in which his labor might be lessened, I have thus carried it out. Besides the three previously mentioned Dissertations and all their notes and observations, by which I have attempted to elucidate the difficult passages of Irenaeus; and a new division of chapters, and new summaries and abridgments, by which the scope and argument of the author are exhibited to the eyes—in all of which perhaps some help may be found by certain people—besides these, I say, there have been added four ampler and more complete Indexes than have hitherto appeared. The first is a Glossary, or Lexicon, of Greek terms; the second of the more difficult Latin terms, and those removed from common usage, whose meanings are peculiar either to Irenaeus, or to his translator, or are not so obvious. The third is of all the testimonies of Holy Scripture whatsoever that Irenaeus brings forward; with a note, if any diversity occasionally occurs in the citing of one and the same testimony, so that by this method those who study the Holy Scriptures may easily compare the sacred codices of Irenaeus with our own, and observe what difference (certainly of the slightest) may intercede between both. Fourthly, finally, there is an index of all the principal matters which occur both in Irenaeus himself and in our Dissertations and notes; with another index added at the end for the notes of others. These are the things which it seemed fitting to state in the preface concerning this new edition of Irenaeus. Having now explained the rationale of my entire plan, I will not delay the reader any further from seeing for himself whether the work corresponds to his wishes and expectations. And if it should be so, I would wish this to be the one reward of my labor: to have merited something for the Church; to whose judgment I willingly submit all that has proceeded from me, ready to amend and recall all those things which it shall command to be amended and recalled.
PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS ON THE BOOKS OF IRENAEUS.
DISSERTATION I.
On the heretics whom Irenaeus reviews in the first book, and their acts, writings, and doctrine.ARTICLE I.
ON VALENTINUS.A [I-XIII] Concerning the fatherland and lineage of Valentinus, nothing certain can be extracted from the ancients, as Epiphanius testifies. Although Irenaeus has extensively attacked his heresy, he passes over these things in deep silence. Epiphanius says that he received information, but by hearsay only and rumor, not, however, as he says, so certain as to remove doubt, that he was from Phrebonis, from a certain coast of Egypt. Where, for Phrebonis—of which place no mention occurs among the ancients—Lambertus Danaeus contends in his notes to Augustine, *De Haeres.*, cap. 11, that we should read Pharbathites, to whose opinion Petavius adds his vote in his notes on Epiphanius. There does indeed exist a Pharbathites nome of lower Egypt, whose capital city is Pharbathus, enclosed by the Bubastic and Busiritic rivers, tending toward the south, of which Herodotus, lib. II, cap. 166; Strabo, lib. XVII; and Pliny, lib. V, cap. 9, make mention. But I fear that the site of this nome does not agree with Epiphanius, who writes that Phrebonus is a coastal region of Egypt. B For the Pharbathite nome is further distant from the sea, and, that it may not draw closer, the Tanite and Neout nomes intervene. Wherefore, if I may be permitted to conjecture anything, I would more willingly read Phtenotes or Ptenetes in Epiphanius. For Phtenotes was a nome in the Egyptian Delta, according to Ptolemy, above Metelis, tending toward the south, and not far from the sea, the capital of which was Butos. To the most learned Hardouin, this seems the same as the Ptenethu of Pliny, lib. V, cap. 9, and Christophorus Cellarius, a man most skilled in geography, believes this to be the true name, because in the Council of Chalcedon, act 1, Heraclius Pienethensis is mentioned. Be that as it may, having set out for Alexandria, Valentinus was not unskillfully instructed in the arts of the Greeks. For Jerome writes that he was most learned in *Osee*, cap.
x, and in the *Dialogue against the Marcionites*, which is commonly ascribed to Origen, he is called οὐκ εὐτελὴς ἀνήρ, a man by no means common. A Indeed, that he was of very keen intellect, and not a little versed in the reading of ancient philosophers and poets, no one will deny who attends to his system, fabricated as it is from so many and such abstruse ideas, partly devised by himself and partly drawn from elsewhere, but in some way or other fitted together. That he applied himself in particular to Platonic philosophy, to which the Gnostics as a whole directed their mind, Tertullian is a witness, and the many dogmas adopted from it demonstrate this. Since very many Jews lived in Egypt, and especially in Alexandria, at that time, Johann Franz Buddeus thinks it probable, in his *Dissertatio de hæresi Valentiniana* at the end of his *Introduction to the History of Hebrew Philosophy*, printed at Halle in 1702, that Valentinus was imbued with their philosophy, such as it was at that time. Clement of Alexandria is indeed the authority that his disciples, in order to commend their master, boasted that he had Theodades, or a certain Theudadas, a disciple of the Apostle Paul, as his tutor. But who and of what sort that Theodades may have been, and how much credence is owed to the tale of such suspicious men, is not sufficiently certain.
II. On the age of Valentinus.
The dispute among scholars is somewhat sharper regarding the time when Valentinus lived or disseminated his errors. Daillé, in order to argue that the Ignatian epistles—most burdensome to all Puritans—were supposed, and to prove them later than Ignatius, thought it to his advantage to make Valentinus a younger man, and he left no stone unturned. For since in the Epistle to the Magnesians the Word of God is called ἀΐδιος, eternal, not proceeding from silence, Daillé wishes the *Sige* of the Valentinians to be struck by these words. B But, he says, this *Sige* was not yet born before the martyrdom of Ignatius. For the first, by the testimony of Irenæus, to transfer ancient doctrines into his own character from that which is called the Gnostic heresy was Valentinus, who defined it thus: a certain innominable Duality, of which one thing indeed is called inenarrable, and the other *Sige*. But Valentinus prolonged his life until the pontificate of Eleutherius, that is, until at least the year of Christ 177, at which time he began to rule the Church. Yet since Ignatius suffered in the year of Christ 107, who would believe that Valentinus, if indeed he were born, could have forged his dogmas at that time, or at least have spread them so that they could come to the knowledge of the most holy martyr? Thus Daillé. But that which he assumes as certain from Irenæus, that Valentinus was the first of all to define *Sige*, I have demonstrated to be most false in the notes to the cited chapter 11. And whoever asserts this must necessarily be a stranger to the history of the ancient Gnostics; for among them nothing is more frequent than the copulation of *Bythus* and *Sige*, as I have abundantly and invincibly proven in the work of the most learned Pearson, *Vindiciæ*, part 11. Nor is it true, as Daillé supposes, that the author of the epistle to the Magnesians looked to the *Sige* of the heretics: he accepts *sigēn* for simple silence, and opposes this word to the eternal. He desires the Word of the Father to be eternal, which never was silent, and the Father never broke the silence as humans sometimes do; but having always spoken, he neither began nor ceased to bring forth the Word consubstantial with himself, and therefore eternal. But setting aside these controversies, which are not our concern, most certain arguments demonstrate that Valentinus brought forth the first rudiments of his pestilent dogmas earlier than Daillé and Blondel think.
3. Irenæus writes that Valentinus came to Rome under Hyginus, but increased under Pius, ἤκμασε δὲ ἐπὶ Πίου, and prolonged his time until Anicetus, καὶ παρέμεινεν ἕως Ἀνικήτου. Eusebius agrees in his *Chronicle*, where he assigns a fixed epoch of time. For, he says, in the 3rd year of Antoninus Pius, and truly 141 of Christ, under Hyginus, bishop of the Roman city, Valentinus the heresiarch, and Cerdo, the master of Marcion, came to Rome. Then in the 6th year of Antoninus Pius, and truly 144 of Christ, under Pius, now supreme pontiff: Valentinus the heretic is recognized, and he remains until Anicetus. But in the Greek of Eusebius it is slightly different: Κατὰ ὙΓΕΙΝΟΟΝ Ῥώμης ἐπίσκοπον Οὐαλεντίνος ἰδίας αἱρέσεως εἰσηγητὴς, καὶ Κέρδων τῆς κατὰ Μαρκίωνα πλάνης ἀρχηγὸς, ἄμφω ἐπὶ τῆς Ῥώμης ἐγνωρίζοντο. Under Hyginus, bishop of Rome, Valentinus, the founder of his own heresy, and Cerdo, the architect of the Marcionite error, were both acknowledged at Rome. Which things, however, are not so difficult to reconcile. For I think that Valentinus, when he first came to Rome under the beginning of the pontificate of Hyginus, feigned the Catholic faith; for such was the malice of men of that sort, as Irenæus observes in the Preface of the first book, and elsewhere, that they spoke things similar to us while thinking differently, so that more easily they might carry off the unwary. But as the pontificate of Hyginus neared its end, the feigned iniquity began to lift its head, yet still more timidly; until, having become more audacious, it broke out openly under Pius. Hence he was recognized as a heretic, D and cast out by the Church, he fled to the island of Cyprus, as Epiphanius says, where he fell into the ultimate impiety, and immersed himself more deeply in that discipline of depravities which he sustains. It is sufficiently probable that he applied the final hand to this destructive hypothesis there, and finally departed from the living. In what precise year he died, it does not appear. However, from the words of Irenæus and Eusebius it is certainly gathered that he reached the times of Anicetus, and did not live longer. For these words, παρέμεινεν ἕως Ἀνικήτου, which the interpreter of Irenæus renders "prolonged his time until Anicetus," openly signify that he did not prolong it further. Just as the same
Irenæus in book III, chapter 3, uses the same word *παρέμεινε* when he indicates that Polycarp lived for a long time: *ἐπὶ πολὺ γὰρ παρέμεινε*, for he persevered for a long time, that is, he lived a long time. Therefore, Tertullian must be corrected, for he writes in book *De praescript. haer.*, chapter 30, that Marcion and Valentinus were not of such long standing, appearing roughly in the principate of Antoninus, and that they had first believed the doctrine of the Catholic Church under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherius; until, on account of their always restless curiosity, which the brethren also avoided, they were ejected once and again, Marcion indeed along with the two hundred sesterces which he had contributed to the Church, and were finally relegated into perpetual discord, having disseminated the poisons of their doctrines. For if Valentinus had arrived at the age of Eleutherius, Irenæus, who was writing his third book under this pontiff, would surely not have omitted mention of it; since especially new strength would have been added to the argument from there, because he sought it from the novelty of the heretics' doctrine, proving that they had risen up toward his own opinion much later than the apostles, while the times of the Church were already in progress. Which he also states in the Preface to the first book, that he had certain knowledge of the opinion of the disciples of Valentinus—of which he was about to speak—derived both from their commentaries and from his meetings with them, who now teach otherwise, namely the followers of Ptolemy, which demonstrates that Valentinus was no longer alive at that time. But we are kept from doubting that Tertullian is held by the grave fault of anachronism, by the fact that he compares the principate of Antoninus with the episcopate of Eleutherius; although it is certain that Antoninus ceased to live at least fourteen years before Eleutherius ascended the Roman see. I fear, therefore, that Septimius, having lapsed in memory, wrote of Valentinus in place of Cerdo. For the things which he attributes to the former, Irenæus ascribes to the latter, book III, c. 4. Nor has any other of the ancients recorded that Valentinus was expelled from the Church at Rome more than once; which is certain to have happened to Cerdo. Although, however, if anyone, adhering more religiously to the words of Tertullian, were to contend that Valentinus was ejected from the Roman Church twice, namely once towards the end of the pontificate of Hyginus, and again under Pius, I would not strongly disagree. But that he first believed the doctrine of the Catholic Church among the Roman Church, and there subsequently laid the first foundations of his heresy, as if he had not yet receded from the Catholic faith when he arrived at Rome, nor had been known as a heretic anywhere else in the world before; whoever might hold this from Tertullian, or with Tertullian, must necessarily assert things that conflict with historical truth.
4. Epiphanius, having set forth the dogmas of Valentinus B, adds in § 7 that he propagated these things in Egypt, then as he proceeded to Rome he dissipated his error in that city, and finally, having been carried to Cyprus, he suffered the ultimate shipwreck of the faith in that place and completely debased his mind. Therefore, it should be said that long before he proceeded to Rome, he had—if he ever did—abandoned the Catholic faith. For I would believe that his mind, already imbued from the beginning at Alexandria with the fables of the Gnostics, had thought more about fabricating a new hypothesis by which he might make a name for himself, than about professing the old religion. At the very least, Epiphanius displays him as a heretic from Egypt, where he was born and educated, and never as a Catholic. Therefore, the heresy which he had conceived in his mind there, he began to scatter there also, albeit perhaps more crudely delineated by a brush at that time. Nor did the poisonous doctrine stand confined to the borders of Egypt: it immediately flowed through the neighboring regions and occupied many provinces of the East and of Asia, disseminated either by Valentinus himself when he was traveling to Rome, or by his disciples. For it is certain that when Justin Martyr wrote his *Dialogue* with Trypho, the certain and established sect of the Valentinians, conspicuous by the name of its author, had already existed in the provinces of Asia. [XV] That disputation with Trypho the Jew, which gave the occasion for writing the *Dialogue*, is attested by Justin himself at the beginning to have been held at Ephesus. When in the course of the discourse Trypho had objected that he had heard that many of those who say they profess Jesus and are called Christians eat things sacrificed to idols and claim to take no harm from it, Justin does not deny it, but indeed admits that there are such among the Christians who think and act in that way. And there are some of them, he says, who are called Marcionites; but some are Valentinians, Basilidians, Saturnilians, and others endowed with other names, each obtaining a name from the head of his opinion. Why would Justin have mentioned the Valentinians before a Jewish man who was then staying at Ephesus? And since he says that he was for the most part living in Greece and at Corinth, why would he have mentioned them there, unless they had been equally well known in those regions and had coalesced into a sect, just as the others he names? It would have been sufficient for his purpose to name a few of the better-known Gnostics. Furthermore, the common opinion is that the *Dialogue* was held and written in about the year of Christ 155, a few years after he had offered his previous *Apology* to Antoninus Pius. For he affirms in the aforementioned *Dialogue* C that he had advised D the Caesar that the Samaritans were being led into error by the impostures of those who obeyed Simon, the magician of their own race: whom they say is a god above all principality and power and virtue. But since these things occur in the cited *Apology*, there can be no doubt for anyone that the *Dialogue* was written after the *Apology* had been offered. And they hold that this was offered in the year of Christ 150. For Justin asserts, at the time he was writing, that for one hundred and fifty years the Christians had asserted that Christ was born under Cyrenius. But since that formula of speaking does not express a number of years so certain that something could not be added or subtracted, and it is not established from elsewhere in which year of Augustus' reign the holy martyr believed Christ was born, we can conclude clearly from this no
A video: since it is very nearly true that the birth of Christ preceded the common era by four full years, it is already certain among the learned.
5. I judge that the Apology was written earlier, not indeed in the year 141, as Eusebius wishes in his *Chronicle*, but in the year 145 or thereabouts. For several things seem to confirm our conjecture. First, because it makes mention of Antinous, who was recently numbered among the gods, Ἀντινόου τοῦ νῦν γεγενημένου. Moreover, the apotheosis of Antinous by Hadrian took place in the year of Christ 130, according to Eusebius’ *Chronicle*, or 131, or 132, if one trusts others; therefore, it is of recent memory if we suppose Justin wrote in the year 145. Finally, because in the *Dialogue*, published after the Apology as we have stated, Trypho, explaining his name and race, says: "I am called Trypho. I am a Hebrew by circumcision, a fugitive from the recent war, φυγὼν τὸν νῦν γενόμενον πόλεμον." And Justin later relates that Trypho’s companions, sitting in the stadium which was in the middle of the *xystus*, were discussing the Jewish war, περὶ τοῦ κατὰ τὴν Ἰουδαίαν γενομένου πολέμου διελάλουν. It cannot be doubted that the war waged by the rebels under Hadrian against the Jews near the end of his reign, by the leader Bar-Cocheba, and finished around the year 136, is understood here. For I cannot accept that these words refer to some other matter, to which Antoninus Pius might have sought out the Jews as rebels again, as the most learned Tillemont hints in his notes on the sect of the Marcionites. And although Capitolinus asserts that Antoninus crushed the audacity of the Jewish rebels through his generals, these things should be understood as the movements of certain restless men that were immediately repressed, rather than as a fought-out war by which Judea was set aflame: for, as this event was obscure, you would scarcely find others who recorded it. I would not, however, wish to infer from the words of the cited *Dialogue* that Judea was burning with war at that time, when Justin and Trypho were staying at Ephesus, in order to conclude with Scaliger that the *Dialogue* was written under Hadrian: I have already demonstrated that it was published after the Apology, and therefore under Antoninus. Nor do I think it necessary, for γενομένου, to read γενημένον in Justin, as the most famous Tillemont wishes. It is known that the participle γενόμενος often has the meaning not only of present but also of past time, and the particle νῦν is sometimes taken for "recently," and this could be easily proved by examples. Therefore, τὸν νῦν κατὰ τὴν Ἰουδαίαν γενόμενον πόλεμον, denotes the war, not that it was being waged at that time, but that it had been waged recently in Judea and was already finished; and since it had proven so fatal to the Jews, it remained the more deeply fixed in their minds and was the more frequently on their lips, the more recent the wound was.
6. These things B do not explicitly prove that Justin’s Apology was written around the year 145, and the *Dialogue* shortly thereafter, but they do demonstrate at least that the time of both must be recalled as close as possible to the time of the Bar-Cocheba war; and that it is reasonable to believe it was written at least in that year. Since, therefore, Justin mentions the sect of the Valentinians in the *Dialogue*, it follows from this that their heresy was already celebrated and had spread far and wide even before the year of Christ 150. What if we add to these the book that Justin professes in his Apology to have composed against all heresies? Jerome’s authority in his *Catalogue* does not allow us to doubt that this is the very book in which Tertullian says, in chapter 5 of his book *Against the Valentinians*, that the dogmas of the Valentinians were exposed and refuted. But in what year, and in what place it was composed, cannot be said: yet it is certain that it was written before the Apology; nor therefore is it devoid of probability that it was written toward the end of Hadrian’s reign, as Cedrenus relates. Thus, by these times, the Valentinian heresy had sprouted so much from its root that, so it would not spread further, it was necessary for Justin to attack it with his writings.
7. But to conclude from the things said thus far: it is clear that Valentinus was indeed recognized as a heretic in Rome during the times of Pius; but his heresy could not have been born or matured there, as it had already been noted elsewhere in the world (or indeed perhaps in Rome, although its author was less known there) and censured by the pens of Catholic teachers. We saw above from Epiphanius that it was first formed in Egypt, long before he arrived in Rome (for it is never written that he returned to Egypt from that city, to infect it with his venom). And although he does not record the time when this happened, in my opinion, one would not be far from the truth who linked the first beginnings of the heresy to the beginnings of the second century. Theodoret confirms this conjecture marvelously. For he writes in book 1, c. 5, that Epiphanes, the son of Carpocrates, amplified his father’s fables; and that during the reign of Hadrian C he confirmed his own impious heresies; and therefore before the year 138, in which Hadrian ended his life. It is certain, indeed, from Clement of Alexandria and Epiphanius, that Epiphanes applied himself to the sect of the Secundians, the disciples of Valentinus; which must indeed have happened during the final times of Hadrian, or at least during the very beginnings of Antoninus Pius, and no later; since Epiphanes died in the 17th year of his age. Already, therefore, under the Emperor Hadrian, the sect of Valentinus was so widely scattered and so famous that Secundus, and indeed Ptolemy, and Colorbasus, his disciples, having received the material from their master, had founded their own sects. These things clearly prove that the dogmas of Valentinus, long before he traveled to Rome, had been known and more widely disseminated elsewhere in the world: which, since they were not established all at once but gradually, must have begun around the beginning of the second century. And certainly, since Valentinus was older than Irenaeus, a man of the apostolic times, it is necessary that he approached more closely to the age of the apostles. He, as I said, D was instructed by a certain Theodas, a disciple of the apostle Paul.
A His disciples boasted that this was certain. It is perhaps a vain boast of insane men; yet it cannot be inferred that he could not have been the originator of a most ancient, blasphemous heresy. For who would believe that the earlier Valentinians, even if they were liars, had such brazen faces that they would have dared to boast that their teacher was instructed by the disciples of Paul, especially in that age when a lie could easily have been refuted by not a few apostolic men who were still alive, if he had not at least been contemporaneous with the disciples of the apostles? Nor, for us to assert this, is it necessary that we prolong the life of Valentinus longer than is proper. For since it is certain that he passed away under Anicetus, if we say he died around the year 158, and was born around the year 85, we will be asserting that he departed from the living having passed his seventieth year; which does not exceed credibility. Let Dallaeus and Blondellus now see whether it is as much as they themselves think, and whether it is a deterrent from the probable, that Valentinus, who could have been older than twenty when Ignatius obtained the palm of martyrdom, could have already laid the first rudiments of his doctrine. But enough now on the age of Valentinus.
III. The occasion of widespread heresy
8. For this, as for many other heretics, unbridled ambition, if one believes Tertullian, was the occasion of ruin. He had hoped, he says, for the episcopate because Valentinus was capable in both genius and eloquence; but indignant that another had obtained the place by the prerogative of martyrdom, he broke away from the authentic rule of the Church and turned his efforts to the subverting of the truth. A recent author, prolific in conjectures, guesses that this took place at Rome; but if it did take place, what we have said thus far demonstrates that it must have happened elsewhere than at Rome. C But although I might believe that one could somehow elicit from the words of Tertullian that the crafty man, with the hope of attaining a bishopric, had laid aside the mask by which he deceived the Catholics; I do not consider that it can be proven from this that he held to the Catholic faith at any time with a sincere soul. Be that as it may, Valentinus, exasperated by his rejection, held less firmly to whatever measure he had held before, and poured forth, a little more openly, the poison that was hidden in his heart; yet in such a way that he mostly clothed it with an assumed appearance of Catholic words; unless by chance he fell in with those who were D either simpler, or possessed itching ears, or were already seduced by captious questions, and were prepared to catch any winds of fables; to these, he would unfold, in private and with every pretense removed, the mystery of iniquity. For such was the deceit of the learned in the arts of crafty simulation among men of this kind, that they would lure the curious and the unwary by holding out the empty hope of a "perfected knowledge" which they promised, and the husk of Catholic words, gradually instilling into them their lethal poison. Irenaeus describes and unmasks their nefarious arts throughout, and after him, and from him, Tertullian.
IV. The writings of Valentinus
9. And Valentinus did not just scatter his dogmas in speech, but also in writings. Clement of Alexandria mentions several letters written by him, and reports their fragments. He neglected to say to whom they were inscribed, with the exception of one, which he asserts was written to a certain Agathopus. He also reports fragments of two of his Homilies, namely, one in which, raving beyond measure, he promises immortality to his followers; another on friendship. Tertullian mentions the Psalms of Valentinus in book I *De carne Christi*, chapter 20. But no fragment of these still survives. However, you have a part of the Dissertation on the origin of evil, published by the heresiarch, in the *Dialogue against the Marcionites*, which is commonly ascribed to Origen, section IV. There are those who think a book was written by him under the title *Sophia*, relying on these words of Tertullian in *Adv. Valent.*, chapter 2: "He teaches *Sophia* herself, not indeed of Valentinus, but of Solomon." But they interpret these things wrongly. For Tertullian is alluding, not to any book of Valentinus, but to *Sophia*, the last of the Aeons he devised, as will be clear to the reader. Nor is it more true, as others contend, that a new Gospel was published by the heretic. That indeed is read in Tertullian, chapter 49 of the book *De praescriptionibus*: "He approves some things of the Law and the Prophets, and disapproves others... He also has his own Gospel, besides these of ours." But it is now established among the learned that the last nine chapters of the book *De praescriptionibus* are spurious, and appear to be the work of an author later than Tertullian. Certainly, so as not to deflect further from my purpose, the genuine Tertullian in chapter 38 of this book openly absolves Valentinus from the crime of supposing a new Gospel. For he establishes this distinction between him and Marcion: that the latter openly subverted the Scriptures by hand, the former only by the interpretation of his meaning; and although Valentinus seems to use the whole instrument, he nevertheless, with a craftier genius than Marcion, laid hands upon the truth. For Marcion, he adds, used the sword openly and plainly, not the pen; since he fashioned the slaughter of the Scriptures to his own subject matter: but Valentinus spared them; since he did not fashion the Scriptures to his subject matter, but his subject matter to the Scriptures; and yet he took away more, he added more, taking away the properties of each individual word, and adding arrangements of things that do not appear. Which things, just as they prove that Valentinus twisted the Scriptures to his own argument with perverted expositions, so they show openly that he added nothing to the Canon, nor took away anything. Indeed, Irenaeus, in *lib* 1, *cap* 11, *n.* 8, relates that the disciples of Valentinus, existing outside of all fear, boasted when bringing forth their own writings that they possessed more than the Gospels themselves. To such an extent, indeed, had their audacity proceeded, that they had concocted a new Gospel, which they entitled of truth. But he never ascribes anything similar to Valentinus himself. Nay, both in the place just cited, and in *lib* 1, *cap* 8 and 9, and elsewhere passim, it is sufficiently
A signified that the Valentinian increased the canon of the Scriptures for himself with a new Gospel, so that he had cast away nothing at all, no entire book, no part of one (a thing which he more than once reproaches Marcion for), but, having attempted to adapt the Lord’s parables, or prophetic diction, or the apostolic discourses to his own hypothesis, he brought calumny upon the Scriptures. False, therefore, is what the author of the cited addition writes, which is read at the end of the book *De praescriptionibus*: "He approves some things of the Law and the Prophets, some he disapproves... He has also his own Gospel, besides these of ours." If these things refer to Valentinus, they are perhaps true; if to the disciples of Valentinus, they are not to the earlier ones, with whom Irenaeus dealt, but to the later ones. And in the same way, I think, those things which are read in Chrysostom, *lib* iv *De sacerd.*, cap. 4, are to be explained: *Τὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ δοθέντα τῷ Μωϋσῇ νόμον οἱ τὴν Οὐαλεντίνου καὶ Μαρκίωνος διαδεξάμενοι φρενοβλάβειαν, καὶ ὅσοι τὰ αὐτὰ νοσοῦσιν ἐκείναις, τοῦ καταλόγου τῶν θείων ἐκβάλλουσι Γραφῶν·* The Law which was given by God to Moses, those who have succeeded to the madness of Valentinus and Marcion, and whoever suffer from the same diseases as them, strike from the catalogue of the divine Scriptures. These things, according to the mind of Chrysostom, clearly demonstrate that they refer to the later Valentinians by the words which he uses, *τὴν Οὐαλεντίνου διαδεξάμενοι φρενοβλάβειαν*, who have succeeded to the madness of Valentinus.
10. There exists in Epiphanius, § 5, a certain fragment which Blondel thinks was excerpted from some book of Valentinus. But Epiphanius openly contradicts this, asserting both at the beginning and at the end that it was taken from the Valentinians, that is, from the books of certain disciples of Valentinus, *τῆς αὐτῶν βίβλου, τὰ ἀπὸ τῶν Οὐαλεντίνων*. The whole sequence of discourse also contradicts it, from which it is clear that the view of the author B of that fragment is different from that which Epiphanius a little before attributed to, and explained as, Valentinus. For not to mention other things, it is certain that, according to the hypothesis of Valentinus and the Ptolemaeans, Man and the Church were emitted by the Logos and Zoe; but in the Fragment, in inverse order, the Logos and Zoe are subjected to Man and the Church; which was the dogma of certain disciples of Valentinus. For these, as we observed in the notes to *lib* 1, cap. 11 of Irenaeus, having noticed other Gnostics, failed in this from their master; thinking it absurd that Man be emitted by the Word, and that it is more agreeable to reason that the Word should proceed from Man. And hence also you may refute Dodwell, who thinks that this Fragment approaches more closely to the character of Ptolemaic Valentinianism than to the disciplines of the other Valentinian sect. For the Ptolemaeans did not assert that the Logos and Zoe were produced by Man and the Church, but rather that Man and the Church were produced by the Logos and Zoe.
V. The Dogmas and Hypothesis of Valentinus and his Disciples.
11. Having now set forth these things which pertain to the person, character, and books of Valentinus, so far as it was permitted to unearth them from ancient monuments, the discourse must now turn to the second chapter of our Dissertation, and that far more troublesome one—namely, the man’s hypothesis and dogmas. If indeed it were enough simply to describe these in the historical manner, the task would not be so laborious; for, having summarized what Irenaeus, Tertullian, Theodoret, and others pursue in a more diffuse style, we would already depart, having finished our duty. But a work full of more dangerous risk must be handled; the *pataiolgiai* (vanities) of the Valentinians must be recalled to the origin from whence they flowed, and whatever the idle head could bring forth of deliriums must be discussed by a certain art and method, and a torch must be held before readers who are studious of ecclesiastical antiquity, C so that the reading of our author might become easier for them. Nor, however, is there reason why anyone should demand from us certain demonstrations here in such obscure and intricate matters; it will be enough if, feeling our way with our hands in the midst of doubts, we bring forward conjectures, the collection of all of which may perhaps have reached that degree of probability which will not be so far from the true and the certain.
12. That the whole hypothesis of Valentinus and his disciples rests upon three heads is known. The first includes the explanation of the Pleroma, or the Fullness of divine things. The second turns upon those things which happened outside the Pleroma. The third, finally, sets forth the origin and constitution of this visible world. In the first part, superior and divine things are treated; in the last, the lowest and corporeal ones; in the second, things medial between them. It exhibits a series of the first thirty Aeons, of which fifteen are male and as many female, divided as it were into various branches, the head of all of whom is one God, invisible, eternal, unbegotten, and incomprehensible, whom they called *Proarche*, *Propator*, and *Bythos*, or the first principle, first Father, and Profundity; to whom, in the place of a consort, they associated *Ennoea*, or Thought, whom they also called *Sige* and *Charis*, Silence and Grace. She, having received the seed from *Bythos*, big with child, brought forth *Nous*, that is, Mind, the Only-begotten, and the Father and Principle of all things, and together with him *Alethia*, that is, Truth. This is the primogenial tetrad, the root of all. From this burst forth another tetrad, of *Logos* and *Zoe*, that is, Word and Life, and *Anthropos*, that is, Man, and the Church; from the Only-begotten indeed the Word and Life, D but from these latter, Man and the Church; although others derived first Man and the Church from the Only-begotten, then the Word and Life from Man and the Church. From both tetrads they fashioned the ogdoad, which they called the primogenial ogdoad itself, the root and substance of all. For just as the first tetrad had poured out the second, so the second provided an origin for the remaining Aeons in succession. And hence *Logos* is the head of the last, the Father of all those who were to be after him, and the beginning and formation of the entire Pleroma...
For from the [Logos] sprouted a new Decad of Aeons, namely: Bythios and Mixis, Ageratos and Henosis, Autophyes and Hedone, Acinetus and Syncrasis, Monogenes and Macaria; and from Anthropos and Ecclesia, a Dodecad: Paracletus and Pistis, Patricos and Elpis, Metricos and Agape, Ainos and Synesis, Ecclesiasticos and Macariotes, Theletos and Sophia. These are the same number of Greek names, the meanings of which you will find in our Glossaries at the end of the work. These thirty Aeons are so celebrated; this Pleroma of the Valentinians is divided into three ranks, as it were: into an Ogdoad, a Decad, and a Dodecad, [XVII] the first of which was led by Bythos with Sige, the second by Logos with Zoe, the latter by Anthropos with Ecclesia.
13. Although, to be sure, all the Aeons drew their received origin from one and the same stock, Bythos, nevertheless, the condition of all was not one and the same, but disparate. To Nous alone, as the first-begotten, was the perfect communion with Bythos granted; his greatness was alone [accessible], and inaccessible to the rest. Hence, in all others, there was an agitation to know the Father, and in Nous almost a gnawing of envy; but in the last Aeon, Sophia, it was greater; she, having been carried away by the precipitous impulse of investigation, would have been nearly absorbed and dissipated into the universal substance, had not Horus—that is, the Boundary—met her in time, that Power free from all conjunction, which supports all things and guards them outside the ineffable greatness; by whom she was at last repressed, supported, and recalled to herself, and cast off her previous thought along with that passion which had arisen from that stupendous miracle. B Indeed, she was scarcely able, as one pregnant with the desire for an impossible thing, to keep from bringing forth a miscarriage. She did in fact bring forth and drive away an immature fetus, namely, an unformed substance; of what genus? This was not sufficiently agreed upon among the architects of the fable, nor was it certain even to the Mother herself. Hence arose wretched sadness, fear, and supreme perplexity, the appendages of her pristine thought, and their necessary consequences, as it were; from which she was finally purified by the works of Horus, whom we have mentioned, and restored to her conjunction and to the Pleroma; while her Enthymesis, that abortive fetus devoid of form and figure, and the appendage of passion, were relegated outside the Pleroma.
14. Indeed, the remaining Aeons did not undergo a similar case; the supreme Father sends forth through the Only-Begotten another pair of Aeons, Christ and the Holy Spirit, by whom all other numbers might be brought to completion. For the office of Christ was to teach the Aeons of the immense height of the Father, which, indeed, could neither be perceived, nor understood, nor finally seen or heard, except through the benefit of the Only-Begotten. The Holy Spirit, however, taught them to be equalized one with another, to give thanks, and introduced true rest. And thus all the Aeons were established as equals in form, will, and sentiment; all became what each one was; all were transformed into Nous, Logoi, Anthropoi, and Christs, and the females into Truths, Lives, Spirits, and Ecclesiae. Then, rejoicing in such a metamorphosis, they burst forth into praises of the Propatôr, and, mindful of the benefit received, by common counsel and with all D assenting, contributing whatever was best and most flourishing that each possessed, and fitting them together appropriately, they sent forth Jesus into the glory and honor of Bythos, as the most perfect star and fruit of the Pleroma, also called the Savior, and the Word, and Christ, and finally "All," whom they also surround with a guard of angels. Valentinus explained the origin of Christ and the Holy Spirit differently. He said, indeed, that the former was produced by the Ecclesia for the examination and fecundity of the Aeons; but that the latter was procreated not from those Aeons who have their seat in the Pleroma, but from the Mother excluded from thence, according to a remembrance of better things, and not without a certain shadow. But, ungrateful, since he was male, he cut away the shadow from himself and returned to the Pleroma, leaving the Mother behind along with the shadow and bereft of spiritual substance. However, he asserted that Jesus was sometimes born from Theletos, sometimes from Christ, and sometimes from Anthropos and Ecclesia. These trifles about divine matters were sold by those crafty ones; and this is the first part of the fable.
15. The other part is concerned with those things which were done outside the Pleroma. For the Enthymesis of the superior Sophia (whom they called Achamoth from the Hebrew word, Wisdom), whom we said was relegated outside the Pleroma along with the appendage of passion, lay wretchedly in shadow and void, devoid of form, figure, and light. Moved by her calamity, the superior Christ bestowed form upon her by his own power, but according to substance only, not according to knowledge; and, having immediately withdrawn his power and departing to the heights, he left the unhappy one behind, yet still imbued with some fragrance of incorruptibility. But she, now formed and having become composed of mind, is inflamed with a sharper desire to seek out the light which had failed her. But behold, Horus intervenes, untimely, and restrains her reckless impulse. Hence she despairs in her soul and succumbs to every kind of perturbation; to sadness, indeed, because frustrated in her desires; to fear, lest, just as the light, life also might fail her; and, finally, to anxiety of mind and tears; that would be little, had not the complete ignorance of things, mixed with so many perturbations, increased the burden. Sometimes, however, forgetting her previous state, and revolving in her mind the beauty of the light which had deserted her, she was diffused with joy and laughed. But the laughter was momentary, which was quickly followed by the customary perturbations. Tossed by these things succeeding one another by turns, at length gathering herself together, she turns to the light which she had already touched, that is, to ask Christ. Why, you ask, these motions of a soul seething with the waves of so many perturbations, and unable to find rest? This is the beginning of the fable. For from this, the substance of the matter from which this world has been constructed took its rise. For from her conversion, both the world, and the Demiurge, the creator of things, and finally every other soul took its origin; but from her fear and sadness, all the rest. For from her tears all liquid substance had its beginning,
A from her laughter, the luminous; and finally from her sadness and stupor, the bodily elements of the world. For when Achamoth had turned in supplication to Christ, he sent the Paraclete—that is, the Savior—to her, accompanied by attendant angels, who instilled in her the form of knowledge and delivered her from her perturbations. Nor, however, did he so separate these from her as to abandon all care for them; but he fixed and condensed them, and transformed them into matter, from which a twofold substance might be made: one evil, which had existed from the passions; the other susceptible to passions, which had arisen from the conversion. Thus, Achamoth, freed from all evils and now rejoicing with joy, fixed her gaze upon the angels who were the companions of the Savior; and, captivated by their splendor and fecundated by the sight, she conceived and brought forth a spiritual fruit in their likeness. We have, therefore, a triple substance as the offspring of Achamoth: the material from passion, the animal from conversion, and the spiritual from contemplation. Nor was it enough to have provided the matter of things, unless she also brought them form; this was the first care of Achamoth. And since she had no power to form a spiritual substance, because it was of the same essence as herself, she betook herself to the formation of the animal, from which she made the Demiurge, the creator of the remaining things from that time forth, their parent, [XIX] king, and God. And here is the end of this part of the tale.
16. There follows the vision of the constitution and origin of this world, which they explained thus: The Demiurge sets himself to the work and applies himself wholly to it; yet he is blind (marvel at this!), and ignorant of what he is doing. But secretly the Mother was guiding him under the direction of the Savior, by whose incitement he caused the image of the superior Pleroma to be expressed here also. For Achamoth was unknown to the Demiurge; the Demiurge was unknown to the Only-begotten; and the angels and archangels created by the Demiurge related to the other Aeons. Thus, therefore, does that ignorant Demiurge labor at such a work. Having separated and distinguished the animal and material essences—which until then were confusedly mixed—he created from them both the celestial and the earthly; and having fashioned seven heavens (which they wanted to consider endowed with intelligence, and even to be angels), he chose for himself a seat above the seventh, with the Mother occupying the higher place, a medium between the Pleroma and the World. For this reason, he is called the Hebdomad, and she the Ogdoad, so that that supreme and primordial Ogdoad of the Pleroma might be expressed. But the sluggish ignorance of the Demiurge brought forth a monstrous error. For when he had created so much, and being unable to reach the spiritual things, and being ignorant of himself, of his Mother, and much more so of the superior Pleroma, he imagined that he alone was God, and said through the prophets: *I am God, and there is no other besides me.* B But let us return to the matter at hand.
17. Since the material essence was composed of three affections—from fear, sadness, and anxiety; and from fear and conversion all those things which are endowed with a soul were conjoined—the Demiurge, indeed, from the conversion, and from the fear, whatever else was animal C of the malice of the substance, such as the souls of brute animals, of beasts, and of men; from sadness, the spiritual wickednesses, the evil angels and demons, whose prince is the devil, called Cosmocrator, to whom a seat was assigned beneath the Demiurge in this world; yet, in this, he is better than his own creator, because he perceives the things that are above him, since he is a spiritual wickedness; whereas the Demiurge, because he is animal, is ignorant of it. Finally, from the stupor and anxiety, as if from a more ignoble stock, the bodily elements of the world proceeded. But there was implanted in all things a deadly and destructive fire; as also the ignorance that is hidden and obscured by the aforementioned three perturbations.
18. There remained the superior part of the inferior man to be created. The Demiurge fashioned this man from fluid and flowing substance; and this was the choic or earthly man, into whom the animal aspect was breathed so that he might exhibit the likeness and image of the Creator. Then a skin-like tunic was placed around the earthly one, that is, the body that falls into the senses. It was not enough unless, without the Demiurge knowing, the spiritual man had been sprinkled along with his own insufflation by the Mother. That is the spiritual seed which Achamoth produced from the contemplation of the angels, called otherwise the Church, the mirror of the superior Church. There is, therefore, a triple man in one man, or three parts of one and the same man: material, animal, and spiritual, whose lot and outcome are disparate. The former, destitute of every breath of incorruptibility, necessarily perishes; the latter, to whatever flagitious crimes and wickednesses he may deliver himself, receives certain salvation; the animal, as a medium between the two, obtains the outcome of either the material or the spiritual, according to whether he has inclined to this part or that. But in order for this one to obtain salvation, he stood in need of sensible disciplines, and consequently, here there was need of a Savior. But of what kind? One who would be suited to him, that is, to the animal and the spiritual, yet clothed with a body so that he might be apparent to the senses. He received, however, nothing of the material, for he assumed only those things to which he was to grant salvation: but matter is incapable of salvation. He passed through Mary, just as water through a pipe, receiving nothing at all from her; and into him, when he was being baptized with the water of baptism, that Jesus or Savior, who was of the Pleroma and had drawn his origin from all things, descended under the form of a dove. D So that our Lord was thus composed of these four: from the spiritual, which was from Achamoth; from the animal, which was from the Demiurge; from the body, which was from the dispensation; and finally, from the Savior, which was that dove that descended into him. From which only the psychic Christ suffered, and he who had been formed in a mystical manner from the dispensation: while the Savior, and the spiritual Christ, remained exempt from the suffering, and as they flew away from the Lord, he was taken with Pilate. Thus the entire economy of our salvation, and whatever the faith teaches concerning the Incarnation of the divine Word, and the merits, death, and satisfaction of Christ, [in ar.iles]
A all dissolves into fables and ridiculous inventions. But attend to where they might have flowed from, for it remains to be inquired. And first of all, I do not dwell upon the vain conjectures of a certain recent Frenchman, who, in order to acquit Valentinus and his disciples in most points of their doctrine from heresy, attempts to extract certain mystical meanings lurking beneath the enigmatic shell of the words, and revealed to himself alone, and dares to cast the reproach of falsehood into the faces of all the ancient Fathers, nay, even sometimes to accuse them of imposture, and does not fear to prefer the absurd inventions of Valentinus concerning the generation of the Word to the golden expressions of Athanasius and Hilary. O, the most sagacious man, who, after some fifteen centuries, thinks he knows that which escaped those Fathers who were either contemporary with or nearly equal in age to those heretics! Perhaps some Achamoth, a Mother revived from the long-buried Pleroma of Valentinus, whispered this into the ears of that modernist, secrets which are carried only to him who might have been imbued with the seed of that same Mother; but let all who are sober reject this, who do not wish the venerable foundations of history and at the same time of ecclesiastical tradition to be shaken. B
21. Nor are those to be heard who, like Joannes Franciscus Buddeus, already cited, in his Dissertation on the Valentinian heresy, derive the tenets of the Valentinians from the Kabbalistic philosophy of the Hebrews; and, in order to soften them, twist them to I know not what recondite meanings, offering violence to the writings of the ancients, nay, rashly creating ill will. For it has pleased these authors to assume, without proof, what needed to be proven by him from the first and second century after the birth of Christ. Although from the age of Christ the Jews, having degenerated from the true simplicity of their fathers, were already feeding their minds with fables, yet they had not been so deluded as to have produced Sephirotic chimeras, Kabbalistic worlds, and insane rather than mystical conjunctions of letters and numbers, by which those more recent [authors], having been mocked, subsequently mocked others. Certainly to Justin Martyr, Origen, Jerome, Epiphanius, and other ancient Fathers, because of the intercourse they had with the Jews, their doctrine was clearly seen and investigated; they argued at times concerning the names of God according to the Hebrews; they attacked the vain traditions of the Jews and their old wives’ fables more than once; C but of the Kabbalistic trifles, and the name of God explained by twelve, by forty-two, by seventy-two letters, and other such nonsense, they did not mention even a word, nor did they signify that they had heard anything of the sort. An invincible argument that they were not yet devised. And certainly whoever approaches books written on the mystical Kabbalah, or consults the more learned of the Rabbis, will immediately detect that they are very recent, and could scarcely have been written before five or six hundred years ago. It does not escape me, indeed, that Philo Judaeus began to investigate and treat of things divine with a method more subtle and ingenious than was proper; but how far he was from the arcane mysteries of the Sephirot, those who have read him know. He, according to the custom of the Egyptians, among whom he lived, [inclined] to Platonic and Pythagorean philosophy, D as Eusebius and Jerome testify.
A He gave himself over to this entirely (whence the proverb, common as it is believed, that he "Platonizes" and that "Plato Philonizes"), and having subsequently applied divine matters to these principles, and mixing philosophical opinions with the fixed dogmas of the sacred books and the uncertain traditions of the Jews, he constructed a system that was vain and poorly coherent: so much so that, being more studious of allegories than of ancestral rites, and offended more than once by [the Scriptures'] common and trite [language], he brought offense upon the incautious. But you would seek in vain for the insipid hotchpotch of the Kabbalists in him. Nor does the command of Paul to Timothy, to warn certain men not to occupy themselves with fables and endless genealogies, avail the champions of the antiquity of the Kabbalah. For in these words, as Chrysostom, Theophylact, and others interpret, the Apostle points his finger either at the foolish vanity of the Jews, who, in order to show off the nobility of their lineage, would trace a long series of pedigrees with the utmost contention and arrogance from Abraham, and would vex the Church by harassing the Gentiles who had converted to the faith with a proud enumeration of their ancestors; or at those among the Greeks who, although they had given their name to Christ, had not ceased to busy themselves and to trifle in recounting the degrees of the fabulous Theogony of the heathens. Although it is not lacking in probability that the Gnostics are struck by these words of the Apostle, as we shall say later, whose heresy and doctrine of the Aeons, propagated by Simon Magus and Menander, had already struck deep roots in the age of the apostles. But that Paul had even thought of the Kabbalah, it must be considered as certain that he had not. The principles of the Valentinian heresy must therefore be sought elsewhere.
22. That predecessors had paved the way for Valentinus, and that he had outlined the lineaments of an ill-constituted system, Irenaeus clearly hands down: "He [Valentinus] is the first," he says, "in book [I], chapter 11, who from that which is called the Gnostic heresy, transferring ancient doctrines to his own character, defined it thus." Therefore, Valentinus had not laid the first foundations of his heresy, but had found them laid by the ancient Gnostics; by superimposing a new mass of building upon them, he made them his own and accommodated them to his own intent. Hence, in book B II, chapter 13, after Irenaeus had overturned the emission of Nous and Aletheia from Bythos and Ennoea, and had demonstrated it to be diametrically opposed to reason, he concludes in no. 8 that the things said thus far are valid not only against the Valentinians, but also against those who are from Basilides and against the remaining Gnostics; for since it was demonstrated in the first book that they received the beginnings of their emissions from them. Therefore, the first order of emission, which he attacks, is common both to these and to those, and the first tetrad is common to both. And not only these [things], but also the second. For when Irenaeus had similarly examined that [second order], he adds in no. 10 that, regarding the second emission of Anthropos and Ecclesia, which the fathers of the Valentinians falsely called Gnostics along with their sons, they judge it to be more fitting to the emission C—as it is probable—that the Word was emitted from Anthropos, and not Anthropos from the Word, and that Anthropos is prior to the Word. Hence, for this reason of the contest, the Valentinians had stolen the second tetrad of the Word and Life, and of Anthropos and Ecclesia, from the Gnostics; and this was not grievous to the former: but it seemed by no means to be borne that these [men], having secretly drawn them away, had inverted the order, placing the Word and Life before Anthropos and Ecclesia; in this they were evil thieves, that, not content with the theft, they had brought the stolen goods to ruin. Moved by these things, many of Valentinus’ disciples, with the order of their master exchanged, restored this tetrad in its entirety, placing Anthropos and Ecclesia before the Word and Life.
23. Meritoriously, therefore, after Theodoret had explained the heresies of Simon, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, Carpocrates, and Prodicus, he infers: that Valentinus, taking his material from all these heresies, taking his "points of departure" (λαβών ἀφορμὰς), composed endless fables. Deservedly also Irenaeus, when he had run through the opinions of these same heretics in order, concludes in book I, last chapter, no. 3: "It was necessary to manifest/expose them clearly, since those who are from Valentinus [derive] from such mothers, fathers, and grandfathers, just as their very sentences and rules show them to be." So certain is it that their sentiments and rules were the same. And for this reason, in the Preface of the second book he promises that he will overturn the sentiment of all the Gnostics, and dissolve their hidden conjunctions, having made the beginning from the head, Bythos. Rightly also Epiphanius says that the doctrine of Valentinus proceeded from that specious profession of the Gnostics, "his teaching existing from this great Gnostic promise" (τὴν αὐτοῦ διδασκαλίαν τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς μεγάλης ταύτης γνωστικῆς ἐπαγγελίας ὑπάρχουσαν). And hence the title prefixed to the five books written by our author against the Valentinians, "Of the detection and overturning of false-named knowledge" (Ελέγχου καὶ ἀνατροπῆς τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως); because all the Gnostics, that is, the "knowing" or learned, sold themselves, and gloried in the title of a certain mystical science. The same [is true] for all of them: the same first syzygies of the Aeons, the same corruption of faith and morals, the same distinction and separation of the supreme Father from the maker of the world, as is clear from all of Irenaeus. Hence Gregory Nazianzen, orat. 23, reproaches Simon, Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides, Cerdo, Cerinthus, and Carpocrates equally, because they cut up the God of all things, and waged war for the "Good" against the Creator. On which passage Elias the Cretan observes that the ogdoad was held in highest honor by the Simonians (the same must be said of the other Gnostics), on account of those eight Aeons of their master, Bythos and Sige, Nous and Aletheia, Logos and Zoe, and finally Anthropos and Ecclesia, whom they worshiped, and by whom they distinguished the maker of the world. Which same things Nicetas notes on orat. 44. And from all these it is concluded clearly that which we wish: that Valentinus was the first D of the system which received its name from him
A nor was he its author and inventor, but he added to those things which the earlier Gnostics had already devised and put upon them the final touches. Indeed, the first Ogdoad of the Pleroma is common to all: but to this, after it had been slightly altered, he added his own decade and dodecade; and thus, he enlarged and enriched the old Pleroma with twenty-two Aeons. Moreover, I consider the whole fable of Achamoth, along with the origin of the spiritual seed, to be proper to him; the other parts of his hypothesis, having sometimes changed the names, he drew from the impure source of the Gnostics.
24. Nor should it unsettle anyone that Irenaeus, while reviewing the opinions of the older Gnostics, should not have explicitly mentioned the first Ogdoad of Aeons handed down by them. For it was not, as the most learned Pearson rightly notes (part 1, *Vindic.*, cap. 6, where he pursues with a fuller style what we cover more briefly), the intention of Irenaeus to enumerate separately the complete genealogies of all, nor to recite the names of all the Aeons, nor was it necessary for him to do so. Since the opinions of the followers of Ptolemy, who held the highest place in the school of Valentinus, and the sum of their doctrine, with all their Aeons and the names of the Aeons, and the rest that pertained to their heresy, had already been explained from the early chapters, and having been placed, as it were, under a single view, it was enough thereafter to briefly set forth the individual opinions of the Gnostics from whom they had drawn their own, and of Valentinus himself and his disciples, and what was peculiar to each, by which he differed from the others; nor was there any need to touch upon individual points and repeat what he had said before. Certainly, that the entire genealogy of Basilides was not described by Irenaeus is clear from this, that Basilides, as Clement of Alexandria testifies (*Strom.* lib. IV), supposes Justice and her daughter Peace to remain arranged in the Ogdoad; he considers both Justice and her daughter Peace to be disposed in the Ogdoad: which you would seek in vain in Irenaeus.
B of intellectual powers, which also the parables of the ten virgins fit: so that the five foolish ones represented the bodily senses, foolish, namely, because they are prone to deception, whereas the wise ones expressed the sum of the intellectual powers, wisdom, namely, because that hidden and supernal truth of contingent things, which is established in the Pleroma; the mysteries of heretical ideas: for the Aeons and their genealogies are these things. The same thing, before Tertullian, Irenaeus had warned, that the Valentinians had derived the form of their system from the pagan poets, and the matter from the philosophers; for they gathered the sayings of these men, and as if sewing together a patchwork from many and very wretched rags, they prepared for themselves a feigned façade with subtle eloquence. Among these philosophers he enumerates Thales the Milesian, Anaximander, [XXII] Anaxagoras, Democritus, Epicurus, Plato, Empedocles, and Pythagoras. And hence Philastrius notes that Valentinus was a Pythagorean more than a Christian. Porphyry indeed writes in his *Life of Plotinus* that the Gnostics emerged from ancient philosophy. These men, indeed, circulating many books of Alexander the Libyan, Philocomus, Demostratus, and Lydus, and displaying openly certain revelations of Zoroaster (whose book he contends was fabricated by them), Zostrianus, Nicotheus, Allogenes, Messus, and others of that kind, deceived many, having been themselves first deceived; asserting that Plato had not at all penetrated the depth of the intelligible essence. These men Plotinus openly refuted in his writings, which still survive; and he proved that their whole doctrine, with only certain new words added, and false opinions, had been taken from Plato. By which are wondrously confirmed those things we just said, that the Valentinian hypothesis is nothing other than an untidy jumble of Chaldean, Pythagorean, and Platonic doctrines, mixed with Christian dogmas. But it is helpful to explain these things a little more clearly, and to repeat the matter from the beginning.
26. Of all philosophers, the most ancient are recorded by Cicero as the Chaldeans, from whom philosophy was transmitted first to the barbarian nations (so those situated outside Greece and Italy were called), then to the Greeks and Latins. For from the Chaldeans it flowed to the Babylonians and Assyrians, as Aristotle is the author, or whoever else wrote the book which is inscribed *Magicus*, and Sotion in the books *De Successione*, as Laertius testifies. But whether Abraham was taught philosophy by the Chaldeans, or, which we judge with Josephus to be far more probable, the Chaldeans received it from Abraham; it is certain that through Abraham it came to the Palestinians, or Canaanites, and afterward also reached the Egyptians. Indeed, that Abraham was most skilled in astronomical matters, the very oldest of the pagans confessed, Berosus in particular, cited soon by Josephus. Nor is there doubt that with the same sciences in which he was highly skilled, he imbued the minds of the peoples among whom he dwelt. And when from the Canaanites to the Egyptians, or…
25. But just as the Valentinians received the greatest part of their dogmas from the Gnostics, so they used the pagan philosophers—Pythagoreans especially and Platonists, and also Egyptian and Chaldean mystagogues—to furnish, as if it were a raw fabric, that which they then distinguished with various colors drawn from the Christian religion. To such an extent that that whole hypothesis is a pure and unmixed paganism, variously interpolated and augmented by new additions from the Christian religion. "Heresies themselves," says Tertullian, "are adorned by philosophy." Hence also come the Aeons, and Forms, I know not what, and the "trinity of man" in Valentinus: he had been a Platonist. And elsewhere: "For Plato wishes there to be certain substances that are invisible, incorporeal, supermundane, divine, and eternal: which he calls ideas, that is, exemplary forms and causes of these natural things that are manifest and submissive to bodily senses; and that those are truths, but these are images of them." Do the heretical seeds of the Gnostics and Valentinians shine forth now? For hence they seize upon the difference between bodily senses and intel-
- A lectual things, and thus they divide their entire teaching into [the realm of] the senses and [the realm of] the intellect.
But let us return to the thread of history. The sacred history relates that, having passed through Phoenicia, he [Abraham] visited parts of Syria, where, as Josephus testifies, he instructed the prophets in the same disciplines. And from this, Diodorus wrote, even before Josephus, that philosophy was transferred from the Chaldeans to the Egyptians; for Abraham traced his origin from the Chaldeans. I shall not dwell upon the Phoenicians, whose fame for the sciences is celebrated throughout all antiquity, seeing that, as they were descended from the Canaanites and bordered on the posterities of Abraham, they could easily derive whatever they knew from their parents and neighbors alike. Nor is it improbable, as most learned men think, that the Magi of the Persians, instituted by Zoroaster, drew their natural sciences—and indeed their theology—from those fountains of the Chaldeans. If this does not persuade everyone, the great consensus of both peoples in the principal chapters of doctrine seems at least to suggest it. To such an extent did the Chaldean philosophy emerge as the most abundant fountain from which the Babylonians, Assyrians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Persians first drew their cup, and later poured it into the Greeks. The Greeks themselves, as Laertius testifies in his Proem, were more candid and did not deny it; mindful, they reported that the origins of their philosophy were received from the Barbarians. Nor did anything seem more effective to the earlier Fathers of the Church—Tatian, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, and others—for breaking the pride of the others, than to summon them back to the origins of the sciences, with which they were then too arrogantly puffed up.
27 And certainly, lest I bring forward too many of the ancient philosophers, it is known to all how much Pythagoras, from whom the name "philosophy" began among the Greeks, owes to the Barbarians. Josephus, in his first book against Apion, records that Pherecydes the Syrian, Pythagoras, and Thales, who were the first to discourse upon celestial and divine matters, acknowledged themselves to have been students of the Chaldeans and Egyptians in this regard. Isocrates agrees, writing in his *Busiris* that Pythagoras, having set out for Egypt, received from the Egyptians the discipline of philosophy, of sacrifices, and of divine worship, which he then transmitted to the Greeks. "Pythagoras, having arrived in Egypt and become a student of them, was the first to bring that other philosophy to the Greeks, and he applied himself more conspicuously than others to matters concerning sacrifices and purifications, which are in the temples." There, having used the arch-prophet Sonchedis as his teacher, as Clement of Alexandria testifies in *Stromata*, book 1, he learned the symbolic method of teaching, as Iamblichus is the author in his *Life of Pythagoras*, book 1, chapter 5. Indeed, it is gathered not obscurely that he drew the error of metempsychosis from there. For Herodotus says in *Euterpe* that it was first devised by the Egyptians and later received by the Greeks. But when he had spent twenty-two years among the Egyptians, if we believe the cited Iamblichus, and was initiated into all their sacred rites, he was abducted from there to Babylon by the soldiers of Cambyses; he spent time with the Magi of the Chaldeans and Persians, and was not sluggishly educated in their mysteries. Already before this, the same Iamblichus says in chapter 5, he visited Sidon, Tyre, Byblos, and other B parts of Phoenicia and Syria, becoming a listener to the successors of Mochus and other hierophants of Phoenicia; he had diligently investigated all sacred things and performed them according to the custom of the nation, nor had anything worthy of being known and observed in the arcana of the gods and their sacrifices escaped him.
28 I might say almost the same things about Plato, who, as Augustine writes, being an Athenian, born in a respectable position among his own, and surpassing his fellow students by far in admirable talent, yet thinking himself to be little sufficient for the perfecting of philosophy and the Socratic discipline, made journeys as far and wide as he could, and snatched up whatever was considered great and taught anywhere, by which he might catch the fame of some nobility of science in any place. And so, even in Egypt, whatever was taught there, and then coming into those parts of Italy where the fame of the Pythagoreans was celebrated, he understood most easily whatever of the Italian philosophy was then flourishing, having heard the more eminent teachers in it. Thus Augustine, who has Diogenes Laertius, Apuleius, and others who recorded the deeds of Plato in their writings, agreeing with him. Therefore, having heard Socrates, then Hermogenes, the disciple of Heraclitus, then a follower of Parmenides, and finally Euclid the Elder, from whom the Megarian sect took its origin, he then set out for Cyrene and was instructed by Theodorus the mathematician. But by the Pythagorean philosophy, which then surpassed other sects in fame, he was captivated by its more sublime method of treating divine things. Arriving in that region of Italy which was called Magna Graecia, he gave himself over to the discipline of Archytas the Elder, Euricus, Timaeus, Philolaus, Epicharmus, and other Pythagoreans. When he had devoted long and diligent labor to this philosophy, he followed the example of his master Pythagoras and approached the priests of Egypt as well, and learned their arcana thoroughly. It is also a common, and not improbable, opinion of the ancient Fathers that the Jews were not neglected by Plato, whether he went to Judea himself or consulted the Jews who were then frequent in Egypt, and that he received from them a store of divine science by no means to be regretted, with which he then adorned his own books. Thus, enriched abundantly with the spoils of philosophers of every kind, he returned home, laid the foundations of the old Academy, and founded a new sect destined to be celebrated throughout the whole world thereafter, and which would obscure almost all others. Here, furthermore, is the character of this new sect, as it confounded together, as Laertius says, the opinions of the Heracliteans, Pythagoreans, and Stoics, so as to skillfully hand down a new body of doctrine from them all. "For he philosophized about sensible things according to Heraclitus; about intelligible things according to Pythagoras; and about political things according to Socrates." And in those things which are subject to the senses, he defended the position of Heraclitus; he treated those things which are comprehended by the mind according to the opinion of Pythagoras; but in civil affairs, he philosophized according to the mind of Socrates. Yet he added value to this philosophy above the rest, because regarding God
A and his attributes, and those things by which the morals of men must be formed, he discoursed more sublimely than others. For Plato acknowledged that there is one God, the highest architect of the universe, and the author of things and the illuminator of truth, and the bestower of blessedness; and consequently 49 that the end of the good is to live according to virtue, and that this can happen only to him who has knowledge of and imitation of God, and that there is no other reason for being blessed. This, therefore, was the reason why Jews and Christians preferred these to the rest; because while other philosophers have worn out their talents and studies in seeking the causes of things, and what mode of learning and living there might be; these, having recognized God, discovered where was the cause of the constituted universe and the light of perceived truth, and the source of the happiness to be drunk. In this, however, Plato sinned more grievously than the others, that although he acknowledged one true God, he nevertheless thought that sacred rites should be performed to very many gods 50. For besides Him, he established other inferior gods, whom he also ordered to be worshipped with sacred rites. And thus, through the various superstitions of the nations, sacrifices, wicked mysteries, and magical arts, the philosophy of the Platonists, no less than that of the others, remained defiled.
29. From the ancient Academy of Plato B proceed new and mixed ones, to which some add a fourth and a fifth, the differences of which, known to all, contribute nothing to our goal. But finally, after the various vicissitudes which the Academy experienced, those who adhered more strictly to the dogmas of Plato, having spurned the name of Academic, which was left to the followers of Arcesilaus, claimed for themselves that of Platonists, and added a new splendor to the school of Plato, which was already coalescing into one, having previously been fractured. Those new Platonists seem to have flourished from the Alexandrian school, which Ptolemy Philadelphus, a lover of letters, had instituted. For so that he might promote the studies of literature and make his school famous throughout the whole world, he had taken care that the entire wisdom of the Egyptians, hitherto entrusted only to the hierophants and the Egyptian language, should be converted into Greek C (by which it might be known to and benefit many) along with the sacred books of the Jews, as is commonly believed; he had equipped a library with a not unworthy collection of books; he had summoned, lured by the hope of very ample reward, the most learned men of the whole world, Jews, Greeks, Romans, etc. Philosophers of various nations flowed together there, to give specimens of their learning. But the Platonists easily held the first place, recommended above the rest by the great affinity of their dogmas with the Egyptians; inasmuch as Plato had diligently learned these, both from the frequent meetings he had had with their mystagogues, and from those Pythagorean teachings which he had heard. For indeed in treating of divine things, he followed the Pythagorean method of teaching, the same as the Egyptian one, as we just said out of Laertius. And hence it happened that the Platonica philosophy was held in such great price by the Egyptians, such as those new Platonists taught, and thence was propagated far and wide among other nations.
30. The first who is recorded to have obtained fame in the Alexandrine school is Potamon, who flourished in the times of Caesar Augustus and Tiberius, according to Suidas: *Ποτάμων Ἀλεξανδρεὺς φιλόσοφος γεγονὼς κατ' Αὔγουστον, καὶ μετ' αὐτόν*. This man, if we trust the same Suidas, left *εἰς τὰς Πλάτωνος πολιτείας ὑπόμνημα*, Commentaries on the books of Plato's Republic. If he wrote anything else, time, the devourer of things, denied its memory to posterity. Although Potamon had chosen Plato as his guide above all others, whose footsteps he followed, he did not rashly think that every word of his master must be sworn to by himself. Indeed, he followed him with a cautious step, so that he might freely depart from his opinion, when better things were perceived. Therefore, he introduced into the Alexandrine school a new, and more liberal than it had hitherto been, type of philosophizing: by which, having purged the opinions of Plato, having dismissed the improbable, and having cut away the trifles by which the flourishing talents of the disciples were obscuring the master's doctrine; whatever seemed truer or more like the truth, without any discrimination of the authors, he took and substituted. *Ἐκλεκτικόν*, in Latin *electivum*, was this type of philosophizing called; the followers, however, *ἐκλεκτικοί*, *electivi* or *electores*; so that, as the best and most praiseworthy, it was certainly the most difficult of all, by which, after a choice of all philosophical dogmas had been made, only that which, exacted to the norm of reason, best squared, was approved. This path was entered by as many as thereafter acquired a name for themselves from the Alexandrine school, such as Ammonius, contemporary to Nero and Vespasian, not that one of Origen and Plotinus, but the tutor of Plutarch, whom Eunapius mentions in the Proemium. But the famous Ammonius made greater progress in it, and added a new distinction to the restored Academy of Plato, with the mixing of the dogmas of other philosophers, of the Pythagoreans in the first place, called *τῆς ἱερᾶς γενεᾶς*, the head of the sacred Platonic succession: from whose mouth Herennius, Origen, and Plotinus drew this purged philosophy; whom then Porphyry, Iamblichus, Hierocles, Syrianus, and Proclus, called *κατ' ἐξοχὴν* the successor, received, to whom we can add Maximus Tyrius, Alcinous, Damascius, Apuleius, Chalcidius, and others.
31. But indeed, a great addition accrued to this new Platonic school from the opinions of other sects, which it made its own; a far greater one accrued from the more sublime theology, which it drew from the books and sermons of the Jews [XXIV - D] and Christians. For since the Jews already from the first beginnings of that school were living frequently at Alexandria, and the sacred books had been converted into the Greek language and had begun to be worn in the hands of the Gentiles, those more recent Platonists could not fail to gather from the words, sneers, taunts, and invincible arguments of both, how much their polytheism and the monstrous rites and mysteries of heathendom were abhorrent to sound reason;
A and how, on the contrary, the knowledge of divine things which is gathered from the sacred books is sublime, august, pure, and consistent with reason. Happy would they have been if those rays shining forth from thence had dispelled the clouds overhanging their minds, and, having shaken off the shadows, they had turned their eyes to the sun itself! But most preferred, blinded by preconceived opinions, to obscure the sparks of divine light with the smoke and darkness of falsehood; and while they ought to have measured their theology by the divine oracles, they studied instead, in perverse order, to recall it to the tenets of Pythagoras and Plato. For this reason, they wove together a new body of doctrine—by introducing a Pythagorean and Platonic appearance into all those things they were able to pilfer from the sacred books and the dogmas of the Jews—which was indeed cleared of the thicker dregs of paganism, yet still muddied with no small amount of filth. Plato had indeed acknowledged one supreme maker of the world and lesser demons; but as for angels, archangels, their ranks and offices, some I know not what mystical Triad, and six hundred other things, upon which those later disciples discoursed with more subtle argumentation, the master had not even dreamt—so much so that these things originated from those authors alone, if indeed they are to be called authors, who obscured things they had accepted from the Jews with fabricated colors. But if those Platonists had received anything from the Jews, they later returned it to the Jews with interest. For when the latter observed this new method of philosophizing, which was mingled with sacred dogmas, allegories, and symbols, and was purer than the rest, and not so repugnant to the principles of higher science, they were drawn into its admiration and began to apply themselves to its study; thinking that it would be no difficult task for it to be purified of the filth which pagan superstition had introduced, and to be useful for explaining and treating the mysteries of the sacred religion by a more accurate method. Therefore, directing their hearts hither, and refining divine science more subtly than was fitting, they began to perform B *platonize* with the Platonists, and to divert the purest streams of truth into the dry gullies of Pythagoras and Plato—truly to the great detriment of religion, which subsequently was produced filled entirely with subtleties, numbers, and the conjunctions of numbers, symbols, and allegories. Now, how much the Jews, especially the Hellenists, succeeded in that type of discipline can be seen from the writings of Philo, who, because he had more deeply imbibed Platonic dogmas in his soul, seems to have been considered by the ancients as another Plato; whose example those who followed him poorly emulated, adding subtleties to subtleties and nourishing diseased minds with vain refinements. Although there are no arguments demonstrating that the Jews who lived in Palestine in the time of Philo had progressed so far, still, the frequency of the trade that existed between them and the Hellenists, Egyptians, and Tyrians, as well as the books of Flavius Josephus, which show a man not a little versed in the reading of the philosophers, persuade us that they were not moderately cultivated by Platonic doctrine. C Platonic doctrine afterward cast a coating of paint upon the Christians; and this occurred the more easily as, with the dawning of the Gospel day, it flourished more proudly than before, now enriched by a new accession. For from the time when the apostles and apostolic men contended in the fiercest struggle with pagan superstition and openly gained triumphs over it, the philosophers, in order to avert the ruin impending upon it, began to think about a new reformation of their doctrine. Therefore, having read through the writings of the New Testament and held conferences with all the most learned Christians, they gathered from their dogmas those things which would add splendor and value to the pagan religion; and by artfully interweaving these, and covering them—lest the theft be exposed—with a veil of symbolic forms, in the Platonic manner, they offered a new hypothesis to the Christians, which might deceive the inexperienced by a feigned appearance of holiness and sublimity. This plan was not a little advanced by that great Ammonius, the teacher of Origen and Plotinus, who, having professed the Christian religion, was so devoted to the unbridled love of the Platonic philosophy, to which he had always applied himself, that he left nothing undone to recall the oracles of the Scriptures to it. He was not, indeed, of a malicious mind; for he hoped that by this means he would procure greater authority for the Christian religion among the Gentiles. And if indeed he had endeavored to reform philosophy from the Scriptures, as was right, and to confine it within the limits of the Gospel, he might perhaps have accomplished something worth the effort; but when he entered into a path entirely contrary, he was the ruin both of the Christian religion and of the Christians themselves. D For many Christians, subsequently applying themselves to the study of this philosophy—which was in high esteem above the rest on account of the affinity it appeared to have with the Scriptures—and not attending to the fact that whatever it displayed that was more sublime had been drawn entirely from the storehouse of those very Scriptures, became accustomed to equate it almost with the Scriptures themselves, and to base their reasonings upon its principles rather than upon the principles of Scripture: which provided the fuel for a nearly infinite number of errors by which the faith was contaminated. The pagans, on the contrary, opportunely seizing the occasion offered by this mixture of sacred and profane dogmas—which adorned philosophy and purged it of so many monstrous errors—to perfect and more insolently advance their own doctrine, began to grow more proud against the Christians, as if they had enriched themselves with the spoils of Plato, and to despise the Christian religion. There vanished from their writings that multitude of gods, bound in subjection neither to one another nor to any superior being: fewer appeared, and all were subject to one supreme Divinity, celebrated in language more august than before. Their natural theology subsequently proceeded, adorned with the angels, archangels, heavenly minds, and six hundred other things which they had borrowed from the Christians. They wrote magnificently of the flight from the body and the senses, of the care of the mind, of the cultivation and elevation of the soul toward God, and of the cultivation of the virtues and the overcoming of vices; and they left nothing untried whereby they might oppose the painted purity of their doctrine to the holiness of the Gospel.
A There were two things, however, by which, whatever they did, the veil of vain excuse could not be so drawn over them that the stain of base infamy would not always bespatter their religion: namely, magic and the abominable [XXV] mysteries of the sacred rites, especially the Eleusinian and the Bacchanalian, to say nothing of others. For from Plotinus indeed, and Porphyry, Iamblichus, Eunapius, and others, you may see that philosophers, just like mystagogues, practiced magical arts and were devoted to the wicked evocations of demons. They indeed tried to cover their infamy with the specious name of theurgy and sacred commerce with the gods, but certainly they could not wash it away. As for the wicked mysteries, there is not even a word about them in the cited philosophers, since they were well aware that such things could in no way be excused.
33. It was necessary to preface all these things in order that it might be evident from what fountains most of the Gnostic dogmas flowed. Whether these people were born Jews, or pagans, or had professed the Christian religion from their infancy, they could be imbued with the doctrines of the new Platonists all the more easily because this philosophy had already been propagated far and wide among the Hellenistic Jews, and indeed even the Palestinians, and in Egypt and the East; from which time especially this type of philosophizing had been introduced into the famous school of Alexandria by Ammonius, to which Origen, Plotinus, Porphyry, and others, both Christian and pagan, subsequently directed their studies. Since, however, Valentinus, according to Epiphanius, had been instructed in the arts of the Greeks at Alexandria, there is no doubt that he nurtured his mind there with Platonic philosophy; since the aforementioned Tertullian asserts this in clear terms. That all the principal heads of the Valentinian heresy flowed from this would not be very difficult to demonstrate from a clarified exposition of the same.
They posit a triple world; the first of which they call invisible and ideal, because it contains the ideas of all things; for they think that nothing in the lower, corporeal world arises which is not displayed in the ideal, invisible world. The second, which they call intermediate, comprises the soul or spirit of the universe, the cause of the corporeal and visible world; third, lastly, this lower world, corporeal and visible. Marsilius Ficinus speaks of these thus in *Plato’s Symposium*, ch. 3: "There are three worlds among them (the Platonists)... The first of all is God, the author of all things, whom we call the Good itself. He first creates the angelic mind; then the soul of this world, as Plato wills; finally the body of the world. We say that the supreme God is not the world, because the world signifies an ornament composed of many things, but He must be utterly simple; but we assert the principle and end of all worlds to be Him. The angelic mind is the first world made by God; the second is the soul of the universal body; the third is this whole machine which we see." Valentinus proposed this triple world, with only the names changed and enriched with new additions. He called the first world the Pleroma, because it contains the whole fullness of the Divinity and the patterns, ideas, and images of all lower things; and there he established the seat of the Divinity. It is a common opinion that the word was taken from the saying of Paul, Col. 1:9, where it is said that in Christ B *πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς θεότητος*, the whole fullness of the Divinity, dwells bodily. I will not say whether the Platonists borrowed it from there; but I would most certainly assert that they used the same word, and in the same sense, as the Valentinians, so that it is highly probable that the latter received it from the former. This is clear from these words of Iamblichus, sect. 1, *De myst.*, ch. 845: *Οἱ μὲν (Θεοὶ) κρείττονες ἐν αὐτῷ, ὡς ὑπὸ μηδενὸς περιέχονται, καὶ περιέχουσι πάντα ἐν αὐτοῖς. Τὰ δὲ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἐν τοῖς ΠΛΗΡΩΜΑΣΙ τῶν θεῶν ἔχοντα τὸ εἶναι, ὁπόταν ἐπιτήδεια πρὸς τὴν θείαν μετοχὴν γένηται, εὐθὺς ἔχει πρὸ τῆς οἰκείας ἑαυτῶν οὐσίας προϋπάρχοντας ἐν αὐτῇ τοὺς θεούς.* "The gods are higher therein, for they are contained by nothing, and they contain all things in themselves. C But things upon the earth, having their existence in the FULLNESSES of the gods, whenever they become fit for the divine participation, immediately have the gods pre-existing in them before their own essence." The gods excel primarily in this, that they are contained by nothing, but they themselves contain all things in themselves. Terrene things, however, which have their essence in the PLEROMAS of the gods, as soon as they are fit to participate in the divine, immediately have the gods existing in their substance before they obtain their own nature. Damascius uses the same word likewise not once.
34. And, to begin with the name of the Gnostics, everyone knows that it was derived from *γνῶσις* or the knowledge of supernal things, in which the followers of Simon, Menander, etc., Valentinus and Ptolemy boasted more than others. The Platonists, ambitiously bragging of the same in their discourses, had nothing more frequently in their mouths than the most perfect *γνῶσις*, true wisdom, the intimate union of the soul with God, the elevation of the mind to God, D the cognition and knowledge of the true Being, and the contemplation of heavenly things. These occur everywhere in Plato, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and others.
35. We have already said that Valentinus's whole hypothesis can be reduced to three heads: 1° to the Pleroma, which embraces divine things; 2° to those things which happened outside the Pleroma, by which things intermediate between celestial and worldly are contained; 3° to the origin and constitution of this visible world. These are the very same things which Plato discusses so laboriously regarding the triple world in the *Timaeus* and the *Epinomis*, and his disciples after him.
36. The Pleroma of the Valentinians was tripartite, into two tetrads of Aeons, or an ogdoad, into a decade and a dodecad. They placed Bythus in the first place, supreme over all, to whom they coupled Ennoia or Sige. Him Nus or Mind succeeded, with whom they connected Truth; then the Word, with whom they connected Life; then Man, with whom they connected the Church. Of whom if
A one considers not all things, at least the primary and cruder outlines, they were supplied by Chaldean, Egyptian, and Pythagorean theology, or rather by Platonism mixed with all these. Iamblichus in his book *De mysteriis*, sect. VIII, cap. 2, writes that this is the most ancient doctrine of the Egyptians concerning the principles of things: 1. That there is one God, prior to all beings that truly exist and to all universal principles, and indeed prior even to the first God and king: remaining in the monad of his own unity; and he is established as the exemplar of him who is his own Father, self-begotten, and the God who is his own progenitor; for there is something greater and prior, the fountain of all things, and the root of all primary intelligible ideas which exist. Mercurius calls this first principle, by the testimony of Iamblichus, the first exemplar and Eicton; in which, he says, is the first intellect and the first intelligible, and which is worshipped only in silence. Of this there is also the oracle that circulates under the name of Zoroaster: "For the intellect itself gives the paternal Mind to all fountains and principles. It is the end of the paternal Profundity, and the fountain of intelligibles. It did not go forth, but remained in the paternal Profundity, and in the adytum B through divine silence." From which it is evidently clear that neither the name of Bythus, of the supreme and first God, the fountain and parent of all the Aeons, nor the thing signified by the name, was unknown to the most ancient philosophers. They called him Bythus, that is, Profundity, because of the infinite perfections in which he rejoices, the immense depth of which no created mind is able to explore. The poets expressed the same thing, but in other words, according to their custom, imagining that all the gods were born from the Ocean. Indeed, by the name of Ocean, whose depth is most profound, they meant the Bythus or Profundity of the philosophers themselves. They meant a God sufficient to himself; who accordingly is his own Father and principle. For he is both principle and God of gods, a unity from the One, superessential, and the principle of essence: for from him comes nature and essence; and therefore he is called Noetarcha, or intelligible principle. Mercurius, by the testimony of Iamblichus, calls God Emeth (perhaps it should be read with Eusebius, lib. *Præp. evang.*, cap. 2, Kneph), whom he places as leader over the celestial gods, and says that this is the Mind thinking itself, and converting other intellections to itself. The same Iamblichus hands down that he was called by other names by the Egyptians. "For the creating Mind," he says, "the author and president of Truth, and of Wisdom, insofar as it comes to generation, and brings to light the hidden power of secret reasons, is called in the Egyptian language Amon: but insofar as he perfects all things with the highest truth and art, they call him Phtha: but insofar as he is the maker of goods, he is called Osiris; and he has other names for other powers and operations."
37. From this it is clearly gathered that Iamblichus (the doctrine is the same as Plotinus, *Enn.*, lib. V, cap. 5) establishes two first gods, and that they are designated by the same characters by which the Valentinians designated Bythus and Nun: so that all drew from the same fountain, namely, from Egyptian and Chaldean theology, to which the Platonists had applied themselves, especially those who had come from the Alexandrian school. This will become manifest to one comparing the principles and opinions of both with one another. Iamblichus affirms, according to the opinion of the Egyptians, that the first God is prior to all principles and things, even prior to the first God and king; that he remains in the monad of his own unity, and is the fountain of all things and the root of all primary intelligible ideas, etc. These same things are what the Valentinians attribute to their Bythus. For they say, by the testimony of Irenaeus, that there is a certain perfect C Aeon in invisible and ineffable altitudes, pre-existent, who was before, whom no thing can comprehend, invisible, eternal, and ingenerate, and that he was in much quietude for infinite ages. These things agree entirely; and you will find they cohere still more tightly if you compare the sentiment of Epiphanes, which Irenaeus sets forth in cap. 11: "There was," he said, "before all, a Proarche, pre-unthought, and ineffable, and unnameable, whom I call Monotetes. With this Monotetes is a power, which I also call Henotetes." Therefore, the first God of Iamblichus is prior to all principles and things, and even to the first king. The first God of the Valentinians is the most perfect Aeon, pre-existent to all things, the Proarche or first principle which is before all things, D eternal.
A Eternal, Ingenitus, Propator, and consequently they called him Nun, because they said he was Father and the beginning of all things, being prior. To Iamblichus, God is the fountain of all things and the root of all intelligible first ideas, the first intellect, and the first intelligible. And, as the Chaldean Oracles say, "Fountain of fountains, of all fountains, a womb containing all things," the Fountain of fountains, and of all fountains, a matrix containing all things. To the Valentinians, God is the first fountain and the first root of Mind (Nous), of Truth, and of the Word; in a word, of the entire intelligible world, or Pleroma. The first God, according to the Chaldean Oracles, is a certain intelligible, which must be perceived by the flower of the mind; to conceive of which one must not struggle violently, but with the inward sharpness of the mind, which measures all things, except that intelligible. "For there is something intelligible, which it behooves you to conceive with the flower of the mind, which you must not conceive with sharpness, but with the tenuous flame of the mind, which measures all things, except that intelligible." No thing can grasp the first God according to the Valentinians; he is incomprehensible, pro-unthinkable, ineffable, unnamed. He, according to the Platonists, remains in the singularity of his unity, "remaining in the mono-type of his own unity." According to Epiphanius, he is Monotes, with whom is a power which is called Henotes. According to Marcus, whose opinion Irenaeus sets forth in book 1, chapter 15, number 1, "to the mono-type co-exists unity," since with the singularity existence is unity. To the Valentinians, there is Bythus, with whom was Ennoia, and with her and through her he sent forth Nun and Truth, the beginnings and fountains of the other Aeons. In the Chaldean Oracles, there is the Abyss (Profundum), in which is the first intellect and the first intelligible, "in which is the first thinking, and the first intelligible," with which is intelligence, "the thinking" which is the end of the paternal Abyss and the fountain of intelligibles, by which he poured the paternal mind into all fountains and principalities. Ennoia is called Sige by the Valentinians, or silence. Wherefore, as attested by Irenaeus, book 4, chapter 35, number 4, they used to say that silence was a most great thing among the wise; for it was fitting that that which is above, Sige, should be shaped by that which is among them, silence. Among the Egyptians and Chaldeans, God is worshipped through Sige alone, "by silence alone": the intelligence of this is as if enclosed in an inner sanctuary by divine silence. The first God to the Egyptians, according to Damascius in his book *On Principles* (not yet, as far as I know, in print), is called "unknown darkness," unknown shadows, and as Orpheus sings: "I do not see him, for a cloud is fixed around him." According to the Valentinians, Ennoia was with Bythus, and is joined to him, nor did she proceed from him. According to the Chaldeans, the intelligence of the first God did not proceed from him, but remained in the paternal Abyss and in the inner sanctuary by divine silence. Thus far, one drop is no more similar to another than the tenets of the Valentinians are to the dogmas of the Platonists, Egyptians, and Chaldeans. But let us proceed to the rest.
58. B Iamblichus maintains that God is self-sufficient, his own Father and principle, a Mind thinking itself, and converting other intellections to itself, a second Mind and the mind of a Mind, as the Chaldean Oracles call them. From the Bythus of the Valentinians proceeded the second Aeon, whom they also called Nous. The Nous of the Valentinians is called the "beginning of all," in which the Father put forth all things seminally, as they say in book 1, chapter 8, number 5. Among the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Platonists, the Nous is the beginning, the God of gods, the Noetarch or intelligible principle, the beginning of essence, from whom is all nature and essence, the leader of the celestial gods, and the artisan mind. C For, as the Chaldean Oracles have it, "For the Father perfected all things, and delivered them to the second Nous. For he is the mind of the mind, the artisan of the fiery world." For the Father perfected all things and delivered them to the second Mind. For it is the mind of the mind, which is the artisan of the fiery world, that is, the intelligible world. Thus from Bythus proceeded the Nous of Valentinus, so that nevertheless he is himself both Father and only-begotten. Thus from the first God proceeded the Nous of the Platonists, so that he is his own Father and principle, and is self-begotten. Porphyry, cited by St. Cyril *Against Julian* from book 4 *On the History of Philosophy*, brings forward this reason for the matter: "He went forth pre-eternal, having set out from the cause which is God, being self-begotten, and his own Father. For not by his moving toward generation did the procession of this one take place, but because this one went forth self-begotten from God." Which reason also fits the Gnostics. For in nearly the same way Epiphanes expressed his opinion: Henotes, he says, and Monotes, being one, sent forth—not emitting—the beginning of all noetic, and unbegotten, and invisible [things], which D the sermon calls the Monad. With this Monad is a power of the same substance, which I also call the Hen. That is, the Monad sent forth from the Father, not through a movement of generation properly so-called, whose term would be something distinct from the Father; but it is merely his *energeia*, not diverse from him; and consequently, speaking properly, unbegotten, and which knows not the Father. Where I would also have you observe, that just as for the Platonists the second Mind or second God is called "a Monad from the one," so also for Epiphanius the second Aeon is called "a Monad from the mono-type and unity," and Marcus similarly [calls] the second conjugation of Aeons, which comprised Nun and Truth, "a monad and the one." The Nous of the Valentinians is similar and equal to him who sent him forth, and he alone grasps the greatness of the Father. Among the Egyptians the first Mind "is set as a pattern," a form and exemplar to which the second mind was fashioned, which is the image of this, receiving from it of all things...
A in that intelligible world of which we have spoken, the principles are Bythus, the first principle and Father; Nun, the Father and beginning of all things; and the Word, the Father of all those who were to be hereafter, and the beginning and formation of the entire Pleroma. And these are perhaps the three kings of Plato and Amelius, of whom Proclus speaks in his *Timaeus*, or rather that Triad so often chanted by the Platonists. But furthermore, it is also gathered that those eight Eon conjugations are deservedly called by Irenaeus, the first, the primary and primogenital Pythagorean quaternion, and the root of all things; but all of them together, the primogenital octonation, the root and substance of all things. For what the Pythagoreans ascribed to the four and eight-numbered figures, the Valentinians, claiming for themselves, attributed to the first eight Eons. B The Pythagoreans, who referred all things to numbers, valued the quaternion so highly that they considered it the source of all nature: "The quaternion number is the source of nature," says Themistius, according to the opinion of the Pythagoreans, *Phys.* lib. III, and Proclus, in *Theol. Plat.*, lib. IV, cap. [XXVIII]. "Because indeed it contains in itself the cause of all number, Timaeus called it the quaternary, comprehending the four first operating causes; for the source of the generation of all forms pre-existed." Hence the sacred oath among the Pythagoreans, by which they swore by the author of the quaternary:
By him who transmitted the quaternion to our souls, Having the roots of the perennial fountain of nature. C
And hence they also called the quaternion "all number." Suidas, under the entry "Number": "The Pythagoreans called every number a quaternion; for the number is completed by the ten. And the ten is the composition of the four, and for this reason they called every number a quaternion." The Pythagoreans, however, called every number a quaternion, which is indeed completed by the ten. The decad, however, is the composition of the quaternion: and therefore they called the quaternion "all number." Namely, because it contains the decad, which in itself comprehends every number; for whatever is counted beyond the ten is a repetition of the ten. But the quaternion, if you join the unit, the binary, and the ternary, of which it consists, immediately creates the ten. But just as the Pythagoreans called the quaternion the source and root of Nature, and "all number," so the Valentinians called the first quaternion of Eons the first and primogenital, and the root of all things; for the reason that from that first quaternion flowed the second, the source and beginning of all the other Eons. And just as the Pythagoreans wished the decad to flow from the quaternion, so the Valentinians asserted that the decade of Eons was emitted by the second quaternion. These, moreover, D [considered] the octonation as fashioned from two tetrads, the primogenital
A octonation, the root and substance of all things, were expressed by 1, 3, 5 and 7, as they held the first, third, fifth and seventh place in the ogdoad; from these, as being more perfect and excellent, the ogdoad derived its name; while Sige, Alethia, Zoe, and Ecclesia were passed over, because they corresponded to the numbers 2, 4, 6 and 8, which were more imperfect and ignoble; for the one was established in the second, another in the fourth, another in the sixth, another in the eighth order. They also receive light from what Irenaeus soon adds: For each one is male-female. For since every syzygy is composed of an odd and an even number, they merge as male and female; they were named as such. This agrees wonderfully with that Pythagorean dictum, "Everything is eight." Tarrhaeus brings forward this notion in his Proverbs: "Everything is eight. Evander said that the eight gods who rule over all things are Fire, Water, Earth, Heaven, the Moon, the Sun, Mithras, and Night." All things are eight. Evander reports that the eight gods who have power over all things of the world are Fire, Water, Earth, Heaven, the Moon, the Sun, Mithras, and Night. Therefore, just as for the Pythagoreans all things are eight, because the first gods, who have power over all things, are eight; so for the Valentinians the octonation is primogenital, the root and substance of all things, because it consists of the first eight Eons, the parents of the others, B and hence the head of the syzygy, expressed by an odd number, coupled with another Eon that corresponds to an even number, is to be called male-female. Nor does it deviate from the truth that the whole mystery of the male Eons and the female Eons, or the male-female Eons, was taken from the lacunae of the Platonists. Nothing occurs more frequently among Proclus and others than that some gods are male, some female, or some male-female. Where by females they understand nothing other than the powers and faculties of the gods, intimately adhering to them, through which they work their own proper effects and bring them into the light.
40. If the problem is bothersome regarding why the octonation was named among them by only four names—Bythus, and Nus, and Logos, and Anthropos, while Sige, Alethia, Zoe, and Ecclesia were passed over—you will easily solve the knot from the principles of the Pythagoreans. They established that every number is either even or odd: the latter they considered perfect, the former imperfect. Plutarch, in his book *On the Poetry of Homer*: "For Pythagoras, considering that numbers have the greatest power and referring everything to numbers, declared the even to be deficient and imperfect, but the odd to be full and perfect." For Pythagoras, who thought that numbers have the greatest power and referred everything to them, showed that the even is indeed deficient and imperfect, but the odd is full and perfect. For this reason, they judged the odd number to be more excellent. Julian, in his C *Epist. ad Serapionem*: "And I am not ignorant that the discourse of the ancients and wise men is that the odd is set before the even." Indeed, I am not unaware that the ancients, and those wise men, preferred the odd number to the even. And Pliny, lib. XXVIII, cap. 11: "We believe that odd numbers are stronger for all things." Because, clearly, as an anonymous author explains in lib. 1 of Ptolemy’s *Tetrabiblos*, the even number is subject to division and change; but the odd is free from both, and is effective, and approaches closer to unity, the simplest of all. And therefore, by the testimony of the same anonymous author, the Pythagoreans called the odd number male, and the even female. "Wherefore the one is called female, the other male." And Macrobius, in *Somnio Scipionis*, lib. 1, cap. 6: "We expressed above that the odd is male, the even female." Thus, a number which is compounded of an even and an odd—that is, of male and female—was called *arrhenothelys*, male-female. An anonymous author in the *Theologumena Arithmetica*, where he speaks of the number six: "It is born from the even and the odd, the first, the male and the female, by power and multiplication, so it is called *arrhenothelys*." From the first even and odd, male and female, it is born by power and multiplication: whence it is also called male-female. From all of which those things that we were just reporting from Irenaeus receive light, that the primogenital octonation was called by four names among the Valentinians: Bython and Nun, and Logon and Anthropon. Indeed, since Bythus, Nus, Logos, and Anthropos were by odd numbers 1, 3, D and they used to consider the even as left, inauspicious, and unlucky; but the odd, right, auspicious, and prosperous. Iamblichus, *De vita Pythagorae*, lib. 1, cap. 28: "He commands one to enter the temples by the right-hand parts, and to leave by the left; setting the right as the beginning of what is called the odd among numbers, and the left as the symbol of the even." He commanded that one should enter temples by the right-hand locations, but exit by the left, because the right is the beginning of the number which is called odd; but the left is the symbol of the even [XXIX]. Censorinus, *De die natali*, cap. 20: "The odd number was held to be full, and more auspicious." Lutatius, ad Statii *Theb.* v: "Every odd number signifies prosperous things, and is ascribed to the living." Finally Festus: "The ancients believed that an odd number is more prosperous for men." By these things is easily explained the opinion which Irenaeus reports in lib. 1, cap. 41, n. 2, belonging to Secundus, a disciple of Valentinus: that the quaternion is right, and the quaternion is left, and light, and darkness. For since, by the testimony of Plutarch in his book *On the Creation of the Soul*, whose words we will soon recite, there was a double quaternary for the Pythagoreans, one composed of the first four odd numbers, the other of the first four even numbers, and that one was judged to be right and auspicious, this one left and inauspicious; it is no wonder if Secundus, retracing their footsteps, might cut the Gnostic octonation into two quaternaries, namely, the right and the left. The right was that which was composed of the first four odd Eons, namely the first, third, fifth, and seventh; the left that which was composed of the first four even [Eons], the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth. The first was light, because odd numbers are auspicious and male; the second darkness, because the numbers
are unfortunate and female; and these depend upon the males, from whom they receive light.
42. Finally, this is the power of the Pythagorean quaternary, so that it may contain the number thirty-six; namely, the first four even numbers—two, four, six, eight—and the first four odd numbers—one, three, five, seven; which, when added together, produce that number; and therefore it is called the World. Plutarch, *On Isis and Osiris*: "The so-called tetractys, which is thirty-six, was their greatest oath, as it is commonly said, and is called the World, being composed of the four first even numbers and the four first odd numbers added together." The number that was truly called the quaternary, consisting of thirty-six, was their greatest oath, as is known to all, and it was called the World, being constituted of the first four even and the first four odd numbers. And in his book *On the Procreation of the Soul*: "The tetractys extolled by the Pythagoreans, which is thirty-six, seems to have a wonderful property, as it is composed of the four first even and the four first odd numbers." Indeed, that quaternary proclaimed by the Pythagoreans, namely thirty-six, has this wonderful property, that it is composed of the four first even and the first four odd numbers. The power of each quaternary, both even and odd, was the same, B or that of the Valentinian octonary. The World itself was also this, and it comprised the number thirty-six. For it exhibited the eight first Eons, along with another twenty-two, including Horus, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and the Savior emitted by them, by whom the Pleroma or the intelligible world is defined; and Achamoth and the Demiurge, the leaders and creators of this visible world, who also derive their origin from the supernal Eons, and they complete the number 36.
43. From that first octonary of Eons, the Valentinians derived a second, and a duodenary, namely, ten emitted by the Word and Life, and twelve emitted by Man and the Church; so that from all of these the number thirty of the Eons might be formed. The names and conjugations of these latter do not occur in the writings of the Platonists and Pythagoreans, as they are matters which Valentinus himself either scraped together from the Scriptures or invented. Whatever terms in the Scriptures signify the properties of the divine Word and the effects of his goodness poured out upon the human race, these he diligently collected, and by a certain artifice binding and connecting them, he transformed them into as many Eons; seduced by a vain persuasion that different things were signified by those different names. We read everywhere in the Scriptures that the Word became man, founded the Church, and having breathed life into her, took her as his bride. Abusing these things, the trifler feigned that Man and the Church flowed forth from the Word and Life. But because in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and in him C are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge of God, D hence [they call it] Bythios, or Profundus; and Mixis, or Mixture: Profundus on account of the infinite depth of his perfections; Mixture, on account of the most orderly series of those same perfections. Concerning Christ, the Apostle understands the words of the Psalm: *They (the heavens) shall perish; but you shall remain, and all shall grow old as a garment; but you are the same, and your years shall not fail*; but I omit many other things which demonstrate the immutability of Christ, subject to no old age, and his perfections which never fade. Hence [they call him] Ageratos, free from old age, to which is coupled Enosis, a union, on account of the very tight bond of perfections which never fail, are never diminished, or dissipated. Wisdom is said in the Scriptures to have been *in the beginning of the ways of the Lord, before he made anything from the beginning, ordained from eternity, and from ancient times before the earth was made, before the abysses were conceived*, etc., as having been *in delight* with God. *The Word was in the beginning*; *His going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity*; *He is the Son most beloved of the Father*, *Alpha and Omega*, *the beginning and the end*, etc. Whence [they call him] Autophyes, born of himself, and Hedone, pleasure. But because the Word of God is eternal, which excludes a beginning, succession, mutability, and an end; because, existing in a point and moment, he knows no change or vicissitude; because, finally, he has the infinity of moving time present, and in him every variety of ages and times, future, present, and past, come together most perfectly and without any flux; hence [they call him] Acinetos, immovable, whose property is Syncrasis, a tempering, if I may say so, of the times. Finally, because the Word is everywhere said to be the only-begotten Son of God, whom to know is eternal life, and with whom to reign in heaven is the supreme happiness of our minds, the heretics called him Monogenem, the Only-begotten, and Macarian (supplying *Zoe*), the blessed life.
44. But those Eons which are said to be sent forth by Man and the Church, and which were stupidly fashioned by insane men from the properties and gifts of the Holy Spirit which are read in the Scriptures, are these: Thus the Paraclete is the Holy Spirit, whom the Savior promised so often that he would send, that he might teach us *all truth*, and in consequence inspire faith in us. Patricos, paternal, is the Spirit of adoption, in whom we cry, *Abba, Father*, bearing witness to our spirit that we are the children of God, and consequently heirs, *awaiting the revelation of the children of God*, and abounding in the hope and power of the Holy Spirit. Metricos, maternal, is the Paraclete, who consoles us as a mother might caress someone, *with charity poured forth in our hearts*. Ainos, in Greek *deinous*, a mind eternal and always thinking, is the Spirit who *searches all things, even the deep things of God*, and knows the things that are of God, through whom God has revealed to us the wisdom in a mystery, which is hidden.
A Since it suppressed the reckless attempts of Sophia and Enthymesis—for Valentinus devised a double Horos, one between Bythos and the Aeons, the other between the Pleroma and Enthymesis—it surrounds and fortifies [the Pleroma or Bythos] as if with a rampart, closes the entrance to those approaching more closely, and by exclaiming *Iao*, that is, by pronouncing the ineffable name of God, it signifies that the divine mysteries are inaccessible. It is also called *Horothetes*, or the president and establisher of boundaries: finally, it is represented as a power that confirms the beyond-ineffable magnitude and guards all things. But because they had perceived from Catholic doctrine that the Son of God, whom the Holy Scriptures also call the *Nous* of the Father, is named *horos* and *Logos* of the Father—that is, the definition and the reason, or the Word of the Father—hence the occasion was seized by these insane men to distinguish *horos* and *Logos* from the only-begotten Son of the Father, and thus to rend asunder one and the same person, or the various names and concepts of one and the same person, into B many Aeons. For just as they contended that the *Logos* was emitted from the *Nous*, so they also wished for the *Horos* to have proceeded from Bythos through the *Nous* in the image of the Father. This was a foul deformation of the Catholic dogma. For one and the same Son of God is called *horos* and *Logos* of the Father by the holy Fathers. And the interpretation of this name is discussed at length by Gregory of Nazianzus in Oration 36, p. 590: "He is called *Logos* because he is to the Father as the word is to the mind; not only on account of the passionless nature of his generation, but also because of his conjunction and his power of declaration. Perhaps one might also say, because he is as a definition to that which is defined, since this too is called *logos*. For he who has understood the Son (for this is what 'having seen' means), says he, has understood the Father. And the Son is a brief and easy demonstration of the nature of the Father. For every offspring is a silent word of him who begat it." He is called *Verbum* (Word), because he relates to the Father just as discourse relates to the mind: not only on account of a generation void of all passion, but also because of his conjunction with the Father and his declarative power. Perhaps also because he relates to the Father in the same way as a definition relates to the thing defined. For a definition is also called a *logos*. For he who has understood the Son, he says—for this is what that implies, "who has seen"—has also understood the Father. And the Son is a brief, compendious, and easy declaration of the paternal nature. For everything that is begotten defines its begetter by a certain silent voice. Therefore, the Son is called a definition, C *horos*, and the property of the paternal nature, because he is the express image of it, and he embraces, contains, and explains it; just as a definition explains the thing defined and causes it to be grasped and understood by the mind. The heretics, indeed, wished to express this to some extent, claiming that *Horos* is emitted in the image of the Father, that it is the *Horothetes* (Boundary-setter) of the Pleroma—which is that the divinity is defined and declared by him—and applying other names of the Son of God to this [entity], such as *lytrotes*, Redeemer, *ekdiketes*, vindicator, etc. But not content with these, they summoned Egyptian fables to their aid, and miserably deformed what the Catholic faith teaches concerning the generation of the divine Word. D
A dividing Him from the Only-Begotten, from Horus, from the Word, from the Savior, and from Jesus, they spun a myth of another pair of Aeons, Christ and the Holy Spirit, sent forth according to the providence of the Father: the former to teach the Aeons that the Father was accessible only to the mind of the Only-Begotten, and that He could be perceived or understood by no one except through the favor of the Only-Begotten; the latter, indeed, to bring all the Aeons into equality, and to make them all of the same form and spirit, so that all might be Minds alike, and Words, and Men, and Christs, etc. Indeed, they laid the groundwork for these fabrications from what Christ teaches in the Gospel—that "no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him"—and from the fact that, by faith, we know the Holy Spirit is charity and love, the bond of the most holy Trinity, and the link by which the faithful are constrained and become one. Moreover, they idly babbled that the Savior, because each of the Aeons of the Pleroma had within himself the most excellent and flowering part, was skillfully composed and elegantly constructed as the star and perfect fruit of the Pleroma, and signed with the paternal names of all the Aeons, and thus brought into the light—because they had read in the Apostle that our Christ was enriched with the infinite treasures of divine wisdom and knowledge, and that in Him "the whole fullness of Divinity dwells bodily." While they describe Him as surrounded by angelic attendants produced at the same time, they partly follow the Gospel, in which it is read that angels announced the birth and resurrection of Christ and ministered to Him in all things, and partly imitate the Platonists, who, as Iamblichus testifies (sect. 2, cap. 2, 3 et seq.), assign to the gods some host of angels as attendants.
A 48. The fall of Sophia, the most recent of the Aeons, must not be omitted from the review of the Valentinian fable. It is another enigma, as foolish as it is obscure. I shall briefly explain what I think of it. There is a deeply rooted doubt concerning the origin of evil, which has long vexed the minds of those philosophers ignorant of Christian dogma, as well as those who professed the Christian name. Since there is this notion innate in all human minds—that God, being supremely good, cannot be the author of evil—and on the other hand, since experience teaches that this world teems with evils, many, unable to solve this knot, have either broken down in despair or, cast into the chasm of the most absurd errors, have perished most miserably. To say nothing of those from the Platonists who declared eternal matter (which was produced by nothing) to be the root of evils, which—mingled with divine works—would infect them with a certain contagion; others, both philosophers and those who were Christians in name only, such as the Marcionites, Manichaeans, and Priscillianists, preferred to assert the existence of two gods, one of them the principle of evil, lest they be forced to admit that the true God, who is by nature good, is the source and origin of evil. They were afraid to cast another injury upon divinity; yet they were not afraid to set up angels as the authors of the world and the craft-workers of all evils. This was the impious opinion of all the ancient Gnostics—Simon, Menander, Saturninus, and others whose blasphemies Irenaeus recites in Book 1. But because the question of whence the angels themselves had the power or malice to create the world, either against the will of the good God or without His opposition, and to contaminate it with evils, could never be evaded by the arts of vain subtlety, the Valentinians thought they could resolve it by the fiction of their tales, thereby obscuring certain truths. B They had heard in the schools of the Christians that pride was the beginning of every perdition; for angels, because they had wished to approach nearer to the throne of the Most High than their condition allowed, and because they had rashly emulated the supreme knowledge and majesty of God, and had desired—at least in affection and will—to rule over and provide for all created things, had been cast down from heaven and perished in a precipitous fall; and that, infected with the same poison of pride with which they were first tainted, they had infected and destroyed the human race, and thus had provided the tinder for all the evils by which the world is now weakened. They had also heard and read in the Apostle that God has purposed "to reunite all things in Christ, both those in the heavens and those on the earth," and that through His Son, "who is the image of the invisible God, it has pleased Him to reconcile all things to Himself, making peace by the blood of His cross, both those things which are on earth and those which are in heaven." Depraving these most certain dogmas handed down to the Catholic Church by the apostles, and mixing in their own ludicrous fictions, they forged a new hypothesis by which they might explain the genesis of things in their own way—a more Platonic and Pythagorean way—weaving enigma into enigma. They pretended, therefore, that the supreme God had remained for infinite ages in the height of quiet and tranquility, having performed no external work, but content and occupied only with His own thought, which they therefore called Silence, because He did not reveal Himself by any external act; and Grace, because it was the source and principle of all the benefits which He subsequently bestowed upon the world. For from the moment God determined in His mind to create the world, He so fertilized His thought (hitherto sterile) that, bursting forth into a new act by which it might be made manifest externally, it produced the *Nous* or sense, the future father and principle of all things, or the primeval and archetypal form and exemplar of all things to be created. Joined to this is said to be Truth, because that first exemplar is the supreme truth and rule to which the fabrication of all things must be fashioned. But D because it is impossible to deny in the Scriptures, more openly than those who profess the Christian name in any way can, that...
it is read [c], "In the beginning was the Word, and in the Word was life; by the Word, the Father entrusting the care of this whole work to him, all things were made; by the Word man was created; by the Word the human race was restored, and the Church founded; God founded the earth by wisdom, and established the heavens by prudence," etc., it seemed necessary to them to imagine that from the *Nous*, the principle of all things, the Word proceeded with Life; which Word, indeed, being inferior to the Father and his minister, was the first author, creator, and architect of all things below, being therefore distinct at least in person from the Father and his *Nous*; but from the Word and Life, Man and the Church proceeded. But since the Word and Man, although distinct from the supreme Father and therefore far inferior Eons, were still closer to him, so that the creation of the material of things—consisting of immediate and proximate principles—might be attributed to them, lest the defects of matter be imputed to the highest Father: for the sake of these being removed further from the Father, a long series of Eons was subjected to the Word and Man, so that the work of the more ignoble labor and the cause might gradually descend to Sophia, the last of all, to whom the Father was less known, because she was situated further from him. And hence the fable is woven regarding the ignorance of Sophia, the last Eon, and her danger, which was almost extreme; so that by bringing forth the source of evils from this, provision could be made for the holiness of God. For while those insane heads bring onto the stage Sophia, burning with envy because it had been granted to the Only-Begotten alone to gaze more deeply upon the supreme Father; while they show her boiling with a poorly conceived desire to comprehend the magnitude of the Father, and, snatched away and almost dissolved by the impossibility of the thing: what else do they shadow forth than the wicked prayers and sad fall of that [XXXII] angel, who, promising himself he would be like the Most High, lost his wisdom in his beauty and was cast to the ground in punishment for his exalted heart 66? But when they imagine Horos, whom we have said above is the Word of God himself, and whom they called the Cross and the Redeemer, giving help to the one who was laboring, and finally restoring her to her former conjugation: what else was their intention than to express the ruin of the angels restored by the cross and blood of Christ, relying on the citations of the Apostle's words?
These words of the Apostle were indeed interpreted wrongly and twisted from their genuine sense; but not by them alone; for afterwards Origen, himself carried further than was right by the dogmas of the Platonists, seems to have accepted them in the same sense, and to have believed that the angels were restored by Christ. But it is clear to everyone whither the fable now tends: namely, that they might transform that rash and headlong desire of Sophia, and what they called the *Enthymesis*, into a certain unformed fetus, from which they might finally excavate the matter for all things to be created; a seedbed, therefore, of all evils, because it derived its origin from the blind desire of the ignorant Eon. Thus those old wives' tales were marketed, and those triflers thought they could avert the cause of evils from God and cast it solely upon ignorance. And from this they say there were various perturbations, with which the *Enthymesis* was tossed, and that they were conjoined with ignorance (lib. 1, cap. 4, n. 1, and on the testimony of Irenaeus, lib. 2, cap. 17, n. 10): they defined ignorance as an evil, and that all evils flowed from it. Thus, in an enigmatic and poetic manner, and with an unusual way of speaking, these hemi-Christian men discoursed on divine matters, attaching Christian things to pagan ones, and filthily interpolating one thing with another.
49. But before we pass to another part of the Valentinian system, another and more laborious question lies upon us to solve: what, in truth, did those heretics mean by the name of so many Eons? Did they understand so many gods, in almost the same way as the commonality of the pagans considered Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, etc., to be gods, each having his own individual divine nature? Or were there just as many persons subsisting in one and the same Divinity, in the manner that Catholics profess and believe three distinct persons subsisting in one divine nature? Or, finally, were there just as many properties, affections, and D *energeias* of one and the same singular nature, as well as of the person, just as Sabellius used to say that the Word and the Holy Spirit were merely two mere operations of one and the same person, to whom there were different names for different operations and properties? And indeed, in order to distinguish the certain from the uncertain, it is established that the term *Aion* denoted God not only among the Gnostics, but also among most of the ancients. *For this name also has been pronounced divinely by the ancients*, says Aristotle, lib. 1 *De Coelo*, cap. 9. Hence Epictetus, in Arrian, who flourished at the same age in which Valentinus lived (lib. 2, cap. 5, before the middle), considering the necessity of death, says: *"For I am not an Aion, but a human being."* He alludes, of course, to the etymology of the word *aion*. For *Aion*, says Aristotle in the cited place, *has taken its name from "always being" (apo tou aei einai)*, it has assumed its appellation from "always being." In this sense, by Pseudo-Dionysius, lib. *De div. nom.*, cap. 5, § 4, God is called the *beginning and measure of ages (aionon), and the essence of times, and the eternity (aion) of things that exist*. And Clement of Alexandria, in the hymn he sings to Christ the Savior at the end of lib. 1 *Paedagogus*, calls him *Aiona apleton*, an infinite Aeon. But no one uses this word in that sense more freely and frequently than Synesius in his *Hymns*. Who, if I may say so in passing, if he is not entirely to be blamed in this, is hardly to be excused for using the language of the Valentinians more incautiously—in a Catholic sense indeed, and far removed from the dreams of the heretics, but with a Muse more loose than is proper and *Platonizing* more than is just. It certainly sounds harsh to Catholic ears that [alt-version omitted]
A he should call Bythos "paternal," and "eternal" Bythos, as at the beginning of the second hymn. It is more harsh that in the same hymn it is read:
Σὺ δ' ἄῤῥην, σὺ δὲ θῆλυς, Σὺ δὲ φωνὰ, σὺ δὲ σιγά, Φύσεως φύσις γονώσα. Σὺ δ' ἄναξ, αἰῶνος αἰών, Τὸ μὲν, ᾗ θέμις βοᾶσαι . Μέγα, χαῖρε, κέντρον ὄντων, Μονὰς ἀμβρότων ἀριθμῶν, Προενουσίων ἀνάκτων.
Tu Pater, tu es Mater, Tu mas, tu femina, Tu vox, tu silentium, Naturæ natura fecunda. Tu, o rex, sæculi sæculum, Quantum id quidem fas est voce testari. Longum, salve, centrum rerum, Unitas divinorum numerorum Sempiternorum regum.
And in hymn III, concerning the same Father:
Πατέρων πάντων Πάτερ, αὐτοπάτωρ, Προπάτωρ, ἀπάτωρ, Υἱὲ σεαυτοῦ.
Patrum omnium Pater, Pater tui ipsius, Primus omnium Pater, sine Patre, Fili tui ipsius.
And afterwards:
Σπέρμα τὸ πάντων, Ῥίζα καὶ δρυπαξ, Φύσις ἐν νοεροῖς, Θῆλυ καὶ ἄρρεν, Μύστας δὲ νόος Τά τε καὶ τὰ λέγει, Βυθὸν ἄῤῥητον Ἀμφιχορεύων.
Semen omnium, Radix et summus ramus, Natura in intellectualibus, Femina et mas. Mystica autem mens. Hæc atque illa dicit, Profunditatem ineffabilem Circa ducens choreas.
To omit many other things from which a more severe Muse ought to have abstained.
50. That also is certain, that the Holy Fathers did not think that Valentinus introduced but a few gods. Thus, Epiphanius, Haer. 31, § 2, when he had enumerated thirty Aeons, adds that they were named gods by Valentinus, οὓς καὶ θεοὺς ὀνομάζει. So, likewise, Origen, Hom. 1 in Lib. Reg., with Tertullian, Lib. advers. Valent., cap. 8, Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. 6, and Paulinus in the Life of St. Ambrose. But Ambrose himself, Epistle 40 of the new edition, written to the Emperor Theodosius, n. 16, agrees indeed concerning the name, but seems to dissent concerning the number. Although, he says, the Gentiles call twelve gods, these (the Valentinians) worship thirty-two Aeons, whom they call gods. That this is the way to read it—not "thirty Aeons," as the Roman editors read—is demonstrated by the authors of the new edition from the unanimous consent of the ancients, both in manuscripts and in editions. But since Irenaeus, Lib. II, cap. 12, n. 7, proves from the principles of the Valentinians that not only were thirty emissions emitted according to them, but four along with those thirty, to wit, Horus, whom he B demonstrates should be numbered with the remaining Aeons; Ambrose was able to add to the others thirty from these. But although Ambrose dissents regarding the number of the Aeons, which is sufficiently clear from other sources such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and others, he agrees with the Fathers praised above regarding the name of gods assigned to them.
51. But if the Valentinian Aeons assigned the name of gods to their own, I do not believe it can be effectively concluded from that that they were considered by them as so many divine natures, or as persons of one divine nature. For if in the Scriptures the name of God is sometimes attributed to just and pious men, to princes and to magistrates, the Valentinians could have attributed it in almost the same sense to certain substances C inferior, indeed, to God, but superior to all other created things. Certainly, Synesius, in the hymn already cited (n. III), calls the angels gods more than once. For thus he addresses God the Father:
Αἰωνοτόκε, Αἰωνόβιε. Ἐπέκεινα θεῶν. Ἐπέκεινα γόων... Ἀρχηγέ θεῶν, Πνεῦματουργέ, Καὶ ψυχοτρόφε.
Sæculorum parens, Sæculorum vita, Superans deos, Superans mentes....... Originem præbens diis, Spirituum opifex, Et animarum alitor.
And afterwards:
Σὲ, πάτερ κόσμων, Πάτερ αἰώνων, Αὐτουργὲ θεῶν, Εὐαγὲς αἰνεῖν. Σὲ μὲν οἱ νοεροὶ Μέλπουσιν, ἄναξ, Σὲ δὲ κοσματοὶ Ὀμματολαμπεῖς, Νόες ἀστέριοι Ὑμνοῦσι, μάκαρ, etc.
Te, pater mundorum, Pater sæculorum, Opifex deorum, Fas est laudare. Te quidem intelligentiæ Canunt, o rex, Te mundi rectores, Oculi fulgentes, Mentes sidereæ Celebrant, o beate.
These things can be understood as applying to none but the angels, whom he calls not only gods, but also Aeons and ages, as the whole context openly declares. Moreover, the Platonists, whose footsteps all the Gnostics followed, distinguished a triple genus of gods, as may be read in Proclus, Jamblichus, Damascius, and others—namely, some supercelestial, some celestial, and some subcelestial; the first being superior, the second middle, and the third inferior: all of which they contended differed in their whole essence and in their whole genus, κατ' οὐσίαν τε ὅλην, καὶ παντὶ τῷ γένει ἐξαλλαττομένους, he says.
A Iamblichus, sect. 1, cap. 4, says that the middle ones depended on those above, and the lowest on these. Nevertheless, they assigned the name of God to all; even if they were unable to believe that the true essence and nature of God were in the middle and lowest beings; since the notion of God implanted in the minds of all banishes every kind of subjection. Furthermore, even as to the invisible or supercelestial gods, although when speaking with the common people they used the plural number, in reality they judged them to be one God, of one nature, essence, and person. Sallust the philosopher, in his book *On the Gods and the World*, cap. 2, says that the natures of the gods are neither separated from the first cause, nor from one another; just as notions are not separated from the mind, nor disciplines from the soul. "The essences of the gods are not separated from the first cause, nor from each other, just as the concepts of the intellect are not, nor the disciplines of the soul." And all philosophers, if we believe Damascius, say that the many gods are effulgences of the one transcendent God, not B self-subsisting hypostases; they said those many gods were the supersubstantial brightnesses of one God, not absolute essences subsisting by themselves. These things agree perfectly with the opinion of Iamblichus, who thinks that the invisible gods are the ideas themselves, which he holds to be all of one essence, and to be one among themselves: because one common unity is dilated into all, and through a common unity, that is, through the primary mind, all things exist; to which, as to one object, principle, and end, all are referred simultaneously, without any difference of time. Nor is it to be denied that unity belongs to all of them at once, because individual things look toward diverse objects. For their essential unity precedes the multitude of things; nor can things posterior in nature take away unity from the ideas, which are prior in nature. And hence, when Aristotle, to cast envy upon Plato, had exposed his opinion as if he had affirmed that ideas exist separated from the divine mind; the disciples of Plato, repelling the calumny, denied with one voice that Plato had anywhere said what Aristotle invents—that ideas exist separated from the divine mind, but only that they were separated from the substance which was inferior to them. Proclus, in his first Commentary on the Parmenides, having introduced various testimonies from Orpheus and the Oracles concerning the ideas, concludes his long dispute against the Aristotelians with these words: "Little D heed must be paid to those sophistical arguments of theirs, which are refuted by themselves, and say nothing scientific or sound. For the gods clearly have said that they are the notions of the Father; for they remain in the thoughts of the Father, and thus proceed from the Father to the creation of the world." Little attention is to be paid to their words, which are shown to be mere cavils and to bear nothing learned or sound. For the gods did clearly say that they are the notions of the Father: for they remain in the thoughts of the Father, and thus proceed from the Father into the creation of the world. These, however, whether they were called notions or ideas, they named by the name of gods; from which it does not seem that the conclusion can be drawn that they believed there could be many divine substances or persons.
52. But what is more, and where the knot of the case seems to be sought, how far Valentinus was from denying the unity of God; rather, as Irenaeus bears witness, he openly professed it. For he says, lib. 1, cap. 22, n. 1, almost all heresies say indeed that there is one God, but they change Him by their opinion. He does not say, they multiply Him, but they change Him; in so far as they separated from the idea of God the reason of the omnipotent and the maker of all things, constituting a creator of the world other than the supreme Father of all, whom they also called by the name of God; although they said he was made and subject to ignorance, and therefore they did not believe he was truly God, unless their mind had entirely abandoned them. And Irenaeus explains this very thing in lib. IV, cap. 33, n. 3: "But he will judge also all those who are of Valentinus, because while they confess with their tongue one God the Father, and that from Him are all things; yet they say that he who made all things is the fruit of a defection or flaw." Therefore Valentinus openly professed that there is one God. And truly it is abhorrent to probability that either the earlier Gnostics, most of whom—being of the progeny of the Jews—joined the Mosaic Law and Jewish rites with the Christian profession, to whom the venerable mystery of the SS. Trinity (which to men wise only in earthly things seemed to violate the unity of God) could not have been persuaded; or that Valentinus, and all those who, having spurned the superstitions of the Gentiles, had embraced the Christian religion—all professing to have at least some faith in the Gospel—would have wanted to revive for all Christians the profane and detestable polytheism, or to profess an immense number of divine persons. Surely all Christians would have abhorred such a thing, and it would have gone ill with those crafty men (greedy for vain fame and followers). Nor would Irenaeus have allowed such wickedness to go unpunished, who had undertaken to detect all the shameful deeds of men and the monsters of their errors, and to punish them as they deserved. He indeed, though he argues most often that they divided the creator of the world from the supreme Father, and demonstrates that the creator of things and the supreme Father are one and the same; though he proves that they thought indignantly about God, and wrongly attributed the affections, imperfections, and vices of men to Him [XXXIV]; he never, however, attacks them as if they were polytheists or as if they were increasing the number of divine persons beyond measure, nor does he search for arguments by which the Fathers were accustomed to persuade the unity of God; from which nonetheless, if he were to pluck out the evil from the deepest roots, he ought to have drawn the beginnings of the dispute. Since a man otherwise most accurate, and to whom the dogmas of all the Gnostics were well known, did not do this, we can affirm for certain that they did not think their Aeons were so many true gods or divine persons, although they were accustomed to call them gods. But what the genuine mind of those heretics was concerning their Aeons, and what they understood by the name of so many Aeons and conjugations, from the safer evidence of both Irenaeus and the ancients...
A regarding the principles of others, as much as is permitted in such an obscure matter, must be investigated.
53. That the Aeons are divided by the Valentinians, and some are male, others female, and that the males are joined with the females, we have already stated. Furthermore, that the female Aeons are merely the affections, virtues, and properties of the males, and not substances or persons separate or distinct from them, seems certain. And indeed, that the disciples of Ptolemy thought so is beyond doubt. For the two B whom they assigned to Bythus, they themselves called, as Irenaeus testifies (lib. 1, cap. 12, n. 1), *Bythi diatheseis kai dynameis*, that is, affections and virtues. That the other Valentinians thought no differently is clearly gathered from the same Irenaeus. For he, in lib. 2, cap. 12, where he takes upon himself to prove that the thirty heretical Aeons are both deficient and redundant, proves the deficiency from the fact that Ennoea is indivisibly joined with Bythus, and therefore not diverse from him or distinct in reality. For it is impossible, he says, that the Ennoea of anyone, or Silence, should be understood separately, and being emitted outside of him, should have its own figuration, that is, form and nature. But because—a fact he well knew—it was not the opinion of the Valentinians that Ennoea should be understood separately from Bythus, nor did they say that she was emitted outside, but rather that she was united to the Propatōr; upon this answer of theirs being brought forward, he immediately infers that Ennoea should not be numbered with the remaining Aeons, those that are not united, C as she is not distinct from Bythus. Then, he asserts the necessity that every emission from a united and inseparable conjugation, and existing as one, be indistinguishable and unified, so that it is not unlike that which emitted it. And therefore, that one and the same thing occurs; just as with Bythus and Sige, so also with Nus and Aletheia, always adhering to one another: and since one cannot be understood without the other, just as water cannot be understood without humidity, nor fire without heat, nor stone without hardness; for these are united to one another, and one cannot be separated from the other, but always coexists with it. This he likewise concludes concerning the conjugation of Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia, and the remaining pairs of Aeons. These things are clear and evident. But lest the most holy martyr seem to have assumed these things gratuitously and of his own accord, he refers to the principle of the Valentinians themselves, so that he may subsequently D utterly overthrow the other part of their hypothesis, namely, that Sophia, without the intermixture of her consort Theletus, had suffered a passion and had separately, without him, generated a fruit. For he says that a female Aeon, according to them, must be on equal footing with the male, since she is as it were his affection. And since these things are so, and since these things are said by them, they again shamelessly dare to teach that the younger Aeon of the duodecad, whom they also call Sophia, without the permission of her consort, whom they call Theletus, suffered a passion, and separately, without him, generated a fruit—which they also call 'female from a female'; having progressed to such a degree of insanity that they most manifestly hold two contrary opinions concerning the same matter. For this, then, was the opinion of the Valentinians, and these things were said by them: that the female Aeon is joined to the male indivisibly, because she was as it were his affection. Which is so certain that from it Irenaeus invincibly concludes that they contradict themselves, holding two most manifestly contrary opinions concerning the same subject; on the one hand, namely, that Sophia suffered a passion without the intermixture of her spouse Theletus, and separately without him generated; on the other hand, however, that Sophia was so tightly joined with her spouse that she was his affection. Which argument, indeed, would be futile if the heretics had thought otherwise, and had distinguished the female Aeons from the males. And from this it now appears why in lib. 1, cap. 1, they said that every single Aeon was male-female, and called the primeval ogdoad by only four names, omitting the appellations of the females. For since these were the affections of the males, their properties and active virtues, it is not surprising if they did not properly come into the number which coalesces from distinct units, and each Aeon was said to be male-female, who enjoyed an active virtue, which was to him in the place of a female. Since, therefore, it is now established that the female Aeons are not distinct from the males, if we wish to speak properly and according to the truth of the matter, the Aeons cannot be more than fifteen, or if it pleases to add to them Horos, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and the Savior, no more than nineteen, in the investigation of the nature of whom alone the whole hinge of the difficulty revolves.
54. That this was the opinion regarding the Aeons for all the Valentinians is ascertained from Irenaeus, Tertullian, Theodoret, and others. For by the time of Tertullian(67), the disciples had departed so far from their master that Valentine was nowhere to be found, and only Axionicus at Antioch preserved to this day the memory of Valentine by guarding his teachings intact. Indeed, Tertullian testifies (lib. 2, cap. 16, n. 9) that it was not sufficiently clear even to all these triflers what they meant, or whither they tended, nor were they ever able to explain the idea of the convoluted matter by defining it. For with the question proposed to him, which we are now discussing, and after the various methods of explaining the emissions had been brought forward, he concludes: 'Besides these emissions, I for my part now do not know what else they can say; nor were they ever found to be knowledgeable, even when they rendered an account, although we have had a very long dispute with them about such species: yet they say only this, that each of them was emitted, and knew only him who emitted him, but was ignorant of him who is before him.' But they do not proceed with a demonstration of how they were emitted, or how such a thing can be in spiritual matters. And cap. 14, n. 8: 'These, by persuading those who are gradually accustomed to these things (so I read), to assume the aforementioned emission (of the six prior Aeons) through *pithanologia* (persuasive discourse), bring in species of the remaining emissions which are neither congruent nor consistent, from Logos…
and Zoe, saying ten Aeons were emitted, and from Anthropos and Ecclesia twelve; and having neither proof, nor testimonies, nor verisimilitude, nor anything of the kind at all in their account, they wish to be believed A in vain, and just as it happens, that Bythos and Mixis were emitted from the Aeons Logos and Zoe, etc. By these words [XXXV] he signifies that the Valentinians indeed affirm that Aeons are emitted by Aeons; but when it came to an explanation of the emissions and to defining the nature of the Aeons, they were completely stuck and could not form a sufficiently clear idea of those matters in their own minds or those of others. If we listen to Colarbasus, the Aeons of at least the first Ogdoad are nothing other than names given to the various affections, acts, and perfections of one and the same thing; just as Catholic theologians commonly say that justice, goodness, wisdom, etc., are distinguished from God not in reality, but by thought alone, and that it is one and the same God who, according to different reasonings, is called by us now just, now good, now wise, etc. When (he says in Irenaeus, lib. 1, cap. 12, n. 3) the Propatôr thought of emitting something, he was called Father; but when the things he emitted were real, this was called Alethia. When, therefore, he wished to show himself, this was called Anthropos. And those whom he had forethought, after he had emitted them, this was called Ecclesia. Anthropos spoke Logos; this is the first-begotten Son. But after Logos follows Zoe, B and thus the first octonary is completed. The supreme Father is therefore the same, who, for his diverse *energeiai* (operations) and offices, is named Father, Alethia, Anthropos, etc.; and Colarbasus therefore did not consider the Aeons of at least the first Ogdoad to be substances or persons distinct from the Father. Nor do I think Epiphanes held a different opinion, who, as we saw above, wished not only that Henoteta and Monoteta, that is, Bythos and Sige, were one, but also that they emitted, not emitted beings, Monada and Hen: that is, that the whole mystery of the prior emissions was merely the *energeia* of the emitter, not a motion of generation properly so called; the term of which was something distinguished from the emitter, not in reality, but in name only.
And adding A: more honest and more liberal is Valentinus, who dared to conceive of both simultaneously, Bythos and Sige, when he poured forth the swarm of divinity up to thirty offspring of Aeons, like an Aeonian sow. Where he not only calls thirty Aeons gods, but seems to assert them to be as distinct from one another in substance and person as the two gods of Marcion; otherwise, he could have established no comparison between the two. Therefore, we can scarcely establish anything certain in this matter on the authority of Tertullian. But Irenaeus, to whom greater faith is to be given, as being the one from whom the others drew, in lib. 1, cap. 1 et seqq., describing the opinion of Ptolemaeus, and in cap. 11 that of Valentinus, teaches that the one differs from the other only in this, that the latter fashioned two *horoi* (limits), B one between Bythos and the Aeons, the other between Pleroma and Enthymesis; while the former fashioned only one. As for the rest, regarding the nature and order of the Pleroma, he presents them as in agreement, and nowhere makes mention of the difference noted by Tertullian. I do not hide from myself that disciples added many things to the hypothesis of each, and detracted many; but with the exception of Epiphanes and Colarbasus, whom we discussed above, we read nowhere that others thought differently than they about the nature of the Aeons: and we can therefore conclude for certain that almost all of them agreed in their opinions on that matter. But what they thought about them, I shall now declare.
55. Tertullian establishes C that the difference between Ptolemaeus and Valentinus is that the latter did not distinguish the Aeons from the divinity otherwise than as notions, affections, and motions are distinguished from the thing itself; whereas the former transformed the Aeons into personal substances separated from God. "Ptolemaeus," he says, "afterwards entered upon this way, with the names and numbers of the Aeons distinguished into personal substances, but determined outside of God: which Valentinus had enclosed within the very height of divinity, as sense and affection and motion." But how little Tertullian remained consistent with himself is shown by what he writes in lib. adv. Prax., cap. 8: "Valentinus discerns and separates his *probolai* (emissions) from their author, and places them so far from him that the Aeon does not know the Father." And in lib. 1 contra Marcion, cap. 5, urging his adversary, why he would admit no more than two gods D...
56. That there was not one and the same condition for all the Aeons in the Valentinian hypothesis, from what Irenaeus reports in the first chapters of Book 1 and elsewhere passim, seems to be clearly evident. For it is most certain that *Nous*, or Monogenes, differed immensely from the other Aeons. To him alone was the supreme Father known; to all the others, however, he was invisible and incomprehensible. *Nous* alone, according to them, delighted in seeing the Father, and considering his immense magnitude, rejoiced, etc. All the remaining Aeons were in a way silently longing to see the emitter of their seed, and to contemplate her who is the root without beginning. In one word, *Nous* was *homoios te kai isos tō proballonti*, similar and equal to him who had emitted [him], and alone grasping the magnitude of the Father, and illuminated by the light of most perfect knowledge; the others standing so far from the Father that he was altogether incomprehensible to them, and they could neither see nor hear him except through Monogenes alone; thus they were involved, by their very nature, in the shadows of ignorance. The nature of *Nous* was therefore far more sublime and perfect than that of the other Aeons. And although they all agreed in the name of "Aeons," it is clear that they were different in nature. Furthermore, concerning both, as much as can be concluded from Irenaeus, the following seems to be decided.
57. That the nature of Monogenes was divine is beyond doubt. For he who is established as similar and equal to the supreme Father, and who perfectly grasps his magnitude, cannot be an inferior nature. And whatever the heretics may have thought about God the Father, unless they were entirely insane, to this *Nous* or Mind...
they must necessarily have equated his own. Indeed, are we to believe that they considered the *Nous* to be a subsistent person, distinct from the Father, yet of the same substance as Him and consubstantial with Him, as the Catholic faith teaches concerning the Son of God? There are many things that seem to suggest the opposite, and to prove that it A is a mere affection of the Father, an operation or property *anypostaton*, that is, not subsistent.
1. They attribute to this *Nous* no action or property that would argue for a person distinct from the Father. To the Logos, indeed, to Sophia, to Horos, to Christ, and to the Holy Spirit, and to the Savior, they ascribe their own activities and affections for each, which imply something personal; but to the Monogenes they ascribe none that could not be consistent with a mere property or a non-subsistent affection.
2. We have shown above that the Valentinians derived their first Ogdoad from the earlier Gnostics. But Simon Magus and Menander, the princes and leaders of the Gnostics, and their disciples Saturninus and Basilides, as they were Jews or imbued with the opinions of the Jews anticipated against the sacred mystery of the Trinity, were never truly Christians; they were never men B who confessed multiple persons in one Deity: reasoning, to be sure, in common with the mass of the Jews, that polytheism is introduced by the number of divine persons. What Simon thought about the Trinity is sufficiently explored from those things which Irenaeus reports of him in Book I, chapter 22. For that most impious man said that he was the most sublime Power, who had descended in Samaria as the Father, appeared among the Jews as the Son, and in the remaining nations had arrived as the Holy Spirit. These things demonstrate that Simon had no other thought about the Trinity than what Noetus and Sabellius subsequently thought, namely, that there is one person in God, who would assume different names for different offices. Therefore, if he considered the *Nous* or Only-Begotten to be similar to the Father and equal in nature, certainly he did not consider, nor could he consider, that it was a distinct person. Even if later Basilides, a disciple of Simon, said in Irenaeus (Book I, chapter 24, no. 4) that the unborn and unnamed Father had sent his primogenital *Nous*, whom he calls the incorporeal Power and *Nous* of the unborn Father, for the salvation of the nations; who had appeared on earth as man, and had performed virtues, and who, having escaped from the hands of those who wished to crucify him, had ascended to C him who had sent him, mocking them because he could not be held: he spoke in exactly the same sense as Sabellius later asserted that the Son was sent as a ray of divinity, who performed all those things which pertain to the administration of the Gospel and the redemption of the human race: which duty having been finished, he was assumed again into heaven; just as a ray emitted from the sun runs back again to the sun: and that in Jesus, therefore, had flowed a mere efficacy of divinity, and as it were a certain radiation, neither solid nor substantive. Such, therefore, was also the opinion of the Valentinians, who agreed with Simon concerning the first Ogdoad: nor do any arguments among Irenaeus, or Tertullian, or Epiphanius provide evidence that they thought catholically about the Trinity of persons. And on this account Athanasius, in his book *On the Salutary Advent of Christ*, makes Valentinus guilty of the error of the Patripassians: not because he ever affirmed that the Father had truly suffered, or could have affirmed it, since he acknowledged no substantial union of divinity with the human nature of Christ; but because if he said that the Son of God had suffered in any way, then it would seem to follow that the Father, who was the same person with Him, also suffered.
3. Irenaeus, in Book II, chapter 13, in order to prove that the first order of emission, which the heretics invented, can be defended by no reason, supposes as a most certain thing, and one about which no one doubted, that the *Nous* is exactly that which is the principal and supreme, and as it were the D principle and fountain of the entire sense; and that it contains the principal and first place of his affection which is within, hidden and invisible, from which sense is generated; so that from there he infers that it is altogether absurd to say that the *Nous* is emitted. For that is to make God composite and corporal: so that there is separately the God who emitted; but separately the one who is emitted, the sense. But because he well knew that the heretics would answer that the *Nous* was not emitted outside the Father, but in the Father himself; he immediately infers: in the first place, that it is even superfluous to say that he was emitted. For how was he emitted, if he was within the Father? For emission is the manifestation of that which is emitted, outside the emitter. And after this emission, even he who is from him, the Logos, will be within the Father, etc. Which argument of Irenaeus indeed manifests that these two had not been denied by the heretics: that the *Nous* contains the principal and first place of his affection which is within invisible; and that the *Nous* was not emitted outside the Father, but in the Father himself; and consequently, that the *Nous*, according to their hypothesis, is a mere affection of the Father *anypostaton*, non-subsistent. For if the heretics had denied either, if they had distinguished the *Nous* from the Father as a person, the argument of Irenaeus would be entirely vain and futile; for the whole of it, as much as there is, rests on this principle: the *Nous* is a mere affection of the Father, the *Nous* is emitted within the Father, that is, it is emitted from the Father in such a way that it is not distinguished from the Father, lest the Father be called composite: therefore he is vainly said to be emitted. For emission is the manifestation of that which is emitted, outside the emitter. Therefore, if he remains within the Father, and is not distinguished from him, he is said to be emitted in vain. Therefore, with the principle denied, the whole edifice which rests on this must necessarily collapse. And certainly, if the heretics had the same opinion about their Monogenes as the Catholics have about the only-begotten Son of God; if they had taught that he is so emitted from the Father, that only in person, not in substance, was he distinguished from Him, Irenaeus, a most sharp defender of the Catholic faith, would never have brought himself to refute it. For I suppose it would not have been displeasing that, speaking of the eternal generation of the Son of God, they had used the name of *probole* or emission: for that this was not unpleasing to the ancient Catholics is clear from Tertullian, *ad Praxean*, chap. 8, nay, from Irenaeus himself, Book II, chapter 28, no. 6. Still less could he have been displeased, because…
they did not wish the person of the Only-Begotten and of the Father to be the same: for this is the Catholic faith. Therefore, the only thing that could have given offense to Irenaeus is that while they did not distinguish the Nus or Only-Begotten from the Father either by nature or by person, they still wished for him to be emitted: which is in truth absurd. And he demonstrates that these three absurdities necessarily follow from the hypothesis of the heretics in the whole of chapter 13. First, that by abusing names, they said he was emitted, a thing which cannot be emitted even in human beings themselves, although they are composite. 2° That by saying the Nus was emitted from the Ennoia of the Father, and the Logos from the Nus, they described and applied to the Father of all the affections, passions, and intentions of the mind of human beings themselves, when it thinks and speaks with itself. For in composite human beings, since they consist of body and soul, it can be said that the Nus is generated as a sense, and the Ennoia, and the Enthymesin: all of which, when they are brought to cognition and emitted together into the word of the mind, differ from the Nus merely by appellation, persistence, augmentation, and succession, not in reality; for all these depend on the Nus, who governs them and, from himself, through the things mentioned, emits the word like a ray. But to God, who is entirely simple, entirely like and equal to Himself, entirely sense, entirely spirit, entirely thought and reason, nothing similar can be attributed, unless He be called composite and subject to change. 3° Finally, that God is separated from God, and one thing after another is supposed in Him. For since the Nus in human beings themselves is something primary and principal, from which all other things depend and are emitted; it cannot be emitted unless some other and prior and superior thing be supposed, from which it is emitted; which indeed, without manifest contradiction, cannot be posed even in human beings themselves. Whoever, therefore, imagines that God, whose nature it is to be entirely Nus or Mind, emits a Nus, supposes something prior and superior to the mind of God, and consequently to God Himself, from which it is emitted; and consequently he separates God from God, and blasphemes that one thing is emitted from another.
58. A Regarding the remaining Aeons, Logos, Anthropos, Bythios, and the others, I do not believe the same judgment can be made. Irenaeus testifies everywhere that all of them existed in the same condition, that the supreme Father was unknown and invisible to all, that all were possessed by a desire to see the Father, that all were stained with the blot of ignorance, and that all—the last one especially—were subject to various tides of perturbations. Assuredly, the holy doctor supposes it as a matter of certain heretical opinion, in Book II, chapters 13 and 16, that the Logos himself was not immune to the common vice of the others, and that he was ignorant of the Father, just like the others, so that he might thereby beat back their blasphemies. It is necessary, therefore, for anyone to confess that they were all by nature inferior to the Father, and distinct from Him by more than just hypostasis or reason. For whatever god Valentinus may have invented for himself, however crude and—if I may say so—concrete the intelligence he conceived of in his mind, he could not, however, have been B so dull and have acted with such enormous folly as to wish those whom he held to be Aeons, persons, or divine perfections to be subject to ignorance and perturbations. For the natural and innate notion of God in the minds of all suggests to everyone that everything that is either a person or a divine perfection, since it is infinite, divine, and God Himself, must banish far from itself every shadow of ignorance, perturbation, or imperfection. And yet the Valentinians contended that the Logos and the other Aeons begotten from him were true persons, not merely simple affections or properties. This, if I am not mistaken, is invincibly concluded from the actions and passions which they ascribed to them—the desire of seeing the Father, the searching for the Father, the ignorance and the perturbations—which can only belong to and be said of persons. And in the same way, one must judge the Logos, Anthropos, etc., as well as the Horus, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Savior. Now, that these were virtues subsisting of themselves and true persons follows manifesty from the actions which the heretics ascribe to them in the first chapters of the first book. Valentinus wished for Christ to have been generated by a mother still living under the shadow, and indeed to have been obscured by that same shadow; yet he asserted that he immediately returned into the Pleroma, albeit in such a way that he later procreated Jesus. These things show both how much more ignoble Christ was than the other Aeons, according to the opinion of this heresiarch, and how distinct he was from them. Why should it not be equally permissible to infer the same things about the Logos and the others from similar actions and affections? Furthermore, Irenaeus, Book II, chapter 13, n. 6, in order to prove that the Nus is in vain said by the heretics to be emitted within the Father, posits as an absurdity in their hypothesis that, once this is granted, the Logos who is from him would also be within the Father, and likewise the other C emissions of the Logos. This type of argument, for it to be valid, manifestly supposes that it is repugnant to the principles of the Valentinians that the Logos and the other Aeons emitted from him are within the Father. And in truth, in the preceding chapter, no. 8, he asserts that their Logos was *endiathetos*, that is, conceived within the mind, but was external, and so distinct from the Father that he had a proper substance different from the substance of the Father. Indeed, after having shown that Sophia, separated from her spouse Theletos, could not suffer or generate anything at all, and that Sige and Logos, Silence and the Word, could not stand together in one and the same Pleroma, forestalling the responses of his adversaries, he adds, no. 6: For if they say that they are units of conjugation—that is, if they do not distinguish the female Aeons from the male in any other way than virtues, properties, and affections from the thing to which they belong—their entire argument is dissolved. For how, since they were united, did Sophia generate the blemish without a spouse? But if, he continues, they say that as in an emission every one of the Aeons has his own proper substance; how can Sige and Logos be shown to be the same person? It was therefore so certain among the heretics that the Logos and each one of the male Aeons emitted from him had a proper substance, that Irenaeus fears lest from this he might provide an D opportunity for them to reply, and that they might hold the female Aeons to have their own proper substance as well.
However, this was contrary to their opinion. Therefore, they claimed that the Logos and other Aeons born from him were emitted outside the Father in such a way that they attributed to each of them a proper substance distinct from the substance of the Father. Furthermore, Irenaeus, in the same chapter 13, n. 9, while lashing out at the daydreams of the heretics concerning the emission of the Logos and Zoe, says: "And they did not accept such emissions according to the descent (thus I read, not 'and') of things that are; but they are appellations of those virtues that are always with God, as it is possible and fitting for men to hear and speak about God. For by the appellation of God, the sensing, and the Word, and life, and incorruptibility, and truth, and wisdom, and goodness, and all such things are understood together." A This principle, most certain to all Catholics, he opposes to the heretics; therefore they thought otherwise. They imagined, consequently, that the Logos, Truth, Life, Wisdom, etc., were not appellations of those virtues which are always with God, nor were they to be understood together by the appellation of God; but that they were distinguished from God in fact and nature, so that God could not only not be understood without them, but also that they existed at some point in reality, in that they imagined them to be older than the Aeons by infinite intervals of centuries.
59. Nor should it seem abhorrent to anyone that B the Valentinians separated the Word and Wisdom from the Mind of the Father and from the Father Himself. For *Enthymesis* coheres as indivisibly with *him who enthymizes* (the thinker) as *Logos* does with the one thinking. And yet they separated the *Enthymesis* of Sophia from her in such a way C that they attributed a completely different substance to each. Why should they not similarly have been able to tear the Logos and Sophia from the *Nous* and from the Father? If anyone says these things are most absurd, I will gladly admit it; indeed, I will say they are so absurd that no one, unless a person of deranged mind, could bring these thoughts into his soul. But we are not inquiring here what accords or conflicts with right reason, but what the dogmas of the Valentinians were. But, you say, Irenaeus, lib. 1, cap. 16, n. 6, examining how the remaining Aeons, that is, the Logos, Anthropos, and the rest, were emitted, proposes various ways of explaining the emissions. Whether, he says, united to him who emitted them, as rays from the sun; or effectibly and partitionally, that is, whether they were released and separated from the emitting principle, so that each one of them is separate and has its own configuration, just as man is from man, and beast from beast? Or according to germination, just as branches from a tree? And whether they existed of the same substance as those who emitted them, or having a substance from some other substance? And whether they were emitted at the same time, so that they were of the same time; or according to a certain order, so that some of them were older, while others were younger? And whether they were simple and uniform, and equal and similar to themselves on all sides, just as spirit and light were emitted; or composite and different, and dissimilar in their members? D By which he seems to report and embrace the opinions of some [XXXVIII]; and consequently to imply that the opinion of some was that Aeons are emitted united to him who emits, just as rays to the sun; of others, however, that they exist of the same substance as those who emitted them; of others, finally, that they are simple and uniform, and equal and similar to themselves on all sides, just as spirit and light. But besides the fact that I would not deny that a few among them, such as the Colorbasaeans, could have thought that the Aeons were emitted united to the emitter, just as rays to the sun; yet from those which Irenaeus reports and refutes, I would not believe that it could be concluded that the Valentinians used all these different methods of explaining the emissions. Indeed, the holy man does exactly what is commonly done in refuting more obscure opinions; so that they might be invincibly refuted, and all escape routes for the adversaries might be blocked, all the methods of explanation and responses which they could employ are reported; not because they truly employ them all, but so that, even if they were to employ them, their opinion might be shown to diverge from sound reason. That this was in fact the intention of Irenaeus, no one will doubt who attends to that which he subjoins in n. 9: "Besides these emissions, I truly do not understand that they can state another; but neither have they themselves ever been known to us as rendering any other certain property of emission, although we have had a very long dispute with them about such kinds of species." He does not say that these are the emissions which they approve, but that these are all the possible emissions which they can state, and that beyond these they do not understand that they can state another; nor has he ever heard from them any other method of emitting. But the Valentinians were so far from laying claim to all these emissions that they could hardly stand on any certain hypothesis, and satisfy the questions proposed to them on that matter. Irenaeus treats this clearly in the following words: "This, however, they say: that each of them was emitted, and that he alone knew who emitted him, while ignorant of him who is before him." They no longer, however, proceed with a demonstration, how they were emitted, or how such a thing can happen in spiritual matters. And therefore, for solving the difficulties proposed to them, they were so poorly prepared to explain their sentiment that, by the testimony of our author, lib. III, cap. 15, n. 2: "If any of those who heard them would ask for solutions, or contradict them, them they would affirm were of the middle parts, that is, of the Psychics, as if he did not grasp the truth and did not have the seed from his mother concerning the higher things, and they would say absolutely nothing to him." Which shows them to be men speaking rashly whatever comes to their lips, but unable to explain it or fortify it with certain reasons.
60. However, as far as can be conjectured from their words and from the hypothesis accepted among all (for from these alone, whether we like it or not, the opinion must be formed), the Logos and the other later Aeons were substances
independent in themselves, but far inferior to the supreme God, we can conclude. One might not wrongly say of the angelic order that it was difficult to prove the mind of these heretics in this matter. For, first, the Marcosians, who differed almost nothing from the rest of the Valentinians, save that, to add value to their trifles, they referred everything in the Pythagorean manner to a farrago of symbolic letters and elements, conclude concerning the generation of the Aeons handed down under these enigmas: *Those sounds exist, which form A the unoriginated and unbegotten Aeon, and these are the forms which the Lord has called angels, which continuously behold the face of the Father.* They say that these are the sounds which form (express) the unsubstantial and unbegotten Aeon, and these are the forms which the Lord called angels, who without intermission behold the face of the Father. Nothing is clearer: sounds, that is, Aeons, are the angels of whom Christ (Matt. XVIII, 10) said: *Their angels in heaven always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.* But that this is to be understood not of all the Aeons, but only of the later ones, is evident from the very broad distinction they wished to exist between the first tetrad and the remaining Aeons. For they said that the names of the holy of holies, which cannot be uttered, but are understood by the Son alone—which the Father alone knows what they are—belong to it (lib. 1, cap. 15, n. 1). These things demonstrate by what interval the first tetrad surpassed the second, and the decade and dodecad; and that these, therefore, were the only ones that could be of the angelic order. 2° We have already said more than once that the Valentinians received the first principles and rudiments of their doctrine, and as Irenaeus says, the beginnings of the emissions, from Simon Magus, Menander, Saturninus, and other Gnostic leaders. But that they immediately subjected Angels, Archangels, Virtues, Powers, etc., to the first and highest Aeons, Irenaeus, Epiphanius, Theodoret, and others clearly teach. For Simon and Menander B wished the angels to have been emitted from the Ennoia of the Father (beyond doubt with the intervention of Nus or Monogenes, whom in reality they did not distinguish from Him). Nor was the opinion of Saturninus any different, who, as Irenaeus reports, similarly to Menander, presented one Father, unknown to all, who made the Angels, Archangels, Virtues, and Powers, undoubtedly through the Ennoia and Nus. It is certain, however, and has been proven by us above, that those ancient Gnostics, just like the Valentinians, derived them from Nus or Anthropos, or the Logos; from the first tetrad, the second. Therefore, while they assert that the angels were immediately emitted from the Ennoia and Nus, they explain their mind clearly enough, if I am not mistaken, and signify what they understood by the name of the later Aeons, namely, Angels, Archangels, Powers, etc. Basilides alone, in order to appear to have discovered something deeper and more plausible, extended the opinion of his doctrine immensely, or, as Epiphanius speaks, borrowed the arguments of his error from Saturninus and Simon Magus, which he promised to treat in another manner and with greater C pomp. For he removed the angels somewhat further from Nus and Ennoia, with the intervention, namely, of the Logos, Phronesis, Sophia, and Dynamis: whom indeed he did not appear to distinguish from the unbegotten Father in reality, but only by virtue and reason. But he agreed with these masters in this, that he immediately subjected the angels to those first and highest Aeons. For he asserted that Virtues, and Princes, and Angels, whom he called the first, were born from Dynamis and Sophia. It seems, therefore, that the only difference between the Valentinians and the Gnostics was this: that the latter brought forth Angels of the first order from the supreme Aeons in a confused manner, without any certain order or number; the former, however, arranged them orderly, and under certain conjugations, in a decade and dodecad, as if divided into ranks.
61. I said "Angels of the first order": for there was a multiplicity D among them; nor is it to be thought that these Angels, whom they wished to be emitted from the highest Aeons, were of the same order and dignity as those to whom they ascribed the fabrication of this world. And although some descended step by step from others, nevertheless, a maximum interval was placed between the former and the latter. This is manifest from the hypothesis of Saturninus, who, although he said that there was one Father who made the Angels, Archangels, Virtues, and Powers, nevertheless asserted that the world and all things in it were not made by these, but by seven other, certain angels. It is even clearer from Basilides, who called those Virtues, and Princes, and Angels, whom he contended were emitted from Sophia and Dynamis, the first, from which he said other and yet other Princes and Angels were made: but those who later contain the heaven, which also is seen by us, constructed all things that are in the world. So likewise Carpocrates and his followers said that the world, and the things that are in it, were made by the unbegotten Father through angels much inferior. Indeed, those inferior Angels were constituted outside the Pleroma; others lived inside the Pleroma; and these were disposed into many orders. For some, more excellent in dignity and order, were called Aeons (by which name Synesius, cited by us above in his Hymns, also repeatedly endowed the angels), as if secondary gods, and approaching closer to divinity than the rest; others of an inferior order were destined as satellites to the Savior. Of the angels, also, who lived outside the Pleroma, there was not one order, but a manifold one; one was more sublime and dignified than another; for some were Angels, others Archangels, whose duties and, as it were, prefectures were all various: yet so that they were subject to the higher Angels of the Pleroma, whose ministers they were. For in the creation of created things the Savior had particularly labored through the Euthymesin, so that He might make all things in honor of the Aeons and express the image of the invisible Pleroma in all things, as Irenaeus reports (lib. 1, cap. 5). Therefore, just as the Demiurge had angels subject to himself, so Nus had those subject to himself.
A Likewise, the Logos was an Angel who, as the word and interpreter of the divine mind, revealed the divine oracles to others, and through them—especially through the 'Savior'—saw to it that they were manifested to men. He gathered together the reasons and ideas of all things, which the divine mind contains, through Bythios, Ageratos, etc., and derived them into the Savior according to a certain proportion and norm, as if into a pattern, so that the latter might endeavor to have all things fashioned according to this exemplar through Enthymesis and the Demiurge. And for that reason they said that the Savior was the receptacle of the higher Christ and of the entire Plerosity, and was generated from all things; wherefore he was called the Beneplacitum, since the entire Pleroma felt well-pleased to glorify the Father through him. Others, however, said he was generated from only the ten Aeons which were emitted by the Logos and Zoe, and for this reason they called him Logos and Zoe, as preserving the names of his parents.
B There was also the Angel of Man and the Church, who, being a leader to spiritual men, or the Church dwelling on earth, instituted and informed it through the Aeons subject to him and through the Savior according to the pattern of the higher Church, or, as Ptolemaeus used to say, ἐφανέρωσε καὶ ἐγέννησε, brought it into light and generated it. Hence they also called this lower Church, or the spiritual men, the image of the higher Church. Hence also some of them wished the Savior to have been generated from the twelve Aeons, those who were made by Anthropos and the Church; and for this reason he confessed himself the Son of man, as a descendant (ἀπόγονον, grandson) of Anthropos. The Marcosians, however, asserted that he was generated by the Virtues emanated from Anthropos and the Church, the Logos and Zoe, and that it was he who was manifested on earth, Jesus. And they said that the angel Gabriel fulfilled the place of the Logos, the Holy Spirit that of Zoe, and the power of the Most High that of Anthropos; while the Virgin represented the place of the Church. And thus, they said, he who is according to the dispensation (ὁ κατ' οἰκονομίαν) is generated among him (παρ' αὐτῷ, from him, Anthropos, if I am not mistaken) as man, whom the Father of all, passing through the womb, chose through the Word for his own recognition—that is, so that through him he might become known to men. By these things, those points I just mentioned are wonderfully confirmed: that the lower angels, in the heretics' opinion, ministered to the higher Pleroma, and that Jesus was chosen by the Word as the interpreter of the divine mind, but brought to light by Anthropos as the leader and prefect C of the Church, so that through the Savior he might reveal the divine oracles to men, and found and institute the lower Church.
62. But those who engage in such trifles regarding these lower Aeons are merely putting together fragments, partly dissected miserably from the Scriptures and tradition, and partly badly translated and collected hither from the philosophizings of the Platonists, and most ineptly stitched together. For instance, they had read in the Scriptures that all things were made through the Word of God, that God the Father is invisible, and that no one has ever seen God; they had heard from several ancient Fathers of the Church that God the Father had always remained invisible and had never been manifested to men by himself, but through his Word, which repeatedly offered itself to be seen under the same visible appearance, and spoke, so that by seeing and hearing it they might gradually grow accustomed to it: they had seen in the same Scriptures, passim, that the word of the Lord came to the prophets and spoke in them; yet that angels often spoke in God's name and person, appeared to men under a human shape, disposed and ordered the law, took care of the Church, that our Christ is called the Angel of the New Testament, and other things of this kind. All of which they ineptly stitching together, they have woven the fable I mentioned; that the Logos and Anthropos are angels emitted from the mind of God to pour forth divine oracles and present themselves to be seen by men, and that by a certain succession of other Aeons D they generated the Savior, the Angel of the Testament, who would illuminate Jesus, the founder of the Church, and descend into him, in whom consequently the Logos and Anthropos would be expressed.
63. But if the Christian religion and Scripture furnished the form, Platonic dogmas furnished the substance for the whole fable. Besides the one πρεσβυτάτην αἰτίαν, an older and higher cause, as Iamblichus says, which rises above all gods, the Platonists distinguished a multiple genealogy of gods; some who are in this world, others who are in the intelligible realm. To speak here only of the latter, Proclus divides them into νοητούς, intelligible, and νοερούς, intellectual, or those endowed with the faculty of understanding. Similar is that series of gods of the Chaldeans, according to Damascius: the πηγαί, fountains, and the νοεροί, intellectual. Concerning these, even if they discoursed—as is their custom—very obscurely and allegorically, yet these things, as far as I can grasp, seem capable of being elicited from their discourses. Those gods whom they call πηγὰς and νοητούς are the very ideas of the divine mind, and the supreme exemplars of all things recondite in the inmost bosom of God's intellect; they are indeed multiple if you look at the boundary, namely the things which they express and exhibit; but one and most simple Being, if you compare them to God, from whom they are neither distinguished in reality nor separated. That this is the genuine doctrine of the Platonists, we have demonstrated above. But if it should cast doubt on anyone that divine ideas are called gods, Proclus will remove this, writing in lib. 1 Platonic. theol., cap. 24, in many places that Plato [calls] those which partake of the gods by the same names, and names them gods: Πολλαχοῦ δὲ ὁ Πλάτων καὶ τὰ μετέχοντα τῶν θεῶν, τοῖς αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασιν ἀποτέμνει, καὶ θεοὺς ἐπονομάζει. From which he concludes that one thing is God simply, another through union, another through participation, another through connection, another through likeness. Ληπτέον τοίνυν ἐκ τούτων ἁπάντων, ὅτι Θεὸς, ὁ μέν ἐστιν ἁπλῶς Θεὸς, ὁ δὲ καθ' ἕνωσιν, ὁ δὲ κατὰ μέθεξιν, ὁ δὲ κατὰ συνα
συναφὴν, ἄλλος δὲ κατὰ ὁμοίωσιν. A Moreover, the divine ideas were called fountains and principles of all things, and as it were archetypes, which God imitates by acting; but the *noêtoi* gods, since they are spiritual affections of the divine intellect, can be grasped by the intelligence of the mind alone. The *noeroi* gods, however, that is, the intellectual ones, are those superior angels and are nearer to God, possessing the faculty of understanding, or those heavenly minds to whom it has been given to contemplate and express those divine exemplars according to the strength of their intelligence, and to direct their works according to their standard. And that the Platonists thought in this way is shown clearly enough by Proclus, who in Lib. III, cap. 21, after *ta prôtista, kai hypselotata genê tôn theôn*, the first and highest genera of the gods, namely the *noêtoi*, places immediately *ta deutera, kai angelikên echonta taxin*, the second genera of the gods, and those having an angelic order. Therefore, the *noeroi* gods, who held the second rank in the order of the gods of the intelligible world, are the superior angels themselves. Jamblichus also agrees, who in Sect. II, cap. 2, 3 and following, places the *noêtoi* gods in the first rank. Nearest to these approach the archangels, whom the angels follow. And that the archangels hold a degree of divinity, he implies not obscurely in cap. 7, where he discusses the species of gods, archangels, and angels, while they offer themselves to be seen. "The gods," he says, "have gods or angels standing beside them, the archangels take to themselves other angels, etc." There is no doubt, therefore, that those gods whom the presiding gods have are archangels, whom he establishes immediately after the *noêtoi* gods. But Ficinus, already cited by us, demonstrates the whole matter most clearly in his *Comment. in Conviv.*, c. 3, where, distinguishing a threefold world according to the opinion of Plato, he says: "First of all is God, the author of the universe; whom we call the Good itself. He first creates the angelic mind; then the soul of this world, as Plato wishes; lastly the body of the world. The angelic mind is the first world made by God," etc. So certain it is that the intelligible world of the Platonists contains nothing else except the first cause, pregnant with all forms and species, and the angels. That this is the very same hypothesis of the Valentinians and of all the Gnostics is manifestly clear. For what else is that first *presbytate aitia*, that superior and more ancient cause, which stands above all gods, than the Valentinian Proarche, Propator, and Bythus, existing before in invisible and ineffable heights, invisible, sempiternal, unbegotten, dwelling in silence and in much quiet B over immense intervals of ages, before he emitted the Aeons? What else are the *noêtoi* gods, the intelligible ideas of the fatherly mind, the forms and exemplars according to whose pattern he fashioned all things, than Ennoia, Nus, and Truth, the root of all; Nus, I say, the Father and beginning of all, in whom the supreme Father pre-established all things seminally? What else are the *noeroi* gods of the Platonists, the intellectual ones, the contemplators and imitators of the divine ideas, than the archangels or superior angels, whom he derives gradually one from another, and to whom, as Plato wishes in the *Timaeus*, God mandates that they set about the fabrication of inferior things in imitation of himself; than those second-rank gods of the heretics, whom Nus wishes to bring into the intellect and desire of the search for their own Father, and who, attentive to the ideas of the divine Mind, wishing themselves also to clarify the Father from their own essence, emit emissions, namely other Aeons, whom he directs in acting by a certain succession and series, and by whose ministry they take care that the supreme exemplars of things are expressed in the founding of things? There is such an affinity between both hypotheses that, as it cannot be greater, it seems that they are absolutely the same. The only difference is this, that the one is entirely adapted to the profane theology of the Gentiles; but the other, by the help of the Scriptures, has been turned slightly toward Christian theology, but so defiled by these trifles that you might doubt which is to be preferred to which. I fear that if the affinity of either system were weighed more broadly and part by part, which could easily be done, the speech would run on too long: let it suffice to have opened the path for the learned reader. Meanwhile, from what has been said, if I am not mistaken, he will conclude that not only were the later Aeons of the Valentinians the very same as the archangels of the Platonists, but also that that invisible and spiritual Pleroma flowed from the intelligible world of Plato as an example from an archetype. Now it is time to turn the discourse to the second part of the Valentinian system, namely the myth of Achamoth, or those things which happened C outside the Pleroma, along with an appendix concerning the passion relegated to it, which the Valentinians called the one miserably lying in shadow and void, void of form, figure, and light, where it fermented out of necessity. But after the superior Christ came to its aid, and bathed it with a certain scent of immortality, form having been instilled into it according to substance, its condition was certainly better, so that it began to pour forth the rude and undigested mass of all created things, and to separate it a little; not yet, however, freed from every calamity, until the Savior was sent to it, who instilled into it the form of knowledge and freed it from the surge of perturbations. It is not difficult to detect the Platonic soul of the world hidden under these enigmas. Plato, for the sake of that which he studied with industry, according to his allegorical and symbolic manner of philosophizing, supposed this whole universe to be *zôon empsychon kai ennoun*, a living and intelligent animal, compounded of body and soul. By the name of the body of the universe, he understands *to horaton kai hapton*, the matter which can be seen and touched. But what he and his disciples were discussing with such magnificent apparatus of words about the soul of the world was referred to that which is read written in Gen. 1, 2: "The Spirit of God was moving over the waters"; that is, over the formless and undigested matter of the whole universe, in order to inspire it with form, motion, life, and fecundity. Indeed, by the spirit of the universe, Plato means the universal spirit, the soul of the world, wisdom, virtue, or the efficien-
- A t cause of God, which moves, directs, orders, and disposes all things. [XLI] For he himself describes it thus in Book X of the *Laws*, p. 896: “The soul is that which turns itself, and the first origin and motion of things that are, and that have been, and that will be, and of all things contrary to these; since it clearly appeared that it is the cause of all change and motion to all.” It is the same thing, both soul and first origin, and the motion of those things which are, which have been, and which will be, and of all things contrary to these again: since it is the cause to all of change and of universal motion. And a little later he calls it the soul “administering and inhabiting in all things that are moved everywhere,” the soul ruling and inhabiting in all those things that are moved. From which he concludes that the soul existed before the body, and that the body was born second and after the soul, since the latter is ruled and moved by the former; for that which is the cause of motion to another must be prior to it.
65. Furthermore, the Platonists believed that this soul of the world was not perfect from the start, nor absolute in all its parts. For, as Plato says in the *Timaeus*, when the architect of the world wished to make the world an intellectual animal, and the intellect could not be present to the body without a medium, he joined the intellect to the soul, and the soul to the body, and thus infused it into the world as a medium, and thence diffused it through all things. First, therefore, God created the soul, not yet fully perfect until he endowed it with intellect. But Marsilio Ficino explains the whole matter better and more aptly for our purpose in Chapter 5 of his *Commentary on Plato’s Symposium*, where he unfolds the opinion of the Platonists. B In the beginning, he says, God creates the substance of that mind, which we also call essence. At that first moment of its creation, it is formless and obscure. Because, however, it is born from God, it turns with an immense appetite toward God, its principle. Having turned to God, it is illuminated by His rays. By the radiance of His rays, its appetite is enkindled. Once enkindled, the appetite remains totally fixed on God; by being fixed, it is formed; for God, who can do all things, fashions in the mind fixed upon Him the natures of things to be created. Therefore, in it, as it were, those things which we perceive in bodies themselves are painted, if I may so speak. From these, the globes of the heavens and the elements, the stars, the natures of vapors, the forms of stones, metals, plants, and animals are brought forth. We do not doubt, he says, that the species of all such things, conceived by the fostering care of God in that supreme mind, are ideas, etc. What is here handed down under the cover of allegory could have been explained much more clearly and simply, leaving aside these digressions. Namely: what they call the unformed substance of the soul is chaos, or matter, which God created formless and rude, devoid of certain figures and motions; which, however, by laws established by Him, required that it be equipped with certain forms, motions, and figures. Into this He first infused a motive power, which, gradually exerting itself, stirred those motions, with God directing, by which the parts of matter are thus suited, composed, and ordered to one another, so that the forms of bodies proceed toward the image and norm of the supreme exemplar. C This is the very thing Plato wished to express in the *Timaeus* when he writes that the world is composed of intellect and necessity, or an erratic cause, that is, of the order of forms themselves and of matter. For he calls the soul of the world, or the motive force—which God impressed upon matter like a certain seed—and matter itself: the former, because it is an image of divine intelligence; the latter, however, because it is introduced not for its own sake, but as if it were a necessary final form for these or those things, to be received successively in such a way that it is not held by anything, but is of its own nature indifferent to all things. We can even, says Ficino in *Timaeus* cap. 39, under the name of necessity, understand not matter alone, but also D the soul itself in the first sign of its procession, considered as formless, after the likeness of matter. For both, as much the soul as matter, in the first sign of their origin are indeed formless, but are easily formable through the gift of intelligence: whence also onto the soul itself are infused the reasons and seeds of natural forms, and onto matter, its qualities and forms.
66. Now, there is no one who does not perceive that the fable of Achamoth is more than shadowed in these Platonic tenets. For there is such an affinity between the *Enthymesis* of the superior Sophia—separated from the superior Pleroma with passion, effervescing in the places of shadow and vacuity by necessity, having been made outside the light and outside the Pleroma, formless and without shape, because it apprehended nothing (as the Valentinians describe it)—and the soul of the world such as we have just described according to the opinion of the Platonists, that a greater one could hardly exist. Both emanate from the wisdom and power of God. Both first lie hidden in chaos, or matter that is obscure, dark, and incondite, formless and without shape, as if fermenting, and gradually exerting their power: both apprehend nothing, and into both is first put form according to substance only, but not according to science; because, although in the beginning there was a certain motion, yet because it was incondite, vague, if I may so speak, inordinate and indeterminate, it exhibited no certain shape or form: both finally received the rays of divine light, because the motive and *spermatic* power impressed upon matter by God had to be excited so that it might burst forth into act. The things which the Valentinians add—that the *Enthymesis*, already perfumed with some scent of immortality, was agitated by various storms of perturbations, from which the various elements of the world proceeded, until, having turned to Christ, it received the Savior, decorated with the power of the Father and the Aeons, who might free it from perturbations, and, having separated these from it, might mix, condense, and change it from incorporeal affection into incorporeal matter—are ineptitudes, sold with that apparatus of words which might move the ignorant; by which it is hinted only that chaos, having been at that time first agitated by perturbed motions, was at last, with God ordering, determined to those species, reasons, and modes of motions from which the parts...
being repugnant to one another yet coalescing, might become fit A to bring forth into light the various forms of things. We have explained in the notes to Book I, chap. 4, n. 5, why that incorporeal matter is termed so by both the Valentinians and the Platonists. But it will not be tedious to relate that which Laertius records on page 208 while expounding the opinion of Plato, because it wonderfully confirms what we have said thus far. Indeed, Plato used to say that matter is unformed and infinite, from which the composites arise. He states that, being at some time agitated without order, it was gathered by God into one place, having judged order to be better than disorder. Being unformed and infinite, it is that from which concretions are made. He says that when this was being moved at one time rashly and without order, it was gathered by God into one place, because he judged that order was superior to rashness. Compare, if you wish, Plato in the *Timaeus*. The Ophites and Sethians also had the intention of covering this same thing under other masks of words, when they said that Sophia, descending into the waters, had wantonly moved them and taken a body from them: for all things, they claimed, came running and adhered to the moisture of her light, and other figments of delirious men of that kind, which, among the Valentinians, do not differ in mode of foolishness, but in the thing itself. In this, truly, both proved themselves more stupid than the Platonists, in that these latter do not seem to have distinguished the soul of the world from God himself as the principle, and the world as the subject, whereas the former thus distinguished and separated their *Enthymesis* from both, so that they transformed it into a certain substance subsisting by itself, and a secondary kind of Deity. B
67. The story of Achamoth is followed by the origin, constitution, and ordering of this observable world, which Irenaeus exposes more fully, and which we have described above from his own compendium. The sum of it comes back to this: that first of all, the Demiurge was fashioned by Achamoth from animal substance, and that all other things were fashioned in sequence, both celestial and terrestrial, and animal, and those destitute of sense and life—Angels, Archangels, the Cosmocrator or the devil, and demons—and the seven heavens, which they desired to be endowed with intelligence, and even they themselves to be Angels, and finally Man, concreted from a triple substance. Yet, blind and unaware of what he was doing, the Demiurge attempted these great things: but Mother Achamoth directed them secretly, and the Savior directed her, so that all things might be brought to the image of the invisible Pleroma. The seat of the Demiurge was established above the seventh heaven; C the Mother occupied the higher hearth—namely, the middle space which exists between the Pleroma and the visible world. In all these, the dogmas of the Platonists and other ancient philosophers shine forth once again, clearer than the noon-day light. Unable to extricate themselves from the entanglements of that most troublesome question, "whence is evil?", many of the older philosophers, as Plutarch testifies in *Isis and Osiris*, thought that there were two gods, *as if they were rival craftsmen* (καθάπερ ἀντιτέχνους), and as if dedicated to contrary arts: one a fabricator of good things, the other a fabricator of evils. Zoroaster called the one Oromazes, and this demon Arimanius; the one born from the purest light, the other from darkness and ignorance; and he wanted good gods to be generated from the first, and evil gods from the second, and that between these there existed another intermediate god by the name of Mithras. D Those most impure pits were revisited by the Marcionites, and the early Gnostics, that they might thence excite a double principle of things—the one good, the other evil—and the one perpetually laying snares for and opposing the other. The Valentinians, truly, that they might decline the odium of so portentous a dogma, used names more honestly, as Irenaeus speaks; for they did not openly profess God to be the effector of evils: but in reality they were swallowing a cruder poison, as the same Irenaeus shows, when they asserted that the creator of things was generated from that stain which was emitted outside the Pleroma—namely, from the rash and immoderately bold action of Sophia—and that he was the fruit of ignorance, that is, of the blind perturbations of Achamoth. For to introduce a bad God as the author of evil, and a blind and ignorant God, seems to be of the same wickedness; or rather, this latter is more grave. For this blind God is not so by himself, but is fashioned by Achamoth, with the Savior directing, whom, in turn, both the supreme Father and the remaining Aeons rule and inspire; and therefore ignorance, that fodder and root of all evils, and the evils themselves which pullulate from it, are refunded back into the supreme God. And thus the pestiferous virus, which the Valentinians attempt to soften, having been drawn from the corrupt pits of the philosophers, breaks out again.
68. That the Platonists were so senseless as to invent two gods, one the author of good things, the other the author of evils, we do not read: rather, they constantly asserted that any other cause of evils, besides God, must be sought. Nevertheless, it is true that while they entrusted the province of creating and administering inferior things to the angels, they later provided an occasion of offense to others. Plato seems to suggest this when, in the *Timaeus*, he introduces God exhorting his own sons—that is, the inferior angels—that in imitation of himself they might undertake the mixing of things beneath the moon, and subject all things to man, and infuse his rational soul, received from him, into the frail body. Pondering and at the same time refuting which, Augustine, in *De civitate Dei*, book XII, chap. 26, writes that Plato wished the lesser gods, made by the supreme God, to be the effectors of the other animals, so that they might receive the immortal part from him, but they themselves might weave the mortal part. Therefore, he did not wish them to be the creators of our souls, but of our bodies. But the mind of Plato the teacher was expressed more clearly by Proclus, book V, chap. 29, where he thus distinguishes: that the world has need of God the Father, *as the subsistence of all things* (ὡς ὑποστάτου τῶν ὅλων), and *begetter* (καὶ γεννήτορος), as the founder by whom it is supported and the progenitor: *for to beget, and to bring forth, and to provide, is proper to gods, insofar as they are gods* (τὸ δὲ γεννᾶν, καὶ παράγειν, καὶ τὸ προνοεῖν, θεῶν ἐστιν ἴδιον, καθόσον εἰσὶ θεοί). Truly, he...
considers the primary cause to be God the Father, insofar as he contains the archetypal forms of things, by which the gods are directed; but that the generative, and substantial, and providential power for others pertains especially to the gods themselves, he attributes to the gods. Sallust the philosopher agrees in his book *On the Gods and the World*, chap. 6: Of the gods, he says, some are mundane, others are supermundane. “Of the gods, some are cosmic, others are supercosmic. I call cosmic those gods who make the world. Of the supercosmic ones, some make the essences of the gods, others the mind, others the souls.” I call them mundane, he says, who build the world. But of the supermundane, some produce the substances of the gods, others the mind, others the souls. And therefore, he proceeds, they are distinguished in a threefold order. Of the mundane ones, these build the world, others animate the same, others adapt what is compacted from various and diverse things, others guard what has been adapted. That indeed those gods, both mundane and supermundane, are far inferior to the first God, the preceding chapter teaches, where he says that the first cause is one (τὴν πρώτην αἰτίαν μίαν εἶναι). “For over every multitude,” he says, “presides a monad, which surpasses all things in power and goodness; and for this reason it is necessary for all things to participate in it.” For over the entire multitude prevails unity, surpassing all things in power and goodness; and for this reason it is necessary that it be communicated to all. And the opinion of Iamblichus is the same, sect. v, chap. 9. Then, in chap. 14, he divides the gods thus: that some are material, others immaterial. He calls them material who, although they are mostly separable from matter, encompass and adorn it with their immaterial power, and are present to it, and rule it, and exist together with it. He calls them immaterial who are entirely free from matter and far excel it. Moreover, he maintains that all administration of human affairs pertains to the material gods, and not to the immaterial (unless insofar as these embrace the material gods and their powers in themselves, as one and [XLIII] primary cause), because this administration is particular, and has admixed a certain kind of anxiety, and is not entirely segregated from bodies, nor is it able to grasp a liquid and imperturbable government. Wherefore, in sect. 11, he assigns to the different kinds and orders of inferior gods various stations, duties, and functions in the administration of the world, just as Sallust does. So likewise Ficinus, in his *Critias* of Plato, divides the gods according to the opinion of the Platonists into supercelestial, celestial, and subcelestial; he attributes the most ample providence to the first, a less ample one to the second, and to the last he assigns that which is reduced to narrower limits, as they are those who preside over certain regions of the earth and kinds of things by divine distribution: just as some celestial beings are set over some parts of the heaven, others over others, and spheres and stars are set over them. From all these things it is clearly certain that Plato and his disciples did not think that the first principle created created things from itself; but that which was established in the second place was the angels, to wit. Hence Numenius, in Eusebius, lib. XI *Præp. evangel.*, cap. 18, attributes these words to Plato: “O men, he whom you deem to be the first God, the maker of the world, is not the first, but God is still superior to him.” This oracle agrees with that utterance:
Πάντα γὰρ ἐξετέλεσσε Πατὴρ καὶ τῷ παρέδωκε Δευτέρῳ, ὃν πρῶτον κληίζετ᾽ ἅπαν γένος ἀνδρῶν.
For the Father accomplished all things and delivered them to the Second, whom all the race of men calls the first God.
Expounding this, Psellus says that the second Mind is called by men the first God, because they do not know the supreme Father.
B 69. From these fountains flowed the common opinion of the Gnostics, that the duty of both creating and ruling the world had been imposed upon angels. Nor did the Valentinians think otherwise. For although they sometimes called the Demiurge God and Father, in reality they confined him within the limits of angelic nature. They say that the Demiurge is himself also an angel, similar to God, says Irenaeus lib. I, cap. 5, n. 2, and lib. II, cap. 8, n. 3. And no less openly he writes in lib. IV, c. 1, n. 1, that this was the mindset of the Valentinians: that the Demiurge is naturally neither God nor Father, but is called so only in word, because he rules over the creation. This must also be said of the *Enthymesis* or Achamoth. And hence it is that the holy doctor, refuting these ravings of the heretics in book II, in no way distinguishes between the Valentinians and the rest of the Gnostics; but he judged it enough to prove that the world was not founded by angels or archangels, but by one and the same God and Father. However, it was a common starting point for both philosophers and heretics to assert these things: that the supreme God and Father was and remained unknown and invisible, and did not manifest himself by the creation of things; some judging that it did not befit the majesty of God that he should lower himself to undertake the care of inferior things by himself; others fearing that the evils by which the world is shaken might be refunded into him, if he himself ruled and created it. From this it flowed spontaneously that the regimen and creation of the world were the work and effect of someone other than God the Father: and since neither knew any other person or intelligent nature beyond this one than the angelic, they wished to rest upon this mass of work. What disastrous consequences arise from this, we shall report a little later.
70. Meanwhile, that the Valentinians used to say this inferior world was made as an image of the superior, or Pleroma, is another chapter of Platonic doctrine which they transferred into their own hypothesis. For it is most well known, and already stated by us more than once, that the invisible or ideal world of Plato contains the ideas and forms of all things conceived by the mind of God; which indeed the supreme Father engraves upon the minds of the angels, the makers, and presents them as if to their eyes, so that after the example of that archetype, they might form this world.
And for this reason Tertullian wrote in his book *De anima*, c. 17, that the heretical seeds of the Gnostics and Valentinians shine forth in the Platonic notions. Furthermore, the angels and A archangels, whom the heretics' Demiurge creates, are angels or worldly gods, whom the Platonists maintained were begotten by the superior beings, in a manifold order, series, and succession. For just as they subjected archangels to the gods, so they subjected angels to the archangels, and heroes to the angels, and souls to the heroes. They likewise held that the spheres of the seven planets and other stars were animated and endowed with intellect, and indeed were even angels, just as the Valentinians did; not, to be sure, by way of an informing form, but an assisting one, as they say in the schools; or, as the Valentinians explained it, not in substance, but in virtue; insofar as there is an angel present to each heaven and star, who rules and moderates its motion, as the Platonists explain throughout. And you may consider these angels presiding over the seven planetary spheres to be the seven *Cosmocratores*, concerning whom Damascius says: although he himself would have the order of *Cosmocratores* be twofold; for some govern the higher, or celestial, world, others the lower: which Iamblichus also implies in sect. 1, where he distinguishes between two kinds of Archons, some higher, some lower. It seems that the *Cosmocrator* or devil of the Valentinians, and the whole swarm of evil demons, which they called spiritual wickedness, and which they asserted was created by the Demiurge from the sadness of Achamoth, were of this number. But why they would wish there to be this difference B between the Demiurge and the *Cosmocrator*, namely, that the latter understood the things that are above him, while the former was ignorant of them, no one will easily say. They provide this reason, that the Demiurge is animal, but the devil is spiritual wickedness; but this confuses the matter rather than explaining it. For I do not see how the *Cosmocrator* could proceed from an animal Demiurge, who, if not by nature, at least in intelligence, is superior, and how a spiritual angel could be created from the sadness of the Mother Achamoth, but only an animal one from her conversion; nor does the Platonic philosophy provide anything with which I might solve this knot. Only this much can be gathered from Porphyry in his *Epistle to Anebo*, that good demons differ from bad ones in this, that the former are souls joined to spirit, but surpassing the spirit in reason, and because they have a body composed in harmonic proportion, they are inclined by their nature to benefits; the latter, however, are souls joined to spirit, but yielding to it in reason, and having been allotted a body composed inharmoniously and ill-affected, they are carried by the impulse of anger and desires, by which they are incited to inflict all manner of evils. Indeed, he wished this to be the difference between gods and demons, whether good or bad, or between superior and inferior angels, that the former were impassible and pure intelligence, while the others were participants of mind and animal. For already in the schools of the Platonists that opinion prevailed C that a twofold genus of demons, namely, of the good and of the evil, was to be established. Pythagoras and other ancients felt otherwise, for whom it is proven by those poems commonly ascribed to Pythagoras that no other genus of demons than the ἁγνῶν, the pure and beneficent, was acknowledged. But when Plato in the *Timaeus* and elsewhere had either introduced this belief or confirmed it as newly born, that the souls of heroes—that is, of those men who had excelled others in beneficence and liberality toward their country, as well as in justice and piety—were to be relegated to the order of demons; hence, flattery and fear quickly opened a way for themselves to swell the crowd of demons. For whatever powerful men had lived in fear of their people, or had by any other means made a name for themselves among their own, although they had led an impure and flagitious life, they easily found flatterers when they were dead, who would place them in the number of heroes and demons, and decree sacred rites for them, and ignorant and timid men, who would celebrate the memory of those thus placed with divine honors. But since that ridiculous and rather easy apotheosis, by which sacred rites were sometimes decreed to wicked mortals, provided Christians with invincible arguments against pagan religion; in order to decline the force and weight of these, philosophers were forced to establish a twofold genus of demons and heroes, the one beneficent, the other malefic and suggesting evil; rites were performed for the former for the sake of honor and religion, and that they might assist; for the latter, however, for the sake of caution and providence, that they might not harm. Thus, in general, Jamblichus D and others explain the matter. But although he does not deny that certain demons are by nature evil and wicked, yet he does not explain explicitly enough why they are so constituted by nature; but as to the other part of the question—that is, that all demons are corporeal and animal—he admits that this seems so to most philosophers, and that this is the more common opinion, though not proven to himself. And in truth, Plutarch teaches in his book *De placitis philosophorum* that this was the opinion of many philosophers. It is not our business to settle the dispute; but it suffices to observe that it was our design that from this opinion of the philosophers, the Demiurge of the Valentinians, being animal, and perhaps also that swarm of spiritual wickedness, had flowed.
71. Nor were the heretics in this alone in assenting to those ancient philosophers, because they wished their Demiurge and the other inferior angels to be animal, but also in that they assigned them a seat in the "mediety," as they used to say. For it is placed beyond all shadow of doubt that Plato felt the same concerning demons. He provides this reason for this assertion in the *Symposium*; that since superior gods and humans differ greatly in nature, demons must be inserted between them, who might fill the middle place and join those who are distant; and this they do not only by nature but also by the function of their office, in-
ons must be inserted between them, who might fill the middle place and join those who are distant; and this they do not only by nature but also by the function of their office, in interpreting and transferring human things to the gods, and divine things to men; namely, the warnings and precepts of the gods to us, and our prayers and sacrifices to them. From this it followed that they were the authors of all oracles and prophecies, which each one inspired according to his own mode, affection, and nature. To this opinion of Plato all the Academics in subsequent centuries always assented, as Plutarch in his book *On the Defect of Oracles*, Apuleius in his book *On the God of Socrates*, Iamblichus, Proclus, and others. Thus, in like manner, the Valentinians associated human things with divine. Through the animal Demiurge, placed in the middle, commerce was established between men and their spiritual mother, Achamoth, who was placed above the Demiurge. But since she sat in the midst between the Demiurge and the Pleroma, by this buckle of interposition the Pleroma was joined with the Demiurge. B And of this dogma the corollary was the same as that of the Platonists, namely, that all prophecies should be referred as received either through the Mother, or the Demiurge, or the Savior through Jesus. For the heretics blathered that Christ Jesus, the angel and mediator of the New Testament, who came to restore the commerce between God and men that had been interrupted by sins, was clothed with a threefold substance: the spiritual, brought down from the higher Pleroma; the animal, from the Demiurge; and the corporeal, received from the elements of the world: so that in this way he was neither God (thus they blasphemed), nor pure man, but standing in the middle between both, and as another Demiurge, he might connect the lowest to the highest.
72. But I slip gradually toward the other part of the world's constitution, the fabrication of man, which it would be a marvel if those blatherers had not also twisted to fit Platonic tenets. They maintained that there was a triple man in one man: the material or earthy; the psychic or animal, breathed in by the Demiurge; and the spiritual, that is, springing from the spiritual seed which Achamoth had brought forth from the contemplation of the Angels, which, through the Demiurge—as through a channel, though he was unaware of it—the mother of all sprinkled together with his own insufflation. And indeed, that they should assert that the earthy man was formed first from slime, then from flesh, sounds nothing unusual, and was the common opinion of all philosophers. Slime is, as it were, the first material of the human body, which God so shaped that it might become flesh, into which He breathed life. Thus Moses C (Gen. II, 7) describes the creation of man, and this description, interwoven with myths as was their custom, they strove to imitate. But that they feigned the soul to be divided into two parts, as it were, of which one was animal and inferior, and the other spiritual and far more noble in both origin and nature, they did after the Platonists. Man, says Iamblichus, "has two souls, which the sacred writings of Mercury himself show. One is from the first intelligible, which also participates in the power of the craftsman." [Greek text omitted]. The other, however, is bestowed upon us by the circuit of the celestial worlds, into which descends the theoptic soul. The soul that comes to us from the worlds also obeys the movements of the worlds; but that which is present, derived intelligibly from the intelligible, super-eminently resides in the motion of the Generator. He wishes, therefore, that the former soul does not serve fate, because, as he says in the following chapter, it has in itself the proper principle by which it can restore itself to the intelligible, and flee from things made, and be connected with that which is, and which is divine. But the latter soul, he says, is subject to fate. Thus Iamblichus, in whose words and sense that double soul of the Valentinians clearly shines forth. For that which he says is from the first intelligible is the one they boasted was spiritual, having fallen from the superior Pleroma through the Savior and his angels. But that which he asserts was placed in us from the circuit of the celestial worlds is the one they intended had been breathed in by the animal Demiurge, who sits above the seventh sphere, and into which that superior one insinuated itself. They differ only in this among themselves, that Iamblichus, following Plato and with the rest of the Platonists, affirmed that the superior soul had long pre-existed the bodies, already perfect, and had been infused into them as if already adult; but the Valentinians opined that it was like a certain seed, D unformed, and without shape, and imperfect, inserted into the animal soul, so that it might there receive perfection and formation. Although, however, they do not dissent so much that concord cannot be restored. For although the Platonists wished that souls already adult should be cast into bodies, yet, having been drunk from the cup of oblivion, they were so weighed down by the burden of the bodies that they would not grow up again except by the slow shaking off of these entanglements, and by the aid of reason they would gradually recover the traces of their former thoughts. For which cause they also contended that this soul, at first unformed, would in the passage of time become perfect. This also was agreed upon between both, that they felt the animal soul was bound by the chains of fate, but the spiritual was free from these; which, expressing in other terms, but certainly in the same sense, the Valentinians said that some souls were good by nature, but others were evil by nature. And that these were indeed good, which become capable of the seed; but others, evil by nature, never take that seed, to which, consequently, every access into the Pleroma, destined solely for the reception of spiritual beings, was of necessity closed. Thus did those most wicked men induce the semblance of Christianity into the inventions of the Platonists. Namely, that which they had read in the writings of the apostles, that the animal man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God; that some men are animal, not having the Spirit; that the spiritual judges all things; that true Christians have received the first fruits of the Spirit, and are spiritual, etc., was the occasion for transferring the Platonic ravings hither.
A regarding the soul, I do not delay; it flows spontaneously from the different condition and origin of each. For each one desires its own principle and pants after it: and therefore, since one flows from the Pleroma and another from the Medietas (Middle Region), it is necessary that the one should return to be gathered back into the Pleroma with the Angels of the Savior, and the other into the Medietas with the Demiurge. Nor are these things unknown to the Platonists. For Iamblichus, sect. 1, cap. 2, thinks that certain souls, through the kindness of the gods and the illumination infused by them, often ascend higher and are raised to a higher order, namely the angelic. As often as this happens, he says, they are no longer contained within the limits of souls, but turn out to be entirely angelic souls, and perfectly arrive at a most pure life. Nor do I delay regarding the lot of the hylic man, or the material body. They believed, as a necessary consequence, along with the Sadducees and not a few other Gentile philosophers, that it went to corruption and was never to be raised; for it is not fitting that what takes its origin from stain and ignorance, from the perturbations of the Enthymesis, and from the ignorance of the Demiurge, should be a partaker of life.
73. We have already said what they felt about Christ, and by what blasphemies they subverted the sacred mystery of the Incarnation. They laid this as a foundation—which is most true and has been affirmed more than once by the Holy Fathers—that Christ assumed those things which He was to save. But, by a base abuse of this, they concluded that He was composed of a fourfold substance, so that He might preserve the pattern of the first and supernal quaternary: from the spiritual, which was from Achamoth; from the animal, which was from the Demiurge; from that which He assumed B for the sake of the economy, or the procuring of human salvation—corporeal, it is true, so as to affect the senses, but so refined and pure from more gross matter, and prepared with such skillful art, that it had nothing in common with it, and was in a way spiritual in comparison to it; and finally from the supernal Savior, who descended into Him in the guise of a dove when He came to baptism. It was necessary that He should receive the spiritual substance from Achamoth, since He was to bring its perfection and increase—suffocated hitherto by the vices budding forth on every side, especially by ignorance—to the spiritual seed, and to diffuse into men a new light hitherto invisible, namely the knowledge of the supreme Father. He also had to assume the animal substance, and that which could be seen and touched; because, since He was to impart salvation to animal men—to whom, as being destitute of the spiritual seed or knowledge, the only way open to it is through faith and good works—it was necessary that He should become like them and visible, so that He might become their leader and teacher. To all these, there had to be added the Savior from above, who would inform the mind of Jesus Christ with the mysteries of the Pleroma; and he was to be joined to Him by a kind of union which is far removed from the hypostatic, and denotes nothing more than merely moral; and that He might exempt Jesus from the lot of common human beings (if indeed he is to be called a man, whose body was etherial and phantastical rather than human), A inasmuch as he was neither truly God, but a lower Angel far inferior to God, nor hypostatically united to Jesus Christ. For they did not want the Son of God Himself to have assumed flesh; and if they had said so, they could not have spoken in any sense other than that of Sabellius and Paul of Samosata. But Jesus Christ could not claim for Himself anything hylic or material; because, since this is a fruit of stain and ignorance, an unfortunate offspring of a disturbed and not self-possessed Enthymesis, and the work of a blind and ignorant Demiurge, it can grasp no salvation, but must necessarily yield to the corruption whence it took its beginning. These, indeed, were the necessary consequences of that most impious dogma: 1. That Christ received nothing from Mary, but passed through her just as water through a pipe. For since He took nothing hylic, but bore a body far different from the hylic or material one which is common to all men, He could borrow nothing from her, nor be formed in her womb, from which nothing but a hylic body and one similar to it could be generated. 2. That the Savior could suffer nothing; since He was not truly united to Christ Jesus, nor was He by His own nature passible and visible. But they said that when Jesus was set before Pilate, He immediately flew back into the Pleroma. 3. That not even that seed which was from the Mother suffered, insofar as it was distinct from the animal soul, which alone is capable of passion, and was spiritual and invisible even to the Demiurge himself. Thus they say. 4. That only the animal substance suffered, and that which Christ had assumed for the sake of the economy, C [XLVI] in skillful workmanship fashioned. Thus these profane men subverted and utterly destroyed the whole economy of the mysteries of the incarnation of the Word.
74. If the life of the dogma had not corresponded, it would have been necessary for the most impious dogmas to be matched by the most wicked morals. He convicts them of insanity, in that they impudently boasted themselves to be perfect, spiritual, fecundated by spiritual seed, the seeds of election, and Gnostics, or those who know; who possessed the grace received from the Mother as by an hereditary right, so that it would always increase and never decrease or flow away; while they contemptuously called Catholics psychical and animal, who received grace as a loan and in uncertain use, so that it could be rightly taken away from them. What this grace of the spirituals is, that spiritual seed by which they were more proudly puffed up, we have said. It is the knowledge of the Supreme Father, invisible and unknown until the times of the New Testament, and the knowledge of the supernal mysteries of the Pleroma, given to men through the advent of Christ, by which alone, with all other things spurned and omitted, they thought salvation could be obtained. They granted this only to the men of their own sect, denying it to all others, as those whose capacity that D gnosis surpassed; in whom, therefore, they believed that only faith had a place—an implicit faith, of course, and one to be applied to the sectaries of their own discipline. This was the seminary and origin of all the vices, crimes, and most shameful wickedness with which the life of abandoned men was defiled. Hence, as
Irenaeus rightly observes, A fearlessly engaging in all things that are forbidden, they practiced them, thinking that they could not be defiled by the mire of any vices. For if the supreme God was unknown until the times of the New Testament, if He did not Himself take care of this world but committed its administration to inferior angels: then it follows that prophecies, like other things, originated from the angels, and the Law was given on Mount Sinai. But if the Law was given by the animal Demiurge, the creator of the animal man, then the spiritual soul is not bound by it, and consequently, it does not sin by neglecting the commands of the Law, because it is of a higher origin and not subject to the Demiurge's rule. If the knowledge of God, hitherto unknown but now revealing Himself, brings salvation to those into whom it has been infused, or, as they used to say, introduces them into the Pleroma; then there will be no need for works, especially since the Savior, by His advent, liberated souls from the necessity of those works which the law given by the angels enjoined. If works are necessary for some, they can only help those who lack spiritual knowledge; for the others, they are completely useless. If the spiritual seed is effective for salvation, and once possessed, can never perish but always increases, grows, and is perfected: then whatever they do to whom it has been sown, and whatever kind of crimes they commit, they will never fall from grace and salvation. Finally, if only those things attain salvation which Christ has assumed, and He assumed nothing material: then there is nothing belonging to the bodies, and no resurrection is to be hoped for them. So tightly do these consequences cohere with their principles that the Valentinians themselves would not blush to openly profess them as their own.
75. I think that no one henceforward, unless he has more audaciously cast off the yoke of the authority of all the ancients, will dream of absolving the Valentinians from those portents of errors with which they are accused both by Irenaeus, a witness surpassing all exception, and by the other Fathers. Indeed, every right-minded person will be astonished that some moderns have proceeded so far in their rashness as to try to excuse, by vain quibbles, those whom the ancients prove guilty by certain reasoning and invincible testimonies, by setting aside the authority of contemporary and eyewitness witnesses; and, lest the lost men appear insane, they do not fear to intimate that the holy Fathers were insanely mistaken. Let those kind interpreters of the heretics attend, I pray, to how many and how great were the monsters of errors and foolish ravings which these latter centuries have produced in England, Germany, Holland, and indeed a few years ago in France, that sick-brained center of fanatics; to which, however, there was no lack of followers, neither few in number nor the lowest in rank and learning: and it will no longer seem to exceed belief that some men of previous centuries should have been so insane as the Fathers relate. But leaving aside these contentions, which we have discussed so far, they clearly demonstrate that the Valentinians were pure and unadulterated heathens, who, by introducing a feigned form of Christianity under the guise of Gentile philosophies, were worse even than the heathens themselves, and had so crushed the moral precepts themselves, which nature inscribed on the hearts of mortals, that, having broken the barriers, they cast men down into the manner of living of beasts. The Christian religion turns entirely and most especially upon the sacred mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, as upon two hinges, and relies upon the word of God, both written and handed down. B These foundations, however, they so shook that they completely demolished them. Concerning the Trinity of persons, they not only held impious views in that they transformed the Mind, Truth, Word, Life, Horos, Christ, and Savior—diverse names by which are expressed the properties of one and the same self-subsistent Son of God—into as many Aeons; but they also either confused those Aeons with the Father Himself, as Noetus, Sabellius, and Paul of Samosata did, or separated them so far from the Father as to wish them to be of a far inferior nature, considering them to be no more than angels, which was the subsequent blasphemy of Arius. Nor did it fare better with the Holy Spirit, who was himself degraded in rank and relegated to the lot of the angels. And thus one and the same heresy knew how to mix at once those poisons which Sabellius and Arius subsequently drank in parts. How miserably the faith of the Incarnation mystery was violated by them, is manifest from what has been said a little while ago. C There, God neither assumed flesh, nor was born, nor suffered in the flesh, nor did the Word become flesh; nor was Christ a true man, but a phantom of a man and a vain appearance that would deceive the senses. Although the wicked hand of Valentinus spared the books and words of the Scriptures, yet to have denied that they were inspired by the supreme Parent of all, to have converted them by foul twisting into fables, to have substituted the trifles of delirious men for the sacred tradition of the apostles, and to have basely rejected the Word of God—this was to treat them as naught. I shall say nothing about the freedom of the will and the necessity of good works: the one was at least in large part constrained by fatal necessity; the other, as vile refuse, was relegated to those on whom the mother Achamoth had not sown the spiritual seed: so that in the Scriptures nothing remained unviolated, but both dogmas and precepts fell completely.
76. This is what we had to say about the Valentinian heresy. If we have been a little longer in explaining it, we have done so following the example of Irenaeus, who pursued this heresy in a far more copious and accurate style than all the rest [XLVII]. For since, as he asserts more than once, the filth and impurities of all heretics have flowed into it as into a certain sink, or, to use his words, it is the *anakephalaiosis*, the recapitulation of all; once it is rightly exposed, the others will be able to cause little or no trouble. Wherefore, in this also we shall imitate Irenaeus, in that we shall touch upon them more lightly, observing only those things which
are proper to each, and not common to others. Postponing the order of time, we shall preserve for the reader only that which our author has preserved, consulting for his convenience.
ARTICLE II. OF THE DISCIPLES OF VALENTINUS.
77. Irenaeus notes everywhere that the praise of belonging to the one true and Catholic Church of Christ is unique to the Church, whereas discordant opinions, shamefully fighting among themselves in faith, are properly to be attributed to all heretics. Although this is most true regarding all heretics, it shines nowhere more clearly than where the discourse is about the Gnostics and the Valentinians. They differ, he says, from one another in both doctrine and tradition; and those of them who are acknowledged as more recent are anxious to invent something new day by day, and to bring forth fruit which no one else has ever conceived. And elsewhere: From these who have been mentioned, already many offshoots of many heresies have been made, because many of them—nay, all of them—wish to be teachers, and depart indeed from the heresy in which they were; but by composing one dogma from one opinion and another from a different one, they insist on teaching novelties, declaring themselves the inventors of whatever opinion they have constructed. Indeed, they were all grasping at the glory of a new discovery; and, that they might make a name for themselves among their own, some labored to pile old errors upon new ones, others to adorn them with at least new and unusual names. For with the same freedom with which Valentinus had departed from his masters, the ancient Gnostics, in many things, did his own disciples—Secundus, Epiphanes, Ptolemaeus, Colorbasus, Marcus, and others—depart from him in many things; so that in the age of Tertullian, the pure Valentinianism, such as Valentinus himself had devised, was flourishing nowhere in the world except at Antioch, under Axionicus. All the others, having adopted a new mask, even with the name of the master obliterated, each imposed his own name upon his own heresy.
I. Of Secundus.
78. The first whom Irenaeus, Epiphanius, Theodoret, Tertullian, or whoever else is the author of the *Addition* which is read at the end of the book *De praescriptionibus*, Augustine, and others mention next after Valentinus, is Secundus. Who he was, what his character was, or in what place he was born, no one of the ancients has written. We learn only from Epiphanius that he was a contemporary of Valentinus, and that he was so eager to surpass his master with some new invention that the difference between the two lay almost entirely in words. For he taught everything the same as Valentinus, but filled the ears of the deranged with a more grandiose sound: "He explains all things according to Valentinus, A but he sounded forth a more profound noise into the ears of those who had been thunderstruck." Augustine adds that the Secundians are said to differ from the Valentinians in that they added deeds of shame; perhaps because they preached the base and obscene doctrine of Valentinus more impudently, and performed it in act, having cast aside all shame. For they were not the authors of the principles, but had received these from Valentinus, who, if he stood out as better than his disciples, was perhaps so only because he was slightly more modest. And Damascenus thinks this, writing in his book *On Heresies*: that the Secundians had agreed with Valentinus, except that they surpassed him greatly and widely in teaching and recounting obscenity.
79. Secondly, Irenaeus and Epiphanius attribute to him that he distinguished the first octad into a right and a left quaternion, light and darkness. These are, indeed, B new and enigmatic words, but not a new error. For by these he signified, as we have shown above, that the first octad is composed from a double quaternion; the one of odd numbers, which he called "right" and "fortunate" according to the mind of the Pythagoreans, and the other of even numbers, which he called "left" and "unfortunate." This is the same thing that the Ptolemaeans called masculine and feminine quaternions. C But in one point he departed from these and from Valentinus: that he did not derive the Virtue, which fell through its own recklessness, from the thirty Aeons, but from their fruits. He feigned, namely, that a certain angel of an inferior order existed, lest the superior Pleroma be besmirched by any taint.
II. Of Epiphanes.
80. Irenaeus places Epiphanius next after Secundus; for concerning him, and not another, are to be understood the words which we read in the old Latin interpretation of Irenaeus: "But some other one, who is also a famous teacher of theirs," etc. Although those words are indeed missing D from Epiphanius, Pearson rightly conjectures that it should read thus: "Ἄλλος δέ τις, ὁ καὶ Ἐπιφανής, διδάσκαλος αὐτῶν." Where the unskilled interpreter, having blundered miserably, provided a stumbling block for Tertullian; for he also wrote, "of a more famous teacher among them." For neither, noting that Irenaeus was alluding to the name of the heretic with the word ἑπιφανὴς, made an appellative noun out of it; they wrongly converted the definite words of Irenaeus into a vague and indefinite discourse, from which the name of no author could be gathered. That Irenaeus will treat of Epiphanes here, however, is made certain by Epiphanius, who...
reviews him next; to whom those things which the Latin Irenaeus and Tertullian attribute to that illustrious or rather infamous teacher, correspond primarily. Epiphanes was contemporary with Secundus, and consequently succeeded him, not so much in time as in doctrine. He was the son of Carpocrates, that infamous heresiarch of whom we shall speak later, and of a mother named Alexandria; he was Alexandrian on his father's side, but Cephallenian on his mother's. Having been diligently trained in the liberal arts by his father, he made such progress in Platonic philosophy under his guidance that everyone admired the man’s exquisite erudition. These were indeed excellent gifts, but he miserably converted them to his own destruction as well as that of others: for, having abused them, he amplified the nefarious dogmas of his father, and disseminated them more audaciously; then he joined himself and his followers to Secundus, and expressed his virus in himself—that is, the talkativeness with which he was imbued by a certain poisonous pestilence. I omit that Epiphanius says that a certain Isidorus (whether a philosopher or a Valentinian heretic is doubtful, but Clement of Alexandria affirms him to have been the son of Basilides) was the author of the error in his written *Exhortations*, and that Secundus and Epiphanes had translated these *Exhortations* for the use of their own sect. For the fragment which Clement of Alexandria cites from those *Exhortations* in *Stromateis*, lib. III, p. 427, seems to conflict with what Epiphanes teaches concerning marriage in the same Clement. Be that as it may, Epiphanes was not permitted to live long, lest he should be the ruin of many. For when he had reached his seventeenth year, he was cut off by an untimely death; in what year, is not certain. But since Theodoret writes that he confirmed his heresy under the emperor Hadrian, he could scarcely have outlived that prince. Wherefore he must have died either at the end of his reign or during the beginning of Antoninus Pius. Yet the evil was not entirely compressed by his death. For, while living, he had so fascinated his fellow-countrymen—the Cephallenians, on his mother's side—both by his prestidigitation and his erudition, that after he died they paid him divine honors, built a temple, altars, and a museum in the city of Same, offered sacrifices and libations to him as to a God every new moon, gave feasts, and sang hymns to him. This practice still obtained in the time of Epiphanius. He wrote, among other things, a book *On Justice*, from which Clement of Alexandria transcribed certain fragments which bear witness to the man's insane impiety and lust. In it, he says that the justice of God is a certain *koinonia met' isotētos*, a certain communion with equality: and from this he infers that all things, even wives themselves, ought to be common among men: which monstrosity of error he indeed received from Plato, who, if he did not think so in reality, at least used words in book V of *The Republic* that persuaded many he had thought so. What the consequences of this dogma were among wicked men, and with what sordid crimes they saw fit to pollute their synaxes of dogs and men, anyone can understand.
81. Regarding the opinion of Epiphanes on the Aeons, we have explained it above. It differed from that of Valentinus and the Ptolemaeans only in that he expressed the first quaternion with different names. For whereas they called them Bythos and Sige, Nous and Aletheia, he called them Monoteta and Henoteta, Monas and Hen. These are just as many terms familiar to the Platonists when the discourse was on the Divinity, as we have seen. And for this reason he is called by Clement of Alexandria the author of *monadical* knowledge, namely from that Monas or Monoteta which he had introduced into his own school from the school of the Platonists. We have set forth the rest while discussing the hypothesis of the Valentinians.
III. Of the disciples of Epiphanes.
82. Just as Epiphanes sought to obscure the old enigmas of his masters with new ones, so his disciples were even more eager to cast darkness over the words of their teacher. These are they, on the authority of Epiphanius, whose trifles Irenaeus refers to in book I, ch. 11, n. 5, under the silent name of "the babblers." They compounded a first tetrad from Proarche, Anennoetos, Arrhetos, and Aoratos. They blathered that from Proarche there was emitted in the first and fifth place Arche, from Anennoetos in the second and sixth place Acataleptos, from Arrhetos in the third and seventh place Anonomastos, and from Aoratos in the fourth and eighth place Agennetos. We have attempted in the notes to this location to unravel these tangles (if indeed any sense can underlie such ravings). Thus, it pleased those masters of deception to obscure the first ogdoad with names grander than others were accustomed to use; and, so that they might not seem to be retracing the footsteps of other Gnostics, they sought to disturb Bythos (whom some said was without a spouse, others said was male and female, others said was neither male nor female) and Sige from their original seat, so that they might place them in the position that the rest assigned to Bythos and Mixis. But the battle was in words, while the hypothesis always remained the same.
IV. Of Ptolemy and his disciples.
83. Epiphanes is succeeded by Ptolemy, concerning whose age, homeland, and behavior nothing certain can be determined. The same Epiphanius indicates that he was a disciple of Secundus and Epiphanes, but much more learned than both; regarding the rest, there is the deepest silence among the ancients. Dodwell, in *Dissertation IV on Irenaeus*, § 28 ff., proposes many conjectures on these matters, but they find faith among hardly anyone but credulous readers. This much at least we can conclude from Irenaeus, that Ptolemy, even if he perhaps saw Valentinus, was nevertheless younger than him. For he boasted that he had seen a certain Theodades, a disciple of the apostles, as we have said: but Irenaeus, lib. II, cap. 32, n. 5, affirms that Ptolemy never saw the apostles, nay, not even a trace of an apostle...
A in those called by them Bythos, he devised and granted. Tertullian apprehended the mind of Irenaeus much better, who refers what Irenaeus narrates in this chapter 12 to the emenders of Ptolemy. For there arose, he says in chapter 33, from his school, disciples who were above their master, who imputed a dual marriage to their Bythos, etc. Yet the disciples differed from their master only in this, that he attributed to his Bythos one consort, namely Ennoea or thought; these attributed a double one, thought and will: so that Bythos produced Nous and Aletheia by the equally supporting operation of both, the will corresponding to Nous, the thought to Aletheia: whereas, on the contrary, Ptolemy held that Bythos had emitted Nous and Aletheia through one thought. And this opinion of the disciples seemed more consistent with reason. For since both agreed in this, that the consorts of the Aeons were merely their affections, as we have proved above; it seemed more equitable that thought and will together, affections not distinct from Bythos, should flow into the production of Nous and Aletheia, than thought alone, omitting the will. In other respects, the disciples did not differ from the master. Here, indeed, he thought a little differently than Valentinus concerning the Boundary, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and Jesus. But we have expounded the opinion of both above when dealing with Valentinus, and since we dwelt long enough there on explaining the hypothesis of Ptolemy more clearly, nothing remains to be said here. He wrote a letter to a certain little woman named Flora, which Epiphanius transcribed, in which he denies that the Mosaic Law, or Pentateuch, was sanctioned by the supreme God and Father, but holds that it should be distributed in a threefold manner. For some things, he says, pertain to God himself (the creator of the world) and his sanctions: but others are to be attributed to Moses, not indeed insofar as anything was decreed by God through his intervention; but insofar as he constituted some things of his own accord and by his own will: finally, others were authored by the elders who were among the people, and they were the first to dare to insert certain private precepts. Thus that wily man, clinging to the principles of Valentinus and other Gnostics, who imagined for themselves a supreme God as if torpid in idleness, who, having laid aside the solicitude of governing the world, entrusted all care of it to angels. From which it followed that the old law did not pertain to him at all. But more on these things above.
V. Concerning Colorbasus. 84. Colorbasus precedes the Ptolemaic school. For although he [Irenaeus] is silent regarding his name, that the opinions reported in chapter 12, n. 3, of those who are thought to be the wiser among them (that is, the Ptolemaics) actually pertain to him is clear from Epiphanius, Haer. 35, from which we can conclude that Colorbasus was a disciple of Ptolemy; but whether he was also a disciple of Marcus is a slightly greater difficulty. Epiphanius indeed asserts this, writing that Colorbasus had scraped together his follies from the prestige of Marcus, and had been his first
companion and participant in his doctrines; afterwards, as if a head had been severed from a serpent’s body, he became the ruin of many. The same is gathered from Augustine and Damascene in their books *De hæresibus*, and Theodoret, book 1, chapter 12. But I fear that Epiphanius, having been deceived himself in the first instance, has led others into error with him. For Irenæus, to whom greater trust is owed, makes Colorbasus not a student of Marcus, but of Ptolemy, as we saw just now, and in recounting the Valentinian disciples in order, he places Marcus after Colorbasus. Indeed, in chapter 14, when he is about to expound the hypothesis of Marcus and, beginning from the head, repeats the matter, he signifies—if I am not mistaken—in sufficiently clear words that Colorbasus was the guide of this path for him. For he says that Marcus called the womb and recipient of the Colorbasian Silence himself alone, saying: *οὕτως Μάρκος μήτραν καὶ ἐκδοχεῖον τῆς Κολορβάσου Σιγῆς (sic legendum) εἰσηγήσατο αὐτὸν μονώτατον γεγονέναι λέγων*. B Marcus, however, could not have been called the womb and recipient of the Colorbasian Silence unless he had been taught the mysteries of the Valentinians by Colorbasus, which, receiving form and growth in him as in a womb, were thence brought forth into the light. Nor must it be omitted that the same Irenæus, having already recounted the heresy of Colorbasus and his disciples, turns his speech to Marcus, adding: "But another certain one of those who are among them, boasting that he is the corrector of his master, Marcus is his name," etc. Certainly, those words, "of those who are among them," cannot seem to refer to any others than those of whom he had just spoken C—the Colorbasians, namely. And who was that master whose corrector Marcus boasted to be, if not Colorbasus, of whom he had just spoken? For these things cannot refer to Ptolemy, whose heresy he described long before, and between whom and Marcus he inserted many other leaders of the Valentinian school. Not otherwise did Tertullian understand Irenæus in regard to Colorbasus (*Adv. Valent.*, ch. 4). He says, namely, that Valentinus, having obtained the seed of some ancient opinion, had delineated the way for Colorbasus; that Ptolemy subsequently entered it; and that he finally deduced from it certain side-paths: Heracleon, and Secundus, and the magician Marcus. He affirms that Valentinus delineated the way for Colorbasus, as Dodwell aptly observes; D that Ptolemy entered that same way; and that from that same way Marcus deduced a path—the allegory of the way being everywhere continued. Although he seems here to make Colorbasus prior to Ptolemy and Secundus—in which I think he has slipped and departed from Irenæus—in this, however, he agrees with him: that he indicates Marcus was posterior to Colorbasus. Nor do I tarry on the fact that in the book *De præscriptione*, ch. 50, he is placed before him. For the learned agree that that *Catalogue of Heretics*, which is read at the end of the book *De præscriptione*, is not the genuine offspring of Tertullian.
85. Colorbasus explained the Ogdoad in a different way. While others wanted the first eight Æons to be emitted one after another by degrees, so that the latter tetrad was entirely separated from the former and of an inferior nature, he indeed judged that the first ogdoad was not emitted by degrees, or *καθ᾽ ὑπόβασιν*, but all at once and into one, *ὁμοῦ καὶ εἰς ἕνα*: so that there were not many Æons, but one and the same who, for various operations and properties, was bestowed with various names and appellations—of the Father, namely, when he thought to emit something; of Truth, where those things which he emitted were true; of Man, when he wished to show himself, etc. He also asserted that Man and the Church were not produced from Logos and Zoe, as with other Valentinians, but rather that Logos and Zoe were produced from Man and the Church, as the ancient Gnostics held. Concerning the Savior, however, there was not one, but a manifold opinion among the Colorbasians. Some said he was composed of the symbols of all the Æons, and for that reason they thought he was called *εὐδόκητον* in the Gospel, when, namely, the Father, addressing the Son, says: *Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ Υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός, ἐν ᾧ εὐδόκησα*, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," because, namely, it pleased him to illustrate the glory of the Father through him to the entire Pleroma. Others handed down that he was produced from the ten Æons alone, which the Word and Life brought into the light; so that they might thus explain why in the Gospel he is sometimes called Word and Life, because he retains the ancestral names. Others preferred that he was the offspring produced for the sake of strengthening the Pleroma by Christ and the Holy Spirit; and for that reason he is called by the paternal name, Christ. Others contended that he arose from those twelve Æons which existed from Man and the Church: and hence it happens that he confesses himself to be the Son of man, as if the grandson of man. Although, says Tertullian (*adv. Valent.*, last chapter), after Irenæus, there are those who have conceived that he should be called the Son of man from elsewhere, because, namely, the supreme Father was sometimes called by the name of man, when he made himself manifest to men. Besides those errors which Irenæus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius attribute to the Colorbasians, Augustine adds in his book *De hæresibus* that Colorbasus affirmed that the life and generation of all men consist in the seven stars, the seven planets, namely—a notion he had drawn from the pits of the Platonists. For they said that the animal soul comes to us from the revolution of the celestial worlds, and that, bound by fatal necessity, it obeys their motions, as we proved above from Iamblichus.
VI. Of Marcus the Magician
86. From the school of Colorbasus came Marcus, about to heap the ravings of those old masters with new absurdities. Jerome writes that he descended from the stock of the Gnostic Basilides; which, if true, shows he was not a degenerate offspring of an ancestral impiety. He was most famous among the Valentinians, and no one of his school...
A was second to him either in prolixity or in the number of his disciples, or indeed was his superior in the thousand arts of doing harm. And for this reason, Irenæus described the craft and crimes of both heresies with special care and in a more expansive style. While refuting and exposing the errors and vices of Marcus, he appears to suppose that he was still alive at that time. Moreover, the holy doctor was writing under the pontificate of Eleutherius, in the year 180 after the birth of Christ, more or less. Since the sect of the Marcosians had already been propagated far and wide, and had even invaded the West itself—a result that could not have come about except over the span of many years—whoever traces its origins back to about the year 160, or even a little earlier, toward the final years of Valentinus’s life, does not conjecture poorly. Since Marcus was most skilled in magical prestidigitation, according to the custom of all the Gnostics who had received that foul species of knowledge from their Platonic masters—in whose eyes it was most familiar and held in highest honor under the specious name of theurgy, as may be seen in Porphyry, Iamblichus, and others—it is a marvel how many men and women he induced into fraud and turned toward himself, as if he were a man endowed with a singular kind of knowledge and power. It would have been little if that reprobate had laid snares only for the minds of women and not also for their bodies. Irenæus suspects that Marcus possessed a certain demon as a familiar or assistant, by whose operation he was seen both to deliver certain prophecies himself and also to cause the miserably seduced women to prophesy. For he expended his zeal and effort principally upon women, especially those who were elegantly dressed and abounded in wealth. Irenæus describes at length, in chapter 12 and following, the man’s nefarious arts, his tricks, and his horrific formulas of words, by which he drove the simpler-hearted ones to insanity B and to the same blasphemy as his own. But we must not omit this species of his crime: that he not only arrogated to himself a priesthood, without having received any laying on of hands according to the laws of the Church, but also allowed women to engage in the trade of prostituted modesty through the most extreme wickedness. For since even the most depraved heretics of those times were well aware that there could be no Christian society without a true sacrifice, Marcus sought to simulate this in some way. For, pretending to consecrate cups mixed with wine (undoubtedly white wine), by uttering solemn words of invocation, he managed to make them appear red and purple, so that it might be thought that supernal Grace was distilling its own blood into that cup. He later ordered this to be done by the women as well. From this, anyone who has been willing to put aside, for a little while, the opinions of Calvinists and Lutherans, will easily observe how deeply it was fixed in the minds of those who, even if only in appearance, professed the Christian name, that the sacred gifts, once consecrated, were converted into the true Body and Blood of Christ—by that kind of conversion which is now called transubstantiation—so that those who were devoid of legitimate authority and power, and who knew well that they could not effect such a conversion, used tricks to persuade themselves that they were performing it. Come, I ask you, suppose Marcus and his followers recognized nothing in the Eucharist but a mere figure of Christ’s body and blood, with the substance of bread and wine always remaining the same after consecration; why would he have labored so painstakingly to change the white wine into a red color, and to show and proclaim the blood dripping from above, if that had not been the opinion of all Christians at the time, namely, that after the consecration is performed, the wine does not remain, but is converted into true blood? Anyone would have shuddered at a crime hitherto unheard of in ecclesiastical assemblies; and there would have been no one who would not have shrunk from staining their lips with that liquid as an impostor C who claimed it was blood, and who boasted that it was truly blood; yet it is clear from Irenæus that there was no one who did not desire to taste of it. So fixed in the minds of all Christians was the belief that the Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of Christ. The magician fooled his followers with another kind of trick. For after the sacrilegious consecration attempted by the women, he himself would bring forth another cup, far larger than the one that had been consecrated by the seduced woman, and by pouring from that smaller one, consecrated by the woman, into the one he himself was to bring forth, having uttered certain ridiculous words, he would manage to make the large cup fill up from the small one, even to the point that it overflowed.
87. Marcus and his disciples, D learned in these same roguish arts, traveled round the world and infected it with a foul confluence of vices and errors. The evil seems to have begun in Asia: for that deacon, whose wife Marcus debauched while seeking to repay the man’s hospitality, was an Asian. Thence it was spread into the western parts and reached the Rhodan regions. From Irenæus’s words, it seems it can be concluded that this was brought there by the disciples of Marcus, rather than by the teacher himself. It is surprising, therefore, that Jerome, both in chapter LXIV of Isaiah and in the aforementioned letter, wrote confidently, as though from Irenæus: that a certain Marcus, descending from the line of the Gnostic Basilides, first came to the Gauls and stained those parts through which the Rhone and the Garonne flow with his doctrine, and especially seduced noble women by promising certain mysteries in secret, winning them to his own love through magic arts and the secret pleasure of bodies. Thence, crossing the Pyrenees, he occupied the Spains, and made it his study to seek out the homes of the wealthy, and therein especially the women, who are led by various desires, always learning and never arriving at a knowledge of the truth. He (Irenæus) wrote this about three hundred years ago; and he wrote it in these books, which he composed against all heresies with most learned and eloquent speech. Although, as I have said, Irenæus ascribes it to the disciples of Marcus, that they came into the Gauls and stained those parts through which the Rhone and the Garonne flow with his doctrine, I do not...
wish to contend stubbornly with Jerome, who attributes that to Marcus himself, thinking as he does that one account can easily be reconciled with the other. But that Marcus crossed the Pyrenees and occupied the Spains, Irenæus—in those books which he composed against all heresies—is so far from having written, that he could not even have conceived of it. That there was indeed a certain Marcus who disseminated the errors of the Gnostics in Spain, is clearly written by Sulpicius Severus, *Hist. sacr.*, lib. II, c. 60, and by Isidore of Seville, *De script. eccles.* lib. But it is evident from the same sources that he was a native of Memphis in Egypt, of the Manichæan sect, and that he was two centuries more recent than Marcus the Magician. For they add that this Memphite Marcus, upon arriving in Spain, had as disciples a certain woman named Agape, and Elpidius the Rhetorician, by whom Priscillian was instructed, B who was condemned with his teacher Elpidius by the Council of Saragossa in the year 380, and in 385 was beheaded at Trier by the order of the tyrant Maximus. Either, therefore, Jerome’s memory failed him, or he was deceived by the identity of their names and confused the Memphite Marcus with the Magician.
88. It would be tedious, indeed superfluous, to recount all the absurdities of this charlatan. For he did not differ, or differed very little, from the other Valentinians, except that, in order to give value to his nonsense, he added a certain impenetrable obscurity; and where others taught more plainly and simply, he used a Pythagorean method, and strove to cast a veil of darkness over the fictitious mysteries of the Pleroma by way of an allegorical farrago of elements, letters, syllables, and numbers. He exhibited the whole Pleroma like a certain name; the tetrad, the decade, and the ogdoad like so many syllables; and individual Æons like individual letters from which the mystical name of the Pleroma might coalesce. He contended that the twenty-four letters of the Greeks were, as it were, C *ap-porrhoias*, certain effluvia, shadowing forth those three Virtues in which the entire number of the higher elements is contained. He used to say that the nine mutes were the images of the Father and Truth: that is, that they themselves are mute—meaning they are such as cannot be expressed by any words; but that the eight semivowels were the images of the Word and Life, because they are placed as it were intermediately between the vowels and consonants, and just as they flow down from the superior levels, so the inferior levels are in turn related to them: furthermore, the vowels, which are also seven in number, were the images of Man and the Church; for the voice, having proceeded through Man, informed all things. This, then, was the opinion of Marcus: that individual Æons in the Pleroma had their own peculiar characters and sounds, to the image of which the letters of the Greeks were expressed.
89. Regarding Jesus Christ, he drivelled on in almost the same way as the other Valentinians: namely, that he had been chosen by the Parent of all things, by the operation of the Word, to make Him known to men, and had been dispensed after the image of the supernal Virtue; wherefore he had been produced by those Virtues which had proceeded from the Word and Life, Man and the Church, yet had applied his own labour, being brought forth by them and the four supreme Virtues, not indeed immediately and by themselves, but through the angel Gabriel, who represented the Word; the Holy D Spirit, who represented Life; the power of the Most High, which represented Man; and finally the Virgin, who filled the place of the Church. Moreover, he held that he was brought into the light by Mary in such a way that, passing through her womb like water through a pipe, he took nothing from her. But as for him, when he had come to the water, the supernal Saviour—who, being the offspring of all the Æons, comprehended in himself the virtue of all—descended in the likeness of a dove: and it is he, he said, who spoke through the mouth of Jesus, and confessed himself to be the Son of man, because he had the supernal Man as his father.
90. [They] peddled these trifles. They wanted this [world] to be so fashioned after the image of the supernal things that it would, in almost all its parts, refer to the Pleroma. We have shown above that this was a Platonic dogma reheated by these triflers. But that the authority of the sacred Scriptures—if it pleases the powers above—might not be lacking to confirm so many and such great ravings of an unbalanced mind, it is astonishing what engines they moved to mangle and sew them together as impiously as they did ridiculously, and to twist them by the neck into alien and inept meanings. It would have been little, had they not feigned almost innumerable apocryphal and spurious Scriptures, by which they might deceive the ignorant. It has not pleased our Irenæus to discourse separately upon these books which they had forged. This alone is certain: that that ridiculous fable which they tell concerning the child Christ in chapter 20 occurs in the pseudo-Gospel of the infancy of Christ, which Henry Sikius edited in Arabic with a Latin translation, and in certain other writings of the same bran, which we have mentioned in the notes to this place.
91. We have already seen how they contaminated and utterly overturned the venerable mystery of the Eucharist and the sacrament of Ordination. It is not surprising if their impiety spared other sacraments. They had substituted for that holy laver, through which we are regenerated to God, a certain profane kind of initiation suggested by Satan, for the destruction of that laver and for the rejection of the whole faith. They said that those who had attained to this redemption, which they called *gnosis*, it was necessary that they be regenerated into that Virtue which excels above all things. For otherwise it could not be that an approach to the Pleroma would be open to anyone: seeing that it was that which carried them up to the inmost bosom of Bythos. Furthermore, they were not ashamed to assert that this redemption surpassed the common baptism of Christians by an infinite interval. For this one, they claimed, is animal, that one spiritual; this one was instituted by the visible Jesus, that one by the Saviour who descended upon him; this one is proclaimed for repentance, nor is it superior in virtue to that which John conferred; that one was brought down from above for the sake of obtaining perfection. These points were held in common among the Marcosians. But as to the mode of the Redemption...
A as Irenaeus says, every one of them delivers it according to their own will. For there are as many redemptions as there are mystical leaders of such doctrines. 92. Others initiated their followers with certain rites and profane forms of words. These are their spiritual nuptials, in imitation of heavenly marriages. Others shadowed forth the ceremonies of baptism. For, leading them to the water, as they baptized them they would pronounce these words: "In the name of the unknown Father of all; into Truth, the mother of all; into him who descended into Jesus, for the union and redemption and communion of the powers." Others, to strike terror into these wretched people, brought forth a senseless and empty heap of grander Hebrew terms. Then, emulating the anointings of the Catholics, they anointed their initiated ones with opobalsam. Some, despising the baptism of water, would mingle oil and water, and pour it upon the head of those whom they were initiating, uttering certain words not unlike those we have mentioned. And they too would use balsam. Others, disapproving and rejecting all these things, denied that divine mysteries, which can be perceived neither by the senses nor by the mind, should be performed through sensible and corporeal things. They held that perfect redemption was spiritual, not corporal, and consisted in the knowledge of the ineffable Magnitude. Of these, Theodoret B made a special sect of heretics, which he calls the Ascodrutae, or Ascodrupitae, and asserts that among them, and by them, no mystery of baptism is celebrated. Whether they are the same as the Ascodrobi, who Jerome writes in his Epistle to the Galatians were infesting Ancyra in Galatia in his time, but were unknown elsewhere, I would not venture to affirm. 93. Finally, others put off the redemption until the end of life. When anyone was about to depart from this life, they would pour oil and water upon his head, and in addition to the ridiculous invocations used by other Marcosians, they would command him, when he arrived at the Principalities and Powers and the Demiurge, to address them with certain words that Irenaeus records, by which he might escape their hands. Nor did Irenaeus express their name. But we learn from Epiphanius that they were Heracleonites, so called from Heracleon. He thinks he succeeded Colorbasus; but Tertullian inserts Ptolemaeus between Colorbasus and Heracleon. From Irenaeus, it seems it can be gathered that he was a disciple of Marcus, since he records his tenets among the various dogmas of the Marcosians. Augustine, whom Damascenus also seems to agree C with, thinks he was a disciple of both, namely of Marcus and Colorbasus. By Origen he is called a disciple of Valentinus; by Clement of Alexandria, his estimation in the school of Valentinus was very great. But all these things designate no certain mark of time: and as it may be inferred from later writers that Heracleon had embraced the dogmas of Valentinus, I do not think it can be concluded that he was contemporary with Valentinus himself. Wherefore I would rather leave the time of his life in uncertainty than define anything rashly. Heracleon had written Commentaries, at least on the Gospel of John. For Origen, in his own works, reports and refutes many of his expositions of various passages. Moreover, he justly rebuked him because, to these words of John, *χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν* (without him was nothing made), he had dared to add impudently, *τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, καὶ τῇ κτίσει* (of those things that are in the world, and in the creation); so that, forsooth, he might conclude from this, along with the other Valentinians, that not all things were created through the Word: that D while He was the author of the inferior Aeons and of the world itself, through the interposition of the Demiurge, He was not for the four superior Aeons. Photius seems to have had those Commentaries of Heracleon on the Gospel of John, if not before his eyes, at least in his mind, as the illustrious Grabe aptly notes in his *Spicilegium*, when in Epistle 134 to John the Protospatharius (whom Grabe misnames Aspatharius; the letter *a* here is a numeral) he wrote: "For it was not in insult and slander of the Law that the saying, 'Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ,' was adapted to the evangelical ordinances. For this is how Heracleon would say it, and the children of Heracleon." By which he implies that Heracleon had twisted these words of the Gospel in his Commentaries into an insult to the Law. Clement of Alexandria also reports another Fragment of Heracleon concerning martyrdom in the place just cited, which seems to have been transcribed from some Commentaries on Luke. For where Clement has prefixed this passage of Luke's Gospel (ch. XII, 11), "But when they shall bring you into the synagogues, etc.," he subjoins: "Explaining this passage, Heracleon... says word for word, etc." Explaining this passage, Heracleon... says with these words, etc. In the *Eclogae Propheticae* at the end of the same Clement, on the occasion of these words of John the Baptist (Luke III, 16), "He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire," another opinion of Heracleon is cited, saying that he marked with fire the ears of those who had received the seal of baptism, thus understanding that apostolic passage [referring to verse 17: Whose fan is in his hand, etc.]. By which their conjecture seems to be confirmed, who think that Commentaries on Luke were also studied up by Heracleon. Moreover, that he felt likewise with Valentinus, but wished to seem to think differently by means of a certain novelty of expression, is reported by Tertullian or any other, ch. 49 of the book *De praescriptione*, to which Epiphanius and all others agree. He differed from the Ptolemaeans only in this, that the supreme parent of all, whom they call Bythos...
they called Man, as Epiphanius reports. Moreover, Origen attributes to him A the view that the soul is not immortal by nature, but corruptible. Yet that was the common opinion of all the Valentinians regarding the animal soul, which they considered would either perish or be saved, according as it chose the better or the worse path.
94. But to return to the point from which we digressed, it is evident to anyone, even if we were to remain silent, that the redemptions of the heretics already described flowed from the impure initiations of the heathens, which the Platonists—captivated above others by the foul arts of the magi—valued so highly. For just as the initiates of certain more secret pagan rites were considered to have reached the pinnacle of perfection by participating in certain rituals and ceremonies, so too among the Marcosians, B once one had completed the rites of redemption and become privy to the secrets of the sect, he was thought to have been raised to the height of perfection. Hence these initiations were called *teletai* by the heathens, because they were believed to confer perfection; but by the Marcosians they were called *apolytroseis*, because they liberated man from all the filth of mortality and from ignorance, the root of all imperfection. The Platonists frequently insisted upon these same rites as being prime necessities for the purgation of the soul, insofar as the soul, having been purified by what they called religious rites, would become fit to receive the gods and participate in their prophetic power. See Iamblichus, sections III, IV, and X. But just as some among the heretics denied that divine mysteries were to be performed through sensory and corporeal things, so too certain Platonists, such as Porphyry, C believed that the use of material things in sacred matters was not fitting for the gods, who exist entirely separated from matter. Yet this is what the Marcosians promised themselves through their redemption: that they had attained that degree of perfection—namely the most perfect, absolute in every detail, in which alone salvation stands—the knowledge of the ineffable Virtue, to which it was not permitted even for Peter and Paul, or any other of the apostles (so they blasphemed) to arrive; nor could they, as long as they lived, fall from it, nor be delayed by any worldly power after death, but would immediately take possession of the places destined for them in the Pleroma. For they held that by the benefit of redemption, D whatever they had done in this life, they could neither be seized nor seen by the judge. Reasoning that all things were lawful to them, they did not blush to wallow in the mire of every crime and lust. These were the necessary consequences of this ruinous dogma, as we have already explained. That the heretics used certain barbarous words and foreign, unusual forms of expression in initiating their followers was also a Pythagorean and Platonic practice. How much and how greatly the disciples of Pythagoras and Plato attributed to such words when used in pagan sacred rites is known from Porphyry’s letter to Anebo, and from Iamblichus, section VII, chapters 4 and 5, to say nothing of others. Though these words were unknown to mortals, and mostly devoid of sense and hollow in meaning, they yet believed them to be more suitable to the divine than any others—partly because, having long been used in Assyria and Egypt, where the worship of the gods first flourished and where they had more frequent and greater intercourse with mortals, they seemed more ancient than all others, and better known and more familiar to the gods. Motivated by these same reasons, the Marcosians preferred Hebrew, Chaldaean, and Syriac words to all others; because by these, as the first and most ancient of all, God had uttered his oracles, and because their unusual sound was better suited to strike terror into the hearts of the unlearned.
95. We have reviewed, as accurately as possible, the disciples whom Irenaeus attributes to Valentinus, so that we may discuss the masters of both in the same discourse. Indeed, nothing seemed more effective to him—and rightly so—for repelling the insanity of the Valentinians than to betray their infamous origin, or, to use his words, to report their "most foul fountain and root," so that the tree from which such fruits had flowed might be understood. For the Valentinians were ashamed of the true authors of their stock, Simon and Menander, and with all the effort they could muster repudiated such shameful masters. Nevertheless, that these were their true parents, whether they liked it or not, was invincibly demonstrated by both the agreement of their dogmas and the continuous, unbroken succession of heretical schools from Simon to Valentinus, from whom—and within whom—the latter borrowed everything he afterwards blathered on about.
ARTICLE III. OF THE MASTERS OF VALENTINUS.
1. *Of Simon Magus.*
96. Simon, the father of all heretics, from whom all Gnostics take their start and have introduced impious and irreligious dogmas into this life, was a native of Gitta, a town in Samaria, which in Epiphanius’s time was but a village. He had such power among his own people through his magic arts, in which he had no equal, that he drove them to madness D so that they regarded him as the "great Power of God," that is, as the supreme Father of all. It is not improbable that he had expended no little effort in the liberal disciplines, and especially in the Platonic philosophy, which had by then taken root among the Jews. This is suggested both by his authority and his confidence in speaking, by which, hawking a feigned power, he had enticed the minds of the populace to himself.
both the dogmas he disseminated, which were not unlike the Platonic, and finally the magic itself, which was familiar and highly regarded in those times: he seems, therefore, to have mixed Platonism with the religion of the Samaritans and Jews. But when, in the year of Christ 34, the light of the Gospel began to shine in Samaria, and the true miracles of the deacon Philip began to dispel the deceits of Simon, the Samaritans, having set aside their error, gave their name to Christ. A Simon himself was amazed and gave his adherence, but not from the heart. For, since he coveted that extraordinary power of performing miracles which he observed in the apostles, he wished to purchase it with ready money; yet, being rebuked by Peter as he deserved, the unclean dog returned to his vomit, and began to practice his magic art more zealously than before. He thus abandoned the Christian faith, but, having retained some shadow of it, he decided to use it as a means of putting whatever obstacles he could in the way of those spreading the word of God, out of the hatred and envy with which he burned against the apostles.
97. Having therefore been admitted into the company of this ancient mixture of Platonism and Judaism, this mask of Christianity, he left Samaria and began to travel here and there: in order to occupy the nations and provinces to which the Gospel had not yet reached, and to infect them with his errors. When he had arrived at Tyre in Phoenicia, he bought there a base prostitute, a common woman named Helena, and attached her to himself, as his companion in his subsequent travels and crimes; he told many ridiculous stories about her in public, while intending to commit more shameful acts with her in private. After traveling through the provinces of the East, he came to Rome under Claudius Caesar, about the year of Christ 41. There he made so great a name for himself by his prestidigitation and impostures that they say a statue was erected to him, as though to some divinity, on the Tiber Island, between the two bridges, with the Latin inscription: *Simoni Deo sancto* (To Simon the Holy God). For Justin Martyr, first of all, mentioned this in his *Apology to Antoninus Pius*, which, though it is the second in the order of publication, is truly the first. Irenaeus seems to have asserted the same, though with some hesitation, on his authority: "He is said to have been honored with a statue on account of his magic," he says. But Tertullian (*Apolog.*, ch. 13), Eusebius (*Hist.*, lib. II, ch. 14), Cyril of Jerusalem (*Catech.* 6), Theodoret, Augustine, and others have confidently asserted it. Nevertheless, in these later centuries, there have not been wanting most learned men who thought that Justin was deceived, either by his ignorance of the Latin language or by the similarity of the name; since he supposed that a statue set up to Semo Sancus, or Sanctus, who was a god among the Sabines, had been consecrated to Simon Magus. About a hundred years ago, a statue was unearthed on the Tiber Island with this inscription, which is very close to that of Justin: *Semoni deo sanco* (or *sango*) *Deo Fidio sacrum*; so that it seems to be the very one that Justin had once seen on the same island: his error could the more easily occur, in that there was nothing more frequent among the ancient Latins than the interchange of the letters *e* and *i*, and that Semo, the god of the lesser nations, was called *sanctus*, *sancus*, or *sangus* indiscriminately. B The very illustrious Tillemont, of blessed memory, weighed the arguments of these most learned men, and with that extraordinary erudition and sharp judgment for which he is renowned, he refutes them in his *Observations* in volume II of his *Commentaries on Ecclesiastical History*, note 2, on Simon Magus (p. 482), where he proves that it could scarcely, if at all, have come to pass that so many ancient Fathers were deceived in a matter of such common knowledge, and one which Justin, while he was living at Rome and writing his *Apology*, could have investigated with his own eyes, not once or twice, but as often as he had crossed the Tiber bridges. For what sober man could persuade himself that a most holy martyr was so thoughtless and imprudent as to dare assert in the same *Apology*, twice, something to the emperors while writing in the city of Rome itself, without having sufficiently verified the truth—something whose falsehood even children, by convicting the writer of rashness, could have detected? A person could hardly bear such a monstrous hallucination in a writer separated by a long distance of lands from the statue itself: how much less in one who wrote in the city of Rome itself, and, so to say, at the very feet of that statue? But lest we do what is already done, consult the cited place of the most learned Tillemont. Not content C with these things, the impure man had himself depicted under the guise of Jupiter, and his Helena under that of Minerva; and he handed over both images to be worshipped by his disciples.
98. There is a common opinion among the ancients that the Prince of the Apostles came to Rome in the year of Christ 42 to dispel the frauds and evil arts of the Magi; and that when fame had already deserted him, he gathered his strength and endeavored to emulate the miraculous ascension of Christ into the heavens; but that his flight fared so badly that, having been struck down by divine power at the prayers of the apostles, he fell headlong and subsequently died miserably with broken legs, in that year which immediately preceded the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, that is, the year of Christ 65. I touch upon all these things briefly; for they are obvious and known to all. He is said to have published several books or discourses. Jerome recites some of the blasphemies from one of them in *Matt.*, ch. xxiv. The author of the book *De divinis nominibus*, ch. 6, mentions others, whose title is *Antidictoria*, or *Contradictories*. If one is to trust the *Apostolic Constitutions*, lib. vi, c. 8, Simon and his associate Cleobius had dared to foist many books upon Christ and his disciples. From the workshop of the disciples had come forth a Gospel, which they had entitled the *Book of the Four Corners of the World* (because it was divided into four parts), as well as an apocryphal book, *On the Preaching of St. Paul*.
99. As regards the errors of Simon, we showed above, while treating of Valentinus, that he was the author and inventor of the first Valentinian ogdoad. Indeed, according to Theodoret, he posited an certain infinite power, which he also called the root of all things; this is Bythus, to which he coupled D *Ennoia*. And he feigned that this was twofold: the first, which he called the Mother of all, which...
A he said was conspicuous in his Helena; the other, which he conjoined with *Phone* (Voice). He said that this infinite power was fire, that is, a most active Virtue, whose operation was twofold: one conspicuous, the other latent. From the former, the world was indeed begotten; but from the latter, he said that three conjugations were first produced, which he also named roots. The first of these he called *Nous* (Mind) and *Epinoia* (Notion); the second, *Phone* (Voice) and *Ennoia* (Intelligence); the third, *Logismos* (Reason) and *Enthymesis* (Cogitation). Everyone recognizes the Valentinian Ogdoad in this. The names, indeed, in Theodoret, whom we transcribe here, are slightly different; but in Elias of Crete and Nicetas, praised above, they are the very same: so that it seems certain that it was *polyonymous*, and signified by these or those names by the disciples of Simon. But the consensus of the ancients, and especially of Irenaeus, as we have said elsewhere, demonstrates that the same reality existed in both. Therefore, the same must be thought concerning these Simonian Aeons as of the [LV] prior eight Valentinian ones. Both were drawn from the reservoirs of the Platonists, and being cloaked in some manner with a Christian garb, they emerged through the art of those heretics.
100. He blasphemed that he was the most sublime Virtue of God, that is, the Father who is over all. Herein lies the peak of the old deceiver’s madness and impudence; yet I do not think he was so insane as to believe or boast that he himself was, in reality, essence, and nature, the supreme Father. He seems to have felt the same about himself as he did about his Helena, whom he said was the first conception of his mind, through whom he had made the angels and archangels. But, according to Theodoret, he asserted that this world, of which angels were the first and nobler part, was founded through that operation of the supreme Virtue which was conspicuous, or, as Irenaeus puts it, through the *Ennoia* which had leaped forth from the supreme Father and had descended to the lower realms, that is, which had made itself manifest externally. Just as, therefore, he judged Helena to be the first *Ennoia* of the supreme Father, not in reality and nature, but in operation alone; so he could not deem himself to be the supreme Father otherwise than by way of *energeia* and efficiency, not by substance or personal union (for he never acknowledged that kind of union): insofar as the Father had chosen him above other mortals to dwell within him, into whom he infused a certain radiation of his divinity—not a solid or substantive one, but a transient one—and through whom, as through an instrument morally joined to himself, he operated. In a word, he thought the same concerning himself as his disciples did concerning Christ, whom he also claimed to be. It is certain, however, that they did not judge Christ to be God for any other reason than, as Noetus, Sabellius, and Paul of Samosata later raved, by efficiency and operation alone, not by substance or substantial union. B Finally, that which Menander, the disciple of Simon, who dissented from his master in words although not in substance, taught—that he did not call himself the first Virtue (for he said it was unknown), but boasting that he was sent by it, he called himself the Savior. Whatever difference, therefore, can be feigned between the two, it comes down to this: that one was slightly more modest, calling himself the Savior because he was sent from the first Virtue for the salvation of men; the other impudently blustered that he himself was the first Virtue, in so far as it operated through him by that kind of operation which was external and conspicuous, not by that which was latent, and through which he had produced the Aeons. From this he boasted to the Jews, who were expecting the Messiah (whom he had learned from the apostles was the Son of God), that he had appeared as the Son; but to the Samaritans B, whose faith concerning the Messiah was more obscure, he claimed to have descended as the Father; and finally to other nations, whom he knew were to be gathered into the Church by the power of the Holy Spirit, he claimed to have arrived as the Holy Spirit; and finally, as Irenaeus says, he endured being called whatever men called him: that is, he allowed various names to be attributed to him—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—according to the diverse operations of the first Virtue which he put forth, and the diverse sentiments of the different nations; and sometimes even of Jupiter, for under this schema his disciples had set up statues and images for him, which they would adore. From which it is most certainly concluded that, in his opinion, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were not three subsisting persons, but merely three names and offices of one person.
101. He said that his Helena (whom he sometimes even called the Holy Spirit) was the first conception of his mind, the Mother of all, through whom in the beginning he conceived in his mind to make the angels and archangels: and that this *Ennoia*, or conception, leaping forth from him, knowing what her Father wills, descended to the lower realms and generated angels and Powers, to whom, however, no knowledge of the Father was imparted. With these he said this world was made. In that *Ennoia*, the mother of all, through whom angels and archangels were conceived in the mind at the beginning, Plato’s world of ideas shows itself quite clearly; namely, the storehouse of all ideas, forms, and archetypes, according to whose standard and exemplar the angels and archangels, having been created, first made this visible world according to the prescription of the supernal ideas. For Simon was the first of the Christians who judged that the supreme God should be absolved from the creation, governance, and administration of this world, and he distinguished the creator from him, following the Platonists, lest the evils by which the world is shaken be cast back upon the first, supremely good God; who, moreover, having always remained unknown, and never having manifested himself by any visible sign, could have no part in the fabrication and administration of the world. The rest, which the impostor added concerning the *Ennoia* being held back by the angels out of envy and treated unjustly, lest D
A she should return to the Father, and, having been revolved into various bodies, both human and bestial, until, having taken pity on this lost sheep, Simon should have come in order to liberate her, and at once provide salvation for men through his own recognition, and vindicate and amend the world from the tyranny of the angels who were ambitiously contending for the primacy; all these things, I say, smack of Christianity, but are miserably deformed by myths. He wished to shadow forth under these symbols the fall of the angels and of men. The former, blinded by the pride of arrogance and refusing to be subordinate to God their author, because they did not wish to be thought to be the offspring of someone else, detained his B *Ennoia*, lest she should return to her own beginning; while, evidently, whatever splendor, power, and perfection they had received, they wickedly arrogated to themselves, and attempted to extinguish the idea of the supreme author of such great benefits, lest the glory should return to him, first in themselves, then in men. For they were the authors that the image of God, impressed upon their minds, was foully deformed by their own pride; and gradually, the notion of the true divinity being obliterated, [men], compared to senseless beasts, and having become similar to them in the bestial manner of living, plunging themselves daily deeper into the chasm of all the most shameful vices, were always affecting themselves with new insults. These are the things which Simon signified in his own way by the captivity, calamities, and miserable accidents of the *Ennoia*. Nor is that which Tertullian says in *De anima*, ch. 35, dissimilar to the truth: that Simon had, at least in part, instructed his disciples in this Pythagorean metempsychosis, the myths about Helen being revolved into various bodies; since it was established that both belonged to his teaching: that souls are portions of the divine mind, and that they are thrust into various successive bodies. Of the same kind are the things he babbled about his own coming into this world, in order to liberate the lost sheep, and to restore the world, having been vindicated from the tyranny of the angels. In these, among the very mists of his inventions, there shines forth the evangelical doctrine concerning the coming of the true Savior; by which the image of God, obliterated by vices, was renewed, the knowledge of the true God was awakened in souls, men were asserted into liberty, having shaken off the yoke of the dark Powers, and finally all things were restored, whether they be things in heaven or things on earth. For the heresiarch perceived that the foundation of the Christian religion, for which he wished to provide somewhat, rested on his profession. Yet he boasted that he had descended into this world in such a way that, putting on a foreign appearance, by which he might deceive the Angels and Powers with a feigned likeness, lest he should be held by them, he appeared as a man among men, when nevertheless he was not a man, and seemed to suffer in Judea when he had not suffered. C These are the first beginnings of the sect of the Docetae, to which as many impure men later gave their name: the first author of this was the most lost of all men. Yet the consequences of his ill-conceived hypothesis were necessary. For if, as he supposed, the stain of all the evils that are in the world, the authors, the Angels, D if misery and the most shameful defilement, was sprinkled upon the bodies founded by them, it is manifest that he who was sent by the good God, that he might subdue the fabricators of the world and purge the world of evils, could not have taken to himself a worldly and true body: both that he might not himself be contaminated by evils, and that he might not, by conceding to the empire of the angels who govern matter, be oppressed by them. It was necessary, therefore, that he should put on a body that was merely phantastical and shadowy, by which he might present himself to be seen by men, whose leader and teacher he was to be, and might more safely wage war against the Angels. From which it flowed that he could not truly be born or suffer, and, as the martyr Ignatius rightly concludes, that the Eucharist is not the true body of Christ, since he never had a true one.
102. The Magus also added that the law was not from God (who indeed remained invisible and unknown even to the times of the New Testament), but had been laid down by a certain sinister intelligence. [He said] that the prophets had been inspired to pour forth their prophecies by the fabricators of the world, these by those, and others by others. That these things were to be despised by those who, once the true God was recognized, placed their hope in Simon and Helen, his legates and interpreters: for those were already gifted with the liberty which is gained through the knowledge of the supreme Father, [and] that it was free for them to perform whatever they wished: that salvation was to be attributed to grace alone, namely *gnosis*, not to just works: for by nature there were no actions that were good or evil, but [that they were so] from accident; namely, from the will of the Angels who created the world, and led men into slavery by the bonds of such precepts. This last sentiment he seems to have received from the philosopher Archelaus, whose dictum this was: "Nothing by nature is just or unjust, but by law." Certainly they were nefarious dogmas, and the most abundant seedbeds of all crimes, which nevertheless flowed necessarily from the principles he established. For if the supreme God remained unknown, and did not deign to offer himself to be perceived by any sensible sign, but committed the care and administration of the world to the Angels: then they alone were the authors of the law and the prophecies which looked to the regimen of the world; therefore, those whom men, having attained the knowledge of the true and supreme God, have been rescued from their power and asserted into liberty, are not held by the precepts of the law. If salvation depends on the knowledge of the one God, hitherto unknown but now revealing himself: then works are superfluous for obtaining salvation. If works are for that reason alone good or evil, because they are commanded or forbidden by the law which the Angels established: therefore they are by nature indifferent; and consequently, the yoke of the law having been shaken off, they are neither good nor evil. Now, what wonder is it if men, imbued with these principles, with all the barriers of nature and modesty broken, have entered into a wanton and most shameful manner of living? For by that, as by a natural consequence, their ruinous doctrine led them. Far be it that I should commemorate their iniqui-
iniquities; Epiphanius records the wicked conventions practiced by them: I would not wish for the eyes of readers to be defiled by these monstrous crimes. To aggregate these further, they were not afraid to practice every kind of most base magic art, after the example of Simon and the Platonists. From hence flowed the common calumny among the Gentiles, A by which they long vexed the Christian religion, that all Christians were devoted to magical arts, and that their assemblies—every sense of decency being extinguished, and with the license of night added—were workshops of corruption of every kind. Thus, the profligate life of these pseudo-Christians redounded upon the Christian religion. They denied the resurrection of the flesh: and how could they not deny it? For if the flesh was the work of the Angels who created the world, it ought neither to be assumed nor saved by Christ the Savior, who came to battle the Angels. The care of souls alone was their concern. They did not hesitate to burn incense to Gentile idols whenever the opportunity arose, nor did they refuse to offer them supreme worship so as to avoid the penalties inflicted upon those who refused: for they counted these things among the "indifferents." Indeed, Simon, thinking that the Gentiles would come over to his side if he could instill in them the opinion that he was Jupiter, whom they worshipped as the supreme Deity and father of the gods; and that his Helena was Minerva, who, as the poets fable, was born from the brain of Jupiter; he wished for himself to be depicted and adored by his disciples in the guise of Jupiter, and Helena in the guise of Minerva: B so that he might combine paganism with the profession of the Christian religion. But it is strange that he, who appeared to denounce enmity against the Angels throughout the whole series of his doctrine, yet wished divine honors to be paid to them. For he denied that any man could obtain salvation in any other way than by offering to the parent of the Universe those abominable sacrifices—which one is ashamed even to name—through the Principalities and Powers: not, indeed, that they might bring protection, but that, being placated, they might not inflict harm, nor trouble men either in life or after death. This was also the doctrine of the Platonists which we explained above.
103. The things said thus far demonstrate that Simon and his disciples are to be reckoned among the Gentiles rather than among the Christians. For although they professed the Christian name with their lips, they had scarcely preserved the faith in even one Christian dogma. They did indeed utter the name of the three persons of the most holy Trinity, but they did not hold the reality: one and the same person, according to different offices, rejoiced in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The mystery of the Incarnation was utterly unknown to them: Christ was neither true God, for He had no hypostatic union with God; nor true man, for His humanity was but shadowy and phantastic; but a certain semblance which, on one hand, exhibited human nature to the eyes and, on the other, received the rays of Divinity. By these [doctrines], the faith of the mysteries C was brought to ruin. If they retained any sort of baptism, it was certainly a ludicrous thing, which would be far removed from a Christian. An ancient author who wrote against Cyprian, [LVII] among the works of the holy martyr, relates that certain heretics descended from Simon, while conferring baptism, exhibited fire flashing from the water to the eyes of onlookers, by which they would delude those about to be initiated with a simulated presence of the Holy Spirit. What faith could they have had in the Eucharist, who denied that Christ had a true body? They surely had their own mysteries, but they were utterly execrable, which one is ashamed even to mention. That these impure men made light of the other sacraments, and—having spurned all else—ascribed salvation to knowledge alone, and utterly overturned the necessity of good works and the observance of evangelical laws, whoever asserts this will not have conjectured rashly.
104. Simon left behind several successors in error and wickedness, called Simonians after the prince of this most impious opinion. That they received the beginnings of the "knowledge falsely so called"—that is, the Gnostic heresy—from their very assertions, it is possible to learn from them themselves. For, in truth, the dogmas of all the Gnostics were almost the same as those of Simon. If any difference existed, it lay in the fact that the same principles and chapters of Platonic philosophy were delivered by these a little more strictly, and by those more explicitly and at length, and were accommodated in various ways to the matters of faith according to the capacity and talent of each, yet the foundation remained unshaken. There were three principal heads of the Gnostic heresy: 1. That the supreme God is different from the creator of the world; 2. That works do not contribute to salvation, but that it depends on the knowledge of heavenly things alone; 3. That Christ was not a true man, but deluded the eyes with a vain appearance of a man. These points were championed by all, since they knew the whole hypothesis rested upon them; other things were added either for greater explanation or were certain corollaries, which each one derived and amplified from the principles according to his own ability. It was easy to observe this by comparing it with what we have already said about the Valentinian heresy, nor will it be more difficult to observe it in those things which remain to be said about the ancient Gnostics.
II. Concerning Menander.
105. Simon’s successor and disciple was Menander, who was like his teacher in character and doctrine. He himself was of Samaritan race, D originating from the village of Capparetaja, as Justin calls it, or Chabrai, as Theodoret calls it. He arrived at the highest pitch of trickery, so that he could easily not only contend with his master but even claim the first place for himself, and he made a name for himself with greater portents. He chose Antioch, the capital of the East, as a public theater in which he could act the charlatan and from whence he could more easily spread his poisonous wares through the East. There he miserably fascinated many. If one reads Tertullian, or the author of the supplement which is read at the end of the book *De praescriptionibus*,
we believe he said the same things that Simon himself said. Whatever Simon had claimed to be, this Menander claimed to be. Yet this must be understood soberly. For Simon shamelessly boasted of being the supreme Power of God; Menander did not attribute as much to himself, because he said the primary Power was unknown to everyone; but he claimed that he himself was the one sent from the invisible [beings] (that is, as Eusebius explains, from the invisible Aeons), as a Savior for the salvation of men. But as we have shown above, the difference lies in the words, and in the fact that one was madder than the other. For Simon did not contend that he was the supreme Power of God in substance and nature, but only in mission and A operation, in which he agreed with Menander. Nor does any conflict arise between them because one said that this Power was unknown to all, while the other boasted that he had come to provide access to it. For if, with Theodoret, we distinguish a twofold operation of the supreme Power—occult and manifest—the dispute is easily resolved. For Simon looks to the occult operation; Menander speaks of the manifest. Here too, Epiphanius, writing that Menander did not differ from the dogma of Simon, except that he proclaimed himself greater than his predecessor and teacher, must be explained so that he does not conflict with himself or with Irenaeus. Indeed, this man proclaimed himself greater, not in dignity and mission—for both boasted that they were sent by the supreme Power as a Savior for the salvation of men—but in the skill of the magical art, by which he boasted he was superior to his master.
106. Menander taught that the world was created by Angels, just as Simon did. Therefore, Damascenus seems to have had a lapse of memory when he wrote in his book *On Heresies* that the Menandrians differed from the Simonians in that the former denied that the building of the world was done by angels, while the latter asserted it; for the opinion of both regarding this matter was the same. But Menander contended that no one could be saved from the dominion of those Angels, except through the magical knowledge he taught. He therefore wanted the salvation of man to be placed in redemption from the servitude of the Angels; and the means of salvation to be in magical knowledge. All of which is Simonian, and indeed Platonic as well. For the things that these heretics attributed to magical knowledge, the Platonists likewise attributed to their *mantikē*, divination, B and Theurgy. For they distinguished two kinds of magic: one which they called Theurgy—that is, the art of doing divine things, good and praiseworthy, by which they invoked good and beneficent demons through certain specific victims and sacrifices, a certain purity of soul and body, and other sacred ceremonies, by whose inspiration and aid they manifested occult things, pronounced future events, and performed wondrous works; the other, Goetic and Necromancy, namely the deceptive and fallacious art that calls up and consults the dead, and by their help and that of evil demons renders responses regarding occult and future matters. As they turned the latter to reproach, so they attributed the former to their own honor, and exalted it to the heavens with praises, as one can see everywhere in Iamblichus and others. He says in *Theurgists*, sect. 11, cap. 31, that "every evil spirit flees and is utterly overthrown; all malice and passion is entirely cut away; but the pure communication of the good is brought to the pure, and the divine fire fills them with truth from above. These evil spirits can bring no impediment, nor obstacle to thwart the good things of the soul," etc. And sect. 10, cap. 4: "Only divine *mantikē* connects us to the gods, makes us true participants in divine life; and since it contains within itself foreknowledge and divine notions, it makes us truly divine as well. This C exhibits the good clearly to us; for it is the most blessed knowledge of the gods, full of all good things." And in cap. 5 he says that man, "having once been joined to the vision of God, and afterwards having entered into another soul—namely that which is fitted to the shape of the human form—came to be under the yoke of fate and necessity; but that these bonds cannot be loosed otherwise than by the knowledge of the gods; that this is what preserves true life, because it reduces to the Father, who is content with his own lot and superessential: and that this sacred and Theurgic gift of happiness is called the gate to the very maker of all things, God, or the seat and hall of the good." Then finally, in the following chapter, he concludes that Theurgy "presents the soul to the universal Maker, and places it with Him, and connects it, free from all matter, with the sole eternal Word: to the Power of God itself, which is begotten by Him, self-moving, sustaining all things, intellectual, adorning all things, calling back to intelligible truth, perfecting and giving completion, and so associates it with the remaining creative Powers of God, that the Theurgic soul is perfectly confirmed in their actions and effective intelligences." Many other things of this kind occur in the cited sections of Iamblichus. In these, I think, the learned reader will find without difficulty the foundations of the doctrine of Simon, Menander, and all the Gnostics; so that from these impure fonts seem to have been openly drawn both *gnosis* itself, and that laborious study which they brought to the cultivation of magic, and finally everything which both so brazenly attributed to themselves.
107. Menander imparted a certain kind of baptism to his followers, by which those who were deemed worthy might obtain resurrection, and having once attained immortality, continue to persevere, immune to any old age or death. Moreover, he conferred baptism in his own name; to which degree of insanity, indeed, Simon does not seem to have gone. But as for the effect of immortality which he impudently asserted for his baptism, Tertullian D and Eusebius seem to understand it as the immortality of the body even in this present life. It is wonderful, however, that men, otherwise keen, should have so convinced their own minds. For besides the fact that it seems placed beyond all doubt that Menander's mind must be explained according to the opinion of his teacher, who taught that bodies perish utterly and do not rise again, but only the soul—
A that it is immortal. Irenaeus clearly teaches this in Book II, chapter 31, n. 2, concerning what all the Gnostics meant by the "resurrection from the dead," which they sometimes preached, namely, the knowledge of that truth which is spoken of by them. Tertullian himself acts on this, explaining it a bit more clearly in Book *De resurrect. carn.*, chapter 19, where, uncovering the frauds of the Gnostics, he writes: "Some have seized upon a most solemn form of speech from the prophets, and—for the most part, though not always—allegorical and figurative; they distort the resurrection of the dead, which was clearly announced, into an imaginary meaning, asserting that even death itself must be understood spiritually. For they say that this is not in reality what is in our midst—the separation of body and soul—but ignorance of God, through which a man lies dead to God, no less in error than in a sepulcher. Therefore, according to them, the resurrection must be claimed as that attainment by which one, having approached the truth, is reanimated and revivified for God, having shaken off the death of ignorance, just as if he had emerged from the sepulcher of the 'old man'; for the Lord also likened the Scribes and Pharisees to whitewashed sepulchers. From this, then, they claim that those who have obtained faith are with the Lord, having put Him on in baptism. Finally, they are often accustomed to deceive our people in conversation with this same ingenuity, as if they themselves admitted the resurrection. 'Woe,' they say, 'to him who has not risen in this flesh,' so that they may immediately strike those who would instantly deny the resurrection. But silently, according to their own conscience, they mean this: 'Woe to him who, while he is in this flesh, has not known the heretical mysteries,' for this is what 'resurrection' means among them." Moreover, many, claiming the resurrection from the excess of the soul, interpret it as "exiting from the sepulcher" or "escaping from the world," because the world is also the habitation of the dead—that is, of those who do not know God—or even from the body itself, because the body, in place of a sepulcher, keeps the soul enclosed in the death of secular life. To whom it becomes plain that the "resurrection of the dead" which Menander and others like him falsely sold was to be understood mystically and allegorically; and it is nothing else but the discovery of an unknown God and of the heretical mysteries, by which whoever has obtained that fictitious baptism which they imparted, and has been initiated into their wicked mysteries, having shaken off the death of ignorance, emerges as if from the sepulcher of the old man. Menander, therefore, in these matters, did not move so much as a hair's breadth from the opinion of Simon and the other Gnostics, except that he involved in riddles what they spoke more plainly.
III. On Saturninus.
108. A certain poisonous, two-tongued beast, as Eusebius says, sprang from Menander and produced two authors and leaders of two sects differing from each other: Saturninus (or Saturnilus, for the authors write both indiscriminately), by birth an Antiochene, and Basilides the Alexandrian, both pupils of Menander and contemporaries; of whom the former established schools of error in Syria, the latter indeed in Egypt, against God and piety. Theodoretus relates that both lived while Hadrian was emperor; and Eusebius does not disagree, for he mentions them when writing the history of the times of Hadrian: although, however, the illustrious Tillemont judges it probable that Saturninus had already begun a little before Basilides, from the times of Trajan. But of these things later. He spoke almost the same delirious nonsense as Menander. He preached that there was one supreme Father, and an unbegotten Power—that is, God—remaining in those highest and infinite parts and in the superior regions, and entirely unknown, who created Virtues, Principalities, Powers, and Angels far distant from Himself. When all these had fallen away from the Father, seven of them founded the world, without the knowledge of God the Father, and each of them obtained his own part. He said that one of these founding Angels was the God of the Jews. He said that Satan himself was an angel, opposing the angels who were the fabricators of the world, and especially the God of the Jews; who, just like this one and those others, was the author of the prophecies. All these things are Simonian and Gnostic, drawn partly from the pitfalls of the Platonists, partly from the corrupted and depraved oracles of the Scriptures, as is evident from what has been said so far.
109. Saturninus also attributed the origin of man to the Angels. And this was the occasion of the creation: C When a luminous image had shone from above from the supreme Power, they, captured by the love of that heavenly light and filled with immense desire and pleasure, strove to keep it with themselves with all their might; but since they were unable—because it suddenly flew upward and vanished from their eyes—it occurred to their minds that, out of a desire to make up for the loss of the fleeting image, they should express some likeness of it, and should fashion a man who would represent it. Wherefore, coming together into one, they said by common counsel: "Let us make man to the image and likeness." Thus, says Epiphanius, the impostor curtailed the little portion of our text that God uses in Genesis, so that he might bolster belief in his error; as if the artificers of the work were others, while the image itself refers to a different one. Therefore, man was brought into the light, but, on account of the weakness of the Angels, quite imperfect. For he lay D on the ground like a crawling worm, being unable to raise himself or to do anything else, until the supreme Power, having taken pity on him because of its own image and likeness, sent its own spark into him, by which it both raised him up and imparted life. And this spark it calls the human soul, which, being as it were a little part cut off from the divine essence, he says is preserved in the dissolved animal, and flies upward to those things which are of the same kind; the rest of the man perishing, resolved into its own principles. Saturninus, however, did not summon all men to share in that spark, but only those who had given their name to his sect. For, in the beginning, he asserted that two men were made, one good, one...
A lacking the spark, from which he was the first of men to devise that a double race of men, namely those good by nature and those evil by nature, had been sown throughout the world.
110. All these things are Platonic, though variously interpreted and augmented with new fables. What is imagined here concerning the image shining from above, in whose likeness man was created, is purely and simply the dogma of the Platonists concerning the ideas and forms of all things, fashioned by the supreme Parent of all things: which indeed He stored up in the mind of the Angels, to whom He entrusted the province of creating and governing the world, so that, having these celestial archetypes before their eyes, they might imitate them in fabricating things. Likewise, it is the common opinion of all Platonists that the superior part of the soul, and its very apex, which they called the mind, is a kind of particle of the divine essence, B cut off from the "first intelligible," as Iamblichus speaks, which, inspired into man from above, imparts reason and exempts him from the common lot of brute animals. The fable concerning the spark sent down from the supernal Virtue into man, who was crawling and lying on the ground, by which he might be raised up and do those things which are of man, provided the foundation. Just as the spark, upon the dissolution of the animal, would fly back to its principle, according to Saturninus; so too the mind, according to the Platonists, would return to God, its author. Thus far the opinions coincide; they differ, however, in the explanation of the spark, or particle of the divine essence. By it, the Platonists understood the mind by which man becomes rational; the Saturninians, however, understood *gnosis*, or the knowledge of the supreme Father, by which he becomes spiritual and is distinguished from earthly men living in the darkness of ignorance. And this is the very thing which it later pleased the Valentinians to call the spiritual seed; which, indeed, they boasted was granted not to all, but to certain men, just as Saturninus boasted of his spark. Whence, just as he distinguished two kinds of men, by nature good and partakers of the spark, and by nature evil and devoid of it; so they likewise established that some men were by nature good, namely those who were C fecundated by the seed; and some by nature evil, who were devoid of the seed. So much so that the same invention is proposed on both sides, under the wrappings of various trifles. What one signifies by "man erect and replanted," the others signify by "spiritual and animal men." Finally, that Saturninus attributed the oracles of the prophets sometimes to the creating Angels, and sometimes to Satan, he had also borrowed from the Platonists, who, as we saw above from Iamblichus, attributed the cause of prophecies sometimes to good, sometimes to evil demons.
111. Following in the footsteps of Simon, Saturninus said that the Savior was sent by the common will of the supernal Virtues, so that He might reduce the rebellious Angels, and especially the God of the Jews, to order, and might destroy the evil men D together with the demons who aided them. This was the very thing that Simon expressed in other words: that Christ had come so that He might free men from the bonds of the Law, which the God of the Jews had imposed, and might impart salvation only to the souls of those who believed, or the spiritual ones. However, Saturninus said that the Savior was sometimes begotten by the supreme Father, and sometimes unbegotten—unbegotten, indeed, if one holds to the definition of generation strictly so called, whose term would be a person distinct from its principle; but begotten, if generation is received more broadly for simple production, of whatever kind it may be. Hence it is evident that for him, as for Simon and many other Gnostics, the Savior was a mere *energeia* of divinity, a temporary function, and a ray, not a subsistent person distinct from the Father. He asserted that He was devoid of a body (namely, a terrestrial and material one) and without figure, yet presented to the senses a simulacrum and image of a man, and that all things done by Him were perfect only in appearance; such as being born, walking, being seen, suffering. In a word, that He was a phantasm, which, moved by divine *energeia*, deceived human senses. That same wanderer [Saturninus] was the first of all to proclaim that marrying wives and begetting children was from Satan; not because he practiced chastity, but so that, released from the laws of matrimony, he might more unrestrainedly indulge in all kinds of vile pleasures. Also, many of his disciples, imitating the Pythagoreans, abstained from all animated things, so that by that affected kind of holier life they might lure some into their error.
IV. On Basilides.
112. Basilides the Alexandrian, a disciple of Saturninus, falsely boasted that he had received his doctrine from the apostle Matthias, and prided himself on having had as a teacher a certain Glaucias, whom they claimed had been an interpreter of Peter. The boasting of the deranged man about Glaucias, a man of obscure name, is perhaps pointless, in order to gain authority for his dogmas from the person of the master. From that, however (as we concluded above regarding the similar boasting of Valentinus), one may infer that Basilides, if he was not contemporary with the apostles themselves, at least approached their age very closely and lived with their disciples. Certainly Jerome, arguing against the Luciferians, counts Basilides among the heretics of the apostolic times: "But what," he says, "do I say of later ones? While the apostles were still surviving in the world, in Judea, with the blood of Christ still recent, the body of the Lord was asserted to be a phantasm. The Apostle again travailed for the Galatians who were led back to the observance of the Law. He endeavors to lead back to the true path the Corinthians, who did not believe in the resurrection of the flesh, with many arguments. Then Simon Magus, and Menander his disciple, asserted themselves to be Virtues of God: then Basilides invented the supreme God Abraxas with three hundred and sixty-five Aeons." And Epiphanius does not dissent.
A He writes, in *Hær.* xxxi, § 2, that Valentinus is indeed later in time than Basilides, Saturnilus, Ebion, Cerinthus, and Merinthus, and their companions; yet that all of them blossomed at one time for the destruction of the human race; although, he says, Cerinthus and Merinthus and Ebion preceded them a little. If not much time passed between Cerinthus, recognized as a heretic in Asia before Saint John had written his Gospel, and Basilides, then it is necessary that the latter lived in the age of John. Furthermore, Valentinus and Basilides blossomed at one time for the destruction of the human race, though in such a way that the latter was earlier and the former later. But in discussing the age of Valentinus above, we showed that he began to scatter his dogmas at the beginning of approximately the second century; from which it follows that Basilides (and a fortiori Saturnilus, who preceded him by a little) at least reached the times of the apostle John.
113. There are those, however, who make Basilides younger and contend that his heresy did not come to light until the times of Hadrian. They rely primarily on the authority of Clement of Alexandria, *Strom.* VII, p. 765; Eusebius, *Hist.* IV, cap. 7, and in his *Chronicon*; and Theodoret, *Hær. fab.* I, cap. 2, who place the heresy of Basilides in the times of Hadrian. But from the words of Clement, Eusebius in the *Chronicon*, and Theodoret, I think it can only be inferred that Basilides lived under the reign of Hadrian, had a school, and disseminated his heresy more boldly, but not that he began the heresy or taught it for the first time then. Nor can it be concluded from the fact that Eusebius in his *History* institutes a narrative about the heresy of Saturnilus and Basilides around the times of Hadrian, any more than it could be inferred that because he discourses on the Ebionites, Cerinthians, and Nicolaitans under Trajan, their origin is not earlier. Nor are the words of Firmilian, in Cyprian, *Epist.* 75, any more explicit for fixing the beginning of the Basilidian error: *"But the time of both Valentinus and Basilides is clear, in that they too rebelled against the Church of God with their wicked lies after the apostles and after a long time."* For this "long time," as Cotelerius rightly remarks, B must undoubtedly be considered an oratorical exaggeration; because between the end of the apostle John and the beginning of the emperor Hadrian, not twenty years intervene. Furthermore, Firmilian speaks of the open rebellion of Basilides against the Church, not of the beginning of his heresy. It is certain that while the apostles were alive, the heretics, lurking like serpents in their dens, repressed by the fear of the holiest men, vomited the poison of their error only secretly and timidly; but with the death of the apostles adding audacity, they began to lift their heads, to propagate their dogmas more freely, and, with unity openly violated, to establish schools for themselves. From which it follows that what Irenaeus writes in *lib.* v, c. 20, n. 1, is most true: *That all heretics are much later than the bishops to whom the apostles entrusted the Churches.* This we must indeed refer to the time when the apostles committed the Churches to apostolic men, not to that at which those bishops ceased to live. For it is certain, both from Irenaeus himself, *lib.* iii, c. 3, n. 4, and from other ancients, that Polycarp, ordained bishop of Smyrna by the apostles, was contemporary with Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, and other heretics. More truly, *a fortiori*, our author writes in the immediately cited chapter, n. 3, that the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians is older than the heretics who now falsely teach, and invent another God above the Demiurge and creator of all these things. These words, *who now falsely teach*, openly demonstrate that he understands not just any Gnostics, but only the Valentinians, whom he was refuting.
114. How old he was and whether Basilides was alive, is not sufficiently established. In the *Catalogus* of Jerome, under the entry *Agrippa*, it is read: *However, Basilides died, from whom are the Gnostics, in Alexandria in the times of Hadrian; at which time also Cochebas, leader of the Jewish faction, killed Christians with various tortures.* If these things are genuine, it must be said that Basilides died in about the year 135, when Judea was aflame with the war which the rebellion of Cochebas had stirred up against the Romans. But whether it should be read in Jerome *mortuus est* (he died) or *moratus est* (he resided/stayed), I do not yet consider placed beyond all doubt; for arguments stand for each reading. The authority of the most ancient of all our codices, the *San-Germanensis* manuscript, written in Merovingian characters, of about the seventh century, fights for *moratus est*. The same reading is exhibited by five manuscripts which Vossius testifies to have seen, and many others which our most learned Martianaeus compared. The most perfect consensus of the Hieronymian *Chronicon* with its *Catalogus* also argues for the same reading. For in the former, at the year 134, it is held: *Basilides the heresiarch resides in Alexandria, from whom the Gnostics; Cochebas, leader of the Jewish faction, kills Christians with every kind of torture because they refuse to bear aid against the Roman soldier.* The words are almost the same in both places: and what is read in the former, *commoratur* (resides), suggests that in the latter it should be read *moratus est* (resided). From the other side, all printed editions, along with most manuscripts, stand against this reading, preferring *mortuus est*. But what seems more important, the Greek interpretation which is attributed to Sophronius, and which, if it is truly Sophronius', is undoubtedly older than all the Latin codices that now exist, represents this vulgate reading: Τελευτῶντος Βασιλείδου, Γνωστικοὶ ἐν ᾿Αλεξανδρείᾳ ἐκλήθησαν, ἐν τοῖς χρόνοις ᾿Αδριανοῦ. *Basilides having died, the Gnostics were called so in Alexandria in the times of Hadrian.* Then, neither is it so certain that *commoratur* should be read in the *Chronicon*. For although Pontacus teaches that it is read in some manuscripts, as Pearson says he found it written even in one Cambridge codex, nevertheless, the same occurs in many.
115. Agrippa Castor, who flourished under Hadrian with the reputation of a scholar, seems to have been the first of all to have exposed and refuted the errors of Basilides and to have publicly brought his hidden and nefarious mysteries to light. Eusebius records that his refutation was most powerful and that it had reached his own times; yet the voracious time, destroyer of all things, has long since wretchedly consumed so luminous a work, so that we cannot enjoy it. According to Eusebius, Basilides was the author of twenty-four books on the Gospel; Clement of Alexandria mentions the twenty-third in *Stromata*, bk. IV, p. 506; Archelaus [LXI], however, mentions the thirteenth. But it is uncertain whether A they were worked up on the true Gospels of Christ or on those of Basilides himself. For Origen teaches that the impudence of the man was such that he even dared to write a new Gospel. He rejected the Old Testament along with the other Gnostics. As for the New, according to Jerome in the introduction to his *Epistle to Titus*, he foully mutilated it, cutting off not only many passages but even entire Epistles—the Letter to the Hebrews, the Letter to Titus, and both to Timothy—which he declared were not by Paul; the sole reason for cutting or rejecting them was that his errors were refuted by them. But having repudiated the true prophets, he had substituted new ones to lend credibility to his error, and he had bestowed upon them the foreign names Barcabas and Barcoph, with which he might strike terror into the simpler folk. That fictitious Barcoph is perhaps the prophet Parchor, on whom Isidore, son and disciple of Basilides, had written books of exposition. Clement of Alexandria transcribed a certain fragment taken from the first book, from which we learn that another book was familiar to the Basilidians, which they called the prophecy of Cham.
116. Basilides borrowed the arguments for his error from Simon, Menander, and Saturninus; but he set out to treat them in a different way in order to make a name for himself, and to relate them with greater pomp, having added certain new prodigies of myths. It will suffice here to mention only those things that differed from the doctrine of his masters. He derived *Nous* (Mind) from the unborn Father, then *Logos* (Word) from him, then from *Logos*, *Phronesis* (Insight) or Prudence, or, as it is read in Tertullian, Providence; and from *Phronesis*, *Sophia* (Wisdom) and *Dynamis* (Power). Thus Irenaeus, Epiphanius, Theodoret, and Tertullian. But they do not report the genealogy of Basilides in its entirety. For from Clement of Alexandria, *Stromata*, bk. IV, p. 539: *Basileides apostates* (thus I read, not *hypostatas*), *Justice and her daughter Peace, he thinks remain disposed in the Ogdoad.* Nor is there any doubt that in his first conjunction he had *Ennoia* (Thought) or *Stocheia* (Principles), and that he coupled males with females in the Ogdoad, since Gregory Nazianzen, Nicetas, and Elias Cretensis, cited elsewhere, assert this in explicit terms; and he did not reject the opinion of his masters, but rather extended it infinitely, as Irenaeus says. He distributed the Virtues, Princes, and Angels into 365 classes, according to the number of the heavens (for he imagined 365 heavens; such, no doubt, was the name he chose to give to the spheres which the sun is seen to traverse in its daily motion). He said the first class was produced by *Sophia* and *Dynamis*, which then created the first heaven and other B Angels; from these the second heaven was made, and other Angels, and from these a third, and likewise others: and thus, step by step, Angels and heavens were produced by one another up to the 365th and final heaven, which is the one nearest to us. Yet from the Angels who are in charge of the lowest heaven (the prince of whom is he who is called the God of the Jews), this lower world was fashioned, the rule and empire of which they divided among themselves; furthermore, he imposed upon all those Angels certain foreign names which would terrify the unlearned. He called their prince and supreme leader *Abraxas*, or, as Epiphanius writes, *Abrasax*; concerning which name, see what we have said in our notes. But nowhere, so far as I know, did he call those Angels *Aeons*, whence I am surprised that Jerome, in the above-cited *Dialogue against the Luciferians*, wrote that Basilides had invented 365 *Aeons*: for they distinguished Angels from *Aeons*.
117. These were nearly the points on which Basilides departed from his masters. In other matters, they were in perfect agreement. The opinion regarding the advent of Christ, his cause, effects, and mode, was the same for both. He added only that it was not Christ himself, whose body was phantasmagorical, but Simon of Cyrene, who—having changed form and appearance with Christ—was substituted for him and was lifted onto the cross: and for this reason, he said, those alone were to be liberated from the power of the Angels who created the world—those who, clearly distinguishing the one from the other, denied the crucified one and confessed him who was not crucified, but who appeared to be crucified; consequently, those were insane who suffered martyrdom for the crucified one, as there was no reward for them for a death they underwent for the sake of man. C It seems that Clement of Alexandria did not attend sufficiently to this distinction, which was familiar to these impious ones, when he wrote in *Stromata*, bk. IV, that Basilides dared to call the Lord a man endowed with the power of sinning: which appears false if it refers to the true Christ, whom he did not even admit to be a man; however, it can be tolerated if it is understood of the counterfeit Christ, namely Simon of Cyrene, who was affixed to the cross under the appearance and figure of Christ. The same unrestrained D arguments were used by both.
licentiousness in all actions, corruption of morals, A a reckless lust for whatever one pleases, and the pursuit of magical arts, nay even the crimes of idolatry; for they offered impious worship to certain images. But, being more skilled than the others in weaving his deceits, he zealously commended the art of dissimulation to his followers, and often inculcated that they should never divulge the secrets of their sect except to a very few, those indeed who were proven and certain; for, he argued, not many are prepared to receive these things, but scarcely one in a thousand, and two in ten thousand. "Make every effort," he would repeatedly insist, "so that you may know all things, but let no one know you." Therefore, so that they might learn to be silent more securely, following the custom and practice of the Pythagoreans, he prescribed a five-year silence for those who surrendered themselves to his discipline. Hence, they did not hesitate in the least to deny the faith whenever the opportunity arose. Indeed, when interrogated, they would deny that they were Jews, but conversely would claim that they had not yet been Christians. If it happened that someone suffered martyrdom, Basilides was so far from counting it as a singular benefit that he would rather contend it was punishment that his soul was suffering on account of sin committed in another life: a punishment, indeed, B more honorable than those which other souls pay, being punished by domestic tribulations; yet a punishment nonetheless. For he believed that souls were thrust into this life because they had sinned in another: indeed, that they were sometimes bound in the bodies of beasts or birds before entering human ones. These things quite clearly betray the opinion of Plato regarding the pre-existence of souls, sin, and the atonement of punishment in bodies, as well as the invention of metempsychosis, the first author of which was Pythagoras, if one trusts Laertius. For he was the first to perceive that the soul, changing the circle of necessity, is bound to various animals. But he had received this from the Egyptians. For Herodotus, in *Euterpe*, says that the Egyptians were the first to put forward this opinion. And Iamblichus, Book I of *De vita Pythagoræ*, chapter 5, and Photius, in his *Bibliotheca*, p. 1004, agree with him.
118. [LXII] That Basilides also held that there were two souls in us, just as the Pythagoreans did, one bestial, the other rational, is testified to by Clement. But what concept underlies this dogma, we have explained in discussing Valentinus—namely, that there are two parts of our soul: the sense, which we share with the beasts, and the mind, by which we differ from them. This was the opinion and explanation of the Pythagoreans, as can be seen in Laertius, pp. 512, 513. Somewhat more obscurely, Clement writes in the same place that it seemed to the followers of Basilides that the perturbations of the soul, which they called C *prosaprtēmata*, that is, appendices, were certain spirits attached to the rational soul according to substance, in view of a certain primary perturbation; but that other, adulterous ones, and of a different kind, were natures of spirits grafted onto them, such as those of wolves, apes, lions, and bears, by which the soul takes on properties similar to those of brute animals. Light is thrown on this by the opinion, familiar to not a few of the ancient Fathers, that there are as many vices as there are demons that move and disturb the soul and impel it to evil. One should listen to Origen, Homily 15 on Joshua: "Whence it seems to me," he says, "that there is an infinite number of contrary virtues, for the reason that there are certain spirits throughout individual men, plotting diverse kinds of sins in them. For instance, there is some spirit of fornication, another is the spirit of anger, another is the spirit of avarice, yet another is the spirit of pride. And if you should find some man who is agitated by all these evils, or even by more, he must be considered to have as many, or even more, of these spirits within him as enemies. Whence it is to be believed that there are many throughout individuals; because individual men do not have individual vices, nor commit individual sins; but rather many seem to be admitted by each one. And again, it should not be thought that one spirit of fornication seduces him who, for example, commits fornication in Britain, and him who does so in India, and in other places; nor that there is one spirit of anger that agitates different men in different places; but I think rather that there is indeed one leader of fornication, but that there are countless others who obey him in this office, and throughout individual men, different spirits, serving under this leader, solicit them to such sins. Similarly, I judge that there is one leader of the spirit of anger; but that there are countless numbers acting under him, who, through each one of these men, excite the sins of this kind of vice. Similarly, that there is one leader of avarice; and so of pride, and of the other evils, etc." He has the same things on John, v, 49. Cotelerius relates many other testimonies of the ancient Fathers to this effect in his notes to Hermas, *Pastor*, Book II, chapter 2. Now, if I am not mistaken, it will not be very burdensome to explain what the Basilidians meant when they defined the perturbations of the soul as certain spirits attached to the rational soul according to substance, in view of a certain primary perturbation: *Пvєúµατά τινα κατ' οὐσίαν προσηρτημένα τῇ λογικῇ ψυχῇ, κατά τινα τάραχον καὶ σύγχυσιν ἀρχικήν*. I think that their opinion was the same as Origen’s: namely, that they are evil spirits or demons, by which the soul is, as it were, besieged, and which, by proposing enticing and deceitful objects, stir up various perturbations within it; yet that in each man there is one D as a leading demon to whom the others are subject, and likewise one dominant affection on which the rest depend and to which they are referred. And that this was the mind of the Basilidians is confirmed by the very testimony of Valentinus, which Clement relates in the same place, taken from a certain letter of his. For he, explaining the appendices of the Basilidians, says that our heart is like an inn, in which many spirits dwell and do not allow it to be pure, but each one of them performs its own works, often insulting it with unseemly cravings. But since affections of a double nature can be distinguished—some more spiritual and, if I may say so, more refined, the objects of which do not so much depend on matter; others coarser, which are carried with a blind and almost bestial impulse toward those things which [depend on] matter.
V. Concerning Carpocrates.
119. Carpocrates, or Carpocras, an Alexandrian by birth, took to wife a woman named Alexandria, of the Cephallenian people, from whom he received a son, Epiphanes, a bad egg from a bad crow, the founder of a new sect, of whom we have already spoken. Eusebius reports, as if from Irenaeus, that Carpocrates lived in the same times as Basilides. Although not even a word about the age of Carpocrates occurs in Irenaeus, I do not therefore think that the date established by Eusebius is incorrect. For Epiphanius A strongly agrees with this, and Theodoret does not disagree, writing that he lived under Hadrian. He indeed affirms that the sects of Basilides, Saturninus, Valentinus, Colorbasus, Ptolemaeus, Secundus, and Carpocrates arose at the same time; only that the Valentinian sect is slightly more recent than the others. And yet we have proved that Basilides was at least a contemporary of the apostle John, and that Valentinus was not much younger. If, therefore, Carpocrates established a school in the same times as both of them, it is necessary that he did so at the beginning of Hadrian’s reign. Consequently, his heresy became known much earlier in the parts of the East than in the West: indeed, it was brought there by a certain Marcellina, who, as Irenaeus testifies B, came to Rome under Pope Anicetus, in about the year 160.
120. That Carpocrates was most learned in the Platonic discipline is clear even from the fact that the son of Epiphanes, fostered by him, had a great name among the Platonists. But if perhaps he surpassed many heresiarchs in the praise of knowledge, he certainly surpassed them all in the depravity of his morals. He affirmed, like the others, a single supreme Principle, and also the Father of all, who is unknown and not signified by any name; but that the world, and what is contained in the world, were made by Angels, who hold a far lower degree of dignity than that unknown Father, and have fallen away from him. Furthermore, that our Lord Jesus was born from the union of Joseph and Mary, and existed indeed in nature similar to the rest of men; but that he excelled in his manner of life, temperance, virtue, and justice. For when he had been allotted a soul firmer and more vigorous than other men, with the pristine circumrotation (περιφορά) with the unbegotten God adhering more tenaciously to it, there was infused into it by that same supreme Father a Power, which might refresh the memory of things seen before, so that, strengthened by the recollection of heavenly things, he might escape the Angels who are the founders of the world, and by the benefit of the infused Power, having performed all the actions which can be undertaken by men, even the most shameful (horrendous!) and most wicked, he was already free, having discharged all the debts of human nature, and could fly up to the supreme Father. Nor indeed did he have the soul of Jesus only, but also any other whatsoever, which might be so powerful that it could despise the Angels who are the fabricators of the world, receive strength from above, so that by the same actions, progression, deeds, and functions which Jesus underwent, it itself might also be exalted above the fabricator Angels, and, freed from all, might arrive upward to the unknown Father. Indeed, such was the arrogance of most impudent men, that certain ones boasted that they excelled not only the apostles Peter and Paul and the rest, but even Jesus himself, both in the excellence of their knowledge and because they had performed various progressions and courses more abundantly. For all souls C, they said, were from the same circumrotation (περιφορά); and therefore the same [soul], harboring the contempt of the Angels just as Jesus did, to be instructed with the same force and virtue by which all kinds of actions are conducted. But if any soul could be found which harbored a greater contempt than Jesus, that one would finally surpass him himself.
121. What, therefore, shall I call this—was it a beginning of men or of beasts? Souls pre-existing in bodies could not reach the summit of perfection, unless they had contemned the world’s fabricator Angels—their laws, precepts, and works being audaciously trodden underfoot—with a more dissolute life, wicked baseness, and every kind of crime and villainy: with that yoke shaken off, they might obtain celestial liberty and be able to aspire and fly upward. For nothing by nature is good or evil, but only by the opinion of men, who judge those things to be good or evil which are repugnant or consonant to the law; the law, therefore, having been abolished, which was unjustly laid down by the Angels, all things are held to be promiscuous by their own nature: but only faith and charity are necessary for salvation, and all other things confer nothing: and these were the things which Jesus taught his apostles and disciples in secret, and commanded that those believe them who were worthy. Hence a new species of transmigration (μετεμψυχώσεως) was concocted, that the soul which has omitted even a single kind of flagitious act in this one present life might be thrust into another body; and if not even then has it perfected everything, [it is thrust] in turn into another, until, having performed every kind of action, and being obligated to no action owed in this world, it might depart already free. Souls indeed departing from here, as soon as they have been released from the bonds of the body, are seized by one of the D fabricator Angels of the world, to whom that duty has been entrusted, and he leads them to the judge; where if they are convicted of not yet having performed everything, they are handed over by the Prince of the Angels to another Angel who ministers to him, who thrusts them back into other bodies.
122. What wonder is it now if men imbued with these principles, living after the manner of cattle, surrendered themselves headlong into infinite kinds of flagitious acts and impudently practiced whatever was the most abominable in the art of magic? It would have been little, if they had not assumed the name of Christian to themselves, and bespattered the Church of God with the infamy of their most wicked life. For...
the heathens, who judged the morals of all by the lives of these men, abominated them, making no distinction at all, and could not even bear to hear the name. Yet they could easily have been distinguished from one another, not only by their faith and morals, but also by certain external signs. For the Carpocratians were accustomed to imprint a certain mark upon the lower part of the ear of those whom they had deceitfully enticed into their sect, using a heated iron, or a razor, or a needle. And indeed, that they might not stray too far from the superstitions of the Gentiles, they possessed certain images, both painted and carved, which they affirmed were likenesses of Jesus, made by Pilate at the time when He walked among men. Furthermore, they mixed in with these the images of more famous philosophers—Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and others—and all of them together, while preserving the rites of the Gentiles, they worshipped.
123. From this cult it is confirmed what we have many times said, that Pythagoras and Plato, and their doctrines, held a place of the highest honor among the Gnostics. Although the Carpocratians had augmented these with the greatest monstrosities of impiety and had interpolated them, they yet shine through from time to time amidst the mists. Concerning the hypothesis of the creation of the world, concerning the unknown God, and concerning the law that was to be abrogated, which was given through Angels, I will say nothing: for it is the very doctrine of Simon, responding not poorly to the tenets of Pythagoras and Plato. Moreover, that which Carpocrates invented concerning the human soul tastes in almost every respect of the Platonic school. Just as the Platonists, according to Iamblichus, attributed a twofold soul to every man—one from the first intelligible, which participates in the power of the Creator, *ἀπὸ τοῦ πρώτου νοητοῦ μετέχουσαν καὶ τῆς τοῦ δημιουργοῦ δυνάμεως*; another which comes to us *ἐκ τῆς τῶν οὐρανίων περιφορᾶς*, into which the *θεοπτικὴ ψυχή*—the soul that contemplates God—creeps, in the revolution of the celestial spheres, into which the soul that is a spectator of God inserts itself—so also did Carpocrates distinguish the two souls of each man, at least of the just man; one which has descended from the *περιφορᾶ*, the revolution of the unknown God—that is, if my supposition does not fail me, from the supreme sphere or heaven, or the Pleroma in which the highest God dwells; the other, which has insinuated itself into this, namely, the supernal virtue sent into it, that it might be strengthened and might be able to remember the unknown God. D According to the Platonists, the former soul obeys the motions of the worlds and is subject to fate; according to the Carpocratians, if it should be alone, it submits to the empire of the Angels who created the world. According to the former, the latter is superior to the motion of the *δημιουργός*, because it has in itself its own principle *τῆς εἰς τὸ νοητὸν περιγωγῆς*, by which it can convert itself to the intelligible, and withdraw itself from created things, and transcend the mundane order. From these things, it shakes off the yoke of the Angels, the creators of the world, becomes master of all created things, and at last, freed from its bonds, flies upward to the supreme Father. These things respond to one another so aptly that one drop of water could not be more like another. It is the doctrine of Plato in the Phaedrus, in the Epinomis, and elsewhere, that our souls, long before they entered bodies, sat at the banquet of the gods and tasted divine viands; that is to say, they were nourished by the contemplation of truth and refreshed by the sight of true beings: then, having broken the two wings by which they were borne to things above—their inclination of intellect and will toward the divine truth and goodness having, as it were, grown faint—they were carried away by the weight of the instinct that inclines toward the generation and animating of bodies, and fell into them: B where, by the aid of reason, they recover their broken wings, having gradually remembered those things which they once saw when joined to God; and then, despising these lower things, they are turned back toward true beings which are above. If, by the constant meditation of celestial things and a praiseworthy use of reason, they have recalled the memory of the higher things they once saw, they fly upward once the bonds of the body are finally loosed, to rule as some star and lead a blessed life. But if, more deeply immersed in bodies, they have allowed their reason to languish and to be overwhelmed by the mists of base affections, never looking back to the things above, these, as a punishment for their sins, are thrust—first into female bodies, then into the bodies of beasts, if they do not repent—until, reason being awakened and they having been purged of base affections, they have returned, mindful of celestial things, to their first and best state. Furthermore, that this is the very opinion of Carpocrates will be clear to anyone comparing one with the other. The same celestial origin of souls appears everywhere; the same pre-existence and contemplation of higher things, prior to the entry into bodies; the same purgation of souls and recovery of the memory of things past through the contempt of lower things; the same revolution through diverse bodies, and finally the restitution to the pristine state. So much does Carpocrates, under the Christian name, prove far worse than the pagan Plato, in that he interprets this contempt of lower things in a way that Plato would have blushed at; and he attributes the cause of the repeated revolution of souls to the omission of some most base crime, which he rejects as base affections and a perverse use of reason.
124. It was also a Pythagorean tenet—which Carpocrates devised—that the task was entrusted to a certain Angel to lead souls migrating from here to the Prince, to be punished by him if they had omitted any duty whatever. For, the witness being Laertius, this was the very office that Pythagoras attributed to Mercury: so much so that Carpocrates has reboiled the same story in its entirety, with only the names changed. He said that Mercury is the *ψυχοπομπός*, the receiver of souls, and thus is called the guide because he leads souls out of bodies—the pure and purged ones to the heights, but delivers the impure to the Furies to be bound in unbroken chains. Hence Horace, Odes 1.10: *Tu pias laetis animas reponis* *Sedibus, virgaque levem coërces* *Aurea turbam.*
VI. Concerning Cerinthus.
A 125. Cerinthus was, if not by nationality, at least by religion, a Jew, who erupted in the times of the apostles, or even from the very cradles of the Church, if one is to trust Epiphanius. For he believes that it was he who stirred up the faithful against St. Peter because he had deigned to baptize the Centurion Cornelius; and that he was the same man who wrongly troubled the Church at Antioch by recommending the old Law. Finally, it was the Cerinthians who, with a preposterous zeal for the Law, so often stirred up ill-will against the apostles, especially against St. Paul, whom he attacks more frequently in his Epistles. But Irenæus seems to contradict this, writing that the error of the Nicolaitans was sown much earlier than that of the Cerinthians; nor is Epiphanius sufficiently consistent with himself, signifying that Cerinthus was later than Carpocrates, who, as we saw a little earlier, did not emerge until the beginnings of the reign of Hadrian. But that Cerinthus is older, and founded his heresy under Domitian, is demonstrated by the account which Irenæus testifies he received from Polycarp, and after him Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome, Theodoret, and others: that the Apostle John entered a bath at Ephesus to wash, but when he learned that Cerinthus was inside, he immediately rushed out of that place, saying, lest the bath, in which Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, dwells, should suddenly collapse and crush us.
126. That he first spent a long time in Egypt, devoting himself to philosophy (Platonic, certainly, which was flourishing there at that time), then came to Asia, and there spread his impiety far and wide, is stated by Theodoret, with whom Epiphanius agrees. A new sect sprouted from him, called the Cerinthians, or Merinthians; either because Cerinthus was also called Merinthus, or because he had a certain Merinthus as an assistant and associate, which Epiphanius admits is doubtful and known only to God. Irenæus relates that the Gospel was written by John, partially to refute the errors of Cerinthus. Therefore, those men were most senseless who, as Philastrius testifies, surmised that Cerinthus himself was the author of this Gospel. For they approved only the Gospel of Matthew, and that one mutilated of the genealogy of Christ, having rejected the other three, as well as the Acts of the Apostles and all the Epistles of Paul, if one is to trust Philastrius and Epiphanius. B However, I am somewhat afraid that both have confused the Cerinthians with the Ebionites. For only they among the ancients ascribe to them what others consistently attribute to the latter; nor does it seem that this would have been omitted by Irenæus, who records the errors of Cerinthus, when he did not neglect to note it while reviewing the dogmas of the Ebionites. Furthermore, Epiphanius seems to contradict himself. For in *Haer.* xxx, § 14, he asserts in clear terms that Carpocrates and Cerinthus relied on the Gospel of Matthew, and from its beginning, by means of Christ's genealogy, strove to prove that Christ was begotten from the seed of Joseph and Mary. The Ebionites, on the contrary, with all that genealogy cut away, derived the beginning of the Gospel from other words. Therefore, the Cerinthians did not cut the genealogy from the Gospel of Matthew, from which they persuaded themselves they could derive arguments against the virginity of Mary. And therefore, the memory of Epiphanius must have failed him either here or there. I would rather believe it failed him there than here. Dionysius of Alexandria, according to Eusebius, bears witness that there were some who thought that Cerinthus was the author of the Apocalypse, which the Church most certainly believes to be John’s. No doubt because he too, posing as an apostle, had dared to write a spurious Apocalypse; for indeed Theodoret asserts this in clear words: and the words of the presbyter Caius, according to the same Eusebius, easily admit this sense. He had also published, according to Theodoret, *ἀπειλῶν τίνων διδασκαλίας*, doctrines of certain threats; whether this book was different from the Apocalypse is not sufficiently clear. It is more certain that Cerinthus laid the foundations of the error of the Chiliasts or Millenarians in his Apocalypse; by which he suggested that after the resurrection of human flesh, there would be a terrestrial kingdom of Christ, and that in Jerusalem men would serve the passions of the flesh and the enticements of pleasures, and would spend a thousand years in marriage feasts and celebrations. C And to this error indeed (to say nothing of the Apocalypse of John), the prophecies of the prophets concerning the kingdom of the Messiah seem to have provided the occasion; which, when understood literally by a man of "duller" intellect, together with the common people of the Jews expecting an earthly kingdom, and thus not yet fulfilled, he lapsed into the opinion that they were to be fulfilled after the resurrection. Perhaps the comment of Plato concerning the "Great Year" also provided material. For he wishes that after 36,000 years the world should be renewed; and then the golden age would arrive. Having fallen imprudently into the same error, but purged of the dregs of bodily pleasures, Papias, the auditor of John, provided an occasion for the fall of not a few of the Holy Fathers later on. But more on these things elsewhere.
D 127. The errors of Cerinthus were almost the same as the dreams of Simon, Menander, and other Gnostics. He distinguishes the supreme God from the Creator of the world in such a way, both by nature and by dwelling, that the latter is a Virtue infinitely distant from the former, and entirely ignorant of it. Whence it follows that God took no care of this world, nor gave the Law; but that an Angel was the creator of the world, and likewise the author of the Law, and the Lord of the Jews: these were the delusions of Simon, Menander, and Carpocrates, which Tertullian, or anyone else, and Epiphanius explicitly attribute to Cerinthus. And yet Epiphanius wishes—
it is difficult to say whether through a lapse of memory or through oversight—to offend even Augustine himself by mixing together disparate things, namely the heresies of the Ebionites and the Cerinthians. For Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Theodoret, who are most accurate writers, while compiling a catalogue of the errors of Cerinthus, do not mention by even a single word his ill-timed zeal for the Old Law, A of which, however, they did not fail to accuse the Ebionites. I concede, indeed, that it is no wonder if unwise heretics differ among themselves; since Truth is one and the same, it is consistent only with itself. But that they should so openly contradict themselves, as to knowingly and willingly tear down with one hand what they had built with the other, and to urge the necessity of that Law whose yoke they teach—plainly and everywhere—was imposed by wicked Angels rebelling against God, and thus contrary to divine law, and ought to be cast off—this can hardly be credited by sensible people.
But it is clear that this must have been Cerinthus' hypothesis: that he consequently despised the Old Law and judged that its observance should be altogether banished far from true Gnostics. Following the footsteps of Simon and Carpocrates, he asserts along with them that [the Law] was placed by inferior Angels, ignorant of the supreme Father, and he traced salvation to the sole knowledge of the unknown God. Nor should it be omitted that, in Tertullian, this very thing is attributed to the Ebionites which Epiphanius attributes to the Cerinthians, namely, that they abused these words of Christ in Matthew: *No disciple is above his teacher, nor a servant above his lord; it is enough for the disciple to be as his teacher;* B in order to commend the necessity of circumcision and the Old Law by the example of Jesus Christ, since He submitted Himself to both. So that from this, suspicion is strengthened that Epiphanius did not sufficiently accurately distinguish between the Cerinthians and the Ebionites.
128. That the Pleroma, the home of the supreme Father and of Sige [Silence], and of other invisible and unnameable Virtues, was for Cerinthus, as for the Nicolaitans and other Gnostics, is asserted by Irenaeus and Gregory Nazianzen. From that Father he derived the Monogenes [Only-begotten], and from him the Logos; so that it is not permitted to doubt that he admitted a primary Ogdoad along with the other Gnostics. As for Jesus, he said [He was] the son of the creator of the world, and that He was a pure man, born from the sowing of Joseph and Mary in the manner of other men, with only this difference: that He excelled other men in justice, wisdom, and prudence. C But upon this man, when He received baptism, the Christ descended from the supreme God in the form of a dove; who revealed to him—and through him to the rest of men—the unknown Father, and was the author of the miracles which he performed. But at the time of the passion, Christ withdrew and flew back to whence He had come; but Jesus alone both suffered death and was raised from the dead; Christ, as being spiritual, was devoid of all suffering.
All these things are Carpocratian; however, they depart from the Simonians in that a true human body is attributed to Jesus, but when He is posited as a mere man whom only a passing ray of divinity illuminated, the entire merit of Christ's passion and death vanishes. But from what has just been said, you will easily detect in what sense Epiphanius wrote that Christ had suffered and been crucified. Unless a mistake has crept into the text, and for D *Christon* one must read *Iesoun*, it is plain that here the term "Christ" is not used in the sense of the Cerinthians, who distinguished Christ from Jesus, but of the Catholics who use both terms indiscriminately, because Christ and Jesus are one and the same person. But what Epiphanius adds (to which Philastrius and Augustine agree), that Jesus had not yet been raised from the dead, but would be raised only then, when all the dead rise, can hardly stand with those things which we have just related from Irenaeus, or indeed from Epiphanius himself, that Jesus died and was raised from the dead. Unless perhaps we say that this was the opinion not of Cerinthus himself, but of certain of his disciples, who, imbued with the error of the Millenarians by their master, did not wish Jesus to be endowed with any singular prerogative above the rest, but to be raised from the dead only when all others were to be raised. And Epiphanius seems to hint at this, that some Cerinthians also fundamentally denied the resurrection of the dead; whom, therefore, it seems consistent to suppose thought differently about the earthly kingdom of Christ than their master. That Cerinthus honored the traitor of the Jews, only Philastrius mentions; of the ancients, no one else.
VII. Of the Ebionites.
129. The name of the Ebionites is derived from a certain Ebion, a prince of the sect, as most assert; but [others say] it is a mere nickname given to those heretics who, having judged Christ to be a mere man, thought of Him in a very humble and abject way. For which reason, says Eusebius, they obtained the name Ebionites, by which the poverty of their intelligence is sufficiently indicated. For thus are beggars called among the Hebrews. The words of Origen are almost the same. Others, however, commonly—but more recent than these, whose leader is Epiphanius—dissent, and affirm that a certain shadowy Ebion existed who was the author of the sect by that name. Yet it is strange that our Irenaeus, who nowhere neglected to name the princes of all the ancient Gnostic sects where they were certain and known, does not [mention] that Ebion, where he recounts the errors of the Ebionites.
Whatever the case may be, Epiphanius writes that the report had reached him that Ebion, after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the Christians had withdrawn across the Jordan into the city of Pella and the neighboring regions, began to propagate his ill-conceived dogmas in the village of Cocabe; and from there disseminated them in Asia, in Rome, and even on the island of Cyprus. The opinion common among the ancients is that John wrote his Gospel to stifle this nascent hydra: and since it was written around the year 97, it must be that Ebion had emerged from his hiding place before then.
130. If he was a disciple of Cerinthus, he strayed far from his master’s opinion. His chief error was the stubborn assertion that a studious observer of the old law must join it—though mixed with many superstitions and the rites of the Samaritans—to the Christian faith. He did not deny that the world was created by God. Concerning Jesus Christ, however, the opinion of the Ebionites was not uniform. All agreed that he was a mere man, not God. Indeed, some allowed that he was born of a Virgin, but they denied that he existed as God, or as the Word and Wisdom of God, before this birth. Others, along with Ebion, said that he was begotten from the union of Joseph and Mary, in the manner of other men, and that he acquired holiness for himself through good works. And this was the more common opinion of the Ebionites, which Irenæus, Tertullian, Eusebius, and Theodoret attribute to them. B From this, I think, we must derive the explanation of these words of Irenæus: *But concerning those things which pertain to the Lord, they do not think similarly to Cerinthus and Carpocrates*; provided, however, that the reading is genuine and the negative particle is not to be expunged. For, to omit here what I observed in the notes to this passage: although Cerinthus and Carpocrates wished Jesus to have been begotten from Joseph and Mary in the manner of other men, they did not believe that he acquired holiness and the power to confer holiness for himself; but rather that a supreme Power from God descended upon him, conferring upon him—and through him upon others—holiness and the power to perform miracles. The Ebionites, however, inventing nothing of the kind, nor summoning that fictitious Christ from above, more simply maintained that Jesus was an ordinary man whose sole prerogative above others was his having applied himself more studiously to good works, thereby acquiring greater holiness for himself. Thus, there is no slight difference between the two, so that Irenæus could rightly write that they do not think similarly.
131. From the books of the New Testament they valued none, except the Gospel of Matthew, namely that which was written in Hebrew, called "according to the Hebrews," and that mutilated in the first two chapters, and in many C places depraved, which they accepted. They did not greatly esteem the other Gospels—they made little account of the rest, to use the words of Eusebius. If, however, one may trust Marius Mercator, they sometimes made use of the authority of Mark and Luke, when, that is, they thought it would suit their purposes to defeat the Catholics, if possible, with their own weapons. They not only rejected the Epistles of Paul, but also cast various insults at him. Whatever was prophetic in the Old Testament they strove to expound more curiously than others, says Irenæus; that is, if I conjecture correctly, they interpreted them into various and vain allegories, according to the custom of heretics. They had not shrunk from attributing to the apostles diverse adulterated writings. They circulated other Acts of the Apostles, and the Circuits of Peter, or books of Recognitions, upon which they had falsely inscribed the name of Clement of Rome, and had foully corrupted them. They urged the necessity of circumcision and legal observance to such an extent that they contended that without them, with only the Christian faith, salvation could not be obtained; but they mixed the legal observances, as I said, with various and ridiculous superstitions. These are primarily those whose D more fervent, or rather, often furious zeal, the apostles, especially Paul in his Epistles, generally censure and repress. They initiated their followers with baptism, which, at least in the age of Jerome, the Catholic Church does not disapprove. But they celebrated mysteries annually, in which they used unleavened bread, and for the other part of the mystery, water. Eusebius, however, seems to indicate that those mysteries were celebrated by them not annually, but on each Lord's Day. For, he says, they observe the Sabbath and the rest of the Jewish institution similarly with the Jews; but they commemorate the resurrection of our Savior on the Lord's days in the same manner as we do. Many other things concerning the errors of the Ebionites, and their depraved customs and ways of life, can be seen in Epiphanius, which I deliberately omit, as they contribute little or nothing to my purpose and require no exposition. Let the studious reader merely observe that Epiphanius did not distinguish with sufficient accuracy between the errors of the earlier and the later Ebionites, and attributed them indiscriminately to all, though they might not apply to the former, but only to the latter; for I believe that the hypothesis of the latter was interpolated by the accession of new dogmas and superstitions: and that the former erred almost only in this, that they were excessively addicted to Jewish ceremonies, rites, and superstitions, and felt more humbly concerning the person of Christ. And for that reason Irenæus inserts them into the catalog of Gnostics; not that they were fed in their minds by the chimeras of Eons, but because, acknowledging in Christ Jesus nothing but what is human, and nothing divine by substance, they removed the Incarnation of the Word from the midst, and entirely overturned the whole merit of Christ’s passion.
VIII. Of the Nicolaitans.
132. That the Nicolaitans derived their name from Nicolaus, one of the seven first deacons mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, is the common opinion of all; if one excepts Cassian, who, relying on no authority of the ancients, thinks that they received both their name and origin from some other Nicolaus. Whether that Nicolaus the deacon laid the foundations of the shameful sect of the Nicolaitans is a matter on which opinions are divided. Some hold him to be guilty, others A innocent. That Nicolaus stood as the first author and teacher of this error is explicitly asserted by Irenaeus, by the ancient author of the Addition at the end of Tertullian’s book *De praescriptione*, by Hippolytus, as cited by Photius, by Hilary, Gregory of Nyssa, Philastrius, Jerome, and Gregory the Great. If we listen to Epiphanius, the cause of the fall was the intemperance of the man, and his lack of constancy in the proposal of continence he had adopted. For, having a wife—a woman of elegant appearance—from whom he had abstained for some time, he became impatient of longer continence and returned to his former embraces. But, to cloak this shameful act with sought-after excuses, and heaping impudence upon libido, he taught: unless one makes use of luxury every day, one cannot attain eternal salvation. Then, inflamed by jealousy, and having fallen into new crimes, he gave rise to the sect of the Nicolaitans B and Gnostics, from which many others sprang—whose names are obscure or entirely unknown—as new monsters of errors and filth were added.
Those, however, who free Nicolaus from blame are neither few, nor of low name in the Church. Clement of Alexandria leads the group, followed by Eusebius, Theodoret, Augustine, Victorinus of Pettau, and others; among whom one might count Ignatius in his letters to the Trallians and Philadelphians, if the testimonies brought forward in favor of Nicolaus were drawn from genuine, and not interpolated, letters. They all hold that the heretical Simonians, in order to gain authority for themselves through a great name, slandered Nicolaus and gloried in him as their author, having wrongly seized an occasion from a fact that Clement of Alexandria narrates in a C way far different from Epiphanius. He says, namely, that Nicolaus, in order to purge himself of the jealousy charged against him by the Apostles, brought forward his wife, who was beautiful, into the midst, and permitted whoever wished to marry her. Then, as if he had publicly prostituted his wife and permitted her promiscuous use to everyone, the heretics seized the occasion to relax the reins of their lust. Nicolaus’s one goal was to remove from himself the suspicion D of jealousy, and to show publicly that he was so disposed that, if it were lawful, he would be prepared to grant to anyone the power to marry his wife, once he had renounced her. That this is certain is proven by the fact that he never recoiled from his conjugal fidelity, and from the fact that his daughters remained virgins, while his son lived a bachelor life. The heretics abused another of Nicolaus’s apophthegms, namely, that *the flesh must be abused*: by which, however, his intention had only been to signify that the flesh should by no means be indulged, but rather subdued, and broken by the assiduous exercise of virtue.
Each party has its authority, and weighty arguments fight on both sides. Nicolaus is condemned by the apostolic man Irenaeus, and acquitted by Clement, his contemporary; each of them [spoke] from what he could have perceived by hearing from the disciples of the apostles; so that the faith of neither one should be disparaged. It is safer, therefore, not to define rashly, but to leave the matter in the middle. This, however, is most certain: that the Nicolaitans were condemned by the mouth of God Himself. For thus in the Apocalypse, Christ addresses the bishop of Ephesus: *But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.* And consequently, that sect was at that time devastating the Church. Eusebius thinks it was quickly extinguished. More probably, it was not the sect itself that was extinguished, but only the name of the sect. For since it sounded to Catholic ears as something most wicked, and thus execrable, that name was set aside, and a new title of Gnostics was devised, which, with the feigned praise of science, might deceive the ignorant.
133. Irenaeus thought it superfluous to recount the theoretical dogmas of the Nicolaitans: for he clearly implies in Book III, chapter 11, that they were the same as those of the other Gnostics, as we have already observed when treating of Cerinthus. Epiphanius prosecuted these in a more flowing style, while Augustine and Pseudo-Tertullian reported them in summary. But what they ascribe to the Nicolaitans is the very thing that Irenaeus, a little later, attributes to the Gnostics in general. Since, however, the Nicolaitans gloried in that name more than others—and perhaps had been the first of all to claim it for themselves—I do not doubt that what our author refers to the Gnostics there pertains most of all to them. But more on this in its own place. The same Irenaeus compressed their practical dogmas into very few, but most effective words: *They live indiscriminately*, he says, that is, for them all things are promiscuous: which returns to the principle of Carpocrates: that nothing is by its own nature good or evil, but all things are matters of indifference. No wonder, therefore, if to eat of things sacrificed to idols, and to commit fornication (by which characters Christ designates that sect), should be for them a matter of no religion. In one word, so unbridled was he in every kind of intemperance...
their lust, to the point that among the Pseudo-Tertullian it was a source of shame to speak of it.
IX. Concerning Cerdon.
A 434 Cerdon, the teacher of Marcion, appears to have originated from Syria. For all the ancients consistently affirm that he came to Rome from Syria while Hyginus was ruling the Roman Church, at almost the same time as Valentinus, that is, about the year of Christ 141. There, mingling guile with errors—now professing the Catholic faith, now casting it aside, now penitent, now apostate, in this way changing his form often like Proteus, constant to nothing—he troubled the Church for a long time; until at last, weary of his repeated relapses, the Church forever barred the impostor from the sacred assemblies of the faithful. This man, as Irenaeus testifies, received the matter of his error from those who are of the school of Simon, that is, from Simon, Menander, Saturninus, and other ringleaders of the Gnostics, to whom, however, he introduced a somewhat different form so that he might appear to offer something new. He established two principles of the universe, and two gods: the one Good and unknown to all, whom he also named the Father of Jesus; the other, the Maker of the world, just, harsh, and known, the author of the Mosaic law, who also appeared to the prophets and gave himself to be seen many times. If these things differ in any way from the doctrines of Simon, the conflict lingers in names alone. For although he asserted that the world was created by angels and that the old law was sanctioned by them, yet his successors introduced a specific creator and author of the law, whom some called the Demiurge and others Jaldabaoth; all said that he was God in his own way, both because he comes under that name most often in the Old Testament, and because he had claimed for himself supreme power over inferior things. But they could not confess the true God—unless they had fallen into open insanity and extinguished the idea of divinity implanted in all mortals—from whom they said that the created one was defeated by the supreme God and driven out from the empire which he had badly usurped for himself. Therefore, the creator of the world was the same thing for Simon and Cerdon, namely, an angel, and one who was wicked and exercising tyranny; the same was the supreme God and Father, who remained unknown until the times of Christ the Lord. Consequently, the conclusions of this same hypothesis are the same, namely, that the old law is to be rejected as alien to the true God; that there is no resurrection of the dead; that Christ was not the Son of Mary, but descended from heaven clothed in a feigned appearance of flesh, so that he might overthrow the empire and tyranny of the world's architect. And the authors attribute these dogmas to each of them equally.
X. Concerning Marcion.
135. As many of the ancients as make mention of Marcion relate that he was both a disciple and successor of Cerdon, and that he was from Pontus by birth. Epiphanius adds that there was a widespread report B about him that he originated from that part of Pontus which is called the Hellespont, from the city of Sinope, and was born of a father who was a bishop of the Catholic communion. Rhodon, in Eusebius, calls him a sailor, and Tertullian calls him a shipmaster: is it because he practiced the nautical art at first? Or because both of them, playing on the word *Pontus*, the name of Marcion's homeland, which signifies both a region of Asia and the sea, call him a sailor or shipmaster, as if he were a man of the sea, born in the sea? Anyone who attentively reads the beginnings of the first book against Marcion will discover that this was perhaps the mind of Tertullian, who was very fond of such witticisms. In his virginity, at first, fleeing the company of men, he lived laudably as a *monazon* (not professing the institutes of monks, which were not yet known, as Petavius translates it less attentively). But when afterwards, on account of a rape committed upon a virgin, he was expelled by his own father, a bishop who was extremely religious and most ardent in his love of truth and holiness, and could not wheedle pardon and peace by any prayers (doubtless because there was no sincere sorrow from his offense), he betook himself to Rome after the death of Pope Hyginus. And when he obtained nothing of what he desired there from the presbyters, the see being vacant, as I conjecture—because the laws of the Church, C without the Father's knowledge, would not allow him to do this—crushed by pride and envy, because he had obtained neither a chief position there nor even an entrance to the Church, he joined himself to Cerdon. Whether Marcion was canvassing for that chief position, *proedrian*, in the Roman Church is entirely uncertain. Unless, perhaps, having already been inscribed among the clerics and stubbornly denying his guilt of the rape, he was aspiring to the first rank among his peers. For it is not probable that a man from outside, and scarcely known, interdicted from all sacred things, and therefore laboring under at least a grave suspicion of a crime committed, was so foolish as to direct his mind to the bishopric itself. Indeed, Optatus of Milevis wishes Marcion to have become an apostate from his bishopric; but who could that bishop be, who led a solitary life until his fall? D
136. It is certain that when Marcion came to Rome, he had not yet fallen from the Catholic faith. This is clear from those things which we have just said from Epiphanius; it is clearer still from Tertullian, who states expressly that he believed the doctrine at first among the Roman Church. "They will not deny," he says elsewhere, "that his disciples had the primary faith with us, testified by his own letters; so that from this a heretic can now be identified, who, having deserted what he once was, has afterwards chosen for himself that which had not been before." Now, it is established that this desertion occurred then, when, having suffered a rebuff from the Roman presbyters, he fled to Cerdon, who was then staying in Rome. For I do not think that the conjecture of the most learned Petavius can be defended by any reasoning, namely, that two periods of Marcion must be distinguished: that he believed the Catholic doctrine at first among the Roman Church.
A So that it would be likely that he preached a nefarious dogma under Hadrian in Pontus and Asia only; but later, under Antoninus, gathering greater breath, he began to apply himself more vehemently to those same errors. For I do not see how he could have been able to preach a nefarious dogma in Pontus and Asia under Hadrian, seeing that Tertullian and Epiphanius assert that he, having departed from Pontus as a Catholic, lived for some time at Rome as a Catholic during the reign of Antoninus. Still less do I see by what reasoning Tertullian could have so confidently affirmed that Marcion, who had already appeared long before under Hadrian, called himself an Antonian heretic more than once and emerged under the principate of Antoninus. Furthermore, almost all the ancients who have made mention of Marcion assert that he was both a disciple and a successor of Cerdo; which indeed cannot stand with the hypothesis of Petavius; for from what has been said above, it is certain that Cerdo did not raise his head from his hiding places until he had arrived at Rome and the Church of Hyginus, with Antoninus Pius holding the empire. Therefore, either the faith of all the ancients B must be diminished without any compelling necessity, or it must be said that Marcion did not lapse from the Catholic faith until, cast down from his hope of communion, he was able to see and hear Cerdo at Rome. Nor ought the authority of Philastrius to delay anyone, who writes that Marcion (was) defeated by John in Asia and driven from Ephesus: he was so monstrously mistaken that I do not think Petavius would have wished to cast his vote for this opinion. I shall not even delay over Clement of Alexandria, whose words ostensibly suggest that Marcion preceded not only Basilides, but even Simon Magus in time. Learned men labor to explain these things indeed, but in vain: they are to be healed through the aid of manuscript codices, not explained. Justin Martyr alone cast the most learned Petavius into these entanglements: he can cause others less skilled than Petavius to conjecture. For in his former Apology he not only mentions Marcion, but also assumes his heresy to have been propagated far and wide already. But this difficulty does not press so hard; indeed, it vanishes entirely if we say, as we have tried to prove when discussing Valentinus, that this Apology was written around the year of the restored salvation 145, and the 8th of Antoninus Pius. Petavius himself and the illustrious Tillemont suppose it was written five years later. C If now, as is certain, Marcion came to Rome upon the death of Hyginus, with the seat then vacant, that is, according to our calculations, in the year 142, and shortly afterward, disheartened, embraced the heresy of Cerdo; then from that time until the year 145, when Justin was writing, there would have been space enough and to spare for him, relying on the aid of demons, to have been the author for many, so that they might speak blasphemies, just as Justin says. And this appears all the more likely to be true, as he did not stay long at Rome, already sufficiently imbued with the doctrine of Cerdo, and seems to have departed from there in the same year 142, or the following one, specifically to travel through the provinces. For Jerome writes that Marcion, when he was about to undertake a journey to Rome, had sent before him a woman to prepare minds for him to deceive; which, since it certainly cannot be understood of his first pilgrimage, must be referred to a second, in which he returned to Rome as to disseminate more widely there the error D which he had not been able to preach as much as he wished in the first. And to that second coming of Marcion into the City, in which his error began to emerge more openly there, can somehow correspond what Tertullian says: From Tiberius to Antoninus there are nearly 115 years, and half a year with half a month: they place as much time between Christ and Marcion, who first came forward under Antoninus. If Septimius counted only 115 years from Tiberius to Antoninus, no one will easily divine it, unless perhaps he shortened the reign of Tiberius by several years. If, however, we wish to count from the fifteenth year of his reign, in which Christ began to teach publicly, there will not be much missing from the sum of 115, and then Marcion's having returned to Rome and having begun to wage war openly with the Roman Church, nothing contradicts.
137. Be that as it may, it is clear from what has been said thus far that the author of the Poem against Marcion is mistaken, when he asserts that he first came to and became known in Rome under Pope Anicetus. He had certainly already become known long ago, he who, with Irenaeus as witness, flourished under that pope, that is, he had reached the highest peak of wickedness. And this is clearly proven by what the same Irenaeus relates, that the most holy martyr Polycarp, then staying at Rome, upon Marcion meeting him and saying: "Do you recognize us?" replied: "I recognize you, the firstborn of Satan," and converted many Marcionites to the Church of God. But from Irenaeus himself it is certain that Polycarp did not arrive in the City until under Anicetus. Therefore Tertullian is also mistaken, writing that Valentinus and Marcion were not of such long ago, being almost of the principate of Antoninus, and that they first believed in the Catholic doctrine at the Roman Church; until under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherius, because of their always restless curiosity, by which they also corrupted the brethren, having been cast out once and twice, Marcion indeed with his two hundred sesterces which he had brought to the Church; most recently relegated to perpetual schism, they disseminated the poisons of their doctrines. Afterward, Marcion, having confessed his penitence, when he met the condition given to him, such as to receive peace, if he should restore to the Church the others also whom he had led to perdition, was forestalled by death. These things mostly agree with those which Irenaeus relates concerning Cerdo, who often coming to the Church and making confession...
now teaching secretly, now making open profession, now led away by some into the things which he taught evilly, and abstaining from the assembly of religious men; but they by no means agree with Valentinus and Marcion. There is no benefit in repeating here what we have already said concerning the heresy of Valentinus; but I would not believe that Marcion prolonged his life as far as the times of Eleutherius; for Irenaeus, who was writing his third book at that time, would not have been silent about this. Since, therefore, he asserts in that place that he [Marcion] grew strong under Anicetus, and makes no mention of him as if he were still living at that time, he seems to indicate that he had already ended his life under Anicetus. Furthermore, Tertullian not obscurely suggests that Marcion had believed in the Catholic doctrine among the Roman Church for a long time, until finally, under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherius, he was relegated to eternal schism and disseminated the poisons of his doctrine; and yet he often calls him a heretic of the time of Antoninus, whose heresy appeared while Antoninus was reigning; which things are in open conflict with one another: for the death of Antoninus Pius preceded the episcopate of Eleutherius by at least fourteen years. And how could he have lived as a Catholic up until Eleutherius, he who had already fallen from the faith after the death of Hyginus, and indeed grew strong under Anicetus? Finally, this whole narrative of Tertullian about repeated falls, and Marcion's repeated repentance, can in no way be reconciled with those things which all others have written, that, cast down from the hope of communion, he immediately flew into the camp of Cerdo, and from that time onward did not cease to infect the world with errors. And that condition of peace offered to Marcion seems utterly absurd, if he were to restore to the Church others as well whom he had led to perdition. For it was not possible for Marcion, already imbued with errors throughout the whole world, to collect such a multitude of men from all parts of the world and restore them to the Church. Therefore it is necessary that Tertullian, having a lapse of memory, wrote Marcion instead of Cerdo, the disciple instead of the master.
138. Tertullian relates that Marcion studied Stoic philosophy most of all, and that he sought arguments for his errors from it, and also from the Epicurean school. Clement of Alexandria, however, believes that Marcion received the occasions for his foreign and alien dogmas ungratefully and ignorantly from Plato. But his chief error, the head of the rest, concerning the dual God—the one good and Father of Christ, the other the author of the old law and the creator of evils—flowed partly from the doctrine of Plato, who distinguishes the creator of the world from the supreme God, as we have shown elsewhere, and imagines two souls of the world in Book X of *Laws*, that is, one beneficent and one which can produce the contrary; and partly, most of all, from the opinion of those more ancient philosophers, explained by us in the words of Plutarch, who imagined a dual God, one the creator of good things and good, the other C the creator of evils and evil. This error, which Marcion had received as taught by Cerdo, he indeed took up; but he, as we observed above, differed from other Gnostics only in words, not in things. And hence Gregory Nazianzen, and after him Elias Cretensis, attributes to Marcion the ravings of Simon Magus and the other Gnostics; namely, the Bythos, Sige, and in a word, the thirty Aeons of Valentinus. Nor without merit: for Irenaeus indeed enumerates him among those who assigned a third procession of the Word of God from the Father, whence he also is ignorant of His magnitude; and who, furthermore, separated the Word far from God, and said that it was emitted from thought and sense, that is, *Ennoia* and *Nous*: men who prattled that the supreme God D has something underlying Him outside of Himself, which they call a void and a shadow, in which this which is the Universe was fashioned, beneath the spiritual Pleroma: according to whom there was also another thing, which they say is outside the Pleroma, into which they opine that the superior erratic virtue had descended: who, finally, strive to teach that above the creator of heaven and earth there is some Pleroma or God. Since all these things are the very inventions of Valentinus, they manifestly demonstrate that Marcion, who was contemporary with Valentinus, though slightly later, repeated the whole fable of the Valentinian system. This also appears from those things which other authors ascribe to Marcion. There was, by the test of Tertullian, a condition for the supreme or good God of Marcion, and His own world, and His own heaven; a world superior to ours and superior to the Creator. He placed the Creator in a location, indeed by judging him by the same condition, and subjected matter to him. The Pleroma of Valentinus and his Demiurge could not be designated more clearly. Dionysius of Alexandria, in Athanasius, and after him Cyril of Jerusalem and Epiphanius assert that Marcion constituted three principles; of which one is supreme, which can be comprehended neither by name nor perceived by sight, whom he also calls the good God, by whom nothing of those things which are in the world was fashioned; but he says the second God is visible and the creator; finally, a third, the devil, between those two, namely, visible and one who cannot be seen, interjected; from these, that he who is the creator and maker can be seen to be the God of the Jews, and the same one also the judge—[the author of the Dialogue against the Marcionites, falsely ascribed to Origen, adds that] the good God commands the Christians; the devil, the Gentiles. To these Theodoret adds matter, which is evil, and underlies the other evil, and which, by the testimony of Tertullian, is eternal and unbegotten. Although Justin, Irenaeus, and Rhodon, in Eusebius, make mention of only two gods or principles of Marcion, and not even a word of a third; and indeed Augustine absolves Marcion from the error of a triple Divinity; and Rhodon writes that the author of this was Synerus, a disciple of Marcion; nothing prevents Marcion, insisting on the footsteps of Valentinus, besides the supreme invisible God...
A and the Demiurge, the creator of the universe, from having set down the Cosmocrator, that is, the Prince of the lower world; and from having called matter an eternal emanation of erratic virtue, or of Sophia, or of Enthymesis; although it is not certain whether Valentinus believed that matter was eternal; indeed, it seems far more probable that he affirmed that it was created in time. And for that reason, those who seem to fight among themselves easily agree. Marcion, therefore, did not differ from Valentinus: both taught that there were two gods, namely, Bythos, the head of the spiritual Pleroma, and the Demiurge existing outside that Pleroma. This much alone was peculiar to Marcion, that he was the first who dared to attack the Demiurge, or creator of the world, with open blasphemy, saying that he himself was evil and the author of evil. Cerdon, indeed, while he denied that the God of the Law and the Prophets was good, still confessed that He was just; but Marcion, to speak with Irenaeus, amplified his master’s doctrine, calling him the creator of evils, one who lusts after wars, and one who is also B inconsistent in his opinion and self-contradictory. The Valentinians, indeed, used names more honorably, as the same Irenaeus observes; for they had a religious scruple against openly declaring God to be the maker of evils. But certainly it was the same crime to posit a God who is ignorant, and a God who is evil and the designer of evils; indeed, that is all the more grave, in that the ignorance itself is cast back upon the supreme God Himself, at least as the remote cause of the Demiurge, as we have proven concerning the heresy of Valentinus. And to introduce a God who is ignorant, acting with blind impulse, and animal—that is, subject to all the movements of the soul which a sensing appetite stirs up—what else is this than to confer the blame for all the evils by which the world is shaken upon Him? Whence, even if at first sight Marcion may seem to blaspheme more impudently, not at all striving to soften his words, the blasphemy of Valentinus was no less execrable, although he seemed to use more honorable names. But what that God of both of them is, whether ignorant or the designer of evils, we have already said more than once, and a little before we repeated it in regard to the heresy of Cerdon; he is, of course, a mere Angel, whom it pleased them to honor with the title and name of God; but who in reality is distant by an immense abyss from the true God, and is counted in the same condition as other created things, as the soon-to-be-cited Tertullian says.
139. Furthermore, Tertullian is the author who states that this was the occasion for Marcion of dreaming up a dual Principle of things. He suffered, he says, the unhappy instinct of this presumption, from the simple chapter of the Lord's teaching, which directs to men, not to gods, those examples of the good and evil tree, that it should not bring forth evil fruits from a good mind/faith, nor good fruits from an evil one; that is, that neither a good mind nor a good faith should produce C works, nor evil ones produce good. For he, languishing (as many now do, and especially heretics) concerning the question of evil; "Whence is evil?" and with obtuse senses finding—in that very enormity of curiosity—the Creator proclaiming: "I am He who fashions evils"; insofar as he had already presumed Him to be the author of evil, and from other arguments which thus persuade every perverse man; to that extent, having interpreted this toward the Creator, that a bad tree brings forth bad fruits—that is, evils—he presumed that there must be another god in the part of the good tree (suppose him to be creating) good fruits. And so in Christ, finding as it were another disposition of sole and pure benignity, as different from the Creator, he easily argued for a new and hospitable divinity revealed in his Christ: and from that little leaven he deceived the whole mass of faith with heretical sourness. From that poisonous fountain flow almost all the marvels of errors by which that miserable man allowed himself to be deluded. He rejected the entire Old Testament, inasmuch as he thought it took its origin from an evil God, whom he therefore blasphemed as inconsistent in opinion and contrary to Himself, because he contended that there were many testimonies of the old law which openly fought against one another; which indeed he assiduously collected and published a book of *Antitheses*, or contradictions, in which he opposed sentences to sentences. Although, however, he believed the good God to be the author of the New Testament, he did not nevertheless embrace all the writings of the same Testament which the Catholic Church receives. For from the four Gospels, having rejected three, he approved only of Luke’s, or rather only a part of it; yet with the name of the author suppressed, for he would not have it inscribed for this one. But his disciples so ascribed it to Christ Himself, that they even gossiped that it had been increased by many things, such as the history of the Passion, by St. Paul. Indeed, so great was their audacity that they feared not to interpolate it daily, adding many things or cutting others, according to how they were pressed by Catholics. They cut away whatever testimonies were cited from the Old Testament, and all those places in which Christ confesses the creator of the world to be His Father; having cut off the whole beginning, in which the generation of the Savior in the womb and His advent with a body are clearly commemorated; and not only from the beginning, but also from the middle having removed many sentences, and having substituted others for them, Marcion presented to his followers not now the Gospel, but an adulterated species of the Gospel. How far the sacrilegious crime of the man proceeded, Epiphanius explains point by point in *Haer.* XLII. He admitted only ten of Paul's Epistles D, and those not entire, but he would take away some chapters from them, and change others; he rejected, however, both Epistles to Timothy, the one to Titus, and the one to the Hebrews, along with the Apocalypse and the other canonical Epistles.
140. These things were of Marcion, which the others...
Gnostics' delusions concerning Christ; namely, that he had been sent by the Father, that he had falsely assumed the appearance of flesh in order to dissolve the works and laws of the maker of the world, and to impart salvation to souls alone; consequently, that bodies, being subject to eternal destruction, remained [LXXI]. Yet, if we believe Tertullian, he seems to have imagined two Christs: one who was revealed by a certain unknown God in the times of Tiberius for the salvation of all nations; another who was destined by the Creator God for the restoration of the Jewish state, and who was to arrive at some time. These things seem to relish of Cerinthus' fables about an earthly kingdom of Christ, and to have given occasion to Gennadius to include the Marcionites among the Millenarians. He maintained that souls were to migrate and pass from some bodies into others: as far as those men are concerned who live in ignorance. Concerning whom he had invented this fable: namely, that the soul returns, and clothes itself in each individual animal, until it has obtained purification, and thus, being purified and dissolved, it migrates into heavenly places. But the souls of the Marcionites, or of those who had learned the doctrine of Marcion, are so purified and freed from corporeal dregs that, after death, they immediately enjoy eternal salvation. All these things are Platonic and Carpocratian. And Origen was undoubtedly pointing his finger at this dogma of Marcion when he wrote that all souls, according to Marcion's opinion, are not of one and the same kind, but that some differ from others in nature. From this, also, flowed the other blasphemy of the impostor: that Cain, and those who are similar to him, and the Sodomites, and all the nations whatsoever that walked in every intermixture of wickedness, were saved by the Lord when He had descended into the underworld and they had met Him. For as long as the souls of the damned were devoid of this Marcionite knowledge, they had to pay the penalty; but from the moment they were illuminated by it, having seen Christ in the underworld, they were cleansed by Him and taken up into His kingdom. Relying on the same principles, he added that Abel, Enoch, Noah, and the rest of the just, together with all the prophets and those who had pleased God, had not partaken of salvation; because they suspected that they were being tempted by the world's creator, as was His custom, and refused to hear Jesus and believe His words.
141. The hatred which Marcion had conceived against the Creator had broken out to such a degree that he condemned marriage, and judged that no one should be admitted to the grace of baptism unless he were a virgin, or widowed of a spouse, or a continent person. For he contended that the flesh, which is born through generation, is the work of an evil maker. This error, if one trusts Clement of Alexandria, he had drawn from the pools of the Platonists and Pythagoreans, who believed that generation was evil, although not for the same reason as the Marcionites. They railed against generation because they claimed it was made from evil matter and by a base Artificer and Creator; for which reason, being unwilling to fill the world which was made by the Creator, they abstained from marriage, resisting their Creator. But the philosophers, whom we have mentioned, from whom the Marcionites had wickedly learned that generation was evil, do not—as they boast in their own dogma—wish it to be evil by nature; but that because of it, the soul, which is divine, is thrust into the body as into a place of punishment. Sometimes the Marcionites would even inflict death upon themselves out of hatred for the same Creator, and they did not refuse it when offered, and for this reason they boasted that their sect was adorned by not a few martyrs. They fasted on the Sabbath, because on that day the maker of the world had rested. They prohibited the eating of animals, and Epiphanius says they thought those who tasted meat were liable to judgment, as if they were eating souls. Yet Tertullian provides assurance that they used fish, and indeed even deemed it a more holy food. Epiphanius adds that baptism among them was repeated up to three times, and that the power to baptize was granted to women: that the mysteries were celebrated with catechumens looking on; and that, furthermore, water was applied, and only water, as it seems; which was the error of the Aquarians.
XI. Concerning Tatian.
142. Tatian testifies that he himself was an Assyrian by nation. Theodoret and Epiphanius write that he was a Syrian: although the latter asserts elsewhere [at B] that he was born in Mesopotamia. These things, however, can easily be reconciled; for at times the names Assyria, Syria, and Mesopotamia are used promiscuously. Thus Gen. XXVIII, 5, he who went to Mesopotamia of Syria, in verse 7, is said to have gone into Syria. So also Arrian writes that middle Assyria is contained by the Euphrates and the Tigris: whence, he says, it is also called Mesopotamia by the natives. Having been not slightly educated in the arts and studies of the Greeks, he came to Rome; where, when he had encountered the sacred Scriptures, he was moved by the characters of divinity which they display, and embraced the faith of Christ. He was the first auditor of Justin Martyr, and as long as he lived with him, he kept his faith unblemished; but after he was slain for the faith about the year 167, when he was already in sole charge of the school established by Justin, he was puffed up by his teaching and rushed to ruin. Before, however, he had fallen away from the catholic faith, after the death of Justin, it is certain that he published his Oration against the Greeks, a work certainly catholic. But not long after, having set out from Rome into the Orient, he fell into the absurd opinions of the Gnostics, and founded a new sect around the twelfth year of M. Aurelius (not Antoninus Pius, as is mistakenly read in Epiphanius), and the year of Christ 172, which [the sect] of the Tatiani, the Encratitae C... D...
or those of the Continents, and those of the Hydroparastatae or Aquarians is called.
143. The dogmas were the same as those of Saturninus, Valentinus, and Marcion. Everywhere is repeated the ridiculous fable of the Aeons, the dual principle, and the fabrications regarding the false body of Christ. Tatian added one thing, namely, that Adam did not attain salvation, but was punished with eternal damnation for his fall. Furthermore, he condemned marriage as Marcion had done; he believed that one should abstain from eating meat and from wine, and offered only water in the mysteries. But truly, that he might bring invidiousness upon the Old Law, he published a book of Problems, or Questions, to prove it to be most obscure and impenetrable, and therefore proceeding from an evil God. He wrote of many others, concerning whom, since we have nothing special to say, consult the most learned Tillemont, volume II of his *Commentary on Ecclesiastical History*, under "Encratites."
XII. Concerning certain other heretics. 144. Irenaeus subjoins other heretics to Tatian, whose origin he says they took from Basilides and Carpocrates. He suppresses their name, but it matters little to know it, for they did not differ from their masters, except that they were less ashamed of their filth and flagrant crimes, namely, promiscuous and worse than beastly copulations, polygamy, the indifferent eating of things sacrificed to idols, and other things of that kind. For they blasphemously asserted that God was not in the least affected by these things, inasmuch as they imagined Him to be sluggish in idleness and not at all solicitous for inferior things.
XIII. Concerning the various sects of the Gnostics. [LXXII] 145. After Irenaeus has discoursed one by one upon the Simonians and the various classes of Simonians, he then treats of diverse heretics whom he designates by no special name, but only by the general name of Gnostics. All the followers of both Simon and Valentinus, indeed, used to puff themselves up rather insolently with the title of Gnostics, boasting of the excellence of their knowledge. For *gnosis* signifies knowledge, and *gnostikos* signifies one who is knowing or endowed with knowledge. By this name they sold to the ignorant an eminent and singular knowledge of divine things by which they seemed to surpass others. For when other Christians, well aware of their own lot, were persuaded that it was not lawful for them to scrutinize too curiously the divine mysteries hidden from ages—concerning the Trinity, concerning Christ, concerning creation, etc.—but that it was enough to venerate them with simple and humble faith, the heretics, on the contrary, led astray by rash curiosity far beyond the bounds of evangelical simplicity, attempted to extract these things from Platonic philosophy and to demonstrate them, and to reconcile them with it. This, although it was done with a most unhappy attempt and with the shipwreck of faith itself, nevertheless provided the wretched ones with an impulse for various sorts of glorying, as if it had been granted to them alone, if it pleases the powers above, to unlock the inner sanctuaries and intimate entrails of the Christian religion. And hence they collapsed into such insanity, that A they not only despised other Christians but even boldly affirmed that they surpassed the apostles themselves in knowledge.
146. Who was the first to impose upon himself the proud name of Gnostic, or upon his own sect, is not certain. If the question were about the origin of this heresy itself, it would be easily resolved; for Irenaeus clearly hands down that they received the beginnings of the "knowledge falsely so-called" from the followers of Simon. Elsewhere, however, he pronounces that they were called Gnostics by Menander, a disciple of Simon; and that the Carpocratians called themselves Gnostics. Jerome, however, derives the Gnostics from Basilides; Epiphanius, Philastrius, and Augustine derive them from the Nicolaitans. All of which is true; for all these heretics claimed the name of Gnostics for themselves. But which of them first attributed it to themselves is not so certain. I would easily believe that the earlier disciples of Simon or Menander did so, in order to ward off from themselves the invidiousness which the shameful name of their masters had brought upon them; for it did not escape them how much all Christians abhorred that name. Wherefore, having laid aside the name of Simonians or Menandrians, and having put upon themselves the specious name of Gnostics, they believed that under that mask they could both lie hidden more safely and spread more widely. For subsequently they busied themselves with patching up, amplifying, or propagating the heresy of Simon, [and] although they were known by their own peculiar names, they nevertheless preferred to be called Gnostics. Certainly, Paul seems to denote the Gnostics, where he exhorts Timothy to avoid the *antitheseis tēs pseudōnymou gnōseōs*, the oppositions of knowledge falsely so-called. At least, Clement of Alexandria and Chrysostom understand the Apostle thus, whose opinion is the more probable the more Irenaeus designates the heresy of the Gnostics everywhere by these very words, *tēs pseudōnymou gnōseōs*; nay, he even inscribed on his own books the title, *Refutation and overthrow of the knowledge falsely so-called*.
147. Therefore, the name of Gnostics was not an appellation of any single sect or heresy, but of all in general, as many as had allowed themselves to be deluded by the ravings of Simon and Menander. Wherefore neither Theodoret nor Pseudo-Tertullian mention the Gnostic heresy as a special one, distinct from the others. But why Irenaeus, on the contrary, [and] Epiphanius, Augustine, and others, constitute a certain special sect, distinct from the Simonians, Menandrians, Basilidians, Valentinians, etc., this reason is ready at hand. There were Gnostics of two kinds. Some were known not only from their peculiar dogmas, but also from certain famous coryphaei and leaders of their sect; others, however, although distinguished by their own peculiar errors, either had leaders of obscure name or acknowledged none that were certain and singular. The former were known not only by the common title of Gnostics, but also by the names of their teachers and their sects.
The latter, because there was no peculiar appellation which could be derived from their authors, were given the common name of Gnostics. And thus the name of the Gnostics is either common, which fits all the disciples of Simon; or special, which usage made proper to certain classes of Simonians only. And these are the men whose follies, having already described the errors of the more famous followers of Simon, Irenaeus recounts in detail (Lib. 1, c. 29 et seqq.), and after him Epiphanius (Haer. XXVI). "Over these," he says, "of those who are called Simonians, a multitude of Gnostics, Barbelo, arose, and they manifested themselves like fungi from the earth." And rightly so. For since, as he warned in the preceding chapter, many of those who boasted of the title of Gnostics—indeed, all of them—wished to be teachers and to withdraw from the heresy in which they had been, and possessing another dogma from another opinion, and next composing one from another, they insisted on teaching new things, narrating themselves the inventors of an opinion, whatever one they might have gathered together; almost countless offspring of many heresies had been made, which it would be difficult to name even with difficulty. Indeed, all worshipped the Ennoia; but that which to some was Helena, to others was Sige or Charis; to others, whom a new morbid itching for speaking consumed, it was called Barbelo. Hence they were called by some Barbeloites, from the barbarian name which they themselves had invented; by others, Borborians, or Coddiani. Borborians, indeed—that is, "filthy"—from their most sordid and, in all wickedness, miry way of living; but Coddiani from the word *Codda*, which, Epiphanius says, is the same in Syriac as a paropsis or a bowl: because their filthiness was so great that no one wanted to eat common food with them, but it was customary for it to be placed apart for those contaminated ones. The same men in Egypt were called Stratiotici or "Military," and in other places Floriani, Phibionites, and Zacchaeans. Although, however, if we listen to Epiphanius, the Stratiotici and Phibionites, to whom he adds the Levites, were perhaps only three classes of men in one and the same sect, of which the first was of beginners, the second of those who were progressing, and the third, finally, of those who were consummate in every kind of wickedness and abominable filth. The same Epiphanius wishes those heretics to have sprung from the Nicolaitans; Theodoret from the Valentinians. Perhaps both are true; for from the latter they could have borrowed the ravings regarding the Aeons, and from the former a way of living more than swinish.
[LXXIII] 448. Their speculative dogmas were almost the same as those of the Valentinians; but the appellations, series, and conjugations of the Aeons were a little different. They placed the Ineffable Father in the first rank, and held him to be free from every conjugation; and this was the opinion of many others. But they subjected to him a certain Aeon who never ages, in a virginal spirit, whom they called Barbelo, the Ennoia, the Mother of all, and a great Aeon by excellence. To him they coupled the Logos. Three others followed this conjugation: Aphtharsia, that is, Incorruptibility, and Christ; Zoe and Thelema, that is, Life and Will; Prognosis and Nous, that is, Providence and Mind. Moreover, they claimed that Christ was light, whom the Father had anointed with his own benevolence, that he might become perfect—vilely alluding, clearly, both to the etymology of the name, which means "anointed" in Greek, and to those places in the Gospel where Christ calls himself the light of the world, and to those words of the Father addressing the Son: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
A This first ogdoad of theirs, which it is of no use to explain at further length, is easily understood from those things which we have said about the Valentinians. From the Ennoia and the Logos they derived the Autogenes or Monogenes—that is, the "self-generated" or "only-begotten." They called him Autogenes and Monogenes because they asserted he was generated by a singular prerogative; as he was the likeness and image of the great light, that is, of the Ennoia, and was therefore adorned with the highest honors and the prefecture of all things. His consort was Alethia, or Truth. From the light, which is Christ, and from Incorruptibility, they imagined that four luminaries were emitted—that is, four angels, who surrounded the Autogenes as if they were his satellites, whose names were Harmogenes, or Soter (that is, Savior), Raguel, David, and Eleleth; to whom they likewise assigned four consorts: Charin, Thelesin, Synesin, and Phronesin, that is, Grace, Will, Intelligence, and Prudence. B The Autogenes, however, produced another pair of Aeons, namely, the perfect and true Man, whom they called Adamas because of his unconquerable virtue, and Gnosis, or perfect knowledge; whence it was given to him to know the supreme Father. Thus, those babblers said, the supreme Father, Mother, and Son were manifested. From the Anthropos and Gnosis, they said, the tree was born, which they also called Gnosis—alluding to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of which Genesis 2:9 speaks. Then, from the first angel, the satellite of the Autogenes, the Holy Spirit was generated, whom they also called Sophia and Prunicus; and he, when he saw the other Aeons coupled with their consorts, but himself destitute of a consort, anxiously sought to whom he might be joined; and with a rash impulse, without consulting the Father, he was borne first towards the higher parts, then towards the lower, and finding none that was fitting for him; C affected by weariness and recalled from his attempt, he desisted. But from his weariness was born a work, in which there was ignorance and audacity. This work, moreover, they called the Proarchon, the prince of this world, its creator and fabricator; who, having stolen great virtue from his mother and having descended to the lower parts, constructed the firmament of the heavens in which he might inhabit, with the Powers, Angels, heavens, and D all earthly things.
And he was the author of all evils, quarrels, contentions, etc. Saddened by these things, his mother Sophia withdrew from him and chose for herself a seat above the firmament or seventh heaven, so that she might thus escape being the head of the inferior Ogdoad. Everyone can see that in these things the whole tale of the Valentinians is rehashed, with the names only slightly altered. The other dogmas concerning Christ Jesus, the resurrection, good works, etc., were the same as those of the Valentinians. The Apostle John, Jude, James, Ignatius, and Polycarp often attack the Gnostics in their epistles, chiefly because they denied the truth of the mystery of the Incarnation.
149. Certain Gnostics used the Old and New Testaments, but mutilated ones. For they embraced that which they thought favored themselves, and asserted that it was proclaimed by the Spirit of truth; but they rejected what was contrary to them, and declared that it had proceeded from the Prince of this world. They rejected the Epistles of Paul to Timothy, because they were explicitly condemned in them. But all other Gnostics despised the law and the prophets: indeed, it did not even shame many to say that our Savior was the primary author of their filth and impieties. Among them were very many apocryphal books, filled with old wives' tales, obscenities, and blasphemies, a catalog of which you will find in Epiphanius, *Haer*. XXVI. I shall say nothing of their most depraved morals: you would think them pigs and dogs, not men; to such an extent does what the aforementioned Epiphanius reports of them abhor from human nature. These things could scarcely obtain belief, were it not that it is established from elsewhere that these are the necessary consequences of the principles laid down by them; and Epiphanius himself testifies that he learned these things both from their own books and from the mouth of two women, the leaders of this sect, whom they had attempted to ensnare while he was still a young man. Therefore, the boldness and recklessness of certain more recent writers must be chastised, for they, led by futile conjectures, do not fear to disparage the faith of Epiphanius and all the ancients in order to defend the Gnostics from the monstrous crimes of which they are accused, as if these had been fabricated by men of bad religion in hatred of the sect itself. As if more faith should be placed in the vain arguments of those obscure moderns than in Epiphanius, a witness not only having heard but also having seen, and in the testimonies of other ancients contemporary with the Gnostics, who saw the heretics themselves, heard them, and unrolled their books. A But, they say, none of the apologists, while purging the Christian Church of the calumnies of Oedipean unions and Thyestean feasts, with which the gentiles bespattered it, mentions such crimes perpetrated by pseudo-Christians: which, however, it would have been to their interest not to omit, especially since the flagrant crimes of those impostors had given the gentiles the opportunity for the calumnies with which the true faithful of Christ were unjustly burdened. Indeed, Justin Martyr in his first Apology, and the Church of Lugdunum and B Vienna in their letter, as recorded by Eusebius, book V, cap. 2, assert in express words that they either do not know, or do not believe, that these atrocities were perpetrated by the heretics or by any mortal anywhere. But the response is easy. Those very calumnies which were fabricated against the Christians show that the gentiles had at least heard something of the most shameful life of the Gnostics; which was the occasion for the calumnies. For since they did not distinguish them from other Christians, they attributed to everyone indiscriminately that which was the crime of the "masked" ones alone. Hence, Irenaeus, treating of the Carpocratians, complains that they were sent ahead by Satan for the detraction of the divine name of the Church: so that, in one way or another, men hearing what is theirs, and thinking we are all such, turn their ears away from the proclamation of the truth; or even seeing what belongs to them, they blaspheme us all. And Eusebius, *Hist. Eccles.* book IV, cap. 7, writes similarly, that the flagrant crimes of those wretches had provided the gentiles an opportunity to petulantly and impiously revile the most holy word of God: with the plain intent that the rumor about their wicked way of life, spread everywhere in this manner, might brand the whole multitude of Christians with a foul mark of ignominy. Hence it certainly happens, he says, that a certain nefarious opinion about us was excited, and one entirely alien to all reason, which spread far and wide through the minds of the infidels: namely, that we did not fear to commit both the unspeakable union of violating mothers and sisters, and also a certain wicked kind of food. But whence could the heathens have found the opportunity to seize the handle to hurl such monstrous portents of crimes at the head of all Christians, unless they had perceived something of them, either from the complaints of the true faithful of Christ, or from the confession of the impostors, or from general fame? Such insolent crimination would never have obtained credence among the most bitter enemies of the Christians, had not the flagitious life of certain ones provided this with some semblance of truth. Nor should the silence of the praised Apologists move anyone, nor the ignorance of Justin and the Churches of Lugdunum and Vienna. It could have escaped them, what was perpetrated secretly and in the dark, certainly not openly and publicly; nor is it a wonder if they refused to believe what, to such an immense degree, abhors from human nature, and scarcely suits even swine. Furthermore, the apologists were engaged in this, that they might purge the Christians, whose cause they were defending, from the crimes of which they were falsely accused; which they also accomplished in their Apologies. However, it did not pertain to this occasion to recount the obscenities of the Gnostics, which were to be buried in eternal silence, since they had nothing in common with these "masked" ones, as Justin observes, except the name; and they, as the cited Irenaeus says, communicated with them in nothing, neither in doctrine, nor in morals, nor in daily conversation. It was enough if the innocence of those whose vindication they had undertaken were demonstrated; it was not fitting to accuse others and bring them into danger of capital punishment.
XIV. Concerning the Ophites and Sethians.
A Irenaeus records another genus of Gnostics, whom others, like Theodoret, call Ophites and Sethians indiscriminately; although others, like Epiphanius, distinguish between the two, and constitute diverse sects of heretics from them. But this is contrary to the mind of Irenaeus, who in no way distinguishes them from one another, and attributes to one and the same sect the same dogmas which others divide. They were called Ophites or "Serpent-men," from the snake or serpent, which they venerated as the image of the deity, because they believed he had been the author of all knowledge for men; but [they were called] Sethians, because they supposed that Seth, the son of Adam, had been a certain divine power. Their heresy is founded upon an ill-compacted farrago of the tenets of the Nicolaitans and Valentinians; and for that reason, by Pseudo-Tertullian it is confused with that of the Nicolaitans; but by Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Theodoret it is derived from the Valentinian school, because it has something of the Valentinian mixed into it. Consequently, it must have been born after Valentinus. In the first place, they posited a certain first light in the power of Bythus, blessed and incorruptible and infinite, which they called the Father of all and the first man. They said that Ennoea proceeded from him, the son of the emitter, the son of man, and the second man. Beneath both of these, they wished to place the Holy Spirit, whom they called the first female and mother of the living; who was indeed carried over the segregated elements, water, darkness, abyss, chaos. From the conjunction of the first and second man, the Holy Spirit, impregnated by the rays of the supreme light, poured forth a new incorruptible light, a third masculine [entity], Christ, the son of the first and second man, and of the Holy Spirit, the first female. But when the entire fullness of the light infused into the Holy Spirit could not be contained by her, a great abundance of it, overflowing, fell downward toward the left side; while Christ, in the meantime, ascended toward the right with his mother, and was received into the incorruptible Aeon. This first tetrad of Aeons—the union, namely, of the Father of all (the first man), the Son (the second man), the Holy Spirit (the first female), and Christ (their son)—was called the true and holy Church by those insane persons, who, according to their custom, perverted Scripture.
Having at last emerged and raised itself upward, when its body was dilated and expanded, it produced this heaven which appears, beneath which it remained, still preserving the form of an aquatic body. But, always stimulated by the desire for the supernal light, striving with all its might, it finally freed itself from the surviving remnants of its body. The body, however, which it shed, they name a female from a female. It also had a son by the name of Jaldabaoth, whom it brought forth in ignorance, into whom, however, it infused a certain aspiration of incorruptibility; by which, being quickened, and without the knowledge of its mother, he produced Angels, Archangels, and Virtues, and furthermore a son from the B waters; from whom another son was begotten, and a third from him, and so on consecutively up to the seventh, with each one building and ruling a heaven proper to himself; so that thus a hebdomad might exist, with the Mother holding the eighth place.
152. This first part of the fables, in which Platonism does not obscurely show itself, is where primary matter first appears under the names of the elements—water, darkness, abyss, chaos—by which it is accustomed to be designated by the Platonists, as we have said elsewhere; and it is eternal, as it seems, and coeval with God himself; which was the opinion, if not of Plato himself, at least of not a few of his disciples. The heretics therefore posit two coeval principles; one active, namely God, or the first and incorruptible light; the other passive, which is formless matter. From that light or Father proceeded Ennoea, the mind of the Father, forming the ideas of all things, and containing in itself the eternal exemplars of things, according to the norm of which all things are fashioned. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of the Universe, or the soul of the world. The heretics call her the first female and mother of the living, because she is the first cause of the generation of all things and of all movements. A part of this spirit is carried upward, part descends to the lower regions and moves the waters; because of the more subtle matter, which is the spirit of the Universe, some parts are more subtle than others; and some, according to various degrees of subtlety, are superior to others. The part which descends into the waters is that which impressed motion upon primary matter, and, hidden in it like leaven, and nearly overwhelmed by the bulk of its primary [state], it gradually exerted its powers, and, breaking the barriers by which it was held, extricating itself, it imparted to it various forms, figures, and motions. Thus, those idle men, C not without sacrilegious abuse of religion, would hand down the three common principles of Platonic philosophy—God, Mind, and the Soul of the World, and the original genesis of things—under the mystical names of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I do not linger over the rest of the inanities about the Aeons; they are easily understood from those things which we have said concerning the Valentinians.
[…] it has fallen, and which they call the Left, Prunicus, Sophia, and male-female; when it had descended into waters until then immobile, it began to move them from the bottom to the top, and assumed from them a body. But when all things had run to the light of this one, and had adhered to it, burdened by such a mass, and all but absorbed, it strove in vain to shake off the complex of waters, and to return to the bosom of its mother. Meanwhile, it strove with all its might to hide the remnants of the supernal light; for fear tormented the poor thing, lest it be injured by the elements. But at the approach of the new light...
153. Longer are those things concerning the origin of man and his fall, and the origin of evil (which was the cliff against which almost all the heretics of the previous centuries have been dashed) which they weave into commentaries. The summary comes to this: Jaldabaoth, having spurned his mother, sought the principate; the children begotten by him resisted: whence [arises] the fullness of [indignation]...D
A nus lowered his eyes to the dregs of matter, and begot a certain Virtue in the likeness of a serpent, whom they call his Son and Nous; then also spirit, and soul, and all things that are in the world; and from this were born all oblivion, malice, zeal, envy, and death. Hence, seizing the opportunity for foolish boasting, he called himself Father and God, and the supreme principle of all things. But in order to punish his insanity, the Mother cast into him and the remaining six Virtues a mind, so that thus, having taken away from Jaldabaoth the power which she had imparted to him, she might transfuse it into man. Therefore, man was formed by them, immense in length and breadth, and creeping on the ground, that is to say, formless. Into him, Jaldabaoth breathed the breath of life, and with it the light, or, as they called it, the moisture of light, namely Nous and Enthymesis, which he had received from the Mother; but while he took away from himself what he bestowed upon another, he only weakened his own strength; which was the intent of the cunning Mother. Man, however, endowed with Nous and Enthymesis, that is to say, with mind and the desire for celestial things—which alone, according to the Gnostics, receive salvation—immediately gave thanks to the first man, or the supreme Father, having left the fabricators behind. But Jaldabaoth, bearing ill that things above him had reached the knowledge of anyone, created a female, called Eve, whose form the others admired and begot angels from her. But from her, the celestial Mother secretly withdrew the virtue inspired by Jaldabaoth: and not content with these things, she brought it about by her arts that the serpent first, and then through him, Adam, became the author of rebellion, persuading him to eat the forbidden fruit; through which both attained the knowledge of the supreme Virtue and of divine mysteries, and departed from the fabricators of the world. Enraged, Jaldabaoth cast the rebels, empty of the divine substance, and cursed, out of heaven and paradise into this world: where their bodies, [formerly] light, pellucid, and spiritual, were changed into slower, darker, and grosser ones, and the soul also was weakened and broken by languor. By a similar reason, the serpent Nous, the instrument of seduction, was thrust into this world, and subjected its angels to himself, and begot six sons, mundane demons, in imitation of the supernal hebdomad; always hostile to men, because they had provided the occasion for their paternal fall and misfortune. But when Prunicus had now sufficiently avenged the arrogance of Jaldabaoth for their own desires through the calamity of men, having turned to pity, she granted them a certain sense of the lost light, through which, mindful of their original state and conscious of their present one, they regained their spirit, and understood that they were at length to be liberated from the bulk of the mortal body: whence, now refreshed by food, they gave themselves to generation, from which was born first Cain, then afterwards Abel, whom the serpent with his sons immediately overthrew, and drove headlong into every wickedness. Nor is it strange: the Mother secretly opposed them, intent on this one thing, that what was her own B might be saved, namely the supernal light. Hence, when Jaldabaoth was enraged at men because they did not worship him, and wished to destroy the human race with a flood, she, solicitous for the light which she had infused, saved Noah in the ark, from whom a new progeny of men replenished the world. From these, Jaldabaoth chose Abraham for himself, with whom he made a covenant; through Moses he led the Israelites out of Egypt, and enacted the law; and both he himself and his sons from the Jewish nation claimed for themselves their own prophets, through whom they might pour forth their prophecies.
154. In all these, the character of the Platonic religion and the common Gnostic hypothesis, not without notable corruption of the Scriptures, may be discerned, however accommodated. There the supernal origin of souls, like sparks gleaming from a divine fire, or certain portions falling away from the divine substance, is invented, as with Plato. Because of these, on account of the abuse of the light bestowed upon them, they are enclosed in a squalid and dark prison of bodies, to be liberated in their own time and recreated with their pristine light: which is the Platonic fiction concerning souls, [which] because of the lost wings of contemplation with which they were carried aloft, [fell] headlong into bodies; where, the memory of celestial things being gradually rekindled, they recover their pristine happiness by degrees. There also, the fabrication of the world is ascribed to angels, not to God the supreme himself; which is likewise Platonic. To these fables, the Christian religion indeed provides a manifold ornament; but the Platonic philosophy provides the foundation, so that it would be easy to show it proved C if it were easy for those attending and recalling the things we have already said many times. The rest, which they prattle concerning the rebellion of Jaldabaoth, concerning the twofold soul—the one which is the spirit of life, or animal, breathed in by Jaldabaoth; the other which is spiritual, or the moisture of light, which secretly from him, yet by his interposition, is poured through the Mother, which the Mother alone, when she has sent [it] forth, alone preserves in men, [as the only part] to be gifted with salvation, the body being therefore eternally to perish—concerning the Mosaic law enacted through Jaldabaoth, etc., are Gnostic and Valentinian [heresies].
155. Of the same kind are those things which they concocted concerning the birth, death, and benefits provided by him in Jesus Christ; except that they would acknowledge that Jesus was born of a Virgin, and would have it that not only Christ, but also simultaneously with his sister Sophia, descended into him. They said that the body of Jesus was raised from the dead; not that earthly one which is flesh and blood (for this, they said, cannot possess the kingdom of God: whence whatever it had received from the world, it dismissed to the world); but that body which they called animal and spiritual, namely the more subtle and airy part of the body; or rather the soul itself, both animal and spiritual, which they pretended were both bodily, wherefrom D
A however the one was called purer and more subtle, that is to say the spiritual, in comparison with the other, which was grosser. Whatever it may be, that kind of resurrection which they admitted here is ridiculous, and far different from that which the Catholic faith teaches. They added that, through the resurrection of Jesus, Jaldabaoth was despoiled of the dominion which he had claimed for himself over holy souls; and that it would no longer be in his power henceforward to cast the spiritual ones back into the world to be purged, but only those which he had breathed into them, that is, the animal ones. These things smack of the Platonic fable of metempsychosis.
156. Some of the Ophites, according to Irenaeus, claimed that Sophia herself had become a serpent, so that she might defeat the creator of Adam and bring knowledge to men; and for this reason, they called the serpent the most wise of all living creatures. But whether the Ophites wished for Sophia or for Nun to have assumed the form of a serpent, they offered it the highest honors, because of the knowledge they imagined they had received from it. Epiphanius, Theodoret, and Augustine testify that those impure men kept a real serpent in a chest or a cave, which they would summon during times of mysteries. Emerging from an open hole and from its hiding places, it would climb onto a table and coil itself around the loaves of bread. This they deemed to be the Eucharist, and a most absolute sacrifice. But as for the loaves, about which the serpent had been coiled, they not only broke them and distributed them, but each person also, having brought his mouth close, would kiss the serpent itself: whether by certain chants the beast was softened to gentleness, or by some other deception of the demon it was rendered harmless. And finally, by that means, as they said, those celebrating their mysteries would perfect them.
XV. Regarding the Caiani or Cainists.
157. Irenaeus concludes his catalog of the Gnostics and his first book with the Caiani or Cainists. He writes that they sprang from the Valentinian school, as a new head of the Lernaean hydra; but Epiphanius and Theodoret maintain that they drew their impiety and nefurious deeds from the impure source of the Gnostic Nicolaitans, Valentinians, and Carpocratians. Both can be true at once; nor will it conflict with Irenaeus, who a little later adds that the Caiani imitated the foul way of life of the Carpocratians. They were called this because they were not ashamed to preach Cain and call him their forefather. For they imagined a twofold Virtue: one higher, which they called Sophia, and another lower and later, which they called Ὑστέραν (Hysteram). To this one they ascribed the fabrication of the heavens and the earth. They held that Adam and Eve drew their origin from those Virtues, or Angels; but the children whom they produced did not. For they affirmed that both Virtues met with Eve, and that she brought forth Cain and Abel in such a way that Cain was the offspring of the stronger Virtue, and Abel of the inferior and weaker one: that they quarreled with one another, and he who had been begotten by the stronger Virtue had killed the offspring of the inferior and weaker one. B They wished Esau, Core, the Sodomites, and all who labor under the infamy of crimes in the Old Testament to belong to that same lineage with Cain; these most wicked men asserted that these figures were to be praised and were joined with them by the kinship of their race, as being perfect and adorned with a science more sublime than the rest. Therefore, being unseen by the Maker of the world, and attacked by his continual plots, they nevertheless could receive no harm from him: because Mother Sophia had been impregnated by her own seed and had snatched them to herself, having transformed them into the supernal Aeon. Judas, whom they also boasted to be their kinsman, and to whom alone above all other mortals they attributed the knowledge of the truth, had, they claimed, accurately perceived all these things; wherefore, instigated by a more powerful divine Virtue, he betrayed Christ Jesus, whether because, as others blasphemed, he was evil and declared war on the truth; or, as still others wished, because he consulted for our salvation and, through the cross and death of Jesus Christ, procured for us the knowledge of celestial things. For the princes of the world knew that if he were lifted up on the cross, all their power would be exhausted; wherefore Judas, fearing lest they prevent his death, made haste and moved every stone so that he might betray him to the Jews. For they claim this was the reason that he [Christ] descended from heaven: so that the strong and more solid Virtue might be perfected in him, and it might be shown, and he might teach how to carry off a triumph over the weaker one. A truly execrable triumph, located in the idea that each one should fly through all nefurious types of baseness; for no one, they supposed, could attain perfect knowledge, and consequently salvation itself, unless he had experienced all the most shameful things. This was the blasphemy of Carpocrates. They added this one thing: that some Angel presided over each shameful action, whom those giving effort to such things would invoke. They had concocted many apocryphal books, such as the Gospel of Judas, the Anabaticon of Paul, or the account of the assumption of Paul into the third heaven, and certain others, filled with dirges and the monstrosities of impieties. Moreover, if these sects differed at all from the other Gnostics, the distinction lay only in this: that they made the bounty of the supernal seed available to certain reprobate and wicked men, which others denied to the same. But the foundation of the error remained the same for all: namely, that salvation must be credited to one divine seed, or the knowledge of celestial things, and that the maker of the world is distinct from the supreme God; that the former is good, the latter evil—his works are to be trampled underfoot, and his laws violated; the knowledge of the former is to be pursued.
158. These are the things that had to be said about the heresies censured by Irenaeus. We have endeavored to explain them according to our own measure, and to dispel the thick darkness cast upon them.