above him another Fullness, or Beginning, or Power, or another God, since God, the Pleroma of all these, must contain all things in his immensity and be contained by none? But if there is anything outside him, he is no longer the Pleroma of all, nor does he contain all. For what they say is outside him will be lacking to the Pleroma, that is, to the God who is above all; and what is lacking and taken away by something is not the Pleroma of all. He will also have a limit, a middle and an end with respect to those outside him. And if he has an end toward the things below, he has a beginning toward the things above. Likewise on the other sides too he must necessarily experience the same thing, and be contained, bounded and enclosed by those outside. For what is the end below necessarily in every way circumscribes and surrounds what ends at it. And again, according to them, the Father of all (whom they call Proon and Proarche) with their Pleroma, and Marcion's good God, is placed and shut up in something and surrounded from outside by another Principality, which must be greater; since what contains is greater than what is contained; and what is greater is also stronger and more Lord; and what is greater, stronger and more Lord will be God. 3 For since, according to them, there is also something else which they say is outside the Pleroma, into which they suppose the higher wandering power descended, it is necessary in every way either that what is outside contains and the Pleroma is contained (otherwise it will not be outside the Pleroma: for if there is something outside the Pleroma, the Pleroma will be inside this very thing they say is outside the Pleroma, and the Pleroma will be contained by what is outside; and with the Pleroma the first God is also understood), or else that they are infinitely distant and separated from each other, that is, the Pleroma and what is outside it. But if they say this, there will be a third thing which separates the Pleroma and what is outside it by an immense distance; and this third thing will bound and contain both, and will be greater than both the Pleroma and what is outside it, as containing both within itself; and the argument about what is contained and what contains will run on to infinity. For if this third thing has its beginning above and its end below, it must necessarily be bounded on the sides as well, beginning or ending at certain other things; and these again, and others above and below, will have their beginnings at certain other things, and so on to infinity; so that their thinking will never rest in one God, but, through seeking more than there is, will fall into what does not exist and depart from the true God. 4 These arguments likewise fit those who follow Marcion. For his two Gods too will be contained and bounded by the immense interval that separates them from each other. And so one would have to imagine on every side many gods separated by immense distances, beginning from one another and ending at one another; and by the same reasoning by which they try to teach that there is a Pleroma or God above the Maker of heaven and earth, anyone using it will build another Pleroma above the Pleroma, and another again above that, and above Bythus another sea of God, and the same likewise at the sides; and so, the thought running out into immensity, it will always be necessary to imagine other Pleromas and other Bythi, and never to stop, always seeking others besides those mentioned. It will also be uncertain whether the things around us are below, or are themselves the higher ones; and whether what they call above is above or below; and no fixed state or certainty will hold our mind, but it will have to wander off into countless worlds and undefined gods. 5 And if this is so, each God will be content with his own and will not meddle with what belongs to others; otherwise he will be unjust and greedy and cease to be what God is. And each creation will glorify its own maker and be content with him, and will not know another; otherwise it will be most justly judged an apostate by all and will receive a most deserved punishment. For there must be either one who contains all things and made in his own domain each of the things that were made, as he willed; or else many undefined makers and gods, beginning from one another and ending at one another on every side; and then one must confess that all the others are contained from outside by some greater one, and each of them shut up and remaining within its own; and that none of them all is God. For each of them, having a very small part compared with all the rest, will be lacking, and the name of Almighty will be dissolved; and such a thought must fall into impiety.

1 Those who say the world was made by angels, or by some other world-maker, against the will of the Father who is above all, err first in this very point, saying that angels made such a great creation against the will of the first God, as though angels were more effective than God, or as though he were negligent, or inferior, or had no care for what happens in his own domain, whether it is done badly or well, so as to scatter and prevent the one and praise and rejoice in the other. But one would not ascribe this even to a capable man; how much less to God? 2 Next let them tell us: were these things made within what is contained by him and in his own domain, or in regions belonging to others and placed outside him? If they say outside him, all the absurdities mentioned will meet them, and the first God will be enclosed by what is outside him, where he must also end. But if in his own, it will be quite idle to say that the world was made against his will, in his own domain, by angels who are themselves under his power, or by someone else, as though he did not see everything that happens among his own, or did not know what the angels were going to do. 3 But if it was not against his will, but with his will and knowledge, as some think, then the angels or the world-maker will no longer be the causes of this making, but the will of God. For if he is the world-maker, he made the angels, or at least was the cause of their creation; and he will be seen to have made the world who prepared the causes of its making. Even if they say the angels were made by a long succession downwards, or the world-maker from the first Father, as Basilides says, nonetheless the cause of what was made will go back to the one who was the author of such a succession: just as the success of a war is credited to the king who prepared the causes of victory, and the founding of a city or a work to the one who prepared the causes for completing what was later done. So we do not say that the axe cut the wood or the saw cut it, but one would very rightly say that the man cut and sawed it who made the axe and saw for this, and long before that all the tools by which the axe and saw were made. So, justly by their own reasoning, the Father of all will be called the maker of this world, and not the angels, nor any other world-maker, besides him who was its author and was beforehand the cause of the preparation for such a making. 4 This argument may perhaps be persuasive or seductive among those who do not know God [and who] liken him to needy men and to those who cannot make anything at once from what is ready, but need many tools to make things; but it is not at all plausible to those who know that God, needing nothing at all, founded and made all things by the Word; not needing angels as helpers for what is made, nor any power far inferior to him and ignorant of the Father, nor any deficiency or ignorance, so that one who began to know him should become man. But he himself in himself, in a way unspeakable and inconceivable to us, predestining all things, made them as he willed, giving all things harmony, their own order and the beginning of their creation: to spiritual things a spiritual and invisible nature, to supercelestial things a heavenly one, to angels an angelic one, to animals an animal one, to swimming things one fit for water, and to those born of the earth an earthly one, to all a substance fitted to them; and all that was made he made by his untiring Word. 5 For this is proper to God's pre-eminence, not to need other instruments for making what is made; and his own Word is fit and sufficient for forming all things, as John, the Lord's disciple, says of him: “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” And among all things is this world of ours too. So it too was made by his Word, as the Scripture of Genesis says that God made all things around us by his Word. Likewise David declares: “For he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.” Whom, then, shall we believe about the making of the world: these heretics, babbling so foolishly and inconsistently, or the Lord's disciples, and Moses, God's faithful servant and prophet? He first told of the origin of the world, saying: “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth,” and then all the rest; but not gods, nor angels. And that this God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Paul the apostle also said of him: “One God, the Father, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.” We have already shown that God is one; we shall show it further from the apostles themselves and from the words of the Lord. For what would it be, to leave the voices of the prophets, the Lord and the apostles, and attend to these men, who say nothing sound?

1 Unstable, then, is their Bythus and his Pleroma, and Marcion's God. For if, as they say, he has outside himself something lying beneath, which they call void and shadow, this void is shown to be greater than their Pleroma. And it is also untenable to say that, while he contains all things within himself, the creation was made by someone else. For they must necessarily confess some void and formless thing, beneath the spiritual Pleroma, in which this universe was made; and as to this formless thing, did the Propator leave it so on purpose, foreknowing what would happen in it, or not knowing? If not knowing, God will no longer foreknow all things; and they will not even be able to give the reason why he left this place idle for so long. But if he foreknew and contemplated in his mind the creation that would be in that place, then he made it who also formed it beforehand in himself. 2 Let them stop saying, then, that the world was made by another; for as soon as God conceived in his mind, what he had conceived was also made. For it was not possible for one to conceive in his mind and another to make what had been conceived by him. But according to these heretics God conceived the world either as eternal or as temporal, both of which are incredible. If he had conceived it as eternal, spiritual and visible, it would have been made so. But if it was made such as it is, then he made it such who had conceived it such; or he willed it to be in the Father's presence, according to his mental conception, such as it is, composite, changeable and passing. And since it is such as the Father had shaped it within himself, it is a work worthy of the Father. But to say that what was conceived in mind and pre-formed by the Father of all exactly as it was made is the fruit of deficiency and the product of ignorance is great blasphemy. For according to them the Father of all will be generating in his breast, by his own mental conception, emissions of deficiency and fruits of ignorance; for what he had conceived in mind, that was made.

1 So the cause of such a dispensation of God must be sought, but the making of the world must not be ascribed to another; and all things must be said to have been prepared beforehand by God to be made as they were made, and shadow and void must not be invented. Besides, where does the void come from? It will be asked whether it too was emitted by the Father and author of all, according to them; then it is equal in honor and akin to the other Aeons, and perhaps even older than they. And if it was emitted by the same, it is like the one who emitted it and those with whom it was emitted. So it will be absolutely necessary that their Bythus with Sige is like the void, that is, is void; and that the other Aeons, being brothers of the void, have a void substance. But if it was not emitted, it was born of itself and generated of itself, and is equal in time to their Bythus, the Father of all; and so the void will be of the same nature and the same honor as their Father of all. For it must either have been emitted by someone, or have been generated and born of itself. But if the void was emitted, its emitter Valentinus is void, and so are his followers. If it was not emitted but generated of itself, then the void is like, and brother to, and of the same honor as, the Father proclaimed by Valentinus, and older, existing long before, and more honorable than the other Aeons of Ptolemy himself and Heracleon and all the others who hold the same. 2 But if, at a loss on these points, they confess that the Father of all contains all things, and that there is nothing outside the Pleroma (for it is absolutely necessary that it be bounded and circumscribed by something greater), and that they speak of outside and inside with reference to knowledge and ignorance and not to local position), that in the Pleroma, or in the things contained by the Father, whatever was made by the Demiurge or by the angels, all that we know was made, is contained by the unspeakable greatness, as the center in a circle or as a stain in a garment: then, first, what sort of Bythus will he be, who allows a stain to come about within himself, and permits someone else to found or emit within his domain against his mind? This would bring disgrace on the whole Pleroma, since it could have cut off the deficiency from the beginning, and the emissions that took their beginning from it, and not have allowed the constitution of creation to take place in ignorance, passion or deficiency. For he who afterwards corrects the deficiency and, as it were, washes out the stain, could much earlier have taken care that no such stain should arise among his own even at the beginning. Or if at the beginning he allowed it, because the things made could not be made otherwise, they must always be so; for how will things that cannot receive correction at the beginning receive it afterwards? Or how do they say men are called to perfection, when the very causes from which men were made, either the Demiurge himself or the angels, are said to be in deficiency? And if, because he is kind, he took pity on men in the last times and gives them perfection, he should first have pitied those who were the makers of man and given them perfection. So men too would surely have received pity, made perfect by the perfect. For if he pitied their work, he should have pitied them much earlier, and not let them come into such blindness. 3 Their talk of shadow and void, in which they say our creation was made, will also be dissolved if these things were made within what is contained by the Father. For if they think their Father's light is such that it can fill all things within him and illuminate them all, how could there be void and shadow within what is contained by the Pleroma and the Father's light? They must show a place within the Propator or within the Pleroma, not illuminated and not held by anyone, in which either the angels or the Demiurge made whatever he wished; and it is no small place in which so great and such a creation was made. So it will be absolutely necessary for them to make something void, formless and dark, locally, within the Pleroma or within their Father, in which the things made were made. Their Father's light too will be accused, as though it could not illuminate and fill what is within it. And further, by calling these things the fruit of deficiency and the work of error, they bring deficiency and error within the Pleroma and into the Father’s embrace.

1 Against those, then, who say this world was made outside the Pleroma, or under the good God, what we said a little before applies; and such people, with their Father, will be shut in by what is outside the Pleroma, in which they must also end. Against those who say this world was made by certain others within what is contained by the Father, all that has now been said will appear absurd and incongruous; and they will be compelled either to confess that all things within the Father are bright, full and active, or to accuse the Father's light as unable to illuminate all things; or else to confess that, like the part, so their whole Pleroma is void, disordered and dark. And they accuse all the other things of creation as being temporal, or, if eternal, earthly. But these must either be beyond accusation, since they are within the Pleroma and in the Father’s embrace, or else the accusations will come equally against the whole Pleroma. And their Christ will be found to be the cause of ignorance. For, as they say, when he had formed their Mother according to substance, he cast her outside the Pleroma, that is, he separated her from knowledge. He, then, who separated her from knowledge made ignorance in her. How then could the same one give knowledge to the other Aeons, those who were before him, and yet be the cause of ignorance to his Mother? For he put her outside knowledge when he cast her outside the Pleroma. 2 Further, if they speak of inside and outside the Pleroma in terms of knowledge and ignorance, as some of them do, because one who is in knowledge is within what he knows, they must agree that the Savior himself (whom they call All Things) was in ignorance. For they say that when he came outside the Pleroma he formed their Mother. If, then, they call what is outside ignorance of all things, and the Savior went out to form their Mother, he came to be outside the knowledge of all things, that is, in ignorance. How then could he give her knowledge, when he himself was outside knowledge? For they say that we too, being outside their knowledge, are outside the Pleroma. And again: if the Savior went out of the Pleroma to search for the lost sheep, and the Pleroma is knowledge, he came to be outside knowledge, that is, in ignorance. For either they must agree that what is outside the Pleroma is so locally, and all the things said before will meet them as contradictions; or, if they call what is inside knowledge and what is outside ignorance, their Savior, and long before him Christ, will have been in ignorance, having gone out of the Pleroma, that is, outside knowledge, to form their Mother. 3 These arguments will likewise fit all who say in any way that the world was made by angels or by anyone other than the true God. For the accusation they make against the Demiurge, and against the material and temporal things that were made, will fall back on the Father, if indeed the things that were made in the womb of the Pleroma began soon after to be dissolved by the Father's permission and good pleasure. So the maker, who thought very well of himself as making it, is no longer the cause of this work, but he who permits and approves the products of deficiency and the works of error to come about among his own, and allows what belongs to error to be in the eternal things of truth. But if these things were made without the permission or approval of the Father of all, then he who made within the Father's own domain whatever the Father did not permit is more powerful, stronger and more sovereign. And if their Father permitted without approving, as some say, he permitted either because of some necessity while able to prevent it, or not able. If he could not, he is powerless and weak; if he could, he is a deceiver, a hypocrite and a slave of necessity, not consenting yet permitting as though he consented. And having permitted error at the beginning to stand and grow, he tries in later times to dissolve it, when many have already perished miserably because of the deficiency. 4 It is not fitting to say that God who is above all, being free and his own master, served necessity, so that something should happen by permission against his mind; otherwise they will make necessity greater and more sovereign than God, since what is more powerful is the most ancient of all. And he should have cut off the causes of necessity at once at the beginning, and not to have shut himself in to having necessity by permitting something other than befits him. For it was much better, more consistent and more godlike to cut off the beginning of such necessity at the beginning than afterwards, as though from repentance, to try to root out so great a crop of necessity. And if the Father of all will be a slave of necessity and fall under fate, bearing with displeasure what happens, but unable to do anything against necessity and fate, like the Homeric Jupiter, who says from necessity, “For I too have given it to you, as though willing, with unwilling heart”: then by this reasoning their Bythus will be found a slave of necessity and fate.

1 And how could the angels or the world-maker not know the first God, since they were in his own domain, were his creatures and were contained by him? He could be invisible to them because of his pre-eminence, but by no means unknown, because of his providence. For though, as they say, they were very far separated from him by their descent, yet since his dominion extends over all, they had to know their ruler, and to know this very thing, that he who created them is Lord of all. For since his invisible nature is mighty, it gives to all a great mental insight and perception of his most mighty and almighty pre-eminence. So, although no one knows the Father except the Son, nor the Son except the Father and those to whom the Son reveals him, yet all know this very thing, since reason implanted in their minds moves them and reveals to them that there is one God, the Lord of all. 2 And for this reason all things are subject to the name of the Most High and Almighty; and by invoking him, even before the coming of our Lord, men were saved from the most wicked spirits, from all demons and from all apostasy; not as though the earthly spirits or demons had seen him, but because they knew that he exists who is God above all, at whose invocation they trembled, as all creation trembles, and principality and power and every subject power. Or will those under the empire of the Romans, though they have never seen the Emperor but are far separated from him by land and sea, know because of his rule the one who has the greatest power of government; while the angels who were above us, or the one they call world-maker, will not know the Almighty, when even dumb animals tremble and yield to such an invocation? And just as, though they have not seen him, all things are subject to the name of our Lord, so also to the name of him who made and founded all things, since he is no other than the one who made the world. And for this reason the Jews to this day drive out demons by this very invocation, since all things fear the invocation of him who made them. 3 If, then, they will not have the angels more irrational than the dumb animals, they will find that, even though they had not seen the God who is above all, they had to know his power and dominion. For it will appear truly ridiculous if they say that they themselves, who are on earth, know the God who is above all, whom they have never seen, but will not allow the one who made them and, according to them, the whole world, though he is on high above the heavens, to know what they themselves know, though they are below; unless perhaps they say their Bythus is under the earth in Tartarus, and that therefore they knew him before the angels who dwell on high; coming to such madness as to pronounce the world-maker out of his mind. They are truly to be pitied, since in such great madness they say that he knew neither the Mother, nor her seed, nor the Pleroma of Aeons, nor the Propator, nor what the things were that he made; but that they are images of what is within the Pleroma, the Savior having secretly worked that they should come about so, in honor of those above.

1 While the Demiurge, then, was ignorant of all things, the Savior, they say, honored the Pleroma in the creation through the Mother, emitting likenesses and images of those above. But we have shown that it was impossible for anything to be outside the Pleroma, in which they say images of those within the Pleroma were made, or for this world to be made by anyone other than the first God. But since it is pleasant to overthrow them on every side and prove them liars, we shall say against them that if these things were made by the Savior after their image in honor of those above, they should always endure, so that what has been honored may always be in honor. But if they pass away, what is the use of this very brief honor, which once was not and again will not be? The Savior will be shown by us to be rather a seeker of vainglory than one who honors those above. For what honor to the eternal things that always are are things temporal; to things that stand, things that pass away; to the incorruptible, the corruptible? Since even among men, who are temporal, there is no regard for an honor that passes quickly, but for one that lasts as long as possible. And things that perish as soon as they are made will justly be said to have been made rather to the insult of those who are thought to be honored, and what is eternal is treated with insult when its image is corrupted and dissolved. And what if their Mother had not wept, laughed and been perplexed? The Savior would not have had anything by which to honor the Fullness, since her final confusion had no substance of its own by which to honor the Propator? 2 O honor of vainglory, which passes at once and appears no more! There will be some Aeon in which such honor will not be thought to have existed at all, and then the things above will be unhonoured; or it will be necessary to emit again another Mother, weeping and perplexed, in honor of the Pleroma. O dissimilar and at the same time blasphemous image! You tell me that an image of the Only-begotten was emitted, the world-maker, whom you also will have to be the Nus of the Father of all, and that this image did not know itself, did not know the creation, did not know the Mother, nor anything that exists, nor the things made by him; and are you not ashamed to bring ignorance, against yourselves, right up to Monogenes himself? For if these things were made by the Savior after the likeness of those above, while the one made after the likeness is so ignorant, such ignorance must also exist spiritually around him and in him after whose likeness the ignorant one was made. For since both were emitted spiritually, neither moulded nor composed, it is not possible for the image of the likeness to have been spoiled, which was emitted for this purpose, to be after the likeness of the emission above. And if it is not like, the blame will be the Savior's, who emitted an unlike image, like an incompetent craftsman. For they cannot say that the Savior, whom they call All Things, lacked the power of emission. If, then, the image is unlike, the craftsman is bad, and the fault, according to them, is the Savior's. But if it is like, the same ignorance will be found in the Nus of their Propator, that is, Monogenes: the Nus of the Father did not know himself, nor the Father, nor the things made by him. But if he knows, then the one made after his likeness by the Savior must also know the like things; and their greatest blasphemy is dissolved by their own rule. 3 Apart from this, how can the things of creation, so varied, many and innumerable, be images of the thirty Aeons within the Pleroma, whose names, as they give them, we set out in the book before this? And not only the variety of the whole creation, but not even that of any one part, whether of heavenly, or earthly, or water creatures, can they fit to the smallness of their Pleroma. For that their Pleroma is thirty Aeons, they themselves testify; but anyone will show that in one of the parts mentioned they count not thirty but many thousands of species. How then can things of so manifold a creation, standing in opposition, fighting one another and killing one another, be images and likenesses of the thirty Aeons of the Pleroma, if indeed, as they say, these are of one nature, made of equal and like, and have no difference? If these things were their images, then, as they say some men are evil by nature and others good by nature, they should show such differences in the Aeons too, and say that some of them were emitted good by nature and some evil by nature, so that their invention of the image might fit the Aeons. Further, since in the world some creatures are gentle and others fierce, some harmless and some harmful and destroying the rest, and some on earth, some in the water, some flying and some heavenly, they should likewise show that those have such properties, if indeed these are their images. And they must explain of which of the Aeons above the eternal fire is an image, which the Father prepared for the devil and his angels; for it too is counted in the creation. 4 But if they say these are images of the Enthymesis of the Aeon who suffered, first they will act impiously against their Mother, calling her the initiator of evil and corruptible images. Then how will things that are many, unlike and contrary in nature be images of one and the same? And if they say the angels of the Pleroma are many, and the many things here are their images, even so their account will not hold. For first they must show differences among the angels of the Pleroma contrary to one another, as the images below are of contrary nature to one another. Then, since the angels around the Maker are many and innumerable, as all the prophets confess, ten thousand times ten thousand stand before him and many thousands of thousands serve him: according to them, the angels of the Pleroma will have the Maker's angels as images, and the creation remains whole in the image of the Pleroma, the thirty Aeons no longer corresponding to the many-formed variety of creation. 5 Further, if these things were made after their likeness, after whose likeness again were those made? For if the world-maker did not make these things from himself, but like a worthless craftsman, or a boy just learning, copied them from others' archetypes, where did their Bythus get the form of the arrangement he first emitted? It follows that he took the pattern from someone else above him, and that one again from another. And no less will the talk of images run off to infinity, as also of gods, if we do not fix our mind on one craftsman and one God, who made of himself the things that were made. Or does one allow men to have found something useful for life of themselves, but not allow the God who completed the world to have made of himself the form of the things made and the design of their ordered arrangement? 6 And how are these things their images, when they are contrary to them and can share nothing with them? For contraries can be destructive of the things to which they are contrary, but in no way images of them; as water and fire, or again light and darkness, and many others, will never be images of one another. So too things corruptible, earthly, composite and passing will not be images of those which, according to them, are spiritual; unless they confess that those too are composite, circumscribed and shaped, and no longer spiritual, diffused, abundant and incomprehensible. For they must be shaped and circumscribed to be true images, and then it is settled that they are not spiritual. But if they say those are spiritual, diffused and incomprehensible, how can things that are shaped and circumscribed be images of those that are without shape and incomprehensible? 7 But if they say these are images not by shape [nor] by form, but by number and order of emission, then first these should not be called images and likenesses of the Aeons above; for how are things that have neither their bearing nor their figure images of them? Then they should fit the numbers and emissions of the higher Aeons as the same as and like those of creation. But as it is, showing thirty Aeons and saying that the great multitude of things in creation are images of the thirty, they will justly be refuted by us as senseless.

1 But if they say these things are a shadow of those, as some of them dare to say, so that they are images in this sense, they will have to confess that the things above are bodies. For bodies above cast a shadow, but spiritual things do not, since they can darken nothing. And even if we grant them this, which is impossible, that there is a shadow of spiritual and luminous things, into which they say their Mother descended, yet since those things are eternal, the shadow cast by them also remains for ever, and these things do not pass away but endure with the things that overshadow them. But if these pass away, the things of which they are the shadow must also pass away; and if those endure, their shadow endures too. 2 But if they say it is a shadow not in the sense of being overshadowed, but in the sense of being far separated from them, they will accuse their Father's light of smallness and weakness, as though it did not reach as far as these things, but failed to fill the void and dispel the shadow, and that when nothing hinders it. For according to them their Father's light will turn into darkness and be blinded and fail in the places of the void, since it cannot fill all things. Let them no longer say, then, that their Bythus is the Pleroma of all, if he neither filled nor illuminated the void and the shadow; or else let them drop the shadow and the void, if their Father's light fills all things. 3 So there can be nothing outside the first Father, that is, the God who is above all, or outside the Pleroma, into which they say the Enthymesis of the suffering Aeon descended, otherwise the Pleroma itself, or the first God, would be bounded and limited by what is outside and contained by it; nor can it admit a void or shadow, since the Father is there before, so that his light does not fail and end in a void. It is irrational and impious to invent a place in which their Propator and Proarche, the Father of all and of this Pleroma, ceases and has an end. Nor again is it lawful, for the reasons given, to say that someone else made so great a creation in the Father’s embrace, whether he consented or not. For it is equally impious and mad to say that so great a creation was made by angels, or by some emission ignorant of the true God, within his own domain; nor is it possible that earthly and material things were made within their Pleroma, since it is wholly spiritual; nor even that things of a manifold creation, contrary to one another, were made after their image, since those are said to be few, of like formation, and one. And their talk of the shadow of the kenoma, that is, of the void, has proved false in every respect. So their fiction has been shown empty and their doctrine unstable; and those who listen to them are empty too, truly going down into the depths of destruction.

1 That God is the maker of the world is agreed even by those who contradict him in many ways and yet confess him, calling him maker and saying he is an angel; not to say that all the Scriptures cry it out, and the Lord teaches this Father who is in heaven, and no other, as we shall show as our discourse proceeds. For now the testimony of those who say the opposite to us is enough, all men agreeing at least on this: the ancients keeping this conviction from the tradition of the first-formed man above all, and singing the praises of one God, maker of heaven and earth; the rest after them receiving the reminder of this from the prophets of God; and the Gentiles learning it from creation itself. For creation itself shows the one who founded it, the work itself suggests the one who made it, and the world makes known the one who ordered it. And the whole Church throughout the world has received this tradition from the apostles. 2 This God, then, being established, as we have said, and receiving testimony from all that he exists, the father invented by them is beyond doubt unstable and without witness. Simon the magician first said that he himself was God above all and that the world was made by his angels; then those who succeeded him, as we showed in the first book, with various opinions spread impious and irreligious doctrines against the maker; and these men, being their disciples, make those who agree with them worse than the Gentiles. For the Gentiles, serving the creature rather than the Creator, and those who are not gods, nevertheless give the first place of deity to God, the maker of this universe. But these men call him the fruit of deficiency, call him animal and ignorant of the power above him, and say that when he says, “I am God, and besides me there is no other God,” he lies; they themselves are lying, joining all malice to him; and inventing, by their own opinion, one who is not above him as though he existed, they are exposed as blaspheming the God who is, and inventing a God who is not, to their own condemnation. And those who call themselves perfect and claim knowledge of all things are found worse than the Gentiles, and more blasphemous in mind even against their own maker.

1 It is therefore most irrational to pass over him who is truly God and has the testimony of all, and to ask whether there is above him one who does not exist and has never been proclaimed by anyone. For that nothing has been said plainly about him, they themselves bear witness; and it is plain that, by wrongly transferring to the one they have invented the parables, whose meaning is itself in question, they now generate another who was never sought before. For by wishing to explain ambiguous passages of Scripture (ambiguous not as though referring to another God, but as referring to God's dispensations), they have fashioned another God, weaving, as we said before, ropes of sand, and adding a greater question to a lesser. But no question will be resolved by another that is itself in question, nor, among those who have sense, will an ambiguity be solved by another ambiguity, or riddles by a greater riddle; but such things receive their solution from what is plain, consistent and clear. 2 But these men, seeking to explain the Scriptures and parables, introduce another greater and impious question, whether there is another God above God the world-maker; not solving questions (for how could they?), but attaching a great question to a small one and inserting an insoluble knot. For in order to know this very thing, that the Lord came to the baptism of truth at thirty years of age, they do not learn it but impiously despise God the maker himself, who sent him for the salvation of men. And to be thought able to explain where the substance of matter comes from, not believing that God made all things that were made, so that they might be, out of what was not, as he willed, using his will and power as substance, they have collected vain words, truly showing their unbelief: since they do not believe in what is, they have fallen into what is not. 3 For to attach the substance of matter to a deficiency is not consistent; to attach it to the will and power of God is consistent and has credibility. When they say that moist substance came from Achamoth's tears, luminous substance from her laughter, solid substance from her sadness, and mobile substance from her fear, and are proud and puffed up about these things, how is this not worthy of derision and truly ridiculous? They do not believe that God, being powerful and rich in all things, created matter itself, not knowing how much a spiritual and divine substance can do; but they believe that their Mother, whom they call a female from a female, emitted from the passions mentioned so great a matter of creation. And they ask where the substance of creation was supplied to the maker from, but do not ask where their Mother, whom they call the Enthymesis and impulse of an erring Aeon, got so many tears, or sweat, or sorrows, or whatever else produced matter. 4 For to attribute the substance of things made to the power and will of him who is God of all is credible, acceptable and consistent, and of this it would be well said: “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” For men cannot make anything out of nothing, but only out of underlying matter; but God is above all better than men in this, that he himself found the matter of his work when it did not exist before. But to say that matter was emitted from the Enthymesis of an erring Aeon, and that the Aeon was far separated from her Enthymesis, and that her passion and affection, again, apart from her, is matter, is incredible, foolish, impossible and inconsistent.

1 And not believing that God who is above all made by the Word, within his own domain, the varied and unlike things as he willed, since he is the maker of all, like a wise architect and a very great king, but believing that angels, or some power separated from God and ignorant of him, made this universe, they have thus, not believing the truth but wallowing in falsehood, lost the bread of the true life, falling into the void and the depth of shadow; like Aesop's dog, which left the bread, sprang at its shadow, and lost the food. And it is easy to show from the Lord's own words that he confesses one Father, maker of the world and fashioner of man, proclaimed by the law and the prophets, and knows no other, and that this is God above all; and that he teaches, and grants through himself to all the just, the adoption of sons with the Father, which is eternal life. 2 But since they love to accuse, and like slanderers shake even what is beyond reproach, bringing against us a multitude of parables and questions, we have thought it good first to question them in turn about their own doctrines, to show what is implausible in them and cut off their rashness; and then to bring forward the Lord's words, so that they may not be free only to make propositions; but that, being unable to answer reasonably what they are asked and seeing their argument dissolved, they may either return to the truth, humble themselves, cease from their manifold fantasy, and, appeasing God for their blasphemies against him, be saved; or, if they persist in the vainglory that has taken hold of their minds, at least change their argument.

1 First, about their Triacontad we shall say that the whole of it collapses wonderfully on both sides, both by defect and by excess; for which they say the Lord came to baptism at thirty years of age. When this is said, the overthrow of their whole argument will be plain. By defect, thus: first, because they count the Propator with the other Aeons. For the Father of all should not be counted with the rest of the emission: he who was not emitted with what was emitted; the unborn with what was born; him whom no one contains with what is contained by him, and who is therefore uncontainable; him who is without form with what has form. For since he is better than the rest, he should not be counted with them, and that he who is impassible and does not err with an Aeon subject to passion and set in error. For we showed in the book before this that, beginning from Bythus, they count the Triacontad up to Sophia, whom they call the erring Aeon, and we set out the names they give; but if he is not counted, there are no longer, according to them, thirty emissions of Aeons, but they become twenty-nine. 2 Next, regarding the first emission, Ennoia, whom they also call Sige, from whom again they say Nus and Aletheia were emitted, they go astray on both counts. For it is impossible for the thought of anyone, or his silence, to be understood separately, and for it, emitted outside him, to have a shape of its own. But if they say she was not emitted outside but is united with the Propator, why do they count her with the other Aeons, who are not united and therefore do not know his greatness? And if she is united (let us consider this too), it is absolutely necessary that from a united, inseparable conjunction that is one, an undivided and united emission should come, so as not to be unlike him who emitted it. If this is so, then as Bythus and Sige, so Nus and Aletheia will be one and the same, always cleaving to each other: so that one cannot be understood without the other, as water cannot without wetness, fire without heat, or stone without hardness; for these are united with each other and one cannot be separated from the other, but always coexists with it. So Bythus must be united with Ennoia, and Nus with Aletheia in the same way. Again, Logos and Zoe, emitted from united ones, should be united and one. By the same reasoning Anthropos and Ecclesia, and the whole emission of conjunction of the other Aeons, should be united and always coexist with each other. For the female Aeon, according to them, must exist together with the male, since she is, as it were, his affection. 3 And though this is so, and though they themselves say these things, they again shamelessly dare to teach that the youngest Aeon of the Duodecad, whom they call Sophia, without union with her consort, whom they call Theletos, suffered passion, and separately, without him, generated a fruit, which they also call a female from a female; going so far in madness as to hold most plainly two contrary opinions about the same thing. For if Bythus is united with Sige, Nus with Aletheia, Logos with Zoe, and the rest in turn, how could Sophia suffer anything or generate without the embrace of her consort? And if she suffered without him, the other conjunctions too must admit departure and separation from each other, which is impossible, as we said before. It is impossible, then, that Sophia suffered without Theletos; and again their whole argument is dissolved. For from the passion which they say she suffered without the embrace of her consort they have again fabricated all the rest, like the composition of a tragedy. 4 But if, so that their vain talk may not be dissolved, they shamelessly say that the other conjunctions too were disjoined and separated from each other because of the last conjunction, first they rest on an impossible thing. For how will they separate the Propator from his Ennoia, or Nus from Aletheia, or Logos from Zoe, and the rest likewise? And how do they themselves say that they return to unity and that all are one, if the conjunctions within the Pleroma do not keep unity but are apart from each other, so far that they suffer and generate without each other's embrace, like hens without cocks? 5 Then again, their first and archetypal Ogdoad will also be dissolved in this way. For Bythus and Sige, Nus and Aletheia, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia will each be in the same Pleroma. But it is impossible for Sige to be present when Logos is, or again for Logos to be shown when Sige is present. For these consume each other, as light and darkness will never be in the same place; if there is light, there is no darkness, and where darkness is, there will be no light, for when light comes, darkness is dissolved. So where Sige is, there will be no Logos, and where Logos is, there is certainly no Sige. And if they say the Logos is internal, Sige will be internal too, and will nonetheless be dissolved by the internal Logos. But that he is not internal, the very order of their emission shows. 6 Let them no longer say, then, that the first and principal Ogdoad consists of Logos and Sige, but let them reject either Sige or Logos; and their first and principal Ogdoad is dissolved. For if they say the conjunctions are united, their whole argument is dissolved: for how, if they are united, did Sophia generate a deficiency without her consort? But if they say that, as in emission, each of the Aeons has its own substance, how can Sige and Logos be shown in the same place? So much by way of defect. 7 By excess, again, their Triacontad is dissolved thus. They say that Horos, whom they call by many names, as we said in the book before this, was emitted by Monogenes, like the other Aeons. Some say this Horos was emitted by Monogenes, others by the Propator himself in his own likeness. They also say that an emission was made by Monogenes, Christ and the Holy Spirit; and these they do not count in the number of the Pleroma, nor the Savior either, whom they also call the Whole. For it is plain even to a blind man that, according to them, not only thirty emissions were emitted, but four along with these thirty. For they count the Propator himself in the Pleroma, and those who were emitted from one another in succession. Why are these not counted with them, though existing in the same Pleroma and having obtained the same emission? What just cause can they give for not counting with the other Aeons either Christ, whom they say was emitted by Monogenes at the Father's will, or the Holy Spirit, or Horos, whom they also call Soter, or even the Savior himself, who came to help and form their Mother? Is it as though these were weaker than those and so unworthy of the name and number of Aeons, or as though they were better and different? But how will they be lowest, who were emitted for the establishing and correction of the others? Nor again can they be better than the first and principal Tetrad, from which they were emitted; for it too is counted in the number mentioned. These too should have been counted in the Pleroma of Aeons, or else those Aeons should be deprived of the honor of this name. 8 Since, then, their Triacontad is dissolved, as we have shown, both by defect and by excess (for in such a number, more or less makes the number unacceptable, how much more such large differences?), their fable of the Ogdoad and the Duodecad is unstable. Unstable too is their whole system, its very foundation scattered and dissolved into Bythus, that is, into what does not exist. Let them seek from now on to show other reasons why the Lord came to baptism at thirty years of age, and for the Duodecad of the apostles, and for the woman who suffered the flow of blood, and for all the other things about which they rave, laboring in vain.

1 We show as follows that the very first order of their emission is to be rejected. For they say that Nus and Aletheia were emitted from Bythus and his Ennoia, which is shown to be contradictory. For Nus is itself what is chief and highest, and as it were the principle and source of all understanding; and Ennoia, which comes from it, is any motion concerning anything. It does not fit, then, that Nus was emitted from Bythus and Ennoia; it would have been more plausible for them to say that Ennoia was emitted as a daughter from the Propator and this Nus. For Ennoia is not the mother of Nus, as they say, but Nus becomes the father of Ennoia. And how was Nus emitted from the Propator, when it holds the chief and first place of the hidden and invisible affection within him? From it are generated perception, Ennoia, Enthymesis and other things, which are nothing other than Nus, but, as we said before, certain motions of that same Nus concerning some object of thought, named according to their continuance and increase, not according to change, the mind remaining within, founding, administering and governing freely and by its own power, as it wills, the things mentioned. 2 For its first motion concerning something is called ennoia (thought); when it continues, grows and takes hold of the whole soul, it is called enthymesis (reflection). This enthymesis, spending much time on the same thing and as it were tested, is named sensatio (judgment). This judgment, greatly expanded, becomes counsel; and the increase and greatly expanded motion of counsel becomes the weighing of thought; which, remaining in the mind, will most rightly be called word (logos), from which the uttered word is sent out. And all these things are one and the same, taking their beginning from Nus and receiving names according to their increase. Just as the human body, now young, now in its prime, now old, has received names according to increase and continuance, not according to change of substance or loss of body, so with these. For what one contemplates, about that he thinks; what he thinks about, about that he is wise; what he is wise about, about that he takes counsel; what he takes counsel about, that he turns over in his mind; and what he turns over in his mind, that he speaks. And all these, as we said, Nus governs, being itself invisible, and sending out the word from itself through the things mentioned as through a ray, but is not itself sent forth by another. 3 These things can rightly be said of men, since they are composite by nature, consisting of body and soul. But those who say that Ennoia was emitted from God, and Nus from Ennoia, then Logos from these, are first to be refuted as having used emissions improperly; and then as describing men's affections, passions and intentions of mind, while ignorant of God. They apply to the Father of all, whom they also call unknown to all, what happens to men in speaking; denying that he made the world, for fear that He might be thought insignificant, yet giving him human affections and passions. But if they had known the Scriptures and been taught by the truth, they would surely know that God is not as men are, and his thoughts are not as the thoughts of men. For the Father of all is far removed from the affections and passions that come to men: he is simple and not composite, without diverse members, wholly like and equal to himself, since he is wholly mind, wholly spirit, wholly perception, wholly thought, wholly reason, wholly hearing, wholly eye, wholly light, and wholly the fountain of all good things, as the religious and pious may rightly say of God. 4 And he is above these, and therefore unspeakable. For he will well and rightly be called a Mind containing all things, but not like the mind of men; and he will most rightly be called light, but nothing like the light around us. So too in all the rest the Father of all will be like nothing in human smallness; and he is spoken of in these terms because of love, but is perceived to be above them by his greatness. If, then, even in men the mind itself is not emitted, nor separated from the living man who emits the rest, but its motions and affections come into the open, much more will God, who is wholly mind, never be separated from himself, nor be emitted as one thing from another. 5 For if he emitted mind, then he who emitted mind is, according to them, understood as composite and bodily, so that God who emitted is apart, and the mind that was emitted is apart. But if they say mind was emitted from mind, they cut off God's mind and divide it. And where and from where was it emitted? For what is emitted from something is emitted into some subject. What lay beneath, older than God's mind, into which they say it was emitted? And how great was the place, to receive and contain God's mind? If they speak as of a ray from the sun, then as the air beneath receives it and is older than the ray, so let them show something lying beneath there, into which God's mind was emitted, able to contain it and older than it. Then, as we see the sun, which is smaller than all things, sending rays far from itself, so they will have to say that the Propator emitted a ray outside and far from himself. But what can be conceived outside or far from God, into which he emitted the ray? 6 But if they say it was not emitted outside the Father but within the Father himself, first it will be superfluous even to say it was emitted; for how was it emitted if it was within the Father? For emission is the manifestation of what is emitted outside the one who emits. Then, this being emitted, the Logos that comes from it will be within the Father, and likewise the other emissions of the Logos. So they will no longer be ignorant of the Father, since they are within him; nor will anyone know him less according to the descent of the emissions, all being equally surrounded by the Father on every side; and all will be impassible, and none of them will be in diminution. For with the Father there is no diminution; unless perhaps they say, as in a great circle a smaller circle is contained, and within it again another smaller one, or after the likeness of a sphere or a square, that the Father contains within himself on every side the rest of the emission of the Aeons in the likeness of a sphere or square, each of them surrounded by the greater one above it and surrounding the smaller one after it; and that therefore the smallest and last of all, placed in the middle and far separated from the Father, did not know the Propator. But if they say this, they will shut up their Bythus in shape and circumscription, both surrounding and surrounded; for they will be forced to confess that there is something outside him that surrounds him. And none the less the talk of those that contain and are contained will run on to infinity, and all will plainly appear to be enclosed bodies. 7 Further, they will confess either that he is void, or that all that is within him will equally share in the Father. As, if someone makes circles in water, or round or square figures, all these will equally share in the water, and things formed in air must share in air, and things in light in light: so those within him will all equally share in the Father, and ignorance will have no place among them. For where is the participation of the Father who fills them? If he has filled them, there will be no ignorance there. So their work of diminution is dissolved, and the emission of matter, and the rest of the making of the world, which they will have to have had its substance from passion and ignorance. But if they confess he is void, falling into the greatest blasphemy, they will deny his spiritual nature. For how is he spiritual who cannot even fill the things within him? 8 What has been said about the emission of mind fits likewise those who follow Basilides and the other Gnostics, from whom these too took the beginnings of emissions, and who were refuted in the first book. But that their first emission of Nus, that is, mind, is unacceptable and impossible we have plainly shown. Let us look at the rest. For from it they say Logos and Zoe, the makers of this Pleroma, were emitted; taking the emission of Logos, that is, the Word, from human affection, and guessing about God as though they had found something great in saying that Logos was emitted from Nus. All know, of course, that this is consistently said of men; but in God who is above all, since he is wholly Nus and wholly Logos, as we said before, and has nothing older or later, or one thing different from another, but remains wholly equal, like and one, such an emission in this order no longer follows. As one who says he is wholly sight and wholly hearing (for He hears in the same way that He sees, and sees in the same way that He hears) does not err, so one who says he is wholly Mind and wholly Word, and that where Mind is there is the Word, and that this Mind is his Word, will still think too little of the Father of all, but more fittingly than those who transfer the generation of the uttered word of men to the eternal Word of God, giving it a beginning of utterance and a generation like their own word. And in what will the Word of God, or rather God himself, since he is the Word, differ from the word of men, if he has the same order and emission of generation? 9 They have also erred about Zoe, saying she was emitted in the sixth place, when she should have been placed before all, since God is life, incorruption and truth. And such things did not receive emissions by descent; they are names of the powers that are always with God, as far as it is possible and fitting for men to hear and speak of God. For with the name of God are understood mind, word, life, incorruption, truth, wisdom, goodness and all such things. And no one can say that mind is older than life, for mind itself is life; nor that life is later than mind, so that he who is the mind of all, that is, God, should at some time be without life. But if they say that life was in the Father, but was brought forth in the sixth place so that the Word might live, it should have been emitted much earlier in the fourth place, so that Nus might live, and even before him, with Bythus, so that their Bythus might live. For to count Sige with their Propator and give her to him as consort, but not to count Zoe with him, how is this not beyond all folly? 10 As for the second emission from these, of Anthropos and Ecclesia, their very fathers, the falsely named Gnostics, fight one another, each claiming his own, and proving themselves wicked thieves, saying it is more fitting for emission, as being plausible, that the Word was emitted from Man and not Man from the Word, and that Man is before the Word, and that he is the God who is above all. And so far, as we said before, heaping together plausibly all human affections, motions of mind, generations of intentions and emissions of words, they have lied implausibly against God. For by applying to the divine reason what happens to men and what they recognize themselves experiencing, they seem to say fitting things among those who do not know God; and, leading their minds through these human passions, while recounting the birth and emission of the Word of God in the fifth place, they say they teach wonderful, unspeakable and deep mysteries known to no one else, about which the Lord said, “Seek and you will find”: so that, of course, they should seek how Nus and Aletheia proceeded from Bythus and Sige, whether Logos and Zoe in turn come from them, and then Anthropos and Ecclesia from Logos and Zoe.

1 Much more plausibly and pleasingly did one of the old comic poets, Antiphanes, speak of the origin of all things in his Theogony. For he says Chaos was emitted from Night and Silence; then Love from Chaos and Night, and from him Light; then, in his account, comes the rest of the first generation of gods. Next he introduces a second generation of gods and the making of the world, followed by the formation of humanity by these second gods. These men have adopted the fable and arranged their ideas around it as though through a natural explanation, merely changing the names, and showing the very same beginning and emission of the origin of all things: for Night and Silence they name Bythus and Sige; for Chaos, Nus; and for Love (through whom, the comic poet says, all the rest was arranged) they have brought in the Word; for the first and greatest gods they have formed the Aeons; and for the second gods they tell of the arrangement of their Mother outside the Pleroma, calling it the second Ogdoad; from which they proclaim, just as he does, the making of the world and the formation of men, saying that they alone know unspeakable and unknown mysteries; things which are played everywhere in the theaters by actors with the clearest voices, they transfer into their own system, or rather teach with the same plots, only changing the names. 2 And not only are they shown to bring forward as their own what is found in the comic poets, but they gather what has been said by all who do not know God, the so-called philosophers, and, stitching together a patchwork from many miserable rags, they have prepared for themselves a feigned covering with subtle eloquence; introducing a doctrine new in that it has now been set up by a new art, but old and useless, since it has been stitched together from old teachings smelling of ignorance and irreligion. Thales of Miletus said that water was the origin and beginning of all things; and to say water is the same as to say Bythus. The poet Homer taught that Ocean was the origin of the gods, and Tethys their mother; and these men have transferred these to Bythus and Sige. Anaximander posited the infinite as the beginning of all things, having in itself the origin of all things as seed, from which, he says, immeasurable worlds arise; and this too they have transformed into Bythus and their Aeons. Anaxagoras, who was also called the Atheist, taught that animals were made from seeds falling from heaven onto the earth; and these men have transferred this to the seeds of their Mother, and say that they themselves are this seed; at once confessing, among those who have sense, that they themselves are the seeds of the irreligious Anaxagoras. 3 Their shadow and void they took from Democritus and Epicurus and fitted to themselves, since those first discussed at length the void and the atoms, calling the one what is and the other what is not; just as these men call what is within the Pleroma what is, as those called the atoms, and what is outside the Pleroma what is not, as those called the void. So they have placed themselves, being in this world outside the Pleroma, in the place that is not. And when they say these things are images of what is, they are again most plainly setting out the opinion of Democritus and Plato. For Democritus first said that many and various figures, stamped from the universe, came down into this world; and Plato speaks of matter, the pattern, and God. Following them, these men have called his figures and pattern images of the things above, and by a change of name imagine themselves the inventors and makers of such a fiction, boasting of it. 4 And that the maker made the world from underlying matter, Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Plato said first, before these men; inspired, it seems, by their Mother too. That each thing necessarily departs into those from which they say it was made, and that God is a slave of this necessity, so that he cannot add immortality to the mortal or give incorruption to the corruptible, but each departs into a substance like its own nature: this the so-called Stoics from the Porch affirm, and all poets and writers who do not know God. Holding the same unbelief, they have assigned to the spiritual their own region, within the Pleroma; to the animal, the middle; to the bodily, the earthly; and they affirm that God can do nothing besides this, but each of these departs to things of the same substance. 5 And when they say the Savior was made from all the Aeons, each depositing in him as it were its flower, they bring nothing new beyond Hesiod's Pandora. For what he says of her, these men insinuate of the Savior, presenting him as Pandoros (All-gifted), as though each of the Aeons had given him what it had best. Their opinion that food and other actions are indifferent, and that they think they can be defiled by no one at all because of their noble birth, whatever they eat or do, they have taken from the Cynics, since they belong to the same company. And they try to bring into the faith hair-splitting and subtlety about questions, which is Aristotelian. 6 And their wish to turn this universe into numbers they took from the Pythagoreans. For these first set numbers as the beginning of all things, and their beginning the even and the odd, from which they posited both perceptible and imperceptible things; and that some are beginnings of underlying matter and others of perception and form, from which first things all things are completed, as a statue from bronze and shaping. This these men have fitted to the things outside the Pleroma. The beginnings of perception they said are where the mind, understanding what is first taken up, searches until, wearied, it comes to the one and indivisible. And the beginning of all things and substance of all generation is Hen, that is, One; and from it the Dyad, the Tetrad, the Pentad, and the manifold generation of the rest. These men say this word for word of their Pleroma and Bythus; so they also try to introduce the conjunctions that come from the One, which Marcus, boasting of them as his own, seemed to have found as something newer than the rest, setting out the Tetrad of Pythagoras as the origin and mother of all things. 7 But we shall say against them: did all these men mentioned, with whom you are shown to say the same things, know the truth or not? If they knew it, the Savior's descent into this world was superfluous; for why did he descend? Was it to bring into knowledge, for men who knew it, the truth that was already known? But if they did not know it, how is it that, saying the same things as those who did not know the truth, you boast that you alone have the knowledge above all things, which even those who do not know God have? By antiphrasis, then, they call ignorance of the truth knowledge, and Paul well says, “novelties of words of false knowledge.” For their knowledge has truly been found false. And if, acting shamelessly about this, they say that men did not know the truth, but that their Mother, the Father's seed, announced the mysteries of truth through such men, as also through the prophets, while the Demiurge did not know: first, the things mentioned are not such as no one could understand; for these men knew what they were saying, and so did their disciples and their successors. Then, if either the Mother or the seed knew and declared the things of the truth, and the truth is the Father, then according to them the Savior lied when he said, “No one has known the Father except the Son.” For if he was known either by the Mother or by her seed, the saying “No one has known the Father except the Son” is dissolved; unless they say their seed or Mother is no one. 8 So far, then, through human affections, and by saying things like many who do not know God, they have seemed plausibly to draw some away, attracting them by what they are used to into a discourse about all things, expounding the birth of the Word of God and of [Truth and] Life, and also of Mind, and acting as midwives to the emissions of God. But what follows from these they have lied implausibly and without proof, all of it from beginning to end. Like those who set out familiar food as bait to catch some animal, coaxing it little by little with familiar fodder until they take it, and once captured bind it most bitterly and drag it by force wherever they wish: so these men, gently and little by little persuading by plausible speech to accept the emission mentioned, bring in things neither consistent nor expected as forms of the other emissions, saying that [ten] Aeons were emitted from Logos and Zoe, and twelve from Anthropos and Ecclesia; having neither proof, nor testimony, nor plausibility, nor anything at all of the kind for these, but at random and as it happens: that from Aeons there were emitted Bythius and Mixis, Ageratos and Henosis, Autophyes and Hedone, Acinetos and Syncrasis, Monogenes and Macaria; and likewise from Anthropos and Ecclesia, being Aeons, were emitted Paracletus and Pistis, Patricos and Elpis, Metricos and Agape, Ainos and Synesis, Ecclesiasticus and Macariotes, Theletos and Sophia. 9 The passions and error of this Sophia, how she was in danger of perishing through her search for the Father, as they say, and her labor outside the Pleroma, and from what deficiency they teach the world-maker was emitted, we set out with all diligence in the book before this, recounting the heretics' opinions; and Christ, whom they say was emitted after all these, and that Soter had his substance from the Aeons who came to be in deficiency. But we have now mentioned these names of necessity, so that from them their absurd lie and the confusion of their invented naming may be plain. They themselves disparage their Aeons by many such names, while the pagans give plausible and credible names to those called their twelve gods, whom these men also will have to be images of the twelve Aeons: the images having names far more fitting and more able, by etymology, to lead the mind to divinity.

1 But let us return to the question of emissions mentioned before. First let them tell us the reason for such an emission of the Aeons, without touching anything belonging to creation. For they say those were not made because of creation, but creation because of them; and that those are not images of these, but these of those. As, then, they give the reason for the images, saying the month has thirty days because of the thirty Aeons, the day twelve hours and the year twelve months because of the twelve Aeons within the Pleroma, and whatever other nonsense they talk, let them now tell us the reason for this emission of the Aeons: why it was such; why the first and archetypal Ogdoad of all was emitted, and not a Pentad, or a Triad, or a Heptad, or any of those bounded by another number. And why were ten Aeons emitted from Logos and Zoe, and not more or fewer; and again twelve from Anthropos and Ecclesia, when these too could have been more or fewer? 2 And why is the whole Pleroma divided in three, into an Ogdoad, a Decad and a Duodecad, and not into some other number besides these? And why was the division itself made into three, and not into four, or five, or six, or some other number, without touching the numbers of creation? For they say those are older than these, and they must have their own reason, the one that comes before the constitution, not one that agrees with the harmony of the constitution. 3 This harmony we, speaking of creation, say fittingly; for this rhythm fits the things made for this rhythm. But they, having no proper reason to declare about the things that are prior and complete in themselves, must fall into the greatest perplexity. For what they ask us about the constitution, as though we did not know, they themselves, asked in turn about the Pleroma, will either recount human affections or go down to the discourse about the harmony in creation, answering improperly about secondary things and not, by their own account, about the first. For we do not ask them about the harmony in creation, nor about human affections; but since their Pleroma, of which they say creation is an image, is eight-formed, ten-formed and twelve-formed, they will confess that their Father made the Pleroma of such a shape vainly and without foresight, and will surround the Father with unseemliness, if he made something without reason. Or again, if they say the Pleroma was emitted so by the Father's providence for the sake of creation, so that its very essence might be well proportioned, then the Pleroma will no longer have been made for its own sake, but for the sake of the image that was to be after its likeness (as a clay statue is not shaped for its own sake but for the one to be made of bronze, gold or silver); and creation will be more honored than the Pleroma, if those were emitted for its sake.

1 For if anyone is moved away from the Demiurge, he must fall into many gods and infinite worlds. But if they will agree with none of these conclusions, because they are refuted by us, having no account to give of such an emission of their Pleroma, they will be forced to conclude by confessing that above the Pleroma there is some other dispensation, more spiritual and more sovereign, after which their Pleroma was shaped. For if the Demiurge did not make such a form of creation from himself, but after the pattern of the things above, then from where did their Bythus, who brought it about that the Pleroma should be of such a form, receive the pattern of the things made before him? For either one must hold fast to the view about the God who made the world, that by his own power and from himself he received the model for fashioning the world; or, if one moves away from him, there will always be the necessity of asking from where the one above him got the form of the things that were made, what the number of the emissions is, and what the substance of the model itself is. But if Bythus was free to bring about such a form of the Pleroma from himself, why was the Demiurge not free to have made such a world from himself? Again, then, if creation is an image of those things, what prevents us from saying that those are images of the things above them, and those above them again of others, and so falling into endless images of images? 2 This is what happened to Basilides. Since he had not touched the truth at all, and thought that by an endless succession of beings made from one another he could escape such a difficulty, he declared that 365 heavens were made in succession and in likeness to one another, and that the proof of them is the number of the days of the year, as we said before; and that above these is a power which they also call unnameable, with its dispensation. Even so he did not escape such a difficulty. For if he is asked from where the heaven that is above all, from which he wants the rest to have been made in succession, got the image of its form, he will say: from the dispensation that belongs to the unnameable. And then either he will say that the unnameable made it from himself, or he will have to agree that there is some other power above him, from which his unnameable received so great a form of the things that belong to him. 3 How much safer and more careful it is, then, to confess at the start what is true: that this God, the Fashioner who made such a world, is the only God, and that there is no other God besides him, who received from himself the model and form of the things that were made; rather than, worn out after so much irreligion and circling about, to be forced at last to fix the mind on some one being, and [to confess] that from him came the form of the things made. 4 For what the Valentinians charge against us who are of the Church, the Basilideans charge in turn against them, and others again against others. The very charge that the Valentinians bring against us, saying that we remain in the lower Hebdomad, as if we did not lift up our minds on high or understand the things above, because we do not accept their monstrous talk, the Basilideans bring against them: that they are still tossing about among the things below, up to the first and second Ogdoad, and that after the thirty Aeons they ignorantly suppose they have at once found the Father who is above all, not searching out with their minds the Pleroma that is above the 365 heavens, which is above forty-five Ogdoads. And one might justly bring the same charge against them in turn by inventing 4,380 heavens or Aeons, because the days of the year have that many hours. And if someone adds the nights as well, doubling those hours, and thinks he has found a great multitude of Ogdoads and an innumerable labor of Aeons, supposing himself more perfect than all in relation to the Father of all who is above all, he will bring the same charge against everyone: that the multitude of heavens or Aeons spoken of by them does not reach to its height, but that they fall short and remain either among the things below or in the middle.

1 Since, then, the dispensation of their Pleroma, and above all that of the first Ogdoad, involves so many contradictions and difficulties, let us examine the rest as well. Because of their folly we too must inquire into things that do not exist; yet we do this of necessity, because the care of this matter has been entrusted to us, and because we wish all people to come to the knowledge of the truth, and because you yourself have asked to receive from us many and complete means of overthrowing them. 2 I ask, then: how were the rest of the Aeons emitted? Were they united with the one who emitted them, as rays from the sun, or as distinct effects and in parts, so that each of them is separate and has its own form, as a man from a man and a beast from a beast? Or by budding, as branches from a tree? And were they of the same substance as those who emitted them, or did they have their substance from some other substance? And were they emitted at the same time, so as to be contemporaries, or in some order, so that some of them were older and others younger? And were they emitted simple and uniform, in every way equal and alike to one another, as spirits and lights are emitted, or composite and different, unlike in their members? 3 If each of them was emitted as a distinct effect and according to its own generation, after the likeness of human beings, then either the Father's offspring will be of the same substance as he and like their begetter, or, if they appear unlike, it must be confessed that they are of some other substance. And if the Father's offspring are like the emitter, the things emitted will remain impassible, as he who emitted them is; but if they are of some other substance capable of passions, from where did an unlike substance come within that incorruptible Pleroma? Further, by this reasoning each of them will be understood to be divided and separate from the others, like human beings, not mixed with or united to one another, but each shaped in a distinct form, a defined outline, and a quantity of size, which are properties of a body and not of spirit. Let them no longer say, then, that the Pleroma is spiritual, nor that they themselves are spiritual, if their Aeons sit feasting with the Father like men, and he himself exists in such a form as those emitted by him reveal him to have. 4 But if the Aeons were kindled from the Logos as lights from a light, and the Logos from Nous, and Nous from Bythus, as, for example, torches from a torch, they will perhaps differ from one another in generation and size; but since they are of the same substance as the source of their emission, either they all remain impassible, or their Father too will share in passions. For the torch lit later will not have a different light from the one that was before it. Therefore their lights too, when combined into one, return to the original unity, since there comes to be one light, the one that also was from the beginning. Younger and older cannot be understood either in the light itself (for the whole is one light) or in the torches that received the light (for in the substance of their material they have the same age, since the material of the torches is one and the same), but only in the kindling, because one was lit a little while before and the other just now. 5 The fall, then, of the passion that came from ignorance will either happen alike to their whole Pleroma, since they are of the same substance, and the Forefather will be in the fault of ignorance, that is, ignorant of himself; or all the lights within the Pleroma will likewise remain impassible. From where, then, came the passion in the youngest Aeon, if the light from which all the lights were constituted is the Father's, which is by nature impassible? And how can any Aeon among them be called younger or older, since there is one light of the whole Pleroma? And if someone calls them stars, they will nonetheless appear to share all the same nature. For even if “star differs from star in glory,” it is not in quality or in substance, by which something is passible or impassible; but either all of them, since they are from the Father's light, must be by nature impassible and unchangeable, or all of them, together with the Father's light, are passible and capable of the changes of corruption. 6 The same reasoning will follow even if they say that the emission of the Aeons was born from the Logos as branches from a tree, since the Logos has his generation from their Father. For all are found to be of the same substance as the Father, differing from one another only in size, not in nature, and filling up the greatness of the Father as fingers fill up a hand. If, then, the Father is in passion and ignorance, so too are the Aeons generated from him. But if it is impious to ascribe ignorance and passion to the Father of all, how can they say that a passible Aeon was emitted from him, and, ascribing the same impiety to the very Sophia of God, call themselves religious? 7 But if they say that their Aeons were emitted as rays from the sun, then, since all are of the same substance and from the same source, either all will be capable of passion together with the one who emitted them, or all will remain impassible. For they cannot then confess that from such an emission some are impassible and some passible. If, then, they say that all are impassible, they dissolve their own argument: for how did the least Aeon suffer, if all were impassible? But if they say that all shared in this passion, as some dare to say, that it began from the Logos and flowed down into Sophia, they will be convicted of tracing this passion back to the Logos, the Nous of the Forefather, and of confessing that the Nous of the Forefather and the Father himself were in passion. For the Father of all is not some composite living being, distinct from Nous, as we showed before; rather, Nous is Father and Father is Nous. Necessarily, then, the Logos who is from him, or rather Nous itself, since it is Logos, is perfect and impassible; and the emissions from him, since they are of the same substance as he is, are perfect and impassible and remain always like him who emitted them. 8 So the Logos, as one holding the third rank of generation, was not ignorant of the Father, as these people teach. That might perhaps be thought plausible in human generation, because people often do not know their parents; but in the Father's Logos it is altogether impossible. For if, existing in the Father, he knows him in whom he is, that is, he is not ignorant of himself; and the emissions from him, being his powers and always standing by him, will not be ignorant of the one who emitted them, any more than rays are ignorant of the sun. It is not possible, then, that the Sophia of God, the one within the Pleroma, since she is from such an emission, fell under passion and conceived such ignorance. But it is possible that the Wisdom of Valentinus, since she is from the devil's emission, came to be in every passion and bore fruit in a depth of ignorance. For when they themselves bear witness about their mother, saying that she is the offspring of an erring Aeon, one need no longer seek the reason why the sons of such a mother 9 Besides these kinds of emission I do not see that they can name any other; nor have they themselves ever been known to us to put forward some other particular mode of emission, although we have had a great deal of discussion with them about such forms. They say only this: that each of them was emitted, and knew only the one who emitted him, but was ignorant of the one before that one. Yet they do not go on to show how they were emitted, or how such a thing can happen among spiritual beings. For whichever way they proceed, they will be bound, and, blind to right reason concerning the truth, they will go so far as to say that the Word emitted from the Nous of their Forefather was emitted in a state of diminution. For, they say, Nous, begotten as perfect from the perfect Bythus, could no longer make the emission that came from him perfect, but only blinded with regard to the knowledge and greatness of the Father; and the Savior showed a symbol of this mystery in the man who was blind from birth, because the Aeon was emitted blind in this way by Monogenes, that is, in ignorance. So they falsely ascribe ignorance and blindness to the Word of God, who according to them holds the second emission from the Forefather. Admirable sophists, searching out the heights of the unknown Father and recounting supercelestial mysteries “into which angels long to look,” so that they may learn that the Word emitted from the Nous of the Father who is above all was emitted blind, that is, ignorant of the Father who emitted him! 10 And how, you utterly vain sophists, did the Nous of the Father, or rather the Father himself, since he is Nous and perfect in all things, emit his own Logos as an imperfect and blind Aeon, when he could have emitted the knowledge of the Father together with him at once? You say that Christ, though begotten after the rest, was emitted perfect; much more, then, would the Logos, who is older than he, be emitted perfect by the same Nous, and not [blind]; nor would he in turn have emitted Aeons blinder than himself, until your Sophia, ever more blinded, gave birth to so great a mass of evils. And the cause of this wickedness is your Father: for you say that the greatness and power of the Father are the causes of ignorance, likening him to a deep (Bythus) and giving this name to the unnameable Father. But if ignorance is an evil, and you hold that all evils have sprung from it, and you say that its cause is the greatness and power of the Father, you show him to be the maker of evils. For you call the inability to contemplate his greatness the cause of evil. But if it was impossible for the Father to make himself known from the beginning to the beings made by him, he was blameless, since he could not take away the ignorance of those who came after him. But if later, when he wished, he could take away the ignorance that had grown with the progression of the emissions and been sown in the Aeons, much more, had he wished, would he earlier have prevented that ignorance, which did not yet exist, from coming to be. 11 Since, then, when he wished, he became known, not only to the Aeons but also to the people who lived in the last times, but, not wishing to be known from the beginning, he remained unknown, the cause of ignorance, according to you, is the will of the Father. For if he foreknew that these things would happen in this way, why did he not cut off their ignorance before it came about, instead of curing it afterwards, as if from repentance, through the emission of Christ? For the knowledge he gave to all through Christ he could have given long before through the Logos, who was also the firstborn of Monogenes. Or if, foreknowing it, he willed these things to happen, the works of ignorance remain for ever and never pass away. For what was done by the will of your Forefather must remain together with the will of him who willed it; or if these things pass away, the will of him who willed them to have substance will pass away with them. And why did the Aeons find rest and receive perfect knowledge by learning that the Father cannot be contained or comprehended? They could have had this knowledge before they fell into passions; for the Father's greatness was not diminished by their knowing from the beginning that the Father cannot be contained or comprehended. For if he was unknown because of his immeasurable greatness, then because of his immeasurable love he should have kept impassible those born from him, since nothing prevented it, and it was rather more useful that they should have known from the beginning that the Father cannot be contained or comprehended.

1 How is it not absurd that they also say that his Sophia was in ignorance, in degeneracy and in passion? For these things are foreign and contrary to wisdom, nor are they her affections. For where there is lack of foresight and ignorance of what is useful, there wisdom is not. Let them no longer call the suffering Aeon Sophia, then; but let them give up either her name or her passions. And let them not call their whole Pleroma spiritual, if this Aeon lived within it while she was in such great passions. For not even a strong soul, not to speak of a spiritual substance, would undergo such things. 2 And again, how could her Enthymesis, going out with the passion, come to exist separately? For an Enthymesis (a thought) is understood as belonging to someone, but it will never exist by itself. A bad Enthymesis is banished and absorbed by a good one, as sickness by health. What, then, was the Enthymesis that came before the passion? To search out the Father and to consider his greatness. And of what was she persuaded afterwards, so that she recovered? That the Father is incomprehensible and cannot be found. It was not good, then, that she wished to know the Father and so became passible; but when she was persuaded that the Father is unsearchable, she also recovered. And Nous himself, who was seeking the Father, ceased, according to them, to seek further, learning that the Father is incomprehensible. 3 How, then, could the Enthymesis, separated, conceive passions, which were themselves her affections? For an affection belongs to someone; it cannot exist or stand by itself. This is not only untenable but also contrary to what was said by our Lord: “Seek, and you will find.” For the Lord makes his disciples perfect by seeking and finding the Father. But their Christ who is above made the Aeons perfect by commanding them not to seek the Father, persuading them that even if they labored hard they would not find him. And they say that they themselves are perfect by the fact that they claim to have found their Bythus, and the Aeons by the fact that they were persuaded that the one they were seeking is unsearchable. 4 Since, then, the Enthymesis herself could not exist separately apart from the Aeon, they add a still greater lie about her passion, dividing it off separately again and saying that it is the substance of matter: as if God were not light, and there were no Word present who could refute them and overthrow their wickedness. For certainly whatever the Aeon thought, that she also suffered; and what she suffered, that she also thought. And her Enthymesis was, according to them, nothing other than the passion of one thinking how to comprehend the incomprehensible; and the passion was the Enthymesis, for she was thinking of impossible things. How, then, could affection and passion be separated from the Enthymesis and become the substance of so much matter, when the Enthymesis herself was passion, and passion was Enthymesis? So neither the Enthymesis apart from the Aeon nor the affections apart from the Enthymesis can have substance separately; and here again their rule is dissolved. 5 But how was the Aeon both dissolved and subject to passion? She was, after all, of the same substance as the Pleroma, and the whole Pleroma is from the Father. For what is like will not be dissolved into nothing in what is like it, nor be in danger of perishing, but will rather endure and grow, as fire in fire, spirit in spirit, and water in water; but things that are contrary suffer from their contraries, are changed, and are destroyed. So too, if she had been an emission of light, she would not suffer or be endangered in light like herself, but would rather shine and grow brighter, as the day does from the sun; for they say that [she] is the image of her father, Bythus. Whatever living creatures are foreign and strange to one another, and contrary in nature, are endangered and destroyed; but those that are accustomed and akin to one another suffer no danger by living together, but rather gain safety and life from it. If, then, this Aeon had been emitted from it, of the same substance as the whole Pleroma, she would never have undergone change, since she was living among things like and familiar to her, a spiritual being among spiritual beings. For fear, terror, passion, dissolution, and the like may perhaps happen through contraries among bodily things such as ours; but among spiritual things that have light diffused through them, such calamities no longer follow. It seems to me rather that they have wrapped their Aeon in the passion of the character in the comic poet Menander who is very much in love and hated. For those who invented these things had in mind the perception and mental conception of some unhappily loving man rather than of a spiritual and divine substance. 6 Moreover, to think of seeking the perfect Father, to wish to be within him and to have comprehension of him, could not bring ignorance or passion upon a spiritual Aeon, but rather perfection, impassibility, and truth. For not even they, though they are men, say that when they think about him who is before them, and as if already comprehending the perfect and established within the knowledge of him, they are in a passion of consternation, but rather in knowledge and apprehension of the truth. For they say that the Savior said to his disciples, “Seek, and you will find,” for this reason: that they should seek the inexpressible Bythus whom they have invented in thought above the Maker of all things. And they want to be perfect themselves, because by seeking they have found the perfect one while they are still on earth; but they say that the Aeon within the Pleroma, wholly spiritual, seeking the Forefather, trying to come within his greatness, and longing to have comprehension of the Father's truth, fell into passion, and such a passion that, had she not met the Power that makes all things firm, she would have been dissolved into the universal substance and destroyed. 7 Insane is this presumption, and truly the thinking of men abandoned by the truth. For that this Aeon is better than they and older, they themselves confess according to their own rule, when they say that they are the conception of the Enthymesis of the Aeon who suffered, so that this Aeon is the father of their Mother, that is, their grandfather. And for the later grandchildren the search for the Father brings about truth, perfection, firmness, and purification from fluid matter, as they say, and reconciliation to the Father; but on their grandfather this same search brought ignorance, passion, terror, fear, and consternation, from which they say the substance of matter was also made. To say, then, that seeking and searching out the perfect Father, and the desire for communion and unity with him, is saving for themselves, but was the cause of dissolution and destruction for the Aeon from whom they have their very origin: how is this not in every way incongruous, foolish, and irrational? And those who agree with them, truly blind and using blind guides, justly fall with them into the depth of ignorance that lies below.

1 What sort of talk is this, too, about their seed: that it was conceived by the Mother after the form of the angels who attend the Savior, shapeless, without form, and imperfect, and deposited in the Demiurge without his knowledge, so that through him it might receive perfection and formation in the soul that was sown by him? The first thing to say is that the angels who attend their Savior are imperfect, without figure, and without form, if indeed such a thing was conceived after their likeness. 2 Next, their saying that the Fashioner did not know of the depositing of the seed into him, nor again of the sowing done through him into man, is a futile and empty word that can in no way be shown. For how could he have been ignorant of it if the seed itself had any substance and quality of its own? But if it was without substance and without quality, and was nothing, then of course he did not know it. For things that have some motion and quality of their own, whether of heat, or swiftness, or sweetness, or some difference of brightness, do not escape even human beings, since they are among human beings; much less God, the Fashioner of this universe. With good reason, then, their seed was not known to him, since it is without any quality of usefulness, without the substance for any action, and altogether nothing. And for this reason, it seems to me, the Lord also said: “Every idle word that people speak, they will give account for it on the day of judgment.” For all such as put idle words into people's ears will stand at the judgment to give account for what they have vainly conjectured and lied against God, to the point of saying that they themselves, by the substance of the seed, know the spiritual Pleroma, the inner man showing them the true Father (for the soul-endowed nature, they say, needed training through the senses), while the Demiurge, receiving into himself the whole of this seed as the Mother deposited it, was ignorant of absolutely everything and had no perception of the things that belong to the Pleroma. 3 For if the seed had been deposited in him, he could not have been ignorant of the things that are above him. And they say that they themselves are spiritual, because a particle of the Father of the universe has been deposited in their souls, although they have souls of the same substance as the Demiurge, as they say; but that he, having once received the whole seed from the Mother and having it in himself, remained soul-endowed and perceived nothing at all of the higher things which these people boast that they understand while they are still on earth: how is this not beyond all absurdity? For to think that the very same seed gave knowledge and perfection to their souls but ignorance to the God who made them is truly the mark of madmen, wholly bereft of mind. 4 It is also utterly empty when they say that in this deposit the seed is formed and grows and is made ready to receive perfect reason. For there will be in it an admixture of matter, which they hold had its substance from ignorance and the fall, and it will be more apt and useful than their Father's light was: if indeed, born according to the contemplation of that light, it was formless and shapeless, but from this admixture it took formation, appearance, growth, and perfection. For if the light that is from the Pleroma was the cause of the spiritual being's having no form, appearance, or size of its own, while its descent here added all these to it and brought it to perfection, then life here, which they also call darkness, will seem far more effective and useful than their Father's light was. And how is it not ridiculous to say that their Mother was endangered in matter, so that she was almost suffocated and very nearly destroyed, had she not then barely stretched herself out and leapt out of herself, receiving help from the Father; but that her seed grows, is formed, and is made fit to receive perfect reason in this same matter, and that while “bubbling up” among things unlike and unfamiliar to it, since, as they themselves say, the earthly is contrary to the spiritual and the spiritual to the earthly? How, then, could a “little emission,” as they say, grow, be formed, and reach perfection among things contrary and unfamiliar to it? 5 Further, in addition to what has been said, one will ask whether their Mother gave birth to the seed all at once when she saw the angels, or bit by bit. If all together and at once, what was then conceived will no longer be infantile now, and its descent into the people who now exist is superfluous. But if bit by bit, then she did not make her conception after the form of the angels she saw; for since she saw them and conceived them together and at once, she should have gave birth to at once the offspring of those whose forms she had conceived at once. 6 And why is it that, seeing the angels together with the Savior, she conceived their images but not that of the Savior, who is more beautiful than they? Did he not please her, and is that why she did not conceive after him? And how is it that the Demiurge, whom they call soul-endowed, having according to them his own size and form, was emitted perfect according to his substance, while what is spiritual, which should be more effective than what is soul-endowed, was emitted imperfect and needed to descend into a soul in order to be formed in it and so, being perfect, to become ready to receive the perfect word? If, then, it is formed in earthly and soul-endowed human beings, it is no longer after the likeness of the angels, whom they call lights, but after the likeness of the human beings here. For it will have the likeness and appearance not of angels but of the souls in which it is formed: as water poured into a vessel takes the form of the vessel itself, and if it freezes in it, it will have the shape of the vessel in which it froze, since souls themselves have the figure of the body; for they are fitted to the vessel, as we said before. If, then, that seed is solidified and formed here, it will have the figure of a man and not the form of angels. How, then, is that seed after the images of angels, when it is shaped after the likeness of men? And why, since it was spiritual, did it need to descend into flesh? For flesh needs the spiritual, if indeed it is to be saved, so that it may be sanctified and glorified in it, and the mortal may be swallowed up by immortality; but the spiritual has no need at all of things here. For it is not we who make it better, but it that makes us better. 7 Still more plainly is their talk about the seed shown to be false, as anyone can see, in that they say that the souls which had seed from the Mother become better than the rest, and for that reason were honored by the Demiurge and appointed princes, kings, and priests. For if this were true, the high priest Caiaphas would surely have been first to believe in the Lord, and Annas, and the rest of the high priests, the teachers of the law, and the rulers of the people, running together to their kin; and before that, King Herod too. But since neither he, nor the high priests, nor those in authority, nor the notable among the people ran to him, but on the contrary those who sat begging by the roads, the deaf and the blind, and those trampled on and despised by the rest, just as Paul also says: “For consider your calling, brothers: not many among you are wise, nor noble, nor strong; but God chose what was contemptible in the world”; such souls, then, were not better because of the deposit of seed, nor were they honored by the Demiurge for that reason. 8 As to their rule being weak and untenable, and empty besides, what has been said is enough. For, as the saying goes, one who wants to learn that the sea's water is salt need not drink up the whole sea. But just as with a statue made of clay and colored on the surface so as to be thought gold when it is clay, whoever takes any small piece from it and, opening it, shows the clay, will free those who seek the truth from a false opinion; so we too, refuting not a small part but the chief heads that hold their rule together, have shown to all who do not wish to be knowingly led astray what is wicked, deceitful, seductive, and ruinous in the school of the Valentinians and of the rest of the heretics who speak evil of the Demiurge, that is, the Fashioner and Maker of this universe, who alone is God, making plain how easily their way is overthrown. 9 For who that has sense and touches even a little of the truth will bear with those who say that above the Demiurge there is another God, a Father; and that Monogenes is one, and the Word of God another, whom they also say was emitted in a state of diminution; and Christ another, whom they say was made later than the rest of the Aeons together with the Holy Spirit; and the Savior another, whom they say was not from the Father of all but was gathered and heaped together by the Aeons who came to be in diminution, and was emitted of necessity because of the diminution? So that, according to them, had the Aeons not been in ignorance and diminution, neither Christ would have been emitted, nor the Holy Spirit, nor Horos, nor the Savior, nor the angels, nor their Mother, nor her seed, nor the rest of the fashioning of the world; but everything would have been deserted and destitute of so many good things. So they are irreligious not only toward the Fashioner, calling him the fruit of a fall, but also toward Christ and the Holy Spirit, saying that they were emitted because of a fall, and likewise the Savior after the fall. For who will bear the rest of their empty talk, which they cunningly try to fit to the parables, and have turned both themselves and those who believe them to the greatest impiety?

1 That they bring the parables and the acts of the Lord into their fiction improperly and inconsistently, we show as follows. They try to show that the suffering which they say happened to the twelfth Aeon is indicated by the fact that the Savior's passion was brought about by the twelfth of the apostles, and happened in the twelfth month; for they hold that he preached for one year after his baptism. And they say that it was plainly shown in the woman who suffered from a flow of blood; for the woman suffered for twelve years, and by touching the fringe of the Savior's garment she obtained healing from that power which went out from the Savior, and which they say existed before. For that power which suffered, stretched out and flowing into immensity so that it was in danger of being dissolved into the whole substance, stopped and ceased from its passion when it touched the first Tetrad, which is signified by the fringe. 2 As for their saying that the passion of the twelfth Aeon is shown through Judas, how can Judas be compared to it as its likeness, since he was cast out of the number of the twelve and was not restored to his place? For the Aeon, whose type they say Judas is, was restored or recalled once her Enthymesis was separated; but Judas was deposed and cast out, and Matthias was appointed in his place, according to what is written: “Let another take his office of oversight.” They should therefore say that the twelfth Aeon was cast out of the Pleroma and another produced or emitted in her place, if indeed she is shown in Judas. Further, they say that the Aeon herself suffered, but Judas was the betrayer; and they themselves confess that it was the suffering Christ who came to the passion, not Judas. How, then, could Judas, the betrayer of him who was to suffer for our salvation, be the type and image of the Aeon who suffered? 3 But neither is Christ's passion like the Aeon's passion, nor did it happen in like circumstances. For the Aeon suffered a passion of dissolution and destruction, so that the one who suffered was herself in danger of being destroyed; but our Lord Christ suffered a strong passion, one that did not give way: not only was he himself not in danger of being destroyed, but he also strengthened corrupted man by his own power and called him back to incorruption. And the Aeon suffered her passion while seeking the Father and not being able to find him; but the Lord suffered in order to bring those who had wandered from the Father back to knowledge and close to him. For her, the search into the greatness of the Father became a passion of destruction; but the Lord, having suffered for us, gave us salvation by bestowing the knowledge of the Father. Her passion bore a female fruit, as they say, weak, infirm, formless, and ineffective; but his passion bore strength and power. For the Lord through his passion, “ascending on high, led captivity captive, gave gifts to men,” and granted those who believe in him “to tread on serpents and scorpions and on all the power” of the enemy, that is, of the prince of apostasy. And the Lord by his passion destroyed death, dissolved error, abolished corruption, and destroyed ignorance; but he manifested life, showed the truth, and gave incorruption. But their Aeon, when she had suffered, set up ignorance and gave birth to a formless substance, from which, according to them, all material works were produced: death, corruption, error and the like. 4 Judas, then, the twelfth disciple, was not a type of the suffering Aeon, nor was our Lord's passion; for they have been shown to be in every way unlike and unsuited to each other, not only in what we have said but in the very number. That the traitor Judas is the twelfth is agreed by all, since twelve apostles are named in the Gospel; but this Aeon is not the twelfth but the thirtieth. For according to these people not only twelve Aeons were produced by the Father's will, nor was she emitted twelfth in order; they count her as emitted in the thirtieth place. How, then, can Judas, twelfth in order, be the type and image of the Aeon who is in the thirtieth order? 5 But if they say that Judas in perishing is the image of her Enthymesis, not even so will the image be like the truth that corresponds to it. For the Enthymesis, separated from the Aeon, was afterwards formed by Christ, then made wise by the Savior, and having made all things outside the Pleroma after the image of those who are in the Pleroma, is said at last to have been received into the Pleroma by them and, according to the pairings, united to the Savior who was made from all. But Judas, once cast out, never returns to the number of the disciples; otherwise another would never have been counted in his place. And the Lord said of him: “Woe to the man by whom the Son of Man will be betrayed,” and, “It would have been better for him if he had not been born”; and he was called by him the son of destruction. But if they say that Judas is a type not of the Enthymesis separated from the Aeon but of the passion entwined with her, not even so can the number twelve be a type of the number three. For here Judas was cast out and Matthias appointed in his place; there the Aeon is said to have been in danger of dissolution and destruction, and also the Enthymesis and the passion, for they distinguish the Enthymesis from the passion as well; and they make the Aeon restored, the Enthymesis formed, and the passion, separated from these, matter. So since these are three, the Aeon, the Enthymesis, and the passion, Judas and Matthias, being two, cannot be their type.

1 But if they say that the twelve apostles are a type only of that emission of twelve Aeons which Anthropos produced with Ecclesia, then let them produce ten other apostles as a type of the remaining ten Aeons, who, as they say, were produced by Logos and Zoe. For it is unreasonable that the younger Aeons, and therefore the lesser, should be shown by the Savior through the election of the apostles, while their elders, and therefore the better, were not shown in advance; since the Savior (if indeed he chose the apostles in order to show through them the Aeons in the Pleroma) could have chosen ten other apostles, and before these eight others, to show that original and first Ogdoad. Nor could the number of the apostles serve as a symbol of the second Decad: for after the twelve apostles our Lord is found to have sent seventy others ahead of him; and seventy can be a type neither of the number eight, nor ten, nor thirty. What is the reason, then, that the lesser Aeons, as I said before, are shown through the apostles, while the better, from whom these too were made, are not prefigured? And if the twelve apostles were chosen so that the number of the twelve Aeons might be signified through them, the seventy also should have been chosen as a type of seventy Aeons; and then let them say that the Aeons are not thirty in number but eighty-two. For one who makes the choice of apostles after the type of the Aeons in the Pleroma would never do so for some and not for others, but would have tried to keep the image through all the apostles and to show the type of the Aeons in the Pleroma. 2 Nor should we keep silent about Paul, but demand of them after the type of which Aeon this apostle was handed down to us; unless perhaps of their composite Savior, who subsists from the contributions of all and whom they also call All Things, because he is from all. Of him the poet Hesiod too gave a splendid sign, naming him Pandora, that is, “gift of all,” because the best gift from all was placed in him. Among these the account runs: Hermes (as it is expressed in Greek) “put wily words and a thievish character” in their minds, to lead foolish men astray so that they believe their fictions. For their Mother, that is, Leto, secretly stirred them up (and from this she was called Leto, according to the meaning of the Greek word, because she secretly stirred people up), without the Demiurge's knowledge, to proclaim deep and unspeakable mysteries to itching ears. And their Mother brought it about that this mystery was told not only by Hesiod but also, very wisely, by the lyric poet Pindar, so as to hide it from the Demiurge, in the story of Pelops, whose flesh was divided in pieces by his father and collected, brought together, and joined again by all the gods: in this way she signified Pandora. And these people, stung by her, saying the same things as those poets according to their own account, are of the same family and spirit as they.

1 We have shown that their whole number thirty collapses according to their own account, since sometimes too few and sometimes too many Aeons are at once found in the Pleroma. There are not, then, thirty Aeons, nor did the Savior come to baptism at thirty years of age in order to show their thirty silent Aeons; otherwise they will be the first to separate him and cast him out of the Pleroma of all. And they say that he suffered in the twelfth month, so that he preached for one year after his baptism, and they try to confirm this very point from the prophet (for it is written: “To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of retribution”): truly blind, though they say they have found the depths of Bythus, not understanding what Isaiah calls the acceptable year of the Lord, or the day of retribution. For the prophet was not speaking of a day that has the space of twelve hours, nor of a year that has the measure of twelve months. For they themselves confess that the prophets said very many things in parables and allegories, and not according to the sound of the words themselves. 2 The day of retribution, then, is the day on which the Lord will repay each according to his works, that is, the judgment. And the acceptable year of the Lord is this present time, in which those who believe him are called by him and become acceptable to God: that is, the whole time from his coming to the consummation, in which he gains as fruit those who are saved. For according to the prophet's wording the day of retribution follows the year; and the prophet will have lied if the Lord preached for only a year and the prophet speaks of that. For where is the day of retribution? The year has passed, and the day of retribution is not yet; but he still makes his sun rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. And the just suffer persecution, are afflicted and killed, while sinners live in abundance and drink with harp and psaltery but do not regard the works of the Lord. According to the wording, the two should be joined, and the day of retribution should follow the year; for it says, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of retribution.” So this time in which people are called and saved by the Lord is rightly understood as the acceptable year of the Lord, and after it follows the day of retribution, that is, the judgment. And this time is called not only a year but also a day, both by the prophet and by Paul; and the apostle, mindful of the Scripture, says in the Epistle to the Romans: “As it is written, For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep for the slaughter.” Here “all the day long” is said of this whole time in which we suffer persecution and are killed like sheep. So just as this day does not mean one that lasts twelve hours but the whole time in which those who believe in Christ suffer and are killed for him, so there too the year is not said of one of twelve months but of the whole time of faith, in which people hear the preaching and believe, and those who join themselves to him become acceptable to the Lord. 3 It is very much to be wondered at how those who say they have found the depths of God have not searched in the Gospels how many times after his baptism the Lord went up to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover, as was the custom of the Jews from every region every year, to gather in Jerusalem at this time and celebrate the feast of the Passover there. First, when he had made wine from water at Cana of Galilee, he went up to the feast day of the Passover, when it is also written, “Many believed in him, seeing the signs that he did,” as John the Lord's disciple records. Then, withdrawing again, he is found in Samaria, when he also conversed with the Samaritan woman, and from a distance he healed the centurion's son by a word, saying, “Go, your son lives.” And after these things, a second time he went up to the feast of the Passover in Jerusalem, when he healed the paralytic who lay by the pool for thirty-eight years, commanding him to rise, take up his pallet, and go. And withdrawing from there across the sea of Tiberias, where a great crowd had also followed him, he satisfied that whole multitude with five loaves, and twelve baskets of fragments were left over. Then, when he had raised Lazarus from the dead and the Pharisees were plotting against him, he withdrew to the city of Ephraim; and from there, it is written, he came to Bethany six days before the Passover, and going up from Bethany to Jerusalem he ate the Passover and suffered on the following day. That these three Passover seasons are not one year anyone will confess. And that the very month in which the Passover is celebrated, in which the Lord also suffered, is not the twelfth but the first, those who boast that they know all things can learn [from Moses], if they do not know it. Their explanation of both the year and the twelfth month has been shown to be false, then, and they must reject either their explanation or the Gospel: otherwise, how did the Lord preach for only one year? 4 Being thirty years old when he came to baptism, and then having the full age of a teacher, he came to Jerusalem, so that he might rightly be heard by all as a teacher. For he did not seem one thing and was another, as those say who bring in a merely apparent body; but what he was, that he also seemed. Being a teacher, then, he also had a teacher's age, not rejecting or going beyond humanity, nor setting aside in himself his own law for the human race, but sanctifying every age by the likeness to it that was in him. For he came to save all through himself: all, I say, who through him are born again to God, infants, little children, boys, youths, and older people. Therefore he passed through every age: he became an infant for infants, sanctifying infants; a little one among little ones, sanctifying those of that very age, and at the same time becoming for them an example of piety, righteousness, and obedience; a youth among youths, becoming an example to youths and sanctifying them to the Lord. So too he was an older man among older men, that he might be a perfect teacher in all things, not only in presenting the truth but also in age, sanctifying the older at the same time and becoming an example to them as well. Then he came even to death, that he might be “the firstborn from the dead, himself holding the first place in all things,” the prince of life, before all and going before all. 5 But they, to support their fiction from what is written, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,” say that he preached for one year and suffered in the twelfth month. They have forgotten themselves to their own harm, undoing his whole work and taking away his more necessary and more honorable age, that more advanced age, I mean, in which as a teacher he presided over all. For how did he have disciples if he did not teach? And how did he teach if he did not have a teacher's age? For he came to baptism not as one who had completed thirty years, but as one beginning to be about thirty (for so Luke, who indicated his years, put it: “Jesus was about thirty years of age, beginning,” when he came to baptism); and [on their view] from his baptism he preached for only one year, and on completing his thirtieth year he suffered, still a young man and not yet of more advanced age. Now that the age of thirty is the first stage of a young man's prime, and that it extends to the fortieth year, everyone will confess; but from the fortieth and fiftieth year a man already declines toward older age, which our Lord had when he taught, as the Gospel and all the elders testify who met in Asia with John the Lord's disciple, that John handed this very thing down to them. And he remained with them until the times of Trajan. And some of them saw not only John but also other apostles, and heard these same things from them, and bear witness to this account. Whom should we believe instead? Such men, or Ptolemy, who never saw the apostles and never followed the trace of an apostle even in his dreams? 6 And the very Jews who then disputed with the Lord Jesus Christ indicated this most plainly. For when the Lord said to them, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad,” they answered him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” This is fittingly said to one who has already passed forty years, but has not yet reached the fiftieth year, though he is not far from the fiftieth. To one who is thirty years old it would surely be said, “You are not yet forty years old.” For those who wanted to show him a liar would certainly not stretch his years far beyond the age they saw him to have; they named an age near his, whether they truly knew it from the census register or conjectured it from the age they saw him to have, over forty, and certainly not that of a man of thirty. For it is altogether unreasonable that they should lie by twenty years when they wanted to show him younger than the times of Abraham. What they saw, that they also said; and he who was seen was not an appearance but truth. He was not far, then, from fifty years; and therefore they said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” So he did not preach for one year, nor did he suffer in the twelfth month of the year. For the time from the thirtieth to the fiftieth year will never be one year, unless such great years are counted among their Aeons for those who sit in order with Bythus in the Pleroma, of whom the poet Homer also spoke, he too inspired by the Mother of their error: “The gods, sitting beside Zeus, held council on the golden floor.”

1 Their ignorance is also laid bare concerning the woman who, suffering from a flow of blood, touched the fringe of the Lord's garment and was healed. For they say that through her was shown that twelfth power which suffered and flowed out into infinity, that is, the twelfth Aeon. First, according to their own sect this Aeon is not the twelfth, as we have shown. But even if this too is granted to them for argument's sake, then, there being twelve Aeons, eleven are said to have remained impassible and the twelfth suffered; but the woman, on the contrary, was healed in the twelfth year, so it is clear that for eleven years she had a lasting affliction and in the twelfth was healed. If eleven Aeons were said to have been in an incurable passion and the twelfth healed, it would be plausible to say that the woman was their type. But since she suffered for eleven years and was not healed, and was healed in the twelfth year, how can she be the type of the twelfth Aeon, when eleven of them suffered nothing at all and the twelfth alone shared in passion? For a type and image sometimes differs from the truth in material and substance, but in its form and outline it must keep the likeness, and show by things present those that are not present. 2 And not only in this woman are the years of illness recorded, which they say fit their fiction; but see, another woman likewise, ill for eighteen years, was healed, of whom the Lord said: “This daughter of Abraham, whom Satan bound for eighteen years, should she not be freed on the sabbath day?” If, then, the one was a type of the twelfth Aeon who suffered, this one too should be a type of an eighteenth Aeon who suffered. But they cannot show this; otherwise their first and original Ogdoad will be counted among the Aeons who suffered together. And another man too is healed by the Lord, who had been thirty-eight years in his affliction: let them say that the thirty-eighth Aeon suffered too. For if they say that what was done by the Lord is a type of what is in the Pleroma, the type must be kept in all cases. But they can fit to their fiction neither the woman cured after eighteen years nor the man cured after thirty-eight years. And it is altogether foolish and unfitting to say that the Savior kept the type in some cases and not in others. So the type of the woman too is shown to be unlike their scheme.

1 This very fact also shows their invention false and their fiction untenable: that they try to bring proofs sometimes from numbers and the syllables of names, sometimes from the letters of syllables, and sometimes from the numbers which, among the Greeks, are contained in the letters. It shows most plainly the confusion, instability, and distortion of their knowledge. For transferring the name Jesus, which belongs to another language, to Greek numeration, they sometimes say it is the Episemon, having six letters, and sometimes the fullness of the Ogdoads, having the number 888. But his Greek name, which is Soter, that is, Savior, they have passed over in silence, because it fits their fiction neither in number nor in letters. Yet if the Lord's names had been given by the Father's providence to signify by number and letters the number in the Pleroma, Soter, being a Greek name, should show in Greek the mystery of the Pleroma both by letters and by numbers. But it is not so, because it has five letters and the number 1,408. These have nothing in common with their Pleroma; so the transaction they say took place in the Pleroma is not true. 2 The name Jesus in the Hebrews' own language has two and a half letters, as their learned men say, and means the Lord who contains heaven and earth; for in the ancient Hebrew language Jesus is “heaven,” and “earth” in turn is called sura usser. The word, then, which contains heaven and earth is Jesus himself. So their explanation of the Episemon is false too, and their number is plainly overthrown. For in their own language the Greek word Soter has five letters, while Jesus in the Hebrew language has two and a half letters. And in general the Hebrew letters do not agree with the Greek numbering, though they especially, being older and more stable, should preserve the reckoning of the names. For the ancient and first letters of the Hebrews, called priestly, are ten in number, but they are written with fifteen, the last letter being joined to the first. And so they write some in order, as we do, and others backward, turning the letters from the right side to the left. And Christ should have had a reckoning of his name agreeing with the Aeons of their Pleroma, since according to them he was produced for the stabilizing and correction of their Pleroma. And the Father likewise should contain, by letters and by number, the number of the Aeons produced by him; and Bythus likewise; and no less Monogenes; and above all the name that is said to be God, which in Hebrew is called Baruch and also has two and a half letters. From the fact, then, that the more stable names in the Hebrew and Greek languages fit their fiction neither by the number of letters nor by reckoning, it is plain that their reckoning of the rest is shamelessly forced. 3 For choosing from the law whatever agrees with the number of their sect, they try to force proofs. But if it had been the purpose of their Mother or of the Savior that types of the things in the Pleroma should be made through the Demiurge, they would have produced the types in truer and holier things, and above all in the ark of the covenant itself, for which the whole tabernacle of the testimony was built. It was made thus: its length two and a half cubits, its breadth one and a half cubits, and its height one and a half cubits; and this number of cubits, through which above all the type should have been shown, agrees in nothing with their fiction. The mercy seat likewise agrees in nothing with their explanations. Further, the table of the showbread was two cubits long, one cubit broad, and one and a half cubits high. These stood before the holy of holies, and in them not a single quantity contains a meaning of the Tetrad, or the Ogdoad, or the rest of their Pleroma. And what of the lampstand, with seven branches and seven lamps? If these had been made after the type, it should have had eight branches and as many lamps, after the type of the first Ogdoad, which shines out among the Aeons and lights the whole Pleroma. They have carefully counted the curtains, which are ten, saying they are a type of the ten Aeons; but they have not counted the skins, made eleven in number. Nor have they measured the size of the curtains themselves, each curtain being twenty-eight cubits long. And they explain that the length of the pillars was made ten cubits because of the Decad of Aeons; but the breadth of each pillar was one and a half cubits, and this they no longer explain, nor the number of all the pillars, nor of their bars, because it has nothing in common with their argument. And what of the anointing oil, which sanctified the whole tabernacle? Perhaps it escaped the Savior's notice, or while their Mother slept the Demiurge gave orders about its weight on his own; and so it is out of tune with their Pleroma, having 500 shekels of myrrh, 500 of iris, 250 of cinnamon, 250 of calamus, and oil besides, so that it consists of five ingredients. And the incense likewise, of stacte, onycha, galbanum, mint, and frankincense, which can have nothing in common with their argument either in their mixture or in their weight. It is irrational, then, and altogether boorish to say that the types were not kept in the sublime and finer parts of the law, but in other places, wherever some number coincides with what they say, to assert that it is a type of the things in the Pleroma, when every number is set down in the Scriptures in many ways, so that anyone who wished could make up from the Scriptures not only an Ogdoad, a Decad, and a Duodecad, but any number, and say that it is a type of the error he has invented. 4 That this is true, the number called five, which has nothing in common with their argument, does not coincide with their fiction, and does not suit them for a typical demonstration of the things in the Pleroma, will receive proof from the Scriptures as follows. Soter is a name of five letters, and Pater also has five letters; Agape too has five letters; and our Lord, blessing five loaves, satisfied five thousand people. The wise virgins were said by the Lord to be five, and the foolish likewise five. Again, five men are said to have been with the Lord when the Father's testimony came to him, namely Peter, James, John, Moses, and Elijah. And the Lord entered as the fifth to the dead girl and raised her: “For he let no one go in,” it says, “except Peter, James, and the girl's father and mother.” The rich man in Hades said he had five brothers, to whom he asks that one rising from the dead should go. The pool had five porticoes, from which the Lord commanded the paralytic to go home healed. The very form of the cross has five ends and extremities, two in length, two in breadth, and one in the middle, on which the one fixed with nails rests. Each of our hands has five fingers; we also have five senses; and the organs within us can be counted as five: heart, liver, lungs, spleen, and kidneys. Again, the whole man can be divided into this number: head, chest, belly, thighs, feet. The human race passes through five ages: first infant, then boy, then child, after that youth, and then older man. Moses delivered the law to the people in five books. Each tablet he received from God had five commandments. The veil covering the holy of holies had five pillars. And the altar of burnt offering: its height [breadth] was five cubits. Five priests were chosen in the wilderness, namely Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. The robe, the breastpiece, and the rest of the priestly vesture were woven of five things: they had gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and fine linen. And Joshua son of Nun, shutting up five kings of the Amorites in caves, gave their heads to the people to be trampled. Many thousands of other such things, both in this number and in any number one wishes, anyone can gather either from the Scriptures or from the works of nature that lie before us. Yet we do not therefore say that there are five Aeons above the Demiurge, nor do we consecrate the pentad as something divine, nor do we try to confirm unstable things and ravings by this empty labor, nor do we force a creation well fitted together by God to be wrongly turned into types of things that do not exist, and bring in impious and wicked doctrines, whose detection and overthrow is within reach of everyone who has sense. 5 For who would grant them that the year has only 365 days, so that there are twelve months of thirty days as a type of the twelve Aeons, when the type is unlike? For there each Aeon is a thirtieth part of the whole Pleroma, while the month, by their own account, is a twelfth part of the year. If the year were divided into thirty and the month into twelve, it might be thought a type fitting their falsehood. But as it is, on the contrary, their Pleroma is divided into thirty and a part of it into twelve, while here the whole year is divided into twelve parts and a part of it into thirty. So the Savior foolishly made the month a type of the whole Pleroma and the year a type of the Duodecad within the Pleroma; it would have been more fitting to divide the year into thirty, like the whole Pleroma, and the month into twelve, as the Aeons in their Pleroma are. And they divide the whole Pleroma into three, namely the Ogdoad, the Decad, and the Duodecad; but here the year is divided into four, namely spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Nor do the months, which they say are a type of the thirty, have exactly thirty days, but some more and some fewer, because five days are added to them. And the day does not always have exactly twelve hours, but rises from nine to fifteen and falls again from fifteen to nine. So the months were not made of thirty days because of the thirty Aeons, or they would have exactly thirty days; nor again their days, to figure the twelve Aeons by twelve hours, or they too would always have exactly twelve hours. 6 Further, since they call material things the left hand and say that what is on the left necessarily passes into corruption, and that the Savior came to the lost sheep to transfer it to the right hand, that is, to the ninety-nine sheep which are of salvation, which did not perish but stayed in the fold, then, since these are of the left hand, they must agree that the left hand is no support of salvation. And whatever does not likewise have the same number they will be forced to confess to be of the left hand, that is, of corruption. And this name which in Greek is called Agape, having the number ninety-three according to the Greek letters by which reckoning is marked among them, is likewise a support of the left hand; and Aletheia too, having by the same reasoning the number sixty-four, belongs to the side of material things; and they will be forced to confess that absolutely all holy names that do not fill up the number one hundred, but have only the numbers of the left hand, are corruptible and material.

1 If anyone says to this, “What then? Are the giving of names, the choice of the apostles, the Lord's working, and the arrangement of created things empty and a matter of chance?” we shall answer them: Not at all. Rather, all things were made by God with great wisdom and care, clearly fitted and adorned, both the ancient things and whatever his Word has worked in the last times; and they should be connected not with the number thirty but with the underlying subject matter, that is, with reason. Nor should the inquiry about God be drawn from numbers, syllables, and letters. For this is a weak method, because numbers are manifold and various, and because any system devised by anyone up to the present day could draw from them testimonies contrary to the truth, since they can be turned in many directions. Rather, people should fit the numbers themselves, and the things that have been made, to the underlying subject of the truth. For the rule does not come from numbers, but numbers from the rule; nor does God come from the things made, but the things made from God. For all things are from one and the same God. 2 Since created things are various and many, they are well fitted and harmonious with respect to the whole creation, yet, considered one by one, they are contrary to one another and do not agree; just as the sound of a lyre, through the interval between each note, produces one harmonious melody made up of many contrary sounds. The lover of truth, therefore, should not be misled by the interval of each sound, nor suppose that one artist and maker made this and another that, or that one tuned the higher notes, another the lower, and another those in between; but that one and the same made them, to show the wisdom, justice, goodness, and generosity of the whole work. Those who hear the melody should praise and glorify the artist: to admire the tension of some notes, to attend to the slackening of others, to listen to the blending of others between the two, to consider the pattern of others and what each refers to, and to inquire into their causes, never shifting the rule, nor straying from the artist, nor casting away faith in the one God who made all things, nor blaspheming our Creator. 3 And if anyone does not find the cause of all the things that are inquired into, let him reflect that man is infinitely less than God; that he has received grace only in part, and is not yet equal or like to his Maker; and that he cannot have experience and understanding of all things as God has. But as much as he who was made today and received the beginning of his making is less than him who was not made and is always the same, so much is he less than him who made him in knowledge and in searching out the causes of all things. For you are not unmade, O man, nor did you always coexist with God, as his own Word did; but now, receiving the beginning of your making through his surpassing goodness, you learn little by little from the Word the dispensations of God who made you. 4 Keep, therefore, the order of your knowledge, and do not, as one ignorant of good things, pass beyond God himself, for he cannot be passed beyond; nor seek what is above the Demiurge, for you will not find it. For your Artificer cannot be bounded. Nor, as though you had measured the whole of him, and had gone through all his workmanship, and had considered all its depth, height, and length, should you devise another Father above him. For you will not devise one; but thinking against nature you will be foolish, and if you persist in this you will fall into madness, deeming yourself loftier and better than your Maker, as though you could pass beyond his realms.

1 It is better and more profitable, therefore, to be simple and of little learning, and to draw near to God through love, than to think we know much and, having much experience, to be found blasphemers against our own God, fabricating another God the Father. And this is why Paul cried out, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”: not because he blamed true knowledge of God (otherwise he would accuse himself first), but because he knew that some, lifted up under the pretext of knowledge, were falling away from the love of God and for this reason thought themselves perfect, while bringing in an imperfect Demiurge. Cutting down their arrogance over such knowledge, he says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” And there is no greater puffing up than for someone to think himself better and more perfect than he who made and formed him, gave him the breath of life, and granted him his very being. It is better, then, as I said before, for someone to know nothing at all, not even a single cause why any created thing was made, and to believe God and continue in love, than to be puffed up by such knowledge and fall away from the love that gives man life; and better to seek no other knowledge than Jesus Christ the Son of God, who was crucified for us, than to fall into impiety through subtle questions and hair-splitting. 2 For what if someone, a little puffed up by such efforts, because the Lord said, “Even the hairs of your head are all numbered,” should wish to inquire curiously into the number of hairs on each head and to search out the cause why this person has so many hairs and that one so many (for not all have an equal number, but many thousands upon thousands of different numbers are found, since some have larger heads and some smaller, some always have thick hair, others thin, and others very little hair at all), and those who think they have found the number of the hairs should try to bring it as testimony for the sect they have devised? Or again, if someone, because it is said in the Gospel, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without the will of your Father,” should wish to count the sparrows caught every day, everywhere or in each region, and to inquire into the cause why so many were caught yesterday, so many the day before, and so many again today, and should attach the number of sparrows to his own system: would he not wholly deceive himself, and drive those who agree with him into great madness, since people are always eager in such matters to be thought to have discovered something more than their teachers? 3 But what if someone asks us whether every number of all the things that have been made and are being made is known to God, and whether each of them has received, according to his providence, the quantity proper to it; and we agree and confess that nothing whatever of the things that have been made, are being made, and will be made escapes God's knowledge, but that through his providence each of them receives and has received its own character, order, number, and quantity, and that nothing at all has been or is made in vain or by chance, but with great fitness and sublime understanding, and that there is an admirable and truly divine reason which can both discern such things and declare their proper causes; and he, receiving from us such testimony and agreement, goes on to count the sand and the pebbles of the earth, the waves of the sea and the stars of heaven, and to think up causes for the number he supposes he has found: will not such a man justly be called by all who have sense one who labors in vain, deluded and irrational? And the more he busies himself beyond others in such questions, and the more he thinks he discovers beyond others, calling the rest unskilled, simple, and “animal” because they do not take up his so vain labor, the more insane and stupid he is, as if struck by lightning, yielding to God in nothing; but by the knowledge he thinks he has found he changes God himself, and hurls his own opinion above the greatness of the Maker.

1 A sound mind, one that is free from danger, devout, and loving the truth, will readily meditate on the things God has placed in human power and subjected to our knowledge, and will advance in them, making knowledge of them easy by daily study. These are the things that come before our eyes, and whatever is set down openly and unambiguously in the very words of the Scriptures. And therefore the parables should be fitted to things that are not ambiguous. For in this way he who explains them explains without danger, the parables receive a like explanation from all, and the body of truth remains whole, its members fitted alike, and unshaken. But to join things that are not openly spoken nor set before our eyes to explanations of the parables which each person devises as he pleases — in that way no one will have a rule of truth; but as many as there are who explain the parables, so many truths will appear, fighting against one another and laying down doctrines contrary to one another, like the questions of the pagan philosophers. 2 So, by this method, a man will always be seeking and never finding, because he has cast away the very discipline of finding. And when the Bridegroom comes, he who has his lamp unprepared, shining with no brightness of clear light, runs off to those who tear apart the explanations of the parables in darkness, leaving him who by plain preaching freely grants entrance to him, and he is shut out of his bridal chamber. Since, then, the whole of Scripture, both the prophets and the Gospels, can be heard openly and without ambiguity and alike by all (even if not all believe), and proclaims that one and only God, to the exclusion of others, made all things through his Word, whether visible or invisible, heavenly or earthly, in the water or under the earth, as we have shown from the very words of the Scriptures; and since the creation itself in which we are testifies through the things that come into view to this very thing, that there is one who made and governs it: those will appear very dull who shut their eyes to so clear a disclosure and will not see the light of the preaching, but bind themselves fast, and each of them thinks he has found his own God through dark explanations of parables. For that nothing is said openly, in plain words, and without dispute in any Scripture at all about the Father invented by those who hold contrary opinions, they themselves testify, saying that the Savior taught these same things in secret, not to all but to some of the disciples who were able to grasp them, and that they were signified by him through arguments, riddles, and parables to those who understand. And they come to this point, that they say that the God who is preached is one, and the Father who is signified through parables and riddles is another. 3 Since parables can receive many explanations, who among lovers of the truth will not admit that to make assertions about the inquiry concerning God from them, leaving what is certain, indubitable, and true, is the mark of men who throw themselves headlong into danger and are irrational? And is this not to build one's house not on a firm and strong rock set in the open, but on the uncertainty of shifting sand? So such a building is easily overthrown.

1 Having, therefore, the rule itself, the truth, and the testimony about God set in the open, we should not throw away the firm and true knowledge of God by turning aside to one explanation of questions after another. Rather, directing the solution of questions to this standard, we should exercise ourselves in investigating the mystery and dispensation of the God who exists, and grow in the love of him who has done and does so much for us, but never fall away from the conviction by which it is most plainly proclaimed that he alone is truly God and Father, who made this world, formed man, and gave growth in his creation, calling him from his own lesser things to the greater ones that are with him; just as he brings an infant conceived in the womb out into the light of the sun, and stores the wheat in the barn after strengthening it on the stalk. But one and the same is the Demiurge who formed the womb and created the sun; and one and the same the Lord who brought up the stalk, increased and multiplied the wheat, and prepared the barn. 2 If we cannot find solutions for all the things sought in the Scriptures, let us still not seek another God besides him who is. For this is the greatest impiety. We should leave such things to God, who also made us, knowing most rightly that the Scriptures are perfect, since they were spoken by the Word of God and his Spirit; but we, since we are lesser than and later than the Word of God and his Spirit, are to that extent in need of knowledge of his mysteries. And it is no wonder if we experience this in spiritual and heavenly things and in things that must be revealed, since even of the things at our feet (I mean the things in this creation, which we handle and see and which are with us) many have escaped our knowledge, and we commit these very things to God. For he must excel above all. For what if we try to explain the cause of the rising of the Nile? We say much, perhaps persuasive, perhaps not; but what is true, certain, and sure lies with God. The dwelling place of the birds, too, that come to us in springtime and at once withdraw in autumn, escapes our knowledge, though this happens in this world. What can we explain about the ebb and flow of the Ocean, though it is agreed that there is a definite cause? Or what can we declare about the things beyond it, what they are like? Or what can we say about how rains, lightnings, thunders, gatherings of clouds, mists, the outbreak of winds, and the like are produced; or tell of the storehouses of snow and hail and of the things akin to them? What is the preparation of the clouds, what the state of the mist, what the cause by which the moon waxes and wanes, or what the cause of the difference of waters, metals, stones and the like? In all these things we shall indeed be talkative as we search out their causes; but he who makes them, God alone, is truthful. 3 If, then, even among the things of creation some lie with God and others have come into our knowledge, what harm is there if, of the things sought in the Scriptures (since the whole of Scripture is spiritual), we solve some by the grace of God and commend others to God, and that not only in this age but also in the age to come, so that God may always teach and man may always learn the things that are from God? As the Apostle also said that, when the other parts have been done away, these remain: faith, hope, and love. For faith toward our Master remains firm, assuring us that he alone is truly God, and that we should love God truly always, since he alone is Father, and that we should hope ever to receive and learn something more from God, because he is good and has boundless riches, a kingdom without end, and immeasurable instruction. If, then, in the way we have described, we commit some questions to God, we shall both keep our faith and continue without danger; all Scripture given to us by God will be found consistent with us; the parables will agree with what is said plainly, and what is said plainly will explain the parables; and through the many voices of the sayings one harmonious melody will be heard in us, praising in hymns God who made all things. For example, if anyone asks, “What was God doing before he made the world?” we say that this answer lies with God. That this world was made by God as a finished work, receiving a beginning in time, the Scriptures teach us; but what God did before this, no Scripture reveals. This answer, therefore, lies with God; and one should not wish to invent such foolish, undisciplined, and blasphemous emanations and, by thinking you have found the emanation of matter, to reject God himself who made all things. 4 For consider, all you who invent such things: since the Father himself alone is called God, who truly is, whom you call the Demiurge; since the Scriptures know him alone as God; and since the Lord confesses him alone as his own Father and knows no other, as we shall show from his own words — when you call this very one the fruit of a defect and the emission of ignorance, ignorant of the things above him, and whatever else you say about him, consider the greatness of the blasphemy against him who is truly God. You seem to speak gravely and honorably when you say that you believe in God; then, since you cannot at all show another God, you declare this very one in whom you say you believe to be the fruit of a defect and the emission of ignorance. This blindness and foolish talk comes to you from this: that you reserve nothing to God, but wish to announce the births and emissions of God himself, of his Ennoea, of the Word, of Life, and of Christ; and you take these from nowhere else than from human experience. You do not understand that in man, who is a composite living being, one may speak in this way, as we said before, of the mind of man and the thought (ennoea) of man: that from mind comes ennoea, from ennoea enthymesis, from enthymesis logos (but which logos? For among the Greeks the logos that is the ruling faculty which thinks is one thing, and the instrument by which the logos is uttered is another); and that a man is sometimes at rest and silent, and sometimes speaks and acts. But since God is wholly mind, wholly reason, wholly active spirit, wholly light, and always the same and existing alike, as it is both profitable for us to think of God and as we learn from the Scriptures, such affections and divisions will not fittingly be ascribed to him. For the tongue, being fleshly, cannot keep pace with the swiftness of the human mind, because the mind is spiritual; so our word is stifled within and is uttered not all at once, as it was conceived by the mind, but in parts, as the tongue is able to supply it. 5 But God, being wholly Mind and wholly Logos, speaks what he thinks and thinks what he speaks. For his thought is Logos, and Logos is Mind, and the Mind that embraces all things is the Father himself. Whoever, then, speaks of the mind of God and assigns to the mind an emission of its own declares him to be composite, as though God were one thing and the principal Mind another. Likewise again with the Logos: whoever assigns to him the third emission from the Father is ignorant of his greatness, and indeed has separated the Logos far from God. The prophet says of him, “Who will declare his generation?” But you, divining his generation from the Father and transferring to the Word of God the emission of the human word, which is made by the tongue, are justly exposed by yourselves as knowing neither things human nor things divine. 6 But, irrationally puffed up, you boldly claim to know the unspeakable mysteries of God; whereas even the Lord, the very Son of God, granted that the Father alone knows the very day and hour of judgment, saying plainly, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the Son, but the Father alone.” If, then, the Son was not ashamed to refer the knowledge of that day to the Father, but said what is true, neither let us be ashamed to reserve to God the questions that are too great for us. For no one is above his master. If anyone, then, says to us, “How then was the Son emitted from the Father?” we tell him that no one knows that emission, or generation, or utterance, or disclosure, or by whatever name one may call his generation, which is unspeakable: not Valentinus, not Marcion, nor Saturninus, nor Basilides, nor angels, nor archangels, nor principalities, nor powers, but only the Father who begot and the Son who was born. Since, then, his generation is unspeakable, those who strive to declare generations and emissions are not in their right minds, promising to declare what is unspeakable. For that a word is emitted from thought and mind, all men certainly know. Those who devised emissions, then, have found nothing great, nor a hidden mystery, if they have transferred what everyone understands to the only-begotten Word of God; and him whom they call unspeakable and unnameable they declare, as if they themselves had been the midwives, giving the emission and generation of his first generation, likening him to the word of men that is emitted. 7 If we say the same about the substance of matter too, that God brought it into being, we will not be mistaken. For we have learned from the Scriptures that God holds the primacy over all things. But no Scripture explains where or how He brought it into being, and we should not speculate, conjecturing endless things about God from our own opinions; this knowledge must be left to God. Just as the Lord leaves certain things to the Father (and what is the reason why he says that the day and hour are known to no one else but the Father alone?), so too the reason why, when all things were made by God, some transgressed and withdrew from subjection to God, while others, indeed most, persevered and persevere in subjection to him who made them, and of what nature are those that transgressed and of what nature those that persevere — this we must leave to God and his Word, to whom alone he said, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.” But we are still living on earth and not yet sitting beside his throne. For though the Spirit of the Savior that is in him searches all things, even the depths of God, yet as for us, there are varieties of gifts, varieties of ministries, and varieties of workings; and we on earth, as Paul also says, know in part and prophesy in part. As, then, we know in part, so concerning all questions we must yield to him who gives us grace in part. That eternal fire has been prepared for transgressors, both the Lord said plainly and the rest of the Scriptures show. And that God foreknew that this would happen, the Scriptures likewise show, since he prepared from the beginning eternal fire for those who were to transgress; but the very cause of the nature of the transgressors no Scripture has reported, no apostle has said, and the Lord has not taught. This knowledge, then, must be left to God, as the Lord too leaves that of the hour and the day; and we must not run into such danger as to leave nothing to God, although we receive grace only in part. But when we seek things above us and beyond our reach, we must not come to such audacity as to lay open God and things not yet discovered, as though we had already found out, through the empty talk of emissions, God himself the Maker of all things, and assert that he had his substance from defect and ignorance, and so fabricate an impious argument against God. 8 Then, too, they have no testimony for their fiction, which was lately invented by them; but they try to make that fabulous narrative which they have contrived stand, sometimes by any numbers whatever, sometimes by syllables, occasionally by names, at times by the letters contained in letters, and sometimes by parables not rightly explained, or by certain conjectures. For if anyone seeks the reason why the Father, who shares all things with the Son, was declared by the Lord to be the only one who knows the hour and the day, he will not find at present any other reason more fitting, more becoming, or safer than this: that, since the Lord is the only true teacher, we may learn through him that the Father is above all. For “the Father,” he says, “is greater than I.” And so the Father has been declared by our Lord to be preeminent in knowledge too, to this end, that we also, as long as we are in the form of this world, may leave perfect knowledge and such questions to God, and so that, in trying to explore the Father’s depths, we do not fall into such great danger as to ask whether there is another God above God. 9 But if anyone who loves contention contradicts what we have said, and what the Apostle reported, that we know in part and prophesy in part, and thinks that he has grasped the knowledge of all things not in part but universally — being some Valentinus, or Ptolemaeus, or Basilides, or one of those who say they have searched out the depths of God — let him not adorn himself with empty boasting and glory that he has known more than the rest about things that are invisible or cannot be shown; but let him diligently search out, and, learning from the Father, declare to us the causes of the things in this world which we do not know — for example, the number of hairs on his own head, the sparrows caught every day, and the other things we have not foreseen — so that we may believe him about greater things too. But if those who are “perfect” do not yet know the things in their hands, at their feet, before their eyes, and on the earth, and especially the arrangement of the hairs of their own heads, how shall we believe them about spiritual and supercelestial things, and about the things which with empty persuasion they affirm to be above God? So much, then, has been said by us about numbers, names, and syllables, about questions concerning things above us, and about their improper explanation of the parables, since more can be said by you yourself.

1 Let us return to the rest of their argument. They say that at the consummation their Mother will go back within the Pleroma and receive her bridegroom, the Savior; that they themselves, since they say they are spiritual, will be stripped of their souls, become intellectual spirits, and be brides of the spiritual angels; that the Demiurge, since they call him animal, will pass into the Mother's place; and that the souls of the righteous will rest in the place of the Middle, as animal beings. Saying that like is gathered to like, spiritual to spiritual, while material things remain among material things, they lay down things that contradict themselves, saying that souls pass into the Middle to their like no longer because of their substance but because of their conduct, since they say that the souls of the righteous pass there while those of the wicked remain in the fire. For if all souls pass into refreshment because of their substance, and all belong to the Middle by the very fact that they are souls, since they are of the same substance, then believing is superfluous, and the descent of the Savior superfluous as well. But if it is because of righteousness, then it is no longer because they are souls but because they are righteous. And if souls that would have perished had they not been righteous are saved by righteousness, righteousness is able to save bodies too; for why will it not save those which also shared in righteousness? For if nature and substance save, all souls will be saved; but if righteousness and faith save, why should they not save the bodies which, together with the souls, likewise begin to pass into corruption? For righteousness will appear either powerless or unjust in such a case, if it saves some things because of their sharing in it, but not others. 2 For it is plain that the works of righteousness are accomplished in bodies. Either, then, all souls will necessarily pass into the place of the Middle, and there is no judgment anywhere; or the bodies too, which shared in righteousness, will obtain the place of refreshment together with the souls which likewise shared in it, if indeed righteousness is able to bring there the things that shared in it. And then the doctrine of the resurrection of bodies, which we believe, will emerge as true and sure: that God, raising our mortal bodies that kept righteousness, will make them incorrupt and immortal. For God is better than nature, having in himself the will, because he is good; the power, because he is mighty; and the accomplishment, because he is rich and perfect. 3 But they contradict themselves in everything, laying down that not all souls pass into the Middle, but only those of the righteous. For they say that three kinds were emitted by the Mother naturally and according to substance: first, what came from perplexity, weariness, and fear, which is matter; second, what came from impulse, which is the animal; and what she gave birth to after seeing the angels who are about Christ, which is the spiritual. If, then, what she gave birth to enters wholly within the Pleroma because it is spiritual, and what is material remains below because it is material and will be consumed entirely when the fire within it blazes up, why will the animal not pass wholly into the place of the Middle, into which they also send the Demiurge? And what is it of theirs that will pass within the Pleroma? For they say that souls remain in the Middle, while bodies, because they have a material substance, are dissolved into matter and burned by the fire that is in it; and when their body has perished and the soul remains in the Middle, nothing of the man will be left to pass within the Pleroma. For the mind of man, his understanding, thought, mental intention, and the like are nothing other than the soul; they are movements and operations of the soul itself, having no substance without the soul. What, then, will there still be of theirs to pass into the Pleroma? For they themselves too, in so far as they are souls, remain in the Middle, and in so far as they are body, will burn with the rest of matter.

1 This being so, these senseless people say that they ascend above the Demiurge. In so far as they declare themselves better than that God who made and adorned the heavens, the earth, the seas, and all that is in them, and wish to be spiritual themselves, dishonoring him, though they are carnal because of their great impiety; and in saying that he who makes his angels spirits, who is clothed with light as with a garment, who holds as it were in his hand the circle of the earth, before whom its inhabitants are counted as locusts, the Demiurge and Lord of all spiritual substance, is animal: they show undoubtedly and truly their own madness, and, as if truly struck by thunder, more than the Giants told of in the fables, they raise their opinions against God, swollen with vain presumption and unstable glory — people for whom all the hellebore on earth would not suffice to purge them, so that they might vomit up their great folly. 2 For the better must be shown by works. From what, then, do they show themselves better than the Demiurge (that we too, from the necessity of the argument, may stoop to impiety by comparing God with madmen, and descending into their argumentation, often refuting them by their own doctrines — but may God be merciful to us, for we say these things not comparing them with him, but refuting and overturning their madness), they at whom many senseless people marvel, as though they could learn from them something more than the truth itself? And the saying that is written, “Seek, and you will find,” they interpret as said to this end, that they might find themselves above the Demiurge, calling themselves greater and better than God, themselves spiritual and the Demiurge animal; and for this reason they say that they ascend above God, and that they pass within the Pleroma while God remains in the place of the Middle. Let them show by works, then, that they are better than the Demiurge; for the better must be shown not by what is said but by what is. 3 What work, then, will they point to as made through them by the Savior or by their Mother, greater, more splendid, or more reasonable than the things made by him who arranged all these? What heavens have they established? What earth have they made firm? What stars have they sent out? What luminaries have they made to shine? In what orbits have they bridled them? Or what rains, frosts, or snows, suited to each season and each region, have they brought upon the earth? And what heat and drought have they set against them in turn? What rivers have they made to overflow? What springs have they produced? With what flowers and trees have they adorned the world under heaven? Or what multitude of living creatures have they formed, some rational and some irrational, all adorned with beauty? And who could enumerate one by one all the other things established by the power of God and governed by his wisdom, or search out the greatness of the wisdom of God who made them? And what of the things above heaven, which do not pass away, how great they are: angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, powers without number? Against which one of these works, then, do they set themselves up? What such thing can they show done through themselves or by themselves, when they themselves are his work and formation? For whether it was the Savior or their Mother (to use their own terms, refuting them as liars by their own terms) who used him, as they say, to make an image of the things within the Pleroma and of the whole vision she saw around the Savior, she used him as better and more suited to accomplishing her will through him; for she did not fashion the images of such great things through an inferior but through a better one. 4 For they themselves, as they say, were then in existence as a spiritual conception after the vision of those who are set as attendants around Pandora. And they remained idle, the Mother accomplishing nothing through them — or, through the Savior, a useless conception, fit for nothing; for nothing appears to have been made through them. But the God who according to them was emitted, though inferior to them by their argument (for they will have him to be animal), was the worker of all things, effective and fit, so that the images of all things came to be through him; and not only these visible things but also the invisible ones, angels, archangels, dominions, powers, and virtues: all were made through him, evidently as through a better one, able to serve her will. But the Mother appears to have made nothing through them, as they themselves confess; so that one may justly consider them the miscarriage of their Mother, who gave birth badly. For no midwives delivered her, and therefore they were cast out like a miscarriage, useless for anything, made for no work of their Mother. And they call themselves better than him through whom so many and such great things were made and arranged, when even by their own argument they are found far inferior. 5 It is as if there were two working tools or two instruments, one of which the artist always has in his hands and in use, and through it makes whatever he wishes and displays his art and wisdom, while the other remains idle, unused, and without operation, the artist plainly making nothing at all through it and using it for no action; and then someone were to say that this useless, idle, unused one was better and of more worth than the one he uses in his work, through which the artist himself is glorified: such a person would justly be judged dull and not in his right mind. So too these people, who call themselves spiritual and better and the Demiurge animal, and say that for this reason they ascend and penetrate within the Pleroma to their husbands (for they are females, as they themselves confess), while God, being inferior, remains for this reason in the Middle — and who bring no proof of this, for he who is better is shown by works, and all the works were made by the Demiurge, while they can show nothing worthy of reason made through themselves — are mad with the utmost and incurable madness. 6 But if they insist on saying that whatever things are material, such as the heaven and the whole world contained beneath it, were made by the Demiurge, but whatever things are more spiritual than these, the things above heaven, such as principalities, powers, angels, archangels, dominions, and virtues, were made through the spiritual offspring, which they say they themselves are: first, we have shown from the Lord's Scriptures that all the things mentioned, visible and invisible, were made by one God. For these people are not more trustworthy than the Scriptures; nor should we abandon the oracles of the Lord, of Moses, and of the other prophets who proclaimed the truth, and believe these men, who say nothing sound but rave unstable things. Then, even if the things above the heavens were made through them, let them tell us what the nature of the invisible things is, recount the number of the angels and the order of the archangels, show the mysteries of the thrones, and teach the differences between dominions, principalities, powers, and virtues. But they cannot say; therefore these things were not made through them. But if these were made by the Demiurge, as indeed they were, and they are spiritual and holy, then he who made spiritual things is not animal, and their great blasphemy is undone. 7 For that there are spiritual creations in the heavens, all the Scriptures proclaim; and Paul too bears witness that there are spiritual things, indicating that he was caught up to the third heaven, and again that he was carried into paradise and heard unspeakable words which it is not permitted for a man to speak. But what did it profit him, either his entrance into paradise or his being taken up to the third heaven, since all those things are under the power of the Demiurge, if he was beginning to become a beholder and hearer of the mysteries said to be above the Demiurge, as some dare to say? For if he was learning what is above the Demiurge, he would not have stayed in the regions of the Demiurge, and that without even surveying them wholly (for, by their account, the fourth heaven still remained for him, if he was to approach the Demiurge and see the sevenfold order beneath him); but he would perhaps have been received even as far as the Middle, that is, to the Mother, to learn from her the things within the Pleroma. For his inner man, which also spoke in him, being invisible, as they say, could have reached not only the third heaven but even their Mother. For if they say that they themselves, that is, their own man, at once pass beyond the Demiurge and go off to the Mother, much more would this have happened to the man of the Apostle; for the Demiurge would not have prevented him, since, as they say, he is himself already subject to the Savior. And if he had tried to prevent him, it would have been to no purpose; for he cannot be stronger than the providence of the Father, and that when the inner man is said to be invisible even to the Demiurge. But since the Apostle recounted his being taken up as far as the third heaven as something great and splendid, these people certainly do not ascend above the seventh heaven; for they are not better than the Apostle. If they say they are superior, they will be refuted by their works; for they have boasted of nothing of the kind. And for this reason he added, “Whether in the body or out of the body, God knows”: so that the body might not be thought to share in that vision, as if it too were to share in what he had seen and heard; nor again might anyone say that he was not taken up higher because of the weight of the body. Rather, so far it is permitted, even without the body, to see spiritual mysteries, which are the works of God, who made the heavens and the earth, formed man, and placed him in paradise, so that those may see them who, like the Apostle, are very perfect in the love of God. 8 This one, therefore, also made the spiritual things, of which the Apostle became a beholder as far as the third heaven, and the unspeakable words which it is not permitted for a man to speak, since they are spiritual; and he himself grants them to the worthy as he wills, for paradise is his; and he is truly the Spirit of God, and not an animal Demiurge; otherwise he would never have made spiritual things. But if he is animal, let them tell us by whom the spiritual things were made. Nor can they show that anything was made through the offspring of their Mother, which they say they themselves are. For they cannot make not only anything spiritual, but not even a fly or a gnat or any such small and contemptible creature, except by the way in which, from the beginning, living creatures have been and are produced naturally by God through the sowing of seed in those of the same kind. Nor was anything made by the Mother alone; they say that this Demiurge was emitted by her and is Lord of all the work. And him who is Demiurge and Lord of all the work they call animal, but themselves spiritual — they who are makers or lords of no work, not only of things outside them but not even of their own bodies. Indeed, they often suffer many things in the body against their will, though they call themselves spiritual and better than the Demiurge. 9 Justly, then, are they refuted by us as having strayed far away from the truth. For if the Savior made through this one the things that were made, he is shown to be not inferior to them but better, since he is found to be the maker of these very people; for they too are among the things that were made. How, then, does it follow that they are spiritual, while he through whom they were made is animal? Or if (which alone is true, as we have shown by very many and very clear proofs) he of himself, freely and by his own power, made, arranged, and completed all things, and his will is the substance of all things, then he alone is found to be God, who made all things, alone almighty, and alone Father, founding and making all things, visible and invisible, perceptible and imperceptible, heavenly and earthly, by the Word of his power; and he fitted and arranged all things by his wisdom, and contains all things, but he alone can be contained by no one. He is the fashioner, he the founder, he the discoverer, he the maker, he the Lord of all; and there is none besides him or above him: neither the Mother whom they falsely ascribe to him, nor another God, whom Marcion invented, nor a Pleroma of thirty Aeons, which has been shown to be empty, nor Bythus, nor Proarche, nor their heavens, nor the virginal light, nor the unnameable Aeon, nor anything at all of the things raved about by these and by all the heretics. But there is one only God, the fashioner, he who is above every principality, power, dominion, and virtue: he is Father, he is God, he founder, he maker, he fashioner, who made these things by himself, that is, by his Word and his Wisdom, the heaven and the earth and the seas and all that is in them. He is just, he is good; he it is who formed man, planted paradise, fashioned the world, brought the flood, and saved Noah; he is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of the living, whom the law announces, the prophets proclaim, Christ reveals, the apostles hand down, and the church believes. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: through his Word, who is his Son, through him he is revealed and made manifest to all to whom he is revealed; for those know him to whom the Son has revealed him. And the Son, always coexisting with the Father, of old and from the beginning always reveals the Father to angels, archangels, powers, virtues, and all to whom God wills to reveal him.

1 So, with the followers of Valentinus destroyed, the whole multitude of heretics is overthrown. For all that we have said against their Pleroma and concerning the things outside it — showing that the Father of all would be enclosed and circumscribed by what is outside him (if indeed there is anything outside him); that there would then necessarily be many Fathers, many Pleromas, and many fabrications of worlds on every side, beginning from some and ending at others; that all of them, remaining in their own domains, would not concern themselves with the others, in whom they have no share or fellowship at all; and that none would be God of all, the title “Almighty” being a mere name — all this will likewise fit against the followers of Marcion, Simon, and Menander, or whoever else in the same way divides from the Father the creation to which we belong. And all that we said, again, against those who say that the Father of all contains all things, but that the creation to which we belong was made not by him but by some other Power, or by angels ignorant of the Propator, circumscribed like a center in the immense greatness of the universe, like a stain on a cloak — when we showed that it is not probable that anyone other than the Father of all made the creation to which we belong — the same will be said against the followers of Saturninus, Basilides, Carpocrates, and the rest of the Gnostics, who say the same things in a similar way. What has been said about the emissions, the Aeons, the diminution, and the instability of their Mother likewise overthrows Basilides and all who are falsely called Gnostics, who say the same things under other names, but even more than these transfer things foreign to the truth to the pattern of their own doctrine. And whatever we said about numbers will also be said against all who bend the things of the truth to such a form. And whatever has been said about the Demiurge, showing that he alone is God and Father of all, and whatever will yet be said in the following books, I say against all heretics. The milder and more humane among them you will turn back and put to shame, so that they no longer blaspheme their Founder, Maker, Nourisher, and Lord, nor invent his origin from defect and ignorance; but the fierce, frightful, and irrational you will drive far from you, so as no longer to endure their wordiness. 2 Moreover, the followers of Simon and Carpocrates are refuted by this, and any others who are said to work miracles: they do what they do not by the power of God, nor in truth, nor as benefits to people, but for ruin and error, through magical illusions and every kind of fraud, harming more than helping those who believe them, in that they lead them astray. For they cannot give sight to the blind or hearing to the deaf, nor drive out all demons — except those sent in by themselves, if they do even this — nor cure the weak, the lame, the paralyzed, or those afflicted in some other part of the body, as often happens through bodily infirmity, nor restore good health from infirmities that come from outside. And so far are they from raising the dead — as the Lord raised them, and the apostles by prayer, and as in the brotherhood very often, because of some necessity, when the whole church of the place asked with fasting and much supplication, the spirit of the dead man returned and the man was granted to the prayers of the saints — that they do not even believe this can happen at all, and hold that the resurrection from the dead is the knowledge of what they call the truth. 3 Since, then, among them there is error and seduction, and magical illusion is impiously practised before the eyes of men, but in the Church compassion, mercy, steadfastness, and truth for the help of people are practised not only without fee and freely, but we ourselves even spend our own means for people's salvation, and those who are cured, very often lacking what they need, receive it from us: truly by this mark too they are proved to be wholly strangers to the divine nature, to the kindness of God, and to spiritual power, but filled in every way with every kind of fraud, apostate inspiration, demonic working, and the phantasms of idolatry. They are the forerunners of that dragon who by such a phantasm will make a third part of the stars fall away with his tail and will cast them to the earth. We must shun them as we shun him; and the greater the phantasms by which they are said to work, the more closely we must watch them, as having received a greater spirit of wickedness. If anyone observes this prophecy and the daily practice of their way of life, he will find that their way of life is one and the same as that of the demons.

1 This impious opinion of theirs about conduct, which says that they must come to be in all works, even evil ones of any kind, is refuted by the teaching of the Lord. With him not only is the one who commits adultery cast out, but also the one who wishes to commit adultery; and not only will the one who kills be liable for the killing to condemnation, but also the one who is angry with his brother without cause. He commanded not only not to hate people but even to love enemies; and directed not only not to swear falsely but not even to swear; and not only not to speak evil of one's neighbors but not even to call anyone “Raca” and “fool,” otherwise such people are liable to the fire of Gehenna; and not only not to strike, but even when struck to offer the other cheek as well; and not only not to deny others what is theirs, but even if one's own things are taken away, not to demand them back; and not only not to harm one's neighbors or do them any evil, but even when ill-treated to be patient, to show kindness toward them, and to pray for them, so that by repenting they may be saved; so that we imitate in nothing the insolence, lust, and pride of others. Since, then, he whom these people boast of as their master, and of whom they say that he had a soul much better and stronger than the rest, commanded with great care that some things be done as good and excellent, and that one abstain from others, not only from the deeds but even from the thoughts that lead to the deeds, as evil, harmful, and wicked: how are they not put to shame, when they call such a master stronger and better than the rest, and then plainly prescribe things contrary to his teaching? And if there were nothing evil, or again good, but some things were thought unjust and others just by human opinion alone, he would certainly not have said in his teaching (dogmatizans, that is, teaching): “But the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father,” and that he will send the unrighteous, and those who do not do the works of righteousness, into eternal fire, where their worm will not die and the fire will not be quenched. 2 Again, they say that they must come to be in every work and every way of life, so that, if possible, accomplishing everything in one sojourn of life, they may pass over to perfection; yet they are nowhere found attempting to do the things that belong to virtue, which are laborious, glorious, and skilled, and which all approve as good. For if one must go through every work and every activity, they should first learn all the arts, whatever they are, whether carried out in reasoning or in works, whether taught through self-restraint or acquired by labor, practice, and perseverance: for example, every kind of music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and all that are occupied with reasoning; further, all of medicine, the knowledge of herbs, and the skills developed for human health; painting, sculpture, bronze-work, marble-work, and the like; and besides these every kind of farming, veterinary skill, herding, and the crafts of artisans, which are said to run through all the arts; those concerned with the sea, those devoted to bodily training, hunting, the military and royal arts, and as many others as there are — of which they could not learn a tenth or a thousandth part even if they labored their whole life. Yet they try to learn none of these, they who say they must come to be in every work; but turning aside to pleasures, lust, and shameful deeds, they are judged by themselves according to their own doctrine; for since they lack all the things mentioned, they will go to the chastisement of fire. Imitating the philosophy of Epicurus and the indifference of the Cynics, they boast of Jesus as their master, who turned his disciples away not only from evil works but even from words and thoughts, as we have shown. 3 And though they say that they have souls from the same circuit as Jesus and are like him, and sometimes even better, produced for the works which he did for the benefit and strengthening of people, they are found to accomplish nothing of the kind, nothing similar, nothing that could in any respect come into comparison. And if they do anything, working by magic, as we said, they try to deceive the senseless fraudulently, bringing no fruit or benefit to those on whom they say they work miracles; but bringing in beardless boys, deluding the eyes, and showing phantasms that cease at once and do not last even a drop of time, they are shown to be like not Jesus our Lord but Simon the magician. And because it is certain that the Lord rose from the dead on the third day, showed himself to the disciples, and was received into heaven as they watched, they, who die and do not rise again nor show themselves to anyone, are proved to have souls in no way like that of Jesus. 4 But if they say that the Lord too did such things by phantasms, we shall bring them back to the prophetic writings and show from them that all things concerning him were both foretold in this way and done most surely, and that he alone is the Son of God. Therefore also in his name those who are truly his disciples, receiving grace from him, perform works for the benefit of other people, as each has received the gift from him. For some drive out demons surely and truly, so that very often those who have been cleansed from the wicked spirits themselves believe and are in the church; others have foreknowledge of things to come, visions, and prophetic utterances; others heal those who suffer from some sickness by the laying on of hands and restore them to health. Even, as we have said, dead people have been raised and have remained with us for many years. And what more? It is not possible to tell the number of the gifts which the church throughout the whole world receives from God in the name of Christ Jesus, crucified under Pontius Pilate, and exercises every day for the help of the nations, neither deceiving anyone nor taking money from him. For as she has received freely from God, so freely she also ministers. 5 Nor does she do anything by invocations of angels, nor by incantations, nor by any other wicked curiosity; but, directing her prayers cleanly, purely, and openly to the Lord who made all things, and calling on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, she has performed miracles for people's benefit and not for their deception. If, then, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ even now confers benefits, and heals most surely and truly all everywhere who believe in him — and not the name of Simon, or Menander, or Carpocrates, or of anyone else — it is plain that he, having become man, lived with his own handiwork and truly did all things by the power of God, according to the good pleasure of the Father of all, as the prophets foretold. What these things were will be told in the account of the proofs from the prophetic writings.

1 We may overturn their transmigration from body to body by the fact that souls remember nothing at all of what happened before. For if they were sent out for this purpose, to come to be in every activity, they should remember what was done before, in order to fill up what was lacking, and not, turning continually about the same things, labor miserably. For the mingling with a body could not wholly extinguish all their memory and contemplation of what they had had before, especially since they came for this very purpose. For just as now, when the body is asleep and at rest, whatever the soul sees by itself and does in a vision, it remembers many of these things and shares them with the body; and sometimes even after a very long time a person, awake, reports whatever he saw in a dream: so it would surely remember also the things it did before it came into this body. For if what was seen in a very short time, or conceived in a vision, by the soul alone in a dream, is remembered after it has been mingled with the body and spread through every member, much more would it remember the things among which it dwelt for so long a time and through the whole age of its past life. 2 In answer to this, Plato, that ancient Athenian, who was also the first to introduce this opinion, tried to account for it by a cup, thinking that by this he escaped such a difficulty. He offered no proof, but answered dogmatically that souls entering this life are made to drink forgetfulness by the demon who presides over the entrance, before they enter bodies. And he did not notice that he had fallen into another, greater difficulty. For if the cup of forgetfulness, once it has been drunk, can blot out the memory of all deeds, how do you know this very thing, O Plato, now that your soul is in the body: that before it entered the body it was given the drug of forgetfulness to drink by the demon? For if you remember the demon, the cup, and the entrance, you should know the rest too; but if you do not know the rest, then neither is the demon true, nor the cup of forgetfulness skillfully contrived. 3 Against those who say that the body itself is the drug of forgetfulness, this will be the answer: How, then, does the soul itself remember whatever it sees by itself, both in dreams and in thought or mental intention, while the body is at rest, and report it to those near it? Indeed, the soul existing in the body would not even remember what it once came to know through the eyes or the hearing, if the body were forgetfulness; but as soon as the eye was away from what it had seen, the memory of these things too would surely be taken away. For, existing in forgetfulness itself, the soul could know nothing except only what it saw at the present moment. And how would it learn divine things and remember them while existing in the body, if, as they say, the body itself is forgetfulness? Indeed the prophets too, while they were on earth, themselves remembered, when they had returned to their human state, whatever they saw or heard spiritually in visions of heavenly things, and reported them to others; and the body did not make the soul forget what was seen spiritually, but the soul teaches the body and shares with it the spiritual vision granted to it. 4 For the body is not stronger than the soul, since it is breathed into, given life, increased, and articulated by the soul; rather, the soul possesses and rules the body. The soul is hindered in its swiftness only as far as the body shares in its movement, but it does not lose its knowledge. For the body is like an instrument, while the soul holds the place of the artist's reason. Just as an artist quickly conceives a work by himself, but carries it out more slowly in the instrument because of the immobility of the material, and the swiftness of his mind, mingled with the slowness of the instrument, produces a moderated operation: so the soul too, sharing in its body, is hindered a little, its swiftness being mingled with the body's slowness; but it does not wholly lose its powers. Rather, while sharing its life, as it were, with the body, it does not itself cease to live. So too, sharing other things with the body, it loses neither the knowledge of them nor the memory of what it has seen. 5 If, then, the soul remembers nothing of what is past but receives here the knowledge of what exists, it was never in other bodies, nor did it do things it does not even recognize, nor did it know things it does not even see. But as each of us receives his own body through the skill of God, so he also has his own soul. For God is not so poor or needy as not to give each body its own soul, as he also gives it its own character. And therefore, when the number which he himself determined beforehand is fulfilled, all who are written down for life will rise, having their own bodies, their own souls, and their own spirits, in which they pleased God. But those who deserve punishment will go away into it, they too having their own souls and their own bodies, in which they stood apart from God's goodness. And both will then cease to beget and to be begotten, to marry and to be given in marriage, so that the full number of the human race, measured out and predetermined by God, the structure or fitting-together of the perfected, may preserve the Father's design.

1 The Lord has taught most fully not only that souls continue to exist, and do not pass from body to body, but also that they keep the same character of the body to which they were fitted, and that they remember the deeds they did here and from which they have ceased. He taught it in the account written about the rich man and that Lazarus who was refreshed in Abraham’s embrace; in it he says that the rich man knew Lazarus after death, and Abraham likewise; and that each of them remained in his own station; and that the rich man asked for Lazarus to be sent to help him, Lazarus with whom he had not shared even the crumbs from his table; and in the answer of Abraham, who knew not only what concerned himself but also what concerned the rich man, and who directed those who would not wish to come to that place of punishment to heed Moses and the prophets and to receive the preaching of him who would rise from the dead. For by these things it is most plainly declared that souls continue to exist; that they do not pass from body to body; that they have the shape of a man, so as even to be recognized, and remember the things here; that the prophetic gift too was present to Abraham; and that each kind receives a fitting dwelling even before the judgment. 2 If some say at this point that souls which began to exist only a little while ago cannot continue for a long time, but must either be unbegotten in order to be immortal or, if they received a beginning of generation, die with the body itself, let them learn that God alone, who is Lord of all, is without beginning and without end, truly and always the same and existing in the same way. But all things that are from him, whatever have been made and are made, receive their own beginning of generation, and for this reason are inferior to him who made them, since they are not unbegotten; yet they continue and extend into the length of the ages according to the will of God their Maker, so that he grants them both to come to be thus at the beginning and afterwards to exist. 3 For just as the heaven above us, the firmament, the sun, the moon, the other stars, and all their adornments, though they did not exist before, were made and continue for a long time according to the will of God, so anyone who thinks thus about souls and spirits, and indeed about all things that have been made, will not err at all; since all things that have been made have a beginning of their making, but continue as long as God wills them to exist and to continue. The prophetic Spirit also testifies to these views, saying, “For he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created. He established them for ever, and for ever and ever.” And again, of man who is to be saved, he says, “He asked life of you, and you gave him length of days for ever and ever”: as though the Father of all grants continuance for ever and ever to those who are saved. For life is not from us nor from our nature, but is given according to the grace of God. And therefore he who keeps the gift of life and gives thanks to him who granted it will also receive length of days for ever and ever. But he who casts it away and proves ungrateful to his Maker for having been made, and does not acknowledge him who grants it, deprives himself of continuance for ever and ever. And therefore the Lord said to those who were ungrateful toward him, “If you have not been faithful in what is little, who will give you what is great?” meaning that those who in the brief life of this time were ungrateful to him who granted it will justly not receive from him length of days for ever and ever. 4 And just as the animal body is not itself the soul but shares in the soul as long as God wills, so the soul itself is not life but shares in the life granted to it by God. So the prophetic word says of the first-formed man, “He became a living soul,” teaching us that the soul became living by participation in life, so that the soul is understood separately and the life that is in it separately. Since God, then, grants life and perpetual continuance, it is possible for souls which at first did not exist thereafter to continue, since God has willed them both to exist and to subsist. For the will of God must govern and rule in all things, and all other things must yield to it, be subject to it, and be given over to its service. So much, then, has been said about the making and continuance of the soul.

1 Basilides too, besides what has been said, will be compelled by his own rule to say not only that 365 heavens were made in succession, one from another, but that an immense and innumerable multitude of heavens has always been made, is being made, and will be made, and that such a fabrication of heavens never ceases. For if from the outflow of the first the second heaven was made after its likeness, and from the second the third, and likewise all the rest that follow, then from this one of ours, which he calls the last, another like it must necessarily be made from its outflow, and from that again another; and neither the outflow of those already made nor the making of heavens will ever cease, but they will run into an immense number of heavens, not a predetermined one. 2 The rest, who are falsely called Gnostics and who say that the prophets uttered their prophecies from different gods, will easily be overthrown by this: that all the prophets proclaimed one God and Lord, the very Maker of heaven and earth and all that is in them, and that they signified the coming of his Son, as we shall show from the Scriptures themselves in the following books. 3 But if some object the different expressions in the Hebrew language set down in the Scriptures, such as Sabaoth, Eloe, Adonai, and whatever others there are of this kind, laboring to show from them different powers and gods, let them learn that all such terms are significations and titles of one and the same Being. For what is called Eloe means God in the Jewish tongue; and Elos indeed and Eloeuth in the Hebrew language mean “that which contains all things.” Adonai sometimes means “nameable and wonderful,” but sometimes, with the letter delta doubled and with an aspiration, as Addonai, “he who bounds and separates the earth from the water,” so that the water does not afterwards rise over it. Likewise Sabaōth, written with the Greek omega in the last syllable, means “voluntary,” but written with the Greek omicron, as Sabaoth, it signifies the first heaven. Jaōth, with the last syllable long and aspirated, signifies a predetermined measure; but when it is shortened with the Greek omicron, as Jaoth, it means him who puts evils to flight. And all the rest are names of one and the same: as (in Latin) Lord of powers, Father of all, God almighty, Most High, Lord of the heavens, Creator, Fabricator, and the like. These are not titles of one being and another, but names and designations of one and the same, by which the one God and Father is shown, who contains all things and grants to all things that they exist. 4 That the preaching of the apostles, the authoritative teaching of the Lord, the announcement of the prophets, the dictation of the apostles, and the ministry of the lawgiving agree with what we have said — all praising one and the same God and Father of all, and not one and another, nor one who has his substance from different gods or powers; but that all things are from one and the same Father (who nevertheless adapts them to the natures and disposition of the underlying materials), and that things visible and invisible, and absolutely everything that has been made, were made neither by angels nor by any other power, but by God the Father alone — I think has been sufficiently shown, and by these many arguments one God the Father, the Maker of all, has been shown. But so that we are not thought to avoid the proof from the Lord's Scriptures, since the Scriptures themselves proclaim this very thing much more plainly and clearly, at least to those who do not attend to them perversely, we will devote a book of its own to them, following these Scriptures, and present proofs from the divine Scriptures before all who love the truth.