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TERTULLIAN.

Ante-Nicene / Post-Nicene Fathers · 427 sections

1. section3.chapter6

   He declares that God’s attribute is still safe to Him, of being the only God, and the First, and the Author of all things, and the Lord of all things, and being incomparable to any—qualities which he straightway ascribes to Matter also. He is God, to be sure. God shall also attest the same; but He has also sworn sometimes by Himself, that there is no other God like Him.6188 Hermogenes, however, will make Him a liar. For Matter will be such a God as He—being unmade, unborn, without beginning, and without end. God will say, “I am the first!”6189 Yet how is He the first, when Matter is co-eternal with Him? Between coeternals and contemporaries there is no sequence of rank.6190 Is then, Matter also the first? “I,” says the Lord, “have stretched out the heavens alone.”6191 But indeed He was not alone, when that likewise stretched them out, of which He made the expanse. When he asserts the position that Matter was eternal, without any encroachment on the condition of God, let him see to it that we do not in ridicule turn the tables on him, that God similarly was eternal without any encroachment on the condition of Matter—the condition of Both being still common to Them. The position, therefore, remains unimpugned6192 both in the case of Matter, that it did itself exist, only along with God; and that God existed alone, but with Matter. It also was first with God, as God, too, was first with it; it, however, is not comparable with God, as God, too, is not to be compared with it; with God also it was the Author (of all things), and with God their Sovereign. In this way he proposes that God has something, and yet not the whole, of Matter. For Him, accordingly, Hermogenes has reserved nothing which he had not equally conferred on Matter, so that it is not Matter which is compared with God, but rather God who is compared with Matter. Now, inasmuch as those qualities which we claim as peculiar to God—to have always existed, without a beginning, without an end, and to have been the First, and Alone, and the Author of all things—are also com- patible to Matter, I want to know what property Matter possesses different and alien from God, and hereby special to itself, by reason of which it is incapable of being compared with God? That Being, in which occur6193 all the properties of God, is sufficiently predetermined without any further comparison.

2. section3.chapter7

   When he contends that matter is less than God, and inferior to Him, and therefore diverse from Him, and for the same reason not a fit subject of comparison with Him, who is a greater and superior Being, I meet him with this prescription, that what is eternal and unborn is incapable of any diminution and inferiority, because it is simply this which makes even God to be as great as He is, inferior and subject to none—nay, greater and higher than all. For, just as all things which are born, or which come to an end, and are therefore not eternal, do, by reason of their exposure at once to an end and a beginning, admit of qualities which are repugnant to God—I mean diminution and inferiority, because they are born and made—so likewise God, for this very reason, is unsusceptible of these accidents, because He is absolutely unborn,6194 and also unmade. And yet such also is the condition of Matter. 6195 Therefore, of the two Beings which are eternal, as being unborn and unmade—God and Matter—by reason of the identical mode of their common condition (both of them equally possessing that which admits neither of diminution nor subjection—that is, the attribute of eternity), we affirm that neither of them is less or greater than the other, neither of them is inferior or superior to the other; but that they both stand on a par in greatness, on a par in sublimity, and on the same level of that complete and perfect felicity of which eternity is reckoned to consist. Now we must not resemble the heathen in our opinions; for they, when constrained to acknowledge God, insist on having other deities below Him. The Divinity, however, has no degrees, because it is unique; and if it shall be found in Matter— as being equally unborn and unmade and eternal—it must be resident in both alike,6196 because in no case can it be inferior to itself. In what way, then, will Hermogenes have the courage to draw distinctions; and thus to subject matter to God, an eternal to the Eternal, an unborn to the Unborn, an author to the Author? seeing that it dares to say, I also am the first; I too am before all things; and I am that from which all things proceed; equal we have been, together we have been—both alike without beginning, without end; both alike without an Author, without a God.6197 What God, then, is He who subjects me to a contemporaneous, co-eternal power? If it be He who is called God, then I myself, too, have my own (divine) name. Either I am God, or He is Matter, because we both are that which neither of us is. Do you suppose, therefore, that he6198 has not made Matter equal with God, although, forsooth, he pretends it to be inferior to Him?

3. section3.chapter8

   Nay more,6199 he even prefers Matter to God, and rather subjects God to it, when he will have it that God made all things out of Matter. For if He drew His resources from it6200 for the creation of the world, Matter is already found to be the superior, inasmuch as it furnished Him with the means of effecting His works; and God is thereby clearly subjected to Matter, of which the substance was indispensable to Him. For there is no one but requires that which he makes use of;6201 no one but is subject to the thing which he requires, for the very purpose of being able to make use of it. So, again, there is no one who, from using what belongs to another, is not inferior to him of whose property he makes use; and there is no one who imparts6202 of his own for another’s use, who is not in this respect superior to him to whose use he lends his property. On this principle,6203 Matter itself, no doubt,6204 was not in want of God, but rather lent itself to God, who was in want of it—rich and abundant and liberal as it was—to one who was, I suppose, too small, and too weak, and too unskilful, to form what He willed out of nothing. A grand service, verily,6205 did it confer on God in giving Him means at the present time whereby He might be known to be God, and be called Almighty—only that He is no longer Almighty, since He is not powerful enough for this, to produce all things out of nothing. To be sure,6206 Matter bestowed somewhat on itself also—even to get its own self acknowledged with God as God’s co-equal, nay more, as His helper; only there is this drawback, that Hermogenes is the only man that has found out this fact, besides the philosophers—those patriarchs of all heresy.6207 For the prophets knew nothing about it, nor the apostles thus far, nor, I suppose, even Christ.

4. section3.chapter9

   He cannot say that it was as its Lord that God employed Matter for His creative works, for He could not have been the Lord of a substance which was co-equal with Himself. Well, but perhaps it was a title derived from the will of another,6208 which he enjoyed—a precarious holding, and not a lordship,6209 and that to such a degree, that6210 although Matter was evil, He yet endured to make use of an evil substance, owing, of course, to the restraint of His own limited power,6211 which made Him impotent to create out of nothing, not in consequence of His power; for if, as God, He had at all possessed power over Matter which He knew to be evil, He would first have converted it into good—as its Lord and the good God—that so He might have a good thing to make use of, instead of a bad one. But being undoubtedly good, only not the Lord withal, He, by using such power6212 as He possessed, showed the necessity He was under of yielding to the condition of Matter, which He would have amended if He had been its Lord. Now this is the answer which must be given to Hermogenes when he maintains that it was by virtue of His Lordship that God used Matter— even of His non-possession of any right to it, on the ground, of course, of His not having Himself made it. Evil then, on your terms,6213 must proceed from God Himself, since He is—I will not say the Author of evil, because He did not form it, but—the permitter thereof, as having dominion over it.6214 If indeed Matter shall prove not even to belong to God at all, as being evil, it follows,6215 that when He made use of what belonged to another, He used it either on a precarious title6216 because He was in need of it, or else by violent possession because He was stronger than it. For by three methods is the property of others obtained,—by right, by permission, by violence; in other words, by lordship, by a title derived from the will of another,6217 by force. Now, as lordship is out of the question, Hermogenes must choose which (of the other methods) is suitable to God. Did He, then, make all things out of Matter, by permission, or by force? But, in truth, would not God have more wisely determined that nothing at all should be created, than that it should be created by the mere sufferance of another, or by violence, and that, too, with6218 a substance which was evil?

5. section3.chapter10

   Even if Matter had been the perfection of good,6219 would it not have been equally indecorous in Him to have thought of the property of another, however good, (to effect His purpose by the help of it)? It was, therefore, absurd enough for Him, in the interest of His own glory, to have created the world in such a way as to betray His own obligation to a substance which belonged to another—and that even not good. Was He then, asks (Hermogenes), to make all things out of nothing, that so evil things themselves might be attributed to His will? Great, in all conscience,6220 must be the blindness of our heretics which leaves them to argue in such a way that they either insist on the belief of another God supremely good, on the ground of their thinking the Creator to be the author of evil, or else they set up Matter with the Creator, in order that they may derive evil from Matter, not from the Creator. And yet there is absolutely no god at all that is free from such a doubtful plight, so as to be able to avoid the appearance even of being the author of evil, whosoever he is that—I will not say, indeed, has made, but still—has permitted evil to be made by some author or other, and from some source or other. Hermogenes, therefore, ought to be told6221 at once, although we postpone to another place our distinction concerning the mode of evil,6222 that even he has effected no result by this device of his.6223 For observe how God is found to be, if not the Author of, yet at any rate the conniver at,6224 evil, inasmuch as He, with all His extreme goodness, endured evil in Matter before He created the world, although, as being good, and the enemy of evil, He ought to have corrected it. For He either was able to correct it, but was unwilling; or else was willing, but being a weak God, was not able. If He was able and yet unwilling, He was Himself evil, as having favoured evil; and thus He now opens Himself to the charge of evil, because even if He did not create it yet still, since it would not be existing if He had been against its existence, He must Himself have then caused it to exist, when He refused to will its non-existence. And what is more shameful than this? When He willed that to be which He was Himself unwilling to create, He acted in fact against His very self,6225 inasmuch as He was both willing that that should exist which He was unwilling to make, and unwilling to make that which He was willing should exist. As if what He willed was good, and at the same time what he refused to be the Maker of was evil. What He judged to be evil by not creating it, He also proclaimed to be good by permitting it to exist. By bearing with evil as a good instead of rather extirpating it, He proved Himself to be the promoter thereof; criminally,6226 if through His own will—disgracefully, if through necessity. God must either be the servant of evil or the friend thereof, since He held converse with evil in Matter—nay, more, effected His works out of the evil thereof.

6. section3.chapter11

   But, after all,6227 by what proofs does Hermogenes persuade us that Matter is evil? For it will be impossible for him not to call that evil to which he imputes evil. Now we lay down this principle,6228 that what is eternal cannot possibly admit of diminution and subjection, so as to be considered inferior to another co-eternal Being. So that we now affirm that evil is not even compatible with it,6229 since it is incapable of subjection, from the fact that it cannot in any wise be subject to any, because it is eternal. But inasmuch as, on other grounds,6230 it is evident what is eternal as God is the highest good, whereby also He alone is good—as being eternal, and therefore good—as being God, how can evil be inherent in Matter, which (since it is eternal) must needs be believed to be the highest good? Else if that which is eternal prove to be also capable of evil, this (evil) will be able to be also believed of God to His prejudice;6231 so that it is without adequate reason that he has been so anxious6232 to remove evil from God; since evil must be compatible with an eternal Being, even by being made compatible with Matter, as Hermogenes makes it. But, as the argument now stands,6233 since what is eternal can be deemed evil, the evil must prove to be invincible and insuperable, as being eternal; and in that case6234 it will be in vain that we labour “to put away evil from the midst of us;”6235 in that case, moreover, God vainly gives us such a command and precept; nay more, in vain has God appointed any judgment at all, when He means, indeed,6236 to inflict punishment with injustice. But if, on the other hand, there is to be an end of evil, when the chief thereof, the devil, shall “go away into the fire which God hath prepared for him and his angels”6237—having been first “cast into the bottomless pit;”6238 when likewise “the manifestation of the children of God”6239 shall have “delivered the creature”6240 from evil, which had been “made subject to vanity;”6241 when the cattle restored in the innocence and integrity of their nature6242 shall be at peace6243 with the beasts of the field, when also little children shall play with serpents;6244 when the Father shall have put beneath the feet of His Son His enemies,6245 as being the workers of evil,—if in this way an end is compatible with evil, it must follow of necessity that a beginning is also compatible with it; and Matter will turn out to have a beginning, by virtue of its having also an end. For whatever things are set to the account of evil,6246 have a compatibility with the condition of evil.

7. section3.chapter12

   Come now, let us suppose Matter to be evil, nay, very evil, by nature of course, just as we believe God to be good, even very good, in like manner by nature. Now nature must be regarded as sure and fixed, just as persistently fixed in evil in the case of Matter, as immoveable and unchangeable in good in the case of God. Because, as is evident,6247 if nature admits of change from evil to good in Matter, it can be changed from good to evil in God. Here some man will say, Then will “children not be raised up to Abraham from the stones?”6248 Will “generations of vipers not bring forth the fruit of repentance?”6249 And “children of wrath” fail to become sons of peace, if nature be unchangeable? Your reference to such examples as these, my friend,6250 is a thoughtless6251 one. For things which owe their existence to birth such as stones and vipers and human beings—are not apposite to the case of Matter, which is unborn; since their nature, by possessing a beginning, may have also a termination. But bear in mind6252 that Matter has once for all been determined to be eternal, as being unmade, unborn, and therefore supposably of an unchangeable and incorruptible nature; and this from the very opinion of Hermogenes himself, which he alleges against us when he denies that God was able to make (anything) of Himself, on the ground that what is eternal is incapable of change, because it would lose—so the opinion runs6253—what it once was, in becoming by the change that which it was not, if it were not eternal. But as for the Lord, who is also eternal, (he maintained) that He could not be anything else than what He always is. Well, then, I will adopt this definite opinion of his, and by means thereof refute him. I blame Matter with a like censure, because out of it, evil though it be—nay, very evil—good things have been created, nay, “very good” ones: “And God saw that they were good, and God blessed them”6254—because, of course, of their very great goodness; certainly not because they were evil, or very evil. Change is therefore admissible in Matter; and this being the case, it has lost its condition of eternity; in short,6255 its beauty is decayed in death.6256 Eternity, however, cannot be lost, because it cannot be eternity, except by reason of its immunity from loss. For the same reason also it is incapable of change, inasmuch as, since it is eternity, it can by no means be changed.

8. section3.chapter13

   Here the question will arise How creatures were made good out of it,6257 which were formed without any change at all?6258 How occurs the seed of what is good, nay, very good, in that which is evil, nay, very evil? Surely a good tree does not produce evil fruit,6259 since there is no God who is not good; nor does an evil tree yield good fruit, since there is not Matter except what is very evil. Or if we were to grant him that there is some germ of good in it, then there will be no longer a uniform nature (pervading it), that is to say, one which is evil throughout; but instead thereof (we now encounter) a double nature, partly good and partly evil; and again the question will arise, whether, in a subject which is good and evil, there could possibly have been found a harmony for light and darkness, for sweet and bitter? So again, if qualities so utterly diverse as good and evil have been able to unite together,6260 and have imparted to Matter a double nature, productive of both kinds of fruit, then no longer will absolutely6261 good things be imputable to God, just as evil things are not ascribed to Him, but both qualities will appertain to Matter, since they are derived from the property of Matter. At this rate, we shall owe to God neither gratitude for good things, nor grudge6262 for evil ones, because He has produced no work of His own proper character.6263 From which circumstance will arise the clear proof that He has been subservient to Matter.

9. section3.chapter14

   Now, if it be also argued, that although Matter may have afforded Him the opportunity, it was still His own will which led Him to the creation of good creatures, as having detected6264 what was good in matter—although this, too, be a discreditable supposition6265—yet, at any rate, when He produces evil likewise out of the same (Matter), He is a servant to Matter, since, of course,6266 it is not of His own accord that He produces this too, having nothing else that He can do than to effect creation out of an evil stock6267—unwillingly, no doubt, as being good; of necessity, too, as being unwilling; and as an act of servitude, because from necessity. Which, then, is the worthier thought, that He created evil things of necessity, or of His own accord? Because it was indeed of necessity that He created them, if out of Matter; of His own accord, if out of nothing. For you are now labouring in vain when you try to avoid making God the Author of evil things; because, since He made all things of Matter, they will have to be ascribed to Himself, who made them, just because6268 He made them. Plainly the interest of the question, whence He made all things, identifies itself with (the question), whether He made all things out of nothing; and it matters not whence He made all things, so that He made all things thence, whence most glory accrued to Him.6269 Now, more glory accrued to Him from a creation of His own will than from one of necessity; in other words, from a creation out of nothing, than from one out of Matter. It is more worthy to believe that God is free, even as the Author of evil, than that He is a slave. Power, whatever it be, is more suited to Him than infirmity.6270 If we thus even admit that matter had nothing good in it, but that the Lord produced whatever good He did produce of His own power, then some other questions will with equal reason arise. First, since there was no good at all in Matter, it is clear that good was not made of Matter, on the express ground indeed that Matter did not possess it. Next, if good was not made of Matter, it must then have been made of God; if not of God, then it must have been made of nothing.—For this is the alternative, on Hermogenes’ own showing.6271

10. section3.chapter15

    Now, if good was neither produced out of matter, since it was not in it, evil as it was, nor out of God, since, according to the position of Hermogenes, nothing could have been produced out of god, it will be found that good was created out of nothing, inasmuch as it was formed of none—neither of Matter nor of God. And if good was formed out of nothing, why not evil too? Nay, if anything was formed out of nothing, why not all things? Unless indeed it be that the divine might was insufficient for the production of all things, though it produced a something out of nothing. Or else if good proceeded from evil matter, since it issued neither from nothing nor from God, it will follow that it must have proceeded from the conversion of Matter contrary to that unchangeable attribute which has been claimed for it, as an eternal being.6272 Thus, in regard to the source whence good derived its existence, Hermogenes will now have to deny the possibility of such. But still it is necessary that (good) should proceed from some one of those sources from which he has denied the very possibility of its having been derived. Now if evil be denied to be of nothing for the purpose of denying it to be the work of God, from whose will there would be too much appearance of its being derived, and be alleged to proceed from Matter, that it may be the property of that very thing of whose substance it is assumed to be made, even here also, as I have said, God will have to be regarded as the Author of evil; because, whereas it had been His duty6273 to produce all good things out of Matter, or rather good things simply, by His identical attribute of power and will, He did yet not only not produce all good things, but even (some) evil things—of course, either willing that the evil should exist if He was able to cause their nonexistence, or not being strong enough to effect that all things should be good, if being desirous of that result, He failed in the accomplishment thereof; since there can be no difference whether it were by weakness or by will, that the Lord proved to be the Author of evil. Else what was the reason that, after creating good things, as if Himself good, He should have also produced evil things, as if He failed in His goodness, since He did not confine Himself to the production of things which were simply consistent with Himself? What necessity was there, after the production of His proper work, for His troubling Himself about Matter also by producing evil likewise, in order to secure His being alone acknowledged as good from His good, and at the same time6274 to prevent Matter being regarded as evil from (created) evil? Good would have flourished much better if evil had not blown upon it. For Hermogenes himself explodes the arguments of sundry persons who contend that evil things were necessary to impart lustre to the good, which must be understood from their contrasts. This, therefore, was not the ground for the production of evil; but if some other reason must be sought for the introduction thereof, why could it not have been introduced even from nothing,6275 since the very same reason would exculpate the Lord from the reproach of being thought the author of evil, which now excuses the existence of evil things, when He produces them out of Matter? And if there is this excuse, then the question is completely6276 shut up in a corner, where they are unwilling to find it, who, without examining into the reason itself of evil, or distinguishing how they should either attribute it to God or separate it from God, do in fact expose God to many most unworthy calumnies.6277

11. section3.chapter16

    On the very threshold,6278 then, of this doctrine,6279 which I shall probably have to treat of elsewhere, I distinctly lay it down as my position, that both good and evil must be ascribed either to God, who made them out of Matter; or to Matter itself, out of which He made them; or both one and the other to both of them together,6280 because they are bound together—both He who created, and that out of which He created; or (lastly) one to One and the other to the Other,6281 because after Matter and God there is not a third. Now if both should prove to belong to God, God evidently will be the author of evil; but God, as being good, cannot be the author of evil. Again, if both are ascribed to Matter, Matter will evidently be the very mother of good,6282 but inasmuch as Matter is wholly evil, it cannot be the mother of good. But if both one and the other should be thought to belong to Both together, then in this case also Matter will be comparable with God; and both will be equal, being on equal terms allied to evil as well as to good. Matter, however, ought not to be compared with God, in order that it may not make two gods. If, (lastly,) one be ascribed to One, and the other to the Other—that is to say, let the good be God’s, and the evil belong to Matter—then, on the one hand, evil must not be ascribed to God, nor, on the other hand, good to Matter. And God, moreover, by making both good things and evil things out of Matter, creates them along with it. This being the case, I cannot tell how Hermogenes6283 is to escape from my conclusion; for he supposes that God cannot be the author of evil, in what way soever He created evil out of Matter, whether it was of His own will, or of necessity, or from the reason (of the case). If, however, He is the author of evil, who was the actual Creator, Matter being simply associated with Him by reason of its furnishing Him with substance,6284 you now do away with the cause6285 of your introducing Matter. For it is not the less true, that it is by means of Matter that God shows Himself the author of evil, although Matter has been assumed by you expressly to prevent God’s seeming to be the author of evil. Matter being therefore excluded, since the cause of it is excluded, it remains that God without doubt, must have made all things out of nothing. Whether evil things were amongst them we shall see, when it shall be made clear what are evil things, and whether those things are evil which you at present deem to be so. For it is more worthy of God that He produced even these of His own will, by producing them out of nothing, than from the predetermination of another,6286 (which must have been the case) if He had produced them out of Matter. It is liberty, not necessity, which suits the character of God. I would much rather that He should have even willed to create evil of Himself, than that He should have lacked ability to hinder its creation.

12. section3.chapter17

    This rule is required by the nature of the One-only God,6287 who is One-only in no other way than as the sole God; and in no other way sole, than as having nothing else (coexistent) with Him. So also He will be first, because all things are after Him; and all things are after Him, because all things are by Him; and all things are by Him, because they are of nothing: so that reason coincides with the Scripture, which says: “Who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? or with whom took He counsel? or who hath shown to Him the way of wisdom and knowledge? Who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?”6288 Surely none! Because there was present with Him no power, no material, no nature which belonged to any other than Himself. But if it was with some (portion of Matter)6289 that He effected His creation, He must have received from that (Matter) itself both the design and the treatment of its order as being “the way of wisdom and knowledge.” For He had to operate conformably with the quality of the thing, and according to the nature of Matter, not according to His own will in consequence of which He must have made6290 even evil things suitably to the nature not of Himself, but of Matter.

13. section3.chapter18

    If any material was necessary to God in the creation of the world, as Hermogenes supposed, God had a far nobler and more suitable one in His own wisdom6291—one which was not to be gauged by the writings of6292 philosophers, but to be learnt from the words or prophets. This alone, indeed, knew the mind of the Lord. For “who knoweth the things of God, and the things in God, but the Spirit, which is in Him?”6293 Now His wisdom is that Spirit. This was His counsellor, the very way of His wisdom and knowledge.6294 Of this He made all things, making them through It, and making them with It. “When He prepared the heavens,” so says (the Scripture6295), “I was present with Him; and when He strengthened above the winds the lofty clouds, and when He secured the fountains6296 which are under the heaven, I was present, compacting these things6297 along with Him. I was He6298 in whom He took delight; moreover, I daily rejoiced in His presence: for He rejoiced when He had finished the world, and amongst the sons of men did He show forth His pleasure.”6299 Now, who would not rather approve of6300 this as the fountain and origin of all things—of this as, in very deed, the Matter of all Matter, not liable to any end,6301 not diverse in condition, not restless in motion, not ungraceful in form, but natural, and proper, and duly proportioned, and beautiful, such truly as even God might well have required, who requires His own and not another’s? Indeed, as soon as He perceived It to be necessary for His creation of the world, He immediately creates It, and generates It in Himself. “The Lord,” says the Scripture, “possessed6302 me, the beginning of His ways for the creation of His works. Before the worlds He founded me; before He made the earth, before the mountains were settled in their places; moreover, before the hills He generated me, and prior to the depths was I be- gotten.”6303 Let Hermogenes then confess that the very Wisdom of God is declared to be born and created, for the especial reason that we should not suppose that there is any other being than God alone who is unbegotten and uncreated. For if that, which from its being inherent in the Lord6304 was of Him and in Him, was yet not without a beginning,—I mean6305 His wisdom, which was then born and created, when in the thought of God It began to assume motion6306 for the arrangement of His creative works,—how much more impossible6307 is it that anything should have been without a beginning which was extrinsic to the Lord!6308 But if this same Wisdom is the Word of God, in the capacity6309 of Wisdom, and (as being He) without whom nothing was made, just as also (nothing) was set in order without Wisdom, how can it be that anything, except the Father, should be older, and on this account indeed nobler, than the Son of God, the only-begotten and first-begotten Word? Not to say that6310 what is unbegotten is stronger than that which is born, and what is not made more powerful than that which is made. Because that which did not require a Maker to give it existence, will be much more elevated in rank than that which had an author to bring it into being. On this principle, then,6311 if evil is indeed unbegotten, whilst the Son of God is begotten (“for,” says God, “my heart hath emitted my most excellent Word”6312), I am not quite sure that evil may not be introduced by good, the stronger by the weak, in the same way as the unbegotten is by the begotten. Therefore on this ground Hermogenes puts Matter even before God, by putting it before the Son. Because the Son is the Word, and “the Word is God,”6313 and “I and my Father are one.”6314 But after all, perhaps,6315 the Son will patiently enough submit to having that preferred before Him which (by Hermogenes), is made equal to the Father!

14. section3.chapter19

    But I shall appeal to the original document6316 of Moses, by help of which they on the other side vainly endeavour to prop up their conjectures, with the view, of course, of appearing to have the support of that authority which is indispensable in such an inquiry. They have found their opportunity, as is usual with heretics, in wresting the plain meaning of certain words. For instance the very beginning,6317 when God made the heaven and the earth, they will construe as if it meant something substantial and embodied,6318 to be regarded as Matter. We, however, insist on the proper signification of every word, and say that principium means beginning,—being a term which is suitable to represent things which begin to exist. For nothing which has come into being is without a beginning, nor can this its commencement be at any other moment than when it begins to have existence. Thus principium or beginning, is simply a term of inception, not the name of a substance. Now, inasmuch as the heaven and the earth are the principal works of God, and since, by His making them first, He constituted them in an especial manner the beginning of His creation, before all things else, with good reason does the Scripture preface (its record of creation) with the words, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth;”6319 just as it would have said, “At last God made the heaven and the earth,” if God had created these after all the rest. Now, if the beginning is a substance, the end must also be material. No doubt, a substantial thing6320 may be the beginning of some other thing which may be formed out of it; thus the clay is the beginning of the vessel, and the seed is the beginning of the plant. But when we employ the word beginning in this sense of origin, and not in that of order, we do not omit to mention also the name of that particular thing which we regard as the origin of the other. On the other hand,6321 if we were to make such a statement as this, for example, “In the beginning the potter made a basin or a water-jug,” the word beginning will not here indicate a material substance (for I have not mentioned the clay, which is the beginning in this sense, but only the order of the work, meaning that the potter made the basin and the jug first, before anything else—intending afterwards to make the rest. It is, then, to the order of the works that the word beginning has reference, not to the origin of their substances. I might also explain this word beginning in another way, which would not, however, be inap- posite.6322 The Greek term for beginning, which is ἀρχή, admits the sense not only of priority of order, but of power as well; whence princes and magistrates are called ἀρχοντες. Therefore in this sense too, beginning may be taken for princely authority and power. It was, indeed, in His transcendent authority and power, that God made the heaven and the earth.

15. section3.chapter20

    But in proof that the Greek word means nothing else than beginning, and that beginning admits of no other sense than the initial one, we have that (Being)6323 even acknowledging such a beginning, who says: “The Lord possessed6324 me, the beginning of His ways for the creation of His works.”6325 For since all things were made by the Wisdom of God, it follows that, when God made both the heaven and the earth in principio—that is to say, in the beginning— He made them in His Wisdom. If, indeed, beginning had a material signification, the Scripture would not have informed us that God made so and so in principio, at the beginning, but rather ex principio, of the beginning; for He would not have created in, but of, matter. When Wisdom, however, was referred to, it was quite right to say, in the beginning. For it was in Wisdom that He made all things at first, because by meditating and arranging His plans therein,6326 He had in fact already done (the work of creation); and if He had even intended to create out of matter, He would yet have effected His creation when He previously meditated on it and arranged it in His Wisdom, since It6327 was in fact the beginning of His ways: this meditation and arrangement being the primal operation of Wisdom, opening as it does the way to the works by the act of meditation and thought.6328 This authority of Scripture I claim for myself even from this circumstance, that whilst it shows me the God who created, and the works He created, it does not in like manner reveal to me the source from which He created. For since in every operation there are three principal things, He who makes, and that which is made, and that of which it is made, there must be three names mentioned in a correct narrative of the operation—the person of the maker the sort of thing which is made,6329 and the material of which it is formed. If the material is not mentioned, while the work and the maker of the work are both mentioned, it is manifest that He made the work out of nothing. For if He had had anything to operate upon, it would have been mentioned as well as (the other two particulars).6330 In conclusion, I will apply the Gospel as a supplementary testimony to the Old Testament. Now in this there is all the greater reason why there should be shown the material (if there were any) out of which God made all things, inasmuch as it is therein plainly revealed by whom He made all things. “In the beginning was the Word”6331—that is, the same beginning, of course, in which God made the heaven and the earth6332—“and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by Him, and without Him nothing was made.”6333 Now, since we have here clearly told us who the Maker was, that is, God, and what He made, even all things, and through whom He made them, even His Word, would not the order of the narrative have required that the source out of which all things were made by God through the Word should likewise be declared, if they had been in fact made out of anything? What, therefore, did not exist, the Scripture was unable to mention; and by not mentioning it, it has given us a clear proof that there was no such thing: for if there had been, the Scripture would have mentioned it.

16. section3.chapter21

    But, you will say to me, if you determine that all things were made of nothing, on the ground that it is not told us that anything was made out of pre-existent Matter, take care that it be not contended on the opposite side, that on the same ground all things were made out of Matter, because it is not likewise expressly said that anything was made out of nothing. Some arguments may, of course,6334 be thus retorted easily enough; but it does not follow that they are on that account fairly admissible, where there is a diversity in the cause. For I maintain that, even if the Scripture has not expressly declared that all things were made out of nothing—just as it abstains (from saying that they were formed) out of Matter—there was no such pressing need for expressly indicating the creation of all things out of nothing, as there was of their creation out of Matter, if that had been their origin. Because, in the case of what is made out of nothing, the very fact of its not being indicated that it was made of any particular thing shows that it was made of nothing; and there is no danger of its being supposed that it was made of anything, when there is no indication at all of what it was made of. In the case, however, of that which is made out of something, unless the very fact be plainly declared, that it was made out of something, there will be danger, until6335 it is shown of what it was made, first of its appearing to be made of nothing, because it is not said of what it was made; and then, should it be of such a nature6336 as to have the appearance of having certainly been made of something, there will be a similar risk of its seeming to have been made of a far different material from the proper one, so long as there is an absence of statement of what it was made of. Then, if God had been unable to make all things of nothing, the Scripture could not possibly have added that He had made all things of nothing: (there could have been no room for such a statement,) but it must by all means have informed us that He had made all things out of Matter, since Matter must have been the source; because the one case was quite to be understood,6337 if it were not actually stated, whereas the other case would be left in doubt unless it were stated.

17. section3.chapter22

    And to such a degree has the Holy Ghost made this the rule of His Scripture, that whenever anything is made out of anything, He mentions both the thing that is made and the thing of which it is made. “Let the earth,” says He, “bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, after its kind. And it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after its kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after its kind.”6338 And again: “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that have life, and fowl that may fly above the earth through the firmament of heaven. And it was so. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind.”6339 Again afterwards: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beasts of the earth after their kind.”6340 If therefore God, when producing other things out of things which had been already made, indicates them by the prophet, and tells us what He has produced from such and such a source6341 (although we might ourselves suppose them to be derived from some source or other, short of nothing;6342 since there had already been created certain things, from which they might easily seem to have been made); if the Holy Ghost took upon Himself so great a concern for our instruction, that we might know from what everything was produced,6343 would He not in like manner have kept us well informed about both the heaven and the earth, by indicating to us what it was that He made them of, if their original consisted of any material substance, so that the more He seemed to have made them of nothing, the less in fact was there as yet made, from which He could appear to have made them? Therefore, just as He shows us the original out of which He drew such things as were derived from a given source, so also with regard to those things of which He does not point out whence He produced them, He confirms (by that silence our assertion) that they were produced out of nothing. “In the beginning,” then, “God made the heaven and the earth.”6344 I revere6345 the fulness of His Scripture, in which He manifests to me both the Creator and the creation. In the gospel, moreover, I discover a Minister and Witness of the Creator, even His Word.6346 But whether all things were made out of any underlying Matter, I have as yet failed anywhere to find. Where such a statement is written, Hermogenes’ shop6347 must tell us. If it is nowhere written, then let it fear the woe which impends on all who add to or take away from the written word.6348

18. section3.chapter23

    But he draws an argument from the following words, where it is written: “And the earth was without form, and void.”6349 For he resolves6350 the word earth into Matter, because that which is made out of it is the earth. And to the word was he gives the same direction, as if it pointed to what had always existed unbegotten and unmade. It was without form, moreover, and void, because he will have Matter to have existed shapeless and confused, and without the finish of a maker’s hand.6351 Now these opinions of his I will refute singly; but first I wish to say to him, by way of general answer: We are of opinion that Matter is pointed at in these terms. But yet does the Scripture intimate that, because Matter was in existence before all, anything of like condition6352 was even formed out of it? Nothing of the kind. Matter might have had existence, if it so pleased—or rather if Hermogenes so pleased. It might, I say, have existed, and yet God might not have made anything out of it, either as it was unsuitable to Him to have required the aid of anything, or at least because He is not shown to have made anything out of Matter. Its existence must therefore be without a cause, you will say. Oh, no! certainly6353 not without cause. For even if the world were not made out of it, yet a heresy has been hatched there from; and a specially impudent one too, because it is not Matter which has produced the heresy, but the heresy has rather made Matter itself.

19. section3.chapter24

    I now return to the several points6354 by means of which he thought that Matter was 491 signified. And first I will inquire about the terms. For we read only of one of them, Earth; the other, namely Matter, we do not meet with. I ask, then, since Matter is not mentioned in Scripture, how the term earth can be applied to it, which marks a substance of another kind? There is all the greater need why mention should also have been made of Matter, if this has acquired the further sense of Earth, in order that I may be sure that Earth is one and the same name as Matter, and so not claim the designation for merely one substance, as the proper name thereof, and by which it is better known; or else be unable (if I should feel the inclination), to apply it to some particular species of Matter, instead, indeed,6355 of making it the common term6356 of all Matter. For when a proper name does not exist for that thing to which a common term is ascribed, the less apparent6357 is the object to which it may be ascribed, the more capable will it be of being applied to any other object whatever. Therefore, even supposing that Hermogenes could show us the name6358 Matter, he is bound to prove to us further, that the same object has the surname6359 Earth, in order that he may claim for it both designations alike.

20. section3.chapter25

    He accordingly maintains that there are two earths set before us in the passage in question: one, which God made in the beginning; the other being the Matter of which God made the world, and concerning which it is said, “And the earth was without form, and void.”6360 Of course, if I were to ask, to which of the two earths the name earth is best suited,6361 I shall be told that the earth which was made derived the appellation from that of which it was made, on the ground that it is more likely that the offspring should get its name from the original, than the original from the offspring. This being the case, another question presents itself to us, whether it is right and proper that this earth which God made should have derived its name from that out of which He made it? For I find from Hermogenes and the rest of the Materialist heretics,6362 that while the one earth was indeed “without form, and void,” this one of ours obtained from God in an equal degree6363 both form, and beauty, and symmetry; and therefore that the earth which was created was a different thing from that out of which it was created. Now, having become a different thing, it could not possibly have shared with the other in its name, after it had declined from its condition. If earth was the proper name of the (original) Matter, this world of ours, which is not Matter, because it has become another thing, is unfit to bear the name of earth, seeing that that name belongs to something else, and is a stranger to its nature. But (you will tell me) Matter which has undergone creation, that is, our earth, had with its original a community of name no less than of kind. By no means. For although the pitcher is formed out of the clay, I shall no longer call it clay, but a pitcher; so likewise, although electrum6364 is compounded of gold and silver, I shall yet not call it either gold or silver, but electrum. When there is a departure from the nature of any thing, there is likewise a relinquishment of its name—with a propriety which is alike demanded by the designation and the condition. How great a change indeed from the condition of that earth, which is Matter, has come over this earth of ours, is plain even from the fact that the latter has received this testimony to its goodness in Genesis, “And God saw that it was good;”6365 while the former, according to Hermogenes, is regarded as the origin and cause of all evils. Lastly, if the one is Earth because the other is, why also is the one not Matter as the other is? Indeed, by this rule both the heaven and all creatures ought to have had the names of Earth and Matter, since they all consist of Matter. I have said enough touching the designation Earth, by which he will have it that Matter is understood. This, as everybody knows, is the name of one of the elements; for so we are taught by nature first, and afterwards by Scripture, except it be that credence must be given to that Silenus who talked so confidently in the presence of king Midas of another world, according to the account of Theopompus. But the same author informs us that there are also several gods.

21. section3.chapter26

    We, however, have but one God, and but one earth too, which in the beginning God made.6366 The Scripture, which at its very outset proposes to run through the order thereof tells us as its first information that it was created; it next proceeds to set forth what sort of earth it was.6367 In like manner with respect to the heaven, it informs us first of its creation—“ In the beginning God made the heaven:”6368 it then goes on to introduce its arrangement; how that God both separated “the water which was below the firmament from that which was above the firmament,”6369 and called the firmament heaven,6370—the very thing He had created in the beginning. Similarly it (afterwards) treats of man: “And God created man, in the image of God made He him.”6371 It next reveals how He made him: “And (the Lord) God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”6372 Now this is undoubtedly6373 the correct and fitting mode for the narrative. First comes a prefatory statement, then follow the details in full;6374 first the subject is named, then it is described.6375 How absurd is the other view of the account, 6376 when even before he6377 had premised any mention of his subject, i.e. Matter, without even giving us its name, he all on a sudden promulged its form and condition, describing to us its quality before mentioning its existence,—pointing out the figure of the thing formed, but concealing its name! But how much more credible is our opinion, which holds that Scripture has only subjoined the arrangement of the subject after it has first duly described its formation and mentioned its name! Indeed, how full and complete6378 is the meaning of these words: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; but6379 the earth was without form, and void,”6380—the very same earth, no doubt, which God made, and of which the Scripture had been speaking at that very moment.6381 For that very “but”6382 is inserted into the narrative like a clasp,6383 (in its function) of a conjunctive particle, to connect the two sentences indissolubly together: “But the earth.” This word carries back the mind to that earth of which mention had just been made, and binds the sense thereunto.6384 Take away this “but,” and the tie is loosened; so much so that the passage, “But the earth was without form, and void,” may then seem to have been meant for any other earth.

22. section3.chapter27

    But you next praise your eyebrows, and toss back your head, and beckon with your finger, in characteristic disdain,6385 and say: There is the was, looking as if it pointed to an eternal existence,—making its subject, of course, unbegotten and unmade, and on that account worthy of being supposed to be Matter. Well now, for my own part, I shall resort to no affected protestation,6386 but simply reply that “was” may be predicated of everything—even of a thing which has been created, which was born, which once was not, and which is not your Matter. For of everything which has being, from whatever source it has it, whether it has it by a beginning or without a beginning, the word “was” will be predicated from the very fact that it exists. To whatever thing the first tense6387 of the verb is applicable for definition, to the same will be suitable the later form6388 of the verb, when it has to descend to relation. “Est” (it is) forms the essential part6389 of a definition, “erat” (it was) of a relation. Such are the trifles and subtleties of heretics, who wrest and bring into question the simple meaning of the commonest words. A grand question it is, to be sure,6390 whether “the earth was,” which was made! The real point of discussion is, whether “being without form, and void,” is a state which is more suitable to that which was created, or to that of which it was created, so that the predicate (was) may appertain to the same thing to which the subject (that which was) also belongs.6391

23. section3.chapter28

    But we shall show not only that this condition6392 agreed with this earth of ours, but that it did not agree with that other (insisted on by Hermogenes). For, inasmuch as pure Matter was thus subsistent with God,6393 without the interposition indeed of any element at all (because as yet there existed nothing but itself and God), it could not of course have been invisible. Because, although Hermogenes contends that darkness was inherent in the substance of Matter, a position which we shall have to meet in its proper place,6394 yet darkness is visible even to a human being (for the very fact that there is the darkness is an evident one), much more is it so to God. If indeed it6395 had been invisible, its quality would not have been by any means discoverable. How, then, did Hermogenes find out6396 that that substance was “without form,” and confused and disordered, which, as being invisible, was not palpable to his senses? If this mystery was revealed to him by God, he ought to give us his proof. I want to know also, whether (the substance in question) could have been described as “void.” That certainly is “void” which is imperfect. Equally certain is it, that nothing can be imperfect but that which is made; it is imperfect when it is not fully made.6397 Certainly, you admit. Matter, therefore, which was not made at all, could not have been imperfect; and what was not imperfect was not “void.” Having no beginning, because it was not made, it was also unsusceptible of any void-condition.6398 For this void-condition is an accident of beginning. The earth, on the contrary, which was made, was deservedly called “void.” For as soon as it was made, it had the condition of being imperfect, previous to its completion.

24. section3.chapter29

    God, indeed, consummated all His works in a due order; at first He paled them out,6399 as it were, in their unformed elements, and then He arranged them6400 in their finished beauty. For He did not all at once inundate light with the splendour of the sun, nor all at once temper darkness with the moon’s assuaging ray.6401 The heaven He did not all at once bedeck6402 with constellations and stars, nor did He at once fill the seas with their teeming monsters.6403 The earth itself He did not endow with its varied fruitfulness all at once; but at first He bestowed upon it being, and then He filled it, that it might not be made in vain.6404 For thus says Isaiah: “He created it not in vain; He formed it to be inhabited.”6405 Therefore after it was made, and while awaiting its perfect state,6406 it was “without form, and void:” “void” indeed, from the very fact that it was without form (as being not yet perfect to the sight, and at the same time unfurnished as yet with its other qualities);6407 and “without form,” because it was still covered with waters, as if with the rampart of its fecundating moisture,6408 by which is produced our flesh, in a form allied with its own. For to this purport does David say:6409 “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and all that dwell therein: He hath founded it upon the seas, and on the streams hath He established it.”6410 It was when the waters were withdrawn into their hollow abysses that the dry land became conspicuous,6411 which was hitherto covered with its watery envelope. Then it forthwith becomes “visible,”6412 God saying, “Let the water be gathered together into one mass,6413 and let the dry land appear.”6414 “Appear,” says He, not “be made.” It had been already made, only in its invisible condition it was then waiting6415 to appear. “Dry,” because it was about to become such by its severance from the moisture, but yet “land.” “And God called the dry land Earth,”6416 not Matter. And so, when it afterwards attains its perfection, it ceases to be accounted void, when God declares, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed after its kind, and according to its likeness, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself, after its kind.”6417 Again: “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, after their kind.”6418 Thus the divine Scripture accomplished its full order. For to that, which it had at first described as “without form (invisible) and void,” it gave both visibility and completion. Now no other Matter was “without form (invisible) and void.” Henceforth, then, Matter will have to be visible and complete. So that I must6419 see Matter, since it has become visible. I must likewise recognize it as a completed thing, so as to be able to gather from it the herb bearing seed, and the tree yielding fruit, and that living creatures, made out of it, may minister to my need. Matter, however, is nowhere,6420 but the Earth is here, confessed to my view. I see it, I enjoy it, ever since it ceased to be “without form (invisible), and void.” Concerning it most certainly did Isaiah speak when he said, “Thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, He was the God that formed the earth, and made it.”6421 The same earth for certain did He form, which He also made. Now how did He form6422 it? Of course by saying, “Let the dry land appear.”6423 Why does He command it to appear, if it were not previously invisible? His purpose was also, that He might thus prevent His having made it in vain, by rendering it visible, and so fit for use. And thus, throughout, proofs arise to us that this earth which we inhabit is the very same which was both created and formed6424 by God, and that none other was “Without form, and void,” than that which had been created and formed. It therefore follows that the sentence, “Now the earth was without form, and void,” applies to that same earth which God mentioned separately along with the heaven.6425

25. section3.chapter30

    The following words will in like manner apparently corroborate the conjecture of Hermogenes, “And darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water;”6426 as if these blended6427 substances, presented us with arguments for his massive pile of Matter.6428 Now, so discriminating an enumeration of certain and distinct elements (as we have in this passage), which severally designates “darkness,” “the deep,” “the Spirit of God,” “the waters,” forbids the inference that anything confused or (from such confusion) uncertain is meant. Still more, when He ascribed to them their own places,6429 “darkness on the face of the deep,” “the Spirit upon the face of the waters,” He repudiated all confusion in the substances; and by demonstrating their separate position,6430 He demonstrated also their distinction. Most absurd, indeed, would it be that Matter, which is introduced to our view as “without form,” should have its “formless” condition maintained by so many words indicative of form,6431 without any intimation of what that confused body6432 is, which must of course be supposed to be unique,6433 since it is without form.6434 For that which is without form is uniform; but even6435 that which is without form, when it is blended together6436 from various component parts,6437 must necessarily have one outward appearance;6438 and it has not any appearance, until it has the one appearance (which comes) from many parts combined.6439 Now Matter either had those specific parts6440 within itself, from the words indicative of which it had to be understood—I mean “darkness,” and “the deep,” and “the Spirit,” and “the waters”—or it had them not. If it had them, how is it introduced as being “without form?”6441 If it had them not, how does it become known?6442

26. section3.chapter31

    But this circumstance, too, will be caught at, that Scripture meant to indicate of the heaven only, and this earth of yours,6443 that God made it in the beginning, while nothing of the kind is said of the above-mentioned specific parts;6444 and therefore that these, which are not described as having been made, appertain to unformed Matter. To this point6445 also we must give an answer. Holy Scripture would be sufficiently explicit, if it had declared that the heaven and the earth, as the very highest works of creation, were made by God, possessing of course their own special appurtenances,6446 which might be understood to be implied in these highest works themselves. Now the appurtenances of the heaven and the earth, made then in the beginning, were the darkness and the deep, and the spirit, and the waters. For the depth and the darkness underlay the earth. Since the deep was under the earth, and the darkness was over the deep, undoubtedly both the darkness and the deep were under the earth. Below the heaven, too, lay the spirit6447 and the waters. For since the waters were over the earth, which they covered, whilst the spirit was over the waters, both the spirit and the waters were alike over the earth. Now that which is over the earth, is of course under the heaven. And even as the earth brooded over the deep and the darkness, so also did the heaven brood over the spirit and the waters, and embrace them. Nor, indeed, is there any novelty in mentioning only that which contains, as pertaining to the whole,6448 and understanding that which is contained as included in it, in its character of a portion.6449 Suppose now I should say the city built a theatre and a circus, but the stage6450 was of such and such a kind, and the statues were on the canal, and the obelisk was reared above them all, would it follow that, because I did not distinctly state that these specific things6451 were made by the city, they were therefore not made by it along with the circus and the theatre? Did I not, indeed, refrain from specially mentioning the formation of these particular things because they were implied in the things which I had already said were made, and might be understood to be inherent in the things in which they were contained? But this example may be an idle one as being derived from a human circumstance; I will take another, which has the authority of Scripture itself. It says that “God made man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”6452 Now, although it here mentions the nostrils,6453 it does not say that they were made by God; so again it speaks of skin6454 and bones, and flesh and eyes, and sweat and blood, in subsequent passages,6455 and yet it never intimated that they had been created by God. What will Hermogenes have to answer? That the human limbs must belong to Matter, because they are not specially mentioned as objects of creation? Or are they included in the formation of man? In like manner, the deep and the darkness, and the spirit and the waters, were as members of the heaven and the earth. For in the bodies the limbs were made, in the bodies the limbs too were mentioned. No element but what is a member of that element in which it is contained. But all elements are contained in the heaven and the earth.

27. section3.chapter32

    This is the answer I should give in defence of the Scripture before us, for seeming here to set forth6456 the formation of the heaven and the earth, as if (they were) the sole bodies made. It could not but know that there were those who would at once in the bodies understand their several members also, and therefore it employed this concise mode of speech. But, at the same time, it foresaw that there would be stupid and crafty men, who, after paltering with the virtual meaning,6457 would require for the several members a word descriptive of their formation too. It is therefore because of such persons, that Scripture in other passages teaches us of the creation of the individual parts. You have Wisdom saying, “But before the depths was I brought forth,”6458 in order that you may believe that the depths were also “brought forth”—that is, created—just as we create sons also, though we “bring them forth.” It matters not whether the depth was made or born, so that a beginning be accorded to it, which however would not be, if it were subjoined6459 to matter. Of darkness, indeed, the Lord Himself by Isaiah says, “I formed the light, and I created darkness.”6460 Of the wind6461 also Amos says, “He that strengtheneth the thunder6462, and createth the wind, and declareth His Christ6463 unto men;”6464 thus showing that that wind was created which was reckoned with the formation of the earth, which was wafted over the waters, balancing and refreshing and animating all things: not (as some suppose) meaning God Himself by the spirit,6465 on the ground that “God is a Spirit,”6466 because the waters would not be able to bear up their Lord; but He speaks of that spirit of which the winds consist, as He says by Isaiah, “Because my spirit went forth from me, and I made every blast.”6467 In like manner the same Wisdom says of the waters, “Also when He made the fountains strong, things which6468 are under the sky, I was fashioning6469 them along with Him.”6470 Now, when we prove that these particular things were created by God, although they are only mentioned in Genesis, without any intimation of their having been made, we shall perhaps receive from the other side the reply, that these were made, it is true,6471 but out of Matter, since the very statement of Moses, “And darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters,”6472 refers to Matter, as indeed do all those other Scriptures here and there,6473 which demonstrate that the separate parts were made out of Matter. It must follow, then,6474 that as earth consisted of earth, so also depth consisted of depth, and darkness of darkness, and the wind and waters of wind and waters. And, as we said above,6475 Matter could not have been without form, since it had specific parts, which were formed out of it—although as separate things6476—unless, indeed, they were not separate, but were the very same with those out of which they came. For it is really impossible that those specific things, which are set forth under the same names, should have been diverse; because in that case6477 the operation of God might seem to be useless,6478 if it made things which existed already; since that alone would be a creation,6479 when things came into being, which had not been (previously) made. Therefore, to conclude, either Moses then pointed to Matter when he wrote the words: “And darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters;” or else, inasmuch as these specific parts of creation are afterwards shown in other passages to have been made by God, they ought to have been with equal explicitness6480 shown to have been made out of the Matter which, according to you, Moses had previously mentioned;6481 or else, finally, if Moses pointed to those specific parts, and not to Matter, I want to know where Matter has been pointed out at all.

28. section3.chapter33

    But although Hermogenes finds it amongst his own colourable pretences6482 (for it was not in his power to discover it in the Scriptures of God), it is enough for us, both that it is certain that all things were made by God, and that there is no certainty whatever that they were made out of Matter. And even if Matter had previously existed, we must have believed that it had been really made by God, since we maintained (no less) when we held the rule of faith to be,6483 that nothing except God was uncreated.6484 Up to this point there is room for controversy, until Matter is brought to the test of the Scriptures, and fails to make good its case.6485 The conclusion of the whole is this: I find that there was nothing made, except out of nothing; because that which I find was made, I know did not once exist. Whatever6486 was made out of something, has its origin in something made: for instance, out of the ground was made the grass, and the fruit, and the cattle, and the form of man himself; so from the waters were produced the animals which swim and fly. The original fabrics6487 out of which such creatures were produced I may call their materials,6488 but then even these were created by God.

29. section3.chapter34

    Besides,6489 the belief that everything was made from nothing will be impressed upon us by that ultimate dispensation of God which will bring back all things to nothing. For “the very heaven shall be rolled together as a scroll;”6490 nay, it shall come to nothing along with the earth itself, with which it was made in the beginning. “Heaven and earth shall pass away,”6491 says He. “The first heaven and the first earth passed away,”6492 “and there was found no place for them,”6493 because, of course, that which comes to an end loses locality. In like manner David says, “The heavens, the works of Thine hands, shall themselves perish. For even as a vesture shall He change them, and they shall be changed.”6494 Now to be changed is to fall from that primitive state which they lose whilst undergoing the change. “And the stars too shall fall from heaven, even as a fig-tree casteth her green figs6495 when she is shaken of a mighty wind.”6496 “The mountains shall melt like wax at the presence of the Lord;”6497 that is, “when He riseth to shake terribly the earth.”6498 “But I will dry up the pools;”6499 and “they shall seek water, and they shall find none.”6500 Even “the sea shall be no more.”6501 Now if any person should go so far as to suppose that all these passages ought to be spiritually interpreted, he will yet be unable to deprive them of the true accomplishment of those issues which must come to pass just as they have been written. For all figures of speech necessarily arise out of real things, not out of chimerical ones; because nothing is capable of imparting anything of its own for a similitude, except it actually be that very thing which it imparts in the similitude. I return therefore to the principle6502 which defines that all things which have come from nothing shall return at last to nothing. For God would not have made any perishable thing out of what was eternal, that is to say, out of Matter; neither out of greater things would He have created inferior ones, to whose character it would be more agreeable to produce greater things out of inferior ones,—in other words, what is eternal out of what is perishable. This is the promise He makes even to our flesh, and it has been His will to deposit within us this pledge of His own virtue and power, in order that we may believe that He has actually6503 awakened the universe out of nothing, as if it had been steeped in death,6504 in the sense, of course, of its previous nonexistence for the purpose of its coming into existence.6505

30. section3.chapter35

    As regards all other points touching Matter, although there is no necessity why we should treat of them (for our first point was the manifest proof of its existence), we must for all that pursue our discussion just as if it did exist, in order that its non-existence may be the more apparent, when these other points concerning it prove inconsistent with each other, and in order at the same time that Hermogenes may acknowledge his own contradictory positions. Matter, says he, at first sight seems to us to be incorporeal; but when examined by the light of right reason, it is found to be neither corporeal nor incorporeal. What is this right reason of yours,6506 which declares nothing right, that is, nothing certain? For, if I mistake not, everything must of necessity be either corporeal or incorporeal (although I may for the moment6507 allow that there is a certain incorporeality in even substantial things,6508 although their very substance is the body of particular things); at all events, after the corporeal and the incorporeal there is no third state. But if it be contended6509 that there is a third state discovered by this right reason of Hermogenes, which makes Matter neither corporeal nor incorporeal, (I ask,) Where is it? what sort of thing is it? what is it called? what is its description? what is it understood to be? This only has his reason declared, that Matter is neither corporeal nor incorporeal.

31. section3.chapter36

    But see what a contradiction he next advances6510 (or perhaps some other reason6511 occurs to him), when he declares that Matter partly corporeal and partly incorporeal. Then must Matter be considered (to embrace) both conditions, in order that it may not have either? For it will be corporeal, and incorporeal in spite of6512 the declaration of that anti- thesis,6513 which is plainly above giving any reason for its opinion, just as that “other reason” also was. Now, by the corporeal part of Matter, he means that of which bodies are created; but by the incorporeal part of Matter, he means its uncreated6514 motion. If, says he, Matter were simply a body, there would appear to be in it nothing incorporeal, that is, (no) motion; if, on the other hand, it had been wholly incorporeal no body could be formed out of it. What a peculiarly right6515 reason have we here! Only if you make your sketches as right as you make your reason, Hermogenes, no painter would be more stupid6516 than yourself. For who is going to allow you to reckon motion as a moiety of Matter, seeing that it is not a substantial thing, because it is not corporeal, but an accident (if indeed it be even that) of a substance and a body? Just as action6517 is, and impulsion, just as a slip is, or a fall, so is motion. When anything moves even of itself, its motion is the result of impulse;6518 but certainly it is no part of its substance in your sense,6519 when you make motion the incorporeal part of matter. All things, indeed,6520 have motion—either of themselves as animals, or of others as inanimate things; but yet we should not say that either a man or a stone was both corporeal and incorporeal because they had both a body and motion: we should say rather that all things have one form of simple6521 corporeality, which is the essential quality6522 of substance. If any incorporeal incidents accrue to them, as actions, or passions, or functions,6523 or desires, we do not reckon these parts as of the things. How then does he contrive to assign an integral portion of Matter to motion, which does not pertain to substance, but to a certain condition6524 of substance? Is not this incontrovertible?6525 Suppose you had taken it into your head6526 to represent matter as immoveable, would then the immobility seem to you to be a moiety of its form? Certainly not. Neither, in like manner, could motion. But I shall be at liberty to speak of motion elsewhere.6527

32. section3.chapter37

    I see now that you are coming back again to that reason, which has been in the habit of declaring to you nothing in the way of certainty. For just as you introduce to our notice Matter as being neither corporeal nor incorporeal, so you allege of it that it is neither good nor evil; and you say, whilst arguing further on it in the same strain: “If it were good, seeing that it had ever been so, it would not require the arrangement of itself by God;6528 if it were naturally evil, it would not have admitted of a change6529 for the better, nor would God have ever applied to such a nature any attempt at arrangement of it, for His labour would have been in vain.” Such are your words, which it would have been well if you had remembered in other passages also, so as to have avoided any contradiction of them. As, however, we have already treated to some extent of this ambiguity of good and evil touching Matter, I will now reply to the only proposition and argument of yours which we have before us. I shall not stop to repeat my opinion, that it was your bounden duty to have said for certain that Matter was either good or bad, or in some third condition; but (I must observe) that you have not here even kept to the statement which you chose to make before. Indeed, you retract what you declared—that Matter is neither good nor evil; because you imply that it is evil when you say, “If it were good, it would not require to be set in order by God;” so again, when you add, “If it were naturally evil, it would not admit of any change for the better,” you seem to intimate6530 that it is good. And so you attribute to it a close relation6531 to good and evil, although you declared it neither good nor evil. With a view, however, to refute the argument whereby you thought you were going to clinch your proposition, I here contend: If Matter had always been good, why should it not have still wanted a change for the better? Does that which is good never desire, never wish, never feel able to advance, so as to change its good for a better? And in like manner, if Matter had been by nature evil, why might it not have been changed by God as the more powerful Being, as able to convert the nature of stones into children of Abraham?6532 Surely by such means you not only compare the Lord with Matter, but you even put Him below6533 it, since you affirm that6534 the nature of Matter could not possibly be brought under control by Him, and trained to something better. But although you are here disinclined to allow that Matter is by nature evil, yet in another passage you will deny having made such an admission.6535

33. section3.chapter38

    My observations touching the site6536 of Matter, as also concerning its mode6537 have one and the same object in view—to meet and refute your perverse positions. You put Matter below God, and thus, of course, you assign a place to it below God. Therefore Matter is local.6538 Now, if it is local, it is within locality; if within locality, it is bounded6539 by the place within which it is; if it is bounded, it has an outline,6540 which (painter as you are in your special vocation) you know is the boundary to every object susceptible of outline. Matter, therefore, cannot be infinite, which, since it is in space, is bounded by space; and being thus determinable by space, it is susceptible of an outline. You, however, make it infinite, when you say: “It is on this account infinite, because it is always existent.” And if any of your disciples should choose to meet us by declaring your meaning to be that Matter is infinite in time, not in its corporeal mass,6541 still what follows will show that (you mean) corporeal infinity to be an attribute of Matter, that it is in respect of bulk immense and uncircumscribed. “Wherefore,” say you, “it is not fabricated as a whole, but in its parts.”6542 In bulk, therefore, is it infinite, not in time. And you contradict yourself6543 when you make Matter infinite in bulk, and at the same time ascribe place to it, including it within space and local outline. But yet at the same time I cannot tell why God should not have entirely formed it,6544 unless it be because He was either impotent or envious. I want therefore to know the moiety of that which was not wholly formed (by God), in order that I may understand what kind of thing the entirety was. It was only right that God should have made it known as a model of antiquity,6545 to set off the glory of His work.

34. section3.chapter39

    Well, now, since it seems to you to be the correcter thing,6546 let Matter be circumscribed6547 by means of changes and displacements; let it also be capable of comprehension, since (as you say) it is used as material by God,6548 on the ground of its being convertible, mutable, and separable. For its changes, you say, show it to be inseparable. And here you have swerved from your own lines6549 which you prescribed respecting the person of God when you laid down the rule that God made it not out of His own self, because it was not possible for Him to become divided6550 seeing that He is eternal and abiding for ever, and therefore unchangeable and indivisible. Since Matter too is estimated by the same eternity, having neither beginning nor end, it will be unsusceptible of division, of change, for the same reason that God also is. Since it is associated with Him in the joint possession of eternity, it must needs share with Him also the powers, the laws, and the conditions of eternity. In like manner, when you say, “All things simultaneously throughout the universe6551 possess portions of it,6552 that so the whole may be ascertained from6553 its parts,” you of course mean to indicate those parts which were produced out of it, and which are now visible to us. How then is this possession (of Matter) by all things throughout the universe effected—that is, of course, from the very beginning6554—when the things which are now visible to us are different in their condition6555 from what they were in the beginning?

35. section3.chapter40

    You say that Matter was reformed for the better6556—from a worse condition, of course; and thus you would make the better a copy of the worse. Everything was in confusion, but now it is reduced to order; and would you also say, that out of order, disorder is produced? No one thing is the exact mirror6557 of another thing; that is to say, it is not its co-equal. Nobody ever found himself in a barber’s looking-glass look like an ass6558 instead of a man; unless it be he who supposes that unformed and shapeless Matter answers to Matter which is now arranged and beautified in the fabric of the world. What is there now that is without form in the world, what was there once that was formed6559 in Matter, that the world is the mirror of Matter? Since the world is known among the Greeks by a term denoting ornament, 6560 how can it present the image of unadorned6561 Matter, in such a way that you can say the whole is known by its parts? To that whole will certainly belong even the portion which has not yet become formed; and you have already declared that the whole of Matter was not used as material in the creation.6562 It follows, then, that this rude, and confused, and unarranged portion cannot be recognized in the polished, and distinct and well-arranged parts of creation, which indeed can hardly with propriety be called parts of Matter, since they have quitted6563 its condition, by being separated from it in the transformation they have undergone.

36. section3.chapter41

    I come back to the point of motion,6564 that I may show how slippery you are at every step. Motion in Matter was disordered, and confused, and turbulent. This is why you apply to it the comparison of a boiler of hot water surging over. Now how is it, that in another passage another sort of motion is affirmed by you? For when you want to represent Matter as neither good nor evil, you say: “Matter, which is the substratum (of creation)6565 possessing as it does motion in an equable impulse,6566 tends in no very great degree either to good or to evil.” Now if it had this equable impulse, it could not be turbulent, nor be like the boiling water of the caldron; it would rather be even and regular, oscillating indeed of its own accord between good and evil, but yet not prone or tending to either side. It would swing, as the phrase is, in a just and exact balance. Now this is not unrest; this is not turbulence or inconstancy; 6567 but rather the regularity, and evenness, and exactitude of a motion, inclining to neither side. If it oscillated this way and that way, and inclined rather to one particular side, it would plainly in that case merit the reproach of unevenness, and inequality, and turbulence. Moreover, although the motion of Matter was not prone either to good or to evil, it would still, of course, oscillate between good and evil; so that from this circumstance too it is obvious that Matter is contained within certain limits,6568 because its motion, while prone to neither good nor evil, since it had no natural bent either way, oscillated from either between both, and therefore was contained within the limits of the two. But you, in fact, place both good and evil in a local habitation,6569 when you assert that motion in Matter inclined to neither of them. For Matter which was local,6570 when inclining neither hither nor thither, inclined not to the places in which good and evil were. But when you assign locality to good and evil, you make them corporeal by making them local, since those things which have local space must needs first have bodily substance. In fact,6571 incorporeal things could not have any locality of their own except in a body, when they have access to a body.6572 But when Matter inclined not to good and evil, it was as corporeal or local essences that it did not incline to them. You err, therefore, when you will have it that good and evil are substances. For you make substances of the things to which you assign locality;6573 but you assign locality when you keep motion in Matter poised equally distant from both sides.6574

37. section3.chapter42

    You have thrown out all your views loosely and at random,6575 in order that it might not be apparent, by too close a proximity, how contrary they are to one another. I, however, 501 mean to gather them together and compare them. You allege that motion in Matter is without regularity,6576 and you go on to say that Matter aims at a shapeless condition, and then, in another passage, that it desires to be set in order by God. Does that, then, which affects to be without form, want to be put into shape? Or does that which wants to be put into shape, affect to be without form? You are unwilling that God should seem to be equal to Matter; and then again you say that it has a common condition6577 with God. “For it is impossible,” you say, “if it has nothing in common with God, that it can be set in order by Him.” But if it had anything in common with God, it did not want to be set in order,6578 being, forsooth, a part of the Deity through a community of condition; or else even God was susceptible of being set in order6579 by Matter, by His having Himself something in common with it. And now you herein subject God to necessity, since there was in Matter something on account of which He gave it form. You make it, however, a common attribute of both of them, that they set themselves in motion by themselves, and that they are ever in motion. What less do you ascribe to Matter than to God? There will be found all through a fellowship of divinity in this freedom and perpetuity of motion. Only in God motion is regular,6580 in Matter irregular.6581 In both, however, there is equally the attribute of Deity—both alike having free and eternal motion. At the same time, you assign more to Matter, to which belonged the privilege of thus moving itself in a way not allowed to God.

38. section3.chapter43

    On the subject of motion I would make this further remark. Following the simile of the boiling caldron, you say that motion in Matter, before it was regulated, was confused,6582 restless, incomprehensible by reason of excess in the commotion.6583 Then again you go on to say, “But it waited for the regulation6584 of God, and kept its irregular motion incomprehensible, owing to the tardiness of its irregular motion.” Just before you ascribe commotion, here tardiness, to motion. Now observe how many slips you make respecting the nature of Matter. In a former passage6585 you say, “If Matter were naturally evil, it would not have admitted of a change for the better; nor would God have ever applied to it any attempt at arrangement, for His labour would have been in vain.” You therefore concluded your two opinions, that Matter was not by nature evil, and that its nature was incapable of being changed by God; and then, forgetting them, you afterwards drew this inference: “But when it received adjustment from God, and was reduced to order,6586 it relinquished its nature.” Now, inasmuch as it was transformed to good, it was of course transformed from evil; and if by God’s setting it in order it relinquished6587 the nature of evil, it follows that its nature came to an end;6588 now its nature was evil before the adjustment, but after the transformation it might have relinquished that nature.

39. section3.chapter44

    But it remains that I should show also how you make God work. You are plainly enough at variance with the philosophers; but neither are you in accord with the prophets. The Stoics maintain that God pervaded Matter, just as honey the honeycomb. You, however, affirm that it is not by pervading Matter that God makes the world, but simply by appearing, and approaching it, just as beauty affects6589 a thing by simply appearing, and a loadstone by approaching it. Now what similarity is there in God forming the world, and beauty wounding a soul, or a magnet attracting iron? For even if God appeared to Matter, He yet did not wound it, as beauty does the soul; if, again, He approached it, He yet did not cohere to it, as the magnet does to the iron. Suppose, however, that your examples are suitable ones. Then, of course,6590 it was by appearing and approaching to Matter that God made the world, and He made it when He appeared and when He approached to it. Therefore, since He had not made it before then,6591 He had neither appeared nor approached to it. Now, by whom can it be believed that God had not appeared to Matter—of the same nature as it even was owing to its eternity? Or that He had been at a distance from it—even He whom we believe to be existent everywhere, and everywhere apparent; whose praises all things chant, even inanimate things and things incorporeal, according to (the prophet) Daniel?6592 How immense the place, where God kept Himself so far aloof from Matter as to have neither appeared nor approached to it before the creation of the world! I suppose He journeyed to it from a long distance, as soon as He wished to appear and approach to it.

40. section3.chapter45

    But it is not thus that the prophets and the apostles have told us that the world was made by God merely appearing and approaching Matter. They did not even mention any Matter, but (said) that Wisdom was first set up, the beginning of His ways, for His works.6593 Then that the Word was produced, “through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made.”6594 Indeed, “by the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all their hosts by the breath of His mouth.”6595 He is the Lord’s right hand,6596 indeed His two hands, by which He worked and constructed the universe. “For,” says He, “the heavens are the works of Thine hands,”6597 wherewith “He hath meted out the heaven, and the earth with a span.”6598 Do not be willing so to cover God with flattery, as to contend that He produced by His mere appearance and simple approach so many vast substances, instead of rather forming them by His own energies. For this is proved by Jeremiah when he says, “God hath made the earth by His power, He hath established the world by His wisdom, and hath stretched out the heaven by His understanding.”6599 These are the energies by the stress of which He made this universe.6600 His glory is greater if He laboured. At length on the seventh day He rested from His works. Both one and the other were after His manner. If, on the contrary,6601 He made this world simply by appearing and approaching it, did He, on the completion of His work, cease to appear and approach it any more. Nay rather,6602 God began to appear more conspicuously and to be everywhere accessible6603 from the time when the world was made. You see, therefore, how all things consist by the operation of that God who “made the earth by His power, who established the world by His wisdom, and stretched out the heaven by His understanding;” not appearing merely, nor approaching, but applying the almighty efforts of His mind, His wisdom, His power, His understanding, His word, His Spirit, His might. Now these things were not necessary to Him, if He had been perfect by simply appearing and approaching. They are, however, His “invisible things,” which, according to the apostle, “are from the creation of the world clearly seen by the things that are made;”6604 they are no parts of a nondescript6605 Matter, but they are the sensible6606 evidences of Himself. “For who hath known the mind of the Lord,”6607 of which (the apostle) exclaims: “O the depth of the riches both of His wisdom and knowledge! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!”6608 Now what clearer truth do these words indicate, than that all things were made out of nothing? They are incapable of being found out or investigated, except by God alone. Otherwise, if they were traceable or discoverable in Matter, they would be capable of investigation. Therefore, in as far as it has become evident that Matter had no prior existence (even from this circumstance, that it is impossible6609 for it to have had such an existence as is assigned to it), in so far is it proved that all things were made by God out of nothing. It must be admitted, however,6610 that Hermogenes, by describing for Matter a condition like his own—irregular, confused, turbulent, of a doubtful and precipate and fervid impulse—has displayed a specimen of his own art, and painted his own portrait.

41. book6

    In Which the Author Gives a Concise Account of, Together with Sundry Caustic Animadversions on, the Very Fantastic Theology of the Sect. This Treatise is Professedly Taken from the Writings of Justin, Miltiades, Irenæus, and Proculus. [Translated by Dr. Roberts.]

42. book6.chapter1

    The Valentinians, who are no doubt a very large body of heretics—comprising as they do so many apostates from the truth, who have a propensity for fables, and no discipline to deter them (therefrom) care for nothing so much as to obscure6611 what they preach, if indeed they (can be said to) preach who obscure their doctrine. The officiousness with which they guard their doctrine is an officiousness which betrays their guilt.6612 Their disgrace is proclaimed in the very earnestness with which they maintain their religious system. Now, in the case of those Eleusinian mysteries, which are the very heresy of Athenian superstition, it is their secrecy that is their disgrace. Accordingly, they previously beset all access to their body with tormenting conditions;6613 and they require a long initiation before they enrol (their members),6614 even instruction during five years for their perfect disciples,6615 in order that they may mould6616 their opinions by this suspension of full knowledge, and apparently raise the dignity of their mysteries in proportion to the craving for them which they have previously created. Then follows the duty of silence. Carefully is that guarded, which is so long in finding. All the divinity, however, lies in their secret recesses:6617 there are revealed at last all the aspirations of the fully initiated,6618 the entire mystery of the sealed tongue, the symbol of virility. But this allegorical representation,6619 under the pretext of nature’s reverend name, obscures a real sacrilege by help of an arbitrary symbol,6620 and by empty images obviates6621 the reproach of falsehood!6622 In like manner, the heretics who are now the object of our remarks,6623 the Valentinians, have formed Eleusinian dissipations6624 of their own, consecrated by a profound silence, having nothing of the heavenly in them but their mystery.6625 By the help of the sacred names and titles and arguments of true religion, they have fabricated the vainest and foulest figment for men’s pliant liking,6626 out of the affluent suggestions of Holy Scripture, since from its many springs many errors may well emanate. If you propose to them inquiries sincere and honest, they answer you with stern6627 look and contracted brow, and say, “The subject is profound.” If you try them with subtle questions, with the ambiguities of their double tongue, they affirm a community of faith (with yourself). If you intimate to them that you understand their opinions, they insist on knowing nothing themselves. If you come to a close engagement with them they destroy your own fond hope of a victory over them by a self-immolation.6628 Not even to their own disciples do they commit a secret before they have made sure of them. They have the knack of persuading men before instructing them; although truth persuades by teaching, but does not teach by first persuading.

43. book6.chapter2

    For this reason we are branded6629 by them as simple, and as being merely so, without being wise also; as if indeed wisdom were compelled to be wanting in simplicity, whereas the Lord unites them both: “Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and simple as doves.”6630 Now if we, on our parts, be accounted foolish because we are simple, does it then follow that they are not simple because they are wise? Most perverse, however, are they who are not simple, even as they are most foolish who are not wise. And yet, (if I must choose) I should prefer taking6631 the latter condition for the lesser fault; since it is perhaps better to have a wisdom which falls short in quantity, than that which is bad in quality6632—better to be in error than to mislead. Besides, the face of the Lord6633 is patiently waited for by those who “seek Him in simplicity of heart,” as says the very Wisdom—not of Valentinus, but—of Solomon. 6634 Then, again, infants have borne6635 by their blood a testimony to Christ. (Would you say) that it was children who shouted “Crucify Him”?6636 They were neither children nor infants; in other words, they were not simple. The apostle, too, bids us to “become children again” towards God,6637 “to be as children in malice” by our simplicity, yet as being also “wise in our practical faculties.”6638 At the same time, with respect to the order of development in Wisdom, I have admitted6639 that it flows from simplicity. In brief, “the dove” has usually served to figure Christ; “the serpent,” to tempt Him. The one even from the first has been the harbinger of divine peace; the other from the beginning has been the despoiler of the divine image. Accordingly, simplicity alone6640 will be more easily able to know and to declare God, whereas wisdom alone will rather do Him violence,6641 and betray Him.

44. book6.chapter3

    Let, then, the serpent hide himself as much as he is able, and let him wrest6642 all his wisdom in the labyrinths of his obscurities; let him dwell deep down in the ground; let him worm himself into secret holes; let him unroll his length through his sinuous joints;6643 let him tortuously crawl, though not all at once,6644 beast as he is that skulks the light. Of our dove, however, how simple is the very home!—always in high and open places, and facing the light! As the symbol of the Holy Spirit, it loves the (radiant) East, that figure of Christ.6645 Nothing causes truth a blush, except only being hidden, because no man will be ashamed to give ear thereto. No man will be ashamed to recognise Him as God whom nature has already commended to him, whom he already perceives in all His works,6646—Him indeed who is simply, for this reason, imperfectly known; because man has not thought of Him as only one, because he has named Him in a plurality (of gods), and adored Him in other forms. Yet,6647 to induce oneself to turn from this multitude of deities to another crowd,6648 to remove from a familiar authority to an unknown one, to wrench oneself from what is manifest to what is hidden, is to offend faith on the very threshold. Now, even suppose that you are initiated into the entire fable, will it not occur to you that you have heard something very like it from your fond nurse6649 when you were a baby, amongst the lullabies she sang to you6650 about the towers of Lamia, and the horns of the sun?6651 Let, however, any man approach the subject from a knowledge of the faith which he has otherwise learned, as soon as he finds so many names of Æons, so many marriages, so many offsprings, so many exits, so many issues, felicities and infelicities of a dispersed and mutilated Deity, will that man hesitate at once to pronounce that these are “the fables and endless genealogies” which the inspired apostle6652 by anticipation condemned, whilst these seeds of heresy were even then shooting forth? Deservedly, therefore, must they be regarded as wanting in simplicity, and as merely prudent, who produce such fables not without difficulty, and defend them only indirectly, who at the same time do not thoroughly instruct those whom they teach. This, of course, shows their astuteness, if their lessons are disgraceful; their unkindness, if they are honourable. As for us, however, who are the simple folk, we know all about it. In short, this is the very first weapon with which we are armed for our encounter; it unmasks6653 and brings to view6654 the whole of their depraved system.6655 And in this we have the first augury of our victory; because even merely to point out that which is concealed with so great an outlay of artifice,6656 is to destroy it.

45. book6.chapter4

    We know, I say, most fully their actual origin, and we are quite aware why we call them Valentinians, although they affect to disavow their name. They have departed, it is true,6657 from their founder, yet is their origin by no means destroyed; and even if it chance to be changed, the very change bears testimony to the fact. Valentinus had expected to become a bishop, because he was an able man both in genius and eloquence. Being indignant, however, that another obtained the dignity by reason of a claim which confessorship6658 had given him, he broke with the church of the true faith. Just like those (restless) spirits which, when roused by ambition, are usually inflamed with the desire of revenge, he applied himself with all his might6659 to exterminate the truth; and finding the clue6660 of a certain old opinion, he marked out a path for himself with the subtlety of a serpent. Ptolemæus afterwards entered on the same path, by distinguishing the names and the numbers of the Ænons into personal substances, which, however, he kept apart from God. Valentinus had included these in the very essence of the Deity, as senses and affections of motion. Sundry bypaths were then struck off therefrom, by Heraclean and Secundus and the magician Marcus. Theotimus worked hard about “the images of the law.” Valentinus, however, was as yet nowhere, and still the Valentinians derive their name from Valentinus. Axionicus at Antioch is the only man who at the present time does honour6661 to the memory of Valentinus, by keeping his rules6662 to the full. But this heresy is permitted to fashion itself into as many various shapes as a courtezan, who usually changes and adjusts her dress every day. And why not? When they review that spiritual seed of theirs in every man after this fashion, whenever they have hit upon any novelty, they forthwith call their presumption a revelation, their own perverse ingenuity a spiritual gift; but (they deny all) unity, admitting only diversity.6663 And thus we clearly see that, setting aside their customary dissimulation, most of them are in a divided state, being ready to say (and that sincerely) of certain points of their belief, “This is not so;” and, “I take this in a different sense;” and, “I do not admit that.” By this variety, indeed, innovation is stamped on the very face of their rules; besides which, it wears all the colourable features of ignorant conceits.6664

46. book6.chapter5

    My own path, however, lies along the original tenets6665 of their chief teachers, not with the self-appointed leaders of their promiscuous6666 followers. Nor shall we hear it said of us from any quarter, that we have of our own mind fashioned our own materials, since these have been already produced, both in respect of the opinions and their refutations, in carefully written volumes, by so many eminently holy and excellent men, not only those who have lived before us, but those also who were contemporary with the heresiarchs themselves: for instance Justin, philosopher and martyr;6667 Miltiades, the sophist6668 of the churches; Irenæus, that very exact inquirer into all doctrines;6669 our own Proculus, the model6670 of chaste old age and Christian eloquence. All these it would be my desire closely to follow in every work of faith, even as in this particular one. Now if there are no heresies at all but what those who refute them are supposed to have fabricated, then the apostle who predicted them6671 must have been guilty of falsehood. If, however, there are heresies, they can be no other than those which are the subject of discussion. No writer can be supposed to have so much time on his hands6672 as to fabricate materials which are already in his possession.

47. book6.chapter6

    In order then, that no one may be blinded by so many outlandish6673 names, collected together, and adjusted at pleasure,6674 and of doubtful import, I mean in this little work, wherein we merely undertake to propound this (heretical) mystery, to explain in what manner we are to use them. Now the rendering of some of these names from the Greek so as to produce an equally obvious sense of the word, is by no means an easy process: in the case of some others, the genders are not suitable; while others, again, are more familiarly known in their Greek form. For the most part, therefore, we shall use the Greek names; their meanings will be seen on the margins of the pages. Nor will the Greek be unaccompanied with the Latin equivalents; only these will be marked in lines above, for the purpose of explaining6675 the personal names, rendered necessary by the ambiguities of such of them as admit some different meaning. But although I must postpone all discussion, and be content at present with the mere exposition (of the heresy), still, wherever any scandalous feature shall seem to require a castigation, it must be attacked6676 by all means, if only with a passing thrust.6677 Let the reader regard it as the skirmish before the battle. It will be my drift to show how to wound6678 rather than to inflict deep gashes. If in any instance mirth be excited, this will be quite as much as the subject deserves. There are many things which deserve refutation in such a way as to have no gravity expended on them. Vain and silly topics are met with especial fitness by laughter. Even the truth may indulge in ridicule, because it is jubilant; it may play with its enemies, because it is fearless.6679 Only we must take care that its laughter be not unseemly, and so itself be laughed at; but wherever its mirth is decent, there it is a duty to indulge it. And so at last I enter on my task.

48. book6.chapter7

    Beginning with Ennius,6680 the Roman poet, he simply spoke of “the spacious saloons6681 of heaven,”—either on account of their elevated site, or because in Homer he had read about Jupiter banqueting therein. As for our heretics, however, it is marvellous what storeys upon storeys6682 and what heights upon heights, they have hung up, raised and spread out as a dwelling for each several god of theirs. Even our Creator has had arranged for Him the saloons of Ennius in the fashion of private rooms,6683 with chamber piled upon chamber, and assigned to each god by just as many staircases as there were heresies. The universe, in fact, has been turned into “rooms to let.”6684 Such storeys of the heavens you would imagine to be detached tenements in some happy isle of the blessed,6685 I know not where. There the god even of the Valentinians has his dwelling in the attics. They call him indeed, as to his essence, Αἰῶν τέλειος (Perfect Æon), but in respect of his personality, Προαρχή (Before the Beginning), ῾Η ᾽Αρχή (The Beginning), and sometimes Bythos (Depth),6686 a name which is most unfit for one who dwells in the heights above! They describe him as unbegotten, immense, infinite, invisible, and eternal; as if, when they described him to be such as we know that he ought to be, they straightway prove him to be a being who may be said to have had such an existence even before all things else. I indeed insist upon6687 it that he is such a being; and there is nothing which I detect in beings of this sort more obvious, than that they who are said to have been before all things—things, too, not their own—are found to be behind all things. Let it, however, be granted that this Bythos of theirs existed in the infinite ages of the past in the greatest and profoundest repose, in the extreme rest of a placid and, if I may use the expression, stupid divinity, such as Epicurus has enjoined upon us. And yet, although they would have him be alone, they assign to him a second person in himself and with himself, Ennoea (Thought), which they also call both Charis (Grace) and Sige (Silence). Other things, as it happened, conduced in this most agreeable repose to remind him of the need of by and by producing out of himself the beginning of all things. This he deposits in lieu of seed in the genital region, as it were, of the womb of his Sige. Instantaneous conception is the result: Sige becomes pregnant, and is delivered, of course in silence; and her offspring is Nus (Mind), very like his father and his equal in every respect. In short, he alone is capable of comprehending the measureless and incomprehensible greatness of his father. Accordingly he is even called the Father himself, and the Beginning of all things, and, with great propriety, Monogenes (The Only-begotten). And yet not with absolute propriety, since he is not born alone. For along with him a female also proceeded, whose name was Veritas6688 (Truth). But how much more suitably might Monogenes be called Protogenes (First begotten), since he was begotten first! Thus Bythos and Sige, Nus and Veritas, are alleged to be the first fourfold team6689 of the Valentinian set (of gods)6690 the parent stock and origin of them all. For immediately when6691 Nus received the function of a procreation of his own, he too produces out of himself Sermo (the Word) and Vita (the Life). If this latter existed not previously, of course she existed not in Bythos. And a pretty absurdity would it be, if Life existed not in God! However, this offspring also produces fruit, having for its mission the initiation of the universe and the formation of the entire Pleroma: it procreates Homo (Man) and Ecclesia (the Church). Thus you have an Ogdoad, a double Tetra, out of the conjunctions of males and females—the cells6692 (so to speak) of the primordial Æons, the fraternal nuptials of the Valentinian gods, the simple originals6693 of heretical sanctity and majesty, a rabble6694—shall I say of criminals6695 or of deities?6696—at any rate, the fountain of all ulterior fecundity.

49. book6.chapter8

    For, behold, when the second Tetrad—Sermo and Vita, Homo and Ecclesia6697—had borne fruit to the Father’s glory, having an intense desire of themselves to present to the Father something similar of their own, they bring other issue into being6698—conjugal of course, as the others were6699—by the union of the twofold nature. On the one hand, Sermo and Vita pour out at a birth a half-score of Æons; on the other hand, Homo and Ecclesia produce a couple more, so furnishing an equipoise to their parents, since this pair with the other ten make up just as many as they did themselves procreate. I now give the names of the half-score whom I have mentioned: Bythios (Profound) and Mixis (Mixture), Ageratos (Never old) and Henosis (Union), Autophyes (Essential nature) and Hedone (Pleasure), Acinetos (Immoveable) and Syncrasis (Commixture,) Monogenes (Only-begotten) and Macaria (Happiness). On the other hand, these will make up the number twelve (to which I have also referred): Paracletus (Comforter) and Pistis (Faith), Patricas (Paternal) and Elpis (Hope), Metricos (Maternal) and Agape (Love), Ainos (Praise)6700 and Synesis (Intelligence), Ecclesiasticus (Son of Ecclesia) and Macariotes (Blessedness), Theletus6701 (Perfect) and Sophia (Wisdom). I cannot help6702 here quoting from a like example what may serve to show the import of these names. In the schools of Carthage there was once a certain Latin rhetorician, an excessively cool fellow,6703 whose name was Phosphorus. He was personating a man of valour, and wound up6704 with saying, “I come to you, excellent citizens, from battle, with victory for myself, with happiness for you, full of honour, covered with glory, the favourite of fortune, the greatest of men, decked with triumph.” And forthwith his scholars begin to shout for the school of Phosphorus, φεῦ6705 (ah!). Are you a believer in6706 Fortunata, and Hedone, and Acinetus, and Theletus? Then shout out your φεῦ for the school of Ptolemy.6707 This must be that mystery of the Pleroma, the fulness of the thirty-fold divinity. Let us see what special attributes6708 belong to these numbers—four, and eight, and twelve. Meanwhile with the number thirty all fecundity ceases. The generating force and power and desire of the Æons is spent.6709 As if there were not still left some strong rennet for curdling numbers.6710 As if no other names were to be got out of the page’s hall!6711 For why are there not sets of fifty and of a hundred procreated? Why, too, are there no comrades and boon companions6712 named for them?

50. book6.chapter9

    But, further, there is an “acceptance6713 of persons,” inasmuch as Nus alone among them all enjoys the knowledge of the immeasurable Father, joyous and exulting, while they of course pine in sorrow. To be sure, Nus, so far as in him lay, both wished and tried to impart to the others also all that he had learnt about the greatness and incomprehensibility of the Father; but his mother, Sige, interposed—she who (you must know) imposes silence even on her own beloved heretics;6714 although they affirm that this is done at the will of the Father, who will have all to be inflamed with a longing after himself. Thus, while they are tormenting themselves with these internal desires, while they are burning with the secret longing to know the Father, the crime is almost accomplished. For of the twelve Æons which Homo and Ecclesia had produced, the youngest by birth (never mind the solecism, since Sophia (Wisdom) is her name), unable to restrain herself, breaks away without the society of her husband Theletus, in quest of the Father and contracts that kind of sin which had indeed arisen amongst the others who were conversant with Nus but had flowed on to this Æon,6715 that is, to Sophia; as is usual with maladies which, after arising in one part of the body, spread abroad their infection to some other limb. The fact is,6716 under a pretence of love to the Father, she was overcome with a desire to rival Nus, who alone rejoiced in the knowledge of the Father.6717 But when Sophia, straining after impossible aims, was disappointed of her hope, she is both overcome with difficulty, and racked with affection. Thus she was all but swallowed up by reason of the charm and toil (of her research),6718 and dissolved into the remnant of his substance;6719 nor would there have been any other alternative for her than perdition, if she had not by good luck fallen in with Horus (Limit). He too had considerable power. He is the foundation of the great6720 universe, and, externally, the guardian thereof. To him they give the additional names of Crux (Cross), and Lytrotes (Redeemer,) and Carpistes (Emancipator).6721 When Sophia was thus rescued from danger, and tardily persuaded, she relinquished further research after the Father, found repose, and laid aside all her excitement,6722 or Enthymesis (Desire,) along with the passion which had come over her.

51. book6.chapter10

    But some dreamers have given another account of the aberration6723 and recovery of Sophia. After her vain endeavours, and the disappointment of her hope, she was, I suppose, disfigured with paleness and emaciation, and that neglect of her beauty which was natural to one who6724 was deploring the denial of the Father,—an affliction which was no less painful than his loss. Then, in the midst of all this sorrow, she by herself alone, without any conjugal help, conceived and bare a female offspring. Does this excite your surprise? Well, even the hen has the power of being able to bring forth by her own energy.6725 They say, too, that among vultures there are only females, which become parents alone. At any rate, she was another without aid from a male, and she began at last to be afraid that her end was even at hand. She was all in doubt about the treatment6726 of her case, and took pains at self-concealment. Remedies could nowhere be found. For where, then, should we have tragedies and comedies, from which to borrow the process of exposing what has been born without connubial modesty? While the thing is in this evil plight, she raises her eyes, and turns them to the Father. Having, however, striven in vain, as her strength was failing her, she falls to praying. Her entire kindred also supplicates in her behalf, and especially Nus. Why not? What was the cause of so vast an evil? Yet not a single casualty6727 befell Sophia without its effect. All her sorrows operate. Inasmuch as all that conflict of hers contributes to the origin of Matter. Her ignorance, her fear, her distress, become substances. Hereupon the Father by and by, being moved, produces in his own image, with a view to these circumstances6728 the Horos whom we have mentioned above; (and this he does) by means of Monogenes Nus, a male-female (Æon), because there is this variation of statement about the Father’s6729 sex. They also go on to tell us that Horos is likewise called Metagogius, that is, “a conductor about,” as well as Horothetes (Setter of Limits). By his assistance they declare that Sophia was checked in her illicit courses, and purified from all evils, and henceforth strengthened (in virtue), and restored to the conjugal state: (they add) that she indeed re- mained within the bounds6730 of the Pleroma, but that her Enthymesis, with the accruing6731 Passion, was banished by Horos, and crucified and cast out from the Pleroma,—even as they say, Malum foras! (Evil, avaunt!) Still, that was a spiritual essence, as being the natural impulse of an Æon, although without form or shape, inasmuch as it had apprehended nothing, and therefore was pronounced to be an infirm and feminine fruit.6732

52. book6.chapter11

    Accordingly, after the banishment of the Enthymesis, and the return of her mother Sophia to her husband, the (illustrious) Monogenes, the Nus,6733 released indeed from all care and concern of the Father, in order that he might consolidate all things, and defend and at last fix the Pleroma, and so prevent any concussion of the kind again, once more6734 emits a new couple6735 (blasphemously named). I should suppose the coupling of two males to be a very shameful thing, or else the one6736 must be a female, and so the male is discredited6737 by the female. One divinity is assigned in the case of all these, to procure a complete adjustment among the Æons. Even from this fellowship in a common duty two schools actually arise, two chairs,6738 and, to some extent,6739 the inauguration of a division in the doctrine of Valentinus. It was the function of Christ to instruct the Æons in the nature of their conjugal relations6740 (you see what the whole thing was, of course!), and how to form some guess about the unbegotten,6741 and to give them the capacity of generating within themselves the knowledge of the Father; it being impossible to catch the idea of him, or comprehend him, or, in short, even to enjoy any perception of him, either by the eye or the ear, except through Monogenes (the Only-begotten). Well, I will even grant them what they allege about knowing the Father, so that they do not refuse us (the attainment of) the same. I would rather point out what is perverse in their doctrine, how they were taught that the incomprehensible part of the Father was the cause of their own perpetuity,6742 whilst that which might be comprehended of him was the reason6743 of their generation and formation. Now by these several positions6744 the tenet, I suppose, is insinuated, that it is expedient for God not to be apprehended, on the very ground that the incomprehensibility of His character is the cause of perpetuity; whereas what in Him is comprehensible is productive, not of perpetuity, but rather of conditions which lack perpetuity—namely, nativity and formation. The Son, indeed, they made capable of comprehending the Father. The manner in which He is comprehended, the recently produced Christ fully taught them. To the Holy Spirit, however, belonged the special gifts, whereby they, having been all set on a complete par in respect of their earnestness to learn, should be enabled to offer up their thanksgiving, and be introduced to a true tranquillity.

53. book6.chapter12

    Thus they are all on the self-same footing in respect of form and knowledge, all of them having become what each of them severally is; none being a different being, because they are all what the others are.6745 They are all turned into6746 Nuses, into Homos, into Theletuses; 6747 and so in the case of the females, into Siges, into Zoes, into Ecclesias, into Fortunatas, so that Ovid would have blotted out his own Metamorphoses if he had only known our larger one in the present day. Straightway they were reformed and thoroughly established, and being composed to rest from the truth, they celebrate the Father in a chorus6748 of praise in the exuberance of their joy. The Father himself also revelled6749 in the glad feeling; of course, because his children and grandchildren sang so well. And why should he not revel in absolute delight? Was not the Pleroma freed (from all danger)? What ship’s captain6750 fails to rejoice even with indecent frolic? Every day we observe the uproarious ebullitions of sailors’ joys.6751 Therefore, as sailors always exult over the reckoning they pay in common, so do these Æons enjoy a similar pleasure, one as they now all are in form, and, as I may add,6752 in feeling too. With the concurrence of even their new brethren and masters,6753 they contribute into one common stock the best and most beautiful thing with which they are severally adorned. Vainly, as I suppose. For if they were all one by reason by the above-mentioned thorough equalization, there was no room for the process of a common reckoning,6754 which for the most part consists of a pleasing variety. They all contributed the one good thing, which they all were. There would be, in all probability, a formal procedure6755 in the mode or in the form of the very equalization in question. Ac- cordingly, out of the donation which they contributed6756 to the honour and glory of the Father, they jointly fashion6757 the most beautiful constellation of the Pleroma, and its perfect fruit, Jesus. Him they also surname6758 Soter (Saviour) and Christ, and Sermo (Word) after his ancestors;6759 and lastly Omnia (All Things), as formed from a universally culled nosegay,6760 like the jay of Æsop, the Pandora of Hesiod, the bowl6761 of Accius, the honeycake of Nestor, the miscellany of Ptolemy. How much nearer the mark, if these idle titlemongers had called him Pancarpian, after certain Athenian customs.6762 By way of adding external honour also to their wonderful puppet, they produce for him a bodyguard of angels of like nature. If this be their mutual condition, it may be all right; if, however, they are consubstantial with Soter (for I have discovered how doubtfully the case is stated), where will be his eminence when surrounded by attendants who are co-equal with himself?

54. book6.chapter13

    In this series, then, is contained the first emanation of Æons, who are alike born, and are married, and produce offspring: there are the most dangerous fortunes of Sophia in her ardent longing for the Father, the most seasonable help of Horos, the expiation of her Enthymesis and accruing Passion, the instruction of Christ and the Holy Spirit, their tutelar reform of the Æons, the piebald ornamentation of Soter, the consubstantial retinue6763 of the angels. All that remains, according to you, is the fall of the curtain and the clapping of hands.6764 What remains in my opinion, however, is, that you should hear and take heed. At all events, these things are said to have been played out within the company of the Pleroma, the first scene of the tragedy. The rest of the play, however, is beyond the curtain—I mean outside of the Pleroma. And yet if it be such within the bosom of the Father, within the embrace of the guardian Horos, what must it be outside, in free space,6765 where God did not exist?

55. book6.chapter14

    For Enthymesis, or rather Achamoth—because by this inexplicable6766 name alone must she be henceforth designated—when in company with the vicious Passion, her inseparable companion, she was expelled to places devoid of that light which is the substance of the Pleroma, even to the void and empty region of Epicurus, she becomes wretched also because of the place of her banishment. She is indeed without either form or feature, even an untimely and abortive production. Whilst she is in this plight,6767 Christ descends from6768 the heights, conducted by Horos, in order to impart form to the abortion, out of his own energies, the form of substance only, but not of knowledge also. Still she is left with some property. She has restored to her the odour of immortality, in order that she might, under its influence, be overcome with the desire of better things than belonged to her present plight.6769 Having accomplished His merciful mission, not without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, Christ returns to the Pleroma. It is usual out of an abundance of things6770 for names to be also forthcoming. Enthymesis came from action;6771 whence Achamoth came is still a question; Sophia emanates from the Father, the Holy Spirit from an angel. She entertains a regret for Christ immediately after she had discovered her desertion by him. Therefore she hurried forth herself, in quest of the light of Him Whom she did not at all discover, as He operated in an invisible manner; for how else would she make search for His light, which was as unknown to her as He was Himself? Try, however, she did, and perhaps would have found Him, had not the self-same Horos, who had met her mother so opportunely, fallen in with the daughter quite as unseasonably, so as to exclaim at her Iao! just as we hear the cry “Porro Quirites” (“Out of the way, Romans!”), or else Fidem Cæsaris!” (“By the faith of Cæsar!”), whence (as they will have it) the name Iao comes to be found is the Scriptures.6772 Being thus hindered from proceeding further, and being unable to sur- mount6773 the Cross, that is to say, Horos, because she had not yet practised herself in the part of Catullus’ Laureolus,6774 and given over, as it were, to that passion of hers in a manifold and complicated mesh, she began to be afflicted with every impulse thereof, with sorrow,—because she had not accomplished her enterprise, with fear,—lest she should lose her life, even as she had lost the light, with consternation, and then with ignorance. But not as her mother (did she suffer this), for she was an Æon. Hers, however, was a worse suffering, considering her condition; for another tide of emotion still overwhelmed her, even of conversion to the Christ, by Whom she had been restored to life, and had been directed6775 to this very conversion.

56. book6.chapter15

    Well, now, the Pythagoreans may learn, the Stoics may know, Plato himself (may discover), whence Matter, which they will have to be unborn, derived both its origin and substance for all this pile of the world—(a mystery) which not even the renowned6776 Mercurius Trismegistus, master (as he was) of all physical philosophy, thought out.6777 You have just heard of “Conversion,” one element in the “Passion” (we have so often mentioned). Out of this the whole life of the world,6778 and even that of the Demiurge himself, our God, is said to have had its being. Again, you have heard of “sorrow” and “fear.” From these all other created things6779 took their beginning. For from her6780 tears flowed the entire mass of waters. From this circumstance one may form an idea of the calamity6781 which she encountered, so vast were the kinds of the tears wherewith she overflowed. She had salt teardrops, she had bitter, and sweet, and warm, and cold, and bituminous, and ferruginous, and sulphurous, and even6782 poisonous, so that the Nonacris exuded therefrom which killed Alexander; and the river of the Lyncestæ6783 flowed from the same source, which produces drunkenness; and the Salmacis6784 was derived from the same source, which renders men effeminate. The rains of heaven Achamoth whimpered forth,6785 and we on our part are anxiously employed in saving up in our cisterns the very wails and tears of another. In like manner, from the “consternation” and “alarm” (of which we have also heard), bodily elements were derived. And yet amidst so many circumstances of solitude, in this vast prospect of destitution, she occasionally smiled at the recollection of the sight of Christ, and from this smile of joy light flashed forth. How great was this beneficence of Providence, which induced her to smile, and all that we might not linger for ever in the dark! Nor need you feel aston- ished how6786 from her joy so splendid an element6787 could have beamed upon the world, when from her sadness even so necessary a provision6788 flowed forth for man. O illuminating smile! O irrigating tear! And yet it might now have acted as some alleviation amidst the horror of her situation; for she might have shaken off all the obscurity thereof as often as she had a mind to smile, even not to be obliged to turn suppliant to those who had deserted her.6789

57. book6.chapter16

    She, too, resorts to prayers, after the manner of her mother. But Christ, Who now felt a dislike to quit the Pleroma, appoints the Paraclete as his deputy. To her, therefore, he despatches Soter,6790 (who must be the same as Jesus, to whom the Father imparted the supreme power over the whole body of the Æons, by subjecting them all to him, so that “by him,” as the apostle says, “all things were created”6791), with a retinue and cortege of contemporary angels, and (as one may suppose) with the dozen fasces. Hereupon Achamoth, being quite struck with the pomp of his approach, immediately covered herself with a veil, moved at first with a dutiful feeling of veneration and modesty; but afterwards she surveys him calmly, and his prolific equipage.6792 With such energies as she had derived from the contemplation, she meets him with the salutation, Κύριε, χαῖρε (“Hail, Lord”)! Upon this, I suppose, he receives her, confirms and conforms her in knowledge, as well as cleanses6793 her from all the outrages of Passion, without, however, utterly severing them, with an indiscriminateness like that which had happened in the casualties which befell her mother. For such vices as had become inveterate and confirmed by practice he throws together; and when he had consolidated them in one mass, he fixes them in a separate body, so as to compose the corporeal condition of Matter, extracting out of her inherent, incorporeal passion such an aptitude of nature6794 as might qualify it to attain to a reciprocity of bodily substances,6795 which should emulate one another, so that a twofold condition of the substances might be arranged; one full of evil through its faults, the other susceptible of passion from conversion. This will prove to be Matter, which has set us in battle array against Hermogenes, and all others who presume to teach that God made all things out of Matter, not out of nothing.

58. book6.chapter17

    Then Achamoth, delivered at length from all her evils, wonderful to tell6796 goes on and bears fruit with greater results. For warmed with the joy of so great an escape from her unhappy condition, and at the same time heated with the actual contemplation of the angelic luminaries (one is ashamed) to use such language, (but there is no other way of expressing one’s meaning), she during the emotion somehow became personally inflamed with desire6797 towards them, and at once grew pregnant with a spiritual conception, at the very image of which the violence of her joyous transport, and the delight of her prurient excitement had imbibed and impressed upon her. She at length gave birth to an offspring, and then there arose a leash of natures,6798 from a triad of causes,—one material, arising from her passion; another animal, arising from her conversion; the third spiritual, which had its origin in her imagination.

59. book6.chapter18

    Having become a better proficient6799 in practical conduct by the authority which, we may well suppose,6800 accrued to her from her three children, she determined to impart form to each of the natures. The spiritual one however, she was unable to touch, inasmuch as she was herself spiritual. For a participation in the same nature has, to a very great extent, 6801 disqualified like and consubstantial beings from having superior power over one another. Therefore6802 she applies herself solely to the animal nature, adducing the instructions of Soter6803 (for her guidance). And first of all (she does) what cannot be described and read, and heard of, without an intense horror at the blasphemy thereof: she produces this God of ours, the God of all except of the heretics, the Father and Creator6804 and King of all things, which are inferior to him. For from him do they proceed. If, however, they proceed from him, and not rather from Achamoth, or if only secretly from her, without his perceiving her, he was impelled to all that he did, even like a puppet6805 which is moved from the outside. In fact, it was owing to this very ambiguity about the personal agency in the works which were done, that they coined for him the mixed name of (Motherly Father), 6806 whilst his other appellations were distinctly assigned according to the conditions and positions of his works: so that they call him Father in relation to the animal substances to which they give the place of honour6807 on his right hand; whereas, in respect of the material substances which they banish6808 to his left hand, they name him Demiurgus; whilst his title King designates his authority over both classes, nay over the universe.6809

60. book6.chapter19

    And yet there is not any agreement between the propriety of the names and that of the works, from which all the names are suggested; since all of them ought to have borne the name of her by whom the things were done, unless after all6810 it turn out that they were not made by her. For, although they say that Achamoth devised these forms in honour of the Æons, they yet6811 transfer this work to Soter as its author, when they say that he6812 operated through her, so far as to give her the very image of the invisible and unknown Father—that is, the image which was unknown and invisible to the Demiurge; whilst he6813 formed this same Demiurge in imitation6814 of Nus the son of Propator;6815 and whilst the archangels, who were the work of the Demiurge, resembled the other Æons. Now, when I hear of such images of the three, I ask, do you not wish me to laugh at these pictures of their most extravagant painter? At the female Achamoth, a picture of the Father? At the Demiurge, ignorant of his mother, much more so of his father? At the picture of Nus, ignorant of his father too, and the ministering angels, facsimiles of their lords? This is painting a mule from an ass, and sketching Ptolemy from Valentinus.

61. book6.chapter20

    The Demiurge therefore, placed as he was without the limits of the Pleroma in the igno- minious solitude of his eternal exile, founded a new empire—this world (of ours)—by clear ing away the confusion and distinguishing the difference between the two substances which severally constituted it,6816 the animal and the material. Out of incorporeal (elements) he constructs bodies, heavy, light, erect6817 and stooping, celestial and terrene. He then completes the sevenfold stages of heaven itself, with his own throne above all. Whence he had the additional name of Sabbatum from the hebdomadal nature of his abode; his mother Achamoth, too, had the title Ogdoada, after the precedent of the primeval Ogdoad.6818 These heavens, however, they consider to be intelligent,6819 and sometimes they make angels of them, as indeed they do of the Demiurge himself; as also (they call) Paradise the fourth archangel, because they fix it above the third heaven, of the power of which Adam partook, when he sojourned there amidst its fleecy clouds6820 and shrubs.6821 Ptolemy remembered perfectly well the prattle of his boyhood,6822 that apples grew in the sea, and fishes on the tree; after the same fashion, he assumed that nut-trees flourished in the skies. The Demiurge does his work in ignorance, and therefore perhaps he is unaware that trees ought to be planted only on the ground. His mother, of course, knew all about it: how is it, then, that she did not suggest the fact, since she was actually executing her own operation? But whilst building up so vast an edifice for her son by means of those works, which proclaim him at once to be father, god and, king before the conceits of the Valentinians, why she refused to let them be known to even him,6823 is a question which I shall ask afterwards.

62. book6.chapter21

    Meanwhile you must believe6824 that Sophia has the surnames of earth and of Mother—“ Mother-Earth,” of course—and (what may excite your laughter still more heartily) even Holy Spirit. In this way they have conferred all honour on that female, I suppose even a beard, not to say other things. Besides,6825 the Demiurge had so little mastery over things,6826 on the score,6827 you must know,6828 of his inability to approach spiritual essences, (constituted as he was) of animal elements, that, imagining himself to be the only being, he uttered this soliloquy: “I am God, and beside me there is none else.”6829 But for all that, he at least was aware that he had not himself existed before. He understood, therefore, that he had been created, and that there must be a creator of a creature of some sort or other. How happens it, then, that he seemed to himself to be the only being, notwithstanding his uncertainty, and although he had, at any rate, some suspicion of the existence of some creator?

63. book6.chapter22

    The odium felt amongst them6830 against the devil is the more excusable,6831 even because the peculiarly sordid character of his origin justifies it.6832 For he is supposed by them to have had his origin in that criminal excess6833 of her6834 sorrow, from which they also derive the birth of the angels, and demons, and all the wicked spirits. Yet they affirm that the devil is the work of the Demiurge, and they call him Munditenens6835 (Ruler of the World), and maintain that, as he is of a spiritual nature, he has a better knowledge of the things above than the Demiurge, an animal being. He deserves from them the pre-eminence which all heresies provide him with.

64. book6.chapter23

    Their most eminent powers, moreover, they confine within the following limits, as in a citadel. In the most elevated of all summits presides the tricenary Pleroma,6836 Horos marking off its boundary line. Beneath it, Achamoth occupies the intermediate space for her abode,6837 treading down her son. For under her comes the Demiurge in his own Hebdomad, or rather the Devil, sojourning in this world in common with ourselves, formed, as has been said above, of the same elements and the same body, out of the most profitable calamities of Sophia; inasmuch as, (if it had not been for these,) our spirit would have had no space for inhaling and ejecting6838 air—that delicate vest of all corporeal creatures, that revealer of all colours, that instrument of the seasons—if the sadness of Sophia had not filtered it, just as her fear did the animal existence, and her conversion the Demiurge himself. Into all these elements and bodies fire was fanned. Now, since they have not as yet explained to us the original sensation of this6839 in Sophia, I will on my own responsibility6840 conjecture that its spark was struck out of the delicate emotions6841 of her (feverish grief). For you may be quite sure that, amidst all her vexations, she must have had a good deal of fever.6842

65. book6.chapter24

    Such being their conceits respecting God, or, if you like,6843 the gods, of what sort are their figments concerning man? For, after he had made the world, the Demiurge turns his hands to man, and chooses for him as his substance not any portion of “the dry land,” as they say, of which alone we have any knowledge (although it was, at that time, not yet dried by the waters becoming separated from the earthy residuum, and only afterwards became dry), but of the invisible substance of that matter, which philosophy indeed dreams of, from its fluid and fusible composition, the origin of which I am unable to imagine, because it exists nowhere. Now, since fluidity and fusibility are qualities of liquid matter, and since everything liquid flowed from Sophia’s tears, we must, as a necessary conclusion, believe that muddy earth is constituted of Sophia’s eye-rheums and viscid discharges,6844 which are just as much the dregs of tears as mud is the sediment of waters. Thus does the Demiurge mould man as a potter does his clay, and animates him with his own breath. Made after his image and likeness, he will therefore be both material and animal. A fourfold being! For in respect of his “image,” he must be deemed clayey,6845 that is to say, material, although the Demiurge is not composed of matter; but as to his “likeness,” he is animal, for such, too, is the Demiurge. You have two (of his constituent elements). Moreover, a coating of flesh was, as they allege, afterwards placed over the clayey substratum, and it is this tunic of skin which is susceptible of sensation.

66. book6.chapter25

    In Achamoth, moreover, there was inherent a certain property of a spiritual germ, of her mother Sophia’s substance; and Achamoth herself had carefully severed off (the same quality), and implanted it in her son the Demiurge, although he was actually unconscious of it. It is for you to imagine6846 the industry of this clandestine arrangement. For to this end had she deposited and concealed (this germ), that, whenever the Demiurge came to impart life to Adam by his inbreathing, he might at the same time draw off from the vital principle6847 the spiritual seed, and, as by a pipe, inject it into the clayey nature; in order that, being then fecundated in the material body as in a womb, and having fully grown there, it might be found fit for one day receiving the perfect Word.6848 When, therefore, the Demiurge commits to Adam the transmission of his own vital principle,6849 the spiritual man lay hid, although inserted by his breath, and at the same time introduced into the body, because the Demiurge knew no more about his mother’s seed than about herself. To this seed they give the name of Ecclesia (the Church), the mirror of the church above, and the perfection6850 of man; tracing this perfection from Achamoth, just as they do the animal nature from the Demiurge, the clayey material of the body (they derive) from the primordial substance,6851 the flesh from Matter. So that you have a new Geryon here, only a fourfold (rather than a threefold) monster.

67. book6.chapter26

    In like manner they assign to each of them a separate end.6852 To the material, that is to say the carnal (nature), which they also call “the left-handed,” they assign undoubted destruction; to the animal (nature), which they also call “the right-handed,” a doubtful issue, inasmuch as it oscillates between the material and the spiritual, and is sure to fall at last on the side to which it has mainly gravitated. As regards the spiritual, however, (they say) that it enters into the formation of the animal, in order that it may be educated in company with it and be disciplined by repeated intercourse with it. For the animal (nature) was in want of training even by the senses: for this purpose, accordingly, was the whole structure of the world provided; for this purpose also did Soter (the Saviour) present Himself in the world—even for the salvation of the animal (nature). By yet another arrangement they will have it that He, in some prodigious way,6853 clothed Himself with the primary portions6854 of those substances, the whole of which He was going to restore to salvation; in such wise that He assumed the spiritual nature from Achamoth, whilst He derived the animal (being), Christ, afterwards from the Demiurge; His corporal substance, however, which was constructed of an animal nature (only with wonderful and indescribable skill), He wore for a dispensational purpose, in order that He might, in spite of His own unwillingness,6855 be capable of meeting persons, and of being seen and touched by them, and even of dying. But there was nothing material assumed by Him, inasmuch as that was incapable of salvation. As if He could possibly have been more required by any others than by those who were in want of salvation! And all this, in order that by severing the condition of our flesh from Christ they may also deprive it of the hope of salvation!

68. book6.chapter27

    I now adduce6856 (what they say) concerning Christ, upon whom some of them engraft Jesus with so much licence, that they foist into Him a spiritual seed together with an animal inflatus. Indeed, I will not undertake to describe6857 these incongruous crammings,6858 which they have contrived in relation both to their men and their gods. Even the Demiurge has a Christ of His own—His natural Son. An animal, in short, produced by Himself, proclaimed by the prophets—His position being one which must be decided by prepositions; in other words, He was produced by means of a virgin, rather than of a virgin! On the ground that, having descended into the virgin rather in the manner of a passage through her than of a birth by her, He came into existence through her, not of her—not experiencing a mother in her, but nothing more than a way. Upon this same Christ, therefore (so they say), Jesus descended in the sacrament of baptism, in the likeness of a dove. Moreover, there was even in Christ accruing from Achamoth the condiment of a spiritual seed, in order of course to prevent the corruption of all the other stuffing.6859 For after the precedent of the principal Tetrad, they guard him with four substances—the spiritual one of Achamoth, the animal one of the Demiurge, the corporeal one, which cannot be described, and that of Soter, or, in other phrase, the columbine.6860 As for Soter (Jesus), he remained in Christ to the last, impassible, incapable of injury, incapable of apprehension. By and by, when it came to a question of capture, he departed from him during the examination before Pilate. In like manner, his mother’s seed did not admit of being injured, being equally exempt from all manner of outrage,6861 and being undiscovered even by the Demiurge himself. The animal and carnal Christ, however, does suffer after the fashion6862 of the superior Christ, who, for the purpose of producing Achamoth, had been stretched upon the cross, that is, Horos, in a substantial though not a cognizable6863 form. In this manner do they reduce all things to mere images—Christians themselves being indeed nothing but imaginary beings!

69. book6.chapter28

    Meanwhile the Demiurge, being still ignorant of everything, although he will actually have to make some announcement himself by the prophets, but is quite incapable of even this part of his duty (because they divide authority over the prophets6864 between Achamoth, the Seed, and the Demiurge), no sooner heard of the advent of Soter (Saviour) than he runs to him with haste and joy, with all his might, like the centurion in the Gospel.6865 And being enlightened by him on all points, he learns from him also of his own prospect how that he is to succeed to his mother’s place. Being thenceforth free from all care, he carries on the administration of this world, mainly under the plea of protecting the church, for as long a time as may be necessary and proper.

70. book6.chapter29

    I will now collect from different sources, by way of conclusion, what they affirm concerning the dispensation6866 of the whole human race. Having at first stated their views as to man’s threefold nature—which was, however, united in one6867 in the case of Adam—they then proceed after him to divide it (into three) with their especial characteristics, finding opportunity for such distinction in the posterity of Adam himself, in which occurs a threefold division as to moral differences. Cain and Abel, and Seth, who were in a certain sense the sources of the human race, become the fountain-heads of just as many qualities6868 of nature and essential character.6869 The material nature,6870 which had become reprobate for salvation, they assign to Cain; the animal nature, which was poised between divergent hopes, they find6871 in Abel; the spiritual, preordained for certain salvation, they store up6872 in Seth. In this way also they make a twofold distinction among souls, as to their property of good and evil—according to the material condition derived from Cain, or the animal from Abel. Men’s spiritual state they derive over and above the other conditions,6873 from Seth adventitiously,6874 not in the way of nature, but of grace,6875 in such wise that Achamoth infuses it6876 among superior beings like rain6877 into good souls, that is, those who are enrolled in the animal class. Whereas the material class—in other words, those which are bad souls—they say, never receive the blessings of salvation;6878 for that nature they have pronounced to be incapable of any change or reform in its natural condition.6879 This grain, then, of spiritual seed is modest and very small when cast from her hand, but under her in- struction6880 increases and advances into full conviction, as we have already said;6881 and the souls, on this very account, so much excelled all others, that the Demiurge, even then in his ignorance, held them in great esteem. For it was from their list that he had been accustomed to select men for kings and for priests; and these even now, if they have once attained to a full and complete knowledge of these foolish conceits of theirs,6882 since they are already naturalized in the fraternal bond of the spiritual state, will obtain a sure salvation, nay, one which is on all accounts their due.

71. book6.chapter30

    For this reason it is that they neither regard works6883 as necessary for themselves, nor do they observe any of the calls of duty, eluding even the necessity of martyrdom on any pretence which may suit their pleasure. For this rule, (they say), is enjoined upon the animal seed, in order that the salvation, which we do not possess by any privilege of our state,6884 we may work out by right6885 of our conduct. Upon us, who are of an imperfect nature,6886 is imprinted the mark of this (animal) seed, because we are reckoned as sprung from the loves of Theletus,6887 and consequently as an abortion, just as their mother was. But woe to us indeed, should we in any point transgress the yoke of discipline, should we grow dull in the works of holiness and justice, should we desire to make our confession anywhere else, I know not where, and not before the powers of this world at the tribunals of the chief magistrates! 6888 As for them, however, they may prove their nobility by the dissoluteness6889 of their life and their diligence6890 in sin, since Achamoth fawns on them as her own; for she, too, found sin no unprofitable pursuit. Now it is held amongst them, that, for the purpose of honouring the celestial marriages,6891 it is necessary to contemplate and celebrate the mystery always by cleaving to a companion, that, is to a woman; otherwise (they account any man) degenerate, and a bastard6892 to the truth, who spends his life in the world without loving a woman or uniting himself to her. Then what is to become of the eunuchs whom we see amongst them?

72. book6.chapter31

    It remains that we say something about the end of the world,6893 and the dispensing of reward. As soon as Achamoth has completed the full harvest of her seed, and has then proceeded to gather it into her garner, or, after it has been taken to the mill and ground to flour, has hidden it in the kneading-trough with yeast until the whole be leavened, then shall the end speedily come.6894 Then, to begin with, Achamoth herself removes from the middle region,6895 from the second stage to the highest, since she is restored to the Pleroma: she is immediately received by that paragon of perfection6896 Soter, as her spouse of course, and they two afterwards consummate6897 new nuptials. This must be the spouse of the Scripture, 6898 the Pleroma of espousals (for you might suppose that the Julian laws6899 were interposing, since there are these migrations from place to place). In like manner, the Demiurge, too, will then change the scene of his abode from the celestial Hebdomad6900 to the higher regions, to his mother’s now vacant saloon6901—by this time knowing her, without however seeing her. (A happy coincidence!) For if he had caught a glance of her, he would have preferred never to have known her.

73. book6.chapter32

    As for the human race, its end will be to the following effect:—To all which bear the earthy6902 and material mark there accrues an entire destruction, because “all flesh is grass,”6903 and amongst these is the soul of mortal man, except when it has found salvation by faith. The souls of just men, that is to say, our souls, will be conveyed to the Demiurge in the abodes of the middle region. We are duly thankful; we shall be content to be classed with our god, in whom lies our own origin.6904 Into the palace of the Pleroma nothing of the animal nature is admitted—nothing but the spiritual swarm of Valentinus. There, then, the first process is the despoiling of men themselves, that is, men within the Pleroma.6905 Now this despoiling consists of the putting off of the souls in which they appear to be clothed, which they will give back to their Demiurge as they had obtained6906 them from him. They will then become wholly intellectual spirits—impalpable,6907 invisible6908—and in this state will be readmitted invisibly to the Pleroma—stealthily, if the case admits of the idea.6909 What then? They will be dispersed amongst the angels, the attendants on Soter. As sons, do you suppose? Not at all. As servants, then? No, not even so. Well, as phantoms? Would that it were nothing more! Then in what capacity, if you are ashamed to tell us? In the capacity of brides. Then will they end6910 their Sabine rapes with the sanction of wedlock. This will be the guerdon of the spiritual, this the recompense of their faith! Such fables have their use. Although but a Marcus or a Gaius,6911 full-grown in this flesh of ours, with a beard and such like proofs (of virility,) it may be a stern husband, a father, a grandfather, a greatgrandfather (never mind what, in fact, if only a male), you may perhaps in the bridalchamber of the Pleroma—I have already said so tacitly6912—even become the parent by an angel of some Æon of high numerical rank.6913 For the right celebration of these nuptials, instead of the torch and veil, I suppose that secret fire is then to burst forth, which, after devastating the whole existence of things, will itself also be reduced to nothing at last, after everything has been reduced to ashes; and so their fable too will be ended.6914 But I, too, am no doubt a rash man, in having exposed so great a mystery in so derisive a way: I ought to be afraid that Achamoth, who did not choose to make herself known even to her own son, would turn mad, that Theletus would be enraged, that Fortune6915 would be irritated. But I am yet a liege-man of the Demiurge. I have to return after death to the place where there is no more giving in marriage, where I have to be clothed upon rather than to be despoiled,— where, even if I am despoiled of my sex, I am classed with angels—not a male angel, nor a female one. There will be no one to do aught against me, nor will they then find any male energy in me.

74. book6.chapter33

    I shall now at last produce, by way of finale,6916 after so long a story, those points which, not to interrupt the course of it, and by the interruption distract the reader’s attention, I have preferred reserving to this place. They have been variously advanced by those who have improved on6917 the doctrines of Ptolemy. For there have been in his school “disciples above their master,” who have attributed to their Bythus two wives—Cogitatio (Thought) and Voluntas (Will). For Cogitatio alone was not sufficient wherewith to produce any offspring, although from the two wives procreation was most easy to him. The former bore him Monogenes (Only-Begotten) and Veritas (Truth). Veritas was a female after the likeness of Cogitatio; Monogenes a male bearing a resemblance to Voluntas. For it is the strength of Voluntas which procures the masculine nature,6918 inasmuch as she affords efficiency to Cogitatio.

75. book6.chapter34

    Others of purer mind, mindful of the honour of the Deity, have, for the purpose of freeing him from the discredit of even single wedlock, preferred assigning no sex whatever to Bythus; and therefore very likely they talk of “this deity” in the neuter gender rather than “this god.” Others again, on the other hand, speak of him as both masculine and feminine, so that the worthy chronicler Fenestella must not suppose that an hermaphrodite was only to be found among the good people of Luna.

76. book6.chapter35

    There are some who do not claim the first place for Bythus, but only a lower one. They put their Ogdoad in the foremost rank; itself, however, derived from a Tetrad, but under different names. For they put Pro-arche (Before the Beginning) first, Anennoetos (Inconceivable) second, Arrhetos (Indescribable) third, Aoratos (Invisible) fourth. Then after Pro-arche they say Arche (Beginning) came forth and occupied the first and the fifth place; from Anennoetos came Acataleptos (Incomprehensible) in the second and the sixth place; from Arrhetos came Anonomastos (Nameless) in the third and the seventh place; from Aoratos6919 came Agennetos (Unbegotten) in the fourth and the eight place. Now by what method he arranges this, that each of these Æons should be born in two places, and that, too, at such intervals, I prefer to be ignorant of than to be informed. For what can be right in a system which is propounded with such absurd particulars?

77. book6.chapter36

    How much more sensible are they who, rejecting all this tiresome nonsense, have refused to believe that any one Æon has descended from another by steps like these, which are really neither more nor less Gemonian;6920 but that on a given signal6921 the eight-fold emanation, of which we have heard,6922 issued all at once from the Father and His Ennoea (Thought),6923—that it is, in fact, from His mere motion that they gain their designations. When, as they say, He thought of producing offspring, He on that account gained the name of Father. After producing, because the issue which He produced was true, He received the name of Truth. When He wanted Himself to be manifested, He on that account was announced as Man. Those, moreover, whom He preconceived in His thought when He pro- duced them, were then designated the Church. As man, He uttered His Word; and so this Word is His first-begotten Son, and to the Word was added Life. And by this process the first Ogdoad was completed. However, the whole of this tiresome story is utterly poor and weak.

78. book6.chapter37

    Now listen to some other buffooneries6924 of a master who is a great swell among them,6925 and who has pronounced his dicta with an even priestly authority. They run thus: There comes, says he, before all things Pro-arche, the inconceivable, and indescribable, and nameless, which I for my own part call Monotes (Solitude). With this was associated another power, to which also I give the name of Henotes (Unity). Now, inasmuch as Monotes and Henotes—that is to say, Solitude and Union—were only one being, they produced, and yet not in the way of production,6926 the intellectual, innascible, invisible beginning of all things, which human language6927 has called Monad (Solitude).6928 This has inherent in itself a consubstantial force, which it calls Unity6929 These powers, accordingly, Solitude or Solitariness, and Unity, or Union, propagated all the other emanations of Æons.6930 Wonderful distinction, to be sure! Whatever change Union and Unity may undergo, Solitariness and Solitude is profoundly supreme. Whatever designation you give the power, it is one and the same.

79. book6.chapter38

    Secundus is a trifle more human, as he is briefer: he divides the Ogdoad into a pair of Tetrads, a right hand one and a left hand one, one light and the other darkness. Only he is unwilling to derive the power which apostatized and fell away6931 from any one of the Æons, but from the fruits which issued from their substance.

80. book6.chapter39

    Now, concerning even the Lord Jesus, into how great a diversity of opinion are they divided! One party form Him of the blossoms of all the Æons.6932 Another party will have it that He is made up only of those ten whom the Word and the Life6933 produced;6934 from which circumstance the titles of the Word and the Life were suitably transferred to Him. Others, again, that He rather sprang from the twelve, the offspring of Man and the Church,6935 and therefore, they say, He was designated “Son of man.” Others, moreover, maintain that He was formed by Christ and the Holy Spirit, who have to provide for the establishment of the universe,6936 and that He inherits by right His Father’s appellation. Some there are who have imagined that another origin must be found for the title “Son of man;” for they have had the presumption to call the Father Himself Man, by reason of the profound mystery of this title: so that what can you hope for more ample concerning faith in that God, with whom you are now yourself on a par? Such conceits are constantly cropping out6937 amongst them, from the redundance of their mother’s seed.6938 And so it happens that the doctrines which have grown up amongst the Valentinians have already extended their rank growth to the woods of the Gnostics.

81. section5

    This was written by our author in confutation of certain heretics who denied the reality of Christ’s flesh, or at least its identity with human flesh—fearing that, if they admitted the reality of Christ’s flesh, they must also admit his resurrection in the flesh; and, consequently, the resurrection of the human body after death. [Translated by Dr. Holmes.] I. (In the body of a dove, cap. iii. p. 523.) The learned John Scott, in his invaluable work The Christian Life,7283 identifies the glory shed upon the Saviour at his baptism, with that mentioned by Ezekiel (Cap. xliii. 2) and adds: “In this same glorious splendor was Christ arrayed first at his Baptism and afterward at his Transfiguration.…By the Holy Ghost’s descending like a Dove, it is not necessary we should understand his descending in the shape or form of a Dove, but that in some glorious form, or appearance, he descended in the same manner as a Dove descends.…Came down from above just as a dove with his wings spread forth is observed to do, and lighted upon our Saviour’s head.” I quote this as the opinion of one of the most learned and orthodox of divines, but not as my own, for I cannot reconcile it, as he strives to do, with St. Luke iii. 22. Compare Justin Martyr, vol. i. p. 243, and note 6, this series. Grotius observes, says Dr. Scott, that in the apocryphal Gospel of the Nazarenes, it is said that at the Baptism of our Lord “a great light shone round about the place.” II. (His mother and His brethren, cap. vii. p. 527.) It is not possible that the author of this chapter had ever conceived of the Blessed Virgin otherwise than as “Blessed among women,” indeed, but enjoying no especial prerogative as the mother of our Lord. He speaks of “denying her” and “putting her away” after He began His Ministry, as He requires His ministers to do, after His example. How extraordinary this language—“the repudiation of carnal relationship.” According to our author, never charged with heresy on this point, the high rewards of the holy Mary, in the world to come will be those due to her faith, not to the blessing of “her breasts and of her womb.” Christ designates those as “more blessed,” who hear His word and keep it. This the Blessed Virgin did preeminently, and herein was her own greater blessedness; that is, (our author shews) her crown of glory depends chiefly, like that of other saints, on her faith and works, not on her mere Maternity.

82. section5.chapter1

    They who are so anxious to shake that belief in the resurrection which was firmly settled6940 before the appearance of our modern Sadducees,6941 as even to deny that the expectation thereof has any relation whatever to the flesh, have great cause for besetting the flesh of Christ also with doubtful questions, as if it either had no existence at all, or possessed a nature altogether different from human flesh. For they cannot but be apprehensive that, if it be once determined that Christ’s flesh was human, a presumption would immediately arise in opposition to them, that that flesh must by all means rise again, which has already risen in Christ. Therefore we shall have to guard our belief in the resurrection6942 from the same armoury, whence they get their weapons of destruction. Let us examine our Lord’s bodily substance, for about His spiritual nature all are agreed.6943 It is His flesh that is in question. Its verity and quality are the points in dispute. Did it ever exist? whence was it derived? and of what kind was it? If we succeed in demonstrating it, we shall lay down a law for our own resurrection. Marcion, in order that he might deny the flesh of Christ, denied also His nativity, or else he denied His flesh in order that he might deny His nativity; because, of course, he was afraid that His nativity and His flesh bore mutual testimony to each other’s reality, since there is no nativity without flesh, and no flesh without nativity. As if indeed, under the prompting of that licence which is ever the same in all heresy, he too might not very well have either denied the nativity, although admitting the flesh,—like Apelles, who was first a disciple of his, and afterwards an apostate,—or, while admitting both the flesh and the nativity, have interpreted them in a different sense, as did Valentinus, who resembled Apelles both in his discipleship and desertion of Marcion. At all events, he who represented the flesh of Christ to be imaginary was equally able to pass off His nativity as a phantom; so that the virgin’s conception, and pregnancy, and child-bearing, and then the whole course6944 of her infant too, would have to be regarded as putative.6945 These facts pertaining to the nativity of Christ would escape the notice of the same eyes and the same senses as failed to grasp the full idea6946 of His flesh.

83. section5.chapter2

    Clearly enough is the nativity announced by Gabriel.6947 But what has he to do with the Creator’s angel?6948 The conception in the virgin’s womb is also set plainly before us. But what concern has he with the Creator’s prophet, Isaiah?6949 He6950 will not brook delay, since suddenly (without any prophetic announcement) did he bring down Christ from heaven.6951 “Away,” says he, “with that eternal plaguey taxing of Cæsar, and the scanty inn, and the squalid swaddling-clothes, and the hard stable.6952 We do not care a jot for6953 that multitude of the heavenly host which praised their Lord at night.6954 Let the shepherds take better care of their flock,6955 and let the wise men spare their legs so long a journey;6956 let them keep their gold to themselves.6957 Let Herod, too, mend his manners, so that Jeremy may not glory over him.6958 Spare also the babe from circumcision, that he may escape the pain thereof; nor let him be brought into the temple, lest he burden his parents with the expense of the offering;6959 nor let him be handed to Simeon, lest the old man be saddened at the point of death.6960 Let that old woman also hold her tongue, lest she should bewitch the child.”6961 After such a fashion as this, I suppose you have had, O Marcion, the hardihood of blotting out the original records (of the history) of Christ, that His flesh may lose the proofs of its reality. But, prithee, on what grounds (do you do this)? Show me your authority. If you are a prophet, foretell us a thing; if you are an apostle, open your message in public; if a follower of apostles,6962 side with apostles in thought; if you are only a (private) Chris- tian, believe what has been handed down to us: if, however, you are nothing of all this, then (as I have the best reason to say) cease to live.6963 For indeed you are already dead, since you are no Christian, because you do not believe that which by being believed makes men Christian,—nay, you are the more dead, the more you are not a Christian; having fallen away, after you had been one, by rejecting6964 what you formerly believed, even as you yourself acknowledge in a certain letter of yours, and as your followers do not deny, whilst our (brethren) can prove it.6965 Rejecting, therefore, what you once believed, you have completed the act of rejection, by now no longer believing: the fact, however, of your having ceased to believe has not made your rejection of the faith right and proper; nay, rather,6966 by your act of rejection you prove that what you believed previous to the said act was of a different character.6967 What you believed to be of a different character, had been handed down just as you believed it. Now6968 that which had been handed down was true, inasmuch as it had been transmitted by those whose duty it was to hand it down. Therefore, when rejecting that which had been handed down, you rejected that which was true. You had no authority for what you did. However, we have already in another treatise availed ourselves more fully of these prescriptive rules against all heresies. Our repetition of them hereafter that large (treatise) is superfluous,6969 when we ask the reason why you have formed the opinion that Christ was not born.

84. section5.chapter3

    Since6970 you think that this lay within the competency of your own arbitrary choice, you must needs have supposed that being born6971 was either impossible for God, or unbecoming to Him. With God, however, nothing is impossible but what He does not will. Let us consider, then, whether He willed to be born (for if He had the will, He also had the power, and was born). I put the argument very briefly. If God had willed not to be born, it matters not why, He would not have presented Himself in the likeness of man. Now who, when he sees a man, would deny that he had been born? What God therefore willed not to be, He would in no wise have willed the seeming to be. When a thing is distasteful, the very notion6972 of it is scouted; because it makes no difference whether a thing exist or do not exist, if, when it does not exist, it is yet assumed to exist. It is of course of the greatest importance that there should be nothing false (or pretended) attributed to that which really does not exist.6973 But, say you, His own consciousness (of the truth of His nature) was enough for Him. If any supposed that He had been born, because they saw Him as a man, that was their concern.6974 Yet with how much more dignity and consistency would He have sustained the human character on the supposition that He was truly born; for if He were not born, He could not have undertaken the said character without injury to that consciousness of His which you on your side attribute to His confidence of being able to sustain, although not born, the character of having been born even against! His own consciousness! 6975 Why, I want to know,6976 was it of so much importance, that Christ should, when perfectly aware what He really was, exhibit Himself as being that which He was not? You cannot express any apprehension that,6977 if He had been born and truly clothed Himself with man’s nature, He would have ceased to be God, losing what He was, while becoming what He was not. For God is in no danger of losing His own state and condition. But, say you, I deny that God was truly changed to man in such wise as to be born and endued with a body of flesh, on this ground, that a being who is without end is also of necessity incapable of change. For being changed into something else puts an end to the former state. Change, therefore, is not possible to a Being who cannot come to an end. Without doubt, the nature of things which are subject to change is regulated by this law, that they have no permanence in the state which is undergoing change in them, and that they come to an end from thus wanting permanence, whilst they lose that in the process of change which they previously were. But nothing is equal with God; His nature is different6978 from the condition of all things. If, then, the things which differ from God, and from which God differs, lose what existence they had whilst they are undergoing change, wherein will consist the difference of the Divine Being from all other things except in His possessing the contrary faculty of theirs,—in other words, that God can be changed into all conditions, and yet continue just as He is? On any other supposition, He would be on the same level with those things which, when changed, lose the existence they had before; whose equal, of course, He is not in any other respect, as He certainly is not in the changeful issues6979 of their nature. You have sometimes read and believed that the Creator’s angels have been changed into human form, and have even borne about so veritable a body, that Abraham even washed their feet,6980 and Lot was rescued from the Sodomites by their hands;6981 an angel, moreover, wrestled with a man so strenuously with his body, that the latter desired to be let loose, so tightly was he held.6982 Has it, then, been permitted to angels, which are inferior to God, after they have been changed into human bodily form,6983 nevertheless to remain angels? and will you deprive God, their superior, of this faculty, as if Christ could not continue to be God, after His real assumption of the nature of man? Or else, did those angels appear as phantoms of flesh? You will not, however, have the courage to say this; for if it be so held in your belief, that the Creator’s angels are in the same condition as Christ, then Christ will belong to the same God as those angels do, who are like Christ in their condition. If you had not purposely rejected in some instances, and corrupted in others, the Scriptures which are opposed to your opinion, you would have been confuted in this matter by the Gospel of John, when it declares that the Spirit descended in the body6984 of a dove, and sat upon the Lord.6985 When the said Spirit was in this condition, He was as truly a dove as He was also a spirit; nor did He destroy His own proper substance by the assumption of an extraneous substance. But you ask what becomes of the dove’s body, after the return of the Spirit back to heaven, and similarly in the case of the angels. Their withdrawal was effected in the same manner as their appearance had been. If you had seen how their production out of nothing had been effected, you would have known also the process of their return to nothing. If the initial step was out of sight, so was also the final one. Still there was solidity in their bodily substance, whatever may have been the force by which the body became visible. What is written cannot but have been.

85. section5.chapter4

    Since, therefore, you do not reject the assumption of a body6986 as impossible or as hazardous to the character of God, it remains for you to repudiate and censure it as unworthy of Him. Come now, beginning from the nativity itself, declaim6987 against the uncleanness of the generative elements within the womb, the filthy concretion of fluid and blood, of the growth of the flesh for nine months long out of that very mire. Describe the womb as it enlarges6988 from day to day, heavy, troublesome, restless even in sleep, changeful in its feelings of dislike and desire. Inveigh now likewise against the shame itself of a woman in travail6989 which, however, ought rather to be honoured in consideration of that peril, or to be held sacred6990 in respect of (the mystery of) nature. Of course you are horrified also at the infant, which is shed into life with the embarrassments which accompany it from the womb;6991 you likewise, of course, loathe it even after it is washed, when it is dressed out in its swaddlingclothes, graced with repeated anointing,6992 smiled on with nurse’s fawns. This reverend course of nature,6993 you, O Marcion, (are pleased to) spit upon; and yet, in what way were you born? You detest a human being at his birth; then after what fashion do you love anybody? Yourself, of course, you had no love of, when you departed from the Church and the faith of Christ. But never mind,6994 if you are not on good terms with yourself, or even if you were born in a way different from other people. Christ, at any rate, has loved even that man who was condensed in his mother’s womb amidst all its uncleannesses, even that man who was brought into life out of the said womb, even that man who was nursed amidst the nurse’s simpers.6995 For his sake He came down (from heaven), for his sake He preached, for his sake “He humbled Himself even unto death—the death of the cross.”6996 He loved, of course, the being whom He redeemed at so great a cost. If Christ is the Creator’s Son, it was with justice that He loved His own (creature); if He comes from another god, His love was excessive, since He redeemed a being who belonged to another. Well, then, loving man He loved his nativity also, and his flesh as well. Nothing can be loved apart from that through which whatever exists has its existence. Either take away nativity, and then show us your man; or else withdraw the flesh, and then present to our view the being whom God has redeemed— since it is these very conditions6997 which constitute the man whom God has redeemed. And are you for turning these conditions into occasions of blushing to the very creature whom He has redeemed, (censuring them), too, as unworthy of Him who certainly would not have redeemed them had He not loved them? Our birth He reforms from death by a second birth from heaven;6998 our flesh He restores from every harassing malady; when leprous, He cleanses it of the stain; when blind, He rekindles its light; when palsied, He renews its strength; when possessed with devils, He exorcises it; when dead, He reanimates it,—then shall we blush to own it? If, to be sure,6999 He had chosen to be born of a mere animal, and were to preach the kingdom of heaven invested with the body of a beast either wild or tame, your censure (I imagine) would have instantly met Him with this demurrer: “This is disgraceful for God, and this is unworthy of the Son of God, and simply foolish.” For no other reason than because one thus judges. It is of course foolish, if we are to judge God by our own conceptions. But, Marcion, consider well this Scripture, if indeed you have not erased it: “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise.”7000 Now what are those foolish things? Are they the conversion of men to the worship of the true God, the rejection of error, the whole training in righteousness, chastity, mercy, patience, and innocence? These things certainly are not “foolish.” Inquire again, then, of what things he spoke, and when you imagine that you have discovered what they are will you find anything to be so “foolish” as believing in a God that has been born, and that of a virgin, and of a fleshly nature too, who wallowed in all the before-mentioned humiliations of nature? But some one may say, “These are not the foolish things; they must be other things which God has chosen to confound the wisdom of the world.” And yet, according to the world’s wisdom, it is more easy to believe that Jupiter became a bull or a swan, if we listen to Marcion, than that Christ really became a man.

86. section5.chapter5

    There are, to be sure, other things also quite as foolish (as the birth of Christ), which have reference to the humiliations and sufferings of God. Or else, let them call a crucified God “wisdom.” But Marcion will apply the knife7001 to this doctrine also, and even with greater reason. For which is more unworthy of God, which is more likely to raise a blush of shame, that God should be born, or that He should die? that He should bear the flesh, or the cross? be circumcised, or be crucified? be cradled, or be coffined?7002 be laid in a manger, or in a tomb? Talk of “wisdom!” You will show more of that if you refuse to believe this also. But, after all, you will not be “wise” unless you become a “fool” to the world, by believing “the foolish things of God.” Have you, then, cut away7003 all sufferings from Christ, on the ground that, as a mere phantom, He was incapable of experiencing them? We have said above that He might possibly have undergone the unreal mockeries7004 of an imaginary birth and infancy. But answer me at once, you that murder truth: Was not God really crucified? And, having been really crucified, did He not really die? And, having indeed really died, did He not really rise again? Falsely did Paul7005 “determine to know nothing amongst us but Jesus and Him crucified;”7006 falsely has he impressed upon us that He was buried; falsely inculcated that He rose again. False, therefore, is our faith also. And all that we hope for from Christ will be a phantom. O thou most infamous of men, who acquittest of all guilt7007 the murderers of God! For nothing did Christ suffer from them, if He really suffered nothing at all. Spare the whole world’s one only hope, thou who art destroying the indispensable dishonour of our faith.7008 Whatsoever is unworthy of God, is of gain to me. I am safe, if I am not ashamed of my Lord. “Whosoever,” says He, “shall be ashamed of me, of him will I also be ashamed.”7009 Other matters for shame find I none which can prove me to be shameless in a good sense, and foolish in a happy one, by my own contempt of shame. The Son of God was crucified; I am not ashamed because men must needs be ashamed of it. And the Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd.7010 And He was buried, and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible. But how will all this be true in Him, if He was not Himself true—if He really had not in Himself that which might be crucified, might die, might be buried, and might rise again? I mean this flesh suffused with blood, built up with bones, interwoven with nerves, entwined with veins, a flesh which knew how to be born, and how to die, human without doubt, as born of a human being. It will therefore be mortal in Christ, because Christ is man and the Son of man. Else why is Christ man and the Son of man, if he has nothing of man, and nothing from man? Unless it be either that man is anything else than flesh, or man’s flesh comes from any other source than man, or Mary is anything else than a human being, or Marcion’s man is as Marcion’s god.7011 Otherwise Christ could not be described as being man without flesh, nor the Son of man without any human parent; just as He is not God without the Spirit of God, nor the Son of God without having God for His father. Thus the nature7012 of the two substances displayed Him as man and God,—in one respect born, in the other unborn; in one respect fleshly, in the other spiritual; in one sense weak, in the other exceeding strong; in one sense dying, in the other living. This property of the two states—the divine and the human—is distinctly asserted7013 with equal truth of both natures alike, with the same belief both in respect of the Spirit7014 and of the flesh. The powers of the Spirit,7015 proved Him to be God, His sufferings attested the flesh of man. If His powers were not without the Spirit7016 in like manner, were not His sufferings without the flesh. If His flesh with its sufferings was fictitious, for the same reason was the Spirit false with all its powers. Wherefore halve7017 Christ with a lie? He was wholly the truth. Believe me, He chose rather to be born, than in any part to pretend—and that indeed to His own detriment—that He was bearing about a flesh hardened without bones, solid without muscles, bloody without blood, clothed without the tunic of skin,7018 hungry without appetite, eating without teeth, speaking without a tongue, so that His word was a phantom to the ears through an imaginary voice. A phantom, too, it was of course after the resurrection, when, showing His hands and His feet for the disciples to examine, He said, “Behold and see that it is I myself, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have;”7019 without doubt, hands, and feet, and bones are not what a spirit possesses, but only the flesh. How do you interpret this statement, Marcion, you who tell us that Jesus comes only from the most excellent God, who is both simple and good? See how He rather cheats, and deceives, and juggles the eyes of all, and the senses of all, as well as their access to and contact with Him! You ought rather to have brought Christ down, not from heaven, but from some troop of mountebanks, not as God besides man, but simply as a man, a magician; not as the High Priest of our salvation, but as the conjurer in a show; not as the raiser of the dead, but as the misleader7020 of the living,—except that, if He were a magician, He must have had a nativity!

87. section5.chapter6

    But certain disciples7021 of the heretic of Pontus, compelled to be wiser than their teacher, concede to Christ real flesh, without effect, however, on7022 their denial of His nativity. He might have had, they say, a flesh which was not at all born. So we have found our way “out of a frying-pan,” as the proverb runs, “into the fire,”7023—from Marcion to Apelles. This man having first fallen from the principles of Marcion into (intercourse with) a woman, in the flesh, and afterwards shipwrecked himself, in the spirit, on the virgin Philumene, 7024 proceeded from that time7025 to preach that the body of Christ was of solid flesh, but without having been born. To this angel, indeed, of Philumene, the apostle will reply in tones like those in which he even then predicted him, saying, “Although an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.”7026 To the arguments, however, which have been indicated just above, we have now to show our resistance. They allow that Christ really had a body. Whence was the material of it, if not from the same sort of thing as7027 that in which He appeared? Whence came His body, if His body were not flesh? Whence came His flesh, if it were not born? Inasmuch as that which is born must undergo this nativity in order to become flesh. He borrowed, they say, His flesh from the stars, and from the substances of the higher world. And they assert it for a certain principle, that a body without nativity is nothing to be astonished at, because it has been submitted to angels to appear even amongst ourselves in the flesh without the intervention of the womb. We admit, of course, that such facts have been related. But then, how comes it to pass that a faith which holds to a different rule borrows materials for its own arguments from the faith which it impugns? What has it to do with Moses, who has rejected the God of Moses? Since the God is a different one, everything belonging to him must be different also. But let the heretics always use the Scriptures of that God whose world they also enjoy. The fact will certainly recoil on them as a witness to judge them, that they maintain their own blasphemies from examples derived from Him.7028 But it is an easy task for the truth to prevail without raising any such demurrer against them. When, therefore, they set forth the flesh of Christ after the pattern of the angels, declaring it to be not born, and yet flesh for all that, I should wish them to compare the causes, both in Christ’s case and that of the angels, wherefore they came in the flesh. Never did any angel descend for the purpose of being crucified, of tasting death, and of rising again from the dead. Now, since there never was such a reason for angels becoming embodied, you have the cause why they assumed flesh without undergoing birth. They had not come to die, therefore they also (came not) to be born. Christ, however, having been sent to die, had necessarily to be also born, that He might be capable of death; for nothing is in the habit of dying but that which is born. Between nativity and mortality there is a mutual contrast. The law7029 which makes us die is the cause of our being born. Now, since Christ died owing to the condition which undergoes death, but that undergoes death which is also born, the consequence was—nay, it was an antecedent necessity—that He must have been born also,7030 by reason of the condition which undergoes birth; because He had to die in obedience to that very condition which, because it begins with birth, ends in death.7031 It was not fitting for Him not to be born under the pretence7032 that it was fitting for Him to die. But the Lord Himself at that very time appeared to Abraham amongst those angels without being born, and yet in the flesh without doubt, in virtue of the before-mentioned diversity of cause. You, however, cannot admit this, since you do not receive that Christ, who was even then rehearsing7033 how to converse with, and liberate, and judge the human race, in the habit of a flesh which as yet was not born, because it did not yet mean to die until both its nativity and mortality were previously (by prophecy) announced. Let them, then, prove to us that those angels derived their flesh from the stars. If they do not prove it because it is not written, neither will the flesh of Christ get its origin therefrom, for which they borrowed the precedent of the angels. It is plain that the angels bore a flesh which was not naturally their own; their nature being of a spiritual substance, although in some sense peculiar to themselves, corporeal; and yet they could be transfigured into human shape, and for the time be able to appear and have intercourse with men. Since, therefore, it has not been told us whence they obtained their flesh, it remains for us not to doubt in our minds that a property of angelic power is this, to assume to themselves bodily shape out of no material substance. How much more, you say, is it (within their competence to take a body) out of some material substance? That is true enough. But there is no evidence of this, because Scripture says nothing. Then, again,7034 how should they who are able to form themselves into that which by nature they are not, be unable to do this out of no material substance? If they become that which they are not, why cannot they so become out of that which is not? But that which has not existence when it comes into existence, is made out of nothing. This is why it is unnecessary either to inquire or to demonstrate what has subsequently become of their7035 bodies. What came out of nothing, came to nothing. They, who were able to convert themselves into flesh have it in their power to convert nothing itself into flesh. It is a greater thing to change a nature than to make matter. But even if it were necessary to suppose that angels derived their flesh from some material substance, it is surely more credible that it was from some earthly matter than from any kind of celestial substances, since it was composed of so palpably terrene a quality that it fed on earthly ailments. Suppose that even now a celestial flesh7036 had fed on earthly aliments, although it was not itself earthly, in the same way that earthly flesh actually fed on celestial aliments, although it had nothing of the celestial nature (for we read of manna having been food for the people: “Man,” says the Psalmist, “did eat angels’ bread,”7037) yet this does not once infringe the separate condition of the Lord’s flesh, because of His different destination. For One who was to be truly a man, even unto death, it was necessary that He should be clothed with that flesh to which death belongs. Now that flesh to which death belongs is preceded by birth.

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    But whenever a dispute arises about the nativity, all who reject it as creating a presumption in favour of the reality of Christ’s flesh, wilfully deny that God Himself was born, on the ground that He asked, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?”7038 Let, therefore, Apelles hear what was our answer to Marcion in that little work, in which we challenged his own (favourite) gospel to the proof, even that the material circumstances of that remark (of the Lord’s) should be considered.7039 First of all, nobody would have told Him that His mother and brethren were standing outside, if he were not certain both that He had a mother and brethren, and that they were the very persons whom he was then announcing,— who had either been known to him before, or were then and there discovered by him; although heretics7040 have removed this passage from the gospel, because those who were admiring His doctrine said that His supposed father, Joseph the carpenter, and His mother Mary, and His brethren, and His sisters, were very well known to them. But it was with the view of tempting Him, that they had mentioned to Him a mother and brethren which He did not possess. The Scripture says nothing of this, although it is not in other instances silent when anything was done against Him by way of temptation. “Behold,” it says, “a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted Him.”7041 And in another passage: “The Pharisees also came unto Him, tempting Him.” Who7042 was to prevent its being in this place also indicated that this was done with the view of tempting Him? I do not admit what you advance of your own apart from Scripture. Then there ought to be suggested7043 some occasion7044 for the temptation. What could they have thought to be in Him which required temptation? The question, to be sure, whether He had been born or not? For if this point were denied in His answer, it might come out on the announcement of a temptation. And yet no temptation, when aiming at the discovery of the point which prompts the temptation by its doubtfulness, falls upon one so abruptly, as not to be preceded by the question which compels the temptation whilst raising the doubt. Now, since the nativity of Christ had never come into question, how can you contend that they meant by their temptation to inquire about a point on which they had never raised a doubt? Besides,7045 if He had to be tempted about His birth, this of course was not the proper way of doing it,—by announcing those persons who, even on the supposition of His birth, might possibly not have been in existence. We have all been born, and yet all of us have not either brothers or mother. He might with more probability have had even a father than a mother, and uncles more likely than brothers. Thus is the temptation about His birth unsuitable, for it might have been contrived without any mention of either His mother or His brethren. It is clearly more credible that, being certain that He had both a mother and brothers, they tested His divinity rather than His nativity, whether, when within, He knew what was without; being tried by the untrue announcement of the presence of persons who were not present. But the artifice of a temptation might have been thwarted thus: it might have happened that He knew that those whom they were announcing to be “standing without,” were in fact absent by the stress either of sickness, or of business, or a journey which He was at the time aware of. No one tempts (another) in a way in which he knows that he may have himself to bear the shame of the temptation. There being, then, no suitable occasion for a temptation, the announcement that His mother and His brethren had actually turned up7046 recovers its naturalness. But there is some ground for thinking that Christ’s answer denies His mother and brethren for the present, as even Apelles might learn. “The Lord’s brethren had not yet believed in Him.”7047 So is it contained in the Gospel which was published before Marcion’s time; whilst there is at the same time a want of evidence of His mother’s adherence to Him, although the Marthas and the other Marys were in constant attendance on Him. In this very passage indeed, their unbelief is evident. Jesus was teaching the way of life, preaching the kingdom of God and actively engaged in healing infirmities of body and soul; but all the while, whilst strangers were intent on Him, His very nearest relatives were absent. By and by they turn up, and keep outside; but they do not go in, because, forsooth, they set small store7048 on that which was doing within; nor do they even wait,7049 as if they had something which they could contribute more necessary than that which He was so earnestly doing; but they prefer to interrupt Him, and wish to call Him away from His great work. Now, I ask you, Apelles, or will you Marcion, please (to tell me), if you happened to be at a stage play, or had laid a wager7050 on a foot race or a chariot race, and were called away by such a message, would you not have exclaimed, “What are mother and brothers to me?”7051 And did not Christ, whilst preaching and manifesting God, fulfilling the law and the prophets, and scattering the darkness of the long preceding age, justly employ this same form of words, in order to strike the unbelief of those who stood outside, or to shake off the importunity of those who would call Him away from His work? If, however, He had meant to deny His own nativity, He would have found place, time, and means for expressing Himself very differently,7052 and not in words which might be uttered by one who had both a mother and brothers. When denying one’s parents in indignation, one does not deny their existence, but censures their faults. Besides, He gave others the preference; and since He shows their title to this favour—even because they listened to the word (of God)—He points out in what sense He denied His mother and His brethren. For in whatever sense He adopted as His own those who adhered to Him, in that did He deny as His7053 those who kept aloof from Him. Christ also is wont to do to the utmost that which He enjoins on others. How strange, then, would it certainly7054 have been, if, while he was teaching others not to esteem mother, or father, or brothers, as highly as the word of God, He were Himself to leave the word of God as soon as His mother and brethren were announced to Him! He denied His parents, then, in the sense in which He has taught us to deny ours—for God’s work. But there is also another view of the case: in the abjured mother there is a figure of the synagogue, as well as of the Jews in the unbelieving brethren. In their person Israel remained outside, whilst the new disciples who kept close to Christ within, hearing and believing, represented the Church, which He called mother in a preferable sense and a worthier brotherhood, with the repudiation of the carnal relationship. It was in just the same sense, indeed, that He also replied to that exclamation (of a certain woman), not denying His mother’s “womb and paps,” but designating those as more “blessed who hear the word of God.”7055

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    These passages alone, in which Apelles and Marcion seem to place their chief reliance when interpreted according to the truth of the entire uncorrupted gospel, ought to have been sufficient for proving the human flesh of Christ by a defence of His birth. But since Apelles’ precious set7056 lay a very great stress on the shameful condition7057 of the flesh, which they will have to have been furnished with souls tampered with by the fiery author of evil,7058 and so unworthy of Christ; and because they on that account suppose that a sidereal substance is suitable for Him, I am bound to refute them on their own ground. They mention a certain angel of great renown as having created this world of ours, and as having, after the creation, repented of his work. This indeed we have treated of in a passage by itself; for we have written a little work in opposition to them, on the question whether one who had the spirit, and will, and power of Christ for such operations, could have done anything which required repentance, since they describe the said angel by the figure of “the lost sheep.” The world, then, must be a wrong thing,7059 according to the evidence of its Creator’s repentance; for all repentance is the admission of fault, nor has it indeed any existence except through fault. Now, if the world7060 is a fault, as is the body, such must be its parts—faulty too; so in like manner must be the heaven and its celestial (contents), and everything which is conceived and produced out of it. And “a corrupt tree must needs bring forth evil fruit.”7061 The flesh of Christ, therefore, if composed of celestial elements, consists of faulty materials, sinful by reason of its sinful origin;7062 so that it must be a part of that substance which they disdain to clothe Christ with, because of its sinfulness,—in other words, our own. Then, as there is no difference in the point of ignominy, let them either devise for Christ some substance of a purer stamp, since they are displeased with our own, or else let them recognise this too, than which even a heavenly substance could not have been better. We read in so many words:7063 “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.”7064 This passage, however, has nothing to do with any difference of substance; it only contrasts with the once7065 “earthy” substance of the flesh of the first man, Adam, the “heavenly” substance of the spirit of the second man, Christ. And so entirely does the passage refer the celestial man to the spirit and not to the flesh, that those whom it compares to Him evidently become celestial—by the Spirit, of course—even in this “earthy flesh.” Now, since Christ is heavenly even in regard to the flesh, they could not be compared to Him, who are not heavenly in reference to their flesh.7066 If, then, they who become heavenly, as Christ also was, carry about an “earthy” substance of flesh, the conclusion which is affirmed by this fact is, that Christ Himself also was heavenly, but in an “earthy” flesh, even as they are who are put on a level with Him.7067

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    We have thus far gone on the principle, that nothing which is derived from some other thing, however different it may be from that from which it is derived, is so different as not to suggest the source from which it comes. No material substance is without the witness of its own original, however great a change into new properties it may have undergone. There is this very body of ours, the formation of which out of the dust of the ground is a truth which has found its way into Gentile fables; it certainly testifies its own origin from the two elements of earth and water,—from the former by its flesh, from the latter by its blood. Now, although there is a difference in the appearance of qualities (in other words, that which proceeds from something else is in development7068 different), yet, after all, what is blood but red fluid? what is flesh but earth in an especial7069 form? Consider the respective qualities,— of the muscles as clods; of the bones as stones; the mammillary glands as a kind of pebbles. Look upon the close junctions of the nerves as propagations of roots, and the branching courses of the veins as winding rivulets, and the down (which covers us) as moss, and the hair as grass, and the very treasures of marrow within our bones as ores7070 of flesh. All these marks of the earthy origin were in Christ; and it is they which obscured Him as the Son of God, for He was looked on as man, for no other reason whatever than because He existed in the corporeal substance of a man. Or else, show us some celestial substance in Him purloined from the Bear, and the Pleiades, and the Hyades. Well, then, the characteristics which we have enumerated are so many proofs that His was an earthy flesh, as ours is; but anything new or anything strange I do not discover. Indeed it was from His words and actions only, from His teaching and miracles solely, that men, though amazed, owned Christ to be man.7071 But if there had been in Him any new kind of flesh miraculously obtained (from the stars), it would have been certainly well known.7072 As the case stood, however, it was actually the ordinary7073 condition of His terrene flesh which made all things else about Him wonderful, as when they said, “Whence hath this man this wisdom and these mighty works?”7074 Thus spake even they who despised His outward form. His body did not reach even to human beauty, to say nothing of heavenly glory.7075 Had the prophets given us no information whatever concerning His ignoble appearance, His very sufferings and the very contumely He endured bespeak it all. The sufferings attested His human flesh, the contumely proved its abject condition. Would any man have dared to touch even with his little finger, the body of Christ, if it had been of an unusual nature;7076 or to smear His face with spitting, if it had not invited it7077 (by its abjectness)? Why talk of a heavenly flesh, when you have no grounds to offer us for your celestial theory?7078 Why deny it to be earthy, when you have the best of reasons for knowing it to be earthy? He hungered under the devil’s temptation; He thirsted with the woman of Samaria; He wept over Lazarus; He trembles at death (for “the flesh,” as He says, “is weak”7079); at last, He pours out His blood. These, I suppose, are celestial marks? But how, I ask, could He have incurred contempt and suffering in the way I have described, if there had beamed forth in that flesh of His aught of celestial excellence? From this, therefore, we have a convincing proof that in it there was nothing of heaven, because it must be capable of contempt and suffering.

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    I now turn to another class, who are equally wise in their own conceit. They affirm that the flesh of Christ is composed of soul,7080 that His soul became flesh, so that His flesh is soul; and as His flesh is of soul, so is His soul of flesh. But here, again, I must have some reasons. If, in order to save the soul, Christ took a soul within Himself, because it could not be saved except by Him having it within Himself, I see no reason why, in clothing Himself with flesh, He should have made that flesh one of soul,7081 as if He could not have saved the soul in any other way than by making flesh of it. For while He saves our souls, which are not only not of flesh,7082 but are even distinct from flesh, how much more able was He to secure salvation to that soul which He took Himself, when it was also not of flesh? Again, since they assume it as a main tenet,7083 that Christ came forth not to deliver the flesh, but only our soul, how absurd it is, in the first place, that, meaning to save only the soul, He yet made it into just that sort of bodily substance which He had no intention of saving! And, secondly, if He had undertaken to deliver our souls by means of that which He carried, He ought, in that soul which He carried to have carried our soul, one (that is) of the same condition as ours; and whatever is the condition of our soul in its secret nature, it is certainly not one of flesh. However, it was not our soul which He saved, if His own was of flesh; for ours is not of flesh. Now, if He did not save our soul on the ground, that it was a soul of flesh which He saved, He is nothing to us, because He has not saved our soul. Nor indeed did it need salvation, for it was not our soul really, since it was, on the supposition,7084 a soul of flesh. But yet it is evident that it has been saved. Of flesh, therefore, it was not composed, and it was ours; for it was our soul that was saved, since that was in peril of damnation. We therefore now conclude that as in Christ the soul was not of flesh, so neither could His flesh have possibly been composed of soul.

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    But we meet another argument of theirs, when we raise the question why Christ, in assuming a flesh composed of soul, should seem to have had a soul that was made of flesh? For God, they say, desired to make the soul visible to men, by enduing it with a bodily nature, although it was before invisible; of its own nature, indeed, it was incapable of seeing anything, even its own self, by reason of the obstacle of this flesh, so that it was even a matter of doubt whether it was born or not. The soul, therefore (they further say), was made corporeal in Christ, in order that we might see it when undergoing birth, and death, and (what is more) resurrection. But yet, how was this possible, that by means of the flesh the soul should demonstrate itself7085 to itself or to us, when it could not possibly be ascertained that it would offer this mode of exhibiting itself by the flesh, until the thing came into existence to which it was unknown,7086 that is to say, the flesh? It received darkness, forsooth, in order to be able to shine! Now,7087 let us first turn our attention to this point, whether it was requisite that the soul should exhibit itself in the manner contended for;7088 and next consider whether their previous position be7089 that the soul is wholly invisible (inquiring further) whether this invisibility is the result of its incorporeality, or whether it actually possesses some sort of body peculiar to itself. And yet, although they say that it is invisible, they determine it to be corporeal, but having somewhat that is invisible. For if it has nothing invisible how can it be said to be invisible? But even its existence is an impossibility, unless it has that which is instrumental to its existence.7090 Since, however, it exists, it must needs have a something through which it exists. If it has this something, it must be its body. Everything which exists is a bodily existence sui generis. Nothing lacks bodily existence but that which is non-existent. If, then, the soul has an invisible body, He who had proposed to make it7091 visible would certainly have done His work better7092 if He had made that part of it which was accounted invisible, visible; because then there would have been no untruth or weakness in the case, and neither of these flaws is suitable to God. (But as the case stands in the hypo- thesis) there is untruth, since He has set forth the soul as being a different thing from what it really is; and there is weakness, since He was unable to make it appear7093 to be that which it is. No one who wishes to exhibit a man covers him with a veil7094 or a mask. This, however, is precisely what has been done to the soul, if it has been clothed with a covering belonging to something else, by being converted into flesh. But even if the soul is, on their hypothesis, supposed7095 to be incorporeal, so that the soul, whatever it is, should by some mysterious force of the reason7096 be quite unknown, only not be a body, then in that case it were not beyond the power of God—indeed it would be more consistent with His plan—if He displayed7097 the soul in some new sort of body, different from that which we all have in common, one of which we should have quite a different notion,7098 (being spared the idea that)7099 He had set His mind on7100 making, without an adequate cause, a visible soul instead of7101 an invisible one—a fit incentive, no doubt, for such questions as they start,7102 by their maintenance of a human flesh for it.7103 Christ, however, could not have appeared among men except as a man. Restore, therefore, to Christ, His faith; believe that He who willed to walk the earth as a man exhibited even a soul of a thoroughly human condition, not making it of flesh, but clothing it with flesh.

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    Well, now, let it be granted that the soul is made apparent by the flesh,7104 on the assumption that it was evidently necessary7105 that it should be made apparent in some way or other, that is, as being incognizable to itself and to us: there is still an absurd distinction in this hypothesis, which implies that we are ourselves separate from our soul, when all that we are is soul. Indeed,7106 without the soul we are nothing; there is not even the name of a human being, only that of a carcase. If, then, we are ignorant of the soul, it is in fact the soul that is ignorant of itself. Thus the only remaining question left for us to look into is, whether the soul was in this matter so ignorant of itself that it became known in any way it could.7107 The soul, in my opinion,7108 is sensual.7109 Nothing, therefore, pertaining to the soul is unconnected with sense,7110 nothing pertaining to sense is unconnected with the soul.7111 And if I may use the expression for the sake of emphasis, I would say, “Animoe anima sensus est”—“Sense is the soul’s very soul.” Now, since it is the soul that imparts the faculty of perception7112 to all (that have sense), and since it is itself that perceives the very senses, not to say properties, of them all, how is it likely that it did not itself receive sense as its own natural constitution? Whence is it to know what is necessary for itself under given circumstances, from the very necessity of natural causes, if it knows not its own property, and what is necessary for it? To recognise this indeed is within the competence of every soul; it has, I mean, a practical knowledge of itself, without which knowledge of itself no soul could possibly have exercised its own functions.7113 I suppose, too, that it is especially suitable that man, the only rational animal, should have been furnished with such a soul as would make him the rational animal, itself being pre-eminently rational. Now, how can that soul which makes man a rational animal be itself rational if it be itself ignorant of its ration- ality, being ignorant of its own very self? So far, however, is it from being ignorant, that it knows its own Author, its own Master, and its own condition. Before it learns anything about God, it names the name of God. Before it acquires any knowledge of His judgment, it professes to commend itself to God. There is nothing one oftener hears of than that there is no hope after death; and yet what imprecations or deprecations does not the soul use according as the man dies after a well or ill spent life! These reflections are more fully pursued in a short treatise which we have written, “On the Testimony of the Soul.”7114 Besides, if the soul was ignorant of itself from the beginning, there is nothing it could7115 have learnt of Christ except its own quality.7116 It was not its own form that it learnt of Christ, but its salvation. For this cause did the Son of God descend and take on Him a soul, not that the soul might discover itself in Christ, but Christ in itself. For its salvation is endangered, not by its being ignorant of itself, but of the word of God. “The life,” says He, “was manifested,”7117 not the soul. And again, “I am come to save the soul.” He did not say, “to explain”7118 it. We could not know, of course,7119 that the soul, although an invisible essence, is born and dies, unless it were exhibited corporeally. We certainly were ignorant that it was to rise again with the flesh. This is the truth which it will be found was manifested by Christ. But even this He did not manifest in Himself in a different way than in some Lazarus, whose flesh was no more composed of soul7120 than his soul was of flesh.7121 What further knowledge, therefore, have we received of the structure7122 of the soul which we were ignorant of before? What invisible part was there belonging to it which wanted to be made visible by the flesh?

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    The soul became flesh that the soul might become visible.7123 Well, then, did the flesh likewise become soul that the flesh might be manifested?7124 If the soul is flesh, it is no longer soul, but flesh. If the flesh is soul, it is no longer flesh, but soul. Where, then, there is flesh, and where there is soul, it has become both one and the other.7125 Now, if they are neither in particular, although they become both one and the other, it is, to say the least, very absurd, that we should understand the soul when we name the flesh, and when we indicate the soul, explain ourselves as meaning the flesh. All things will be in danger of being taken in a sense different from their own proper sense, and, whilst taken in that different sense, of losing their proper one, if they are called by a name which differs from their natural designation. Fidelity in names secures the safe appreciation of properties. When these properties undergo a change, they are considered to possess such qualities as their names indicate. Baked clay, for instance, receives the name of brick.7126 It retains not the name which designated its former state,7127 because it has no longer a share in that state. Therefore, also, the soul of Christ having become flesh,7128 cannot be anything else than that which it has become nor can it be any longer that which it once was, having become indeed7129 something else. And since we have just had recourse to an illustration, we will put it to further use. Our pitcher, then, which was formed of the clay, is one body, and has one name indicative, of course, of that one body; nor can the pitcher be also called clay, because what it once was, it is no longer. Now that which is no longer (what it was) is also not an inseparable property.7130 And the soul is not an inseparable property. Since, therefore, it has become flesh, the soul is a uniform solid body; it is also a wholly incomplex being,7131 and an indivisible substance. But in Christ we find the soul and the flesh expressed in simple unfigurative7132 terms; that is to say, the soul is called soul, and the flesh, flesh; nowhere is the soul termed flesh, or the flesh, soul; and yet they ought to have been thus (confusedly) named if such had been their condition. The fact, however, is that even by Christ Himself each substance has been separately mentioned by itself, conformably of course, to the distinction which exists between the properties of both, the soul by itself, and the flesh by itself. “My soul,” says He, “is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death;”7133 and “the bread that I will give is my flesh, (which I will give) for the life7134 of the world.”7135 Now, if the soul had been flesh, there would have only been in Christ the soul composed of flesh, or else the flesh composed of soul.7136 Since, however, He keeps the species distinct, the flesh and the soul, He shows them to be two. If two, then they are no longer one; if not one, then the soul is not composed of flesh, nor the flesh of soul. For the soul-flesh, or the flesh-soul, is but one; unless indeed He even had some other soul apart from that which was flesh, and bare about another flesh besides that which was soul. But since He had but one flesh and one soul,—that “soul which was sorrowful, even unto death,” and that flesh which was the “bread given for the life of the world,”—the number is unimpaired7137 of two substances distinct in kind, thus excluding the unique species of the flesh-comprised soul.

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    But Christ, they say, bare7138 (the nature of) an angel. For what reason? The same which induced Him to become man? Christ, then, was actuated by the motive which led Him to take human nature. Man’s salvation was the motive, the restoration of that which had perished. Man had perished; his recovery had become necessary. No such cause, however, existed for Christ’s taking on Him the nature of angels. For although there is assigned to angels also perdition in “the fire prepared for the devil and his angels,”7139 yet a restoration is never promised to them. No charge about the salvation of angels did Christ ever receive from the Father; and that which the Father neither promised nor commanded, Christ could not have undertaken. For what object, therefore, did He bear the angelic nature, if it were not (that He might have it) as a powerful helper7140 wherewithal to execute the salvation of man? The Son of God, in sooth, was not competent alone to deliver man, whom a solitary and single serpent had overthrown! There is, then, no longer but one God, but one Saviour, if there be two to contrive salvation, and one of them in need of the other. But was it His object indeed to deliver man by an angel? Why, then, come down to do that which He was about to expedite with an angel’s help? If by an angel’s aid, why come Himself also? If He meant to do all by Himself, why have an angel too? He has been, it is true, called “the Angel of great counsel,” that is, a messenger, by a term expressive of official function, not of nature. For He had to announce to the world the mighty purpose of the Father, even that which ordained the restoration of man. But He is not on this account to be regarded as an angel, as a Gabriel or a Michael. For the Lord of the Vineyard sends even His Son to the labourers to require fruit, as well as His servants. Yet the Son will not therefore be counted as one of the servants because He undertook the office of a servant. I may, then, more easily say, if such an expression is to be hazarded,7141 that the Son is actually an angel, that is, a messenger, from the Father, than that there is an angel in the Son. Forasmuch, however, as it has been declared concerning the Son Himself, “Thou hast made Him a little lower than the angels”7142 how will it appear that He put on the nature of angels if He was made lower than the angels, having become man, with flesh and soul as the Son of man? As “the Spirit7143 of God,” however, and “the Power of the Highest,”7144 can He be regarded as lower than the an- gels,—He who is verily God, and the Son of God? Well, but as bearing human nature, He is so far made inferior to the angels; but as bearing angelic nature, He to the same degree loses that inferiority. This opinion will be very suitable for Ebion,7145 who holds Jesus to be a mere man, and nothing more than a descendant of David, and not also the Son of God; although He is, to be sure,7146 in one respect more glorious than the prophets, inasmuch as he declares that there was an angel in Him, just as there was in Zechariah. Only it was never said by Christ, “And the angel, which spake within me, said unto me.”7147 Neither, indeed, was ever used by Christ that familiar phrase of all the prophets, “Thus saith the Lord.” For He was Himself the Lord, who openly spake by His own authority, prefacing His words with the formula, “Verily, verily, I say unto you.” What need is there of further argument? Hear what Isaiah says in emphatic words, “It was no angel, nor deputy, but the Lord Himself who saved them.”7148

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    Valentinus, indeed, on the strength of his heretical system, might consistently devise a spiritual flesh for Christ. Any one who refused to believe that that flesh was human might pretend it to be anything he liked, forasmuch as (and this remark is applicable to all heretics), if it was not human, and was not born of man, I do not see of what substance Christ Himself spoke when He called Himself man and the Son of man, saying: “But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth;”7149 and “The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath-day.”7150 For it is of Him that Isaiah writes: “A man of suffering, and acquainted with the bearing of weakness;”7151 and Jeremiah: “He is a man, and who hath known Him?”7152 and Daniel: “Upon the clouds (He came) as the Son of man.”7153 The Apostle Paul likewise says: “The man Christ Jesus is the one Mediator between God and man.”7154 Also Peter, in the Acts of the Apostles, speaks of Him as verily human (when he says), “Jesus Christ was a man approved of God among you.”7155 These passages alone ought to suffice as a prescriptive7156 testimony in proof that Christ had human flesh derived from man, and not spiritual, and that His flesh was not composed of soul,7157 nor of stellar substance, and that it was not an imaginary flesh; (and no doubt they would be sufficient) if heretics could only divest themselves of all their contentious warmth and artifice. For, as I have read in some writer of Valentinus’ wretched faction,7158 they refuse at the outset to believe that a human and earthly substance was created7159 for Christ, lest the Lord should be regarded as inferior to the angels, who are not formed of earthly flesh; whence, too, it would be necessary that, if His flesh were like ours, it should be similarly born, not of the Spirit, nor of God, but of the will of man. Why, moreover, should it be born, not of corruptible [seed], but of incorruptible? Why, again, since His flesh has both risen and returned to heaven, is not ours, being like His, also taken up at once? Or else, why does not His flesh, since it is like ours, return in like manner to the ground, and suffer dissolution? Such objections even the heathen used constantly to bandy about.7160 Was the Son of God reduced to such a depth of degradation? Again, if He rose again as a precedent for our hope, how is it that nothing like it has been thought desirable (to happen) to ourselves?7161 Such views are not improper for heathens and they are fit and natural for the heretics too. For, indeed, what difference is there between them, except it be that the heathen, in not believing, do believe; while the heretics, in believing, do not believe? Then, again, they read: “Thou madest Him a little less than angels;”7162 and they deny the lower nature of that Christ who declares Himself to be, “not a man, but a worm;”7163 who also had “no form nor comeliness, but His form was ignoble, despised more than all men, a man in suffering, and acquainted with the bearing of weakness.”7164 Here they discover a human being mingled with a divine one and so they deny the manhood. They believe that He died, and maintain that a being which has died was born of an incorruptible substance;7165 as if, forsooth, corruptibility7166 were something else than death! But our flesh, too, ought immediately to have risen again. Wait a while. Christ has not yet subdued His enemies, so as to be able to triumph over them in company with His friends.

97. section5.chapter16

    The famous Alexander,7167 too, instigated by his love of disputation in the true fashion of heretical temper, has made himself conspicuous against us; he will have us say that Christ put on flesh of an earthly origin,7168 in order that He might in His own person abolish sinful flesh.7169 Now, even if we did assert this as our opinion, we should be able to defend it in such a way as completely to avoid the extravagant folly which he ascribes to us in making us suppose that the very flesh of Christ was in Himself abolished as being sinful; because we mention our belief (in public),7170 that it is sitting at the right hand of the Father in heaven; and we further declare that it will come again from thence in all the pomp7171 of the Father’s glory: it is therefore just as impossible for us to say that it is abolished, as it is for us to maintain that it is sinful, and so made void, since in it there has been no fault. We maintain, moreover, that what has been abolished in Christ is not carnem peccati, “sinful flesh,” but peccatum carnis, “sin in the flesh,”—not the material thing, but its condition;7172 not the substance, but its flaw;7173 and (this we aver) on the authority of the apostle, who says, “He abolished sin in the flesh.”7174 Now in another sentence he says that Christ was “in the likeness of sinful flesh,”7175 not, however, as if He had taken on Him “the likeness of the flesh,” in the sense of a semblance of body instead of its reality; but he means us to understand likeness to the flesh which sinned,7176 because the flesh of Christ, which committed no sin itself, resembled that which had sinned,—resembled it in its nature, but not in the corruption it received from Adam; whence we also affirm that there was in Christ the same flesh as that whose nature in man is sinful. In the flesh, therefore, we say that sin has been abolished, because in Christ that same flesh is maintained without sin, which in man was not maintained without sin. Now, it would not contribute to the purpose of Christ’s abolishing sin in the flesh, if He did not abolish it in that flesh in which was the nature of sin, nor (would it conduce) to His glory. For surely it would have been no strange thing if He had removed the stain of sin in some better flesh, and one which should possess a different, even a sinless, nature! Then, you say, if He took our flesh, Christ’s was a sinful one. Do not, however, fetter with mystery a sense which is quite intelligible. For in putting on our flesh, He made it His own; in making it His own, He made it sinless. A word of caution, however, must be addressed to all who refuse to believe that our flesh was in Christ on the ground that it came not of the seed of a human father,7177 let them remember that Adam himself received this flesh of ours without the seed of a human father. As earth was converted into this flesh of ours without the seed of a human father, so also was it quite possible for the Son of God to take to Himself7178 the substance of the selfsame flesh, without a human father’s agency.7179

98. section5.chapter17

    But, leaving Alexander with his syllogisms, which he so perversely applies in his discussions, as well as with the hymns of Valentinus, which, with consummate assurance, he interpolates as the production of some respectable7180 author, let us confine our inquiry to a single point—Whether Christ received flesh from the virgin?—that we may thus arrive at a certain proof that His flesh was human, if He derived its substance from His mother’s womb, although we are at once furnished with clear evidences of the human character of His flesh, from its name and description as that of a man, and from the nature of its constitution, and from the system of its sensations, and from its suffering of death. Now, it will first be necessary to show what previous reason there was for the Son of God’s being born of a virgin. He who was going to consecrate a new order of birth, must Himself be born after a novel fashion, concerning which Isaiah foretold how that the Lord Himself would give the sign. What, then, is the sign? “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.”7181 Accordingly, a virgin did conceive and bear “Emmanuel, God with us.”7182 This is the new nativity; a man is born in God. And in this man God was born, taking the flesh of an ancient race, without the help, however, of the ancient seed, in order that He might reform it with a new seed, that is, in a spiritual manner, and cleanse it by the re-moval of all its ancient stains. But the whole of this new birth was prefigured, as was the case in all other instances, in ancient type, the Lord being born as man by a dispensation in which a virgin was the medium. The earth was still in a virgin state, reduced as yet by no human labour, with no seed as yet cast into its furrows, when, as we are told, God made man out of it into a living soul.7183 As, then, the first Adam is thus introduced to us, it is a just inference that the second Adam likewise, as the apostle has told us, was formed by God into a quickening spirit out of the ground,—in other words, out of a flesh which was unstained as yet by any human generation. But that I may lose no opportunity of supporting my argument from the name of Adam, why is Christ called Adam by the apostle, unless it be that, as man, He was of that earthly origin? And even reason here maintains the same conclusion, because it was by just the contrary7184 operation that God recovered His own image and likeness, of which He had been robbed by the devil. For it was while Eve was yet a virgin, that the ensnaring word had crept into her ear which was to build the edifice of death. Into a virgin’s soul, in like manner, must be introduced that Word of God which was to raise the fabric of life; so that what had been reduced to ruin by this sex, might by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve had believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel.7185 The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced. But (it will be said) Eve did not at the devil’s word conceive in her womb. Well, she at all events conceived; for the devil’s word afterwards became as seed to her that she should conceive as an outcast, and bring forth in sorrow. Indeed she gave birth to a fratricidal devil; whilst Mary, on the contrary, bare one who was one day to secure salvation to Israel, His own brother after the flesh, and the murderer of Himself. God therefore sent down into the virgin’s womb His Word, as the good Brother, who should blot out the memory of the evil brother. Hence it was necessary that Christ should come forth for the salvation of man, in that condition of flesh into which man had entered ever since his condemnation.

99. section5.chapter18

    Now, that we may give a simpler answer, it was not fit that the Son of God should be born of a human father’s seed, lest, if He were wholly the Son of a man, He should fail to be also the Son of God, and have nothing more than “a Solomon” or “a Jonas,”7186—as Ebion7187 thought we ought to believe concerning Him. In order, therefore, that He who was already the Son of God—of God the Father’s seed, that is to say, the Spirit—might also be the Son of man, He only wanted to assume flesh, of the flesh of man7188 without the seed of a man;7189 for the seed of a man was unnecessary7190 for One who had the seed of God. As, then, before His birth of the virgin, He was able to have God for His Father without a human mother, so likewise, after He was born of the virgin, He was able to have a woman for His mother without a human father. He is thus man with God, in short, since He is man’s flesh with God’s Spirit7191—flesh (I say) without seed from man, Spirit with seed from God. For as much, then, as the dispensation of God’s purpose7192 concerning His Son required that He should be born7193 of a virgin, why should He not have received of the virgin the body which He bore from the virgin? Because, (forsooth) it is something else which He took from God, for “the Word” say they, “was made flesh.”7194 Now this very statement plainly shows what it was that was made flesh; nor can it possibly be that7195 anything else than the Word was made flesh. Now, whether it was of the flesh that the Word was made flesh, or whether it was so made of the (divine) seed itself, the Scripture must tell us. As, however, the Scripture is silent about everything except what it was that was made (flesh), and says nothing of that from which it was so made, it must be held to suggest that from something else, and not from itself, was the Word made flesh. And if not from itself, but from something else, from what can we more suitably suppose that the Word became flesh than from that flesh in which it submitted to the dispensation?7196 And (we have a proof of the same conclusion in the fact) that the Lord Himself sententiously and distinctly pronounced, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh,”7197 even because it is born of the flesh. But if He here spoke of a human being simply, and not of Himself, (as you maintain) then you must deny absolutely that Christ is man, and must maintain that human nature was not suitable to Him. And then He adds, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit,”7198 because God is a Spirit, and He was born of God. Now this description is certainly even more applicable to Him than it is to those who believe in Him. But if this passage indeed apply to Him, then why does not the preceding one also? For you cannot divide their relation, and adapt this to Him, and the previous clause to all other men, especially as you do not deny that Christ possesses the two substances, both of the flesh and of the Spirit. Besides, as He was in possession both of flesh and of Spirit, He cannot possibly, when speaking of the condition of the two substances which He Himself bears, be supposed to have determined that the Spirit indeed was His own, but that the flesh was not His own. Forasmuch, therefore, as He is of the Spirit He is God the Spirit, and is born of God; just as He is also born of the flesh of man, being generated in the flesh as man.7199

100. section5.chapter19

     What, then, is the meaning of this passage, “Born7200 not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God?”7201 I shall make more use of this passage after I have confuted those who have tampered with it. They maintain that it was written thus (in the plural)7202 “Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,” as if designating those who were before mentioned as “believing in His name,” in order to point out the existence of that mysterious seed of the elect and spir- itual which they appropriate to themselves.7203 But how can this be, when all who believe in the name of the Lord are, by reason of the common principle of the human race, born of blood, and of the will of the flesh, and of man, as indeed is Valentinus himself? The expression is in the singular number, as referring to the Lord, “He was born of God.” And very properly, because Christ is the Word of God, and with the Word the Spirit of God, and by the Spirit the Power of God, and whatsoever else appertains to God. As flesh, however, He is not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of man, because it was by the will of God that the Word was made flesh. To the flesh, indeed, and not to the Word, accrues the denial of the nativity which is natural to us all as men,7204 because it was as flesh that He had thus to be born, and not as the Word. Now, whilst the passage actually denies that He was born of the will of the flesh, how is it that it did not also deny (that He was born) of the substance of the flesh? For it did not disavow the substance of the flesh when it denied His being “born of blood” but only the matter of the seed, which, as all know, is the warm blood as convected by ebullition7205 into the coagulum of the woman’s blood. In the cheese, it is from the coagulation that the milky substance acquires that consistency,7206 which is condensed by infusing the rennet.7207 We thus understand that what is denied is the Lord’s birth after sexual intercourse (as is suggested by the phrase, “the will of man and of the flesh”), not His nativity from a woman’s womb. Why, too, is it insisted on with such an accumulation of emphasis that He was not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor (of the will) of man, if it were not that His flesh was such that no man could have any doubt on the point of its being born from sexual intercourse? Again, although denying His birth from such cohabitation, the passage did not deny that He was born of real flesh; it rather affirmed this, by the very fact that it did not deny His birth in the flesh in the same way that it denied His birth from sexual intercourse. Pray, tell me, why the Spirit of God7208 descended into a woman’s womb at all, if He did not do so for the purpose of partaking of flesh from the womb. For He could have become spiritual flesh7209 without such a process,—much more simply, indeed, without the womb than in it. He had no reason for enclosing Himself within one, if He was to bear forth nothing from it. Not without reason, however, did He descend into a womb. Therefore He received (flesh) therefrom; else, if He received nothing therefrom, His descent into it would have been without a reason, especially if He meant to become flesh of that sort which was not derived from a womb, that is to say, a spiritual one.7210

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Translated/edited by Alexander Roberts, D.D. and James Donaldson, LL.D. TEI XML digitization by the University of Leipzig (Gregory Crane, Matt Munson, Digital Divide Data), via github.com/gregorycrane/nicenefathers @ 4eb88bc1d116edee81b83eb71bfeda46ef973b47. Originally published by Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International).