Against Heresies

SECOND CENTURY. OF OUR HOLY FATHER IRENAEUS, BISHOP OF LYONS AND MARTYR, FIVE BOOKS ON THE DETECTION AND OVERTHROW OF KNOWLEDGE FALSELY SO-CALLED. SANCTI IRENÆI, EPISCOPI LUGDUNENSIS ET MARTYRIS, DETECTIONIS ET EVERSIONIS FALSO COGNOMINATÆ AGNITIONIS, SEU CONTRA HÆRESES, LIBRI QUINQUE.

REVISED AGAIN ACCORDING TO ROMAN, GALLICAN, AND ANGLICAN MANUSCRIPTS, AS WELL AS OLDER EDITIONS, FOLLOWING THE RECENSIONS OF FRANÇOIS FEUARDENT AND JOHN ERNEST GRABE, AND PURGED OF MANY ERRORS BY WHICH IT ABOUNDED; AUGMENTED WITH NEW FRAGMENTS; ILLUSTRATED AND ENRICHED WITH OBSERVATIONS AND NOTES AND VERY COPIOUS GLOSSARIES AND INDICES; TO WHICH ARE PREFIXED THREE DISSERTATIONS IN WHICH THE HERESIES MENTIONED BY IRENAEUS AND DIFFICULT PASSAGES ARE EXPLAINED, AND THE HISTORY OF HIS LIFE AND TIMES IS DISCUSSED.

BY THE STUDY AND LABOR OF DOM RENÉ MASSUET, PRIEST AND BENEDICTINE MONK OF THE CONGREGATION OF SAINT MAUR.

CAREFULLY EDITED AND REVISED BY J.-P. MIGNE, PUBLISHER OF THE UNIVERSAL CLERICAL LIBRARY, OR THE COMPLETE SYSTEM OF INDIVIDUAL BRANCHES OF ECCLESIASTICAL KNOWLEDGE.

PATROLOGIA GRAECA VOLUME 7

TURNHOLT (BELGIUM) PONTIFICAL PUBLISHERS OF BREPOLS

TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE AUTHORS AND WORKS CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME VII.

S. IRENAEUS, BISHOP OF LYONS.

Prolegomena. Col. 9 Five Books Against Heresies. 433 Fragments of the lost works of S. Irenaeus. 1225 Appendix to Irenaeus' books against heresies, containing fragments of the Gnostics whom the holy martyr mentions. 1263 Prefaces, prolegomena, notes, and observations by all those who have published or illustrated new editions of Irenaeus. 1321

[index: entries preserved]

PREFACE

Whoever is not entirely unversed in Christian matters will readily agree with me that there is scarcely any work among all the writings of the holy Fathers more worthy than the works of Irenaeus of the veneration, study, reading, and care of all good men. ^A For whatever is of chief importance for establishing authority among ecclesiastical writers, all these things commend this most holy bishop of the people of Lyons, the most splendid light once of our Gaul. If we look at antiquity, he was an apostolic man, close to the times of the apostles, and trained by the disciples of the apostles; if we look at doctrine, he proved a most curious explorer of all doctrines, always a most strenuous champion of the right and Catholic doctrine, and, as his writings everywhere proclaim, profoundly versed in the reading of Holy Scripture and the earlier Fathers; if, finally, we look at holiness, he was a man entirely equipped with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and heavenly ornaments, whose writings, to use the words of Erasmus, breathe that ancient vigor of the Gospel, and whose diction proves a heart prepared for martyrdom; whom the most holy martyrs of Lyons commend magnificently in their letters; and whom, finally, the integrity of his morals placed into the position of Pothinus, the first bishop of the people of Lyons. And of the many monuments of doctrine and piety which he left behind, there survive the five books which he wrote against the heresies of the Gnostics, which in his time had already begun to grow rampant in the region of Lyons, over which he presided; these are to be esteemed all the more, both because out of so many and such great works by which he had illustrated the Christian faith, almost nothing else remains; and because they are precious relics of the apostolic age, by which the doctrine that the apostles had handed down to their disciples, and which Irenaeus had received from them, is both easily detected and transmitted to us uncorrupted. ^B For in them, all the principal dogmas of the Catholic faith which we profess today—concerning the mysteries of the most holy Trinity and the Incarnation, concerning the sacraments, ecclesiastical hierarchy, the divine institution of bishops, the authority of tradition, the supreme dignity and primacy of Peter and his successors, etc.—are so clearly explained and confirmed that not only the ancients, but as many heresies as have emerged from apostolic times down to our own, can therein be rooted out and utterly overturned. For this reason, having been sought long and solicitously by Gregory the Great, and having been handled with such diligent hand by holy Fathers and all pious Catholics, they have been read the more studiously, the more it has been a delight to draw fresh draughts of pure apostolic doctrine from the springs. Hence, ever since the revival of the study of literature in the West, and the concurrent resurgence of love for the lucubrations of Irenaeus, those to whom sacred antiquity has been dear have had no higher priority than to rescue them from the darkness of libraries, commit them to type, and make them public property.

The first edition of all is that which Desiderius Erasmus procured at Basel in the year 1526, from three exemplars: one which Joannes Faber had sent to him having been transcribed at Rome, and two others provided on loan from monasteries. What he further accomplished in this edition is noted in his dedicatory epistle to Bernard von Cles, bishop of Trent, later created cardinal by Pope Clement VII, in the year 1529, which we have taken care to have placed at the end of our edition. But while much is owed to a man otherwise so deserving of letters, for having been the first to bring the books of Irenaeus to light, it is nonetheless to be lamented that, being destitute of better codices, he could not accomplish more. For his edition teems with so many errors, lacunae, and mutilated and corrupted periods that Irenaeus is often sought within Irenaeus himself, and it is difficult to grasp his meaning. Nicolaus Gallasius, a Genevan minister of the Calvinists, oversaw the second, which he published at Geneva in the year 1570. But although he asserts that it was corrected by himself through the collation of exemplars, nonetheless, since the same errors occur as in Erasmus, it is evident that no manuscript codices were consulted. Only new summaries of the chapters were added to the old ones, and there were inserted what

Epiphanius transcribed in Greek from Irenæus, along with a new Latin translation, which was not very accurate. Hence it seems that the intention of Gallasius was not so much to bring forth Irenæus in a more refined and corrected state, as to circumscribe the sentiment of this most holy man with prolix notes drawn from Calvinist doctrine, and to drag the conqueror of the ancient heresies, reluctant as he was, to a new party, or else to have him lacerated by abuse. Gallasius was followed by Joannes Jacobus Grynæus, of the same sect, who in the year 1571 at Basel oversaw a new edition of the books of Irenæus, which was no different from those preceding, except that he rashly removed the old Latin translation of the first chapters of the first book—which Epiphanius reports in Greek—in order to substitute the version of Janus Cornarius, omitting the Greek text, and prefixed new arguments to each chapter while retaining the old division. More corrected than all these was that which was produced at Cologne in the year 1596, through the work and study of Franciscus Feuardentius, a doctor of the Order of Friars Minor in the sacred Faculty of Paris, and which was subsequently reprinted frequently in that same place and in Paris. For that edition, which had been published by the presses of Nivellius in 1575 and 1576, had not yet been sufficiently purged of the errors of the preceding editions. For besides the fact that he restored the Latin text in many places by comparison with the authority of the Vatican manuscript and another old manuscript codex of excellent quality, and supplied lacunae, and added the five final chapters of the fifth book, which until then had been missing—he also added the first eighteen chapters of the first book, which had once been transcribed in Greek from Irenæus by Epiphanius, together with a not inconsiderable supply of other Greek fragments recovered from various authors, into Latin words, while also appending the most learned observations of Jacobus Billius and Fronto Ducæus. But while this Feuardentian edition is more perfect than the preceding ones, it is not itself perfect in every respect; indeed, it suffers from neither few nor minor faults. For to say nothing of the notes—which were indeed quite learned for that age but too prolix, ranging too far from the subject, and contributing little or nothing at all to the elucidation of the text—he neither restored the text happily in many good places nor explained it successfully; in many instances, he did not even know what he could do: so that after the labors of Feuardentius, six hundred points remained which required a healing hand; many of these, however, he could have corrected with ease had he consulted the manuscript codices he used with slightly more attention. I pass over the aids that are missing from that edition, by which the reader's labor might be lessened and the path paved for him to discover and grasp more easily the author’s meaning.

At length, in the year 1702, there appeared at Oxford in England a new, more accurate, and more elegant edition of the works of Irenæus, through the study and labor of that most illustrious man Joannes Ernestus Grabe, illustrated by the notes of various persons and his own, and enriched with new fragments. We can neither deny nor do we wish to deny that we have often profited from his labors. This edition is commended by the elegance of its type, by a not-negligent care in searching for and collecting new Greek fragments, and by some fortunate conjectures in correcting certain passages. Truly, however, everyone will acknowledge that what displeased the learned in Feuardentius and Gallasius also befell this most illustrious man. For although he had often seen and approved of better readings, he nonetheless followed the worse path and embraced vicious or less sound readings, rejecting those that were obvious and native to the margin: and as for locations manifestly corrupt, he did not even attempt to correct them, or did so with complete lack of success, to a far greater extent than he did correct them. Indeed, having imitated Gallasius, while he strove more intensely for the English Church, to which he joined himself, it seems that he cared more that he might join Irenæus—even unwilling and reluctant—to the Anglican sect, than that he might provide the work in a more refined and corrected state. Hence the tiresome prolixity of the notes, such that he twists even the most lightweight words, which very often have nothing to do with the matter at hand; in other places, however, he is more parsimonious, and he fills the lower margins with the notes of Feuardentius and others, adopted without any selection, which contribute nothing to the understanding of the text; and by adding his own—though they be learned—in such a way that those items of erudition contribute little to clarifying the author's meaning, he has increased the volume of the work to the reader's very little profit. I omit here what I shall explain more conveniently in the second Dissertation, namely that in the Oxford edition, although the old division of chapters was kept—which is nevertheless far later than Irenæus—that totally inept sectioning of chapters led the most illustrious Grabe to sometimes remove, move, or dissect the subheadings at his own whim, and by often heapng them together in greater numbers—not without the loss of many already-truncated subheadings—or by repeating the same ones twice or thrice, he has increased the confusion more than he has diminished it. What of the fact that the Greek fragments, although inserted in their proper places, are so inconveniently arranged that the eyes of the readers are kept in a perpetual state of wandering about the pages, often uncertain as to where they should be directed? But perhaps these things are the printer’s...

fault, to whom we must also impute the fact that there is such a scarcity of that edition in overseas regions that, since it could be obtained only with the greatest difficulty and at too high a price, the booksellers of Paris and Amsterdam considered putting it to their own presses.

Accordingly, it seemed to men of conspicuous learning and piety that a new edition of Irenaeus was not only useful but necessary—one that would be more accurate and could be used by Catholics with an unoffending step. They wished for this labor to be undertaken by one of our own; reasonably concluding, and not without cause, that Irenaeus, that Apostolic man, the light of the Western Gauls, as Theodoret calls him, and a writer of such great authority, did not deserve less than others to have our industry applied to an accurate edition of his works. And they hoped that we should strive to perform in this case—a task no less laborious than it is necessary—what we have already performed with not unsuccessfully in other editions that have emerged from our congregation.

This burden, therefore, having been placed upon me, though I declined it for some time, I at length undertook. But what I have endeavored to perform must be explained in a few words. I have deemed that three things were most of all to be performed by me: to correct the text and restore it to its pristinely decorated state, as far as possible; to illustrate the same; and, finally, to provide readers with those aids by which their labor might be diminished.

Concerning the first point: since the Greek text of Irenaeus has, for the most part, long perished by the injury of time, and almost only a Latin one remains, serving now as an archetype, I have applied all my care to this, so that it might appear as corrected as possible, purified from the flaws sprinkled in by the fault of copyists. I have compared this most attentively against three new manuscript codices, which have not heretofore been examined by anyone.

The first, received from the Library of the College of Clermont of the Society of Jesus, was provided for my use by that most learned man, whose kindness we have always experienced, the Reverend Father Jean Hardouin, prefect of that same library. This codex, which is of excellent quality, was written at least 800 years ago, according to the testimony of the most erudite Dom Jean Mabillon, of pious memory, an expert and, if ever there was one, a judge of such matters; it appears to be the most ancient of all those upon which previous editions were made. However, it is mutilated; for, with several of the final leaves torn away, the fifth book remains truncated by nearly the last ten chapters. Whether this happened by accident or by the imprudent zeal of some smatterer (who perhaps took offense at the error of the Millenarians defended by Irenaeus) is obscure. It is certain that the codex was once complete, as a portion of the twenty-sixth chapter still remains. The rest, thereafter, to the end of the book, has perished. Hence it seems manifest that the Clermont codex is different from the Feuardentian: for the latter was complete, while the former is much more emended.

I received the various readings of a second codex, covering the entire first book and the first eight chapters of the second book, described by the hand of Passeratius in the margin of one copy of the edition of Erasmus, from one of the Reverend Dominican Fathers of the Rue Saint-Honoré in this city, a friend of mine. That these readings were extracted from a manuscript codex, and one that is very ancient and of good quality, and different from those of Feuardentius, the Clermont, and the Vossianus, I have no room to doubt, nor will others who compare them with the readings of the aforementioned codices. Who that codex is, and where it now lies hidden, I have not yet been able to discover; I would not take its loss so hard if Passeratius had continued to note the rest of the various readings in the margin of his book.

The third codex I have used is recent and paper, not exceeding four hundred years in age, and it does not contain the latter five chapters of the fifth book. It is preserved at Rome in the library of the most eminent Cardinal Ottoboni. The excellent man and one so well-deserving of letters, Dom Bianchini, for his singular kindness toward us, communicated it to the Reverend Fathers Dom Guillaume La Parre, procurator general of our congregation at the Roman Curia, and his associate Dom Claude de Vic, who, out of their kindness, deigned to transcribe its various readings and transmit them to me.

In aid, there were added those codices which both François Feuardent and the most renowned John Ernest Grabe used in adorning their editions, whose various readings they (especially Grabe) transcribed not indolently in the margin of their own editions. And indeed, we have searched in vain for that ancient one which Feuardent used, and we have not been able to know whether it has perished or lies hidden in the shelves of some library. There are those who think it arrived in the hands of Vossius; but comparing the readings of both, it will immediately appear that they are different. Latinus Latinius cites another codex preserved in the Vatican Library, and reports various readings of it...

and Feuardentius after him; but I have learned that it is now missing from that library, both from those who have searched through it diligently and from the letters of friends. Grabe professes to have used four manuscripts: namely, the one that belonged to Isaac Vossius, the excellent codex praised above, which Dodwell collated most accurately with the copy of Feuardentius, and from which he communicated various collected readings to the same Grabe; the Arundel codex, preserved in the library of the Royal Society of London, which he judges to be four hundred years old; and an apograph of various readings which the same Vossius had given to Dodwell to be described, readings which Grabe says were derived long ago by Josias Mercer from two manuscript codices, though I know not which ones. But neither Grabe, nor Vossius, nor anyone else, except Josias Mercer, says that he has seen those two codices, nor does anyone indicate where they might now be. Yet the various readings of these same texts which Grabe reports from the apograph agree so much with each other in almost everything that they appear to have been excerpted from one and the same codex, or at least from two, of which one was copied from the other; and both, if there are two, are from a recent codex, and one not of very good quality. And unless my conjecture deceives me, I think the Ottobonian codex mentioned above is the very autograph from which the apograph was first transcribed, and from this another, and in truth, when both came into the hands of Josias Mercer, he held them as two distinct codices. For whatever readings from the Ottobonian have been sent to me from Rome are almost the same as those which Grabe alleges from those two Mercer codices. Wherefore, although we bring forward various readings of those codices from Grabe, I would wish to warn readers not to attribute more faith to them than they deserve (though they deserve little). The Arundel codex seems to have been interpolated either by the scribe himself or by someone more recent; a fact that anyone will recognize as most likely who has diligently weighed its readings. Thus, there remains one codex of Vossius, the, faith of which cannot waver. And in truth, having collated its readings with the Claromontane ones and those which Feuardentius reports from his old codex, I have discovered it to be ancient and of good quality; and in this it excels all others that still survive, because, as Grabe testifies, it alone contains the last five chapters of the fifth book. Nor, therefore, have I hesitated, where I had those three—the oldest and best of all—agreeing, to restore the text by their authority, and, spurning the others, to adhere strictly to them, unless they bore clear marks of corruption.

Beyond the manuscript codices, it has not been irksome to consult printed editions, especially the older ones, and sometimes to prefer them where the manuscript codices seemed either depraved or less sound. Thus it has come about that I have corrected the text of Irenaeus, still vitiated in very many places by either the inexperience or the negligence of scribes, or redundant through the boldness of minor scholars, or interpolated; I have added what was missing, excised what was superfluous, and correctly distinguished what was poorly connected, so that very few things now seem to remain for me in which the difficulty of the reading might delay the reader. But where there was a manifest depravity of the copies, I have not hesitated to amend it, either from the Greek words, if there was an abundance of them, or from other parallel passages in which the exact same repeated words occur, or from conjectures that are certain from other sources, having also employed the counsel of very learned men. This, however, has been done rarely, and with such religious care that the vulgate reading, however clearly corrupt, is kept in the margin of the book; then, that license consisted only within individual words, and those corrupted not so much by the fault of the Latin translator as by the copyists; it has never reached to doubtful [passages], much less to complete clauses or entire periods, which I would have thought it a sin to substitute with new ones by the authority of the Greek text or any other parallel passage. But where that [Greek] seemed sounder, I have thought it worth the effort to observe that and to provide a new interpretation, more accurate than the old Latin, yet translated to the bottom margin; so that the old reading might retain its place and authority. Various readings that might be of some importance we have written below, indicating which codices they were taken from. If it seemed that anything should be changed or supplied on their authority, we have not neglected to warn the readers and to bring forward the reasons for the change, with such religious care that it might be feared that our diligence would appear to some too subtle; but it is better here for diligence to be blamed than to be found wanting. Yet, so that we would not be doing what has already been done, we have not thought that all the errors of previous editions, which Feuardentius had already corrected, needed to be recalled: I have deemed that the one Feuardentian edition, which is in everyone's hands...

and which I have decided to restore and amend, is sufficient, provided that those points are observed and evaluated among the various recorded readings which seemed to be the most critical and sound in other editions.

No less care was applied in recognizing that part of the Greek text which is extant, although with less success due to the lack of manuscripts. Indeed, it is scarcely doubted that Irenaeus wrote in Greek, and that an unskilled and barbarous translator converted his books into the Latin tongue which we have now; this has been amply proven in the second Dissertation, which will follow the Preface and to which I refer the reader. But since the entire Greek text perished long ago by the injury of time, it remained that the fragments scattered everywhere should be sought out; this was done with diligence. For whatever the ancients preserved, or the moderns published, or other editions exhibit of Irenaeus's fragments—whether of those works which survive or of those which have perished—and whatever the most distinguished Grabe has brought forth, unearthed from various authors both published and manuscript; this edition of ours also exhibits these, but at times fuller and more emended, with those items added which I myself collected or which friends provided; all of this has been placed and arranged in an order which is far more convenient than that of Feuardentius and Grabe. I have consulted the Greek Catenae of the Royal and Colbertine libraries, and other Greek manuscript codices of the same, which I have noted in their proper places in the notes, and I have taken care to have them examined by diligent friends learned in Greek; everything transcribed from these, whether published by Combefis, by Grabe, or by others, has been reviewed by me, and more than once corrected and restored. As for those excerpts from Epiphanius, I have compared them again after Petavius with a certain paper manuscript codex of the same Royal Library, which was recent and faulty (for a better one was not to be found), and I have purged it of certain errors which had escaped the diligence of that most learned man. And I have omitted nothing that was in my power in order to compare them with the Vatican codex (for I know of no other Greek manuscript codices of Epiphanius's *Panarion*); but no one learned in Greek who would deign to undertake even a little labor—certainly of a few days—could be found at Rome, where, nevertheless, there are many. ^A However, as for the Greek of Irenaeus transcribed by Epiphanius, which Jacques Billius converted into the Latin language, because he translated far more elegantly and accurately than the old Latin interpreter, I have added his translation—which was already inserted into Feuardentius's Cologne edition of 1596 and subsequently into the Parisian editions—in our edition alongside the old one, so that one might be illustrated by the other. We would also have liked to insert other few Greek fragments of Irenaeus, which Billius likewise translated and which Feuardentius thus translated and inserted into his own edition, into ours as well; but since this version could not be set alongside the ancient one without confusion, we were forced to omit it.

It would have been of little use to purge the text of Irenaeus of errors if it did not proceed correctly distinguished and divided. The usual marks of punctuation serve the distinction, placed as aptly as possible in their proper locations; but a new sectioning of chapters and new headings prefixed to each serve the division. This has been done because the vulgate division and the ancient headings seem most certainly to be attributed not to Irenaeus but to some unskilled person of a later date, as we believe we have sufficiently proven in the second Dissertation; also because the sections of the chapters are often most absurd, no less than the arguments, which obscure rather than represent the opinion of the author. ^B Nothing, however, has been done except by the counsel of most learned men, and this only in the first four books; for in the fifth, the Feuardentian division and headings have been generally preserved. Indeed, each chapter has been divided into several paragraphs or numbers, with brief summaries affixed to the margin, by which the reader may perceive at a single glance what is the chief point of each. Yet, so that those who are accustomed to the old division for citing chapters might not be disrupted by the new, the Feuardentian division, which is now more common, has been preserved in the margin, with asterisks in the text to designate the beginning and end of the Feuardentian chapters; the complete arguments for these are also presented at the beginning of the work in comparison with the new ones. ^C

Another thing that I deemed must be done in this edition for the sake of duty concerns the illustration of the text. For since Irenaeus is sometimes most obscure, either from the difficulty of the subject matter discussed or from the incompetence of the Latin translator, it did not seem enough to emend the text and render an account of the emendations unless the darkness cast over the words was also dispelled. Irenaeus himself warns that the mysteries of the Gnostics are most monstrous and most profound.

These he opens and refutes as clearly as could be done, and so attacks them throughout the entire work that he never averts his eyes from them; yet so that those who are moderately versed in these matters, and do not consider the whole aim of the author as well as the hypothesis of his adversaries with sufficient attention, may sometimes hang in suspense, uncertain as to what the rugged and obscure passages mean, though this is, for the most part, the fault of the translator, or an entanglement of speech, or the direction toward which the discourse looks. Since these readers had to be provided for above others, and their weariness and labor spared, I have endeavored to explain every difficult passage in notes placed below the text as briefly as I could, having also taken up the observations of learned men which seemed to lead to an understanding of the author, though always naming the authors themselves.

If, however, the notes seem at times more frequent and more expansive, this is to be attributed to the difficulty of the subject matter, which I could not resolve in fewer words, fearing that while I strove to be brief, I might become obscure. It is added that since Irenaeus brings forward various and many testimonies from the sacred books of both Testaments, which, being from another version, seemed to have some discrepancy, it seemed worth the effort, for the sake of those who study Holy Scripture, to observe this. Those, however, who are learned and do not need notes and observations of this kind, can pass them over, for they can read Irenaeus continuously; as they are placed in the lower margin, they can easily be separated from the text. I have taken care, however, not to burden the margins with notes that relate only to a display of erudition (which is, for me, certainly meager), or to dogmas and controversies of the faith, unless they could be resolved in a few words; judging, and having learned by my own experience, that nothing is more annoying to readers than to be forced to pause at almost every step because of inserted notes. I thought it better to treat those things that required a more expansive and accurate examination, not indeed in the Preface itself, lest it grow immensely to the detriment of a correct method, but in separate Dissertations, in which each matter might be weighed in its own order and in a continuous series.

I have therefore prefixed three works to the whole: in the first, I have discussed as accurately as I could all those things that pertain to the person, age, customs, writings, and dogmas of the heretics against whom Irenaeus writes; I have laid open the fountains from which their impure doctrine flowed; and I have endeavored to uncover what lay hidden beneath the enigmatic bark of their words, having scrutinized their deepest mysteries. In the second, I have studiously collected and, to the best of my ability, explained everything concerning the life and deeds, martyrdom, and writings of Irenaeus, and most especially concerning the five books of the *Detection and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So-called* (for I have shown there that this is their genuine title), concerning the intent of this work and its method, and finally everything that occurs in the monuments of the ancients concerning the other lost writings of this holy Doctor. In the third, I have finally unrolled the whole series of the holy bishop's doctrine; I have clarified lighter stumbling blocks, if there were any, so that no one might rashly trip over them; I have illustrated what was more obscure; I have rejected what was alien or falsely attributed; and I have explained, defended, and asserted what had been wickedly twisted and obscured by vain cavils by the heterodox. This, I say, I have placed at the beginning of the work so that the reader might be able to traverse the books of Irenaeus with an unhindered foot.

Perhaps there will be some to whom this great mass of pages prefixed to a work not so very large will be displeasing. I myself found it annoying that the number of printed leaves had increased beyond measure and expectation. But the printers were deceived, being themselves misled by the unevenness of the handwritten pages; otherwise, I would have provided for this inconvenience. Furthermore, a brief and clear analysis of each book is prefixed to it (namely, that which was long ago skillfully prepared by our most learned Dom Nicolas le Nourry and published by him in his *Apparatus to the Great Library of the Ancient Fathers*, with a few things added or changed in accordance with our edition), by which the scope and argument of the book may be surveyed in a single glance.

At the end of the work, besides the Fragments of Irenaeus's lost writings, unearthed from various both printed and manuscript books—some of which are now being published for the first time in Greek, others in both Greek and Latin—there have been added, by way of an appendix, other excerpts from the books of the ancient Gnostics which occur scatteredly among the ancient Fathers; these will bring not a little light to many passages of Irenaeus. From this specimen at least, it will be easy to discern that the things which Irenaeus and other Fathers have written concerning those portents of opinion are not in vain. The most illustrious Grabe had already collected the greater part of them and had inserted them into his *Spicilegium of the Ancient Fathers and Heretics of the First and Second Century*. Certain others from the manuscripts of the Bodleian Library he examined: some he himself…

collated against the manuscripts of the Royal Library. These will be followed by the Prefaces, Prolegomena, notes, and observations of those who have hitherto published or illustrated new editions of Irenaeus; so that scholars may obtain in one volume, and at a lower cost, what they could previously only acquire at the expense of more volumes and greater outlay. And indeed, as regards the notes and observations, I have taken care to edit anew those of Billius, Fronto Ducaeus, and Feuardentius in their entirety, even though I had already excerpted many things from them and inserted them into my own work; for I thought I would do a service to readers if I presented the whole, the parts of which they had already read. From Gallasius I have selected very few, since most contain nothing but empty and inelegant declamations. From Grabe I have taken more, specifically those which Catholic ears can tolerate. I know well that Feuardentius's notes do not please everyone, and indeed displease Protestants greatly. Yet that they are learned for their time, and that the man—pious and learned—rendered excellent service to Irenaeus and to the whole Catholic Church, no one can deny without injustice. He often departs quite far from the argument, and in his treatment of the heterodox, he runs on with a style more bitter than is fitting; but this must be forgiven for the sake of his zeal for the Catholic faith, and for the time *^A* in which, amidst fervent controversies and civil wars, the Calvinists assailed Catholics with perpetual invective and calumnies. Anyone who has read the writings of the ministers of that time, and has weighed how shamelessly they slandered Catholics and offered violence to the most brilliant testimonies of the Fathers, *^B* will easily excuse Feuardentius. If any of this man’s arguments seem untimely now, the fault is not his, but that of his adversaries, who, being little consistent with themselves, have been forced—as their shifting sails changed their course—to turn back, and to add or subtract many things from their ill-conceived system, according to the exigencies of the times *^C* and their arguments. Some recent critics blame the most learned man more sharply than fairly, because he cited not a few adulterated writings as genuine, and attributed to various Fathers books and treatises which are now recognized as supposititious. But this was a common error of those times: for the truth was not yet sufficiently clarified, and the matter had not been weighed according to stricter rules of criticism; *^D* it was cited in good faith, and there seemed no room for suspicion. Whoever examines the Magdeburg Centuries themselves, or that famous critic among the Protestants, Andreas Rivetus, will immediately discover that they have lapsed, if not into the same errors, then into others quite as grave, and that they were no more skilled in the art of criticism.

But if Feuardentius committed any error, he who does not fear to reproach a man who confesses his fault and corrects it as soon as possible, commits, in my opinion, a graver one. When he was preparing his first edition of Irenaeus, writing on Book III, chapter 33 (now 22), among the various testimonies of the Fathers that he brought together, he added one as if from Cyril of Alexandria, *Commentary on John*, Book VI, chapter 15: this is not Cyril's, but that of Jodocus Clichtoveus, who inserted four of his own commentaries among the books of Cyril. Once the error was recognized, the good man hastened to correct it; but since the sheet had already been printed by the press, no other remedy remained than to warn the readers in time in an index of errata as to how it might be corrected; which he did. When, however, Francis Suarez, without having read that index, had criticized Feuardentius too harshly, he was worthily punished for his thoughtlessness in the Cologne edition of 1596. Yet observe how some recent critic, without having read either the aforementioned index or the notes added to the cited edition, still strikes at him, relying solely on the authority of Suarez or Theophilus Rainaudus, for an error that had been twice corrected and amended. By what words would Feuardentius respond, if he were alive, to that meticulous censor who does not even deign to leaf through with a diligent hand the very authors he refutes? Be that as it may, I have seen to it that the notes and observations of Feuardentius, such as they appeared in the most recent editions of Irenaeus, be edited again; yet so that I do not wish to stand surety for all his statements and citations (of which I would wish the same to be said regarding others). For it was not to be expected of me that I should weigh every testimony of the authors he puts forward, and if any error crept into his citations, to point it out: that would have been a task of immense labor; and had I undertaken it, I would have produced not Feuardentius’s notes themselves, but new observations upon Feuardentius, with little or no fruit. But since both Feuardentius and others adapted their observations to the old division of chapters which they followed, I have left them so adapted, lest any confusion should arise; I have merely indicated the chapters and pages of the new edition in the margin.

Finally, the third thing I had in mind—namely, to prepare and offer for the reader the aids...

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.

ARTICLE I.

^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.

we have attempted to do, by recalling to the genuine fountains, namely, the Platonic philosophies. To most, the Gnostic fables, which hitherto have seemed inextricable, wrapped in the torn and foully mutilated coverings of the Scriptures and the dogmas of the Christian religion, ^A will appear to have been most poorly dressed in our eyes; perhaps it will also be evident to others, if they have deigned to attend to what has been said thus far and to investigate the matter still more deeply. Nor do the limits prescribed to us allow us to expatiate more widely in that field; we would have wished, had it been permitted, to expatiate a little less.

SECOND DISSERTATION.

FIRST ARTICLE.

[LXXVII.] What may have been Irenæus’s native land, what his race, and in what year he was brought into the light, is nowhere written among the ancients whose works are extant. Yet this seems certain, that he was a Greek; his name itself is clearly Greek, and his education suggests as much. For the holy man narrates in his letter to Florinus, a fragment of which Eusebius recites, that he was still a boy, παῖς ὢν ἔτι, or, as he speaks in the work *Against Heresies*, in his first stage of life, ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ ἡμῶν ἡλικίᾳ, and that he heard Polycarp, who was already very old, πάνυ γηραλέον, and was imbued by him with the first precepts of the Christian religion. That Polycarp was then residing at Smyrna, of which he was bishop, cannot be doubted, and Irenæus seems to suggest this in the place just cited. From which one may infer that he was born not far from that city, and consequently ἐν τῇ κάτω Ἀσίᾳ, in lower Asia, as he has it in the cited letter. For it would exceed belief that a boy of tender age was sent there from distant regions. Yet Irenæus was not so much a boy of tender age that he did not listen to Polycarp eagerly, as he himself writes, and store up deeply in his heart those things which were taught by him, and constantly revolve them with a studious mind. Therefore, it is necessary that he was then plus or minus twelve years old; for such words could scarcely fall to one younger than twelve or ten. But far be it from me to believe with the learned Dodwell that he had then exceeded his twentieth year, and was near his thirtieth, when he heard Polycarp. ^B It is a complete monstrosity that one should be called a boy and in his first stage of life who has attained his twenty-fifth year. Nor does it help Dodwell that Irenæus, in enumerating the ages of men, makes mention of infants, little ones, boys, youths, and elders, and places boys immediately before youths, omitting adolescents; it is nothing. It was not Irenæus’s intention there to enumerate all human ages one by one and to define them exactly: it was sufficient for his purpose to prove that Christ conferred holiness upon all ages by running through each one, so as to conclude from that (which was his scope) that He also arrived at an elderly age, and consequently had exceeded his fortieth year. Hence, having mentioned infants, little ones, boys, youths, and elders, he adds: *Therefore He came through every age, and to infants He became an infant, sanctifying infants; among little ones a little one, sanctifying those who have this very age... among youths a youth, becoming an example to youths, and sanctifying them for the Lord. So also an elder among elders, etc.* Where he omits the boys mentioned before, because they are in no way to be distinguished from the little ones. But although Irenæus might have taken boys here to mean adolescents—which kind of paradox Dodwell will never persuade any sober man of—certainly it could not be concluded that he was older than twenty when he heard Polycarp: for he does not say that he existed then merely as a boy, but in his first stage of life, ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ ἡμῶν ἡλικίᾳ. Who, indeed, could bear that the first stage of life should extend up to the twenty-fifth year? If Irenæus had only advanced in age that far, there is no reason why all the things that ^D concerning him are deemed fabled by Dodwell.

2. It is therefore certain that Irenæus, at the time he heard Polycarp, could not have been older than twelve. But since Polycarp was already at that time ^A *πάνυ γηραλέος*, a very old man, and consequently nearer to martyrdom, Irenæus could not have remained for a long time under the discipline of such a great master, for he is believed to have ended his life with a glorious death in the year of Christ 166. We shall not, therefore, be far from the truth if we say that Irenæus was born around the year 140, at the beginning of the reign of Antoninus Pius. Others, and among them the very learned Tillemont, wish him to have been born twenty years sooner; but I fear that Polycarp, in the year 132, when he would have had to instruct Irenæus, could hardly be called a very old man, especially as the same most clear-seeing man confesses that he did not die until thirty-four years after that. This weighs all the more strongly against Dodwell, who thinks that Irenæus’ birth should be placed under Trajan, and perhaps even going back to the beginning of Trajan’s reign. If this were true, Irenæus would have heard Polycarp around the year 125, which the noble man readily admits. But he relies on a futile conjecture, among many others: that Irenæus, writing to Florinus, asserts that he saw him in lower Asia with Polycarp, when he was acting with splendor at the imperial court, ^C *λαμπρῶς πράττοντα ἐν τῇ βασιλικῇ αὐλῇ*. From which it seems to follow to Dodwell that the emperor, in whose court Florinus lived, was present in proconsular Asia at the same time that Irenæus heard Polycarp as a boy; and certainly no other than Hadrian, who set out for Asia around the year 122. But whether an emperor could be discovered from Irenæus’ words to have been staying in Asia at that time, only Dodwell could see; anyone else would merely infer from this that Florinus was some kind of courtier who possessed great favor with the emperor, and nothing more. There are those who make Irenæus a disciple of the Apostle John, like Paradinus and Severtius, relying on the authority of a certain diploma document, to which Pope Gregory V, King Henry of Burgundy, and Hugo, Archbishop of Lyon, are said to have subscribed. But whatever may be the case regarding the diploma, all the ancients disagree, asserting that Irenæus was a disciple of Polycarp, ^D not of John; Irenæus himself disagrees, who indeed boasts more than once that he learned many things from the elders who had seen and heard the apostles and their disciples, but never from the apostles themselves; which he would never have omitted, had it happened, as it would have added no small weight to the arguments brought against the heretics. And as for John’s Apocalypse, he writes that it was seen not long ago, almost in our own age, ^A *σχεδὸν ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας γενεᾶς*, toward the end of the reign of Domitian. By these words he acknowledges that he lived not far from John’s times, but he denies that he was his contemporary.

3. But even though he may not have heard John himself, he is to be called a man of saintly instruction, who, having been trained by his disciples, progressed so much in their school that he is deservedly numbered by all the ancients among the apostolic men, the witnesses of apostolic doctrine, and the first channels of it. For since it was not permitted to frequent the school of the most holy old man for a long time due to the death of Polycarp, he approached Papias, another disciple of John, and gave himself to his discipline, as Jerome is the author. He affirms more than once in his books against heresies that he heard other *seniores* (elders), disciples of the apostles and of apostolic men, and among them a certain eminent one. But who that elder so frequently praised by him might be, whether it was Papias himself or another, remains unknown to this day. From such great and holy men, he drank to the marrow the purest streams of holier doctrine, a deeper understanding of the sacred scriptures, and at the same time the holiness of life and the zeal for defending the faith, which it is likely he had imbibed along with his mother’s milk; and subsequently he poured them forth abundantly in his own writings. For he was not a sluggish and idle listener, nor did he allow what he had received to slip from his memory: but rather, from his very childhood, when it is barely permitted for others of such tender age to attend to serious matters, Irenæus zealously collected whatever was brought forth by the mouths of those most holy first teachers of the Christian religion, like precious pearls of the Gospel, and comparing them to himself—spurning all others—he stored them in the innermost recess of his heart, to be brought forth in due time. That he was so affected when he lived under the discipline of Polycarp, he boasts by his own right, and he sets it before the eyes of Florinus, his former fellow-disciple under such a great teacher, who later miserably lapsed into heresy, so that the memory of their shared master might recall him from his wandering to the pristine faith. We have provided the words, both in Greek and Latin, among the fragments at the end of the work. And in order that the memory of Polycarp in particular might remain more deeply fixed in his heart, he is himself believed to have transcribed the epistle of the Church of Smyrna, in which the story of his martyrdom is related; as can be inferred from the note which Ussher found at the end of that epistle in manuscript codices.

4. Yet, he does not intend his pursuit of sacred letters to mean that he thought the *humaniores* (classical studies) were to be neglected by him. The most sharp-sighted man knew well that such studies contribute not a little not only to cultivating and strengthening the intellect; but also that they are absolutely necessary for those who, about to refute pagans and heretics, [need] the knowledge of hollow theology and profane superstition from the very sources, the poets…

and philosophers' books. As for the rivals and persecutors of Christian truth, they should be convicted by their own instrument, and of error in themselves, and of iniquity against us. Hence, he applied himself indefatigably to unrolling the books of profane authors: which is clearly evident from the testimonies of old poets and philosophers that he frequently cites; so that not undeservedly did Tertullian call him the most inquisitive explorer of all doctrines. Nor, in truth, does he do this inopportunely, or as is done by many who seek after the praise ^A of manifold literature, sprinkling flowers plucked from the ancients into his works; but whenever he does so, he does it opportunely and appositely to the argument; whether to scrape away the ridiculous ravings of the heretics with festive witticisms; or to open the impure pools from which they had received them; or to strike the enemies of the Church with their own swords. And on this account Jerome, performing an apologetic for philosophical study and demonstrating its utility, seeks his argument from the example of Irenæus and certain others who explained in many volumes the origins of individual heresies and from what philosophical sources they emanated. Therefore, the most humble and modest Father was less than fair to himself, when he tries to persuade a friend that he had neither learned the art of words, nor labored in comparing the force of a writer; and that he was empty and ignorant of the ornaments of diction and the power of persuasion. Less fair also to Irenæus are those who complain of his somewhat humble style. The most fair judges of such matters, Tertullian, praised a little before, and Jerome, felt otherwise, who does not hesitate to assert that his books against all heresies were composed in a most learned and eloquent style: which anyone who reads them attentively easily notices, and which is proven by the sublime sharpness of his perspicacious intellect, the firmness of his very keen judgment, the wonderful abundance in devising arguments, his skill in selecting them, his ease in proposing them, and the force and dexterity in refuting adversaries—qualities which flash forth repeatedly even among the rough patches of an unhealthy Greek text and a barbaric Latin version; for the elegant comparisons, taken from the nature of the matter, soften the bristling thorns of the most troublesome argument and bring light to the more obscure places, and the discourse, seasoned at times with salt and witticisms, pleasantly recreates the reader's spirit. ^B 5. How much time he spent in the East after Irenæus passed from his youth, or what he did there, whether he discharged sacred functions or undertook the duties of teaching, cannot be said, as the ancients are silent. Halloixius indeed asserts that he was admitted among the sacred ministers and honored with the office of deacon, and even of presbyter, by Polycarp; but he relies on no testimony of antiquity. One who might have heard Polycarp, already very old, as a boy, does not seem to have been able to dwell with him long enough that he could have been placed by him in the ranks of the clergy ^B or as bishop of the Church of Thyatira, designated in John’s Apocalypse. But if anyone were nonetheless to contend that Irenæus was previously ordained as a deacon by some Eastern bishop before he was sent into the Gauls, I would not strongly object; for I could hardly believe that a layman would have been destined for that place to illuminate those regions with the light of the Gospel. But I stop within the bounds of conjecture, thinking that nothing should be rashly affirmed without the faith of historical monuments. This much is certain, that Irenæus departed for the Gauls and came to Lugdunum: but when, by whom, and on what occasion he was sent is altogether uncertain. Gregory of Tours writes that he was sent by St. Polycarp: which event Halloixius thinks occurred about the year 157, at the time when Polycarp was staying in Rome, whither he had come in the times of Anicetus. But Irenæus seems to have been too young then, [LXXIX] though he could have been sent. I therefore think he was sent later, although in what year, and by whom, I dare not say, nor can I. 6. That he was ordained as a presbyter by St. Pothinus, bishop of Lugdunum, can be inferred from the words of Jerome; for he calls him the presbyter of Pothinus, who was ruling the Church in Gaul at Lugdunum. These things seem to signify that Pothinus, according to a custom that long flourished in the Church, had claimed and consigned Irenæus to himself and his Church through the imposition of hands; on which account Eusebius calls him a presbyter ^C of the Church of Lugdunum. These things show the conjecture of certain recent writers to be vain, [namely] that Irenæus is that angel of the Church of Thyatira designated in John’s Apocalypse; not to repeat what I proved above, that he was born only many years after the Apocalypse was written and after the very death of John. How excellently he conducted himself in the office of presbyter is sufficiently proven by those things by which the words of the martyrs of Lugdunum commend his piety and his most ardent zeal for protecting and amplifying the Christian law—words brief in truth, but most efficacious, in the epistles which they write to Pope Eleutherus, which they had handed over to Irenæus to be carried. "We pray that you may fare well in the Lord in all respects and perpetually, Father Eleutherus. We have urged our brother and colleague Irenæus to carry these letters to you. Him, indeed, we ask that you hold in recommendation, as a zealot for the testament of Christ. But if we knew that anyone could confer justice upon another, we would have commended him to you in the first place as a presbyter of the Church (for he holds this rank)." So they. Blondellus denies that these epistles were written by the martyrs themselves, ^D but rather by the clergy of Lugdunum, because, he says, in the 7th year of the reign of Marcus, Christ 167, when the martyrdom of Pothinus and the Lugdunenses occurred, Soter was ruling the Roman Church, not Eleutherus. But for him to achieve this, it is necessary first that he overturn the faith of Eusebius, who [says] those epistles...

were written by the martyrs while they were still in prison, and that they suffered under Eleutherus in the 17th year of Marcus Aurelius. Hence, Blondel ought rather to have concluded that they suffered martyrdom at least in the year 170—the year in which he wishes Eleutherus to have entered upon his pontificate (though I should think he entered it later)—than to rely on vain conjectures and refer it to the year 167. Certainly, the occasion of the writing demonstrates that those epistles were composed after the year 167, and indeed after 170.

7. Besides the external storms that were being cast about while the Church was being persecuted by Marcus Aurelius, the spouse of Christ was groaning, shaken by internal agitations and burning with the civil discords which the dissension of spirits had brought forth. Circa the year 170, the Cataphrygians, under the leadership of Montanus, Alcibiades, and Theodotus, ^B moved and instigated by a demon, were deceiving many of the unwary with certain new deceits and false prophecies. The fall into error was the more facile in that, as Irenaeus bears witness, the glory of true miracles still shone in the Church, and the gifts of heavenly graces frequently glittered in many places. Hence came the dissension of spirits: some, whom the feigned appearance of holiness of these pseudo-prophets deceived, as well as an austere way of living that shunned all luxury and pleasure, opined that Montanus and his cohorts were preeminent in the spirit of prophecy, and they accepted and marveled at them as prophets; others, as was the case, believed them to be inspired by an evil spirit, and as conjurers and instruments of the devil, condemned and fought them. Meanwhile, the heat of persecution was boiling over in Lyons and Vienne in Gaul, and many of the faithful—laity as well as clergy—together with Pothinus of Lyons, were apprehended and cast into dismal prisons, where they displayed an outstanding and manifold example of Christian constancy in enduring tortures. Consulted in this most miserable state of affairs by the Churches of Asia and Phrygia as to what they thought of the new prophets, the people of Lyons and Vienne sent a special epistle. The martyrs themselves, situated in prison, whom the disturbance of the Oriental Churches troubled more than their own calamity, when asked for their opinion, spoke in private epistles which the clergy ^C added to their own, so as to strengthen their judgment with the authority of the martyrs. Eusebius, who had read all the epistles, asserts that they were, above all, religious and in agreement with the true faith, and consequently, as was fitting, opposed to the pseudo-prophets. Truly, they were far from the cruelty of those Montanists who closed the doors of the Church to sinners; those who were puffed up neither with pride nor arrogance against the lapsed, nor did they bring grief to the mother or schism and war to the brethren, but leaving joy, peace, harmony, and charity to all, showed favor to those who had disowned the faith and called back to life the members of the Church who were already dead; and who had persuaded one of their companions, S. Alcibiades, to temper himself from that harsh and squalid way of living which the new prophets ^D sought, because God had revealed to Attalus that Alcibiades acted neither rightly nor in order, since he would by no means use the creatures of God and became an example of scandal to others. But because in all ecclesiastical affairs the role of the Roman bishops is primary, the clergy and martyrs rightly judged that nothing of such great moment should be defined without consulting him. Wherefore, fulfilling as it were a legation for the peace of the Churches, they wrote letters to Eleutherus, requesting that, by virtue of the supreme authority he held in the Church, he should apply himself with all his might to settling the movements that had arisen in Asia and to restoring peace.

8. There could have been another cause for writing to Eleutherus. Perhaps the pontiff's mind was inclining toward the new prophets, deceived by their arts; indeed, he had already given them letters of peace. For if it be true, as Tertullian writes at the beginning of his book *Against Praxeas*, that the same Praxeas, when he had come to Rome, at that time compelled the Roman bishop—who was already recognizing the prophecies of Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla, and was from that recognition conferring peace upon the Churches of Asia and Phrygia—to revoke the letters of peace already issued and to desist from the purpose of receiving the charisms, by asserting false things about them and their Churches (thus was he caught in the snares of the Montanists) and by defending the authorities of his predecessors. It did not please Tertullian to designate that Roman bishop by his proper name, whence some understand Anicetus, others Victor, others another. But all things seem to square better with Eleutherus, and what is narrated here agrees perfectly with the circumstances of the letters of Lyons and Vienne. It is certain that these things happened at the very beginnings of the Montanists, when they had not yet broken out into open schism and were striving to circumvent the bishops of the Catholic Church, especially the Roman, so that by his authority they might fortify their pseudo-prophecies and spread them more safely. The people of Lyons and Vienne had heard, perhaps warned by the Asians, that Eleutherus had been deceived and had granted ill-timed peace to the fanatics; that from this the faithful were being troubled and the dissensions of the Churches were being increased. Thinking it to be in their own interest to root out the opinion conceived in the mind of the pontiff, they wrote to him and sent the epistles of the martyrs; they exhorted him to align his own judgment with the opinion of the invincible athletes of Christ, whose weight was so great in the Church; and by revoking what he had done too precipitously, to settle the dissensions that had arisen and to restore peace in the Church by the authority of his judgment. Meanwhile, it happened conveniently that Praxeas, coming to Rome from the East, revealed to Eleutherus the frauds of the Montanists, which were well known to him, and warned him that the prophecy had already been repudiated by his predecessors, namely by Soter. Thus, with the knowledge of facts added to the epistles of the people of Lyons, Eleutherus changed his mind, revoked the letters of peace already sent, and checked the discord that had arisen.

9. All these things cohere aptly together, and mutually...

^A lend light to one another, both in Tertullian and Eusebius. This conjecture is certainly more probable than all others. It had long since been proposed by Henri Valois, and Tillemont of good memory inclined sufficiently toward it; yet one thing stood in the way of that most learned man embracing it. He says that the history which Tertullian narrates—of the Roman Pontiff changing his mind at the warning of Praxeas—is so closely linked to the heresy of that same Praxeas that both appear to have happened at the same time. But it is certain that Praxeas did not emerge until after both Theodotuses, of whom the elder was first seen under Victor. Therefore, Praxeas could have warned no other Roman bishop than Victor. Thus the distinguished man. It is indeed true that these things are reported consecutively by Tertullian; yet I do not think it can be inferred from this that they happened at the very same time; rather, the whole series of Tertullian’s narrative ^B suggests the opposite. For it is certain that when Praxeas arrived in Rome from Asia, and advised the Roman bishop to revoke the letters of peace given to the Montanists, he at least feigned the Catholic faith, even if he did not hold it, and was not detected as a heretic until after several years. For the perfidious heresiarch would not have obtained faith so easily from the Pontiff had it been known that he was eager to stir up discord in the Church. But lest I seem to indulge in conjectures here, let us listen to Tertullian himself: "The Praxean tares had sprouted," he says, "having been sown here also while many slept in the simplicity of doctrine: having been brought out then by whom God willed, they seemed even to have been rooted up. In short, the former teacher had guarded against his own amendment; and the written record remains with the Psychics, among whom the deed was done; since then, silence. And as for us, the later recognition of the Paraclete, and the defense of it, separated us from the Psychics." Thus, Praxeas first sowed the barren tares, as Tertullian speaks with Virgil, or false doctrine, not openly indeed, but secretly, while many slept in the simplicity of doctrine and did not notice the unhappy darnel. So little did the faithful guard themselves against him that the tares were already sprouting—that is, perverse dogmas were occupying and infecting the minds of many—until at length the evil seed was brought to light by whom God willed, namely, as it seems, by Tertullian himself, who had not yet lapsed from the Catholics, as he says; and Praxeas recanted his views. No one could persuade himself that all these things happened together at the same time; it is necessary that many years passed between the sowing of the tares, their sprouting, their exposure, and the recantation of Praxeas. Now, therefore, if we say that Praxeas revealed the evil arts of the Montanists to Eleutherus in the year 177, in which the martyrs of Lyons suffered; then, that for about twenty years he simulated the Catholic faith, secretly disseminated the heresy, and that it was already ripening and spreading more widely ^C and was finally rooted out when the author recanted, while Victor was governing the Church, and both Theodotuses had emerged—I think we shall have affirmed nothing that is repugnant to Tertullian, or to the certain historical monuments of the Church, or to the rationale of the times. Scholars, however, to whose judgment we willingly entrust our conjectures, will decide. But let us return to the letters of the people of Lyons and Vienne.

10. Since the martyrs had written letters to the brethren in Asia and Phrygia in part, and in part to Pope Eleutherus in Rome, they requested Irenaeus not to disdain to carry those which were being directed to Eleutherus, and to labor with all his might for peace among the Churches. When the most holy presbyter had willingly accepted this commission, the martyrs commended him to the Pontiff, as we have seen above. Truly, what the reason was that both the clergy and the martyrs chose Irenaeus above the rest to carry their letters to Rome is, first of all, obscure. For at first sight, that legation ^D appears altogether untimely. Be it that it was of very great moment to treat of the peace of the Churches before the Supreme Pontiff; yet the business could have been entrusted to another; at least it did not seem to press so urgently that it could not have been deferred more conveniently to another time. For in such an adverse condition of the times, with persecution raging against the flock of Christ, and all the clergy either thrown into chains or forced to seek hiding places, it was not opportune that Irenaeus, the ornament and pillar of the Church, whose presence was so very necessary to his own, should be sent so far away. Moved by these reasons, the illustrious Henri Valois admits that Irenaeus was indeed designated by Pothinus, bishop of Lyons, as well as by the clergy and the martyrs, to perform the legation before the Supreme Pontiff, and that he was commended by the martyrs; but he denies that the legation was completed, suggesting that, upon the subsequent death of Pothinus, it was entrusted to another, so that the Church, widowed soon of its pastor, might not be deprived of its chief light in the midst of such great difficulty of circumstances. François Feuardent and Halloix think that Irenaeus undertook the legation not only to Eleutherus, but also to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia: yet with this difference, that the former would have him go while Pothinus was still among the living, the latter after his death and that of the other martyrs. Finally, Baronius concludes that Irenaeus was sent to Pope Eleutherus and actually performed that legation; but he is completely silent about a journey to Asia. The opinion of the latter is embraced by the very learned man who provided the new edition of the works of Pope St. Leo, and he deems it more probable that Irenaeus departed before the death of Pothinus and the martyrs. May we be permitted to state what we ourselves think about this matter.

^A That it was sent by the Christians of Lyons and Vienne, or that he had migrated anywhere into those regions, is asserted quite gratuitously and without any weight of historical records. Eusebius indeed affirms that various letters were written by the martyrs while they were still held in chains concerning the peace of the Churches, both to the brethren who were in Asia and Phrygia and to Pope Eleutherus; but that after the martyrs were dead, the surviving faithful added those letters to that longer and distinguished epistle, which many believe to have been written by Irenaeus himself in the Greek tongue (and the child is certainly not unworthy to be attributed to such a man), in which the struggles of the martyrs were described, and at the end of which they offered their judgment concerning the new prophets; yet neither Eusebius nor any other of the ancients mentions that these were entrusted to Irenaeus, or that he was ever requested to carry them to the East.

A far different view must be taken of those letters which were written to Pope Eleutherus. The martyrs themselves, in their letters of recommendation written to the same Eleutherus in favor of Irenaeus, testify in express terms that they asked Irenaeus to carry them to Rome. That Irenaeus complied with this and carried the letters to Rome is explicitly asserted by Jerome: to whom greater credence is to be given in this matter, the more he lingered for a very long time in Rome, as the most learned editor of Leo rightly notes, and having become a participant in the apostolic archives, he was able to learn this partly from the tradition of the city and partly from records still extant. Nor does Eusebius dissent: nay, he sufficiently signifies by his silence that the requested mission was fulfilled; for if it had not achieved its effect, he would undoubtedly not have passed it over. However, we must not permit ourselves to depart from the opinion of writers of such authority, unless we are swayed by very serious reasons, which are certainly absent here.

But, says Valesius, it is not credible that Irenaeus would have wished to desert, or could have deserted, the Church of Lyons, which was weakening under the bitterness of persecution and was widowed of its pastor. But if it is credible, in those circumstances of the times, when the clergy and the martyrs were already cast into chains—to whom a capital sentence pronounced against them was soon to be declared—with Pothinus having been either arrested or dead, and the other clerics having been either captured or driven into flight, that Irenaeus, so necessary to the terrified and afflicted Church, was chosen to carry the letters to Rome; why should it surprise us that he actually did carry them? Whatever is supposed to have been an obstacle to the embassy being fulfilled, the same ought to have been an obstacle to it being decreed. Since, therefore, the clergy and the martyrs decreed this in the very heat of the persecution, it cannot be doubted that Irenaeus fulfilled it, out of the highest devotion he bore toward the unconquered athletes of Christ, even though the persecution was raging.

^B If the question had merely been, as Valesius supposes, to carry to Rome the opinion of the Lyonnese and the Viennese concerning the prophecies of Montanus, it might perhaps have had no weight. For it does not seem to have been of such importance, nor did the business press so urgently, that it could not be deferred to a more convenient time, or at least committed easily to someone other than Irenaeus. Whence the fact that in such difficult times for the Churches of Lyons and Vienne such a man, and one of such importance, was asked to approach Pope Eleutherus, undoubtedly demonstrates that the cause for approaching him was far different and of greater moment; and that some present danger needing to be warded off by these Churches had hastened the journey.

What the matter actually was can be gathered, if I am not mistaken, not obscurely from the history of the martyrs, from Eusebius himself, and from Jerome. At the very beginning of the persecution, Pothinus, bishop of Lyons, was arrested, and having been inhumanly dragged by the soldiers and subjected to countless blows, was cast into prison nearly lifeless, and two days later, being more than ninety years old, had exhaled his soul from the wounds he had received. If the Church had been left for longer, widowed of its overseer in those straits of time, there would have been a danger that the Christian cause in Gaul—already not a little shaken by the fury of the persecutors—would have collapsed utterly. Wherefore, Irenaeus is chosen by the common vote of both clergy and martyrs to succeed Pothinus.

But because they were either in very short supply or altogether missing in Gaul, there being no bishops (at least, Eusebius mentions none in those times, not even among the Viennese) who could lay hands on the elected one, it was necessary to implore the aid of the Roman Pontiff, both on account of his vicinity and on account of his more powerful "principalitas," as Irenaeus puts it, so that he might bring aid to the Church widowed of its pastor through the consecration of the same Irenaeus. He was, therefore, to be sent to Rome, and, as the laws of the Church required, his faith, piety, and merits were to be proved to Eleutherus.

To this aim point the letters of recommendation which the martyrs wrote to the Pontiff, in which they proclaim Irenaeus's singular zeal for the testament of Christ, and exhort him to prefer him to others, ^C *ἔχειν σε αὐτὸν ἐν παραθέσει* [to have him in your recommendation]: lest he should hesitate to raise an otherwise unknown presbyter to the episcopal dignity. Thus I interpret Eusebius with the learned editor of Leo; but I dissent from him in that he thinks it more probable that Irenaeus set out for Eleutherus before the death of Pothinus and the martyrs. For I cannot bring myself to believe that the martyrs, while their own bishop was still among the living, sent to Rome to have someone take over a see that was not yet vacant. For, besides that it was contrary to the laws of the Church, the Acts of the martyrs themselves, which Eusebius records, ^D sent to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia, testify that Pothinus was arrested at the very beginning of the persecution and ended his life through martyrdom; and the whole series of Eusebius's narrative sufficiently insinuates this, so that to think of sending Irenaeus to Rome was...

delayed until the death of his bishop had already occurred, so that this might be shown to have preceded him. If, however, Eusebius, after having mentioned in chapter 4 the legation of Irenaeus, treats again of the death of Pothinus and the substitution of Irenaeus in his place, it is not an argument that this was prior to his death; but since Eusebius had proposed to himself the transcription of the letters of the clergy and the martyrs, in which all these things are recounted in the same order as I have stated, which he follows in the first four chapters of the fifth book, he had to defer what he was about to say in his own words regarding Irenaeus to the sixth chapter, so as not to break the thread of the narrative. Jerome does not depart from Eusebius, who, in his book *De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis*, speaks thus of Irenaeus: "Irenaeus, a presbyter of Pothinus the bishop, who governed the Church of Lugdunum [Lyons] in Gaul, was sent to Rome as a legate by the martyrs of the same place concerning certain questions of the Church, and he carried honorable letters to Bishop Eleutherius regarding his name (that is, responding to his name, which sounds ‘peaceful’)." Afterwards, when Pothinus had already been crowned with martyrdom for Christ at nearly ninety years of age, he was substituted in his place. 82 By which words he does not obscurely signify that there was a twofold purpose to the legation of Irenaeus: the one, and that less primary, which we have already mentioned, that he should act before the pontiff concerning certain questions of the Church, namely those which concerned the "new prophecies"; the other, far more important, that he should be substituted in the place of the deceased Pothinus; and for that reason he had carried honorable letters regarding his name. Having performed the former duty of the legation, Irenaeus afterwards accomplished the second, being substituted in the place of Pothinus, who had been crowned with martyrdom for Christ. By whom? If not by Eleutherius, to whom he had carried the honorable letters regarding his name. That "afterwards," therefore, does not signify some long delay of time, as if Irenaeus, having returned to the Gauls after the letters were carried to Rome, had been substituted in the place of Pothinus; but it signifies the series of events, of which some preceded others by a few days: namely, that Irenaeus first sought the peace of the Churches before Eleutherius, and then finally was consecrated bishop by him in place of the deceased Pothinus.

13. There remains what might perchance cast a scruple upon anyone: namely, that which I have said, that there were very few, or perhaps none at all, bishops in the Gauls at that time, from whom Irenaeus could have received the laying on of hands. It is not indeed my intention here to call the most celebrated question concerning the first apostles of the Gauls into a new examination: let it suffice to assert this, which seems to have been explored from certain and indubitable monuments, that in the times of Marcus Aurelius the Christian religion had not yet taken deep and firm roots in the Gauls, and that very few episcopal sees had been established there in the age of Pothinus and Irenaeus. It is certain, nor do the keenest supporters of the apostolic missions in the Gauls deny, that the beginnings of the Church of Lugdunum were owed to Pothinus the bishop, who first cast the foundations of the Gospel in that city. But if the Christian religion had then been spread far and wide in Gaul, and many episcopal sees had already been constituted in those regions since the times of Peter and Paul; how could it be that no minister of the Gospel had reached Lugdunum, one of the primary cities of Gaul, conspicuous for its metropolitan dignity, most celebrated for its trade, the frequency of its people, and the habitation and residence of the leading Roman magistrates, and near to Italy, and that no one had founded a Church there and ordained a bishop who might devote his efforts to the conversion of so vast a city? Vienna, Narbona, Arelate, Tolosa, etc., are not so far distant from Lugdunum. If, therefore, those cities had already enjoyed the light of the Gospel before Pothinus, and had their own prelates, the first care of these—if any zeal for the spreading of religion had quickened their breasts—ought to have been to lead a Christian colony to Lugdunum, from which such great utility might have flowed into the Church; nor would it have been necessary to send Pothinus, Irenaeus, and other ministers of the Gospel from the East to convert that city and the neighboring regions to Christ. Certainly, if any city should have had its own bishop in the age of Pothinus, it was most especially Vienna, in which it is clearly revealed by the cited letter of the martyrs that a Church had been constituted. But it is a wonder that in that whole letter, written in the name of the Viennenses just as the Lugdunenses, the name of the bishop of Lugdunum is found, while that of the bishop of Vienna is not even mentioned in the slightest. And yet one of the number of the martyrs is not omitted, Sanctus, a deacon of Vienna. But concerning the bishop of Vienna, there is the deepest silence everywhere. The Lugdunenses and Viennenses write that the most excellent of each Church, and those by whose labor and industry affairs had been constituted there, were all seized together. If all the most excellent from each Church were seized together, the bishop of Vienna ought to have been included with Pothinus, and his name not omitted. While, however, they recount the names of those most excellent ones, they do not remain silent about the bishop of Lugdunum; of the Viennenses, they do not make mention even by a word. The most learned Tillemont wishes him to be contained, at least implicitly, among those most excellent ones whom the letter narrates were seized from each Church. But I wonder at this again and again, that the diligence of the Lugdunenses and Viennenses was so accurate toward the bishop of Lugdunum that, not at all content with an implicit mention, they judged that he should be called by his own name; yet they had so failed in that diligence that, with the explicit mention of the deacon of Vienna made, it was enough to have made implicit mention of the bishop, his name and rank being left totally in silence, as if he were a man of obscure name or a matter of no moment. Gregory of Tours and likewise Ado of Vienna, who had read the entire letter, especially...

^A caring for the Church, and being at the head of those whose names are listed, and whose number is determined: not a word is said about a bishop of Vienna. Moreover, what the learned man adds after Valesius, that at that time a Church had been established in Vienna, and that it was already perfect and fully formed, carries no weight. For if by "perfect and fully formed Church" he understands one that possesses its own bishop, we shall deny, or at the very least doubt, that such a one existed in Vienna. If, however, he understands any assembly of the faithful, he will gain nothing: since in many places there were Churches in that sense, which nevertheless were not episcopal. For it is certain from Athanasius in *Apologeticus* 11, that in the region of Mareotis there were several Churches; and yet there was never any bishop in it, not even a chorepiscopus; but all the Churches of that region, he says, were subject to the bishop of Alexandria. And individual presbyters have their own districts, and these very large, or several of them. What if, then, the number of the faithful at Vienna at that time was so small that one bishop of Lugdunum, neighboring that city, was more than enough to rule the little flock? Especially when there was still such a scarcity of episcopal men that they could not be set over individual cities. And perhaps for that reason the faithful who were arrested in Vienna were taken to Lugdunum, brought to trial before the Lugdunensian presiding officer, interrogated by him, and condemned to the ultimate punishments. Certainly, Lugdunum and Vienna belonged to different provinces; the latter to the Narbonensis, the former to the Celtica, of which it was the capital. Each province had its own prefect, and indeed one of a different kind from the other. The Celtica, which was under the jurisdiction of the Emperor, was governed by a proprætor; the Narbonensis, which was under the jurisdiction of the Senate, by a proconsul. Since, therefore, the Lugdunensian proprætor could exercise no jurisdiction in Vienna, he could not by law claim for himself the cognizance of the case of the Viennese faithful. Why, then, does he order them to be brought before his own tribunal at Lugdunum, and their case to be debated? This one thing comes to my mind, that the proprætor had received instructions to destroy the Church of Lugdunum root and branch. And because he had heard that the Viennese belonged to the Lugdunensian Church [LXXXIII] and were governed by the bishop of Lugdunum; for that reason he ordered them to be arrested according to his mandates, and to be brought before him. I do not think matters can be explained differently up to this point. For the most learned Valesius, who thinks that Lugdunum and Vienna at that time obeyed one and the same Roman governor, does not seem to deserve a hearing; for he asserts this gratuitously, without proving it. ^C

15. Furthermore, it is very well known what Sulpicius Severus writes, that under Aurelius, the son of Antoninus, the fifth persecution was agitated: and at that time martyrdoms were first seen within the Gauls, the religion of God having been accepted later beyond the Alps. It is also very well known what is read in the sincere Acts of the highest quality of the holy martyr Saturninus, the first apostle of the Tolosates, which Gregory of Tours saw and cited, made and corrected for public law by our most learned Ruinart: "In the consulship of Decius and Gratus, that is, in the year of Christ 250, rare Churches were rising in certain cities (of Gaul) through the devotion of a few Christians, and in all places frequently, due to the miserable error of the gentiles, temples were smoking with foul odors." If the religion of God was accepted later beyond the Alps; if in the year of Christ 250 Churches were still rare and only in certain cities of Gaul, and those composed of very few Christians; if in all places the temples of the gentiles were frequently smoking with foul odors; ^D any prudent estimator of things will judge that episcopal sees were founded later in the Gauls, and must have been very rare in the year 250. But if such was the state of Christian affairs beyond the Alps at that time, and if there were very few bishops in the Gauls; then the number of bishops there must have been much worse and also much smaller in the year 177, in which Pothinus, bishop of Lugdunum, suffered. For if religion had then and before flourished in many places in Gaul, if Churches had already been established in many cities, which were ruled by their own bishops; then martyrdoms should not have been seen for the first time within the Gauls under Aurelius, the son of Antoninus, but long before; and they should have been seen not only at Lugdunum, but also at Vienna, Arelate, Narbona, Lutetia Parisiorum, and whatever other cities possessed Churches and their own bishops. For why would Trajan and Hadrian have spared our Churches more than those of the Orientals and Italians; and why should Marcus Aurelius have raged only against Lugdunum and not against others? I do not see; and I do not think anyone else can see, that he had withdrawn himself from the fury of the persecutors, nor that he had been arrested among the most prominent members of his Church (a wonder if he could have withdrawn himself; so great was their diligence in searching out the leaders of the Christians!), at least he would be presented, either by Eusebius or by the martyrs, as one solicitous for the flock of Christ, and as one afflicted...

^A by the heavy devastation which the fury of the Gentiles had soon brought upon the Church of Lyons. But how happily he acquitted himself in this, Gregory of Tours teaches. The most blessed Irenaeus, he says, the successor of this martyr (Pothinus), who was sent to this city (Lyons) by the blessed Polycarp, shone with admirable virtue: for in a short space of time, he rendered the city almost entirely Christian by his preaching. Whence, in the other persecution that occurred under Severus, and which sent Irenaeus to heaven, the same Gregory asserts that such a multitude of Christians was slain on account of their confession of the Lord's name, that rivers of Christian blood flowed through the streets, of whom, he says, neither the number nor the names could be gathered.

16. That Irenaeus himself governed the Lyonese Church after the death of Pothinus, seems to be able to be gathered from Eusebius. For as often as he speaks of affairs in Gaul, whether concerning the foundation of Churches, or thevexation of the Gentiles, or the controversies that arose in the Church and were debated in Gaul, he mentions one Lyonese bishop, and never another. Indeed, in recounting the dispute that flared up between Pope Victor and the Asiatics regarding the celebration of Easter, he presents Irenaeus twice as if he were the only one who then ruled the Churches of the Gauls by episcopal right ^B. Among those who rebuke Victor because he had cut the Asiatic Churches off from his communion, he says: *Irenaeus, on behalf of those brethren in Gaul whom he ruled, wrote to him*, etc. Irenaeus could not have presided over the brethren living in Gaul by any other right than the episcopal, certainly not by the metropolitan, and much less by the exarchial or patriarchal. For, as the renowned author of the new edition of the works of St. Leo the Great argues learnedly in the dissertation cited, in the second century of the Church, when the foundations of the Christian faith had scarcely been laid across the Alps, when the nascent Church in those regions was not even allowed to whisper, and finally, when that city of Gaul which appears to have been the first to receive the faith scarcely possessed another bishop besides Pothinus, one can scarcely demonstrate that such a form of hierarchy had already been-introduced into the few ^C Churches arising there, as would subject bishops to metropolitans, and metropolitans to exarchs. Indeed, if in the very middle of the third century, when Saturninus arrived at Toulouse, the Churches in our regions were still so rare—and the Christians just as few—who would believe that at the end of the second century they were so numerous that Irenaeus presided over many bishops by metropolitan or exarchial right? To this, add that the ancients were not accustomed to designate bishops by the name of "Brethren," but rather the Christian ^D people. But if that passage of Eusebius appears doubtful to anyone, perhaps what he premised earlier will seem clearer. Indeed, in reviewing various synods and conventions of bishops, συνόδους δὴ καὶ συγκροτήσεις ἐπισκόπων, that were convened against the Asiatics, he mentions the Roman, the Palestinian, the Pontic, the Osrhoenian, and the Corinthian. All of these, with the exception of the Osrhoenian, he expressly calls synods of bishops, and what was defined in them, decrees of bishops; nor does he omit the bishops who presided over these synods. But when he relates the decree issued by the Churches of Gaul concerning the same controversy, he no longer mentions "synods of bishops," but a decree τῶν κατὰ Γαλλίαν παροικιῶν, ἃς Εἰρηναῖος ἐπεσκόπει, of the parishes of Gaul, whose bishop Irenaeus was, or which he administered as bishop. By which he designates Irenaeus as the sole bishop of Gaul. For if Eusebius had considered that decree to have been issued in a council of many Gallic bishops, he would have thought it just as worthy of note as he thought the decree of the Palestinians—issued by those bishops over whom Theophilus of Caesarea and Narcissus of Jerusalem presided—or that of the Italians, by those over whom Victor presided; of the Pontics, by those over whom Palmas presided; or finally of the Achaians, by those over whom Bacchylus presided. Since, therefore, he does not speak of the Churches of Gaul in the same way as he does of the others, but in a way far different, he suggests, not obscurely, that the condition of our Churches at that time was far different, and that they were still in their infancy, not yet widely diffused, and that they scarcely had any other bishop than Irenaeus. At least, that no other can be produced, or extracted from the indubitable records of ecclesiastical history, is admitted by Tillemont, a most learned investigator of ecclesiastical antiquity, who here opposes us. Nor do I delay over the *Synodicon*, in which a twofold council is shown to have been held under Irenaeus; one of twelve, another of thirteen bishops; for its credibility is altogether weak in matters of such antiquity. But of these things, enough and more than enough for our purpose.

^A number, nor were we able to collect their names. This is also confirmed by Usuard and other martyrology writers, when they recount that Irenæus was crowned with glorious martyrdom along with almost all the people of his city. These are outstanding proofs of the zeal with which the most holy bishop burned for the promotion of the Christian religion among his own. But it was too great to be contained within the narrower limits of the city of Lugdunum: it spread itself into all of Gaul, and indeed into the whole Church. For it was his care to cultivate disciples in the precepts of Christian life and doctrine, who would subsequently serve the whole Church well by their words, writings, and examples. Such a person was, as Photius bears witness, Saint Hippolytus, bishop and martyr, who flourished among the Fathers of the third century for his reputation for holiness and learning. Such also was Caius the priest, a writer of the same century who was not undistinguished, at least if one grants any credit to what is written in the manuscript codices at the end of the Acts of Saint Polycarp the martyr, which are said to have been described by Caius, who associated with Irenæus, from an apograph of Irenæus himself, a disciple of Polycarp.

18. Since he fulfilled the office of an apostle in Gaul, and had taken upon himself that part of the Lord's vineyard to cultivate, it was fitting that he should provide greater proofs of his zeal there. Therefore, he held nothing more urgent than to send necessary laborers into those parts which were in need of new cultivators. From the Acts of the holy martyrs Ferreolus the priest and Ferutio the deacon, and of Felix the priest and the deacons Fortunatus and Achilleus, disciples of Saint Irenæus, ^B we learn that the first two were sent by him to Vesontio, and the latter three to Valentia, so that they might lay the foundations of divine worship throughout those places. Although these acts may not appear entirely sincere, such that we might grant them full and undoubted credence in all points, there is nothing, however, which can cast doubt upon the mission of those holy men, since we have the tradition of those Churches in most harmonious agreement. ^C And for this reason, Irenæus was justly and deservedly called by the ancients the apostle of the Gauls and the light of the Western Gauls, as one who cultivated and illuminated the Celtic peoples. And from this, what we said a little before is not a little confirmed, that Christian Churches in Gaul were rare at that time, and bishops even rarer; since Valentia and Vesontio, cities of no obscure name or lowest rank, and not so far distant from Lugdunum, had not yet heard the faith of Christ, nor do we read that their own primary apostles were notable for episcopal dignity. But since we read of all these things in authors without any chronological markers, we cannot define in what year they occurred. But this is certain, that while Eleutherus was still pontiff, at least the first three of the five books against the fables of the Gnostics were written. For it was not enough for Irenæus to extend the borders of Christ's kingdom as far and wide as he could, unless he also protected peace within it, and ^D endeavored to break the onsets of domestic enemies—whose evil arts, and the Valentiniani who had long since emerged in the East, followed shortly after by the Marcosians, the followers of Simon Magus, and the evil progeny of other Gnostics—for as much as they stood in their defense with all their might. These men, bearing a mind more than heathen whilst under a Christian name, by incredible monsters of errors and atrocious crimes, were casting the utmost stain of infamy upon the holiness of the Christian religion. The poison was creeping the more dangerously for being the more hidden: and it had already pervaded the region of Lugdunum, having infected many, especially women, whose minds it had led away not merely from the faith, but almost from every sense of reason. Irenæus, keeping watch for Christ's flock, when he sensed the evil, and having sufficiently explored its entire gravity from the books and sermons of the heretics, applied himself to writing, so that he might bring their wicked trifles, deceits, and manners out into the open and utterly overturn them. But we shall discuss the books and writings of the holy bishop more fully and accurately later. That the Valentinians, Marcionites, and other ancient heretics were condemned by Irenæus in the synod which he held at Lugdunum, at which twelve bishops were present, is reported by the already cited *Libellus synodicus*; but we have already warned that in matters of this kind, this booklet, published in the ninth century, can have no authority.

19. How studious Irenæus was of fostering peace in the Church, [LXXXV] appeared nowhere more clearly than in the controversy which raged between Pope Victor and the Asiatics. Hitherto, there had not been one and the same discipline among all the Churches in celebrating Easter. The Churches of Asia Minor contended that the feast day of the Lord’s Easter and Resurrection, and the end of the fasts, must be observed on the fourteenth moon after the vernal equinox, on whatever day of the week it might fall. The Roman Church, however, lest it seem to imitate Jewish rites, thought it should be celebrated on the Lord's Day which would next follow the fourteenth moon, and that the fasts were to be extended until that time. All the Westerns agreed with the Roman Church, as did the Churches of Alexandria, Phoenicia, Pontus, Achaia, and Osrhoene. As to whether the Churches of Syria, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia did so as well, there is room for doubt. Indeed, it is clear from Athanasius in his book *De Synodis*, that before the Council of Nicaea, *οἱ μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς Συρίας, καὶ Κιλικίας, καὶ Μεσοποταμίας, ἐχώλευον περὶ τὴν ἑορτὴν, καὶ μετὰ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἐποιοῦντο Πάσχα*, the Syrians, Cilicians, and Mesopotamians stumbled regarding the feast, and celebrated Easter with the Jews. The synodal epistle of the council itself also records, *πάντας τοὺς τῆς Ἑῴας ἀδελφούς*, that all the brethren of the East, who previously dissented from the Romans, Alexandrians, and other nations regarding the feast of Easter, had now come to agreement with them. Moreover, the head of the East and of Syria is Antioch. That the discipline of the Asian Churches concerning Easter formerly prevailed even in that city, until the Council of Nicaea recalled all Churches to concord, is not to be doubted.

^A Indeed, the clear authority of St. John Chrysostom, a citizen and presbyter of Antioch, forbids us to think otherwise, in the sermon which he delivered against some of his own people, who, mindful of the old rite, did not cease to celebrate Easter on the 14th day of the moon even after the Nicene Synod. He admits, indeed, that this had been the custom of the Antiochians before the synod, but that afterwards, harmony of times was preferred. From the other side, the authority of Eusebius makes us pause. For he asserts in express terms that, beside the Asian and other neighboring Churches, the Churches dispersed throughout the rest of the world agreed with the Roman [Church] concerning Easter. ^B By these, he seems to include the Churches of Syria, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia, just as he does many others of which he makes no express mention. The most learned Tillemont cut this knot rather than solved it, writing that they indeed had celebrated Easter in the Roman manner on the Lord’s day in the time of Victor, but afterwards had fallen away from the pristine rite so that at the time of the Nicene Council they observed Easter with the Jews on the 14th day of the moon. That certain Churches, which had resisted Pope Victor more sharply, might have returned to the common usage of almost all other Churches—having adopted a sounder counsel and departed from their ancient rites—will seem to no one at all surprising. And it is sufficiently probable that many Churches of Asia did this; since the Emperor Constantine, among those which at the time of the Nicene Council celebrated Easter with the Roman [Church], enumerates the diocese of Asia; and Anatolius, who was writing around the year 276, says that "to this day the bishops of Asia celebrated Easter on the 14th day of the moon after the equinox," by which he seems to imply that they then ceased to celebrate it [in that way]. But who and why those Churches—which for almost two hundred years not only had observed Easter on the Lord’s day, but even towards the end of the second century, while the dispute about this matter was more acute, contended vehemently that it should be so observed—should, about a hundred years later, be found so tenacious of a different discipline from the one they had fought for, and which they knew was repugnant to the customs of almost the whole world, no one will easily say, nor will anyone have assigned a cause for so unexpected a change. But, says the most famous man, there is no doubt that Mesopotamia had abandoned the ancient rite at the beginning of the fourth century. For at the end of the second century Osrhoena was in agreement with the Roman Church. Now Osrhoena is taken for Mesopotamia in daily speech. ^C But what the most learned man assumes as if it were certain, that authors are accustomed to use Mesopotamia and Osrhoena indiscriminately, will seem at least doubtful to others. Certainly Ammianus Marcellinus distinguishes the one from the other; and because, he says, all the tracts of Mesopotamia were accustomed to be frequently troubled, they were guarded by bulwarks and agrarian stations, and by a path turned to the left he had settled in Osrhoena: he says in the Alamundar speech, "Of Mesopotamia and the region which is called Osrhoene." In the Notitiae of the empire and the Church, Osrhoene and Mesopotamia properly so-called are also distinguished from one another, and of the latter the capital is established as Amida, of the former as Edessa. Finally, Anthemusia, which is almost Osrhoena, is, by the testimony of Strabo, a portion of Mesopotamia itself, namely of Mesopotamia taken in a wider sense. These things prove that Osrhoena is commonly distinguished by authors from Mesopotamia, either as a part from the whole, or as a part from another part. But even if some have used both indiscriminately, yet, unless I am mistaken, it can be demonstrated by no argument that Eusebius understood it that way. Therefore, whether we take Mesopotamia for the huge tract of lands which includes many provinces, or for a certain province of that same tract, it seems far more probable that the customs of Osrhoena and the customs of the other Churches of Mesopotamia were always different. Therefore, when Eusebius says that certain Churches neighboring the Asian Churches agreed in the discipline of Easter, I would not believe that he intended to force the meaning of his words by adding to them the Churches of Cilicia, of Seleucis (whose capital is Antioch), and at least the province of Mesopotamia. Concerning Cilicia, there is hardly any difficulty, since it was then counted among the provinces of Asia Minor; nor is there greater [difficulty] concerning Seleucis, bordering on it. However, Constantine enumerates Cilicia among those Churches which, in the age of the Nicene Council, celebrated Easter with the Roman [Church]. But lest he be in open conflict with Athanasius, lauded above, it must necessarily be explained as referring to some part of Cilicia. Be that as it may.

20. A contention arose among the litigants the more serious, the more important the points that each brought forward for themselves. ^D For both sides relied upon apostolic tradition: not that, as Socrates says, any of the apostles had laid down a law on this matter; but that the disciples venerated their example as if it were a law laid down for them. The Asians brought forward as authors of their institution the Apostle John, Philip one of the first seven deacons, Polycarp the martyr, Melito, and other most excellent men, who, when they lived among them, celebrated their Easter in the manner of the 14th day of the moon. The Romans, on the contrary, asserted that Peter and Paul, when they were in Rome, had never acted otherwise than on the Lord’s day. And indeed, before Pope Victor, peace had always stood between the Churches, however much they were dissimilar to each other in this matter: each living according to its own custom, allowed the other to live according to its own. Other pontiffs had only taken care, lest restless spirits should corrupt the sound and sincere custom of their Church with the foreign customs of the Asians. And when some Blastus, a presbyter of the Roman Church, had presumed to do this, [he...]

^A Irenaeus, who was no less concerned for the preservation of peace than for the antiquity and tradition of the Churches, restrained him by writing an epistle against him, which he entitled *On Schism*. Yet those pontiffs—namely Anicetus, Pius, Hyginus, Telesphorus, and Sixtus—as Irenaeus himself bears witness, although they neither celebrated the Pasch on the same day as the Asians, nor permitted their own followers to celebrate it on that day, nevertheless zealously cultivated peace and communion with them, and for the sake of the custom of those times, sent them the holy Eucharist. Indeed, when Polycarp had come to Rome in the time of Anicetus, there was a slight dispute between the two concerning other, lesser matters, and an even lesser one regarding the Pasch. Anicetus, for his part, tried to persuade Polycarp to adopt Roman rites, while Polycarp tried to persuade Anicetus to adopt the Asian ones; but since neither yielded to the other, peace was quickly established, so much so that the Roman pontiff, out of reverence, granted the administration of the celebration of the Eucharist to the Smyrnean.

21. They were in that place when Victor undertook the governance of the Church. Being a little more fervent than his predecessors and bearing the diversity of rites impatiently, he labored with more ardent zeal, so that he might recall the entire Church to one and the same practice. Jerome writes in his *Catalogue* that this happened under the Emperor Severus; in his *Chronicle*, however, he assigns it to the fourth year of his reign, 196 A.D. Therefore, Victor wrote to the principal bishops of the entire Church, [urging them] to convoke synods in their provinces and to discuss the question in them, and to settle it according to the wishes and discipline of the Roman Church; he threatened excommunication to the Asians if they did not consent. Councils were held at Rome, in Palestine, in Pontus, in Osrhoene, in Achaia, and in many other places, and with one consensus ^B and judgment, they transmitted the ecclesiastical rule to all the faithful through synodal letters—namely, that the mystery of the Lord’s resurrection from the dead should never be celebrated on any day other than the Lord’s Day. The opinion of the Churches of Gaul, over which Irenaeus presided as bishop, was the same. But Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, having convened a council of the bishops of Asia, was not at all moved by the threatening letters of Victor and did not think that he should depart from the ancient custom of his Church. Therefore, in the name of his council, he wrote back to the pontiff; he set forth the tradition of the Churches of Asia; he showed that from the times of John the evangelist unto his own age, the Pasch had been celebrated by everyone, as many as had flourished in Asia in holiness and doctrine, on no other day than the 14th moon; and that it was wicked, therefore, to depart from their customs. He added that he was not at all disturbed by the things put forward to terrify him, since he had learned from his elders that one must obey God rather than men. Having received this letter, Victor, *ametra termatheis* ("having reached the limit beyond measure"), says Socrates, inflamed with anger beyond measure, cut off from communion all the Churches of Asia that celebrated the Pasch on the fourteenth day of the month. ^C

22. Valesius interprets the words of Eusebius thus, thinking that it could be inferred from them that the threats of excommunication were indeed issued, but that the excommunication itself was not actually launched. But others fear that the most illustrious man did not sufficiently notice that the pontiff had indeed threatened prior to the Ephesian council, but that he had held back the weapon; however, upon receiving the decree of the council, he was exasperated and released it. Nor does it stand in the way, they say, that the same Eusebius asserts that Victor had attempted to cut off the Churches of Asia from the common unity. For it is one thing for those Churches to be cut off from the proper communion of the pontiff, and another to be cut off from the common unity of the whole Church. Victor did the former, and they contend that this is most clearly indicated by Eusebius; but in order to obtain the latter, he marked the Asians with written letters, and issued an edict forbidden by holy law, so that the rest should abstain from their communion. But, writes Jerome, in that opinion, those who disagreed with them did not give their hand to Victor; and his severity, according to Eusebius, *ou pasi ge tois episkopois areketo* ("was not pleasing to all the bishops"); nay, it displeased the majority. For although they did not at all approve of the opinion and discipline of the Asians, they nevertheless bore with greater annoyance the fact that so many Churches were being severed ^D from the body of the Church on account of a question that pertained in no way to the faith; anticipating that from the very diversity of customs a worse evil of schism would erupt due to the overly ardent zeal of the pope. Therefore, many rebuked him rather sharply in letters, and seriously warned him that, as one studious of fostering peace, charity, and concord, he should temper his immoderate severity, from which there would be little profit and a great deal of detriment to the whole Church. But before all others, Irenaeus, beautifully responding to the name he bore (*Eirenaios*, which in Greek signifies a "lover of peace" in Latin), had nothing more at heart than to prove himself a promoter of peace by his manner of acting. Therefore, he challenged Victor in writing, and in the name of the brethren over whom he presided in Gaul, he firmly and gravely [addressed] his rather fervent heat.

He also wrote other letters on the same subject to various bishops, in which he urged them to restore the peace of the Church that had been disturbed, [letters] which have perished due to the injurious passing of time; but Eusebius preserved a fragment of the letters to Victor, which is not to be disdained, and which we have taken care to have printed at the end of this work. He urges the pontiff in it to maintain peace with the Asiatics, in the manner of his predecessors—whom he enumerates—and not to take it ill that they firmly adhere to ancient customs which they had received from the evangelist John and from apostolic men and most holy people, and which Anicetus, Pius, Hyginus, Telesphorus, and Sixtus had not deemed of such moment that the state of the Church should be thrown into confusion on their account.

23. He further ^B teaches that this is a question which, if it brings in many others, is not to be decided quickly or easily, and thus the whole Church is not to be plunged deeper into a chasm of nearly infinite quarrels, from which it could scarcely emerge. For if those who dissent from the Roman Church regarding the Paschal feast are to be provoked, then a struggle must consequently be waged against those who observe the fast which precedes the feast in a way differently than the Romans do. But it is better to listen to him himself, and to elucidate the difficulties—which are neither few nor light—here, since an opportune occasion presents itself. "For the dispute is not only about the day, but also about the form of the fast. For some think they ought to fast one day, others two, others even more, others forty. And they compute their day according to diurnal and nocturnal hours." ^C For the controversy is not only about the day, but also about the form of the fast itself. For some think that they must fast for one day, others for two, others for several more, and others for forty. They measure their day by calculating diurnal and nocturnal hours. These words have set the most learned men against one another, as they agree neither on the reading nor on the sense. H. Valesius, along with Grabius and many others, thinks that after removing the mark of punctuation after the word τεσσαράκοντα (forty), the text should be read in one and the same flow: "And others measure their day by [calculating] forty diurnal and nocturnal hours." Many others measure their day by forty hours, having calculated the diurnal and nocturnal ones. But since Valesius noticed that a day of forty hours appeared to be something absurd, in order to avert that [absurdity], he attempted to change the words of Irenaeus, and to substitute νηστείαν (fast) for ἡμέραν (day), even though all manuscripts, both printed and handwritten, are against it, so that the sense might be that some measure the Lenten fast in such a way that they fast for forty continuous hours. He says that the scribes, by transferring the word from the line above to this place, corrupted the text. But others, to whom it pleases not to place any mark of punctuation between τεσσαράκοντα (forty) and ὥρας (hours), and who retain ἡμέραν (day), interpret that day of XL hours as being from the time that elapsed from the third hour after midday of the Parasceve [Good Friday] until about the sixth hour of the following Sunday, which many passed *astitoi* [fasting], tasting absolutely nothing of food or drink. But others rightly object to this, both regarding the reading and the interpretation. For a day of sixty hours, however it may be explained, is a marvel unheard of in all ecclesiastical antiquity, for which neither track nor footprint occurs in any of the former authors, even those to whom either Eusebius or Irenaeus was more familiar; and it could never have entered the mind of any man, if he were in his right mind, to finish his day from forty hours. But suppose that in the age of Irenaeus there existed some who, devising for themselves a reckoning of time alien to the common usage of all men and nations, had measured their day in such a way, why did Irenaeus add that they had computed the diurnal as well as the nocturnal hours? That is altogether childish and insipid. As if any day could consist of forty hours without the nocturnal and diurnal hours being calculated together! Furthermore, if, as some wish, there were some Christians who passed only the final forty hours which immediately preceded the resurrection of Christ as *astitoi* [fasting], it would be necessary that they had not begun the fast of the day of the Parasceve, on which the Lord was crucified, before the very time of the crucifixion. But that is opposed to Tertullian, who at the end of the book *De Oratione*, which he wrote while he was still a Catholic, clearly asserts that the day of the Pascha—by which name everyone admits he understands the day of the crucifixion—is one of public fasting. But would there have been a public religious fast on that day, if some had begun the fast only at the third hour after midday, and had thought it free for them to indulge in feasts during the rest of the day? You would certainly find none among those who were departing from the discipline of the Quartodecimans who believed it was permitted for them to break the fast on that day before sunset. Nay, Dionysius of Alexandria, the *Apostolic Constitutions*, Epiphanius, and others testify that not only the day of the Parasceve but also the fast of the other five days of the Great Week was observed by Christians with such religion that some, each according to his own strength and piety, would pass the two days, or three, or four, and others even the whole week until the cockcrow of the following Sunday, without food; but all, during those six days, considered it a sin to eat any food other than *xerophagiae* [dry foods]—that is to say, only bread, with salt and water—and that, too, only before evening.

24. To avert this absurdity, the illustrious Grabius entered upon a path different from Valesius, but with no more successful outcome. He indeed spared the words of Irenaeus, but did violence to the sense. He retains the word *hēmeran*, "day," at the end of the second period; but not only here, but also in the first verse of the fragment, "For the dispute is not only about the day," etc., he interprets *hēmeran* as "time," and specifically "the time of the fast": the usage of which meaning, he adds, you may read proved by several examples, if you please, in [the work of] Psochenius.

^A I have not yet read Psochenius's Diatribe nor Vorstius's Dissertation, but I hold it as certain that all the examples they bring forward, even if there were six hundred, would contribute nothing to the present case and could not establish Grabius's interpretation. For if it were valid, Irenæus's discourse would necessarily be laboring under the most shameful ambiguity. He uses the word *hemera* (day) five times in two very brief periods, explicitly and implicitly. It is, however, most certain in these words: "For some think they ought to fast one day; others two [supply 'days'], others more [supply 'days']," that the word *hemera* is understood as nothing else than the space of twenty-four hours. Irenæus ought therefore, unless he wanted to deceive his readers, to have taken the same word, which immediately precedes and follows, in exactly the same sense. Truly, one would be an insipid writer who, playing upon one and the same word, first twists it from its common meaning without warning the reader, and then immediately returns to the common meaning, only to jump from there to an alien one! If Grabius has persuaded anyone that this was Irenæus's method of writing, he has certainly persuaded no sober man. What the learned man adds, in order to avoid the absurdity of counting forty night-hours together with the day-hours, it is wonderful how that could ever have come into his mind. "Whoever," he says, "objects that the mention of forty night-hours together with the day-hours is made here unsuitably, they must of necessity object also against Matt. iv. 2, where the Savior is said to have fasted forty not only days, but also nights." When Christ had fasted forty days and as many nights, the sacred writer, reporting the fact, ought not to have omitted the nights, from which the harshness of Christ's fast is so greatly lauded. For it is one thing to fast for forty days only, and another to add nights to the days; the latter is far harder and more burdensome than the former, nor is he who is said to have done one thing understood to have done the other unless it is explicitly mentioned. So far is it, therefore, from being the case that the mention of night hours was made here [LXXXVIII] unsuitably; rather, it was necessarily to be made. But what affinity this example has with a fast of forty hours, I certainly do not ^B see, nor will any other person perhaps see it. When someone is said to have passed forty hours without food, it is sufficiently understood that one part of that time refers to day hours, and the other to night hours. Therefore, the mention of night hours together with day hours would be brought in here not only unsuitably, but in a way that is utterly ridiculous and childish.

25. It is wonderful into what entanglements learned men throw themselves, which they could have avoided without any effort. Reading and distinguishing Irenæus's words in the way we have written above, his discourse now has nothing objectionable. Indeed, a single small mark of punctuation placed between *tessarakonta* (forty) and *horas* (hours) removes the obstacle which arises from two words being wrongly joined. Thus they read, and thus Christophorson and Savilius distinguish. But, says Valesius, the manuscript codices stand against this, in which no mark of distinction is inserted between the two words. But that most learned man had studied the manuscript codices longer and more carefully, so that he knew there could be no or very little trust in the marks of distinction which they usually either exhibit or omit; forasmuch as scribes, whether by their own judgment, or out of ignorance, or out of inadvertence, often added or omitted them, to the detriment of both the author and the sense. If it be permitted to appeal to manuscript codices, in order to omit those which Christophorson and Savilius used, those which Rufinus had before his eyes while he was adorning the Latin version of Eusebius were older than all those which exist at present. That the mark of distinction we have mentioned occurred in them is openly gathered from his own interpretation, which is this: "For some think the fast ought to be observed for one day only, others for two, others indeed for more; some even for forty, so that calculating the diurnal and nocturnal hours, they establish the day." I indeed know that Rufinus has often fallen short of the office of a good interpreter; but the perfect agreement of the Greek words with the Latin proves that he was accurate here.

26. But since the text is distinguished, all things cohere most aptly, both in themselves and in the history of the times. We have said that the question between the Asians and the Romans was whether the Pasch ought to be celebrated on the fourteenth moon of the first month, or whether the solemn fasts ought to be ended [at that time]; or indeed whether they ought to be postponed until the next Lord's Day. Pope Victor, who asserted the latter, had hurled, or was prepared to hurl, the thunderbolt of excommunication against the Asians who refused. Irenæus, indignant that so many and such great churches were being excluded from sacred communion over a question that pertained in no way to the dogmas of the faith, strives to recall the pontiff from his precipitate decision. He warns him in the first place that it is better to suppress the question with prudent silence than to agitate it with such great tumult, lest perchance one controversy might supply the fuel for many others. For neither, he says, is the controversy only about the day on which the fast is to be ended, but also about the form of the fast itself. Observe, I pray, that the controversy was not about the fast itself, nor even about the number of the fast days. For it was agreed at that time among the Orientals and the Westerners, and thus among all the churches of that century, that several days of fasting at least should precede the Paschal feast: otherwise, there could not have been such contention among the churches about their end, if one or two days of fasting had sufficed; nor would it have seemed so indecorous that on the same days some should be free for fasting, while others were carrying on feastings; and after the days of the Pasch, some should be occupied with feasts and the relaxation of spirits, and others give themselves over to prescribed fasts; to say nothing of what is evident from Dionysius of Alexandria, who flourished no more than sixty years after Irenæus, and from the Apostolic Constitutions 63 lauded above.

27. But what is the point of searching for a knot in a bulrush, when Irenæus asserts that the controversy was περὶ τοῦ εἴδους αὐτοῦ τῆς νηστείας, concerning the very form of the fast, that is, concerning the species, mode, and manner of the fast; in what way, or by what rite the fast was to be observed? What, you ask, is the status of this controversy? Irenæus himself reveals it shortly after. Namely, although all the faithful observed a fast for many days before Easter, there was not one single manner of observing it among them all. *Καὶ τοιαύτη μὲν ποικιλία τῶν ἐπιτηρούντων, οὐ νῦν ἐφ' ἡμῶν γεγονυία, ἀλλὰ καὶ πολὺ πρότερον ἐπὶ τῶν πρὸ ἡμῶν, τῶν παρὰ τὸ ἀκριβὲς, ὡς εἰκὸς, κρατούντων, τὴν καθ' ἁπλότητα, καὶ ἰδιωτισμὸν συνήθειαν εἰς τὸ μετέπειτα πεποιηκότων.* Which words, being a little intricate, I think should be translated into Latin thus: And this variety among those who observe the fasts did not first arise in our own age, but took its origin long before among our ancestors; who, perhaps not accurately retaining the form of the fast, brought into later use the custom which had its origin in simplicity and lack of knowledge. ^A Musculus and H. Valesius have altogether poorly translated the word κρατούντων as those who held the reins of power, or those who preside. For, as the renowned Beveridge well observes, the word κρατεῖν, when posited simply, never signifies to preside or to dominate, unless at least that object is added over which one is said to dominate, as *κρατεῖν τῆς θαλάσσης*, *κρατεῖν τῶν θηρίων*. However, Irenæus in this passage is not speaking of the presidents or prelates of the Church (who are never called *κρατοῦντες*), but *περὶ τοῦ εἴδους τῆς νηστείας*, concerning the form of the fast, which he says some, out of simplicity and ignorance—hence more unlearned and private men, ^B *ἰδιώτας*, certainly not *ἄρχοντας*—had not observed or retained *παρὰ τὸ ἀκριβὲς*, according to accuracy. From this, therefore, arose the controversy, or the complaint of many, that because many held a more lax form of fasting, which the incompetence of some had brought in, they had departed from the accurate form. But what the accurate form of fasting was, we cannot indeed learn from Irenæus himself, but we are permitted to elicit it from the ancients already cited. Dionysius of Alexandria in his epistle to Basilides writes that the six final days of the pre-Paschal fasts, although they were not passed by all in the same manner, were nevertheless transmitted by most in his own age in such a way that some spent all six days without food, others four, others three, others two. Which form of fasting of pious men, although it cannot be drawn into a law common to all, yet it is clearly gathered from it that that custom had already obtained in the Church, so that the fast of those six days was observed more rigidly than the rest. ^C Epiphanius further reveals that same custom of the Church a little more clearly, and at the same time intimates that it was not recently introduced in his own age, but was considered very ancient, inasmuch as it had struck deep roots in the whole Church. *Τὴν δὲ τεσσαρακοστὴν, τὴν πρὸ τῶν ἑπτὰ ἡμερῶν τοῦ ἁγίου Πάσχα ὡσαύτως φυλάττειν εἴωθεν Ἐκκλησία, ἐν νηστείαις διατελοῦσα· τὰς δὲ Κυριακὰς οὐδ' ὅλως, οὔτε ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ τεσσαρακοστῇ. Τὰς δὲ ἓξ ἡμέρας τοῦ Πάσχα ἐν ξηροφαγίᾳ διατελοῦσι πάντες οἱ λαοί· φημὶ δὲ ἄρτῳ, καὶ ἁλὶ, καὶ ὕδατι τότε χρώμενοι πρὸς ἑσπέραν. Ἀλλὰ καὶ σπουδαῖοι διπλᾶς, καὶ τριπλᾶς, καὶ τετραπλᾶς ὑπερτίθενται, καὶ ὅλην τὴν ἑβδομάδα τινὲς ἄχρις ἀλεκτρυόνων κλαγγῆς τῆς Κυριακῆς ἐπιφωσκούσης.* ^D The Church is accustomed to observe in like manner the Quadragesima, which precedes the seven days of the holy Pascha, by persevering in fasts. But on Sundays it is not the custom to fast, not even in the Quadragesima itself. Furthermore, all the peoples pass the six days of the Pascha in xerophagies; that is, taking food then only in the evening, consisting of bread, salt, and water. But those who zealously pursue piety extend their fasts up to the second, third, or fourth day; some even spend the entire week without food until the cock-crow of the following Sunday. Epiphanius clearly distinguishes here three forms of fast: the one for that part of the Quadragesima which precedes the seven days of the Pascha, or the Great Week: this was more moderate, as being free from the law of xerophagies; the other for the Great Week, the first more strict and bound to xerophagies.

And finally, one more severe than both, where a part of this week, or indeed the whole of it, was passed without any food at all. The first and second were customary for the whole Church and for all peoples, and therefore had the force of law; the latter was only for those who pursued piety more zealously than others, and it was a mere counsel, not a command. Hence, the same Epiphanius calls the Great Week ^A *xerophagias hebdomada*, a week of dry eating. And for this reason he rightly rebukes the Aerians, because during the days of Pascha—at which time, he says, Catholics were accustomed to mortify the body and soul by lying on the ground, observing chastity, and through prayers, vigils, fasts, the use of dry foods, and other afflictions of that kind—they themselves were not ashamed to eat meat, celebrate feasts, and rejoice excessively. The *Apostolic Constitutions*—falsely so called, though older than Epiphanius—agree with Epiphanius: “In the days of Pascha, therefore, fast, beginning from the second day until the Friday and Saturday, partaking only of bread, salt, vegetables, and the drink of water. And abstain from wine and meat during these days; for they are days of mourning, not of festival.” Therefore, fast during the days of Pascha, beginning from the second day up to the Friday, and on the Saturday, for six days using only bread, salt, vegetables, and the drinking of water. But abstain from wine and meat on these days; for they are days of mourning, not festive ones.

28. Such, therefore, was the form of the fast amongst the majority of the churches in the earlier centuries, that the first part of the Quadragesima ^B was consecrated by a fast that was indeed slightly more remiss, but the latter part by one far more severe. If, therefore, there was any controversy in Irenaeus’s time regarding the form of the fast, if there was any discrepancy among the churches, it seems to have consisted in this: that some fasted during the last six days of the Quadragesima more softly than was proper and than the more common custom of the churches allowed, and did not partake of xerophagies. And this is exactly what Irenaeus represents here. For he says that some think they ought to fast for a single day, namely, according to the strict form of the fast; others for two, others for several more; while others, whose piety is greater, have progressed farther and spend all forty days in xerophagies. However, this was common to all: that with both day and night hours calculated, they measured their day—that is, those days which they set aside for fasting were not artificial, but natural or civil, which include the hours of both night and day. ^C This Irenaeus added not in vain, but quite prudently, lest anyone imagine that these people, while the sun was shining, made use of thin food, and then at night indulged in more luxurious feasts, after the manner of the Jews. Moreover, all these things are most true and in prime agreement with ancient monuments. For the Council of Laodicea, in canon 50, decrees: “It is necessary for the whole Quadragesima to fast by eating dry foods.” From this, the custom of certain churches is established—having been to eat dry foods not only for the last six days, but for all forty days. From another side, Socrates bears witness that the faithful, while keeping the pre-Paschal fasts, differed among themselves not only as to the number of days, but even in the matter of food abstinence. For some, he says, abstain completely from living creatures; others eat only fish; some eat birds as well as fish, affirming that they too were created from the waters, as is in Moses. ^D Some abstain from all fruit of trees and from eggs. Some eat6 only bread; others do not use even this. Some fast until the ninth hour and thereafter eat any kind of food whatsoever without discrimination. Others fast in another manner, etc. By these testimonies, Irenaeus’s words are greatly illustrated and those things which we have already said are confirmed: namely, that some had receded from the strict form of the fast to such a degree that they fasted by eating dry foods for only one day, others for two, etc., in the way that was proper.

29. Irenaeus says that Victor, the Pope, and all others always maintained peace among themselves. And we, he says, retain it; and thus, a differing manner of fasting commends the concord of faith. Whence it was easy to conclude [XC] that if no disturbance was raised against those who did not keep the form of fasting prescribed by the Roman Church, then none ought to be raised against those who disagreed with it on the day of Pascha; because both can vary according to place and time—neither held any relation to the faith, which remained the same and unshaken in all churches. That all these arguments are of the greatest weight, and most worthy of Irenaeus’s piety, prudence, and erudition, no one will deny. That he prevailed so much with Victor that he revoked the overly hasty step he had taken regarding their way of life, and restored peace to the Oriental churches, is gathered from the fact that Firmilian, writing about sixty years later, says that amidst the diverse customs of the Roman Church and other regions, the peace and unity of the Catholic Church had always stood unharmed. But Anatolius, who wrote about twenty years after Firmilian, asserts in explicit words that with Irenaeus as the mediator and reconciler of peace, the controversies of the opposing parties were settled in such a way that it was safe and free for everyone to retain their ancestral customs. And indeed, although the Orientals did not depart from the manner of celebrating Pascha which they had received from their ancestors, we do not read that they were troubled thereafter by the successors of Victor, until the custom of the Roman Church, sanctioned by the decree of the Nicene Council, was received and approved by the common consent of all other nations. This, then, was the praise of Irenaeus: that he reconciled the dissenting churches, which were soon to be torn apart by broken sacred bonds; hence, among both sides, it was never enough to praise him according to his merit.

30. Irenaeus did not survive this noble labor for long. Scarcely had he extinguished the internal wars by which the churches were being agitated, when he groaned over those devastated more bitterly by external forces. I refer to that cruel and savage war which Severus brought upon the Christian cause in the tenth year of his reign, which is the year of Christ 202, a war for none more harmful than for that of Lugdunum. Gregory of Tours shows us with what immense slaughter of the faithful he ravaged it, and how he sprinkled the blood of the shepherd, who was fighting bravely for Christ along with his flock, upon the ground. "When the persecution came," he says, "the devil practiced such wars there through the tyrant, and such a multitude of Christians was slaughtered there on account of their confession of the Lord’s name, that rivers of Christian blood ran through the streets; of these, we have been able to collect neither the number nor the names. For the Lord inscribed them in the book of life." He dedicated blessed Irenaeus, having been subjected to various torments in the presence of his executioner, to Christ the Lord through martyrdom. Ado and Notker agree with Gregory, when they narrate that Irenaeus was crowned with glorious martyrdom with almost the entire populace of his city. Otherwise, we do not know the circumstances of such a precious death. For those which Severtius, Halloixius, and Theophilus Raynaldus say they have unearthed from certain ancient manuscripts of the Church of Lugdunum, I consider to be of little reliability. One should only have faith in these ancient ^B monuments to the extent that they count Irenaeus among the martyrs of Christ. For they have in agreement with them on this point Jerome, and the author of the *Questions to the Orthodox* among the works of Justin Martyr, who call Irenaeus a martyr in explicit terms, as well as the most ancient codes of the Martyrologies, both published and in manuscript—the one commonly called the Hieronymian, published by Florentinius, and those of Bede, Usuard, etc., and the Greek Menaia themselves. There exists in our Saint-Germain Library a vellum codex in-4°, no. 264, containing many treatises of Isidore, John Chrysostom, Gregory the Great, etc., which the very form of the script proves to be most ancient and more than a thousand years old. In the middle, one can see two quaternions, written perhaps not by the same hand, but at least in the same age, of which part is written in common characters and part in Merovingian, so that in one and the same short work, indeed even on the same folio, one can read both styles: which demonstrates the great antiquity of the codex. Furthermore, at the beginning is prefixed a very brief Calendar, written by the same hand as the rest of the work, in which it is read thus: *IV. Kal. Jul. Lugduno Gallia Pas. S. Herenei Ep.* It is to be lamented that the sincere and authentic Acts of his passion have perished. It is long since they were lost; for Gregory the Great complains that the deeds and writings of blessed Irenaeus could not be found, ^A even though he had sought them out from long ago. Baronius affirms in his notes to the Roman Martyrology, and in the *Ecclesiastical Annals* at the year 205, n. 28, that a fragment was found by him—perchance the same one which the aforementioned Severtius described as having been extracted from an ancient Lugdunum codex; for the history of Irenaeus's death which Baronius narrates accords sufficiently with that of Severtius. But our most learned D. Theodericus Ruinart found the Acts themselves intact (which the Eminent Cardinal had obtained on a single mutilated page) in a manuscript codex of the Cistercian arch-monastery; yet, because they do not seem to reach the age of Irenaeus, he did not deem them worth presenting. Be that as it may regarding the acts, the testimonies which we have drawn from ancient monuments make it plain that at least from the fifth century the opinion has spread among all nations that Irenaeus ended his life by martyrdom.

51. But lo, the recent author Dodwell arises against the opinion hitherto received and handed down by so many ancients, and strives to pluck the laurel of martyrdom from Irenaeus’s head. It would be strange if he, who from tender years has been most hostile to the multitude of martyrs, had spared the star of Gaul. But by what arguments does he erase the Lugdunum bishop from the roll of martyrs? By those, specifically, in which he delights more than is just: by vain and infinite conjectures and by negative arguments; which, if they have any weight here, then nothing in all ecclesiastical antiquity will be so certain that it cannot be easily shaken by the hands of the audacious. And first, he refutes those who think Irenaeus was slaughtered in the year that Severus overcame Albinus in battle at the city of Lugdunum; with the city taken in that same onslaught, and a most immense slaughter wrought upon its citizens, especially the Christians. That year was the 197th of Christ, the 5th of Severus. But if you except the author of the Acts of St. Irenaeus, whose trustworthiness is entirely doubtful, there are very few who feel this way. For indeed in that year, as attested by Jerome in his *Chronicle*, the Paschal controversy between Pope Victor and the Asians was then first emerging, or at least strengthening, which was subsequently composed with Irenaeus as mediator. Scholars therefore readily concede that the bishop of Lugdunum had prolonged his life until the persecution came—as Gregory of Tours says, indeed that one which Severus stirred up five ^D years later—and cut down the shepherd with the greater part of his flock. In what year they obtained the crown of martyrdom, it is not clear; it is certain that they could not have obtained it until after the year 202, nor is Raynaldus's conjecture improbable, that it should be deferred until the year 208, in which Severus, having traveled through the Gauls, set out for Greater Britain. Dodwell does not even lightly touch upon these things; nor do the arguments he offers against them carry much weight with the authors of the primary opinion.

52. ^A But, he says, such was the authority of the martyrs among the ancients that they thought the mention of a martyr should never be made without an encomium of his martyrdom; why is it that no one among the ancients, even when a witness is adduced, even when he is read joined with other martyr-witnesses, has nevertheless called Irenaeus a martyr? Dodwell asserts this quite confidently. Or will he expunge from the catalogue of the ancients Jerome, the author of the *Quaestiones et Responsiones ad Orthodoxos*, and Gregory of Tours? And yet, they call Irenaeus a martyr in clear words, and the first two do so precisely when they cite him as a witness. Dodwell attempts to either diminish their credibility or weaken their testimony, but with empty cavils, which we shall discuss later. To these must be added the most ancient writers of Martyrologies and Calendars, who have most consistently enrolled Irenaeus in the ranks of the martyrs; and this not by their own authority, not by futile conjectures, or by rash guessing, but from the ancient monuments of the Churches which they consulted and had before their eyes. If Dodwell calls these men fabricators again, let him bear in mind that our most learned and piously remembered D. Thierry Ruinart has long since met such accusations with the words that he, having been driven to an impasse, has not hitherto been able to defend his desperate cause. ^B Indeed, he says, while no one can affirm that books of this kind are completely immune from every fault (for this is the singular prerogative of the sacred books), it does not follow from this that they were written in bad faith, or rashly, or lightly; on the contrary, it is certain that the Martyrologies were collected by grave men from older monuments and the Calendars of particular Churches: which, when they had been approved by the bishops, were read publicly in ecclesiastical assemblies; so that if the feasts of all the saints could not be celebrated, at least some commemoration of them might be made, both as a token of the communion which ought to be maintained among catholic Churches, and so that by that means some honor at least might be shown to foreign martyrs. Moreover, the Fathers of the Trullan Council, in canon 63, order that falsely fabricated martyr-histories be consigned to the fire, and they forbid their being read in Church; and they subject those who admit them to anathema. This shows with what caution and religious care the name of someone was entered by our ancestors into the album of the martyrs, and that it was not permitted for just anyone to enter names at will. ^C The second canon of the First Council of Carthage under Gratus, in the time of Pope Julius, was published regarding this matter. Nor is it hidden from anyone that Lucilla, that factious woman who gave the beginning to the Donatist schism, was rebuked by the ministers of the Church because she had shown certain honors to a certain dead man, who was indeed a martyr, but not yet vindicated. It is so certain—that I might omit many other arguments which could be brought forward—that the rulers of the Churches were always solicitous that no one should be rashly inscribed in the number of the martyrs.

3. ^D Defending the case for his own side, Dodwell cites Athanasius, Theodoret, and others; they indeed never call Irenaeus a martyr; but nothing else can be concluded from their silence at most, except that the Acts of his martyrdom did not reach their notice, or they did not know he had been a martyr. Yet, from the fact that the Acts of some Western martyr did not reach the notice of Tertullian, Eusebius, Epiphanius, and certain other Oriental writers, to confidently deny that he was a martyr seems entirely contrary to reason. For in order for this to be rightly inferred, it must be supposed that they were perfectly acquainted with all Western martyrs and that the history of their martyrdom could not have been hidden from them; how absurd a notion that is, no one fails to see. And if, indeed, Irenaeus had suffered in those regions, or not far from those in which the aforementioned writers actually spent their lives, an argument repeated from their silence might have some weight. But the fact that they did not know that a bishop who had shed his blood in the most remote parts of the West, and in a nascent Church, not yet of great name, nor widely diffused, was a martyr, is not something we should wonder at so much. Certainly, it is so well established that Saturninus of Toulouse, Dionysius the bishop of Paris, with his companions Rusticus and Eleutherius, Patroclus of Troyes, Fructuosus of Tarragona, and many others who dyed various parts of the West with their blood were martyrs, that not even those are able to deny it who are more fiercely agitated by the itch to reduce the number of the martyrs. However, you would look in vain for mention of them in Eusebius, Epiphanius, Theodoret, and other writers of Oriental affairs. But to strike closer at the jugular vein of the case: Eusebius, whose silence Dodwell pushes so hard, makes mention of Hippolytus not once, he weaves a catalogue of his works, he says he was a bishop; but nowhere does he say he was a martyr. Yet it must be considered most certain even to Dodwell himself that his life ended in martyrdom; for in those very places which he himself brings forward against the martyrdom of Irenaeus, he is called a martyr. And he is called so by Jerome not once. What could Dodwell now answer if someone, denying that Hippolytus was a martyr, were to turn his own words against him and say: that Eusebius would not have been silent about this, no doubt, if he had truly known it; nor would he have been ignorant of it, if he had found any monuments of his martyrdom to be included in his collection of martyrs? Nothing else, if he were wise, would occur to him to answer, other than this: that Eusebius indeed did not know that Hippolytus had been a martyr, nor had he found the monuments of his martyrdom; his silence, however, can neither prevail against, nor ought it to prevail against, the explicit testimonies of other ancients who assert that he was a martyr. Let him therefore take it in good part if we, putting forward the same things, contend for the explicit testimonies of Jerome, who was a peer of Eusebius, contemporary with Epiphanius, and older than Theodoret and Cyril of Alexandria; and those of the author of the *Quaestiones et Responsiones ad Orthodoxos*, who approached the age of…

^A Gregory of Tours, and other Western writers whose testimonies are of far greater weight than the silence of Eusebius and other Orientals. Certainly, if it is a rule confirmed by the consensus of all nations that in historical matters native witnesses are to be heard before foreigners, then this is valid most of all, or it is valid nowhere, when the former speak and the latter are silent. For what sane man could persuade himself that the historical monuments of any region could be better known to foreigners than to the inhabitants themselves? Would any most illustrious Italian endure someone who arrogated to himself as great a knowledge of British affairs as the English themselves possess, or who contended that these men were not as well instructed in the documents pertaining to the history of the English as the Italians are?

34. Dodwell is aware of this argument; yet, lest he succumb defeated, he strives to weaken the testimonies of the author of the *Quaestiones ad Orthodoxos*, of Jerome, and of Gregory of Tours. It is certain, he says, that the author of the *Quaestiones ad Orthodoxos*, whoever he may be, is later than the times of the received Christianity in the Empire; consequently, in historical causes, even those of the fourth or fifth century, he is not to be heard safely unless the testimony of genuine authors is interposed. An excellent response, indeed! Which has the advantage of being able to easily shake from the very foundations the troublesome authority of any of the ancients, if they bear testimony concerning the affairs of the first three centuries. Are, therefore, only those to be heard safely who existed in the times of the received Christianity in the Empire or were older, and are all other authors of the late fourth or fifth century to be rejected? If it is so, why does Dodwell bring forward Epiphanius, Theodoret, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria in defense of his own cause? They were all indeed later than the times of the received Christianity in the Empire. The laws he wishes to impose on others so contradict common sense that he himself cannot bear the yoke. If indeed an author of the fifth century were to affirm something while fourth-century authors denied it, I admit he would not be safe to hear; but if he is not safe to hear when he affirms something while they are silent, which others before and after him have affirmed, and indeed those to whom the monuments of the matter should have been better perceived and explored, then the common laws of history are to be abolished.

35. Those to whom Dodwell yields, whom he endeavors to shake Jerome, he tries [to refute]. I fear, he says, lest what is read in him concerning the martyrdom of Irenaeus may have crept from the margin (as often used to happen) into the text, noted by some studious person of a later age. Thus do sagacious men never stick in a difficulty. If anything troublesome occurs in authors that cannot easily be distorted, in other matters more confident, in this with a more timid mind, they fear lest it has crept from the margin into the text. But what place is there here for fear? Behold, indeed, in all both published and manuscript codices, Jerome in chapter LXIV of Isaiah expressly calls Irenaeus bishop and martyr: these [words] do not even in the smallest degree ^A contradict the preceding and following [context], nor do they disturb the sense, nor break the series of the discourse; they are most certain proofs of a sincere and uninterpolated text. Yet Dodwell fears that these words, *Et martyr*, may have crept from the margin into the text: indeed, he is not far from pronouncing confidently, with fear cast aside, that Jerome not only did not write these, but that he could not even have written them. Why so? Because if Jerome had known of Irenaeus the martyr, where, I ask, do we have in the *Catalogus*, where it was to be expected, even the slightest mention of his martyrdom? Why, whenever he adduces a witness to others, does he adorn them with encomiums, while omitting that one of all the most worthy of martyrdom? This argument of Dodwell's, which some other person of timid mind, in Dodwellian fashion, could easily turn back upon the very head of the author. I fear, he would say, that the martyrdom of Irenaeus might have dropped out of the text of the *Catalogus* through the negligence of scribes, which was wont to happen often; for there are other things that justly make us suspect that Jerome did not so omit the words *et martyr*, that he could not even have omitted them. Who could persuade himself that a man, to whom it is evident that it had been most certainly established that Irenaeus was a martyr—as is plain from the *Commentaries on Isaiah*—made no mention, even the slightest, of the martyrdom in the *Catalogus* where it was to be expected? etc. Since the reasons for fearing are equal on either side, it is necessary for Dodwell to admit that either his own fear is vain, or that the other is grave. Certainly, he can neither deny, nor does he dare to deny, that Hippolytus was a martyr, and was acknowledged and called a martyr by Jerome. Yet Jerome, who in his letter to Damasus written before the year 384—as our learned Martianay proves in his Prolegomena to the second volume of the Hieronymian edition—called Hippolytus a martyr long before the *Catalogus* was published, and called him [so] afterwards when writing a preface to Matthew; yet he inserts no mention, even the slightest, of [his] martyrdom in the *Catalogus* where it was to be expected. Is it therefore permitted to infer from hence that the text which is read concerning the martyrdom of Hippolytus, both in the cited letter to Damasus and in the Prologue to Matthew, crept from the margin into the text, and that Jerome not only did not write these, but could not even have written them? Let Dodwell infer [this], if he likes, but no one else. It was Jerome's intent to review accurately the writings which had been brought to light by illustrious men, but not their deeds. Therefore, nothing can be gathered from the silence of the *Catalogus* against the martyrdom of Irenaeus which may not be gathered with better right against the martyrdom of Hippolytus. But even if Jerome prudently omitted the martyrdom of Irenaeus while he was writing the *Catalogus*, or even if he did not know [it] then; he made up for the loss later, perhaps having become more learned when, having read the monuments of the martyrdom, he expounded the prophecy of Isaiah. For the commentaries he published on it were edited about twenty years after the *Catalogus* was written. For this indeed was written, if we believe Jerome himself, in the fourteenth year of the Emperor Theodosius, [the year of] Christ 392, while the others [were written] thirty years after he had been [taught] at Constantinople by the most eloquent man Gregory Nazianzen, then bishop of the same city, [and] the holy...

^A studied in the study of the Scriptures; and consequently his translation of Rufinus may be considered freer; yet it was produced around the year of Christ 410. For Gregory Nazianzen governed the Constantinopolitan Church in the years 380 and 381.

36. Remaining from those ^B harassed by Dodwell is Gregory of Tours; since he seems more troublesome than the others, because the fable of the words rashly inserted from the margin into the text cannot be repeated here, Dodwell brings his entire conjectural industry to bear so as to detract from all his authority and credibility. He contends that Gregory of Tours believed in Irenaeus as a martyr in such a way that he thought he was crowned in no other persecution than that of the people of Lyons and Vienne in which Pothinus was crowned. If you ask Dodwell from where Gregory could have imbibed such an enormous error, he will reply that he drew it from the same source from which, ignorantly, recent martyrologies collected the number of XLVIII martyrs from the Latin words of Rufinus’s Eusebius—those whom the persecution at Lyons sent to heaven—having rashly cast into the count whatever names occurred in the epistles of those of Vienne and Lyons. It is by this rashness, he says, that Zacharias the priest was brought into the number of the martyrs. For Rufinus had turned ^C πρεσβύτην . . . Ζαχαρίαν, "the priest Zacharias," failing to notice that the people of Vienne and Lyons were speaking of Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, and not of some other priest Zacharias. By a similar error, adds Dodwell, Gregory counted Irenaeus among the martyrs, because in the same history of the persecution he had found a mention of Irenaeus in the epistle of the martyrs to Eleutherus. There were, moreover, things in that same epistle which, by readers who were impostors like them, might easily be understood in that sense if they were not very attentive. The martyrs call Irenaeus ἀδελφὸν καὶ κοινωνόν (brother and partner). It was easy for those who greedily seized any opportunity to discover new martyrs to interpret that κοινωνίαν as a fellowship in suffering for Christ’s cause. And although Irenaeus did not shed his blood for Christ, that παθημάτων κοινωνίᾳ, or "communion of sufferings," could suffice for the title of martyrdom, in the sense in which the ancients of that age understood that term. Thus entirely in his own way, always like himself, does Dodwell strive to batter the huge number of martyrs with which the Catholic Church glories using his frivolous conjectures; although for that very reason he was long ago handled by our Ruinart in such a way that at the first encounter he collapsed and yielded, defeated.

37. He truly supposes many things here that are diametrically opposed to right reason. And first, indeed, it is an empty fabrication that he asserts, namely that the number of XLVIII martyrs was collected by more recent, as he calls them, martyrologies from the Latin of Rufinus’s Eusebius. For how could they have collected that number from Rufinus’s translation of Eusebius, of which neither the footprint nor the trace appears therein? ^D Lugdunensium martyrum nomina, aliumve nume- rum non exhibet, quam Christophorsoniana, Valesiana et aliæ. Ex illa proinde, quascunque rationes ducat Dodwellus, aut alius quivis, geminato etiam numero, aut temere conjectis in censum quæcunque occurrerint nominibus, XLVIII nunquam eruet. Hallucinatus quidem Rufinus Zachariam, Joannis Baptistæ patrem, presbyterum Christianum perperam arbitratus est; sed hunc martyrem fuisse ne verbo quidem dixit. Qui ergo designato Zachariæ presbyteri supplicio securi percussum asserunt, et XLVII Lugdunensibus martyribus adjungunt, Gregorius Turonensis, Ado, Notkerus, et alii; necesse est et Zachariæ illius, quem presbyterum nuncupant, martyrium, et XLVII sociorum nomina ac numerum aliunde collegerint, quam ex Rufiniana Lugdunensium et Viennensium epistolarum interpretatione. Unde vero, nisi ex ipsis epistolis, quarum non Eusebiana modo fragmenta, sed et integra exemplaria legerant? In iis quippe accurate recensita fuisse et martyrum nomina, et varia quibus interiere suppliciorum genera certum est ex Eusebio. Quid opus est, inquit, expressum in supradicta epistola catalogum martyrum hic recensere, quorum alii securi percussi, alii feris objecti, alii in carcere exanimati sunt? Atqui laudati auctores non tantum martyrum catalogum recensent, sed etiam qui securi percussi, qui feris objecti, qui in carcere exanimati sunt, accurate distinguunt, et eodem prorsus modo et ordine, atque epistolas fecisse narrat Eusebius. Ut vel cæcis ipsis hinc appareat, ex eo solo fonte, non ex Rufino, apud quem ea frustra requiras, manare potuisse quæ de martyrum nominibus et suppliciis referunt illi.

38. Graviter quidem in iis omnibus offendit Dodwellus; sed longe gravius in eo quod confidenter asseverat, Gregorium Turonensem non alia quam Lugdunensium illa Viennensiumque persecutione, qua coronatus est Pothinus, et nostrum quoque coronatum credidisse Irenæum. Si Gregorium usquam legerit, caligantibus oculis legerit. Is enim eam persecutionem quæ Pothinum absumpsit, ab ea qua coronatus est Irenæus, clarius secernere non poterat. In Galliis, ait, multi pro Christi nomine sunt per martyrium gemmis cœlestibus coronati; quorum passionum historiæ apud nos fideliter usque hodie retinentur. Ex quibus et ille primus Lugdunensis Ecclesiæ Photinus (sic scribit) episcopus fuit, qui plenus dierum diversis affectus suppliciis, pro Christi nomine passus est. Beatissimus vero Irenæus hujus successor martyris, qui a beato Polycarpo ad hanc urbem directus est, admirabili virtute enituit; qui in modici temporis spatio, prædicatione sua maxime in integro civitatem reddidit Christianam. Sed veniente persecutione talia ibidem diabolus bella per tyrannum exercuit, et tanta ibi multitudo Christianorum ob confes...

confessionem Dominici nominis est jugulata, ut per plateas flumina currerent de sanguine Christiano; quorum nec numerum, nec nomina colligere potuimus. Dominus enim eos in libro vitæ conscripsit. Beatum Irenæum diversis in sua carnifex præsentia pœnis affectum, Christo Domino per martyrium dedicavit. Nec eo loci duntaxat ita loquitur Gregorius, sed et alibi, semper sibi constans, post recensita XLVIII martyrum nomina, et supplicia postremumque omnium memoratum Pothinum, paucis interjectis de eorum reliquiis et sepultura, subjungit [*]: Igitur martyrio consummatus gloriosus Photinus, qui Lugdunensi præfuit urbi sacerdos, per certaminis nobilis meritum invectus est cœlo. Cui et merito et sanctitate condignus Irenæus successit episcopus, per martyrium et ipse finitus. ^B Clarissima hæc, nec Dodwelli conjecturarum nebulis usquam obscuranda. In ea persecutione, qua multi in Galliis pro Christi nomine sunt per martyrium coronati, Lugdunensis episcopus Photinus passus est. Beatissimum vero Irenæum hujus successorem martyris factum fuisse tradit Gregorius. Qui igitur credere potuit eadem persecutione, quæ si Lugduni multos dies, non certe menses efferbuit, coronatum utrumque fuisse? Nisi forte fingat Dodwellus, eam fuisse Gregorii sententiam, Irenæum paucis admodum diebus Lugdunensem Ecclesiam rexisse. At ita sentire non potuit Gregorius, qui Irenæum asserit tam naviter pastorali functum officio, ut in modici temporis spatio, prædicatione sua in integro civitatem reddiderit Christianam? Tantum igitur temporis spatium Pothino superstitem fuisse Irenæum existimavit, quantum saltem necessarium erat ut illata per primam persecutionem Ecclesiæ Lugdunensi dispendia resarciret. Dum vero hæc ageret Irenæus, veniens persecutio, addit Gregorius, quæ tot et tantorum martyrum sanguine Lugduni plateas inundavit, ut nec nomina, nec numerus colligi potuerit, sanctissimum occupat episcopum, ac Christo Domino per martyrium dedicat. An clarius exprimi et designari potuisset nova persecutio, a priori et tempore et circumstantiis procul diversa? In priori tantam multitudinem Christianorum ob confessionem Dominici nominis Lugduni jugulatam esse, ut per plateas flumina currerent de sanguine Christiano, ^C nullibi legimus; sed nec scribere unquam potuit Gregorius, se nec numerum, nec nomina martyrum, qui in priori passi sunt Lugduni, colligere potuisse; qui alibi et numerum [XCIV] et nomina tam accurate collegit, ut recenseat, et quo quisque supplicii genere affectus sit referre non omittat. Hæc Dodwello legenda erant, aut si quæ fides, dissimulanda non fuerant. Id si fecisset, nunquam certe commisisset, ut scripsisset, proclive Gregorio Turonensi fuisse Irenæum inter martyres Lugdunenses recensere, quod in eadem persecutionis historia Irenæi mentionem reperisset in epistola martyrum ad Eleutherum; et quidem eo magis, quo Irenæum martyres ἀδελφὸν et κοινωνὸν appellant. Itane, quæso, plumbeus et hebes exstiterit Gregorius, ut in Lugdunensium et Viennensium martyrum historiis, quas apud suam cæterasque Gallicanas Ecclesias fideliter usque hodie retineri dicit; et in iis tum cleri, tum Lugdunensium et Viennensium martyrum epistolis, quas legisse cum fatetur Dodwellus, ea distinguere non potuerit, quæ vel Londinensium bajulorum aut nautarum stupidissimus quisque nunquam permisceret? Ecce, martyres in sua ad Eleutherum epistola scribunt Irenæum Romam se mittere, qui litteras eorum perferat; hunc profecturum pontifici commendant, debitisque ornant encomiis; hunc fratrem laborumque consortem vocant, quem Christianum et presbyterum esse, martyresque in carcere detentos consilio, monitis, eleemosynis, pro virili sua, non certe citra capitis discrimen, sublevasse, constabat; et Gregorius imprudens hinc arrepta turpissimæ hallucinationis occasione, eum ipsum quem itineri sese committentem, aut mox commissurum legebat, inter illos recensuerit, qui in ea persecutione, quæ delegationi ansam præbuit, vitam pro Christo profuderint? Quis credat?

39. Sed, inquit Dodwellus, descripto Irenæi martyrio statim addit Gregorius: Post hunc et quadraginta octo martyres passi sunt, ex quibus primum fuisse legimus Vettium Epagatum. Constat autem illos XLVIII martyres, quorum primus fuerit Vettius Epagatus, non in alia persecutione passos fuisse, quam illa Lugdunensium Viennensiumque, qua coronatus est Pothinus. Si ergo post Irenæum passos fuisse crediderit Gregorius, illam in eadem persecutione coronatum fuisse existimaverit necesse est. Ita quidem scriptum legi in hodierno Gregorii textu non diffiteor. Sed fidentior hic evasit Dodwellus. Quin hic contigisse vereatur, quod supra Hieronymiano textui accidisse inanis suadebat timor; ne videlicet mox citata verba e margine (quod sæpe evenire solet) a studioso aliquo recentiore libro [I] De gloria martyrum collecta, in textum, sed incommodo loco irrepserint, vel ab imperito aliquo aut festinante scriba loco perperam mota, in capitis finem male translata fuerint? ^D Quin addat, esse alioqui alia quæ merito faciant ut suspicemur, verba illa adeo non scripsisse Gregorium, ut ne quidem scribere potuerit? Fortasse non abs re veritus, suspicatusve fuisset. Quomodo enim fieri potuit, ut is qui Lugdunensium ac Viennensium Martyrum passionum historias in ipsis fontibus legerat, et apud Gallos fideliter ad suam usque ætatem retineri dicit; qui Irenæum Pothino, quem XLVIII martyribus alibi annumerat, successisse scribit, diuque post eum, et in alia longe diversa persecutione martyrium subiisse diserte asserit; sui

forgotten the forty-eight martyrs themselves, of whose number Pothinus, Irenæus's predecessor, was one, and wishes them to have been crowned after him? This is so monstrously contrary to right reason that it can in no way be attributed to a writer as very serious as Gregory was. Certainly, there is a legitimate suspicion—if there ever is one—that the text has been badly interpolated, when those things are read in any author which abhor from his opinion known elsewhere, and which openly contradict his own most clear and perspicuous words; which is what occurs here. For whoever is a fair evaluator of things, having put aside all prejudices for a time, if he should wish to compare these later words of chapter 27 (new ed.), "After this also forty-eight martyrs, etc.," with the former parts, and with those things which are read in book 1 *De gloria mart.*, ch. 49 and 50, he will by no means be able to reconcile them. Not to be despised, therefore, is the conjecture of those who, believing that what is read in Gregory concerning these later martyrs has been wrongly transposed, are of the opinion that it should be joined with what is written at the beginning of the chapter concerning Pothinus, in this manner: "From among whom also that first bishop of the Church of Lyons, Pothinus, who, full of days, affected by diverse tortures, suffered for the name of Christ. After him also forty-eight martyrs suffered, of whom we read Vettius Epagatus to have been the first. But the most blessed Irenæus, the successor of this martyr, etc." Thus conjectures that most distinguished man who adorned the new edition of the works of Leo the Great; but I cannot concede to his opinion that the whole end of the chapter should be excised from these words, "But the most blessed Irenæus, etc.," on the ground that the whole of that chapter is lacking in certain manuscripts. However, lest I repeat what has already been done, let him who is caught by a scruple in this matter read the Preface prefixed to the new edition of Gregory of Tours, art. 5, in which our Theodoric Ruinart, of pious memory, easily removed such scruples, according to the erudition in which he excelled. But however it may be concerning the proposed conjecture, suppose Gregory wrote what is read concerning the forty-eight martyrs after Irenæus's martyrdom, it will be a slip of memory, and a serious one at that. But is a writer who has slipped in memory in some instance to have a foreign opinion immediately ascribed to him, which he himself expressly rejects? Or because Gregory appended a few intricate words at the end of the chapter, are other things which are clear and open to be explained from those obscure ones, and to be violently twisted toward them, while the author himself is reluctant and unwilling? If it be so, let Dodwell establish new rules of criticism for the ancient ones of antiquity.

40. What has been said thus far demonstrates that the opinion had already become prevalent throughout the whole world by the fifth century that Irenæus was killed while fighting for the Christian faith, and that this belief rests on support that is far from secure, which can only be sought from futile arguments and frivolous conjectures. All the Latins consecrate June 28th as the solemn day for the memory of this martyrdom, but the Greeks August 23rd. His body was resting, most celebrated for miracles in the age of Gregory of Tours, buried in the crypt of the basilica of Saint John under the altar; having Epipodius buried on one side, and on the other the martyr Alexander. But the Calvinists in the year 1562, having captured Lyons, driven by maddened frenzy, vilely violated the martyr's sepulcher; and with the bones scattered, the cranium, after it had been a laughingstock for quite a while, lay ignominiously thrown in the middle of the square for so long, until, rescued from there, it is today religiously preserved at Lyons.

ARTICLE II. ON THE FIVE BOOKS OF IRENAEUS AGAINST HERESIES

[XCV] 41. Having gathered and explained with all the zeal we could command those things which pertain to the life and deeds of our Irenæus, it is worth the effort to discuss, as accurately as possible, his writings. The apostolic man left behind many monuments of the genius, piety, and zeal with which he burned for the defense of the Catholic faith. But none was held in greater esteem by all the ancients, and more often cited by them, than that excellent work divided into five books, which he labored to produce against the heresies of the Gnostics, and which alone has remained safe from the gnawing tooth of time thus far. It is the common opinion that this was the first fruit of Irenæus; for he himself testifies in the Preface of the first book that he was not practiced in the art of writing, nor had he cultivated the art of speaking; which argues a man who had brought nothing, or little, into the light thus far. It seems possible, however, to gather with the famous Grabe, in his Prolegomena, that Irenæus had written something else before from book 2, chapter 7, n. 1. For he says that he had shown in many places and elsewhere that it is Paul’s custom to use hyperbata. But he does not treat even a word of that frequent use of Pauline hyperbata in the two preceding books, nor indeed in those that follow. It seems, therefore, that he published some other treatise first, in which he had dealt with these things as the set subject.

42. There was a double cause for the writing of the aforementioned work against heresies. The other was to comply with the habit of a certain friend, who had urged him with entreaties to make manifest to him, and to explain sufficiently, the hidden mysteries of the disciples of Valentinus, not yet explained by anyone.

^A at the same time to provide the arms by which these monstrosities of error might be pierced. Who that friend was, Irenaeus being silent, cannot be said. I conjecture, however, that he was a Greek, because he wrote in Greek; whereas Irenaeus, as I shall prove below, would otherwise have written in Latin, had he been writing for the sake of a Latin. Add that the plague of Valentinus and the other Gnostics was always far more infested in Greek regions than in Latin ones. I suspect also that he was a bishop, or someone prominent in the clergy, who had a flock entrusted to his care. At the very least, it seems this can be drawn from the fact that Irenaeus says he complied with the friend’s request in order that, knowing he himself also possessed the most portentous and most profound mysteries, he might make them manifest to all those who were with him—*πᾶσι τοῖς μετὰ σοῦ*—and might charge them to keep themselves from the depth of senselessness and from that which is blasphemy against God. Hence, he later warns the same man that, according to the learning he possesses, he should powerfully assert those things that have been invalidly reported to those who are with him; and that he should effectively administer to the others the provision given to him by the Lord, according to the grace given to him, so that men might no longer be drawn away by the persuasion of the Valentinians. And in the Preface to Book IV, he promises that he will provide his friend with opportunities to refute all heretics from every side, so that, being completely repulsed, he might not allow them to fall any further into the depth of error, nor to be smothered in the sea of ignorance, but by converting them to the port of truth, might cause them to perceive their own salvation. These things can scarcely apply to anyone other than a bishop, who, as our author says in Book III, chapter 17, n. 4, had entrusted the care of writing to his friend Irenaeus. ^B There are those who think that friend was Turibius of Toledo, a bishop, the successor of a certain Patruinus, relying on the authority of Pseudo-Dexter, who asserts this for the year of Christ 185; but there is no credibility to this fabulist. The other reason for writing was to meet the heresy of the Marcosians, a scion of the Valentinian heresy, which had surreptitiously invaded Celtic, or Rhodanensian, regions, and to stifle the evil at its very birth. It was the more dangerous in that it offered greater temptations to the greed and curiosity of women especially, and it was the more difficult for the unlearned to distinguish the sheep from the wolves, since they imitated the voice and fleece of the former everywhere. For those old deceivers busied themselves especially around women, particularly the wealthiest ones, many of whom they had already seduced, deceived by the vain hope of prophecy and a more sublime knowledge. The most saintly man, therefore, fearing lest a sex by its own nature more imbecile, and by its innate disposition more curious, might be swept away with its own sin, and along with it and through it certain simpler ones who were as sheep among wolves—ignorant of them because of the outer covering of a sheep's fleece, against whom the Lord warned us to be on our guard, as they speak things like us but think things unlike us—deemed it necessary to tear the mask from the disguised sheep ^C so that the revealed wolfish face might strike the truthful with horror.

43. The work undertaken by Irenaeus was indeed difficult, one which many until now had attempted, but with little success. For they, whether by applying themselves to it with insufficient diligence, or broken by the labor, or destitute of keenness of intellect, had not been able to penetrate the most monstrous and deep mysteries of iniquity, but had remained almost at the very threshold. For, he says, it behooves one who wishes to convert heretics to know their rules, or arguments, diligently. Nor is it possible for anyone to cure those who are ailing if he is ignorant of the condition of those who are unwell. Wherefore, those who were before us, and indeed were much better than us, were nevertheless not able to sufficiently contradict those who are of Valentinus, because they were ignorant of their rule. And no wonder: it was most obscure, and passable only to those who possessed such acuity of intellect as to be able to detect the twisted error beneath the double-edged bark of words. Irenaeus, however, approached that work instructed with such diligence, sagacity, knowledge of heretical doctrines, and other gifts, by which he might bring it to a happy conclusion. For, having sought out the commentaries and books of the disciples of Valentinus, he unrolled them accurately, and compared notes with some of them, and accomplished so much by arduous labor and indefatigable study that, having dissipated the shadows which learned men—pestiferous, having poured forth their opinions by the artifice of simulation—had cast in order to deceive the unwary, he perceived it, and once perceived, finally brought it to light. It was enough to utterly overthrow it. For, as he himself says, addressing his friend, the victory against them is the manifestation of their own opinions. Therefore, we have endeavored to bring into the middle the whole body of this poorly composed fox, and through you to make it manifest. For there will no longer be need of many words to overthrow their doctrine, which has been made manifest to all. He illustrates this with an excellent similitude. Just as, when a certain beast is hidden in the woods, and charges from there and ravages many, whoever separates and clears the woods and brings the beast itself into view, no longer labors to capture it, as those who see that the beast is a beast are present: for it is for them, seeing it, to guard against its charges, and to shoot from all sides, and to wound and kill that ravaging beast. So it is for us, when we have brought their hidden and, to them, secret mysteries into the open, it will no longer be necessary to destroy their opinion with many words. Yet, not content with these, the holy doctor agitated it with a more diffuse style and subverted it thoroughly. Indeed, he suppressed it with arguments gathered from every side and plucked either from reason itself or from divine authority: with such success that the ancients thought, and recent ones—whoever reads Irenaeus with the attention of soul and equity that is due—think, that they could not praise him enough according to his merit. Everywhere, indeed, they look up to a man of excellent genius and perfect learning.

Scripture knowledge, and the acquaintance with venerable tradition, left him second to none; a man, as Epiphanius says, utterly instructed by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and, if I may so speak, anointed with heavenly ornaments for the contest. Having struck down and overturned all the lies of the heretics with the bulwarks of sincere faith and knowledge; in a word, an apostolic man, full of the spirit, faith, and charity of the apostles, he poured forth in his writings the pure waters of sacred doctrine, which he had drawn from the very sources almost; and this with such abundance that it is a marvel that so many and such great things, and things besprinkled with such manifold erudition, could be comprised in so small a volume. ^A

44. It happens, however, I confess, that while Irenaeus sets forth doctrines, he sometimes becomes obscure. But so are fertile minds constituted by nature: when they hasten to bring forth what they have abundantly conceived in their spirit, words often do not correspond to the conceptions. Another cause of obscurity, and indeed the principal one, arises from the difficulty and sublimity of the matters of which he was discoursing. He is entirely occupied in probing the secrets of the Gnostics and in unearthing their more recondite meanings; he is entirely occupied in dispelling the most empty subtleties of minds running riot with captious arguments, and in explaining divine things, than which nothing more abstruse and sublime can be imagined. Scarcely, however, could it happen that he who was engaged in such rugged arguments, which had been attempted by no one hitherto except unsuccessfully, could treat them in such a way as not to create a burden for unaccustomed readers by the very novelty of the argument and the inherent difficulty of the matter. To say nothing here of the barbarous Latin translation, which often casts most dense darkness over sentiments that are in themselves clear—the fault, not of the author himself, but of the unskilled interpreter. If anyone, however, undeterred by the thorns of the first book, reads it carefully, and attentively meditates upon the Gnostic ^B doctrines exposed therein (perhaps our notes on this book, as well as the dissertation which we are bringing to light concerning the Gnostic hypothesis, will alleviate the difficulty), the fruit of labor will be manifest to him, so that he will experience little or no difficulty in unfolding and understanding the rest; nay, more, from the weight of the thoughts, the force and efficacy of the arguments, and the sublimity and piety of so many and such noble words, he will derive no small pleasure and deem the work worthwhile. For many are deceived by this, thinking that they can easily abstain from reading the first book—since the exposition of so many most absurd doctrines only brings weariness—and they hasten to read the others skipping this part: if, however, they stick where they often do, they lay the blame on the author, when it lies entirely with them. How can the meaning of a polemical book appear plain and easy to one whom it has wearied to taste of the sentiment and hypothesis of those whom the author has undertaken to confute? For since he is perpetually alluding to it, and assumes it to be already known; it is no wonder if words clearer than light itself become so many enigmas to readers in this ^C matter, and seem foreign. Whoever desires to reach Irenaeus, let him tread in Irenaeus's footsteps, and read his books in the order in which they were written, it is necessary.

45. For indeed, in subduing the heretics against whom the holy doctor was taking up arms, it seemed necessary to him—and rightly so—to proceed in order and to expose their opinions more accurately than had been done before. He took his beginning from the Valentinians, and he applied himself most of all to this, that he might give an explanation of their hypothesis with greater care than for the others, both because these were the wishes of his friend, and because the filth of all other heresies had flowed into that heresy as into a sewer; and for this reason he turned almost all his strength toward this one, thinking that once this was well known and prostrate, the others could not stand. But since the Valentinians easily held all the first places both in the number of their followers, and in the indigestible farrago of all sorts of dogmas poorly cohering ^D with one another, and in the sheer audacity and rashness of those who propagated them, Ptolemaeus and Marcos, and these had begun to infest the Lyonnais territory over which Irenaeus presided; he delayed for a longer time in explaining their hypothesis, as it were, upon which the whole weight of the war was required to rest. But because all the Valentinians, with the shameful names of their ancestors craftily concealed, arrogantly claimed that Gnosticism for themselves; in order that Irenaeus might chastise their impudence and at the same time root out the heresy from its foundations, he shows that the common parent of all was Simon Magus, that monster of impiety rather than a man, from whose name even all Christians recoiled; and this he demonstrates invincibly from the continuous succession of that Magus's disciples up to the Valentinians, and the agreement of all in the same dogmas and most corrupt morals: with this difference only, that the later ones, in explaining the commentaries of the ancients, while contending among themselves, had invented others still more absurd. Since it is therefore, he says, that the detection and conviction against all heretics is varied and manifold, and it is our purpose to contradict all of them according to their own characters; we deemed it necessary first to recount their source and root, so that, knowing the most sublime Bythos of their own, you may understand the tree from which such fruits have flowed. Then, having explained the heresy of Simon, he concludes, that from the Simonians the "falsely-named knowledge" took its beginnings, as is to be learned from their very assertions. And at the end of the first book, after having recounted the dogmas of the ancient Gnostics, he adds: From such mothers, and fathers, and ancestors are those who are from Valentinus, as their very sentiments and rules show them to be; it was necessary to refute them manifestly, and to bring their dogmas into the light.

46. Therefore, since he wished to pierce through all the Gnostics, he inscribed the title to his work, Ἔλεγχος καὶ ἀνατροπὴ τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως. Detection and overthrow of knowledge falsely so called. This he himself testifies in clear terms in his Preface.

^A For what is the detection and overthrow of their opinion? We have thus titled the composition of this work. And in the Preface of book IV: Sending you, beloved, this fourth book of the work which is on the detection and overthrow of knowledge falsely so-called, etc. And at the end of the same book: Therefore, the remaining sayings of the Lord, which He taught not by parables but simply in the very words concerning the Father, and the interpretation of the Epistles of the blessed Apostle, by arranging them in another book, we shall provide for you, God willing, the whole work of reprobation and overthrow of knowledge falsely so-called. Finally, in the Preface of the fifth book, he calls this book the fifth book of the entire work, which is On the detection and overthrow of knowledge falsely so-called. The translator rendered this as *traductionem* [refutation], just as a little earlier he rendered it *exprobrationem* [reproach], and elsewhere *detectionem* [detection], because the word ἔλεγχος, which Irenaeus used, happily carries all these meanings; but *Detectio* [Detection] fits the author’s aim much better, as is clear from what we have already said. Therefore, there can be no doubt that this is the genuine title of Irenaeus's books, which we were just speaking of and which we restored at the beginning of the work. Eusebius cites Irenaeus's books under this title in *History*, book V, ch. 7: ἐλέγχου καὶ ἀνατροπῆς τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως; Andreas of Caesarea also cites them in *Apocalypse*, sermon 6, ch. 18; Damascenus in his *Parallelis* (MS); Photius in his *Bibliotheca*, cod. 120; and Oecumenius, in II Peter III, and in the Epistle of Jude. Indeed, even older manuscript codices—such as the Claromontanus, the old Feuardentius, the Vossius, and the Arundel—although they bear the more recent inscription on their front, *Contra haereticos, vel haereses* [Against heretics, or heresies], nevertheless retain the old one when they present the chapter headings of the second and fourth books. For they read thus: *These things are contained in the second book of the reprobation and overthrow of knowledge falsely so-called. These things are in the fourth book of the reprobation and overthrow of false knowledge.* From which it is evidently demonstrated that this is the inscription that was read in the autographs themselves, or in the earlier codices from which the later ones were copied, but was wrongly omitted by later scribes who were intent on brevity. It seems that Eusebius himself provided the occasion for this omission, for he sometimes calls Irenaeus's books, for the sake of brevity, *Books against heresies*, and Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome, and many others, both old and new, followed him in this, so that they have omitted the genuine title entirely (which surely should not have been omitted) and have retained only this abbreviated one, giving others an opportunity to retain it. Photius, observing that both inscriptions were commonly used, proposed and retained both. The later one also seems to have been given an opportunity by those words of Irenaeus which we just quoted: *Since, therefore, there is a detection and conviction against all heretics that is varied and manifold, and it is proposed to us to contradict them all according to their own character*, etc. And those words with which he concludes book IV: *And ourselves, and you, for the contradiction of all heretics, exercising ourselves in five books.* And hence, in certain manuscripts, such as the Vossius and Feuardentius, this title is read prefixed to the books of Irenaeus: *Against all heretics, or heresies*. But Irenaeus never prefixed this title, which has prevailed among the more recent writers, to his books; he wrote only [the other one], ^B ἐλέγχου καὶ ἀνατροπῆς τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως: and it fits the author's scope far better. For, as he himself notes in the prefaces of his books, he proposed to perform two things for himself: one, to *detect* (ἐλέγχειν)—to uncover—the opinions of the Valentinians and all the Gnostics, which had been hidden until that time; and second, to *overthrow* (ἀνατρέπειν) them. He accomplished the former in the first book, in which he accurately reviews the dogmas of all the Valentinians and Gnostics; the latter he accomplished in the books that follow. And indeed, in the second book he subverts them with arguments; in the third, he brought the Scriptures and Tradition to bear; in the fourth, he disputed primarily from the Old Testament; in the fifth, from the remaining doctrines of our Lord, and from the apostolic epistles, just as he promises he will do in the Prefaces.

47. Although it is very difficult to define precisely the time when these books were written, ^C nevertheless, he would not be far from the truth who asserted that they were published towards the end of the pontificate of Eleutherus, or partly under Eleutherus and partly under Victor. And indeed, it is manifest that the first book could not have been written before the year 172; for mention is made in it of Tatian and the Encratites, who, if we are to trust the *Chronicon* of Eusebius, emerged in the 12th year of Marcus Aurelius, or the year 172 of Christ; although it is probable that they erupted somewhat earlier. It is established that the third book was published while Eleutherus was already ruling the Church; for in it Irenaeus, ^D compiling a catalogue of the Roman pontiffs, carries it up to Eleutherus, whom he clearly says was sitting in Rome at that time: νῦν δωδεκάτῳ τόπῳ τῆς ἐπισκοπῆς ἀπὸ τῶν ἀποστόλων κατέχει κλήρον Ἐλεύθερος, "Now Eleutherus holds the episcopate from the apostles in the twelfth place." In chapter 11, n. 8 of the same book, he quite openly attacks the Montanists, though he does not name them; they could hardly have been known to Irenaeus before the year 177. But the thing that seems to demonstrate that this book was not written until near the end of the pontificate of Eleutherus is that Irenaeus mentions in it the interpretation of Theodotion. For he, as Epiphanius and the author of the Alexandrian Chronicle testify, translated the sacred Bible when Commodus was already emperor, in the consulship of Marullus (for so I think it should be read, not Marcellus).

And so it follows that Irenaeus wrote some years after the publication of Theodotion’s translation, and therefore not far from the year 192, when Eleutherus departed this life, he who had assumed the government of the Church in about the year 177.

48. Nor do I linger here over the conjectures of Dodwell, who, in order to prove more quickly than I said—that is, about the year of Christ 177—that the books of Irenaeus were written, contends in his singular Dissertation on the Succession of the Roman Pontiffs, ch. 14, § 17, that those things which are read in Irenaeus concerning Theodotion were perhaps absent from his prior manuscript, and were inserted by him afterwards. By conjecturing in such a way, that most subtle man easily cuts through any difficult knots. But such trifles might perhaps please boys; adults would certainly laugh at them. He initiated another path in his Dissertations on Irenaeus. In order to achieve his end in whatever way possible, that Theodotion’s translation was older than the emperor Commodus, and had been composed under Marcus Aurelius, he attempts to disparage the authority of the Alexandrian Chronicle. For he says that the author of that Chronicle derived the time of Theodotion from Epiphanius’ *On Weights and Measures*, whose chronological reasonings concerning the interpreters of the Scriptures are both scarcely consistent with themselves, and are, moreover, very faulty where they are consistent. A brief statement indeed, which relies solely on the authority of Dodwell—[XCVIII] which, however, has not yet sufficiently prevailed among the learned so that we should swear by the words of such a master. Certainly, it is a wonder if the author of the Alexandrian Chronicle derived a certain epoch of time from Epiphanius, which does not appear in him at all. For Epiphanius, even by Dodwell’s own admission, does not designate the consuls, as the author of the Chronicle does. ^B Therefore it is necessary that he derived it from elsewhere. But, says Dodwell, he derived it by most false reasonings. The reasonings which it pleased him to attribute to the author of the Chronicle are indeed very false; but that these were the reasonings of the latter, it had to be proven from the very beginning by arguments other than frigid conjectures. Until Dodwell has demonstrated this, it will be permissible for us, to whom it is not granted to be so perceptive, out of his kindness, to agree with the author of the Chronicle.

49. Through another argument, by which he tries, as it were, to persuade, the illustrious Grabe strives in his Prolegomena to Irenaeus to prove that he had published the entire refutation of heretics while he was still a presbyter, before the year 177, when he was sent to Rome by the martyrs of Lyons. This is deduced from the rise of the sect of the Cataphrygians, which vexed the Churches of Phrygia and Asia; an event which Eusebius inscribed in his Chronicle in the 17th year of Marcus, the year of Christ 171. He says that it is gathered that two of Irenaeus’s first books preceded this, because in them he makes no mention of this sect, but does mention the heresy of Tatian as the most recent: he would not have omitted the former if it had already begun to disturb Asia, to which he was sending these books. On the contrary, in books III and IV he touches lightly upon these pseudoprophets; ^C from which it is necessary that he wrote them after the troubles stirred up by them; nor did a long interval pass between the earlier and later books. But this is so far from helping Grabe’s cause that it rather overturns it entirely. For if Irenaeus touches upon the Cataphrygians in books III and IV, and if no long interval passed between the earlier and later books of Irenaeus; then Grabe must admit that if they could not have been written before the year 177, the earlier ones could scarcely have been written earlier. For although the Cataphrygians had already emerged from the year 171, yet not until the year 177, when the martyrs had already been thrown into prison, did the fame of their sect reach the ears of the people of Lyons. Certainly, if it had arrived sooner, the martyrs would have written sooner what they thought about the new prophets; intending to act at a more convenient time than the most difficult one of all. But that Irenaeus made no mention of the Cataphrygians in the first book is no wonder. His intent was to set forth the opinion of the disciples of Valentinus, and, in order to repeat the matter from the head, to report their source and root; namely, to argue that the Valentinians had received their origin from Simon and the ancient Gnostics, as their fathers and ancestors, and to bring into the middle their dogmas, as we saw above. But what did the mention of the Cataphrygians contribute to this plan of Irenaeus? They had received nothing at all from the Gnostics and Valentinians; they were not attacking any Catholic dogma of that time, they were only rending the unity of the Church. Therefore, Irenaeus would have undeservedly ranked among the Gnostics and Valentinians men who had nothing in common with that knowledge falsely so called, which he had proposed to himself to detect and overturn. Nor are those things more favorable to Grabe’s cause where Irenaeus begins the Preface of book III with the words: *You, indeed, most beloved, had instructed us,* etc., and also those which exist in the Preface of book V: *Since you requested of us, who obey your precept; since we have been placed in the administration of the word:* from which he thinks he can elicit that Irenaeus was then a presbyter, and not yet a bishop: for certainly no one would instruct a bishop to sharpen his pen against heretics; nor would Irenaeus, obeying a precept, hardly even profess it, etc. For to omit the fact that even among friends, counsels and requests are held to be precepts; the most learned man urges the word *præcipio* [I instruct/command] more than is fair, which the translator of Irenaeus used. I gather that Irenaeus had used the Greek verb *παραινέω* because in the Preface of the first book, exhorting a friend, that he might disclose to all those who associate with him, when he has learned the mysteries of the Valentinians from himself, he adds, *καὶ παραινέσῃς αὐτοῖς φυλάξασθαι τὸν βυθὸν τῆς ἀνοίας*, which the translator renders: *and that you instruct them to keep themselves from the depth of senselessness.* Where he renders *παραινέσῃς* as *præcipias* [you instruct/command]; although, however, *παραινέω* in Latin does not properly signify *præcipio*, but rather *hortor* [I exhort], *suadeo* [I advise], *consilium do* [I give counsel], etc. From which it is permissible to conjecture that the same verb, used by Irenaeus in the cited locations, was used in the same manner.

^A been rendered by an unskilled translator. But whatever word or voice Irenaeus may have used, or in what sense his friend may have instructed him, and in what sense he himself may have obeyed, he clearly declares in the same Preface, when he says that he would attempt, with the exertion of love, to expound the doctrine of the Valentinians to both his friend and all who are with him. And later: "What has been written to you with love, you shall receive with love." For this reason he says he is conducting himself as a friend, because love urges and compels him, openly signifying that he is constrained by the law of charity alone. And certainly, if Irenaeus had recognized the one for whom he was writing as his superior, he would never have permitted himself to address him with the term "most beloved," as he always does, and to use him with such familiarity, as the prefaces to the books demonstrate. That simple presbyters conducted themselves with bishops in that manner will be proved by no examples. To whom, I ask, do those words of the Preface to Book V, which Grabe abuses—"since we are placed in the administration of the Word"—belong by a better and stronger right than to a bishop? But, says that most learned man, Irenaeus would have said he was placed in the *prostasia* of the Church rather than in the "administration of the Word," had he already been the supreme priest of the Lugdunensian Church at that time. On the contrary, he was manifestly saying that he was placed in the *prostasia* of the Church in those times, by signifying that he was established in the administration of the Word. For it is invincibly demonstrated from Cyprian’s Epistle 56, from Optatus at the end of his work against the Donatists, from the Life of St. Hilary of Arles written by his disciple Cyprian, from Possidius in the Life of St. Augustine, and from many other monuments of those times, that in the first four centuries the administration of the Word in the West was entrusted to none other ^B than bishops, if that were of any worth.

50. It must therefore be held as certain and proven, whatever Dodwell and Grabe may say, that the five books of the *Detection and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So-Called* were written by Irenaeus when he was already a bishop. But did they all appear at once and at the same time, or at intervals? This is another difficulty, which I explain briefly as follows. In the first place, Irenaeus had determined in his mind to write a certain brief work, in which, by uncovering the dogmas of the Valentinians, he would append certain arguments opportune for overthrowing them, having not yet sufficiently explored the difficulty of the matter and the magnitude of the labor. "As much power as is currently ours," he says in the Preface to the first book, "we shall show, in summary and manifest fashion, the opinion of those who now teach otherwise—I speak, that is, of those who are around Ptolemy—and we shall give to others, according to our mediocrity, opportunities to overthrow it." Hence, he afterward urges his friend that those things which were written to him simply, and truly, and naively, he should himself develop within himself, so that, taking these as seed and beginnings, he might be more capable, and in the breadth of his own understanding might fructify abundantly those things which in few words have ^A been said. But he had scarcely set his hand to the labor when, with a wider field for disputation opening up than he had supposed, he changed his plan and applied himself to a work of greater scale. He signifies this at the end of the first book when he says: "Since, therefore, these things are so, according to my promise, we shall provide, to the best of our ability, their overthrow, contradicting all of them in the following book; for the narrative proceeds to a great length, as you see." For it seems that the first hope was to append the overthrow to the detection in the same book. On that account, in the Preface to the third book, he says to his friend that it would happen unexpectedly that, with the bulk of the work increasing, he would receive from him arguments greater and more ample than he had hoped and requested for the overthrow of the heretics. But in this third (book) he says: "We shall bring forth proofs from the Scriptures, so that nothing of what you had asked may be lacking to you from us; but also, beyond what you had supposed, you may receive from us opportunities to argue against and overthrow those who teach evil in any way whatsoever." For the charity that is in God, existing rich and without envy, bestows more than anyone asks of it. Therefore, having adopted the counsel of a greater work, by which all the vain sophistications of the heretics would be more fully and richly refuted in five books, he hastened to complete the first two; inasmuch as with these, for the time being and for the desires of his friend, he might expose and overthrow the knowledge falsely so-called. He sent them to his friend immediately, while in the meantime he was bringing the other three, which he already had in mind, to their conclusion; these, as each one was finished, were sent immediately, without waiting for the next. All these things are established both from the Prefaces prefixed to the three later books, and from the end of each book, and from Book II, cap. 2, n. 6; cap. 8, n. 3; cap. 11, n. 2, and cap. 28, n. 4, in which he expressly promises the following books. From all these it becomes highly probable, as I have already said, that the entire work was written partly under Pope Eleutherus and partly under Victor.

51. The arguments demonstrating that these books were written in the Greek language are so certain that it is a wonder how any doubt on that matter could have entered the mind of Erasmus and of certain other learned men. Eusebius records several fragments of Irenaeus inserted in his History in Greek; he nowhere, however, warns that these had been translated by him from Latin into Greek, as he does when he cites Tertullian and certain other Latin authors. And as many as there are among the Greek writers who cite Irenaeus (and they cite him frequently), they certainly read him in Greek; nor does Photius, who reviews hardly anyone other than Greek authors in his *Bibliotheca*, signify at all clearly that he had read his books written in any other language. Furthermore, Jerome, although a Latin, who had read the books of Irenaeus accurately and therefore knew well in what language they had been written, clearly excludes him from the number of Latins in order to count him among the Greeks. For, commemorating the authors who had favored the error of the Chiliasts: "Of the Latins," he says, "Ter-

^Atullian, Victorinus, Lactantius; of the Greeks, however, to omit others, I shall make mention only of Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons." And elsewhere, recalling those who favored the same error, he names Tertullian, Lactantius, Victorinus of Pettau, and Severus: "And to name the Greeks," he adds, "and to join the first and the last, Irenæus and Apollinarius." But, says Erasmus in his dedicatory epistle which he prefixed to the edition of Irenæus he had adorned, "It is permitted to doubt whether Jerome called him a Greek by nation or a Greek writer." Indeed, there is no place for doubting that Jerome called Irenæus a Greek in the same sense and for the very same reason that he called Apollinarius a Greek, and Tertullian, Victorinus, and Lactantius Latins; to whose nation he was certainly not paying attention, but merely to their writings. Did nations have anything to do with Jerome’s purpose here? His intent was not to separate nations from nations, but writers from writers, and to review and distinguish those who, among those who had written in Latin, and among those who had written in Greek, had strayed into the opinion of the Chiliasts. Furthermore, even the title itself prefixed to the books of Irenæus proves they were written in Greek. We have shown above that this is the genuine one: *On the Detection and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So-Called*. Which indeed, as represented in Greek by Eusebius and Photius, is not inelegant; thus in Latin it sounds something so barbarous and obscure that anyone writing in Latin who had tasted the first rudiments of the Latin language would easily have prefixed to his work not this, but any other more appropriate, clearer, and more Latin title. But also, the diversity of the writing itself proves that it was translated from Greek into Latin; for sometimes it is written "on the detection," at other times "on the refutation," "on the reproach," or "on the exposure of knowledge falsely so-called," or "of false knowledge," "of knowledge falsely termed," etc., which variety of writing has undoubtedly arisen from the diverse interpretation of the terms ἐλέγχου and ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως. Moreover, you will find no such variety among the Greeks. Eusebius, Photius, and Damascenus write the title in exactly the same way: Περὶ ἐλέγχου καὶ ἀνατροπῆς τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως. A certain argument that it was written in Greek, not in Latin. 3° Jerome, an excellent judge of style, testifies in his letter to the widow Theodora that Irenæus’ books against heresies were composed in a most learned and eloquent style. But unless Jerome were altogether unskilled in the Latin language, he could neither think nor assert this regarding the Latin books of Irenæus. For the style is barbarous, unpolished, harsh, and rugged, teeming with solecisms, and in many places expressing the author’s mind either not sufficiently or quite poorly. On the contrary, the Greek text that remains is elegant, polished, and grave, and consists of words that are propre, significant, and most accommodating both to the matters themselves and to the mind and purpose of Irenæus. Who, however, would believe that Irenæus, a man most learned in Greek and of the sharpest judgment, would, because of his native idiom, have lacked the ability to express his thoughts, but that on the other hand a Greek translator, reading the Latin books written so barbarously and obscurely, would attain the sense of the author more easily and successfully than the author himself could explain it in words? But, you will say, Irenæus himself, in the Preface to the first book, offers the excuse that his style is simple and common, destitute of all verbal artifice and ornament of diction, because, having stayed among the Celts, he was mostly engaged in a barbarous language. It is so; but so far are our arguments from being weakened by this—nay, rather, new strength is added to them. For if Irenæus had written in Latin, the excuse of the Celtic language would seem no more tolerable than if any Gaul, writing in Latin among the Dutch or English, were to apologize for an inelegant and unpolished discourse with this excuse: that, by staying among the Dutch or English, he was mostly engaged in a foreign language. The excuse of this Gaul would indeed be valid if, writing in his native tongue, he were to plead disuse; but it is entirely inept if the discourse is about Latin, which is as familiar to the Dutch and English as it is to the Gauls. Thus, although Irenæus was living among the Celts and sometimes spoke the Celtic language, he would yet not be excusable for doing so in a crude and inarticulate manner while writing in Latin; because the Latin language was familiar to the people of Lyons at that time, and much more familiar than it is to us. Whoever—even one moderately skilled in Greek—casts his eyes upon the Latin text of Irenæus will easily perceive that it is in reality a Greek discourse in which some trace of Latin occasionally appears. For the mode of expression, the diction, the structure of the words, the phrasing, the syntax, etc., betray a man who, having the Greek before his eyes, translated it into Latin, but so unskillfully and servilely that he rendered word for word, preserving the order, gender, and government of the Greeks. Irenæus was Greek, and unrefined in the Latin tongue; yet was he so dull, and so lacking in Latin words, that while ignoring those which are common everywhere—easy, known to everyone, and hackneyed even to schoolboys—he would substitute for them Hellenisms that are far-fetched, obscure, and difficult, most harsh to Latin ears, and almost impervious to the mind? Was it more difficult to write *Nus* or *a Nu geniti* (Mind, or of Mind sprung), *Valentinus, Ptolemæus*, or *Valentini* or *Ptolemæi discipuli*; than *qui sunt circa vel erga Nun, Ptolemæum, Valentinum*; *ostendere posse* rather than *habere ostendere*; *creatio* or *creatura* rather than *conditio*; *principium* rather than *initium*; ablatives absolute rather than genitives, and six hundred of such things which we have not failed to note in their proper places? Ammianus Marcellinus was a Greek, learned in Greek far more than in Latin, and for that reason sometimes obscure in what he wrote in Latin; yet he abstained from such harsh Hellenisms. What of the fact that Latin words are assigned meanings that Greek, while indeed easily admitting them, the Latin words themselves absolutely reject? *Pertransiens* is written in some place for *legendo percurrens*,

[230, A] *perexivimus* for *enarravimus*, *incipio hoc facere* for *passim pro hoc facturus sum*, *principalis* for *antiquus*, *aliquid* for *partim*, etc. Who, in these and other terms of this kind, would not discern a Latin translator? Who, rather, would not here recognize a Latin translator, yet one who is unskilled and of no judgment—one who, having the Greek text before his eyes and seeing in it the words *dierchomenos* (διερχόμενος), *diexelthomen* (διεξήλθομεν), *mellō touto poiein* (μέλλω τοῦτο ποιεῖν), *archaios* (ἀρχαῖος), etc., consults lexicons in a puerile manner and imprudently accepts whichever meaning among the various ones subjoined to each word happens to be the first one to come to hand? What, finally, of the fact that the author of the Latin text, having failed to grasp Irenaeus's meaning, often invents alien ones? Or was Irenaeus not sure of his own mind? Surely there could be no other cause for this error than that the translator either used a faulty Greek codex, or was deceived by the similarity of words and read them wrongly, or, deviating from the sense of the Greeks, substituted his own.

We have observed six hundred examples of this kind in our notes. Thus, sometimes he reads *phylla* (φύλλα) for *phyta* (φυτά), *genesis* (γένεσιν) for *physis* (φύσιν), *hoti* (ὅτι) for *hoti* (ὅτι), *eschatou* (ἐσχάτου) for *hekastou* (ἑκάστου), *topō* (τόπῳ) for *tropō* (τρόπῳ), *hē* (ἤ) for *hē* (ᾖ), *hexēs* (ἑξῆς) for *ex hēs* (ἐξ ἧς), and 888 for *Iēsous* (Ἰησοῦς), as if the single letters of this word were so many arithmetic marks, and many other things of this sort. But the hallucination of that Latin translator regarding the name *Epiphanēs* (᾽Επιφανής) must not be omitted here. Thinking it was an appellative, he translated it *clarus* ("clear"), whereas it is certain that it is the proper name of the heretic whose opinion Irenaeus reports in Book 1, c. 11, n. 3. Such a monstrous error cannot be attributed to Irenaeus himself, who certainly knew well the name of the man he was attacking, since it is exactly the same in Greek and Latin. It is necessary, therefore, to lay the blame on the unskilled translator.

5. If Irenaeus had written in Latin and for the benefit of the Latins, he would have cited Latin authors rather than Greek; yet you will not find any, whether sacred or profane, praised by him except Greeks. Thus, to pass over many things, in Book 1, chapter 9, he weaves a centon from the verses of Homer. Surely, anyone who had written in Latin would have chosen Virgil or some other poet more familiar to the Latins in order to construct a centon from him. Finally, in Book V, chapter 30, while disputing the names of the Antichrist, which will contain the number 666, he brings forward those that are so Greek that they do not add up unless written in Greek. Such are *EUANTHAS*, *LATEINOS*, *TEITAN* (ΕΥΑΝΘΑΣ, ΛΑΤΕΙΝΟΣ, ΤΕΙΤΑΝ), which, if you write them in Latin, the number will no longer correspond to the name. Who would believe that someone writing in Latin would search so far for Greek names, when many Latin ones could have been fashioned so easily, from which the same number could have been derived?

52. I do not dwell on Erasmus's other minor objection, [230, B] that we see some Greek verses mixed into the books of Irenaeus, and that no one has indicated the translator's name. For it is at the discretion of translators—if they are offended by any Greek lines of the poets—to relate them either in Latin alone, or, for the sake of greater *energeia* (ἐνεργείας), in both Greek and Latin, especially if they are few and elegant. The examples are obvious. In the same way, the translator of Irenaeus conducted himself. Should more verses occur, [he renders them] in Latin only; if one or another, in Greek and Latin, and that in two places only, he wrote. Regarding the name of the translator, Erasmus did not notice that the objection is equally applicable to those who believe the Greek text is a mere translation; for it is no easier for them to indicate the name of the Greek translator than for others to indicate the Latin one.

But since I have heard this objection made by various most learned men with a show of slightly greater difficulty—that it is hardly credible that Irenaeus, who was living at Lyons, where there was no use for the Greek language, and who was writing for the benefit of his fellow citizens of Lyons, whose territories the Marcosian plague had already reached, would write in a language that no one would have understood—they presuppose exactly what lies at the very threshold of being proven: namely, that this was the primary plan of Irenaeus, to write for the benefit of the people of Lyons. The prefaces prefixed to every single book demonstrate that he wrote in order to comply with the requests of a certain friend. Moreover, it seems far more probable that this friend was a Greek, not a man of Lyons. For he was not inquiring of Irenaeus what was the opinion of the Marcosians, who alone infested the Gauls, but rather that of the Ptolemaeans, as is evident from the Preface to the first book. However, it is certain that the Eastern provinces [230, C] were vexed by the heresy of the Ptolemaeans, the Valentinians, and indeed of the Marcosians themselves and other Gnostics—the very heresies Irenaeus had undertaken to explain and refute—far more bitterly than the Western provinces: so much so that Irenaeus wished to provide a remedy in his writing for those [Easterners] rather than for these [Westerners], whom he could easily have cured in person and by word of mouth. But be it so, that the friend lived among the Latins; I do not think that this will profit the cause of the adversaries. For what if he, though living among the Latins, happened to be some Greek from among the number of those who had come into the West with Pothinus or Irenaeus? The entire necessity of writing in Latin, which is being imagined, falls. For Irenaeus had proposed only this to himself at first, as he declares in the Preface to the first book, that he might send to him brief commentaries and a sort of memorial booklet, in which, with the opinion of the Valentinians explained in a few words, he might suggest certain arguments to overthrow it: that he, recognizing the most monstrous and lofty mysteries of the heretics, might make them manifest to all who were with him, and might charge them to keep themselves from the depth of senselessness and of that which is blasphemy against God. Hence, he later urges him to amplify, with the erudition he possessed, the seeds and beginnings he had received, and to explain more fully and assert more openly to those who were with him the things that had been said briefly and weakly. And at the end of the first book, dealing with the same heresy: We have endeavored, he says, to bring into the light the entire body of this poorly composed fox, and through you to make it manifest. Now there will be no need of many words to overthrow their doctrine, since it is made manifest to all... For there is also present [230, D] and the opportunity to suggest… that he, recognizing monstrous and most lofty heretical mysteries, might make them manifest to all who were with him, and might charge them to observe themselves from the depth of senselessness, and of that which is blasphemy against God. From here he later encourages him, that from the erudition which he possessed, he might amplify the seeds and beginnings received, and might explain more copiously those things which had been said in few and weak terms, and [might] assert them more openly to those who were with him. And at the end of the first book, acting concerning the same heresy: We have endeavored, he says, to bring into the middle the whole body of this poorly composed little fox, and through you to make it manifest. Now there will be no need of many words to overthrow their doctrine [which is] made manifest to all... For there is present also and

^Asome person rather rude in the Latin language and not of very keen judgment, who out of good Greek made bad Latin, and once or twice has fastened alien meanings upon his author. But whoever he may have been, it is established that the Latin version is most ancient, and was published either while Irenæus himself was still alive, or shortly after he had been taken from us. For that Tertullian, who wrote a little later, had it before his eyes while he labored on his book against the Valentinians, cannot be denied, unless by Dodwell alone. Whoever else compares the Latin Irenæus with Tertullian will immediately perceive that the latter so closely follows the footprints of the former, and so adheres to the very words, the figures of the words, and the order, that he seems to have proposed nothing to himself but to condense in fewer words—often retaining the same words—yet with the addition, according to his custom, of sarcastic quips which the other had set forth more at length. Thus Irenæus, book 1, chap. 11, n. 3, reporting the opinion of Epiphanes, writes: "There is indeed before all Proarche, proanennoetos, and inenarrable, and innominable, which I call monotete. With this monotete is a virtue, which I also call henotete. These henotes and monotes, although they are one, have sent forth, while having sent forth nothing, the principle of all things, noeton, and agenneton, and aoraton, which the discourse calls monad. With this monad is a virtue of the same substance as it, which I also call hen. These virtues, that is, monotes and henotes, and monas, and hen, have sent forth the remaining emissions of the Æons." Tertullian, however, chap. 37: "There is," he says, "before all things Proarche, ^Binexcogitable and inenarrable, which I call monotete. With this was another virtue, which I also call henotete. Monotes and henotes, that is, solitas and unitas [solitude and unity], while they were one, brought forth, not bringing forth, the intellectual beginning of all things, innascible, invisible, which the discourse called monad. With this is present a consubstantial virtue, which he calls unio [union]. These virtues, therefore, solitas, singularitas, unitas, unio, propagated the remaining prolations of the Æons." Where the same words (except that certain Greek terms are translated into Latin), the same barbarity of style appear as in the interpreter of Irenæus. Here n. 5: "Others again have named their first and archegonon octonary with these names: first Proarchen, then Anennoeton, thirdly Arrheton, and fourthly Aoraton. And from the first, indeed, Proarche, there has been sent forth in the first and fifth place Archen, from the second, Anennoeto, in the second and sixth place Acatalepton, and from the third, Arrheto, in the third and seventh place Anonomasion, and from Aorato, in the fourth and eighth place Agenneton." Tertullian, chap. 25, in as many words: "For first they constitute Proarchen, secondly Anennoeton, thirdly Arrheton, fourthly Aoraton. From Proarche, therefore, there proceeded in the first and fifth ^C place Archen; from Anennoeto, in the second and sixth place Acatalepton; from Arretho, in the third and seventh place Anonomaston; from the Invisible, in the fourth and eighth place Agenneton." Certainly, if he had copied immediately from the Greek...

he would have translated these many names; and it could not have happened by mere chance and accident that his naming agreed with the interpreter of Irenaeus. ^B In chapter 12, n. 3, he explains the hypothesis of the Colorbasians thus: "When the Forefather (Propator) thought to emit something, he was called Father; but when the things he emitted were true, this was called Alethia (Truth). Therefore, when he wished to manifest himself, this was called Anthropos (Man). Moreover, the things he had forethought, after he emitted them, this was called Ecclesia (Church). Anthropos spoke Logos (Word), this is the firstborn Son. Zoe follows Logos, and thus the first Ogdoad is complete." In chapter 36, he says: "When, they say, he thought to bring forth, this was called Father. When he brought forth, because he brought forth true things, this was called Veritas (Truth). When he wished to prove himself, this was called Homo (Man). But the things he had forethought, when he brought them forth, then it was called Ecclesia. Homo sounded the Sermo (Word), and this is the firstborn Son, and to the Sermo was added Vita (Life); and the first Ogdoad was concluded." Many other similar things occur throughout Tertullian. But that which finally shows that he took what he relates not from the Greek, but from the interpreter of Irenaeus, is that where the interpreter slipped, wrongly rendering the Greek, Tertullian also slipped. The former, as I have already said, thinking the name *Epiphanes* to be an appellative, translated it entirely wrongly as "famous." Tertullian, following the one erring in a similar way, wrote "more illustrious." In chapter 2, n. 3, Irenaeus, recounting the perturbation of Sophia, writes that when she had brought forth an unformed fetus, she was "first indeed saddened because of the inconsummation of the generation, then afterwards, ^C *phobethenai me kai auto telos sche*,"—at least, so the interpreter reads; for he translated, "to have feared lest this itself should have an end," whereas *telos* should have been translated as "perfection," not "end," as we have said in our notes to this passage. Nor did Tertullian do better in chapter 10: "first indeed to be saddened on account of the inconsummation of the generation, and lastly to fear lest an end should also follow." Where he similarly translated *to ateles tes genneseos* as "inconsummation of the generation"; and, leaving aside the Greek Irenaeus, following the Latin interpreter, he wrote, "lest an end should also follow." In the same chapter, n. 4, Irenaeus reports that the Father through Monogenes emitted Horos in his image, *asuygon, athelunton*, where the interpreter, reading wrongly *asuzogo, athelunto*, or, as others wish, *arrhenothelei*, translated it wrongly as "without spouse male-female." The same fault is held by Tertullian in the cited chapter: "The Father through Monogenes Nun, whom we said above was Horos, brings forth into this in his image female-male." Indeed, both refer that to the image, which right reason demonstrates can apply only to Horos. Tertullian would not have sustained this blame if he had consulted the Greek text here rather than the interpreter. A little later, when Irenaeus had said that Sophia was cleansed and confirmed by Horos, and restored to her conjugation, he adds: "For having been separated from her, with the appendix of passion, she herself indeed remained within the Pleroma; but the ^D *enthymesin autes sun to pathei hypo tou Horou a-pothisthai kai apostaurothenai*. Which the interpreter rendered thus: "For having been separated by intention from her, with the appendix of passion, she herself indeed remained within the Pleroma; but her concupiscence with passion separated by Horos, and crucified, and made outside him, etc.," where he sins in two ways: first, that he translated *sun to epiginomeno pathei* as "with the appendix of passion"; it should have been translated, "with the passion which had supervened." Second, that he translated *apostaurothenai* as "crucified"; here it signifies as if surrounded by a wall and separated from the Pleroma. Tertullian sins altogether in the same way, writing: "Her Enthymesis and that appendix of passion relegated by Horos and crucified." These and many other things, which I have observed time and again in the notes, prove invincibly, if I am not mistaken, that Tertullian, although he read the Greek Irenaeus (which I do not deny), yet often departed from him, so that he would follow the footprints of the Latin interpreter, and one who was indeed sometimes erroneous.

54. It seems that Cyprian also had before his eyes the same Latin translation, but already vicious, when, in epist. 74 (edit. Oxon.) to Pompeius, he writes concerning Cerdon and Marcion: "Whose (Marcion's) master Cerdon came to Rome under Bishop Hyginus, who was the ninth in the City; whom Marcion followed, and with additions to the crime, began to blaspheme more impudently than others and more abruptly against God the Father Creator." These things are found in almost the same words in lib. 1, c. 27, n. 1 and 2, except that Cyprian, having used a corrupted codex, read "ninth" instead of "eighth." But that Cyprian was learned in Greek does not appear from any argument: so much so that it is more probable that he read the Latin interpreter, just as his master Tertullian had read him. Augustine also read him: for he drew two testimonies from him, and cited them against Julian the Pelagian, lib. 1, c. 3 and 7, which even now exist in almost the same words in the Latin Irenaeus, lib. iv, cap. 2, n. 7, and lib. v, c. 19, n. 1. You will find few among the Latins thereafter, even from among those who studiously collected the testimonies of the ancient Fathers,, weaving together, as it were, "centones" and "catenas," as they call them, who quoted Irenaeus. The scarcity of Latin copies, already by the seventh or the end of the sixth century, was such that when Ætherius the bishop of Lyons could not obtain any among the Lyons (inhabitants) themselves, he went to Gregory the Great, so that he might receive from him the deeds or writings of the blessed Irenaeus. To whom Gregory responds: "The deeds or writings of the blessed Irenaeus we have searched for diligently for a long time now; but until now nothing could be found from them." And the cause of such a great scarcity seems to be that, with the heresies already extinguished that had been refuted by Irenaeus, and others emerging daily, which had nothing in common with those ancient ones; and with the barbarity of the style, and the difficulty of the argument, both readers and copyists were deterred—the former from taking them up, the latter from transcribing them—so that the use of an excellent work had almost perished. Yet some copies always remained; but which...

in the age of Gregory the Great, were hidden away in the shelves of libraries, and only in these most recent centuries, by the grace of God, were brought forth and beheld the new light. But the crudity of style and the difficulty of the subject matter, mentioned as I said, caused them not to reach us in a very sound state, as scribes often understood little of what they were writing. Such too was the rashness of certain bold individuals that, by cutting off the final chapters of the fifth book, in which the error of the Millenarians is asserted, they published a mutilated version: so that it is possible to find very few manuscript codices in which it appears entire, as I have said in the Preface. Nay, the most learned Grabe believes, in his Prolegomena to Irenaeus, sect. II, § 6, that book five is still mutilated at the end by a great part. He thinks he can prove this from the fact that Irenaeus, both at the end of book four and in the Preface to book five, promises that he will attempt to make demonstrations from the remaining teachings of the Lord and from the apostolic epistles, namely that the Father, the maker of this world, is one and the same, He who spoke to Abraham, who made the Law, who sent the prophets, who sent His Son, bestowing salvation upon His own handiwork, which is the substance of the flesh. ^C But, says Grabe, while Irenaeus had proved the resurrection of the flesh with many arguments, and had also finally undertaken, from the words of Christ brought forth without the shroud of parables, the demonstration concerning the one God, the creator of the world, and the Father of our Savior himself, in chapter 21; because he immediately wandered far from there, the remaining demonstrations of one and the same God in the Old and New Testament, sought from the words of Christ and the writings of the apostle Paul, perished; because copyists in a later age, loathing the doctrine of the millennial reign, did not wish to transcribe further, and therefore broke off the thread. So he says. But one is struck with wonder that, after that loathed doctrine of the millennial reign had been described, and Irenaeus’s lengthy argumentation on that subject, which already seemed absolute, had been finished, a preposterous scruple should suddenly seize all the copyists, such that they did not wish to transcribe further what appeared to pertain nothing or little to that doctrine. Certainly, the most learned man did not heed that Irenaeus's goal in this fifth book was not, and could not have been, to demonstrate generally from the words of Christ and the writings of the apostle Paul that the Creator of the world is one God, and the same as the Father of our Savior, lest he be repeating what had been done in the previous books. He declares this himself at the end of book IV: For, he says, while many of the Lord's discourses announce one and the same Father, the maker of this world; it was incumbent upon us, for the sake of those who are held in many errors, to refute them through many arguments, if by any means they could, being refuted by many, be converted to the truth and be saved. What, therefore, remained to be done? These two things: 1st, after the Lord's discourses, to add also Paul's doctrine, and to examine his sentiment, and to expound the Apostle, and to explain whatever interpretations the heretics—who do not understand at all what was said by Paul—received differently, and to show the madness of their lack of sense: and from the same Paul, from whom they draw questions for us, to manifest them to be indeed liars, and that the Apostle was a herald of truth, and that he taught all things consonant with the proclamation of truth, that God the Father is one, He who spoke to Abraham, who made the Law, who sent the prophets, who in the latest times sent His Son and bestows salvation upon His own handiwork, which is the substance of the flesh. Therefore, this was what Irenaeus first proposed to himself: to refute the perverse explanations which the heretics attached to the words of the Apostle: and not only this, but also to show that the Apostle taught—not, indeed, as Grabe wrongly surmised, that the Father who spoke to Abraham, etc., is one God, for that he had already abundantly accomplished in the third book, where, as he says himself in the Preface to book five, the doctrine of the apostles had been explained; but that one and the same God the Father, He who had already been demonstrated to have spoken to Abraham and to have made the Law, had sent His Son in the latest times, that He might bestow salvation upon His own handiwork, which is the substance of the flesh. For this subject, as he had not yet sufficiently discoursed upon it, he had reserved to be handled more fully in book five. And he handled it extensively from the beginning up to chapter 17. The second thing that remained for Irenaeus to do was to arrange the remaining discourses of the Lord, which indeed He taught not through parables, but simply in the very wording concerning the Father. This he accomplished from chapter 17 up to 25, from which point he begins to discourse upon the Antichrist, then upon the millennial reign of Christ, until the end of the book. Therefore, since Irenaeus has achieved his goal and liberated the faith, Grabe contends in vain that the fifth book is in large part mutilated.

55. Regarding the Latin manuscripts of Irenaeus that survive, I have already discoursed in the Preface. There is nothing I can say about the Greek ones; for none, at least that are known, survive today. Feuardentius, in the Commonition to the readers prefixed to his edition, testifies that some pious and learned men have said that they read a Greek exemplar in the Venetian library; others also claim to have seen it in the Vatican; which nevertheless, he adds, were sought there afterward in vain. It is certain that no Greek manuscript codex of Irenaeus exists in the Vatican library, indeed not even a Latin one any longer. But if by chance one were in Venice, which I do not think, it would lie forever buried in its own dust. For the codices of that library are not permitted to see the light. Thus it has come to pass that that archetypal Greek text, far more elegant and held in greater value by the ancients than the Latin, was transcribed, worn, and cited by Greeks far more often, longer, and by more people, than the Latin interpretation ever was by the Latins—which in the age of Gregory the Great was so rare that no codices of it could be found, yet it survived and remains while the other perished. For not only in the age of Gregory, but long after, frequent codices of that Greek text existed, as is evident from Germanus of Constantinople, Photius, John of Damascus, and many others, who cited it: although, however, I do not think that they all...

^A Greek fragments of Irenaeus, which are read as inserted into the Claromontane manuscript of John of Damascus, were transcribed by John of Damascus himself. They seem to have been collected by a more recent Greek. But he who adorned the new edition of the works of St. John of Damascus, a man of singular erudition and no less conspicuous for his humanity, the Revered Father Michael Lequien, of the Order of Preachers, discourses on this more fully in volume II of that same edition. There are those who think, not without probability, that beyond the Latin interpretation of Irenaeus' five books, another Syriac one existed. For Ephrem the Deacon of Edessa, who did not know Greek, transcribed an entire passage from Book I, ch. 8, n. 1, and inserted it into chapter 8 of his *Treatise on Virtue*; which treatise is commonly ascribed to him, nor is there anything to contradict that it should be ascribed to him.

56. It was, indeed, common to both texts, the Greek and the Latin, that it appeared divided into five books, but without any chapters or chapter arguments. Irenaeus himself indicates the division into five books at the end and beginning of each book, where, in addition, having briefly repeated those things which he had treated in the preceding book, he lucidly and briefly opens up the subject matter of the following one. But thereafter the thread of the discourse proceeds continuously, and the context is such that no traces of any partition at all reveal themselves, no transitions, or anything else which might prove the end and beginning of a single chapter, or an interrupted style. Hence, of the ancients who quoted Irenaeus—Eusebius, Epiphanius, Theodoret, Augustine, and others—they often specify the book, but never the chapter or any other type of division. Hence also in all Latin manuscript codices, the fifth book proceeds with a continuous and uninterrupted style from beginning to end, and no chapters or chapter arguments appear. [CIV] Gallasius and Feuardentius were the first of all to cut this into chapters, although not in the same way, prefixing an argument to each chapter. For previously Erasmus and Grynaeus had edited this book as the manuscript codices presented it. Hence, finally, the manuscript codices do not agree with each other in the other books either, especially in the second, in which one division after another occurs; in these, there are longer chapters, in those, shorter; in these, a larger number of chapters, in those, a smaller. Even the division which more recent Greeks introduced into their own codices differed far from the Latin; for their chapters were more minute than those of the latter, as the most learned Grabe skillfully infers from the commentary of Procopius of Gaza on chapter III of Genesis, where he quotes those things which Irenaeus teaches in Book II, ch. 23 (alias 38), n. 5, regarding the leather garment of Adam, as if from chapters 59 and 65. From all of which it is concluded that Irenaeus had not even thought of dividing the text into certain chapters, nor indeed had his ancient interpreter. The authors of this division were some more recent persons, whether scribes or anyone else; but they were so unskilled and destitute of judgment that, mixing everything up and down, and rashly and wrongly breaking the thread of the discourse, they generally cut it where ^B they ought to have joined it to what followed, and where the words were scarcely to be distinguished from the preceding ones by a colon. In a word, they miserably lacerated the text, rather than divided it. Proof of this can be found in all the editions of Irenaeus that have been produced until now. They were fashioned with the same maturity of judgment and diligence as the arguments which are found prefixed to each of the chapters of the first four books. They are indeed for the most part founded on the words of the old interpreter, yet they are not rarely newly fabricated, as if there had been a contest over the barbarism of the language; but they are so insipidly and ineptly disposed that they very often present to the readers either nothing less than the goal and purpose of the subject chapter, or they present it wrongly, or only a very slight particle of it, and that not the most important. I would not deny that they are very ancient, as they occur in all the oldest manuscript codices, although arranged in one way or another. But however ancient they may be, since it is certain that Irenaeus himself is not the author of them, and that they are rather a trouble than a help to readers, they are to be regarded no otherwise than as the work of some unskilled person wrongly added to that of Irenaeus.

57. Learned men have long ago judged that the mistake regarding the division and the still more inept arguments should be corrected. John Jacob Grynaeus had already provided for the latter in his edition of Irenaeus; for, having for the most part removed the old ones, he added new and more suitable *periochae* (summaries) of the chapters. The plan displeased Feuardentius, for he restored the old summaries; on that account, I think, because they were ancient: as if antiquity added authority and value to absurd things. It also displeased Grabe, who openly declares that it was poorly done by Grynaeus. But was it done better by Grabe himself? Let the judgment rest with the readers. For he restored the old arguments in such a way that, spurning the authority of the codices—on which alone he thought they should be retained—he arranged and transposed them according to his own whim, sometimes having dissected one and the same [argument] into many parts, sometimes having combined many into one. From which it has happened that at times the same argument, at times none at all, and at times one that fits nothing or very little, is prefixed to many chapters. Perhaps he would have extricated himself more safely from all these inconveniences who, recalling the matter to Irenaeus' own intent, would have published his text distinguished by no chapters or arguments. And this was the opinion of some learned men, whom we consulted, but only a few. Others, however, and these by far the majority, thought otherwise; and their judgment prevailed, relying especially on this reasoning, that a reader, already accustomed to division and arguments, can derive no small utility from them, if only they are made correctly. Wherefore, with a new and more convenient institution of chapter division, we have prefixed new arguments to each one of them, by which the scope and purpose of each is outlined for the eyes of the reader, as we have already said in the Preface.

ARTICLE III. ON OTHER WRITINGS OF IRENAEUS.

58. Irenaeus illustrated the Christian and Catholic faith through many other excellent works, but because of the ravages of time, these have perished, and only those fragments remain which ancient Fathers preserved in their own writings. He wrote a letter against Florinus, a remarkable fragment of which Eusebius transcribed ^A and which we ourselves have published at the end of this work. Florinus, as Irenaeus testifies, while living in splendor at the imperial court, had held some office in lower Asia at the time when Polycarp was flourishing there with the reputation of sanctity and learning. Moved by the fame of such a man, he had entrusted himself to his instruction, and had done everything to prove himself worthy of it. Later, having been made a presbyter of the Roman Church and then having lapsed into error—soliciting the faith of others in order to make them guilty of that same error—he was removed from his rank. Irenaeus ^B, grieving for the fall of a fellow-student whom he had seen and known under Polycarp, and desiring to call him back from his error, wrote a letter against him On the Monarchy, or that God is not the creator of evils. "For he seemed," adds Eusebius, "to be defending this opinion." H. Valesius explains this as if Florinus, adhering to the dogmas of Marcion and Cerdo, had introduced two principles, one the author of good things, the other of evil. But Irenaeus objects, writing that the dogmas of Florinus were such that not even heretics placed outside the Church had ever dared to assert them. ^C The error of Florinus was, therefore, graver than that of Cerdo and Marcion; and for that reason, he seems to have been situated in this: that he did not, like them, invent a double God, one the author of good and one of evil, but rather cast all evils and sins upon one and the same God as their cause: something which, in truth, no heretic had hitherto dared to put forward. Whence, although he might contend with the Catholics against the Marcionites for the monarchy, or the unity of principle, he nonetheless violated it worse than they did, while contaminating it with all evils. Irenaeus, however, contended ^D as truly as he did piously that the monarchy must be retained, yet not stained by the blemish of evils. And he sets before his eyes how alien he had been from the pestiferous doctrine of Florinus, and how he had abhorred the wicked dogma, as even Polycarp, whom he had long before heard as his teacher, had done: so that he might more effectively lead one deviating back to the path of Catholic truth by the memory of so great a teacher. Philastrius mentions certain "Florian" heretics, but identifies them as a sprout of the Carpocratians. Gennadius, however, blames Florinus for believing that the flesh was the cause of evil. These views, if both understood our Florinus, do not entirely agree with Eusebius and Irenaeus, whose testimony carries more weight. Whatever the case, Florinus, defeated by the arguments and reasonings of Irenaeus, yet not convinced, and fearing lest he make God Himself the author of evil, and on the other hand, failing in the monarchy which he had hitherto defended, introduced a double God with Cerdo and Marcion. Embracing, as it seemed to him, a middle ground between both extremes, he adopted the opinion of Valentinus, preferring to be insane with him rather than to be wise with the Catholics. Wherefore Irenaeus, always solicitous for his salvation and striving to rescue him from that new abyss into which he had headlong cast himself, wrote the book On the Ogdoad, or, as Jerome has it in his Catalog, On the Eighth, of which Eusebius reports only the end. I wish at least that he had exhibited the subject matter of that small work, or, as he calls it, his *spoudasma*. It seems to have been intended to overthrow, in a short writing and with selected arguments, the famous ogdoad of the Valentinians—that original octonary of Aeons, the root of all others—which he had already attacked with a more extensive style, or was then attacking in that longer work titled On the Detection and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So-Called. For it is not clear to me whether this work had already been brought to completion. Theodoret indeed writes (though he does not affirm it, saying "they report") that Irenaeus, lamenting the malady of Florinus, wrote against Valentinus. But it is uncertain whether he meant the five books of the Detection and Overthrow or that brief little work On the Ogdoad. For both seem to have been written against Valentinus.

59. Irenaeus wrote another letter against Blastus, which he titled On Schism. This man, also a presbyter of the Roman Church, had been involved in a fall similar to that of Florinus—not, as Valesius erroneously translates, "implicated in a similar error with Florinus," but that he had received similar judgment of deposition with him. To both indeed this was common: that they drew many away from the bosom of the Church, leading them into their own opinion, and adulterated the sincere law of the Church. But furthermore, the *heteros*—the other, namely Florinus, not both, as Valesius here also incorrectly rendered—labored to introduce a new doctrine separately against the truth of the faith. That both had fallen into the heresy of Valentinus...

^A can be said by none of the ancients; it is permitted to the most sagacious Dodwell, however, to say so, who, according to his custom, disputes at length concerning these matters, sparing neither words nor conjecture. But these are Dodwellian conjectures; and he who reads them wonders both that the dissertator has said so much to say nothing, and that the reader has read so much to learn nothing. Irenæus did promise, and not once, that he would specifically refute Marcion, and Eusebius mentions this promise of his. But that the faith was delivered by Irenæus is sufficiently signified by this same Eusebius, when he lists him among those who refuted Marcion with excellent works.

Maximus the Abbot and Confessor cites certain "Sermons on the Faith" by Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, to Demetrius, the Deacon of Vienne, the beginning and some of the sentiments of which he also cites in Greek. A further fragment from the sermon to Demetrius was published by Feuardent; but this in Latin only, which he indeed says he received from N. Faber; but whence the latter received it, he omitted to say. If the Greek were present, it might perhaps appear in a more amended state. But since sermons of this kind were unknown to Eusebius and Jerome, it is doubtful whether they are genuine offspring of Irenæus. ^B I think one must think slightly otherwise concerning those things which Ecumenius attributes to Irenæus in his *Commentary on the First Epistle of Peter*, chapter iii. I would not doubt that they are drawn from the famous letter of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, which I have said it is highly probable was written by Irenæus himself, and this passage of Ecumenius confirms it. For here he says that he has taken these things from that which Irenæus wrote "On Sanctus and Blandina"; not, indeed, word for word, but making a summary of the words: "As it is possible to set forth these things briefly." And in truth, the things which Ecumenius recites there concerning Sanctus and Blandina square sufficiently with those things which are related in the cited epistle of the Lyons martyrs, so that they do not appear to have been taken from elsewhere.

60. Concerning other letters which Irenæus wrote at that time to Pope Victor and to others regarding the feast of Easter, we have discussed in his *Life*. From one of these letters, it seems, is drawn that which the author of the *Questions and Answers to the Orthodox*, among the works of Justin, cites from Irenæus (Quest. 115): that one should not bend the knee, neither on the Lord's Day, nor in those 50 days which follow Easter. ^C Eusebius mentions that the same Irenæus published "A most concise and most necessary discourse, inscribed *On Knowledge*," or rather a book, or Sermon, or Oration against the Greeks, or, as others translate, "Against the Gentiles." Jerome wrongly grasped the meaning of this, and gave others the opportunity to grasp it wrongly, when he says in his *Catalogue* that one short volume was written by Irenæus against the Gentiles, and another *On Discipline*, as if the little work against the Gentiles had been something different from his *On Discipline* or *Knowledge*. Both mention another of Irenæus's sermons, addressed to his brother Marcianus, which contained a demonstration of the apostolic preaching, and a book of *Varied Disputations*, or, as Jerome translates, *Varied Tractates*, in which he made mention of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Wisdom of Solomon, and brought forward certain sentiments from those books. But what the scope or the design of the author was in all these little works or books cannot be said by the ancients.

61. Jerome reports in his *Catalogue* that Irenæus concerned himself with John's Apocalypse: "which," he says, "Justin Martyr and Irenæus interpret." Yet from this I do not think it can be gathered that entire commentaries on the Apocalypse were published by Irenæus; nor does that seem to have been Jerome's meaning. Jerome was looking back to the various places in the Apocalypse which Irenæus explains in his five books, and especially in the fifth, towards the end of which, discussing the millenary reign of Christ and the Antichrist, he interprets many testimonies of this sacred book and adapts them to his design. Some, by the testimony of Photius, attributed to Irenæus a book which has the title, *On the Universe*, or *On the Substance of the World*. But it is more probable that it is the work of Caius, a Roman presbyter and disciple of Irenæus. ^D Concerning the other fragments of Irenæus which we have published at the end, we have spoken in their proper place. These are the things which we had to say concerning the writings of such a great man. Now, the discourse must be directed toward the various chapters of his doctrine.

THIRD DISSERTATION. ON THE DOCTRINE OF IRENAEUS.

^A 1. It is the prerogative of the supreme Divinity alone to be neither deceived nor capable of deceiving: the lot and condition of all mortals, unless by the singular favor of God granted to sacred writers alone, is such that error sometimes leads them astray from the truth. Therefore, no work is so polished and perfect in all its parts that it is not sprinkled with some blemishes—more or fewer, greater or lesser—according to the greater or lesser diligence and erudition of the writer. Neither of these was lacking to Irenaeus; yet he did not always guard himself so well as never to stumble, though it was usually only slightly. But where he stumbled somewhat more seriously, the error is the more to be pardoned, in that, as certain heads of Christian doctrine had not yet been sufficiently explored and brought to light, it could hardly happen that preconceived and common opinions of earlier centuries would not cast clouds even over attentive minds. But as Irenaeus is not to be excused where he has slipped, so neither is he to be rashly blamed where there is no fault, nor should dogmas ^B which he rejects be attributed to him. For there are men to whom all the statements of authors seem to require excuse; and there are others who, with hostile tooth, carp at whatever they do not understand; and finally there are others who, when reading the ancient Fathers of the Church, think they see what they desire to see, so that they may have companions in error. That we may not strike upon the same rocks, it has seemed best to run through, as briefly as possible, each of the principal heads of the doctrine of Irenaeus; and if he has slipped in anything, to note it; but if anything foreign is attributed to him, to repel it.

2. Photius observes that in some of Irenaeus's writings, the certain truth of ecclesiastical dogmas is darkened by spurious arguments. At least, this is the interpretation of the Greek: *“Even if in some of their (writings and letters) the precision of the truth regarding ecclesiastical dogmas is counterfeited by spurious arguments.”* Whether Photius had his finger on the writings and the specific passages of Irenaeus is uncertain. But if that is the sense of the words of Photius, that sometimes weak arguments are used by Irenaeus to prove certain truths of the faith, this is a very light sort of fault, common to almost all writers, and one which anyone can the more difficultly avoid the more studiously he attacks his adversaries and strives to overwhelm them with arguments of every kind. For what author is so strong that all the arguments by which he refutes his adversaries are so many demonstrations? It can hardly happen that, especially if there are many arguments on one and the same matter, some are not more effective than others ^C and appear weaker. Furthermore, if we apply judgment as to the weight and efficacy of any arguments, the rule of equity demands that we attend to that at which the author was primarily aiming. For if many of Irenaeus's reasonings are viewed precisely in themselves and apart from the author's purpose, they will appear weak; but it is otherwise if his intent is taken into account. Because there were no supports for the most vain dogmas of the heretics in the plain words of the Scriptures, they endeavored to procure for themselves other supports in parables and allegories, which they interpreted according to their own whim. Irenaeus rightly contends that these are empty and futile. For, he says, parables must not be adapted to ambiguous things. For it is most absurd to link things that are not clearly spoken, nor placed before the eyes, to the solutions of parables which everyone invents as he pleases. But that the heretics might not glory in this, however weak, support, and trick the unlearned, he undertakes specifically in his fourth book to prove that their desperate cause is not helped by parables, and that if this kind of argument has any force, it entirely redounds to the ruin of their perverse dogmas. Whoever, therefore, complains that arguments are sometimes brought by Irenaeus from parables and allegories to prove truths of the faith which seem to have little strength, let him remember that the holy doctor was not unaware of what and how much such arguments were worth when viewed in themselves, yet he used them by his own right, because those whom he was refuting had been the first to give the example of using them. Whence the arguments were as if directed *ad hominem*, and were taken from the principles and confessions of the adversaries, which derived their efficacy from them alone. For from the fact that they used parables and allegories against the Catholics, they were the less able to decline the weight of the arguments drawn from them, as they themselves had been the first to judge that such methods were to be used to settle the dispute. If Gallasius had noticed this, he would have refrained from the foolish and inept censure with which he vexes Irenaeus, because in this parable of Christ: *Therefore every scribe learned in the kingdom of heaven is like a man that is a householder* [Matthew XIII, 52] *who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old*, he uses it to prove that there is one and the same God who is the author of both Testaments. For, to say nothing of the fact that Chrysostom, Theophylact, Hilary, Jerome, and many others have followed the exposition of Irenaeus, as Feuardentius correctly notes; even if such an argument might not have been valid against other heretics, it was especially valid against the Valentinians, ^D

who believed that effectiveness could be sought from parables: and therefore, to refute them, it was sufficient for the parable to be explained in a sense that did not conflict with the words and teaching of Christ. Irenaeus well knew that there were clearer sayings of Christ from which arguments could be drawn; but he reserved these for the fifth book, as he himself confesses at the beginning of that book and at the end of the fourth. I would wish the same to be said of the various combinations of numbers, by which our author sometimes seems to be taken more than is reasonable. A later age did indeed disdain such subtleties; but sound reason does not allow our own to measure the things which Irenaeus wrote and his customs by our own. This allegorical kind of philosophizing, accepted from the Pythagoreans and Platonists, was held in the highest esteem among the pagans, and indeed even among the Jews themselves: it was necessary for the ancient Fathers to conform themselves to this, both to win over proud spirits more easily, once they were persuaded that the Christian religion did not shrink from the correct method of philosophizing; and to pierce them with their own weapons, whenever the occasion should arise. And this was, indeed, used by Irenaeus with all the more right, in that the Gnostics, as I have shown elsewhere, were imbued with the principles of the Pythagoreans and Platonists, set great store by numbers, and constructed no small stronghold for their cause in their various combinations. Therefore, he composes himself to their philosophemes ^A with the intention of turning back upon their own heads that which they supposed could be drawn from the parables. Wherefore, one must always have before one's eyes the age of the proponent, the aim, the adversaries, and the hypothesis of the disputants, so that what and how much such arguments are worth may be weighed in an even balance: and whoever pays regard to these with an equitable mind will not doubt that the holy Fathers did what the right reason of their times and the circumstances of their disputes demanded of them. But how little Irenaeus trusted in such reasonings and combinations of numbers is clearly evident from what he discusses in Book II, chapters 25 and 26. For there he proves expressly that the works of God, divine matters, reason, and the arguments of truth should not be measured by numbers; but rather that numbers should be measured by divine matters, reason, and the arguments of truth; and that that curious investigation of numbers, and the arguments drawn from them, are weak and for the most part vain and dangerous. I would not, however, deny what has been said so far, that some spurious reasonings occur in Irenaeus, by which the truth of ecclesiastical dogmas is obscured rather than illustrated; such as those which he draws from the age of Christ and the millenarian kingdom; but with these and a few other exceptions, as for all the rest, if they are examined in the scales of equity and measured by the author’s aim and intention, their value and robustness will be established. But let us now see what and how much the Catholic faith can be helped by his doctrine.

ARTICLE FIRST. On the divinity, canon, and translations of the sacred Scriptures.

3. That the sacred Scriptures have God himself as their author, and that they were written forth at the inspiration of his Spirit, Irenaeus ^B so openly and frequently confesses that to observe this is almost like wasting one's time. The Scriptures, he says, are perfect, as having been spoken by the Word of God and his Spirit. And lest I stay longer than is necessary on so manifest a matter, Irenaeus is entirely concerned in the third and fourth books to prove that one and the same God and Father is the author of both Testaments, namely the New and the Old; and that it was he, and no other, who, through his own Word and Spirit, wrote down all those things which the Church has brought into the Canon, through the agency of the sacred writers, both the prophets, and the apostles and evangelists.

4. But how broadly the sacred Canon extended for Irenaeus, and which books he embraced, is not quite so easy to say. It is indeed certain that the following books of the Old Testament are acknowledged by the holy Doctor as sacred and canonical ^C and as having authority, being cited by him as from books of divine authority: the Pentateuch of Moses, Joshua, Judges; the four books of Kings; the Psalms, the Proverbs of Solomon; the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Jonah, Micah, Habakkuk, Zechariah, and Malachi. The index of the passages of holy Scripture which we have compiled at the end of this work demonstrates what testimonies he brings forth from these books. He cites this one, once as from Isaiah, but many times as from the prophecy of Jeremiah: And the Lord holy one of Israel remembered his dead, who slept in the earth of burial: and he descended to them to preach salvation, which is from him, that he might save them. He also cites this, as if from Jeremiah, complaining furthermore that the Jews, through their hatred of the Christians, had erased this opinion and many others from the sacred Bibles. ^D From which it is gathered...

that at that time it existed in certain copies of the Christian Bibles, but in very few; for one can scarcely find others, besides Justin and Irenaeus, by whom it is cited. Now it appears nowhere in the sacred books.

That Irenaeus counted Jeremiah’s Threni, or Lamentations, among the canonical Scriptures cannot be doubted. For, in order to prove from these very Scriptures that Christ is the Son of God, and salvation, and the Saviour, and truly to be called and to be "salutary," he brings forward these words from Lam. iv, 20: *The spirit of our countenance, Christ the Lord*, among other things taken from the sacred books, though without naming the book from which they are sought, but indicating it only generally, as he is often wont, he says it is Scripture, with this word: For, he says, *The spirit of our countenance, Christ the Lord.*

The same must be said of the book of Baruch, which he praises as prophetic and sacred, though not under the name of Baruch, but either under the general name of ^B the prophet or under that of Jeremiah. In Book IV, chap. 29, n. 4, proving that there is one God, who by Word and Wisdom made and fitted all things, who according to his magnitude indeed is unknown to all who were made by him, but according to his love is known always through him by whom he established all things—namely, through his Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, who in the last times was made man among men, that he might join the end to the beginning, that is, man to God—he says: “And for this reason the prophets, receiving the prophetic charisma from the same Word, preached his advent according to the flesh, through which [CVIII] the commixture and communion of God and man according to the pleasure of the Father was made, from the beginning the Word of God announcing that God would be seen by men and would converse with them upon the earth, etc.” With these last words he manifestly alludes to those in Baruch III, 38: *Afterwards he was seen on earth, and conversed with men.* But in Book V, chap. 35, n. 1, he clearly and in the very words refers to the end of the fourth chapter and the whole fifth chapter ^C of the same Baruch, as if from the prophet Jeremiah: “Signified,” he says, “the prophet Jeremiah, ‘Look round about,’ saying, ‘towards the east of Jerusalem, and behold the joy,’ etc.” From this citation of the books of Baruch by Irenaeus and other Fathers, Feuardentius in his notes on this passage of Irenaeus rightly collects its canonical authority altogether.

Yet see, Grabe rises up against Feuardentius in his notes, and pronounces him to be gravely hallucinating. “For who knows not,” he says, “that apocryphal writings are frequently alleged by the Fathers?” And content with this maxim he trusts that his adversary will be laid prostrate. Therefore, because apocryphal writings are occasionally alleged by the Fathers, must it be immediately pronounced that he who collects from their citation that some book is canonical is hallucinating? If that were so, let some impious person now appear against Grabe who would strike from the whitelist of the Scriptures some one of the four Gospels, or some of the Epistles of Paul or of other apostles; by what argument will this most illustrious man refute him? Or will he think that he can prove by the continuous citation of Fathers and Councils that these sacred ^D writings have always been held by all churches, or by the majority, as canonical? To others, indeed, the argument is invincible, but to Grabe it is utterly weak and useless. For the impious man will straightway counter, and by this single Grabean response—that apocryphal writings are frequently alleged by the Fathers—he will easily break the whole force of the argument and reduce Grabe himself to a standstill. It does not follow, therefore, from the fact that some Fathers have occasionally alleged apocryphal writings, that their credit is to be immediately disparaged when they cite some book as canonical. If indeed so many and such great men had cited some apocryphal writing as long and in as continuous a series as they allege a canonical book, the Grabean difficulty might perhaps press hard. But it is very far from the case that the moments on either side are equal. Those who cited an apocryphal book as sacred are few, nor did their opinion prevail; nay rather, with the majority of the churches prevailing, it became obsolete in the passage of time. On the contrary, when some book which the Church subsequently acknowledged as sacred was alleged by the Fathers, although at the beginning many doubted because the apostolic tradition concerning the matter was a little obscure; yet that, in the passage of time, by a more accurate examination of the matter, and by consulting those churches in which there was a most well-known and continuous succession of bishops from the apostles, having been disclosed, and the truth at length explored to the bottom, the entire Church added its vote to the ancients. So immense and so open a distinction Grabe could easily have perceived, had not the anticipated opinions of the Calvinists and Lutherans blinded him. But of his vain little objection, so often crushed by Catholics, enough has been said. That much, to return to Irenaeus, I might add: if he praised the prophecy of Baruch under the name of Jeremiah, he did not do so alone. For indeed in the same manner did Clement of Alexandria allege it, lib. I Pædag., c. 2, and lib. II, c. 3; Cyprian, lib. II Testimon. ad Quirin. and in lib. De oratione Domin.; Eusebius, in the books De demonst. evang.; Basil, lib. IV cont. Eunom., and others both Greek and Latin. The reason is known to all, because Baruch was certainly the disciple of Jeremiah, and his prophecy was joined to the book of his master.

5. Of the books of Tobias, Judith, Esther, Paralipomenon, Ecclesiastes, Canticle of Canticles, Ecclesiasticus, Job, Abdias, Nahum, Sophonias, Aggeus, and the Machabees, nowhere, unless my memory fails me, does mention occur in the books of Irenaeus that are extant. However, that Tobias even then held a place among the prophets in many churches by the same right as Moses, Josue, Amos, Habacuc, Joel, Zacharias, Isaias, Ezechiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, Aggeus, Micheas, Nahum, Esdras, and Sophonias, seems to be able to be collected from this, that Irenaeus, in Book I, chapter 30, describing the ravings of the Sethians and Ophites, says in n. 10 that they had thus divided the prophets among the seven Angels, the rulers of the world, who would broadcast predictions in their name and by their inspiration, so that they ascribed Tobias and Aggeus to their Elozi. The histories of Susanna and Bel,

as are referred to in Daniel, chapters XIII and XIV, are read by Irenaeus not only as described in his own copies of the Bible, but he recognizes them as certain, indubitable, sacred, and canonical, and as written by the prophet Daniel; and he cites them in Book IV, ch. 5, n. 2, and ch. 26, n. 3. Eusebius ^A observes that Irenaeus, in the little book he wrote entitled *On Divers Discourses*, made mention of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Wisdom of Solomon. And acting earlier regarding the books *Against Heresies*, he says: "And he also uses certain sayings from the Wisdom of Solomon, almost saying: The vision of God produces immortality; and immortality makes one to be near to God." He also uses sentiments drawn from the Wisdom of Solomon, saying approximately: "The vision of God brings forth incorruption, and incorruption makes those near to God." Irenaeus uses this sentiment of Wisdom, as it is alleged here by Eusebius, in Book IV, ^B ch. 38, n. 3, in such a way, however, that he neither names the book nor indicates verbatim that it is taken from Scripture: rather, he makes the words of Wisdom so much his own that he conveys partly the sense and partly the very words. For in Wisdom 6:18-19, which passage Irenaeus had before his eyes, it does not read: "The vision of God produces immortality," etc., but: "The attention to laws is the confirmation of immortality; and immortality makes one to be near to God." However, the keeping of the laws is the consummation of incorruption; and incorruption makes one to be near to God. The holy doctor seems to have acknowledged the four books of Esdras; for it does not appear that what he writes in Book III, ch. 21, n. 2, concerning the sacred books corrupted at the time of the Babylonian captivity and afterwards restored by Esdras, God inspiring him, was drawn from any other source than from Book IV, ch. 14 of that work. So much for the Old Testament books mentioned and cited by Irenaeus.

6. As far as the codices of the New Testament are concerned, what he thinks about the four Gospels he reveals immediately from the beginning of the Third Book. After he shows that the evangelists were already endued with the power of the Holy Spirit coming down from on high, and being filled with all things, and possessing perfect knowledge, had applied their minds to writing the Gospel, he adds: "Matthew, indeed, produced a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own tongue, when Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and founding the Church. But after their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also delivered to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. And Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the Gospel that was preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also reclined upon His breast, himself produced a Gospel while abiding at Ephesus in Asia." Many difficulties occur in these words, which, when we have weighed them in the notes to this passage, it is better to refer the reader there than to detain them longer here. Truly, it was so certain to Irenaeus ^C regarding the number of the four Gospels that, according to him, he would not admit that there could be more in number than these, nor, in turn, fewer. Yet these words are not to be pressed as if it were necessary that there be four Gospels, so that God could neither add to nor subtract from this number. That is not the sense of the holy doctor; he only desires to say that it was established by the most wise providence of God that there should be four Gospels, no more and no fewer. Of this providence, indeed, he brings forward many reasons, taken from the four regions and corners of the world, the four principal winds, the four chief pillars by which every building is supported, the four animals of Ezekiel, etc. — certainly mystical reasons, not demonstrations by which he contends to prove that the matter had to be so, and could not be otherwise (for such an absurd thought could never have entered the mind of Irenaeus), but by which he explains the matter as already done, and shows it to have been ordained by the most wise counsel of God. ^D Moreover, the whole discourse of Irenaeus tended to correct the insane audacity of the Gnostics, who, without any consideration of the counsels of God, whose wisdom they prove so much, increased or diminished the number of the Gospels at their own whim. These things being thus, he says: "They are all vain, and led astray, and moreover bold, who frustrate the appearance of the Gospel, and bring forward either more, or, in turn, fewer persons of the Gospel than those which have been stated; some that they may seem to have discovered more than what is truth; others, however, that they may reject the dispositions of God." It is also permitted to call them vain and ignorant who, like Gallasius and Scultetus, having not even in the smallest degree grasped the mind of Irenaeus, spurn as futile and weak the mystical reasons he brings forward concerning the number of the Gospels. Alas! the most squeamish men of fastidiousness, who have been seized by a satiety for that thing which was so approved by Anastasius Sinaita, Germanus of Constantinople, Jerome, and so many others, that the former transcribed this whole passage of Irenaeus, and the others embraced his reasons. It is better, to use the words of Irenaeus, to be unwise with religious "idiots" of this sort than to be wise with blasphemous and impudent sophists.

7. Regarding other parts of the New Testament, there is only this to be observed: in all the writings of Irenaeus that survive, no mention of the Epistle of St. Paul to Philemon occurs; which is not so surprising, because the whole argument of this Epistle contributed nothing to the purpose of Irenaeus. He does indeed occasionally allude to the Epistle to the Hebrews, yet neither that nor its author is cited by name. Thus in Book II, ch. 30, n. 9, he says that God the Father alone made all things by the Word of His power; to which he alludes to that [passage] Heb. 1:3, "upholding all things by the word of His power." And in Book IV, ch. 11, n. 4, he says that the external purifications of the Law were delivered as a figure of things to come, as if the Law were making a description of a certain shadow: which seem to be taken from that Heb. 10:1: "The Law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things." Nor

does he otherwise cite the Catholic Epistles of James and Jude, and ^A the second of Peter, unless by inserting certain words of his own, while omitting the place and the author from whence they are taken, as will be clear to anyone who deigns to consult the locations designated in the Index. A different judgment must be made concerning the second Epistle of John, which he recognizes and cites as the Epistle of John the disciple of the Lord (lib. 1, ch. 16, n. 3, and lib. 1, ch. 16, n. 8). He also explicitly ascribes the Apocalypse to John the disciple of the Lord, and cites it under his name (lib. IV, ch. 20, n. 11; lib. V, ch. 35, n. 2, and elsewhere). Neither should it be omitted that Irenæus praises the Shepherd of Hermas as if it were canonical Scripture (lib. IV, ch. 20, n. 2). "Well, therefore," he says, "did the Scripture proclaim, which says: First of all believe that God is one, etc.," which words are taken from the second book of the Shepherd, Mandate 1. But in the same way, many other Greek Fathers cited it, whose testimonies the most learned Cotelerius collected and prefixed to the books of the Shepherd edited by him. To the Latins, however, this Shepherd of Hermas was not held in such high regard: wherefore it was later expunged from the number of sacred books by all the Churches.

8. Among all the versions of sacred Scripture that the Church has used, none seemed more venerable to Irenæus than that which is called the Septuagint. He deemed it almost equal in authority to the Hebrew source itself, as one which he believed to have been made through the inspiration of God. He held the opinion that the seventy men, who are called the Interpreters, possessed something like the role of prophets, who, with the Holy Spirit breathing upon and directing them, composed their version. Irenæus therefore believes that Ptolemy, son of Lagus, when it was his desire to adorn the library he had built at Alexandria with books of every kind, sent envoys to seek from the Jerusalemites both their Scriptures and men skilled in the Hebrew and Greek tongues, who might translate the same from Hebrew into Greek. The Jerusalemites, who were then subject to the Macedonians, doing the king’s will, sent seventy chosen elders, the most skilled in the Scriptures and in both languages. Ptolemy, fearing that the interpreters, by mutual agreement, might be unwilling to divulge the mysteries of the Scriptures and would produce an imitation with a spurious and adulterated translation, separating them from one another, ordered all of them to translate the same Scripture; and he did this for all the books; ^D that is, he ordered that they should all translate the same book of Scripture at the same time. However, upon their meeting together in one place before Ptolemy, and comparing their translations, God was glorified, and the Scriptures were acknowledged as truly divine, since all confirmed them by reciting the same things, in the same words, and with the same names, from beginning to end: so that even the Gentiles might know that the Scriptures were translated through the inspiration of God. As for whether the matter is credible, Irenæus adds that it is no wonder if the same God who once inspired Ezra to restore the sacred Scriptures similarly inspired the LXX Interpreters when they translated the same into the Greek tongue. For the Scriptures having been corrupted at the time of the Babylonian captivity, God, in the times of Artaxerxes, king of the Persians, inspired Ezra the priest of the tribe of Levi to restore all the oracles of the ancient prophets, and to restore to the people the law that was given through Moses. From all of which he concludes (which was his purpose) that those heretics are truly shameless and bold who, in order to fortify their heresy with the authority of the Scriptures, dare to bring forth other interpretations of Scripture besides that most ancient one, which was produced in such miraculous ways; for the apostles, being more ancient than all the heretics, confirm the aforementioned interpretation, and the interpretation conforms to the tradition of the apostles; since they announced all prophetic matters in the way that the interpretation of the Elders contains. This is how Irenæus argued, in order to prove that those words of Isaiah, "Behold a virgin shall conceive and shall bear a son," were corrupted by Theodotion and Aquila, when they translated the word *almah*, virgin, as *neanis*, young woman; lest, of course, from that passage of Isaiah it might be inferred that Christ was born of a Virgin.

9. It is not our purpose here to examine the history of the LXX version: as that has been done extensively by many, and those most learned men. It suffices to note only a few things regarding our Irenæus’s account. First, it was not Irenæus alone who valued the version of the LXX Interpreters so highly: it was held in the same honor by all the Fathers of the first four centuries, among whom that opinion had prevailed, that the Interpreters had performed the duty and office of prophets. The source from which this common estimation of the ancients flowed was the history of Aristæas, whether it be true or false; a witness, as he himself loves to be believed, of eyes, which Josephus (lib. XII of the Antiquities, ch. 2) and Philo (lib. II, De vita Mosis) reported in summary, and which all, both the ancient Jews and the earlier Christians, received with unanimous consent; then the oft-repeated opinion that the seventy Interpreters were enclosed in as many separate cells by Ptolemy, and were so inspired by God that, when the versions were compared one with another, all were found to have agreed in the same meanings, words, and names. Aristæas, indeed, does not mention this circumstance: the first to mention it before Irenæus was Justin Martyr in his Exhortation to the Gentiles; but both received the tradition partly from Philo, and partly from other Jews, who chose to adorn the history of Aristæas with new miracles. 2. That Ptolemy, during whose reign and by whose order the Scriptures were translated from Hebrew into Greek, was, in the opinion of Irenæus, not Philadelphus, as Aristæas, Josephus, Philo, Tertullian in his Apology, and most other Fathers think, but the son of Lagus; which was the same opinion held by Clement of Alexandria (lib. 1 Strom., p. 341 et seqq.). This is indeed burdened by grave difficulties, and can scarcely, if at all, be reconciled with the history of Aristæas, once its authority has been established. Nevertheless, they attempt to reconcile it, those who, under the leadership of Anatolius, bishop of Laodicea, whose fragment Eusebius quotes...

(Hist. eccl. VII, 32), believe that the version of the LXX Interpreters, if not then made, was at least decreed, and an embassy to the Jews for the purpose of acquiring the sacred codices was sent at the time when Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, had admitted Philadelphus, his son, into partnership in the kingdom; so that it could be ascribed to both. But I fear that Aristaeas would not admit this method of reconciliation. In my judgment, those cut the knot who, having examined the authority of that Aristaeas, believe it to be certain that the Scriptures were translated into Greek by select and learned Jews, either during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter, or Philadelphus, or perhaps during the reign of both and at the command of both; and that all the rest was fabricated by Aristaeas, a Hellenistic Jew, and other more recent Jews, in accordance with the genius of their nation, so that the matter might have a sense of wonder. But these things we remit to the critics: it is enough for us that Irenaeus cannot be accused of vain credulity, as he adopted a view which, in his time—the matter not yet having been subjected to critical laws—all Christians defended with the more confidence, in that, as the Jews of that time were malignantly disparaging the version of the LXX Interpreters, which provided the Christian Church with weapons against them, it could not enter into the suspicion of the holy Fathers that the book of Aristaeas had been fabricated by a Jew.

3° The confidence that Christ the Lord, in citing the testimonies of the Old Testament, disregarded the Hebrew text and took account only of said version, did not a little, among Christians, bestow authority upon the version of the Seventy. Such, indeed, was the opinion of many of the Fathers, though not of Irenaeus. At least, I do not think it can be derived from his words, as I showed in the notes to this place. He seems to derive the authority for this version from him for this reason alone (which is the genuine foundation of his authority), that in all the testimonies of the Old Testament cited by the apostles, nothing occurs that is repugnant to the version of the Seventy; nay, all apostolic testimonies agree with the aforementioned interpretation, and the interpretation agrees with the apostolic preaching; and the apostles announced all the prophetic things in the same way that the interpretation of the Elders contains them. And for this argument to hold, it is not necessary that all the testimonies brought forth by the apostles respond to the Greek of the Seventy; but the sincerity and fidelity of these is sufficiently proven ^B if they agree with the apostolic testimonies in terms of meaning.

4° Irenaeus seems to hold that not only the Pentateuch, but also all the canonical Scriptures of the Jews were translated into the Greek language by the order of King Ptolemy. For he always uses the indefinite word "Scriptures," nor does he add anything that would restrict this to the Pentateuch. Indeed, that which he writes—both that Ptolemy had asked the Jerusalemites to have their Scriptures translated, and that he had ordered the same interpreters, separated from one another, to translate the same Scripture, and that they had done this for all the books—sufficiently indicates that all the books which were sacred to the Jews were translated. For since Irenaeus thought that Ptolemy wanted to adorn his library with writings worthy of all men, he ought consequently to have believed that the oracles of the prophets were not neglected by him, since they are writings certainly worthy to adorn the royal library. In short, if, according to Irenaeus, the apostles announced all the prophetic things in the same way that the interpretation of the Elders contains them: therefore, the Elders interpreted all the prophetic things, not only the Pentateuch, in the opinion of our author—which was the same as that of Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, and others.

5° Finally, that Irenaeus thinks the sacred Scriptures were corrupted at the time of the Babylonian captivity and subsequently restored by Ezra under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, seems drawn, as I have already said, from the apocryphal book IV Esdras, chapter 14, where the author relates that five men, at the dictation of Ezra, wrote many books of things revealed to him. Be that as it may, I do not think it can be inferred from the words of Irenaeus that the Scriptures had perished entirely at the time of the captivity. For he does not say that the Scriptures had been lost, but corrupted; nor that, through Ezra's efforts, they had been entirely resurrected and brought to light again, but that God inspired Ezra the priest to *ἀνατάξασθαι λόγους* (to set in order the preceding words of the prophets) and *ἀποκαταστῆσαι τῷ λαῷ τὴν διὰ Μωϋσέως νομοθεσίαν* (and to restore to the people the legislation given through Moses), i.e., to arrange all the utterances of the old prophets in order and to restore to the people the law that was given through Moses. Irenaeus, therefore, only means this: that the Scriptures had been corrupted by both the ignorance and the negligence of the Jews; that they were received and recognized—and purified from the errors that had crept in—by Ezra under divine inspiration; and that the books of the prophets, while lying in confusion and in a disturbed order, had been restored to their pristine order, and finally that the law, as if buried by long oblivion, had been promulgated anew and proposed to the people. Thus Irenaeus does not depart from the common opinion of the other Fathers and interpreters. ^C

10. In the same place, Irenaeus mentions other versions of the Old Testament, namely those of Theodotion the Ephesian and Aquila of Pontus, both Jewish proselytes; but only in passing, and on the occasion of that testimony of Isaiah: *Behold a virgin shall conceive*, which he rightly complains was corrupted by them in their evil interpretation. And taking the occasion from this, he commends the faith and authority of the version of the LXX, in the manner we have said, and prefers it by far to all others. In citing the places of the Old Testament, he generally follows this one. But if he sometimes seems to depart from it, a threefold cause for this can be offered: 1° That sometimes he cites not from the codex, but from memory; and this is evident from the fact that, often bringing forth the same testimonies in different places, he does not always write them in the same way, but here added to with certain words, there abridged, as memory suggested and the occasion offered. 2° That not all the codices of the Seventy agreed with one another in all things. How great a diversity was among those codices ^D in the age of Origen, and how much Origen had to labor to reconcile them one with another, or...

by cutting out those which had been wrongly added through the negligence or audacity of librarians, or by adding those which had been wrongly omitted, he himself teaches in book 15 of his Commentary on Matthew. Since, therefore, the codices of the version of the Seventy were not the same everywhere, it is no wonder if the things which Irenaeus brings forth from it do not always agree exactly with our own. For the codices that remain to us are fewer in number; far more were in circulation in the age of Irenaeus; ^A if these still existed, we should be able to judge more certainly of those which he used. 3. That the Latin interpreter of Irenaeus sometimes translated less accurately the Scripture testimonies which the holy doctor cites, or did not translate them from the Greek itself, but, sparing himself labor, inserted into the text of Irenaeus the readings as they were found in the common Latin versions. And the same reasons hold good, not only for the places of the Old Testament, but also for the New Testament passages which Irenaeus cited. For he did not always produce them from the codex, but sometimes from memory; and the diversity between the codices of the New Testament was no less than among those of the Old, as Jerome often complained, and as is sufficiently evident from all those Greek ones that still survive today: nor was the carelessness of the interpreter of Irenaeus in translating them any less. This is gathered especially from the fact that he followed the old Vulgate ^B Italic version word for word, not rarely, as I have observed in many places. There is, however, no need for me to warn that such a great variety never existed among all the codices, whether of the Old or New Testament, which the Church used, and which Irenaeus read, that the sense suffered any loss: the matter itself speaks for itself, and to him who would wish to compare all the passages alleged either by our author or by the ancient Fathers with our own modern copies of holy Scripture, it will immediately become clear that the whole difference lies in certain words, while the sense always remains unimpaired. I only wish to be gathered from what has been said so far that hardly anything certain can be established about the codices, especially of the New Testament, which Irenaeus used: so much so that, from the passages of Scripture which he alleges, one cannot conclude anything certain and indubitable, as in such and such a way the codices of Irenaeus absolutely held; but that such arguments must be proposed soberly, and must remain within the limits of conjecture. If the illustrious Grabe had attended to these things, he would not have pronounced so confidently that this or that existed in the ancient codices of the Church, or was absent from them. Whoever is prudent, and even slightly versed in the reading of the Fathers, abstains from such judgments, lest he incur the mark of rashness.

ARTICLE II.

On the perspicuity and obscurity of the Scriptures.

11. That the holy Scriptures are clear and perspicuous, and that their sense is easy and obvious to any attentive and studious reader, is a common error of the Protestants, which it is a wonder if they did not attribute to Irenaeus, a Father of such great authority. Although the illustrious Grabe insinuates this a little more sparingly in his notes, he inculcates it more solicitously in the general Index under the word Scripture. Holy Scripture, he says, proposes all things that we ought to know openly and without the covering of parables. When it is read by the Jews, it is obscure and like a fable, but to Christians it is perspicuous. But if you compare the passages indicated there, you will marvel that nothing less than what the Index promises occurs. And the illustrious man was no more accurate, not to say sincere, in the note which he added in book 2, chapter 46, of his edition, page 172 (but in ours, chapter 27, no. 2, page 155). Indeed, on the occasion of those words of Irenaeus: "Since, therefore, all the Scriptures, both the Prophecies and the Gospels, can be heard in the open, and without ambiguity, and likewise by all," etc., Feuardentius had warned as intelligently as he did truly: "He does not mean," he says, "that all the Scriptures are so open, and obvious to anyone, that there is no obscurity in them; since he frequently affirms the contrary elsewhere," etc. But that they so perspicuously and constantly preach the one and only God, the creator and ruler of the world, that no one, who ^C attends to this, can be ignorant of it. Grabe truly adds: "Nevertheless, on the preceding page he says universally, openly and without ambiguity, in the very words placed in the Scriptures, what indeed God gave into the power of men, and submitted to our knowledge, as he speaks there: that is, what God wished to be known, or believed, by us." It is true indeed that Irenaeus asserts at the beginning of the chapter that some things are placed in the Scriptures openly and without ambiguity, in the very words; but that this proposition of Irenaeus is universal, and that by it the holy doctor wished to embrace all those things which God wished to be known or believed by us, Grabe's commentaries are diametrically opposed to the text itself. Indeed, after Irenaeus, in the preceding chapter, refuted the insane curiosity of the Gnostics, who searched the Scriptures rashly, and, delighted with insipid questions and commentaries on God and divine things, were puffed up with pride under the name of knowledge: then at the beginning of the following chapter (in which he proposes to himself to demonstrate that from parables, under which a manifold sense may lie, obscure things are not to be explained, but from those things which are placed clearly and openly in the ^D Scriptures) he subjoins, that the healthy sense, and that which is without danger, and religious, and a lover of the truth, which indeed God gave into the power of men,

and ^A subjected to our knowledge, to meditate upon these things readily, and to progress in them, making the knowledge of them easy through long study. But he indicates immediately what those things are, which God gave into the power of men, and subjected to our knowledge: "They are these, however," he adds, "which occur before our eyes, and whatsoever are set forth openly and without ambiguity in the very words of the Scriptures." But does anyone who speaks in this way—that "whatever is set forth openly and without ambiguity in the Scriptures" are all the things which God gave into the power of men, and subjected to our knowledge; that is, whatever God willed to be known or believed by us—read Irenæus with bleary eyes if he concludes thus? The holy doctor intends that there are some things, the investigation of which God has permitted to us, and which He has subjected to our knowledge; and that these are: 1. Things which occur before our eyes, namely natural things; certainly not all those things which are contained in the Scriptures, since no one of sound mind would say that these things occur before our eyes. And so, while God may have permitted to our knowledge and investigation whatsoever are set forth openly and without ambiguity in the Scriptures, it does not follow from this, except by a childish sophism, that all things which God willed to be known or believed by us are set forth openly and without ambiguity in the Scriptures. Otherwise, by the same right, it could be concluded that all things which God willed to be known or believed by us occur before our eyes, that is, fall under our sight; for Irenæus does not separate the one from the other; a conclusion which would, however, be most absurd. For these propositions are indeed far different: "Whatsoever things occur before our eyes, and are set forth openly and without ambiguity in the Scriptures, all these God gave into the power of men, and subjected to our knowledge"; and: "All those things which God willed to be known or believed by us are set forth openly and without ambiguity in the Scriptures." The first proposition is Irenæus’s; the second is that of Grabius alone, certainly not that of the holy doctor.

12. So far is he from saying that all things which are contained in the Scriptures are set forth openly and without ambiguity in the very words, that, on the contrary, after he shows that the clear and perspicuous words of Scripture are not to be explained by obscure parables, he subjoins that it is foolish and absurd to join what has not been stated openly in the Scriptures, nor set before our eyes, to the solutions of parables, which everyone invents as he pleases. Therefore, besides the parables, to which a manifold sense may underlie, other things occur in the Scriptures which are not stated openly; and are therefore obscure, and not easily permeable to everyone, but which stand in need of explanation and an interpreter. Yet those things, ^B even if they are obscure, God surely willed to be believed, if not to be known by us. But if you inquire of Irenæus what those things are which are stated openly and without ambiguity in the Scriptures, he will answer: not universally, as Grabius wrongly assumes, but individually, and as far as it pertained to the present argument, namely that there is one and only God, the creator and ruler of the world. "When, therefore," he says, "all the Scriptures, and the Prophecies, and the Gospels, can be heard by all in the open, and without ambiguity, even if not all believe, that they preach one and only God, to the exclusion of others, to have made all things through His Word, whether visible or invisible, etc., and the creature itself, in which we are, through the things which come into sight, testifying to this very thing, that there is one who made it and rules it: they will appear very dull who against so clear an indication blind their eyes, etc." How many things very obscure are in the Scriptures, which cannot be explained by us, he teaches more fully in the following chapter, where he proves that many difficulties occur in them which cannot be solved by us, but whose solution ought to be committed to God alone with humble faith: that the Scriptures are indeed perfect, as being inspired by the Word of God and His Spirit; but that they abound in such great mysteries that for the understanding of them there is need of revelation: since indeed the limits of our mind are so narrow, that it grows blind even in natural things themselves, of which we have constant use, and which we see and handle daily. The words can be read in the author in n. 2 and 3, since they are passages too long to be transcribed here. And in lib. IV, cap. 26, n. 1 (where Grabius also abuses the passage), he teaches that Christ is the treasure hidden in the Scriptures, revealed by the advent and cross of the same Christ. That all prophecies, before they have their efficacy, are enigmas and ambiguities to men: but when the time has come, and that which was prophesied has happened, then the prophecies have a clear and certain exposition. And ^C for this reason indeed, when the Law is read in this present time, it is like a fable to the Jews; for they do not have the exposition of all things pertaining to the advent of the Son of God, who is according to man; but when it is read by Christians, it is a treasure hidden in a field, but revealed and explained by the cross of Christ. The reason is, because Christians have the exposition of all things pertaining to the advent of the Son. But from whom do they have it? From those who are presbyters in the Church, whom therefore it becomes us to obey, those namely who have the succession from the apostles; who, with the succession of the episcopate, have received the certain charisma of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father. ^D For where the charismata of the Lord are, there it behooves one to learn the truth, among whom is that succession of the Church which is from the apostles, and it consists of that which is sound and irreproachable in conversation, and unadulterated and incorruptible in speech. For they both guard our faith, which is in the one God who made all things; and they increase that love which is in the Son of God... and explain the Scriptures to us without danger. The rest

who depart from the principal succession, and assemble in any place whatsoever, are to be held as suspect, either as heretics and of evil opinion; or as those who cause schisms, and are puffed up and please themselves; or again as hypocrites, doing this for the sake of profit and vainglory. But all these have fallen away from the truth. ^A

13. Let the learned Grabius now see whether these words of Irenaeus, to which he himself refers, favor his own cause. Let him see whether, in the opinion of the holy doctor, the Scriptures are so clear and open that they stand in no need of an interpreter. Let him see whether their interpretation is permitted to the judgment of any private individual. Finally, let him see and seriously ponder whether that society—either the one in which he was born, or the one to which he has joined himself—nurtures such presbyters as Irenaeus describes here, who have the succession from the apostles; who, along with the episcopal succession, have received the certain charism of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father; and who also guard the apostolic doctrine ^B and provide a sound discourse and blameless conduct for the confirmation and correction of the rest, etc. Let him, to speak with Tertullian, bring forth the origins of his churches; let him unfold the order of his bishops, so running down by successions from the beginning that that first bishop may have had as his author and predecessor someone from among the apostles, or from those apostolic men who, however, persisted with the apostles. Let him contrive whatever he pleases; if he wishes to act candidly and sincerely, when he arrives at Matthew Parker in England, Luther in Germany, Calvin in Gaul, and other such recent leaders and founders of sects, he will discover that they have either inverted the apostolic succession by a ludicrous and sacrilegious ordination, or have utterly overturned it by spurning all ordination. But enough of these.

ARTICLE III. On the authority and foundation of Tradition.

14. That the sacred Scriptures are indeed the words of God, and a certain and immutable rule of truth, to which it is permitted to add nothing nor take anything away, Irenaeus most rightly holds. Yet, that all words of God are not contained therein explicitly, but that the apostles, as Christ’s legates and heralds, taught more things than they consigned to writing, he no less openly proclaims. For when he is about to refute heretics by the authority of Tradition, he shows ^C already at the beginning of the third book that such is the perversity of these impious men that, when they are refuted from the Scriptures, they turn into an accusation of the Scriptures themselves, as if they were not correct, nor from authority, and because they are interpreted variously, and because the truth cannot be found from them by those who do not know Tradition; for it was not handed down by letters, but by the living voice... But when we challenge them to that tradition again, which is from the apostles, which is preserved in the Church by the successions of presbyters; they oppose the tradition, saying that they themselves, being wiser not only than the presbyters, but even than the apostles, have found the sincere truth. It results, therefore, that they agree with neither the Scriptures nor tradition. From which these things follow liquidly: 1. That heretics confessed the Scriptures to be spoken of in various ways, that is, that they are sometimes obscure, and that various meanings underlie them. 2. That the meaning of obscure passages is to be sought from tradition, not that which was handed down by letters, but by the living voice. Irenaeus does not rebuke these points; rather, in what follows, he proves them, as will soon be seen. 3. That Tradition is more extensive than the Scriptures, and is distinguished by them, as it is their interpreter; and this conclusion of Irenaeus demonstrates: It results, therefore, that they agree with neither the Scriptures nor tradition. And after he has discoursed at greater length on apostolic tradition, now putting an end to the argument, and about to return to that which he had sought from the Scriptures, he begins chapter 5 thus: "By the tradition, therefore, which is from the apostles, thus existing in the Church, and remaining among us, let us return to that demonstration which is from the Scriptures, of those who wrote the Gospel, the apostles, etc." Where he transparently distinguishes the tradition of the apostles from their writings. But I cannot but rebuke here, in passing, the bad faith of Gallasius, who, since he could not adulterate these clear words of Irenaeus in the text, dared to corrupt them in his summaries: "The tradition," he says, "of the apostles agrees with their writings, to which we must always return." Whether that is the sense of Irenaeus’s words, let anyone judge who has eyes, and let him not hereafter put trust in the authors of such new editions. In that age of Irenaeus, therefore, it was certain that it was not enough for Catholic faith that one should agree with ^D the Scriptures, unless he also agreed with Tradition: that which was handed down by the apostles not by letters, but by the living voice, and which is preserved in the Church through the successions of presbyters, that is, of bishops. And hence also it was confessed by all that not the Scriptures only, but Tradition also, was the rule of our faith; for neither were the heretics challenged merely to the Scriptures, as more recent heterodox thinkers wish to be challenged, but also to Tradition, as to the most certain [rule] of the Christian.

^A And the rule of catholic truth: by this, as our author says in the following chapter, all those who—whether out of self-satisfaction, vainglory, blindness, or perversity of opinion—gathered things other than they ought, were confounded. But if any did not consent to the tradition, there was a struggle against them, and the Church Fathers considered that they must be resisted on all sides.

15. But as to why the holy doctors wish the tradition and the catholic faith to be guarded with such great weight, the reason from Irenæus is at hand: because tradition is from the apostles. Naturally, the apostles did not commit to writings all the things which they taught; rather, they delivered many things by the oracle of the living voice, especially to those to whom they committed the Churches; and these through the successions of the bishops have come down even to us. Therefore, the tradition of the apostles, he says (chap. 3, n. 1), is manifest in the whole world, and it is available for all who wish to see the truth to look upon it in every Church; and we are able to number those who were appointed bishops by the apostles in the Churches, and their successors down to our own time, who neither taught nor knew any such thing as those people deliriously imagine. For if the apostles had known hidden mysteries which they taught the perfect separately and secretly from the rest, they would have delivered them especially to those to whom they were committing the very Churches. For they wished those whom they left as their successors, handing over their own position of authority to them, to be truly perfect and irreprehensible in all things, so that by their acting uprightly, great benefit would be achieved, but if they failed, the greatest calamity would result. ^B Therefore, that argument is most firm and ineluctable. When any dogma is proposed in the Church that cannot be sufficiently supported or impugned by the Scriptures, it must be measured against the tradition of the Churches; if it agrees with it, it must be referred to the apostles themselves as accepted; if it dissents, it must be immediately rejected and condemned. For since all the Churches were founded either by the apostles themselves, or by the disciples or successors of the apostles; and the bishops who were first appointed to rule those Churches approached them well-instructed in the knowledge of all things that the apostles had taught and explained, which they had received and accepted from Christ—for the apostles wished those whom they left as successors, handing over their own position of authority to them, to be truly perfect and irreprehensible in all things—these successors of the apostles, in turn, delivered and entrusted what they had received from the apostles to their own successors, and these to others, until we ourselves received the apostolic tradition and doctrine, which has arrived even to us through the successions of the bishops. From which it is evidently clear that what Irenæus and other holy Fathers call the tradition of the apostles is the very doctrine of the apostles, which they delivered and entrusted by living voice both to the Churches founded by themselves and to those whom they appointed as bishops; for this, as I have already said, Irenæus openly distinguishes from the Scriptures. No less ^C of authority, therefore, is this, than the apostolic writings themselves, since both are the words of God and of Christ Himself. For whether the apostles taught, by living voice or by writing, anything that necessarily pertains to faith or morals, it is Christ’s doctrine, revealed and accepted by Christ, which they delivered while the Holy Spirit was breathing upon and guiding them: it is therefore the word of God, to be referred to God Himself as acceptable. For this reason our author opposes tradition to the heretics so anxiously in the first chapters of the third book, and often elsewhere, and rightly wishes its weight to be such that whoever thinks wrongly is overwhelmed by it. Therefore, those who either despise or violate the tradition must be resisted on all sides, and he warns that they are to be avoided as thieves and robbers. It is necessary, he says, to avoid them indeed; but one must love the things that belong to the Church with the greatest diligence, and apprehend the tradition of truth. Therefore, finally, he attributes so much to tradition that even if the apostles had left us no Scriptures, it would still be necessary to follow the order of the tradition which they delivered to those to whom they committed the Churches. Which is so true, he adds, that many barbarian nations, of those who believe in Christ, assent to this ordinance, having salvation written in their hearts through the Spirit without paper and ink (that is, without Scriptures), and diligently keeping the ancient tradition, believing in one God, the maker of heaven and earth, etc. These who have believed without letters are barbarians, as far as our language is concerned; but as regards knowledge, custom, and conversation, they are most wise because of the faith, and they please God, living in all justice, chastity, and wisdom. Demanding that all new things proposed by heretics be tested against this one norm of tradition, these barbarians at once closing their ears would flee very far away, not even enduring to hear the blasphemous discourse. Thus, by that ancient apostolic tradition, they do not even admit into the conception of their mind whatever is the portentous speech of the heretics. Behold what, and how great, was the authority of tradition among the ancient Fathers of the Church and apostolic men.

16. Moreover, that by which the apostolic tradition has flowed down to us uncorrupted, as though through a canal, is the succession of the bishops ^D legitimately ordained in the catholic Church. For the apostles did not appoint or permit anyone to be put in charge of the Churches unless he was first well-versed in all things that necessarily pertain to faith and morals, and had been skillfully imbued with the knowledge of all things that they had proposed for the Church to believe and do: so that, to be sure, he might transmit the same knowledge to those who came after. And hence Irenæus urges this succession of bishops so sharply and so frequently against the heretics, believing, clearly, that nothing is more effective for beating back all heretical obstinacy. For it is not necessary, he says, to seek the truth among others, which it is easy to take from the Church: since the apostles, as if in

a rich storehouse, deposited most fully into her all things that are of the truth, so that every man, whosoever wishes, may take from her the drink of life. Moreover, the custodians of that rich storehouse, into which the apostles have most fully deposited everything that is of the truth, are those whom God Himself has established in His Church as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God; namely, the bishops, who have been ordained and consecrated in the Catholic Church through the legitimate imposition of hands by the apostles and their successors. For this reason, our author says, if there were any ^A dispute about some small question, would it not be necessary to recur to the most ancient churches, in which the apostles conversed, and from them to take what is certain and clear regarding the present question? The reason is that not only did the apostles converse in those most ancient churches and deposit into them most fully all things that are of the truth; but they also set over them bishops, who would succeed them in their government; whom they wished to be very perfect and irreproachable in all things; for if they had known deep mysteries, they would have handed them down especially to those to whom they were committing the churches themselves.

17. Irenæus therefore rightly appeals to the succession of bishops against the heretics, because that succession is a most certain, undoubted, and to all manifest, argument of apostolic tradition and doctrine; by it, the true is discerned from the false, and it is transmitted to us sincere and undefiled. The tradition of the apostles, he says, manifested in the whole world, is present for all who wish to see the truth to behold in every Church. Why so? Because, he adds, we are able to enumerate those who were established by the apostles as bishops in the churches, and the custodians and stewards of that tradition, and their successors down to us, who have taught or known nothing of the kind of which the heretics rave. But because it would be long, as he himself says ^B, to enumerate the successions of all the churches; he thinks it enough, and indeed rightfully and deservedly so, if the tradition which it has from the apostles and the faith announced to men, coming down to us through the successions of bishops, be indicated for the most important and more renowned, and first of all for the greatest and most ancient, and known to all, and founded and established at Rome by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul, that all may be confounded, who, in any way, whether by gathering elsewhere than is proper, that is, by acting contrary to right and justice, hold gatherings. For in that Church the tradition which is from the apostles has always been preserved. Which he forthwith proves from the continuous succession of the Roman bishops from Peter down to Eleutherus, who in his own time was ruling the Roman Church; and having enumerated this, he concludes ^C: By this ordination and succession, the tradition in the Church which is from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, has reached down to us. And this is a most full demonstration, that it is one and the same life-giving faith, which in the Church from the apostles even until now, has been preserved and handed down in truth.

18. He adds to the tradition of the Roman Church the ^D tradition of the Asian churches, especially of Smyrna and Ephesus, which he proves likewise from the succession of bishops. For in that which is in Smyrna, the Church of Polycarp, instructed by the apostles and having conversed with many of those who saw our Lord, having been appointed bishop in Asia by the apostles, always taught those things which he had learned from the apostles, which he also handed down to the Church, and which alone are true. The churches that are in Asia, and those who have succeeded Polycarp even until now, bear witness to these things... But also the Church which is at Ephesus, founded indeed by Paul, but with John remaining among them up to the times of Trajan, is a true witness of the apostles' tradition. And hence he most correctly concludes 60, that it is right to obey the presbyters who are in the Church, those who have the succession from the apostles; who with the succession of the episcopate have received the certain charism of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father [CXV]; but to treat the rest, who depart from the principal succession, and in whatsoever place they gather, as suspects, or as heretics and of evil doctrine; or as schismatics, and proud, and self-pleasing; or, on the other hand, as hypocrites, doing this for the sake of gain and vain glory. And 61 that it is necessary to learn the truth among those with whom is that succession which is from the apostles for the Church, and that which is sound and irreproachable in manner of life, and unadulterated and incorrupt in speech, abides. For they keep our faith, which is in one God, who made all things; and they increase that love which is in the Son of God, who performed such dispensations on our account: and they expound the Scriptures to us without danger. Hence, finally, he rightly infers 62, that through the successions of bishops, to whom the apostles handed down the Church which is in each place, there has reached down to us the most full handling of the Scriptures with a keeping without fiction, receiving neither addition nor subtraction; and reading without falsification; and a legitimate and diligent exposition according to the Scriptures, and without danger, and without blasphemy; and the special privilege of love, etc.

19. From all these things it follows that the succession of bishops is the most certain argument, by which it is demonstrated that the apostolic tradition has been always preserved pure and unblemished in the Church; and that, undefiled, it has reached us through the bishops, who have succeeded one another from the times of the apostles down to our own; provided only that the bishops have been ordained legitimately and according to the laws of the Church, and have not fallen away from the unity of the Church. For, as our author says 63, the true tradition and doctrine of the apostles is God's gift to the Church.

which he confers, just as inspiration is given to his creation, so that all the members who receive it may be vivified. And as we have already said, quoting the same Irenæus: "It is not worth seeking the truth from others when it is easy to take it from the Church, since the apostles, as into a rich repository, deposited everything that belongs to the truth in her, most fully." Therefore, whoever has fallen away from the unity of the Church, being alienated from that rich repository of the Spirit of God and the truth, does not share in its part. The reason is that from the moment any bishop—albeit ordained according to the rite of the Catholic Church and maintaining the order of succession—has withdrawn from unity, if he should fall into error, he has already deprived himself of all the means by which he might be reclaimed. It is of the highest importance to test one’s private opinion against the traditions of other Churches, primarily the Roman Church, which is the center of unity, and to seek from them the legitimate sense of the Scriptures. If, therefore, anyone refuses to listen to them, he has, beyond any doubt, blocked off for himself the approach to the truth. ^B

20. It follows, then, that only in the Church is the tradition that is from the apostles preserved; that only from those presbyters is the truth to be learned; that only by them is our faith guarded, and the Scriptures expounded to us without risk—that only through them has a most full treatment of the Scriptures reached us, preserved without fiction, receiving neither addition nor subtraction, and a reading without adulteration, and a legitimate, diligent, risk-free, and blasphemy-free exposition according to the Scriptures, among whom is that succession of the Church which is from the apostles; for they, with the succession of the episcopate, have also received the sure charisma of truth, according to the pleasure of the Father. But all the rest, who stand apart from the principal succession and who, in whatever place they organize meetings or hold assemblies, are to be held as suspects; for they have all fallen away from the truth, which can be found only in that Church in which the order of apostolic succession is maintained. Furthermore, it is in the Roman Church alone (by which name I here understand all those Churches which, with the Roman—the greatest, most ancient, known to all, and the center of unity, according to Irenæus—are linked by the bond of communion) that the legitimate order of apostolic succession is found; it consists in this: that the first bishop of each Church, having been called, ordained, and constituted bishop by the apostles, or their disciples and successors, has received the mission and authority to found, govern, and preach the Word of God to the flock committed to his charge, to administer the sacraments, and to ordain other ministers, both superior and inferior, who will perpetuate the ecclesiastical ministry within the Church. Outside the Roman Church, it is impossible to assign such a legitimate succession of bishops ^C who can refer the mission and authority they received back to the apostles through intermediate successors. In vain, therefore, would you seek outside the Roman Church that tradition which is from the apostles, in vain would you seek the truth and the legitimate, diligent, risk-free, and blasphemy-free exposition of the Scriptures, etc. Irenæus rightly trusted that he could overwhelm all the heretics and schismatics of his own time with the weight of this argument; the same argument has been used to crush later heretics by the Holy Fathers who followed him: Tertullian, Cyprian, Optatus, Epiphanius, Augustine, and others throughout.

21. But what seemed most effective and irrefutable to the Holy Fathers for confounding all the heretics and schismatics of their time must be no less effective for the downfall of the heretics of our time—the Lutherans, the Calvinists, and all others who have made a secession from the Roman Church. Indeed, since they, no less than the ancient heretics, have withdrawn from the principal succession, they are convicted by this very fact of having fallen away from the truth just as they did. Therefore, we can say to the architects, leaders, and standard-bearers of their sects—Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and others—the same things that Tertullian said to those ancients: "Who are you? When and whence have you come? What are you doing in my house, since you are not mine? By what right, Zwingli, do you cut down my forest? By what license, Calvin, do you divert my springs? By what power, Luther, do you move my boundaries? The possession is mine: I have possessed it from of old, I possess it first, I have firm origins from the very authors whose the property was. I am the heir of the apostles." I desire, therefore, that Luther, Calvin, etc., show me by what authority they have come forth... If they dare to insert their heresies into the apostolic age... we can say: "Let them produce the origins of their Churches: let them unroll the order of their bishops, so running down by successions from the beginning that that first bishop had as his author and predecessor some one of the apostles or of the apostolic men who indeed persevered with the apostles." For in this way the apostolic Churches present their records; just as the Church of the Smyrnæans reports that it has Polycarp, placed there by John: just as the Romans set forth Clement, ordained by Peter: so, too, the others show those whom, having been constituted in the episcopate by the apostles, they possess as transmitters of the apostolic seed. Let the heretics of today invent something of the sort. They certainly cannot invent it, who have turned all order of apostolic succession upside down, who have overturned ecclesiastical hierarchy from its very foundations, who have violated through supreme crime the legitimate, ancient, and apostolic law of ordaining sacred ministers, and who, having received no mission or authority from those who derived their own from the apostles themselves through legitimate succession, have taken upon themselves the honor and, not being called by God as was Aaron, have usurped the ecclesiastical ministry. To these, as well as to the ancient heretics, apply those words of the same Tertullian: "Their ordinations are rash, light, inconstant;

^A now appointing neophytes, now men bound by secular ties, now our apostates, so that they may retain them by the honor they bestow, since they cannot retain them by the truth. Nowhere does one make progress more easily than in the camps of the rebels, where to be there is enough to be worthy. Thus, one is a bishop today, another tomorrow; one is a deacon today, who is a reader tomorrow; one is a priest today, who is a layman tomorrow. For they enjoin priestly duties even upon laymen. Indeed, those who first laid the foundations of the new religion, having foully trampled upon all ancient canons, were either simple priests, and those apostates, excommunicated by the Roman Church, and destitute of legitimate and canonical authority and power, who arrogated to themselves the office of teaching, of administering the sacraments, and of ordaining other ministers; and who, even if they had been canonically ordained as bishops in the Catholic Church, yet from the time they departed from it through apostasy, heresy, and schism, had fallen from the legitimate authority which they had received; and consequently could not beget others than those resembling themselves—apostates, that is, and sons of perdition—certainly not true ministers of the Church. ^B

22. This most annoying argument, taken from the continuous succession of bishops, especially of the Romans, which it is not part of our present design to pursue more fully, the renowned Grabe strives to weaken in more than one place. "Now," he says in his notes to chapter 3 of book III, "that kind of argument is less valid, after the Roman popes have added to the tradition received from the Apostles other articles, partly uncertain, partly false; the explicit profession of which, as long as they strictly require of all, they use that argument in vain against others who are divided from their communion." But if that kind of argument is less valid now, it must be concluded from Grabe’s own reply that it was never valid, and that the ancient Fathers labored in vain when they so confidently opposed it to the heretics and schismatics of their own time. For if Grabe contends with any right that later Roman pontiffs have added to the tradition received from the Apostles other articles, partly uncertain, partly false; the ancient heretics could certainly contend in the same way that the tradition received from the Apostles had been similarly adulterated by earlier Roman pontiffs. Come, let someone from the flock of the Gnostics step forward against Irenaeus, and let him use Grabe’s reply to break the force of that argument. Let Grabe now test its strength; I am certain that the Gnostic, mocking the vain efforts of that man, would remain safe from all his weapons; it would be little indeed if he did not easily pierce the adversary himself with those very same weapons. But if it does not please Grabe to test how much and what he can do against the Gnostic, let him remember how unsuccessfully his own have fought hitherto against domestic heretics, the Socinians. Scarcely, when the question is about the meaning of the Scriptures, do they bring forward tradition, than, neither able nor daring to defend it with the customary arguments of the Fathers taken from the continuous succession of bishops, they are immediately forced to retreat, defeated. Let, therefore, the renowned Grabe—a man otherwise candid and learned—be ashamed of such vain evasions, which so often and so invincibly ^C the Catholics have blocked, and by which the Christian faith, having been brought into open peril, would easily lie exposed to the insults of the most corrupt heretics.

23. That same Pope of Rome, he who asserted that other articles, partly uncertain, partly false, had been added to the tradition received from the Apostles. A statement quickly made: but however quickly and easily it is asserted, it is just as quickly and easily denied. But if you were to press Grabe to support these assertions with credit, what articles, I ask, will he name? Either the false expositions of Catholic doctrine, concocted gratuitously and by calumny by ministers, but condemned by Catholics; or certain superstitions of the ignorant masses, disapproved and rejected by all sober and pious pastors; or private opinions of certain theologians, which others contradict; or articles that pertain to discipline, and have nothing to do with faith; or if he presents any articles whose explicit profession is strictly required of all, he will be immediately convicted of the fact that they have been delivered by the Apostles themselves from the continuous and uninterrupted faith of all the centuries. It would certainly be surprising and akin to a portent if the Roman pontiffs had mixed other articles—both false and uncertain—into the Apostolic tradition, and had strictly required their explicit profession from all; while other Churches, which themselves had preserved the Apostolic tradition unblemished among them through the continuous succession of bishops, and had at times sharply resisted the Roman pontiffs in matters pertaining to discipline, and had complained that their own rights were violated by foreign customs; yet had not complained that the Apostolic faith and tradition had been adulterated by them, nor openly refused to submit to the yoke of a new and hitherto unheard-of profession imposed upon them. Scarcely did Pope Liberius subscribe to the Sirmian Formula, scarcely did Honorius, deceived by the wicked arts of Sergius of Constantinople, incautiously permit himself to be hoodwinked by that old trickster, than the whole Church immediately rose up against both, and disapproved and condemned both: nor did the Roman pontiffs who followed treat them any more gently. How, then, could it have happened that they subsequently fell away so far from the ancestral faith and tradition of their predecessors that, with no one protesting, no one resisting, they drew the whole Church with them into the agreement and profession of the same error? ^D Or, when the enemy sowed tares in the field of Christ, were all the householders so fast asleep that no one perceived it at all, and no one endeavored to root out the tares? Where, then, are the promises of Christ, that He would never be absent from His Church, that the Church would never fail, and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it?

24. But suppose (far be it from me to concede) that the Roman Church has adulterated the Apostolic tradition, and its doctrine has fallen away from the Apostolic, if Protestants deny its truth, they ought to prove that it is also a heresy, defeated in the same manner by which they themselves are refuted, from the tradition and consent of the ancients and of the Apostolic Churches, and to show at the same time where

^A truth should be sought, and where the true Church of Christ is. If the Roman Church was to be deserted, it was necessary to flee to some other which had preserved the uncorrupted tradition along with the apostolic succession; one would have to adhere to this, and the error hitherto defended would have to be condemned before it and rejected [CXVII], and a profession of the Catholic faith would have to be issued: for in this way have repentant heretics been reconciled in every age, nor has the true Church ever allowed them to be reconciled in any other way. Now then, let Grabius prove, if he can, that the heresy of the Roman Church, as his party calls it, is refuted by the same form by which they themselves are refuted: let him say where the architects of the new religion sought the truth and the Church, and to which Church they fled when they departed from the Roman. Certainly not to other Western ones, inasmuch as they felt and communicated with the Roman; nor to the Eastern ones, with whom they have never been bound by any bond of communion. What then? They built for themselves a new faith, a new religion, a new Church, from the foundations. A monstrous crime! The very novelty of these almost daily Churches betrays its atrocity. But, says the learned Grabius, in his notes to book iv, ch. 26, Irenaeus teaches that one must withdraw from the wicked, and from those who do not conduct themselves rightly in Christian conversation, and must adhere to those who, with the order of the presbyterate, provide sound speech and blameless conversation. That is indeed true; but it should not have been concealed that those wicked ones, and those who do not conduct themselves rightly in Christian conversation, are those who had withdrawn from the ^B principal succession, and were gathering in whatever place they chose; that is, heretics and those of erroneous opinion, schismatics, the arrogant, those pleasing themselves, and hypocrites, doing this for the sake of gain and vain glory, all of whom had fallen away from the truth. After Irenaeus has discoursed upon all these individually, and by name concerning those false pastors who are thought by many to be presbyters, but who serve their own pleasures and do not set the fear of God before them in their hearts, but treat others with contumely, and are puffed up with the pride of their principal position, and do evil in secret, he concludes that it is necessary to withdraw from all such; but to adhere to those who both keep the doctrine of the apostles, and with the order of the presbyterate, provide sound speech and blameless conversation for the confirmation and correction of others. And where one finds such, he at once indicates, from the apostle Paul, that is, in the Church: Such, he says, the Church nurtures as presbyters. Which Church? Surely that in which is that succession of the Church which is from the apostles. It is in vain, therefore, to seek presbyters such as Irenaeus described in any other society. It is in vain, accordingly, to seek them among all modern sectarians; among whom, since there occur no bishops ordained by those who refer their ordination back to the apostles themselves, there exists not that ^C succession of the Church that is from the apostles. You will search in vain in the present-day Anglican Church itself, to which it has now pleased Grabius to join himself. It truly prides itself on Episcopal order and succession: but it holds merely the shadow and phantom of it, which may deceive the unskilled, but certainly not the reality. For it is certain that the ordination and succession of the bishops of the English of today flowed, as from a head and fountain, from Matthew Parker, who intruded himself into the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury. It has, therefore, only as much validity as Parker’s ordination had. But that this ordination was a farce, performed by the spurious bishop John Scory (a) (whom, in the times of Edward VI, the Zwinglians and Puritans had ordained as a bishop according to the form of the new Anglican Ritual), in violation of all the canons of the Church, and with the traditionally accepted matter and form despised, the Catholics have demonstrated so invincibly that the heterodox have hitherto been able to oppose to their arguments nothing but vain cavils. Let the learned Grabius see to it, therefore, and seriously weigh whether among the ministers of the modern Anglican Church there be that succession of the Church which is from the apostles, the most certain mark of the true Church, and consequently whether that Church, which has stood so far removed from the principal succession, could have kept the doctrine of the apostles and exhibited sound speech and blameless conversation. Let the most learned man himself finally see what must be answered to the question he has proposed at the end of the note cited above. But what is to be done then, when all things are full of errors, schisms, and vices? To say that, he says, is neither easy nor is this the place for it. Nay, it was most easy to say that it is a chimera born from the Protestant brain; for it is impossible that all things should be full of errors, schisms, and vices, as long as, by the promises of Christ, there is to be in the world a true Church, a guardian of that rich depositary, to speak with Irenaeus, into which the apostles most fully conferred all things that are of the truth. That Church is to exist as long as there are to be presbyters who have succession from the apostles, who with the succession of the episcopate have received the sure charism of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father. ^D Such presbyters the Roman Church certainly nurtures, in which, through the successions of bishops, that which is the tradition from the apostles has always been preserved by those who are everywhere, and the true doctrine of Christ has come down even to us. But no Protestant society can show such ones; among whom, since there is not that succession of the Church which is from the apostles, and the true ministry such as Christ instituted, it is manifest that even that which is sound and irreproachable in conversation, and unadulterated and incorruptible in speech, is lacking.

25. Finally, it follows from the doctrine of Irenaeus explained thus far, and from the description of his testimony, that the apostles, in the Churches which they founded, instituted individual bishops ^A to preside over them as their successors; and that these were therefore superior to presbyters by divine right and by the very institution of Christ. We have, he says, to enumerate those who were instituted as bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our time. Accordingly, a list of these successions of bishops, one after another, existed in the archives of all the Churches in the age of Irenaeus. But because, as he himself says, it would have been too lengthy to recount all those successions, he provides a specimen of them in the single Roman Church, which surpasses the others; while the others are mentioned only in summary: The blessed apostles, he says, founding and building up the Roman Church, committed the office of the episcopate for the administration of the Church to Linus. Anacletus succeeds him; after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement obtains the episcopate. He enumerates the others in succession down to Eleutherus, who, he says, now holds the episcopate in the twelfth place from the apostles. Therefore, individual moderators and pastors, by the name and title of bishops, presided over the Roman Church by apostolic institution. This is as certain in Irenaeus as is the tradition itself, the authority of which he was establishing in that place against the heretics. Indeed, the succession ought to have been more manifest and better known than the tradition, or rather, the tradition of the succession should be more manifest than that of dogma and doctrine: since the tradition of doctrine is approved by another succession. If this is true—and it is true not only at Rome but in other cities as well,, ^B where, by the authority of the apostles, the same form of governing the Churches was established—then the fiction of the Puritans is truly false, that it was only after the death of the apostles, and in the middle of the second century, that there was a bishop set over each Church; whereas up until that time they were allegedly governed by many, that is, by the whole presbytery or college of presbyters, with equal right and authority. For why would Irenaeus, a man of the apostolic times, write that individual bishops were instituted by the apostles in individual Churches, and that upon their deaths other individuals were substituted in such a way that the series of those successions and the catalog was preserved in each Church? Why was the memory of one succeeding another so studiously recorded, if all presbyters were equal, in title just as in dignity, and no one was superior to others by divine right? Why is this one inscribed in the catalog rather than that one, if all are equal? Where is that which Salmasius writes, that the apostles never set individual bishops over the Churches which they founded; ^C when Irenaeus testifies that he is able to recount in detail the successions of those individual bishops who were instituted by the apostles? It is a knot that neither Blondel, nor Daillé, nor Salmasius could ever untie or cut. But since most learned men, both Catholic and Anglican episcopal, have thoroughly treated this argument, and have defended it against the quibbles of the Puritans, I decline to say more. I will observe here only this: that Irenaeus has long since occupied the argument which the Puritans seek from those words of Acts XX:17: *Paul sending from Miletus to Ephesus, called the elders of the Church, τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους τῆς Ἐκκλησίας. And when they had come to him and were gathered together, he said to them... Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Spirit hath placed you bishops to rule the Church of God.* As if Paul were here calling "bishops" those whom he had immediately before called "elders," or presbyters of the Ephesian Church. Irenaeus expressly asserts ^D that those presbyters whom Paul had summoned to Miletus were both simple presbyters and bishops, and that both had been summoned not from Ephesus alone, but also from the neighboring cities of Asia. *In Miletus,* he says, *having summoned the bishops and presbyters who were from Ephesus and from the other neighboring cities, because he himself was hastening to Jerusalem to keep Pentecost, testifying many things to them, and saying what must befall him at Jerusalem, he added: I know that you shall see my face no more, etc.* These things are clear, nor are they to be obscured by any mists of the Puritans. Therefore, those whom the Apostle calls bishops placed by the Holy Spirit to rule the Church of God were not Ephesian presbyters, but the bishop of that same city and the bishops of the other neighboring cities.

ARTICLE IV.

26. Since it is impossible to obtain salvation outside the true Church of Christ, it was consistent with the divine goodness that it should, like the sun, diffuse most clear rays on all sides, by which it could most easily be recognized; or that it should be marked by certain sure and perspicuous signs and characteristics, by which it could be distinguished from every false religion and from other spurious and adulterous societies. But the holy Fathers, and Catholic theologians, have enumerated many marks of the true Church. But they are all easily reduced to these four, which the Council of Constantinople inserted into its Creed: *And one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.* Therefore, whatever is the true Church of Christ, it must be recognized by these marks, that it is, namely, one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Such was

the body of which Irenaeus was a member, whose faith and doctrine he defended, and from which he ^A irreproachably demonstrated that those he was combating, the heretics, had departed. He himself marked it with these characteristics more than once, and wished it to be distinguished from any other heretical or schismatic society.

27. That this mark of unity is singular and proper to the Catholic Church alone, whereby it is discerned from all heretics and schismatics, was so certain to Irenaeus that he establishes this as the safest bastion for the defense of the faith and takes from it the beginning of his argument. "This preaching," he says, "and this faith, as we have said, the Church, although (in Greek, *kaiter*, although) disseminated throughout the whole world, guards diligently, as if inhabiting one house: and she believes in these things in like manner, as if having one soul and one heart: and she preaches, and teaches, and hands down these things consonantly, as if possessing one mouth." As if to say: ^B This is the mark of the true Church, this is its character. Although it has been spread far and wide through the whole world, for the unity of the faith it is as if it inhabited one house. For the faith and doctrine which it has accepted, entrusted to it by the apostles, it guards with the same effort and the same care everywhere; and as if it had one soul, one heart, and one mouth, it believes, preaches, teaches, and hands down what it has received in the same way everywhere. For, he adds, even if the languages of the world are different between themselves, yet the power of the tradition is one and the same everywhere; nor do those Churches which have been established in Germany, the Spains, the Gauls, in the Orient, in Egypt, or elsewhere among the nations, believe otherwise or hand down otherwise; but just as the sun, created by God, is one and the same in the whole world, so also the preaching of the truth shines everywhere, ^C and illuminates all men who wish to come to the knowledge of the truth. And although the gifts of the leaders of the Churches are not the same for all, and some are more skilled and more eloquent than others; yet the doctrine of all is the same. "For since faith is one and the same, neither does he who is able to say much about it amplify it; nor does he who says less diminish it." "The path," he says elsewhere, "of those who are of the Church, going around the whole world, as it holds firm the tradition from the apostles, and grants us to see that the faith is one and the same for all, all confessing one and the same Father, and believing the same disposition of the incarnation of the Son of God, and knowing the same gift of the Spirit, and meditating on the same precepts, and guarding the same form of that which is toward the Church, ^D of the ordination (that is, the same form of ecclesiastical government), and expecting the same advent of the Lord, and maintaining the same salvation of the whole man, that is, of soul and body. And indeed the preaching of the Church is true and firm, with which the one and the same way of salvation is shown to the whole world. For it has been entrusted to it the light of God, etc."

28. This faith of apostolic men, innate in their minds and accepted from the apostles and as it were sealed, is the notion of the true Church. Away then with that spurious and monstrous notion of the Church which the more recent Protestant ministers have invented, which embraces all sects, both heretical and schismatic, which agree in those articles of faith which they are pleased to call fundamental—though they have never clearly or openly defined them—even if they disagree in all other matters, and, fighting as if in a civil war, miserably rend and tear themselves with the mutual wounds of anathemas. Nothing could be imagined more foreign to that unity of soul, heart, and mouth which Irenaeus says is the character of the true Church. Indeed, so far is the Church, as described by Irenaeus, from embracing any heretical sects in its bosom, that he rather contends that it is distinguished from heretics in this, that "its preaching is everywhere constant and perseveres equally," agreeing with itself everywhere in the world; but they are never constant, always and everywhere fighting with themselves, moved by every wind of doctrine, and tossed as if by the alternating and succeeding waves of various opinions. "We," he says, "following the one and only true God as teacher, and having his words as the rule of truth, all say the same things always about the same matters." But they "not holding good opinions, meanwhile argue against themselves, not agreeing on the same words." And elsewhere: "We have thought it good to show first in what respects the fathers of this fable themselves disagree against one another, as if they were from various spirits of error. And from this indeed it is possible to learn diligently, and from the showing (in Greek, *kai pro tes apodeixeos*, 'with no arguments yet brought forward,' as Billius translates better), that truth which is preached by the Church, and that false-speaking which is feigned by them." Then, having exposed the wonderful consensus of all the Churches in one faith and doctrine; he adds: "Let us see now also the inconsistent opinion of these men, since there are two or three, just as they do not say the same things about the same matters, but respond with things contrary in both names and realities." Having described the theories of the principal disciples of Valentinus, which fight against each other, he concludes: "But since they disagree among themselves, both in doctrine and in tradition, and those who are recognized as the more recent among them affect to invent something new every day, and to bring forth fruit which no one ever imagined, it is difficult to describe all their opinions." But if you ask what is the cause of such widespread license for opinion among heretics; Irenaeus will assign it: "because," forsooth, they are not founded upon the one rock, but upon the sand which has in itself many stones; many from...

among themselves even wish to be teachers, and withdrawing, indeed, from the heresy in which they were, they go on to compose one dogma from one opinion and then another from yet another, and insist on teaching something new, boasting themselves the inventors of the opinion, whatever it may be that they have put together. For having once shaken off the yoke of the authority of the Church, and having repudiated the rule of truth, being now unable to be restrained by any bridle, they easily concede to whatever opinions they may encounter. They stand convicted, therefore, of being disciples not of the apostles, but of their own bad opinion. On account of this, there are also various opinions for each one of them, as each receives error in the way he is able to grasp it. Therefore, he very rightly warns that one ought not to seek the truth from others—that is, from heretics—which it is easy to take from the Church; since the apostles, as into a rich repository, most fully deposited into it all things that belong to the truth, so that every one, whoever wills, may take from it the drink of life. For this is the entrance to life; but all others are thieves and robbers. For this reason, one must avoid them; but as for those things which belong to the Church, one must with the greatest diligence love and apprehend the tradition of the truth. Therefore, truth is to be sought only in the Church: to this alone the truth was entrusted by the apostles, to this alone was entrusted the light of God, to this alone was entrusted the gift of God, the faith, even as the inspiration for the formation of man, so that all members partaking of it might be vivified; from this alone the drink of life is to be taken; this alone is the entrance to life. And what is that Church? It is, of course, that which Irenaeus has now described, which, propagated throughout the whole world, has one soul, one heart, one mouth, one and the same form of ecclesiastical government, through the continuous succession of bishops from the apostles, whose one faith, doctrine, and method of teaching is consistent. So far is he from thinking that heretics belong to this Church, that he rather explicitly excludes them from it, as thieves and robbers, among whom there is no life nor any truth to be sought.

^B 29. They say, among the members of that very Church which boasts so much of its unity, there sometimes arise the gravest contentions and fiercest controversies. That is indeed true: but having intentionally omitted many things that could be answered (for I would not wish to introduce more into the field of controversies than our Irenaeus allows), I will observe only this one thing; namely, that the true Church of Christ is distinguished from all other societies whatsoever in this: that in them there is no rule for ending controversies; but in the former, there is a certain means for settling any contentions, namely, the authority of the Church itself, either speaking through its bishops or in general councils, or by judging and defining, or by approving or rejecting something by unanimous consent. For since the apostles entrusted the Churches to bishops, as Irenaeus so often asserts, and entrusted to them the repository that was to be guarded—that rich deposit into which they had most fully brought all things that are of the truth—it is impossible, so long as the true Church shall stand, and Christ shall not be wanting to His promises (can any Christian suspect that he will ever be wanting?), for all the bishops, and every individual Church governed by them, to conspire in error. Wherefore, as something certain and indubitable, and on which the unity of the Church hangs bound, Irenaeus proposes and frequently inculcates: that "it is necessary to obey the presbyters who are in the Church," and "from them to learn the truth," and that "the genuine exposition of the Scriptures is to be sought." The reason is that "with the succession of the episcopate they have received the sure charism of truth, according to the pleasure of the Father." And although there sometimes arise presbyters who are indeed believed by many, "but who serve their own pleasures and do not set the fear of God before them in their hearts; it is certain, nevertheless, that such presbyters always nourish the Church," who both keep the doctrine of the apostles, and with the order of the presbyterate provide sound speech and a conversation without offense, for the confirmation and correction of the rest; to whom, therefore, one ought to adhere.

30. But so that unity among bishops and so many individual Churches so far distant from each other might be cherished, and the consensus of all might be more easily explored, nor would all be forced in the event of any controversies arising to meet together in one place to their own great burden: it was necessary that some primary Church be constituted among all, which might preside over all others, watch over the others by right, and be as it were a center of unity, into which all flowing, might be bound together in the bond of the same faith and communion. The opinion of this primary Church being known, therefore, that of all the others would most for the most part be known; for there is one faith and doctrine of all with that Church; ^C this is the head of the others, to which all are held most tightly to adhere. That this is the privilege of the one Roman Church, so that it holds the first place of honor, dignity, and authority among all the others, and has all others as inferior to itself, Irenaeus teaches so clearly and openly, that a man would have to be blind in the midday light if he were to dare to deny it. About to draw arguments against heretics from the authority of apostolic tradition and the consensus of all Churches; he establishes this as the starting point: that the apostolic tradition has been one and the same, pure and unblemished, preserved in all Churches, and that it is open to all who are studious of the truth. "The tradition of the apostles therefore manifested in the whole world, is present for all to see in every Church who wish to see the truth." This proposition he proves from the fact that since in every apostolic Church, from the first bishop who was instituted by the apostles, there has always been a continuous succession, and never anywhere... ^D

^A an uninterrupted series of bishops succeeding one another, who have handed down, as it were from hand to hand, to those in their care and to the peoples committed to them, that which had been delivered by the apostles; if in any dogma all Churches are found to be in agreement, it is an invincible argument that it originated from the apostles themselves. "We have to reckon those who were instituted by the apostles as bishops in the Churches, and their successors down to us, who have taught no such thing, nor have they known what is so wildly imagined by these men. For if the apostles had known hidden mysteries, which they taught privately and secretly to the perfect, they would have handed them down most especially to those to whom they were committing the Churches themselves, etc." The whole force of this argument depends on a double proposition; first, that in each of the apostolic Churches a continuous succession of bishops from the apostles has always persevered; second, that all those Churches conspire to the same sentiment. As Irenæus did not think it necessary for himself to approach each individual Church in order for him to prove both at once, that he might unfold the catalogues of succession preserved in their archives and explore the sentiment of each one—this would have been too long and subject to many difficulties; he proceeds by a faster and shorter way. He deemed it sufficient to consult the tradition of the one Roman Church, preserved in it through the continuous succession of bishops, so as to confound all heretics; judging rightly and deservedly that, once it was known, the tradition, sentiment, and doctrine of all other Churches would be known forthwith. For since the Roman Church is the prince, the head, and the first of all, the greatest of all, the most ancient, and the most known, founded by the glorious prince of the apostles, Peter, and his associate Paul, which for its own right presides over and dominates all others, and with which it is necessary that all the faithful everywhere should be linked by ties of one and the same faith and communion; it is thence clearly evident that there cannot be another tradition and faith for the other Churches than the faith and tradition of the Roman Church. And so, with the catalogues of the bishops of the Churches of the whole world passed over, it is sufficient to recount the continuous succession of bishops of that one Church, and to declare the tradition of the apostles which has flowed through this as if through a channel down to us; so that from the common sentiment and tradition of all the Churches, which ought to consent with the Roman, all heretics may be defeated. "But since," he says, "it would be very long in such a volume as this to enumerate the successions of all the Churches; we, indicating that tradition which the greatest and most ancient and most known Church, founded and constituted at Rome by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul, has from the apostles, and the faith announced to men, coming down to us through the successions of bishops, confound all those who in any way—whether by self-pleasing, or vainglory, or by blindness and evil sentiment—gather what they should not." For to this Church, on account of ^B its more powerful pre-eminence, it is necessary that every Church should resort, that is, those who are from everywhere, the faithful, in which the tradition which is from the apostles has always been preserved by those who are from everywhere.

31. In these words several things must be observed: 1. That the Roman Church in the age of Irenæus was already esteemed the greatest of all, far less in the number of the faithful, regarding which some other Churches could have contended with it at that time, than in the amplitude of its authority. 2. "Most ancient of all"; and if this is referred to the time of foundation, it will be most false; for the apostles had long before founded the Hierosolymitan, the Antiochene, and others. It must therefore necessarily be referred to dignity, that the Roman Church is called the most ancient of all because it is the prince and chief of all. Wherefore I scarcely doubt that Irenæus wrote in Greek, ἀρχαιοτάτης, which the interpreter poorly translated as "most ancient"; whereas it should have been translated here as "chief and princely." 3. Irenæus asserts that it is known to all, inasmuch as all other Churches looked up to and venerated it—as more sublime and excellent than the rest—as their head and first. 4. He says it was founded and constituted by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul; by which collapses that absurd fiction of certain recent heretics who, with all antiquity crying out against them, dared to deny that Peter ever came to Rome. 5. That it is necessary for every Church, or all the faithful dispersed throughout the whole world, to resort to this Church: not that those who were the faithful from everywhere were held strictly to go thither; that would have been the most absurd thing even to think; but because, as Salmasius ^C himself is forced to admit, it was necessary to coincide and agree in matters of faith with the Roman Church. For in Greek, he says, Irenæus had spoken, *συμβαίνειν πρὸς τὴν τῶν Ῥωμαίων Ἐκκλησίαν*; furthermore, *συμβαίνειν πρός τινα* is as customary to the Greeks as *συμβαίνειν τινί*; but the former, indeed, can be referred here to nothing but agreement and concord, and to twist it to mean any kind of pilgrimage can only be done most insipidly. Moreover, the reason why it is necessary that every Church should agree with the Roman Church is offered here by Irenæus, "on account of its more powerful pre-eminence." Salmasius himself rightly agrees with us that the Latin interpreter wrote thus: yet he thinks that what was written in Greek by Irenæus was *διὰ τὸ ἐξαίρετον αὐτῆς πρωτεῖον*; we think it is more probably *διὰ τὸ ὑπέρτερον πρωτεῖον*. But whichever our author wrote, he intended to signify that all Churches are held to agree with the Roman; because although the others may rightly rejoice in a primacy over the faithful subject to them, each in its own boundaries, yet the one which Rome holds is by far more powerful; inasmuch as it dominates all by the right of a principate and primacy, presides over all, and has all subject to it. 6. Finally, in that Church has always been preserved by those who are from everywhere, that ^D which is the tradition from the apostles.

For since all the faithful who are from everywhere are bound to adhere to this opinion and doctrine, the apostolic tradition could be preserved much more safely and easily in it, entrusted to so many bishops, priests, and clerics, and to so many myriads of the faithful, and stored in their inmost hearts, than in other Churches viewed separately, the boundaries of whose jurisdiction did not extend so far and wide.

32. This passage of Irenæus is troublesome to all those who, «through blindness and a malicious interpretation, beyond what is fitting, have gathered»—that is to say, those who have thrown off the yoke of the catholic faith and simultaneously of the obedience which they were bound to show to the Roman Church—so that they might establish for themselves, at their own whim, separate conventicles. Wherefore, lest they incur the most repulsive stain of schism and heresy, the Protestants move no stone left unturned to avoid the weight of this most importunate passage. But they are as inconsistent in explaining this as they are in the dogmas of the faith. Salmasius, unable to close his eyes to the radiance of such clear light, was forced, as I have said, to confess that the meaning of Irenæus’s words is that «it is necessary for every Church to agree and concur in matters of faith and doctrine with the Roman Church.» This is the very same thing that all Catholics infer from this passage of Irenæus. Therefore, Salmasius must necessarily admit that every Church which differs and dissents from the Roman Church in matters of faith and doctrine is, by that very fact, held guilty of schism and heresy. Let the followers of Salmasius, therefore—all the Calvinists and whoever else dissents from the Roman Church in matters of faith—see how they may rid themselves of this guilt. For what Salmasius admits was necessary in the second century of the Church is no less necessary in these later centuries. As to what he adds here—that Irenæus wishes the Roman Church, as the principal one, that is, the first and the most pure of all, to be a type and example to others for the preservation of the sincerity of doctrine and apostolic tradition—in this, what he confesses is true: that Irenæus intends for the Roman Church to be the principal one and the first of all. Let him wish it or not, it follows that by the right of headship and primacy it presides over and dominates all others; and therefore, all those who refuse its authority cannot absolve themselves of the crime of open rebellion. But if Salmasius wishes the Roman Church to be first and principal only in the sense that, being the most pure of all, it ought to be a type and example to others of the sincerity of doctrine and the preservation of apostolic tradition, he is trifling, and he wishes Irenæus to trifle with him. For, to pass over more things here—which I shall speak of shortly when I examine Grabius’s opinion—if the Roman Church were principal and first for that reason alone, the Church of Smyrna and the Church of Ephesus, which Irenæus frequently mentions, could have rightfully and deservedly contended with it for the primacy and headship. For even they, at that time, were no less pure than the Roman Church, nor less capable of being proposed to the others as a type and example of the preservation of the purity of doctrine and apostolic tradition. Therefore, Irenæus would have asserted in vain and ridiculously a more powerful principal status for the Roman Church alone, which other Churches, founded in like manner by the apostles and governed by their most holy successors, could have claimed for themselves with the same right. He would have argued in vain that it is necessary for every Church to agree and concur in matters of faith and doctrine with the Roman Church on account of its more powerful principal status. For if other Churches are not bound to obey this opinion in matters of faith, there is no greater necessity to agree with that Church than with the Antiochene, the Ephesian, the Smyrnæan, and the others.

33. How poorly Salmasius handled the cause of the Protestants is well understood by the learned Grabius. Wherefore, rejecting his interpretation, he thought he should hold a different view, and he attempted to prop up the sagging cause with other commentaries: not new ones, indeed, but those which Chamier had long since written to obscure this passage of Irenæus. I shall not dwell on the Greek which he attributes to Irenæus, and which he fabricates as he pleases: they are empty conjectures of a luxuriant imagination, which are as easily denied as they are gratuitously proposed. Nor shall I dwell on the fact that, regarding the Latin text of Irenæus, he thinks one should read *potentiorem principalitatem* (more powerful principal status), as all published texts and most manuscripts have hitherto maintained, rather than *potiorem* (superior/preferable status), as we restored from the Claromontane manuscript, the most ancient of all; for although this latter reading squares better with the mind and words of Irenæus, yet the other squares well too; wherefore, I consider it the same to the sense whichever one is retained. But I come to the point. Grabius therefore contends that by the "concurrence of the whole Church"—that is, of those who are the faithful from everywhere—to the Roman Church, on account of its *more powerful principal status*, one must understand the influx of those who were sent to Rome from every Church to plead the cause of the Christians before the emperors, whose principal status—that is, supreme power—was more powerful. Because of the more powerful principal status of the Romans, he says, it happened that the faithful from all churches everywhere flocked to the Roman city, and consequently to its Church, to undertake the defense of their faith and Church. But he claims that Irenæus wrote this passage about this gathering at the location of the city and Church of Rome, not about communion of faith and charity with it, and much less about subjection of obedience. Thus Grabius.

34. But that this explanation of Irenæus’s words is supposed to be—if one assumes he was completely delirious—cannot fit in any way. 1° If one is to understand the influx of those who were sent to Rome from every Church to plead the cause of the Christians before the emperors, the meaning will be that it was necessary for the whole Church—that is, those faithful who are from everywhere—to come to Rome to plead the cause of the Christians before the emperors. And yet, so far was that from being necessary, that even before Irenæus’s time...

^A one could not prove by a single example that this had happened, as Grabius tries to do. We read indeed of several Apologies of the Christians presented to the emperors, by Quadratus, Aristides, Melito, Apollinaris, Athenagoras, and Justin; but that they were sent by the Roman Churches to Rome to plead the cause of the Christians before the emperors is most false; indeed, we read nowhere that most of them—even Athenagoras himself, whose Apology Grabius misuses because of the title *Legatio*—left their homeland to present their Apologies. If any, like Justin, presented them at Rome, they were already dwelling there for a long time, and had not come hither for that purpose. And, I ask, what necessity was there for Christians to approach pagan emperors, from whom they could hope for nothing but the violation of all justice and law? 2. Irenæus writes that it is necessary for the faithful to convene to the ^B Roman, not city, but Church. Why, then, by forcibly imposing a meaning on his words, does Grabius wish for “City” to be understood by “Church”? “To the Roman city,” he says, “and consequently the Church, the faithful convened from all the Churches everywhere.” As if the Roman city and the Roman Church sounded exactly the same, and as if anyone who approached the city should be said to have immediately to convene to the Church! Behold, Irenæus has not yet mentioned the Roman city, the court, or the emperors by even a word, but only the Roman Church; and yet are these words, *on account of the more powerful preeminence* (if one is to believe Grabius), to be referred not to the Church, concerning which he is professedly instituting his argument, but to the city, the court, or the emperors, of whom there is no mention? What stomach could bear digesting these absurdities? Who does not see that that *more powerful preeminence*, as the illustrious man likes to read it, pertains to that Church to which all the faithful ought thus to convene, so that the whole method of convening is the very *more powerful preeminence* of that same Church? 3. Finally (and this is the hinge of the case), Grabius neither can nor dares deny that the scope of Irenæus in this entire chapter is to prove that there is one and the same apostolic tradition and faith in every Church, by which all heretics are confounded; and that it had flowed pure and undefiled through the continuous succession of bishops down to his own age. But because it would have been too long and burdensome to enumerate the episcopal successions of all and each of the Churches, he judged it sufficient if the succession of the one Roman Church, through which the apostolic tradition had reached down to that age, were enumerated, because the faith and tradition of all other Churches is the same as the Roman. Wherefore, having enumerated the succession of the Roman bishops, he concludes: *By this ordination and succession, that tradition which is from the apostles in the Church, and the preaching of the truth, has reached down to us.* And this is a most full demonstration that there is one and the same life-giving faith, which has been preserved and handed down in truth in the Church from the apostles until now. Now, Irenæus proves that the faith and tradition of other Churches are the same as the Roman by the fact that to the Roman Church, on account of a more powerful preeminence ^C it is necessary for every Church to convene. If, therefore, we admit the Grabian explanation, and suppose it, it must be said that Irenæus argued as follows: The faith and tradition of those Churches, whose faithful it is necessary to come to Rome to plead the cause of the Christians before the emperors, is the same as the Roman, whose preeminence or supreme power is more influential. But it is necessary that the faithful from all the Churches come to Rome to plead the cause of the Christians before the emperors, whose preeminence is more influential. Therefore, the faith and tradition of all the Churches is the same as the Roman. I challenge Grabius himself to be the judge: who, unless he were delirious, would argue thus? Let us assume, on the contrary, that Irenæus argues in the way I demonstrated above; the argument will proceed thus: The faith and tradition of those Churches is one and the same as the Roman, which it is necessary to agree with, owing to the Roman Church being appointed by God as the head, leader, and prince, for the directing of all things in matters of faith and doctrine. But it is necessary that all Churches, or which is the same thing, all the faithful, from whatever place, region, or nation they be, agree with the Roman Church, which is the head, leader, and prince of all, appointed by God for the directing of all things. Therefore, the faith and tradition of all the Churches is the same as the Roman; and hence, since all heretics and schismatics are confounded by the tradition of this Church, it necessarily follows that they are confounded by the consent of all the Churches. Let any fair appraiser of matters judge, and compare this latter argument, which the Catholics rightly contend is Irenæus’s, with that which Grabius attributes to the most holy martyr: unless he wishes to be voluntarily blind, he must admit how much the latter conflicts with Irenæus, and how much the former is in full agreement with him, and wonderfully squares with Irenæus’s scope, doctrine, and antecedents. 35. But, says Grabius, it is so far from the truth that Irenæus considered himself and other faithful to be so restricted [by the Roman Church] that he considered a public act to the contrary. For when Pope Victor had cut off the Asian Churches from communion because they refused to celebrate Easter according to the custom of the Roman Church, Irenæus did not rebuke the Asian prelates because they refused to follow the custom of the pontiff, nor did he exhort them to have no reason to allow themselves to be ^D severed from the communion of the Roman Church; but rather he rebuked Victor himself because he had cut off entire Churches, which were keeping the custom handed down to them from their ancestors, from communion, as we ourselves have related above from Eusebius and others. It is indeed to be lamented that Grabius allows himself to be deluded by such futile arguments. What comparison can be instituted between matters that pertain to faith and those that pertain to the discipline of the Church? Who does not know that that whole question concerning the celebration of Easter pertained solely to discipline, and in no way to faith, and could always be agitated among those disputing while the faith remained intact? Both sides indeed supported their own opinion with apostolic tradition; but it does not escape even the novice that there are other apostolic traditions, which to

^A matters of faith or customs pertain, others to discipline; the former are always and everywhere the same, exposed to no change at any time; the latter, however, may vary according to the diversity of places and times. Of this latter kind was the apostolic tradition concerning the celebration of Easter. For the rule of conduct of the apostles could have been one thing in the East, and another in the West, wise in both places and grounded in charity; but from both, different disciplines arose here and there, which it was free to follow for as long as the universal Church did not introduce a contrary practice in her councils. Furthermore, when we say that it is necessary for every Church to agree with the Roman, we are speaking of matters of faith; we do not contend, however, nor do the Roman pontiffs themselves contend, that the discipline of all Churches must be the same as the Roman. And many contended that Pope Victor sinned in this, in that he, departing from the prudent economy of his predecessors, had wished to bind the Asiatic Churches to the custom and discipline of Rome: contrary to what previous Roman pontiffs had thought and done, as well as other prelates of the whole West, who had judged that no dispute should be moved against the Asiatics in this matter. Whence, having been decently admonished by Irenaeus, as Eusebius relates, he immediately ceased from his undertaking, restored peace to the Asiatics, and thought it no longer necessary to trouble them. But however unsuccessfully Grabe sought an argument from that history, the same could just as successfully be retorted against him. For unless jurisdictional authority over the Eastern Churches had belonged to Pope Victor, he certainly would never have presumed to command them, and to order them to follow the custom of his own Church. For why should the Roman bishop wish to have the Ephesian, and not the Ephesian the Roman, subject and obedient to him in this matter? Why does the Roman bishop presume to excommunicate the Ephesian, and not the Ephesian the Roman? But why, if he had no authority over him, does the latter not deride the man’s insane arrogance and pride? The Ephesian bishop indeed denies, as do the other Asiatics, that the authority of the Roman pontiff extends so far that he can constrain others to the private discipline of his own Church; but they are so far from denying the authority itself ^C that they rather, when he commanded that the bishops should hold synods throughout the whole of the East, immediately complied, and informed their pontiff of what they had defined in their councils with the reverence that was owed. Indeed, Irenaeus himself, although he did not approve of Victor’s somewhat too ardent zeal, nevertheless did not rebuke the fact that he arrogated to himself some authority over the Easterners: but he only admonished him, and that decently and reverently, not to abuse that authority on the present occasion by excommunicating innocent Churches from communion. So certain is it that not even those with whom the Roman Church had most serious controversies dared to deny its primacy, its authority, and its jurisdiction.

36. Indeed, as I have said, that there is one Church ^D that was able to be bound together with others in the bonds of one and the same communion, scattered through the world; which could not happen except through the intervention of one Church, which, like a center of unity, would bind all others both to itself and to each other. Whoever is truly spiritual will adhere immovably to this one Church, nor will he suffer himself to be torn away from the center of unity by any reason: indeed, with Irenaeus as witness 85, he «will judge» and «will condemn» those who work schisms, who are empty, not having the love of God, and considering their own advantage rather than the unity of the Church: and for small and trivial causes, they tear and divide the great and glorious body of Christ, and, as much as in them lies, do put it to death: speaking peace, and working war: truly straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel. For no such correction can be made by them as there is the bane of schism. These last words are most to be pondered: «No such correction can be made by schismatics, or by all those who have withdrawn from the one chair, as there is the bane of schism.» Whatever correction, therefore, empty men might boast of having made, it can never equal the bane of schism, nor compensate for the loss of charity they have caused. 86 For he who departs from unity, falls from charity, and loses that «preeminent» gift of «love, which is more precious than recognition, more glorious than prophecy, and more preeminent than all other charisms.» Furthermore, that precious gift of the one body of Christ, namely of that Church in which there is one chair and a center of unity, is its character. «Wherefore,» adds Irenaeus 87, «the Church in every place, because of the love which it has toward God, sends forward a multitude of martyrs in every time to the Father; while all the others do not have this thing to show among themselves... for the reproach of those who suffer persecution for justice's sake, and endure all pains, and are put to death for that love which is toward God, and for the confession of His Son, the Church alone purely sustains.»

37. From this the holy character of the Church is made manifest, namely its sanctity. For that which is rooted and founded in charity, which possesses by its own right that precious gift of God, more preeminent than all other charisms, cannot but be holy. It must be holy, of which the Word of God Himself is the head. For, as our author says 88, the Father is indeed over all, and He Himself is the head of Christ; but the Word is through all, and He Himself is the head of the Church; inasmuch as the Word is man recapitulating all things in Himself: so that as He is the prince of the Word of God in heavenly, spiritual, and invisible things; so also in visible and corporeal things He may have the principality, assuming the principality into Himself, and setting Himself as head of the Church, [recapitulating] all things.

^A and [from those] who are said to work wonders by Simon and Carpocrates, and if there are any others, they do not do so by the power of God, nor in truth, nor for the benefit of men; but to their destruction and error, through magical delusions and every kind of fraud; harming those who believe in them more than they provide them any benefit, because they deceive them. For they can neither give sight to the blind, nor hearing to the deaf, nor drive away all demons, except those which are sent in by themselves, if indeed they even do that. ^B Furthermore, he proves that even in his own age, often in the brotherhood, because of some necessity in the Church in whatever place it may be, when the whole Church has besought it through much fasting and supplication, the spirit of the dead person has returned, and the man has been granted to the prayers of the saints; and that [CXXIV] many dead have thus been raised, so that they have remained with us for many years. He says that demons are driven out everywhere from the bodies of the possessed, that the sick are cured by the laying on of hands, and restored to health, and that many in the Church are seen who are conspicuous for the foreknowledge of future events, by visions, by prophetic utterances, and by charisms, the gift of tongues, etc. And what then? There is no numbering the graces which the Church, receiving from God throughout the whole world, performs in the name of Christ Jesus, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, day by day for the benefit of the nations; nor does it deceive anyone, nor take money from him... but purely and manifestly directing prayers to God, who made all things, and calling upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. From all of which he rightly infers, that the truth should be learned only there where the charisms of the Lord are placed, namely among those in whom is that succession of the Church which is from the apostles.

40. And how certain it is, how Irenaeus recognized that the Church is one and holy, it is just as certain that it is also catholic and apostolic. All those things which we have brought forth from the text itself demonstrate this evidently. For nothing is more efficacious, as we have already said, to crush the obstinacy of the heretics—who are divided into various sects and fight against one another ^D than to oppose to them the unanimous consensus of the whole Church throughout the whole world, propagated far and wide, and to reject and overthrow their wicked dogmas. Hence he perpetually urges, as we have seen, that the Church is "sown throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, disseminated throughout the whole world; dispersed throughout Germany, the Spains, the Gauls, the Orient, Egypt, Libya, and Judea; and established among many barbarian nations and throughout the whole world," encircling the entire world; and finally, as a vineyard "no longer hedged around, but expanded throughout the whole world," whose faith, doctrine, and tradition, however, were one.

^A one soul, one heart, one mouth, one and the same preaching, and form of ecclesiastical government. Let him laugh, therefore, or indeed let him be of unsound mind, whoever denies that the Church, so widely and broadly propagated, is visible and conspicuous, and reduces it to some fictitious and invisible gathering of the chosen. Who could remain hidden, whose light—the preaching of the truth—shines everywhere and illuminates all men who wish to come to the knowledge of the truth? How could that be unknown, which "everywhere preaches the truth," in which one and the same way of salvation is shown in the whole world, and which is "planted as a paradise in this world," and which is everywhere clear? Who, finally, can be invisible, which "is a seven-branched lamp, carrying the light of Christ; to which the light of God is entrusted; and for this reason the wisdom of God, by which He saves all men, is sung in the exit, but behaves confidently in the streets, is preached on the highest walls, and speaks constantly in the gates of the city?"

41. Our author also considered that there is nothing more valid for confounding those who either have wrong opinions, or assemble in a way other than is proper, than to oppose to them the apostolic Church. Hence he so often and so constantly inculcates, as we have shown, that this same Church received its faith, doctrine, and tradition from the apostles themselves, that it was founded and ordered by them, and that bishops were appointed by them, in whose hands in every Church was the supreme authority, by whom, ^B succeeding one another, it was perpetually governed and administered; and that by this continuous succession of bishops, never to cease, one and the same apostolic, pure, and undefiled faith and tradition flows down even to us. Hence he desires that in that succession the most certain character of the body of Christ, or the Church, be placed, by which it is distinguished from the conventicles of infidels, heretics, and ^C schismatics. "The character," he says, "of the body of Christ according to the successions of the bishops, to whom they have handed down that Church which is in every place." Where the most illustrious Grabius wrongly contends, and proves with no certain argument, that here the "character" denotes not so much a sign or mark as the form or figure of the Church. Even if he were to obtain this, he would still poorly serve his own cause. For it will be evident from Irenaeus, whether he likes it or not, that that form in the body of Christ, or the Church, was established by the apostles themselves according to the successions of bishops; and therefore by that form will the true Church of Christ, founded by the apostles, always be known and distinguished from any other society; because in that form exists the legitimate succession of bishops, which is missing in those others. Hence those who are from the Church, the same figure of it which pertains to the Church of ordination, that is, the same form of ecclesiastical government which the ^D apostles founded, our author asserts they must always maintain.

Hence, finally, he rightly and deservedly infers that the true Church is more ancient than any heretical or schismatic sects whatsoever, inasmuch as it refers its origin to the apostles, nay, to Christ Himself, its Head: "For all heretics are much later than the bishops, to whom the apostles handed down the Churches." For among the barbarians, the faith which the Church preached had already obtained; to whom, however, the sects of the heretics were not known even by name, much less were their opinions: "for neither had the congregation of heretics yet existed among them, nor had their doctrine been established." Then, that the beginnings of each heresy, and their first parents and architects, could easily be assigned; for they are of recent memory: but the beginnings of the Catholic Church can be traced back to Christ alone and His apostles. For before Valentinus there were not those who are from Valentinus, nor before Marcion were there those who are from Marcion; nor were there at all the other malignant thoughts, which we enumerated above, before their initiators and the inventors of their perversity came into being. For Valentinus came to Rome under Hyginus; he grew under Pius, and extended the time until Anicetus. Moreover, Cerdon, who lived before Marcion, and he too lived under Hyginus... Moreover, Marcion, succeeding him, prevailed under Anicetus... The rest, however, who are called Gnostics, appeared from Menandrus, the disciple of Simon, just as we have shown, that each of them received their beginnings, from whom the principality of the opinion, from him both the father and the leader appeared. But all these rose up into their apostasy much later, in the already intervening times of the Church.

42. With these most certain characteristics having been explained, Irenaeus defines that Church, whose faith and tradition he defended against the heretics, and distinguishes it from any other society, and desires it to be so distinguished. And whoever has heard Irenaeus speaking will not doubt which that Church was, for he says that it is necessary for every Church, if it wishes to be a member and part of the true Church, to agree with the Roman Church, that is, as we have demonstrated above, to agree with it in faith, tradition, and doctrine, and to adhere to its communion: and whoever remembers that the most holy disciple of the apostolic men [CXXV] always persevered, bound to that Church in an individual society of communion, until his death. Moreover, if the Roman Church was therefore the true Church of Christ in the second century, because it alone was marked by the aforesaid characters and signs of the true Church, it is necessary that it be the same and the only true Church of Christ even in these last centuries, since those characters meet in it alone. For whoever, having set aside prejudices for a time, wishes to run through all the sects that now miserably lacerate the body of Christ, will immediately discover the Church

^A alone to be that which is of one faith, one doctrine, one mouth and one lip, and which agrees with itself everywhere on matters of faith and morals as defined by the common judgment of pastors; whereas all other sects are divided into almost as many opinions as there are heads, and are tossed about by the alternating waves of various dogmas according to the requirements of the times, of emotions, and of advantage or disadvantage. He will discover that the Roman Church alone is holy, not because all its members are immune from sin—for in the Lord's field, tares are indeed mixed with the wheat—but because, since it alone teaches and commands nothing but what is holy, the Holy Spirit, the source of all graces and charisms, resides in it alone, who has led many, even in our own days, to an exceptional degree of sanctity and has glorified them with the splendor of true miracles; while all other sects, having long since fallen away from the true praise of holiness, can apply no restraint to sinners, and teach dogmas full of absurdity by which the holiness of faith and morals is utterly overthrown. Such is that [doctrine] that sinners can attain true justice by faith alone, and that no one can ever fall from the true justice he has once attained—which were the very same most destructive principles of the Gnostics, through which, as we have shown elsewhere, a very wide path is opened to all kinds of wickedness. He will discover that the Roman Church alone is apostolic, derived from the apostles by a continuous succession of its bishops and pastors, and has preserved intact the faith and tradition which it received from them; while all other sects, having rashly broken the apostolic ^B succession, have founded new churches for themselves, of which they are the new authors and founders. Finally, he will discover that the Roman Church alone is catholic and universal, propagated throughout the whole world, everywhere conspicuous and distinguished, and enjoying such wonderful fecundity that it daily gives birth to new children for itself and for Christ its Spouse, through those pastors and teachers it sends to the most remote nations; whereas all other sects are confined to a corner of the world and within the borders of certain regions, and are far less concerned with begetting new children for Christ than with perverting the old ones.

43. Concerning this, and especially the amplitude of the Roman Church, the most learned Feuardentius, of happy memory, has frequently inculcated it both truly and piously in his notes, and has confirmed it with other ^D sentiments of the Fathers. Grabius, in his notes to Irenaeus, book IV, chapter, formerly LXX, now XXXVI, has tried with all his might to elude his very troublesome arguments and to make Irenaeus and Augustine—whose authority Feuardentius also cited—favorable to himself. Thus, he confesses that Augustine, in his struggle with the Donatists, was much concerned to assert universality, and the very name "Catholic," as the proper character of the true Church, by which it might be distinguished from the false congregations of heretics and schismatics which adhere to a part of the world and have derived their name from it or from their own authors. And that this is how the matter generally stood in his age and before him. But [Grabius] really holds a different opinion regarding the succeeding and nearly final age of the world, and concerning that time (so often sung of by Calvinist and Lutheran ministers) of the great harlot, of which mention is made in the Apocalypse, chapters XVII, XVIII, and XIX. "Which," he says, "are not explained by Saint John alone, but even in this last age of the world, [they are explained] by the Papists themselves, and indeed by most theologians of the Society of Jesus in their commentaries on the holy Apocalypse, and they admit of no other exposition." Then, indeed, he adds, "if a man, led by the universality and amplitude of that corrupt Church, which turned from a virgin into a harlot, has embraced it, he has surely deceived himself most miserably." So says the renowned Grabius. To whom I say: Surely he rather deceives himself and others most miserably who, led by such frivolous little arguments, offers violence to the most evident testimonies of the holy Fathers, and so weakens their most efficacious arguments that all heretics and schismatics have always been able to blow them away with the slightest breeze. Nothing is more certain than that Irenaeus, Optatus, Augustine, and other holy Fathers objected to the amplitude and universality of the Church. But if this amplitude and universality is not an essential and perpetual character of the Church, there is nothing weaker than an argument drawn from that amplitude. For by what right does Grabius think he can respond to this, that while it might have been valid in previous centuries, back when the Church was still a virgin, it is not valid in this last age of the world, when that virgin has turned into a harlot? Any Gnostic, Sabellian, Arian, Nestorian, Donatist, etc., could have replied in exactly the same way. If the Church has already so fallen away from its pristine sanctity and faith that whoever, led by the universality and amplitude of that corrupt Church, which has turned from a virgin into a harlot, embraces it, is miserably deceiving himself—and consequently, if the most learned man thinks himself safe from the missiles of the Catholics by this response, and that he is a member of the true Church of Christ reduced to narrower limits—he must necessarily confess that he could rightfully use this same shield to protect any most wicked heretics, both ancient and recent, and that they could glory in the title of members of the true Church. Most unhappy, certainly, is Grabius, who provides weapons in his responses to all heretics whatsoever, whose strike he himself has no art to avoid.

44. But since I am forced to act here again, I will ask only one thing of Grabius: whether in this last age of the world any society survives on earth which can rightfully be called the true Church of Christ? He will not deny that it survives, I think, if he has faith in the oracles of the prophets and the words of Christ himself and the Gospel, by which it is foretold that the Church will never perish. Furthermore, if any true Church now survives on earth, it must necessarily be such, and marked by those same characters with which Christ wished it to be conspicuous and by which He willed it to be known. But from the prophetic and evangelical Scriptures it is most certain that universality and amplitude are a proper, essential, and therefore perpetual [character] of that Church, such as Christ established it,

^A a character which Saint Augustine demonstrates so clearly, efficiently, and invincibly in his book *On the Unity of the Church*, and, not to cite others, in what he wrote against the Donatists, so that the mouth of those who speak wickedly is completely stopped. After having produced and weighed the voices of the Scriptures of both Testaments, the holy doctor concludes in § 32: "The Church has been evangelized to us to be throughout the whole world." [CXXVI] The Lord Himself testified that this was foretold in the Law, in the Prophets, and in the Psalms; He who predicted that it would begin at Jerusalem and would continue through all nations, and who, when He was about to ascend into heaven, announced that they would be witnesses for Him in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the whole earth. These words were followed by the deeds. How it began at Jerusalem, and then proceeded into Judea and Samaria, and from there into the whole earth, where the Church still grows, until it obtains even the remaining nations to the very end—where it is not yet—is shown consequently by the testimonies of the holy Scriptures: whoever evangelizes something else, let him be anathema. Now, he who says that the Church has perished from the rest of the world, and has remained—as he claims—in the part of Donatus in Africa alone (it must now be said: has remained in the part of Calvin and Luther in England, Belgium, and Germany alone), evangelizes something else. Therefore, let him be anathema. Let him read this to me from the holy Scriptures, and let him not be anathema.

45. Modern Donatists will strongly answer as those ancients did in Augustine, § 33: "We believe these things, and we confess that they have been fulfilled; but afterwards the world apostatized, and the communion of Donatus (of Calvin and of Luther) alone remained." But we will immediately reply with Augustine: "Let them read this to us, and we will offer no resistance. But if they do not read those things from the holy Scriptures, but try to persuade us by their squabbles, I believe those things which are read in the holy Scriptures; I do not believe those things which are said by vain heretics." Truly a most equitable condition proposed by Augustine. For since it is most manifest, and, to use the words of Augustine (§ 56), the testimonies of the canonical Scriptures which commend ^C the Church as consisting in the communion of the whole world "stand in need of no interpreter;" whoever asserts that this amplitude and universality will not be a perpetual mark of the true Church, must bring forward testimonies of the Scriptures as clear and open by which he may prove his assertion. For, unless God has willed to deceive us—which heaven forbid that we should even think—having commended and designated His Church everywhere as a certain society which, before all others, would be distinguished by its amplitude and universality, He ought, in His goodness, to have warned, at least somewhere in such explicit words, that this amplitude would be a temporary mark of the Church only, destined to cease in the last age of the world; and that it would finally come to pass that the Church, which in previous centuries possessed ^D the whole world, would, in the last age of the world, be enclosed by narrower limits and be restricted by a smaller part of the world. Hence Augustine ^B § 72, 75, whose words Grabe might think were addressed to himself, and whoever is miserably deceived with him, errs so monstrously. "You have heard," he says, "the voice of the shepherd, most manifest, not only through his Law, and the prophets and psalms, but also through his own mouth commending his future Church. And you see by reading how those things which he foretold followed in order, in the Acts and Letters of the Apostles, which complete the canon of the divine Scriptures. It is not an obscure question in which you are deceived by those whom the Lord Himself predicted would come and say: 'Behold, here is Christ,' or 'there,' or 'in the desert,' as if where there is not a frequency of the multitude; 'behold, in the inner rooms,' as if in secret traditions and doctrines. You have the Church spread everywhere (and not only that, but) also growing until the harvest, that is, until the extreme day of judgment. You have the city of which He Himself, who founded it, says: 'A city set on a hill cannot be hid.' It is, therefore, the one that is not in any part of the earth, but is most well-known everywhere... But you, relying on so many most evident testimonies of the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Lord Himself, and the Apostles regarding the holy Church diffused throughout the whole world, demand of these people that they show some manifest testimonies from the canonical books regarding Africa (now regarding England, etc.), as far as pertains to the party of Donatus (now Calvin and Luther). For it could in no way happen, as I have already said, that the Church, as they say—and God forbid—would so quickly perish from so many nations, and that there would be silence about that which they want to be their own, which they contend was to remain until the end. Therefore, let Grabe and his followers search the Scriptures (and here again are the words of Augustine, § 42), and against so many testimonies by which it is shown that the Church of Christ is diffused throughout the whole world, let them bring forward even one as certain and as manifest as those are, by which they demonstrate that the Church of Christ has perished from the rest of the nations and has remained in England alone... But since they are not permitted even to look for something by which they might prove that it was predicted that, with the other nations failing from the Christian faith, the Church would remain in 'England' alone: let them attend to that which I have often recalled, that both grow until the harvest, and the field is the world, the harvest is the end of the age, not according to us, but according to the Lord Himself interpreting His own parable... Therefore, let them cease to look for what they will not be able to find, not because it is hidden, but because it does not exist. For there are still some nations in which the Gospel has not yet been preached; but it is necessary that all things which have been predicted concerning Christ and the Church be fulfilled: therefore it must also be preached in them."

46. But then Grabe, we read in the Apocalypse, would be the great harlot, with whom the kings of the earth will commit fornication and be drunk who inhabit...

concerning the earth, the wine of her prostitution, etc., which are explained by the pontiffs themselves with regard to the last age of the world. But again, with Augustine § 9, I shall answer that "those things must be set aside which are placed obscurely and are wrapped in the veils of figures (such as are almost all things read in the Apocalypse), and which can be interpreted both according to us and according to them." It is, indeed, for sharp-minded men to judge and discern who interprets them more probably; but we do not wish to commit our disputation to these contentions of wits in this cause that holds the peoples... Let the open truth cry out, let it shine, let it burst into stopped ears, let it strike the eyes of those who feign ignorance; let no one seek in these hiding-places a place for his own false opinion; let it confound every attempt at contradiction, let it crush every face of the impudent. If Grabius has such places of Scripture, let him produce them; but let him commit the interpretation of the Apocalypse to God alone, and let him remember how unhappily it turned out for some of his own ^A. However, if it were permitted to search into the mysteries of this holy prophecy, we could much more easily turn whatever is foretold concerning that great harlot upon the Protestants themselves, and accommodate the corruptions which they have brought into faith and morals to them, than they can transfer them to the Roman Church. But setting aside these figures of things, concerning which, as Augustine says again § 10, "because they even seek an interpreter, I do not wish our talents to be compared," let us conclude: since in the Scriptures that [Church] which Christ established is designated by this mark of universality and amplitude, and it does not appear anywhere that this mark will ever cease; if there is any true Church surviving in the world today, it is the only one which is extended more widely and broadly than other societies; and therefore, it is the only Roman one. "For those individuals are not found in many nations where this one is; but this one, which is everywhere, is found even where they are." ^B

ARTICLE V. On the mystery of the most holy Trinity.

[CXXVII] 47. Augustine handed down, in a very few words, the whole faith that the Catholic Church holds concerning the sacred mystery of the Trinity, in his book *De Civit. Dei* c. 24: "We believe," he says, "and we hold, and we faithfully preach, that the Father begat the Word, that is, the Wisdom through whom all things were made, the only-begotten Son, one [begotten] from one, the eternal from the eternal, the supremely good from the equally good; and that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of both the Father and the Son, and is substantial and co-eternal with both: and that this whole is both Trinity on account of the Trinity of persons, and one God on account of the inseparable divinity, just as he is one omnipotent on account of the inseparable omnipotence. So that even when one asks about each, it is answered that each of them is God and omnipotent; but when one asks about all together, not three gods, or three omnipotents, but one God omnipotent: so great is the inseparable unity there in the three, which thus willed to be preached." This, I say, is the sum of the catholic faith, from which the Socinians calumniate Irenæus for having widely departed—men to whom it was of the greatest interest to drag a man of such authority to their side, even against his will. ^C That he thought less correctly of it, some among the Catholics have complained more imprudently than malignantly. The illustrious George Bull, an English presbyter, in his *Defensio fidei Nicænæ*, and our most learned lord Nicolaus Le Nourry, in his *Apparatus ad Bibliothecam maximam veterum Patrum*, t. II of the former edition, in the year 1697, dissert. VI, cap. 6, § 2 et seqq., have strenuously defended him against the accusations of both; to whose labors, if I have been able to add nothing, I may perhaps have sprinkled at least some light.

48. That the mind of Irenæus may be explored more certainly, the safest path of all is to look deeply into what his goal was, what the hypothesis of the adversaries whom he was opposing was, and what, in the end, he undertook to prove against them? Let anyone, therefore, who will not have been reluctant to read our first dissertation, and especially art. 1, § 5 et seqq., recall to mind that all the Gnostics and Valentinians, whom Irenæus was refuting, had utterly destroyed the entire faith of the mystery of the SS. Trinity with their profane and Platonic figments: so much so that it flowed from these most impure fountains ^D which subsequently infected the Christian religion, the Sabellian and Arian heresy. Unable to lift their mind up to the Trinity of divine persons, of whom one and the same was the nature and divine substance, they posited a God, whom they called the first and supreme Father, solitary through immense intervals of ages, and one, as in nature, so also in person, silently thinking with himself, and content and occupied with his one thought. But when he had decided in his mind to reveal himself exteriorly, by founding the world, he erupted into an act which would be the seedbed, principle, form, and archetype of all things: and this they called *Noun*, the Mind or sense, and the only-begotten Son of the Father, and said that he was perfectly similar and equal to his parent.

and it was so arranged that he alone could comprehend the magnitude of the Father, as one who was not in any way distinct from the Father in substance or person, being nothing other than the Father himself perceiving and beginning, as it were, to pour forth externally. From *Noun*, they said, the Word was produced, who was the principle, author, and former of spiritual things, namely of the superior angels, being himself an Angel, but far distant from the Father and his *Noun* in substance and person: for it was not granted to him, as it was to the Only-Begotten, to comprehend the magnitude of the Father. ^A From the Word other Æons or angels were emitted, from whom in turn others were generated; and from all of them conspiring together was produced the Savior, who was to direct the inferior angel, the creator of this visible world. But when the last Æon had rashly scrutinized the magnitude of the supreme Father and had nearly perished, lest the same fate should befall others, another pair of Æons, or angels, was emitted by the Only-Begotten, namely Christ and the Holy Spirit, by whom the Pleroma was to be supported and fortified. The sum, therefore, as far as the present matter is concerned, comes to this: that the Father existed for long myriads of ages before the Word and the Holy Spirit; that that Only-Begotten, whom they called the Son, was a mere *ἐνέργεια* of the Father, an efficiency, act, or property *ἀνυπόστατον* (without individual subsistence), not a person distinct from him; but that the Word, the Holy Spirit, Christ, and the Savior were so many distinct spiritual natures and persons, of the angelic order, distinct from one another and created in time, and far inferior to the divine or paternal; and finally, that the Demiurge, or maker of the world, was himself also an angel, but more ignoble than the preceding; who had no place in the Pleroma, the seat of the others, and was born wrapped in the denser shadows of ignorance. These are the heretical fictions which Irenæus undertook to confute, and which he refutes throughout his entire work.

49. And first, because the heretics abused the various names which appear throughout the Scriptures—Christ, Word, Only-Begotten Son, Christ, Jesus, Savior, and Demiurge—and wrongly distinguished between them, a practice upon which the greatest part of the Valentinian system rested, Irenæus proves it to be vain, first by the authority of the Gospel of John; having explained which, he concludes in lib. 1, cap. 9, n. 3: ^B ‹That the Word, and the Only-Begotten, and *Zoë*, and *Phôs*, and the Savior, and Christ the Son of God, who was incarnate for us, are shown to be one and the same.› And in lib. 2, cap. 13, he demonstrates by many arguments that the distinction which the heretics interposed between the Father, *Noun*, and the Word, conflicts with right reason and the order of emissions they invented. Especially since *Noun*, or Mind, is the very thing that is principal and supreme, and is as the principle and fountain of all sense and thought—in a word, the essential and substantial Mind of the Father, and the Father himself—it must be most absurd to say that he was emitted, lest God himself and the Father be separated from himself, and as if one thing were emitted from another. Then, if such a series of emissions as the heretics invented is admitted in God, so that the Father existed long before he emitted his Word, and this is so far distant from him, it necessarily follows that the nature of composite men, existing of body and soul, and the affections and intentions of the mind, whilst they think, are transferred to God himself. For such is the condition of men, that a word is not emitted from their mind except after a certain series and succession of acts. ^C But in Him who is God over all, since He is simple, non-composite, similar in all his parts, and entirely like to himself, and equal—since he is all *Noun*, and all *Logos*, [CXXVIII] all sense, all *ennoia*, and all reason; and since there is nothing older or later in him, nor does he contain anything of another, but is entirely equal, similar, and enduringly one—such an emission of this kind of ordination does not follow. And in cap. 17, n. 7: ‹For the Father of all is not a composite being of some kind, apart from *Noun*, as we have demonstrated before; but *Noun* is Father, and Father is *Noun*. It is necessary, therefore, that he who is from him, the *Logos*, or rather *Noun* himself (since he is *Logos*), should be perfect and impassible; and that those emissions which are from him, since they are of the same substance as he is, should remain perfect, impassible, and always similar to him who emitted them.›

50. These are the arguments by which Irenæus ^D impugned the Valentinians. 1. As something most certain, based on the Catholic faith and the Gospel, he supposed that the Only-Begotten, the Word, the Savior, and Christ the Son of God, who was incarnate for us, were one and the same, or one and the same person, of whom these were merely diverse names. Then, he agreed with the heretics on this point (which the Catholic faith also approved), not that the Only-Begotten was a mere *ἐνέργεια* of the Father, as they wished, but that the Only-Begotten, through whom he asserted all things were made (with John), was consubstantial with the Father himself, perfectly similar to him, and perfectly comprehending the magnitude of the Father. From which he concluded that the Word himself is also consubstantial with the Father, perfectly similar to him, and comprehending his magnitude. 3. Because the heretics held that the Word was far distant from the Father, both in nature and in the order of generation, and was subject to ignorance and passion, he refuted this blasphemy by the same foundation. Indeed, *Logos* is *Noun* itself, and *Noun* is *Logos*; therefore, the substance, nature, and perfection of both are the same. Moreover, it is necessary that those emissions which are from *Noun* be of the same substance as *Noun* himself, and that they remain perfect, impassible, and always similar to him who emitted them. But *Noun* of the Father, by the admission of the heretics themselves, emitted the Word. It is necessary, therefore, that the Word be of the same substance as the *Noun* of the Father, perfect, impassible, and always similar to him. 4. ‹Much

^A The Father is far removed from all these things that proceed from men, from affections and passions. But these are human affections and passions, such that their word has a beginning of prolation, and, in a mind that thinks, has a later origin in time. Since, therefore, the Word of God infinitely surpasses the human word, it could have neither a beginning of prolation nor an origin in time. Finally, whatever is in God, is God himself: for he has nothing in himself that is older or later, or that is another person’s, or different from himself; but he is wholly simple, and not composite; he is wholly equal, and similar, and remains one. Yet the Word and the Holy Spirit are in God, and they are the Word and Holy Spirit of God; for God himself is the Word, he is entirely Spirit, entirely Logos, entirely Mind, etc. Therefore ^B the Word and the Holy Spirit are of the same substance and nature as God, of the same antiquity and eternity as he, coeval and consubstantial with him; in a word, they are God himself. That these are the very arguments of Irenaeus, no one who has attended to the testimonies just cited and to his whole scope will deny: they are certainly the same arguments that the holy Fathers later used against the Arians and Macedonians, and which theologians even now use to refute the impiety of the Socinians. Consequently, there is the same faith in both regarding the mystery of the most holy Trinity. Nor, however, is the most holy martyr content with these things; he either explains the same things at greater length or brings forward other things in succession, by which it is demonstrated more and more how rightly and catholically he thought.

^C 51. Because, as I have said, the heretics denied the eternity of the Word of God, and they imagined that this visible world was not created immediately by the Father himself, nor by his Word, but by some Power far inferior to him and ignorant of the Father; Irenaeus, refuting this fiction in Book II, chap. 2, shows in n. 4 and 5 that men, although they are needy and "cannot immediately manufacture anything from what is ready, need many instruments for the fabrication of any thing." But "it is the distinctive mark of the supereminence of God to have no need of other instruments for the condition of those things" (for the creating of those things) "which are made; nor to have need of angels as assistants for the things which are made, nor of any Power far inferior to him and ignorant of the Father; but that his own Word is ^D fit and sufficient for the formation of all things, just as John the disciple of the Lord says of him: All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing. In all things, however, is this world also which is according to us. And this too, therefore, was made by the Word, etc." Summing this up again in chap. 30, he says that through his own power he both disposed and perfected all things, and that the substance of all things is his will: "The sole one God," he adds, "is the framer, he who is above every Principality, and Power, and Dominion, and Virtue: this is the Father, this is God, this is the creator, this is the factor, who made them through himself, this is through his Word and his Wisdom, the heaven, and the earth, and the seas, and all that is in them: this is the just one, this is the good one, etc., this is the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, etc., this is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ through his Word, who is his Son, through whom he is revealed and manifested to all, etc." These things, therefore, are certain and demonstrated in Irenaeus: that one God created absolutely all things, both visible and invisible, and that he is the one who is above every Principality, Power, Dominion—in a word, above all angels—and is the Father of all; that he created them, I say, not through organs and instruments diverse from himself and of a different nature from him, but through himself, that is, through his Word, his Son, and his Wisdom, that is, the Holy Spirit, as he himself explains in Book IV, c. 20, n. 1: "For he did not," he says, "need these (the angels) to make what he had predetermined to be made, as if he did not himself have his own hands. For the Word and Wisdom, the Son and Spirit, are always present with him, through whom and in whom he made all things freely and spontaneously, and to whom also he speaks, saying: Let us make man in our image and likeness; taking from himself the substance of creatures, and the pattern of the things made, and the figure in the world of the ornaments." On account of this, he calls the Word and the Holy Spirit the hands of God, not only here, but also in the Preface of the same book, and in Book III, c. 21, n. 10. But since he opposes these hands to other instruments and to an inferior Power, from this it follows manifesty that the Word and the Holy Spirit are indeed distinct from the Father, inasmuch as he has counsel with them, when he says: *Let us make man in our image and likeness*; yet that they are not of an inferior nature, nor of a nature different from his: just as, proportion being preserved, a man’s hands do not differ in nature and substance from the body whose hands they are. Nay, Irenaeus himself explains himself manifestly when he says that one God made all things through himself, that is, he adds, through his Word and his Wisdom. The Word, therefore, and the Holy Spirit are one and the same God with the Father, one and the same substance and nature with him.

[CXXIX] 52. From these things, Irenaeus concludes that the Word or Son, and the Holy Spirit, not only pre-existed all created things, but also always co-existed with the Father himself, and were coeternal. For God always had his own hands: for the Word and Wisdom, the Son and Spirit, are always present with him. And in Book II, chap. 30, n. 9: "But the Son, being ever coexistent with the Father, from of old and from the beginning always reveals the Father, both to angels, and archangels, and Powers, and Virtues, and to all to whom God wills to reveal him." And in chap. 25, n. 8, bringing forward the reason why there are many things which surpass the grasp of the human mind, and which therefore should not be investigated by us too curiously and anxiously; he teaches that of God alone, from whom all things were made,

it is the proper thing to know all things; man, however, is infininitely less than God; and in as far as he is less than He who was not made, and who is always the same, by so much, in respect to knowledge and the investigation of the causes of all things, is he less than He who made him. For, he says, you, O man, were not unbegotten, nor did you always exist together with God, as did His own Word; but on account of His eminent goodness, now receiving the beginning of your creation, you learn gradually from the Word the dispensations of God, who made you. Therefore, the knowledge of man is finite and contracted within narrow limits because it received the beginning of its creation, and is infinitely less than God; but the knowledge of the Word of God is infinite, because He is unbegotten, and always coexisted with God. The same reasoning he brings forward in Book IV, c. 13, n. 4, to prove that the divine Word, which has always provided for the salvation of men, and desired as it were to reconcile to Himself the friendship of Abraham, did not do so out of necessity. But neither did the Word of God assume the friendship of Abraham on account of necessity, being perfect from the beginning: Before Abraham was, I am, He says; but that He might grant to Abraham himself eternal life, being from the beginning good, since the friendship of God is a bestower of immortality to those who attain it. The Word of God, therefore, is in need of nothing, because He exists perfect and good from the beginning, and [is] the fons of all good things; and because God is [good] by nature, He grants eternal life and immortality to His friends. And hence Irenæus infers at the beginning of the following chapter, that in the beginning God did not fashion Adam as if He were in need of man, but that He might have one on whom to bestow His benefits. For not only before Adam, but even before all creation, He was glorifying His Word the Father, remaining in Him; and He Himself was being glorified by the Father, just as He Himself says: Father, glorify Me with the glory which I had with You, before the world was 16. Finally, in chapter 20, n. 3, proving what he had said in n. 1, that the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, were always present with the Father, through whom and in whom He made all things freely and spontaneously; he has this: And that the Word, that is the Son, was always with the Father, I have shown by many things. But that Wisdom also, which is the Spirit, was with Him before all constitution, He says through Solomon: The Lord by wisdom founded the earth, but He prepared the heaven by prudence 18, etc. And again: The Lord created me as the beginning of His ways for His works 19, etc. One God, therefore, who by His Word and Wisdom made and fitted all things, etc. The Son, therefore, and the Holy Spirit were thus with God the Father before all constitution—not only of visible things, but also of invisible [things] and of the Æons which the heretics imagined—such that they were always present with the Father, coeternal and coeval with Him, the Word, Wisdom, and the hands of the Father, of which He could never be in need, even though He could always easily have been without the angels or any inferior Virtues whatsoever. ^A 53. Nor was it enough for Irenæus to have proven the eternity of the Word and the Holy Spirit, but, striking at the throat of the cause, he asserts and demonstrates throughout that both are consubstantial with the Father, [and] of the same nature and substance with Him: although this follows sufficiently clearly from what has been said thus far. For from the principles of the holy doctor, whatever is unbegotten, and without beginning, is truly and substantially God. By this most certain principle he proves in Book II, cap. 8, n. 2 and 3, that nothing of those things which were constituted, and are in subjection, and therefore neither Angels, Archangels, etc., constituted and made by God through His Word, and through the Spirit of His mouth, by whom the heavens were established, and all their host, can be compared to their Author. For those things which were constituted are infinitely distant from Him who constituted [them], and those things which were made from Him who made [them]. For He Himself is unbegotten, and without beginning, and without end, in need of no one, He Himself is self-sufficient, and further, [is the one] providing for all other things that they might exist; but those things which were made by Him, took their beginning. And whatsoever things took their beginning, and can perceive dissolution, and are subject, and are in need of Him who made them: it is necessary in every way that they have a different name, even among those ^B who have even a slight sense in discerning such things: so that indeed He who made all things, with His Word, is justly called God and Lord alone; but those things which were made, are no longer capable of the same name, nor should they rightly receive that name, which is specific to the Creator. These things, therefore, are most certain in Irenæus: He who is unbegotten, and without beginning, and without end, in need of nothing, and Himself self-sufficient, is truly, properly, and justly called God and Lord alone: he who is the author, founder, and maker of all things is unbegotten and without beginning. But it is no less certain in Irenæus that the Word and the Holy Spirit did not have a beginning, that they were always present with the Father, and coexisted with Him; that the Word and the Holy Spirit with the Father made all things; whence it must necessarily be concluded that the Word and the Holy Spirit, according to Irenæus, are rightly said to be, and are, one God and Lord with the Father, and that the nature and substance of the three is one. But I return to my stated task. ^C 54. Heretics, as I said, used to invent that there was one supreme Father, [and] another Demiurge, or creator of all inferior and visible things: [and that] he was the author of the old law, celebrated only in it, and only known and adored by the Jews; but that the other remained unknown always, until, when the Gospel was shining, and Jesus (as the Christ, upon whom [the Spirit] descended, breathing [into him]) revealing [it], he became known, [and] established and promulgated a new law. This most ruinous dogma, the source of all evils, Irenæus, about to overthrow in his entire first book, proves that there is one God, the maker of heaven and earth, and the author of both laws, and that this [one] is the supreme Father Himself, and His Word, and ^D the Holy Spirit, and no other.

^A that there were preachers, and apostles of liberty, if not the one true God the Father and His Word, who has the primacy in all things; it is manifestly shown that He is the maker of heaven and earth, who spoke with Moses, and gave him the disposition of the Law, who called the Fathers, confessed them as Lord God, and knew no other. What is clearer? The Father and the Word, the Father and this His Son, are one and the same God preached by the prophets and announced by the Gospel; the only true God and Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, who spoke with Moses and gave him the disposition of the Law, etc.

55. Renewing the same argument throughout almost the whole of book IV, and approaching even more closely to the cause, Irenæus proves from the Scriptures, and especially from the very discourses of our Lord, that there is one and the same God the author of both laws, who created all things, who gave the old law, who spoke with Moses and the other Fathers and prophets, and who through His Word—not that fictitious one of the ^B heretics, but His only-begotten Son, and the one and true God with Him, most perfect and omniscient—made Himself known in both Testaments. On this matter he brings forward in chapter 5, n. 2, those words of Christ in Matt. XXII, 29 ff. to the Sadducees: "You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. For concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said by God, saying: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?" and He added: "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living: for all live to Him." Then Irenæus adds: "By these things indeed He made it manifest that He who spoke to Moses from the bush, and manifested Himself to be the God of the Fathers, this is the God of the living. For who is the God of the living, unless He who is God, above whom there is no other God?" ^C Whom also the prophet Daniel, when Cyrus, king of the Persians, said to him: "Why do you not worship Bel?" announced, saying: "Because I do not worship idols made by hands, but the living God, who created heaven and earth, and has dominion over all flesh." Again he said: "I will worship the Lord my God, because this is the living God." Therefore, the living God who was worshipped by the prophets is the God of the living, and His Word, who also spoke to Moses, and who also rebuked the Sadducees, and who also granted the resurrection: showing both to those who are blind, that is, the resurrection and God. With this demonstrated, he concludes: "Christ Himself, therefore, with the Father, is the God of the living, who spoke to Moses, and who was manifested to the fathers." ^D Thus with one and the same bolt did Irenæus strike down the double error of the Gnostics at once: both that which they fabricated, that the Word was inferior to the Father, and that the Father was not accessible to Himself; and that which they feigned, that He who spoke to the prophets was the Demiurge himself, far other and distinct from the supreme Father. Indeed, He who spoke to Moses from the bush, and manifested Himself to be the God of the fathers, whom

^A the prophets call the living God, and whom they worshipped as the living God, is this very God of the living, a God above whom there is no other God, in a word, the supreme God. Now the Father and His Word, Christ, are together that same Being who spoke to Moses, who also was manifested to the fathers, and was worshipped and addressed by the prophets as the living God. Therefore, Christ, together with the Father, is the God of the living, the God above whom there is no other God, and the supreme God. What, I ask, could be brought forward more clearly to vindicate the faith of Irenæus and to establish the consubstantiality of the Word with the Father? Nothing more clear or more express will occur even in Athanasius himself. Other similar testimonies and arguments will occur throughout the fourth book and elsewhere passim.

56. Because the Valentinians were abusing the words of Christ in Matt. xi, 27, and Luke x, 22, and describing them thus: "No one has known the Father, except the Son, and neither has anyone known the Son, except the Father, and he to whom the Son shall wish to reveal Him"—but they interpreted it in this way, says Irenæus in ch. 6, n. 1, "as if the true God were known by no one before the coming of our Lord; and they said that this God, who was announced by the prophets, was not the Father of Christ"—the holy martyr demonstrates throughout that whole chapter both that their reading of the words is adulterated, and that their explanation of them is most false. For when the Lord says: "No one knows the Son, except the Father; nor the Father, except the Son, and to whomsoever the Son shall have revealed Him"; the genuine reading of which words is: "He shall have revealed," ^B it is not spoken solely of the future, as if the Word only then began to manifest the Father when He was born of Mary; but it is put generally for the whole of time. For from the beginning, the Son, assisting His own handiwork, reveals the Father to all to whom He wills, and when He wills, and as the Father wills. For the Son executes the good pleasure of the Father: for the Father sends, while the Son is sent and comes. Hence, in every age and always, and in many ways, the Word has revealed Himself, so that He might at the same time reveal the Father. The reason is that "the invisible of the Son is the Father; but the visible of the Father is the Son." And although the Father be invisible and indeterminable, as far as we are concerned; yet the recognition of the Father is the manifestation of the Son: for all things are manifested through the Word. The recognition of the Father is the Son; but the recognition of the Son is revealed in the Father and through the Son. From all these things Irenæus concludes: "Therefore it was not one who was known, and another who said: 'No one knows the Father'; but one and the same [God], ^C with the Father subjecting all things to Him, and He receiving testimony from all, that He is truly man and that He is truly God, from the Father, from the Spirit, from the angels, etc. And because of this, in all things, and through all things, there is one God the Father, and one Word the Son, and one Spirit; and one salvation for all who believe in Him." The Father, therefore, and the Word, by the testimony of Irenæus, are not one God and another God; this is the invisible of the Son, the Father; but the visible ^D of the Father, the Son—namely, that the divine and invisible nature of the Father is that same nature which belongs also to the Son; and by that same nature by which the Son is seen and known, the Father also is known, because the Son is the image of the Father, and the figure or character of His substance: the Word made flesh, so that as He is truly man, so also He is truly God: finally, in all things and through all things, one God the Father, one Word, and one Spirit; a unity in three, one nature in three. What is clearer? As for what Irenæus says, that the recognition of the Father is the Son, and the recognition of the Son is in the Father, and that it is revealed through the Son, this is the very same thing that he had said in lib. II, c. 6, n. 2: "That the Son is in the Father, and has the Father in Himself." It is the same thing, too, which he had said in lib. IV, c. 4, n. 2. He is, of course, responding to the vain cavils of the Gnostics, who, because of the destruction of Jerusalem, the city of the great King, and the abrogation of the old law, inferred that there was one author and God of the Old Testament and another of the New; he shows that both for Jerusalem and for the old law, there was a time measured and determined by God; that both were destined to cease upon the coming of the new law; and that this was done by the most wise and most orderly counsel of God. "For," he says, "God does all things by measure and order, and there is nothing not measured with Him, since there is nothing uncomposed." That this last point—namely, that there is nothing not measured with God—to prove it, he praises some ancient or coeval ecclesiastical writer, whose name he keeps silent, but whose words he approves: "And well did he speak who said that the immeasurable Father Himself is measured in the Son; for the Son is the measure of the Father, since He also contains Him." By these words he shows that God is so much a lover of order, proportion, and measure, that He did not wish to lack a measure of His own; for the Son is the measure of the Father, who takes, contains, and as it were circumscribes in Himself the entire immensity, infinity, and substance of the Father. That is the περιχώρησις, the circumincession of the divine persons, from which the holy Fathers so frequently and so happily drew arguments against the Arians, to prove that the Son is ὁμοούσιον with the Father. For they are in one another, the Father and the Son, and the Father is no less in the Son than He is in Himself, nor is the Son less in the Father than He is in Himself; to the extent that they mutually exist in one another and, so to speak, mingle with and penetrate one another, and are therefore distinguished from one another, and yet agree in one and the same nature and substance without any difference.

57. But from the way and sense in which Irenæus so often and solicitously inculcates throughout the fourth book and elsewhere (which was not infrequent among other Fathers before and after him) that the Father always remained invisible, and was never seen by anyone, not even in an external appearance and sensible form; and that He could not be seen at all; but that of the divine persons, only the divine Word appeared to the ancient patriarchs and prophets in the Old Testament, in order that...

^A He might introduce the knowledge of God and the Father to men, through which He might preserve their life, which cannot exist without the knowledge of God; and that it is the Son who made Himself seen to Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, and to others, and who spoke with Moses, and who finally, as Irenæus says, "showed the prophetic visions, and the divisions of the charisms, and His ministries, and the glorification of the Father, consistently and composedly to the human race, at the fitting time, for the benefit of men, for whose sake He performed such great dispensations; while guarding the invisibility of the Father, so that man might never become a contemner of God, and might always have something to advance toward; but, on the other hand, showing God as visible to men through many dispensations, so that man, not utterly failing, might not cease to be from God." In one word, it is He who says to Moses: "Seeing I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have descended to deliver them"; having been accustomed from the beginning to have the Word of God ascend and descend, for the salvation of those who were faring ill. Irenæus discusses these things at length from almost chapter 5 to chapter 20, but especially in this place. All these things aim at the same point. For since the holy doctor had undertaken to prove that there is one and the same author of both Testaments, he shows that one and the same God had always consulted and provided for the salvation of men; that one and the same God was worshipped by the ancients and by us; that the faith of the ancients and ours was the same; that all the prophecies and figures of the Old Testament converged into one and the same Christ, the mediator of the New Testament, and that consequently there is one and the same God and Father, whom He himself announced, and made known to men, and not another and different from Him whom the prophets announced, who foretold His advent: hence, indeed, that the Father had always been invisible, and that it was never given to any mortal to see His magnitude and wonderful glory; for He is "incapable" and incomprehensible and invisible; but that it is wrongly inferred by the heretics from thence that He had always been unknown until Christ came. "Since He who works all things in all is God, such as He is and as great as He is, He is invisible and unutterable to all things which have been made by Him; but by no means unknown. The reason is because all things learn through His Word, because there is one God the Father, who contains all things, and grants to all to exist, as it is written in the Gospel: No man hath seen God at any time, except the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." Therefore, the Son declares the Father from the beginning, since He who is from the beginning is with the Father. But why does Irenæus assign this task to the Word alone, that He should make Himself and His Father known? Why does he affirm so constantly that one Word made Himself seen, while the Father always remained invisible? Is it because he believed the Son to be inferior to the Father, or that he thought Him, by His own nature, to be approachable, rather than the other? But he refutes this ^B clearly. And as to the Father being invisible and indeterminable, He knows His own Word; and though He is unutterable, He Himself declares Him; but again, the Father alone knows His own Word. Therefore, His Word Himself is not less invisible, and indeterminable, and unutterable—"as far as we are concerned"—than the Father, since He is known as far as He is, by the Father alone: for "the Father of the Son is invisible," as he says a little later; for what the nature of the Father is, the same is the nature of the Son; each, according to his own nature, is invisible. And in chapter 24, n. 2, he openly teaches: "There is one God, who is over every principality, and dominion, and power, [CXXXII] and every name that is named: and His Word, naturally indeed invisible, [has condescended] to be palpable and visible among men, and even unto the death of the cross." If, therefore, the divine Word showed Himself as one to be seen, surely it was not in His own divine and invisible nature, but only in strange and assumed forms and species. He proves this at length in chapter 20, n. 9 and following, where he weighs the words of the divine Word to Moses, with whom He was speaking: "Stand in the high place of the rock, and I will cover thee with my hand. But when my glory shall pass, then thou shalt see the things that are behind me; but my face shall not be seen by thee; for no man shall see my face, and live"; he says that both are signified by these, "that it is both impossible for man to see God, and that through the Wisdom of God, in the last times, man will see Him in the height of the rock, that is, in that advent of His which is according to man." He thinks, therefore, that only then was the divine Word seen face to face, when He assumed a human nature for Himself and made it His own. Hence he concludes that the prophets did not see the very face of God in a manifest way, but [saw] dispensations and mysteries, through which man might begin to see God, so that man might gradually accustom himself to seeing Him who has become flesh. And afterwards: "If therefore neither Moses saw God, nor Elias, nor Ezekiel, who saw many things of the heavenly realm; but the things which were seen by them were likenesses of the glory of the Lord, and prophecies of things to come: it is manifest that the Father is indeed invisible, of whom the Lord also said: No man hath seen God at any time: but His Word, as He Himself willed, and for the benefit of those who believe, showed the glory of the Father, and set forth the dispensations... He was not seen by those who saw Him in one figure, nor in one character, but according to the causes and efficacy of His dispensations." As if he were to say: If neither Moses, nor Elias, nor Ezekiel, nor the prophets with whom He dealt familiarly, saw the divine Word, and yet did not see the very essence of God, but only likenesses of the glory of the Lord; it is manifest that neither is the Father visible according to His own nature in this mortal life; nor is His Word to be discerned in His essence.

^A but presented Himself in varying figures, and not in one character, according to the causes and efficacy of His dispensations.

58. If, then, Irenæus wishes (and this is the scope of both his own assertions and those of other Fathers who agree with him) to point out that the Father, since He is the origin and fountain of the entire most Holy Trinity, from whom the other persons flow and are sent, is Himself sent by no one; it was less fitting that those frequent *epiphanies* of God which occurred of old should have taken place. For it was always fitting for God’s goodness to make Himself known to men, and to offer Himself to be seen so far as they are able to grasp it; since «the vision of God is the life of man.» But it was more fitting that the Son, rather than the Father, should undertake this duty. For that knowledge of God which was to be instilled into the minds of men, and those frequent visions of God, looked toward the *economy* and were brought about for the benefit of fallen men, and were so many preludes to the future incarnation. Furthermore, just as it was fitting that the Son—because He has His necessary and eternal origin from the Father, because He was born of the Father, is sent by the Father, and is His image, the figure of His substance, and, as Irenæus says, the *recognition*—should take on flesh rather than the Father, who, since He is the first person, neither originates from nor is sent by any other; so it was more fitting for the Son than the Father to prelude His future incarnation with those frequent apparitions, and to concern Himself from the beginning with the salvation of those whom He was later to redeem with His blood. For He did not take up this care only then, when He came in mortal flesh, as we have more than once heard Irenæus saying, but from the beginning and from the fall of man. Therefore, from the beginning the Son was solicitous for the salvation of men, and went forth, as it were, so often to manifest both the Father and Himself in public, because such was the will of the Father. «The Son, administering all things, accomplishes [them] for the Father from the beginning to the end, and without Him no one can know God;» and «the Son performs the good pleasure of the Father.» But if you should ask of Irenæus why the Son administers all things for the Father and performs the Father’s good pleasure, he would offer this reason, common to all Catholics: «For the Father sends, while the Son is sent and comes.» The Father sends the Son, because He is the principle of the Son, and begets Him; but the Son is sent, because He proceeds from the Father as from a principle, and is begotten by Him. Furthermore, just as it is honorable for the Father to beget and to send the Son, so it is no less honorable for the Son to be sent and to be begotten; and this mission implies no disparity of substance in either. «For (says Augustine, lib. 3 *cont. Maxim.*, c. 14) it was not the begetter who ought to have been sent by him whom he begat, but the begotten by the begetter; but this is not an inequality of substance, but an order of nature; not that one was prior to the other, but that one was from the other.»

59. From the things said, it is also easy to collect in what sense Irenæus has more than once said ^D that the Father commanded His Word to create the world, and that the Son and the Spirit ministered to the Father in the founding of things; that man was made with the Father indeed well-pleasing and commanding, with the Son indeed ministering and commanding; and with the Spirit nourishing, and increasing, and other things of this sort. Certainly, the Father commands and orders the Son and the Holy Spirit, not as a superior and Lord to inferiors and subjects, but as an equal to equals, consubstantial to consubstantial, coeternal to coeternals, without whom He can do nothing; nay, the Father commands the Son and the Holy Spirit as He would Himself. For He does not distinguish the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Father in any other way than by person and subsistence, certainly not by nature and substance, which He acknowledges and confesses to be one and the same in the three. He demonstrates this clearly and without ambiguity in lib. 2, c. 30, n. 9, and in other places already cited by us. But that ministry which the Son and the Holy Spirit performed for the Father—how far it is removed from Him, in that it has not even the smallest shadow of subjection and servitude attached to it—the holy doctor demonstrates in lib. 4, c. 7, n. 4, where he calls it «a copious and ineffable ministry.» «For there ministers to Him (he adds) His progeny and His *figuration*, that is, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Word and Wisdom, whom all the angels serve and to whom they are subject.» Thus, therefore, the Son and the Holy Spirit minister to the Father, so that that ministry is ineffable, and removes by an infinite interval all the ideas which it has attached to it in human affairs. They minister in such a way that the one is the very progeny of the Father, and the other the *figuration* and image of the Son (for I refer this word, *his figuration*, to the Son, as I have explained in the notes to this passage); therefore not as servants to a master, but as progeny from the principle from which it proceeds, and of the same dignity as He. Finally, they minister in such a way that the angels serve them and are subject to them. But the angels serve the Son and the Holy Spirit for the very reason that they were created by them, as the author explains in lib. 2, c. 8, n. 3, and are therefore infinitely lesser than them.

60.

-^Aoperating, not unwillingly, not constrained by any necessity, but knowing and willing, He made all things freely and spontaneously; not from elsewhere, not outside Himself, but He Himself from Himself, in His will, in His Word and His Wisdom, taking the substance of creatures, and the pattern of things made, and the figure of the ornaments in the world, as he speaks in Book IV, c. 20, n. 1. All those things are sufficiently evident from the testimonies of Irenaeus hitherto adduced, so that there is no need to repeat them here.

61. One thing remains to be considered—whether Irenaeus attributed ignorance of the final judgment to the Son of God. And indeed, this is ascribed to the most holy martyr, but altogether wrongly. Rebuking the Gnostics, he writes in Book II, c. 28, n. 6: "But you, puffed up, say that you know the mysteries of God; since the Lord himself, the Son of God, conceded that only the Father knows the day and hour of judgment, saying plainly: 'But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the Son, but the Father only' [Mark xiii, 32]. If therefore the Son did not blush to refer the knowledge of that day to the Father, but said what is true, let us not blush either to reserve to God those things which are in our questions [which are] greater than us. For no one is above his master." Here the author at first sight seems to ascribe ignorance to the Son of God Himself: so much so that the solution of George Bull is shallow, by which he contends that Irenaeus attributed ignorance to Christ the man only—for here he speaks expressly of the Son of God. Although, indeed, Bull defends, together with many Protestants, that ignorance could be ascribed to Christ the man, and strives to explain Irenaeus in that sense, he casts another blemish upon him. But dismissing this controversy, which is outside our scope, I confidently assert that whoever reads the present chapter, which we are now engaged in, with the attention of mind that is proper, and notices the series and scope of Irenaeus’s whole argument, will immediately discover that no ignorance at all is here attributed to Christ the Lord.

62. Irenaeus, as I have said, chastises the impudence of the Gnostics, who, seeking the praise of vain knowledge, assumed the license to discourse insanely on all things—even the deeper mysteries of the Christian religion, such as the generation of the divine Word—and to frame at will new systems of things both divine and human. But when he has proven that there is a certain rule of truth in the divine Scriptures, to which the questions that religion permits to be agitated concerning divine things must be so exigently applied that one may not depart from it anywhere, he nevertheless shows that there are many things in the Scriptures, though they are perfect in themselves, which far exceed the narrow limits of our mind, and which therefore, since they cannot be known by us, must be humbly committed to God, and not rashly scrutinized. Nor is it a wonder if we are blind in spiritual and celestial matters, which can be perceived by faith alone, when natural things themselves, placed before our eyes, mostly escape our knowledge. Hence ^B he concludes that those heretics are insane who tried to investigate and explain the eternal generation of the divine Word and other such profound mysteries: and that they erred so gravely in this, that, puffed up by the pride of haughtiness, they would reserve nothing to God, but sought to scrutinize all things rashly. Moreover, in order to confound the madness of the heretics more and more, he seeks an argument from the example of Christ the Son of God himself, from the greater to the less. If, says the Lord, the Son of God himself conceded that only the Father knows the day and hour of judgment, and the Son did not blush to refer the knowledge of that day to the Father: why should we, who are infinitely lesser than the Son of God, blush to reserve to God things that are greater than us in our questions? For no one is above his master. By this method of arguing, the holy doctor intends to establish one thing: that Christ, for the sake of the economy, conceded that only the Father knows the day and hour of judgment; not that He Himself did not know it, but that He willed that such knowledge should be referred to the Father, from whom He Himself had received it with His divinity, and that the notification of that day should be expected from Him alone. For although He Himself possessed it, yet He did not wish to communicate it to others, nor to explain it, because the Father (from whom He spoke, and from whom He had received the mandate, what He should say and what He should speak, as John xii, 49 states) had willed that it be kept silent: so that, to be sure, by His example He might teach that some things must be humbly reserved to God, and that those things which God willed to be hidden must not be rashly explained by us. Thus our author explains the mind a little later, namely in n. 8: "If anyone, he says, should inquire the cause why, while the Father communicates to the Son in all things, He has been manifested by the Lord as alone knowing the hour and the day; no other cause, more fitting or more decent, nor without danger, could he find at present (for the Lord is the only truthful master): than that we may learn through Him that the Father is above all. For 'the Father,' He says, 'is greater than I' [John xiv, 28]. And thus, according to [this] acknowledgment, the Father was announced by our Lord as being set before [all], to this end: that we too, in as much as we are in the figure of this world, may concede perfect knowledge and such questions to God; and lest by chance, seeking to investigate the height of the Father, we fall into such danger as to ask whether there is another God above God." Observe 1° that Irenaeus nowhere asserts simply that only the Father knows the day and hour, but that it was manifested by the Lord that only the Father knows the day and hour; that the Lord conceded that only the Father knows the day and hour of judgment, etc. 2° That the holy doctor openly professes that in all things the Father communicates to the Son. He who says he communicates in all things excludes nothing at all, not even the knowledge of the day and hour of the final judgment. 3° That it was not the intent of our author to treat this question professedly—whether in reality only the Father knew the day and hour of the final judgment, and the Son truly ^D

absolute did not know it; but to treat of it only so far as sufficed for the present, or so far as was conducive to the present argument. Yet the present argument was to inquire into the cause [CXXXIV] for which the Father, whilst communicating to the Son the knowledge of all things, and indeed of all things whatsoever, and of the day of judgment, nevertheless, as manifested by the Lord, alone knew the day and hour. For how could the Lord, the truthful Teacher, saying what is true, refer this to the Father alone, when yet He possesses it in common with the Father? To which question he replies that no better reason can be adduced for the present than that this was done by Christ for the sake of the economy and as an example, "that we might learn through Him that the Father is over all, and that perfect knowledge and such questions ought to be conceded to God, lest, searching to investigate the loftiness of the Father, we should fall into danger." For the Father, Christ Himself says, is greater than I; and according to knowledge, the Father has been declared by the Lord to be set before the Son: not that the Father is greater in nature, or that the Son's knowledge is less; for the Spirit of the Savior, which is in Him, searches all things, even the depths of God; and His own Word, always coexisting with God, possesses the experience and thought of all things, and infinite knowledge, as God Himself, and perfectly knows His Father, and is His measure, since He comprehends Him, as we have heard Irenæus saying above; but because the Father is prior in order and origin, being the first of all, and the Principle of the Son Himself; to whom the Son refers back all things, as well His nature as His knowledge, as received; to whom, finally, He yields all things as to His author, desiring to do or say or reveal nothing whatever beyond His will: to the end that we too, being infinitely less than God, might learn by Christ’s example that perfect knowledge, and abstruse questions, should be left to God, nor rashly to scrutinize those things which He has willed should remain hidden from us. In one word, the sum of Irenæus’s whole argumentation returns to this: If the Lord Himself, the Son of God, the Word of the Father, to whom the Father communicates in all things, whose Spirit which is in Him, that is, the divine intellect, searches all things, even the depths of God itself, whom therefore it cannot escape what the Father has determined concerning the day and hour of the last judgment; yet He referred the knowledge of that day to the Father, and conceded it to Him, and would not explain or reveal what the will of the Father did not permit to be revealed: then a fortiori we who dwell upon the earth, to whom are given only "divisions of graces, and divisions of ministries, and divisions of operations," and who "know in part and prophesy in part," ought to concede all questions to Him who grants us grace in part, as he said a little before, and not attempt to explain or investigate that which God has willed to lie hidden in the treasuries of His own wisdom. How catholic this kind of argument is, and how far removed from Arian impiety, any fair judge of things easily sees. ^B 63. Now, I believe, no one—unless he be a Socinian of brazen front—will deny that Irenæus's faith regarding the divinity of the Word and the Holy Spirit, and their consubstantiality with the Father, agrees to the highest degree with the Nicene and Constantinopolitan faith. Nor, henceforth, will anyone read with indignation in the Magdeburg Centuriators that Irenæus "uses the word Word, or tou Logou, so obscurely and perplexedly that he seems not clearly to distinguish between the substantial Word, and the vocal word, or that of the mouth." Truly, those who wrote these things either never read Irenæus’s books, or read them with bleared eyes. To refute this calumny and to vindicate Irenæus’s faith, all the things which we have said thus far are more than sufficient. We could have expatiated still more broadly, and sought many arguments from those things which our author discusses at length in Book III, c. 16, and following. For in those passages he is entirely occupied with proving against the Gnostics that Jesus Christ is one and the same, the only-begotten Son of God, true God and true man, where, among the first things he uses to accomplish this, he employs that testimony of the Apostle, Rom. IX, 5: "Whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed for ever." But perhaps this would have resulted in weariness for the readers: therefore we have preferred that Irenæus himself be read. There is another point of which the cited Centuriators complain: "that Irenæus speaks more rarely of the Holy Spirit." Indeed, he speaks somewhat more rarely of the Holy Spirit than of the Word: judging, clearly, it to be enough, as he himself professes in Book I, c. 9, if the perverse distinction which the Valentinians interposed between the Only-Begotten, the Word, the Savior, Christ, etc., were fundamentally overturned—that first ogdoad of theirs, upon which, as if linked, the whole mass of the Valentinian Pleroma hung; for this being overturned, the whole hypothesis must necessarily fall. Whence upon this distinction to be shaken, and the identity of the Word with the Only-Begotten to be established, and the same nature and divinity of His with the Father, with the distinction of persons preserved, the whole mass of his arguments rests. Yet he does not speak so rarely of the Holy Spirit but that it clearly appears, from those things which he discusses again and again, that he is reckoned by him to be true God, coequal, coeternal, and consubstantial with the Father and the Son. These things which we have reported above, the places and arguments of the most holy martyr, demonstrate clearly. Hence he calls Him the hand of God, and thence concludes that He always coexisted with the Father, and existed before all things were created; which he also proves from the book of Proverbs. Hence he associates Him with the Father and the Son in the work of creation. And he believes, by just merit, that the work of creation is so divine, and proper to God alone, that from the fact that all things were established through the Word, he infers that not only are angels, archangels, and other created things infinitely distant from the Word; but also that He is unmade, without beginning, without end, and alone, with the Father, that He is justly called God and Lord: [believing that] all other things, from the fact that they are created, had a beginning.

be subjected, nor can it justly take the name of God, which belongs to the Creator. This argument either proves nothing at all, or it proves invincibly that the Holy Spirit, according to Irenaeus’s opinion, is no less true God, unbegotten, without beginning, without end, subject to no one, etc., than the Word himself: seeing that He was no less the hand of the Father, and contributed no less effort to the creation of things, than the Word himself. But for those to whom the aforesaid things shall not seem to suffice, let them read what Irenaeus writes in Book V, c. 12, n. 2. I trust that this whole category of objection will be precluded. There, Irenaeus distinguishes between the breath of life, which makes man an animal being, and the vivifying Spirit, which makes man a spiritual being. ^A “And for this reason,” he says, “Isaiah says: Thus saith the Lord, who hath made the heavens and hath established them, who hath formed the earth, and the things that are therein; and hath given breath to the people who are upon it, and spirit to them who walk upon it.” He says that the breath is given commonly to everyone who is upon the earth, but the Spirit [is given] properly to those who trample upon (that is, tread down) earthly desires. For which reason, again, the same Isaiah, distinguishing what was said, says: “For the spirit shall go forth from me, and I have made every breath.” He assigns the Spirit properly in God (πνεῦμα ἰδίως ἐπὶ τοῦ Θεοῦ; it should have been translated here as *in Deum*, "into God"), whom ^B in the last times He poured forth through the adoption of sons upon the human race, but indicates that the breath is common to creation and to the thing made. But what has been made is one thing, and He who made it is another. The breath, therefore, is temporal; but the Spirit is eternal, etc. Here, from the words of Isaiah, Irenaeus proves that a very wide distinction must be placed between the Spirit and the breath: that “the Spirit” is assigned by Isaiah properly to God—^B *πνεῦμα ἰδίως ἐπὶ τοῦ Θεοῦ τάξας, τοῦ ἐκχέοντος αὐτό*—that is, it is constituted in the same order, rank, dignity, and nature as He who poured it forth, God; but that “the breath” is assigned by him commonly to the creation, “and is shown to be a created thing;” and that the breath differs from the Spirit as much as that which is made differs from Him who made it; and consequently that the breath is temporal, had a beginning, and was created; but that the Spirit is eternal, without beginning, the Creator, and true God. There will perhaps be one who might contend that the passages of Isaiah were less successfully explained by Irenaeus; but here we are not discussing the genuine sense of Isaiah; we only contend with just cause and merit that the prophet was so expounded by our author that, from his words, he inferred that the Holy Spirit is true God, consubstantial with Him from whom He has been poured forth upon the human race.

ARTICLE VI.

64. Someone might think that it would take a long dissertation to demonstrate that Irenaeus’s doctrine on the mystery of the Incarnation is sound and orthodox. For his writings speak for themselves, and whoever reads them, especially what the author discusses in his third book, from chapter 16 to 24, will admit that he wrote no less accurately than if he had lived after the times of Paul of Samosata, Photinus, Nestorius, and Eutyches. The heretics with whom he contended denied that Jesus Christ our Lord is true God and true man; but, impiously dividing Jesus from Christ, some blasphemed that He was merely a phantasm of a man, which had passed through Mary as if through a channel; others, that He had been begotten of the seed of Joseph and Mary in the manner of other men: but that [the Christ] had flown into Him when He was about to be baptized, and would soon fly away again when He was to be crucified. Irenaeus, in order to refute these monsters of errors in the cited chapters, is entirely ^C of God, who is “in the beginning existing with God, through whom all things were made, who also was always present to the human race, and who in the last times, according to the time predetermined by the Father, united to his own handiwork, became a passible man:” so that “all contradiction is excluded for those who say: If He was then born, then Christ did not exist before; for the Son of God did not then begin, existing always with the Father; but when He was incarnate and made man, he recapitulated in Himself the long exposition of men, providing us with salvation in a summary, so that what we had lost in Adam, that is, to be according to the image and likeness of God, this we might receive back in Christ Jesus.” Truly God ^D Christ, the Son of the living God, is the same “and the son of man.” For we have demonstrated from the Scriptures that no one among the sons of Adam is called God or named Lord in a total sense in the same way as Him. But since He himself, beyond all those who were then men, is uniquely preached as God, and Lord, and eternal King, and the only-begotten, and the incarnate Word, both by the prophets, and the apostles, and by Himself

in the Spirit, is evident to all who have attained even a little of the truth. These things the Scriptures would not testify concerning Him, if He had been merely a man as all others. But because He had an excellent generation beyond all others, which is from the Most High Father, and because He also performed the excellent generation which is from the Virgin, both of these the divine Scriptures testify concerning Him; and because He was a man without glory, and subject to suffering, and sitting upon the foal of an ass, and given vinegar and gall to drink, and was despised among the people, and descended even unto death: and because the Lord is holy, and a wonderful counselor, and beautiful in appearance, and the strong God, coming upon the clouds as the judge of all, the Scriptures prophesied all things concerning Him... This, therefore, is the Son of God, our Lord, existing as the Word of the Father, and the son of man: because He was born of Mary, who had her descent from men, and who was herself a human being, He had a generation according to man, and was made the son of man. These things are clear, and are not to be eluded by the vain evasions of heretics. Christ is both the true Son of God and the true son of man: true God, on account of His eternal generation from the Most High Father; true man, on account of His temporal, yet excellent, generation from the Virgin; in whom, therefore, there was a double nature, corresponding to the double generation, but a single person so affecting and coupling both natures that one and the same is the Son of God and the son of man, one incarnate Word. Hence He urges the union of the natures against the heretics so strongly that he sometimes asserts, "The Word, who is always present to the human race, was united and commingled with His own creature, and became flesh; and man was commingled with the Word of God." These things, however, we have shown in their proper places to have been said in a catholic sense, and always with the distinction of the natures preserved.

65. And hence Irenæus commends the dignity of Mary, that she, remaining a virgin, gave birth to the true Emmanuel, who in substance is God, and that she begot Him as true man and thus also as true God; and he dissipates the vain attempts of Theodotion, Aquila, and other impious men, who, by perverse interpretations of the Scriptures, opposed the virginity of Mary. Hence, from that chief glory of Mary, he also draws this, that having become the Mother of God, she emerged as the first mediatrix of our salvation after the Son: and he asserts that through her faith and obedience we have attained salvation and redemption; which are the roles of a mediatrix and reconciler with God. "Just as that one (Eve), while having a husband, Adam, yet remaining a virgin... having become disobedient, was made the cause of death both to herself and to the entire human race: so also Mary, having a destined husband, and being nevertheless a virgin, being obedient, was made the cause of salvation both to herself and to the entire human race." And afterwards: "That which the virgin Eve bound by incredulity, this the virgin Mary unloosed by faith." And in book V, ch. 19: "Just as that one (Eve) ^B was seduced by the word of an angel, that she might flee from God, having transgressed His word: so this one (Mary) was evangelized by the angelic word, so that she might bear God, being obedient to His word. And if she had disobeyed God; yet this one was persuaded to obey God, so that the virgin Mary might become the advocate of the virgin Eve. And just as the human race had been bound to death through a virgin, it is saved through a virgin: a balance being struck [CXXXVI], virginal disobedience by virginal obedience. For the sin of the protoplast was now receiving amendment through the correction of the first-born, and the prudence of the serpent was being overcome by the simplicity of the dove, and those chains were being loosed by which we were bound to death." Which latter words, [and] "just as it was bound to death," etc., Augustine transcribed in lib. 1 cont. Julian, cap. 3.

66. The Magdeburgenses ^C think these things poorly said. Gallasius is more insolent than they; in his annotations on the final passage of Irenæus, he rages against Irenæus himself, other Fathers, and the entire Catholic Church. The more moderate learned Grabe spares the person of Irenæus, but attempts to force the words. "Although," he says, "he might signify here an advocate as a patroness, who intercedes for another, yet nothing would compel her to accept this from the Blessed Mary now deceased." Why not? If Mary, while moving on earth, discharged the office of mediatrix and patroness out of the charity with which she burned for the human race, and interceded for men; would that charity—which, as the Apostle bears witness, never fails—have so failed when she is dead, but living to God, reigning with God, and, as it were, immersed more deeply in God himself, the fountain of charity, that she has utterly forgotten those for whom she formerly had pity, and deigns to pour forth no prayers for them? Assuredly, that all the ancient Fathers and the Churches have thought far otherwise is proven by the consensus of all the most ancient Liturgies, Greek and Latin—to say nothing of others—which Grabe himself esteems worthy of veneration; in which the Church implores the help of the Blessed Mary, and strives to obtain through her merits and prayers the remission of sins and other benefits. Wherefore, feeling the vanity of this little argument, the most clear man adds: "Even if it be granted that she now intercedes for the living faithful considered in general—a thing which the more moderate Protestant doctors rightly admit—from that fact alone her invocation by individuals could not be proven; for it is uncertain, not to say false, whether she hears or can hear the supplications of so many thousands of men simultaneously." But if the more moderate Protestant doctors, as Grabe testifies, rightly admit that Mary and the other saints now intercede for the living faithful considered in general; they must, therefore, admit that—no injury being done to the one mediator of God and men—others besides Christ can be secondary [mediators].

whose protection, as being solicitous for our salvation, it is permissible to implore, so that through them access to the principal Mediator may lie open.

67. But, Grabius says, the blessed Virgin cannot hear so many thousands of human supplications at once. How sagacious a man, whose mental acuity is such that, penetrating most deeply into the innermost feelings of the hearts of the blessed, it is able to define the fixed limits of their capacity for hearing and knowing! Such was not the sagacity of the Church disseminated throughout the whole world and through all time, which has judged that the saints can both pray for us and be invoked by us; holding it as certain that our prayers are heard and perceived by them. The ancient Fathers, who confidently asserted that most of the things that happen here are known to the blessed, did not possess such acuteness of wit. Certainly, this objection is not fresh from Grabius, but rather from Calvin and Pierre du Moulin. This was long ago proposed by Severianus of Gabala, and solved by him in *Sermon 6 on the Creation of the World* (vol. VI of the Works of Chrysostom, p. 639). Indeed, when he had said, that St. Mary had most truly affirmed of herself: "All generations shall call me blessed," he immediately poses this objection to himself: "And what does that benefit her, you ask, when she does not hear?" To which he replies: ^B "Nay, rather she hears most truly, because she is in a place that is splendid, the Mother of salvation, the fountain of sensible light." Basil, in his book *On True Virginity*, admonishes a virgin consecrated to God to revere not only the angels, but also the spirits of holy men and Fathers. "And why do I recount individual things," he says, "the innumerable multitudes of angels, and with them the holy spirits of the Fathers? For there is none of them who does not look everywhere: since, though not seen with the eyes of the body, he yet embraces all things in his knowledge with an incorporeal vision." Augustine, in *Sermon 516* (alias 94), *De diversis*, speaking of Paul and Stephen, says: "Both," he says, "you see there, both you hear our discourse at this moment, both pray for us." Theodoret, in book VIII *On Curing Greek Affections*, where he treats of the martyrs, refutes the error of those who believed that the martyrs "have no perception of what is done on earth," which he refutes by the fact "that they are established in a certain divine and most blessed lot." Finally, to make an end of citing the Fathers, Gregory the Great, refuting the same error in *Moralia*, book XI, ch. 19, proves by the same argument that the souls, participating in divine light and happiness, do not avoid the knowledge of human affairs which it is their interest to know; because those who behold within the brightness of almighty God, it is not to be believed that they ignore anything that is outside. Such were the sentiments of those good "simpletons," unlearned in Christian simplicity and humility; such they believed, and such they endeavored to persuade others. But if Grabius argues their ignorance, he should remember the dictum of Irenæus: "Those who leave the proclamation of the Church, reprove the ignorance of the ^D holy presbyters"; not contemplating how much more a religious simpleton is worth than a blasphemous and impudent sophist. Such, however, are all heretics, and those who think they find something more than the truth, "always searching, and never finding the truth." It is safer, therefore, to be "ignorant" with those religious simpletons, and not to inquire too curiously how it comes to pass that the saints hear our prayers, than to be wise with vain sophists who are always searching and never finding the truth. Let it suffice that the matter is certain, and has always been established in the Church; the mode of explaining it is to be committed to God: although, however, one may consult Augustine on this matter in his book *On the Care to be Had for the Dead*, chapters 15 and 16, whose modesty in solving such questions every upright and prudent man will praise and imitate.

68. That the things just mentioned are slight, the distinguished Grabius, sensing well enough, sought to prepare something else for himself, yet neither better nor safer than the others. "Advocate," he says, from the Greek *paraklētos*, has clearly in this place the signification of consoling, not of interceding; which he tries to prove from certain testimonies, not of Irenæus himself, but of Tertullian. Whence he concludes that the Blessed Virgin is called by Irenæus "advocate," that is, comforter of Eve and of the whole human race, because she, obedient to God, bore the Savior to the world, the second Adam; just as that one, lending her ears to the devil, seduced the first Adam, and thence was the cause of destruction to his posterity. But why does Grabius assume so confidently that Irenæus wrote in Greek, *paraklētos*? *Paraklētos*, he says, clearly has in this place the signification of consoling, not of interceding. You would say that the man had the Greek of Irenæus before his eyes. What if I contend that Irenæus wrote something else, which signifies a suppliant, a mediatrix, and an intermediary? By what argument will Grabius refute this conjecture? But suppose Irenæus did write *paraklētos*, I will not disagree. But why does he seek the meaning of this word from Tertullian, and not rather from Irenæus himself? If that most holy martyr had used that word only once, it might perhaps be tolerated. But since he has used the same word in other places, why did not his editor compare them, so as to seek the genuine meaning of the word from Irenæus himself, and explain Irenæus from Irenæus? In book III, ch. 18, n. 7, he writes that the Gnostics, who imagined that Christ existed as a man only in appearance, were still under the old condemnation, "providing an advocacy for sin," that is, protection, patronage, defense. In the same sense he says in book IV, ch. 34, n. 4: "If any one, providing an advocacy for the Jews, calls that the new Testament—the erection of the temple, which took place under Zorobabel after they had migrated into Babylon, and the schism of the people, which took place after seventy years—let him realize," etc. So also in book III, ch. 23, n. 8: "Those who contradict the salvation of Adam... show themselves to be advocates of the serpent and of death—"

69. Before, however, I depart from the Blessed Virgin, it is worth the effort to refute here the unjust accusation of Grabe, by which he attempts to cast a stain upon both Mary’s sanctity and Irenaeus’s doctrine. For in Book II, ch. 16, n. 7, demonstrating that Christ performed all things at their proper time, as they had been preordained by the Father, he adds: "Because of this, Mary, hastening to the admirable sign of the wine (at the wedding at Cana of Galilee) and wishing to partake before the time of the cup of the shortcut, the Lord, repelling her untimely haste, said: 'What is it to me and to you, woman? My hour has not yet come,' awaiting that hour which was foreknown by the Father." ^C From here, Grabe, having most eagerly seized the occasion, concludes that Irenaeus acknowledged the imperfection of human nature, the mother of venial sins, in the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is an observation unjust from every part. Whoever is a fair judge of things will have extracted this one point from Irenaeus’s words: that the Blessed Virgin was ignorant of the hour foreknown and predestined by the Father, at which Christ was to perform His miracles openly and publicly, and that she wished to obtain something from the Son before the time. She indeed knew that the Son would finally at some point come forth openly, and would illuminate the world by the sanctity of His life, His teaching, and His miracles; she had seen that He had already begun to exercise a public office and to collect disciples; wherefore, thinking also that the time and hour for public miracles had arrived, she gave notice of the lack of wine, so that He might divinely provide for those laboring. And this is what Irenaeus calls "untimely haste"—not that Mary’s mind was precipitous or stimulated by vain glory, but because, not knowing the hour preordained by the Father, yet thinking it had arrived, moved by the poverty of the poor, she wished a miracle to be performed at that place and time by which the will of the Father permitted Christ to issue forth signs of His omnipotence that were public and manifest to all. Wherefore Christ does not absolutely refuse the miracle, but performs it as it were secretly and hiddenly. If, therefore, Mary was ignorant of the divine decrees, she was certainly not guilty of any moral imperfection.

70. But if up to this point Irenaeus is to be judged, he does not seem excusable in what he writes in Book II, ch. 22, that Christ was already an old man, that is, as he himself explains, older than forty, indeed nearly fifty, when He suffered and died; and you might be the more surprised at this because many of the ancients wished for the Savior to have been much younger when He suffered than He truly was and than the Gospel shows. For most establish that He came to baptism at about the age of 29, and then died the following year, so that they interpose hardly more than a span of one year between baptism and death; when nevertheless it is known from the Gospel that Christ celebrated at least three Passovers from His baptism, and performed them, which proves an interval of at least three years. But on this occasion, those words of Isaiah were what made many less attentive to the Gospels than they should have been: "The Lord sent me to preach an acceptable year," etc., which was indeed rightly understood, but less happily explained, as if it followed therefrom that Christ would preach for only one year. Only Chrysostom, in Homily 54 on the ninth chapter of St. John, seems to have approached more closely to Irenaeus’s opinion. Indeed, regarding those words of the Jews to Christ, which Irenaeus also tries to drag in to confirm his own opinion: "You are not yet fifty years old," etc., thinking that "forty" should be read instead of "fifty," he concludes that Christ was already near forty years old.

71. Moreover, the fact that the ancients improperly explained the testimony of Isaiah in more than one instance gave the Gnostics the opportunity for error, or rather, for confirming their preconceived error. For so that they might in any way whatsoever bolster the figments of their Aeons, they feigned ^D that "the Savior came to baptism at the age of thirty so that He might show their thirty silent Aeons... But in the twelfth month they said that He suffered, so that He had been preaching for one year since His baptism: and they attempted to confirm this very thing from the prophet; for it is written: 'To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of retribution.'" Our author, intending to refute this error, rightly indeed proves that it is not the meaning of Isaiah’s words. Then he states that Christ came to baptism at the age of thirty; and finally that the Lord ascended to Jerusalem after His baptism for the third Passover time, and there celebrated the feast day of Passover. Anyone from these things could conclude that Christ suffered at the age of 33 or 34. Yet Irenaeus infers nothing less; but by many arguments, which can be read in him, he tries to prove that the Savior had already died while declining into old age, and that He had taught past his fortieth year and close to his fiftieth. That these arguments are weak will be immediately obvious to the reader. Nor is that which he repeats from the authority of the elders who saw the apostles any more valid than the rest. For—

[The beginning of this page follows the immediately preceding portion of the dissertation.]

aside from the fact that nothing concerning the name and authority of those elders is established, and it comes perhaps from Papias alone, a man of very slight intellect, as Eusebius says, [CXXXVIII] who did not always grasp the meaning of what he had heard from the apostles, yet to whose faith Irenæus attributed more than he ought, he could have received what he relates. He had heard only this from those elders, whoever they may have been, that Christ did not suffer at about the age of fifty, but had died when he was already declining into old age; which elderly age, proceeding perhaps a little further from the opinion of the heretics than was proper, out of arbitrariness and the heat of argument, he subsequently interpreted.

72. It is therefore most true that which Augustine observes in Book II *De doct. Christ.*, ch. 28, perhaps pointing his finger at our Irenæus: that "ignorance of the consulship in which the Lord was born and in which he suffered has compelled some to err, so as to think that the Lord suffered at the age of forty-six." Yet it is immediately surprising how Irenæus, to whom it was established that Christ received baptism at the age of thirty, and to whom it was certain from the Gospels that he celebrated only three Passovers from the time of his baptism, could bring himself to believe that he had suffered when he had already exceeded his fortieth year and was nearly reaching his fiftieth. For if that were true, he must necessarily have thought that Christ had kept not three, but more than twelve Passovers from the time of his baptism. The only thing that seems able to be answered is that Irenæus believed that Christ did not undertake the office of teaching immediately after his baptism, but persisted in lurking in hiding and living a private life until he had reached the perfect age of a master; and that he only then began to step forward publicly and act as a master when he had reached his forty-third or fourth year. This seems to be the sense of those words: "Existing as thirty years old when he came to baptism, then having the perfect age of a master he came to Jerusalem, so that he might justly be heard as a master by all." Indeed, he seems here to distinguish between the time of baptism and the time of teaching, and to separate the one from the other by a space of not a few years. Jesus indeed came to baptism being thirty years old, that is, in the sense of Irenæus, still a youth; for "thirty years of age," as he says, "is the first stage of youth." But he did not come to Jerusalem to celebrate the first Passover—not from the time he had received baptism, but from the time he had begun to teach publicly—until he had the perfect age of a master and was already declining into old age, that is, as he explains later, until he exceeded the fortieth year of age. Those three Passovers, therefore, which Christ celebrated after he had been baptized, ^A he proves to have been conducted from the Gospels, not from the time of his baptism, but only from that time when he began to perform the office of a teacher. But I do not see what could have led Irenæus to so unusual an opinion, one diametrically opposed to the Gospels, such that he separated the time of Christ’s preaching from his baptism by such a span of years, nor does anything occur to me by which an opinion so far diverging from the truth can be softened. The most learned Antonius Pagi attempted to cut, rather than untie, this knot in his *Critica Historico-Chronologica in Annales Baronii*, vol. I, p. 24, Antwerp ed. 1705, but unsuccessfully. For he believes that all those things which are read in Irenæus concerning the elder age of Christ are corrupt and spurious. But that would have to be proven by other arguments than mere conjectures, aside from the facts that the entire discourse is so consistent with itself that no part can be torn away without the whole dissolving; and that the style, which is certainly Irenæus’s, and the words which Eusebius quotes from him in Book III *Hist.*, ch. 23 (those, of course, where Irenæus confesses that he received his opinion from the disciples of John), remove every suspicion of interpolation, ^B and are very weak indeed if they were to be used for proof.

73. But our author deserves praise who writes in Book V, ch. 31, n. 1, that after his death Christ spent three days where the dead were, as he says, "the Prophet speaks concerning him: The Lord remembered his holy dead, those who had slept before in the land of burial, and he descended to them, to fetch them out and save them." And none the less clearly in Book IV, ch. 27, n. 2: "The Lord descended into the regions under the earth, preaching to them [the ancients who had already departed from the living] his advent; remission of sins existing for those who believe in him, that is, those who foretold his advent and served his plans, the just and the prophets and patriarchs: to whom he likewise remitted sins as he did to us, which we ought not to impute to them, if we do not despise the grace of God." Finally, in c. 22, n. 1 of the same book: "The passion of Christ is the awakening of sleeping disciples, for whose sake he also descended into the lower parts of the earth, to see with his eyes that which was inactive in creation, of whom he also said to the disciples: Many prophets and just men desired to see and hear what you see and hear." Where he explicitly teaches that Christ descended to the underworld, so that to the souls of the saints and just who were active in the subterranean places until heaven was opened through the Savior's death, he might announce his advent, and the price of our redemption having been paid by him, might draw them out from there and bestow upon them eternal happiness. ^{C D}

ARTICLE VII.

74. That it is very ancient in the Church that the use of confession—by which each and every thing after baptism...

^A deadlier sins, are declared distinctly and individually before those who preside over the Church—is something the Protestants themselves are forced to admit, and indeed the illustrious Grabius admits it in his observations on Irenæus, Book 1, ch. 13, alt. 9. And if anyone were to deny it, Irenæus would immediately refute the error, demonstrating by his own words that both sacramental confession and expiatory penalties—greater or lesser according to the gravity of the offenses, and repeated by the delinquents publicly or privately—had already begun to be used from the very apostolic age, and consequently by the law and institution of Christ, as necessary remedies for washing away sins. In Book 1, ch. 6, n. 3, he recounts that certain of the followers of Valentinus secretly corrupted those women who learned this doctrine from them: just as, he says, many women, often persuaded by them, after they were converted to the Church of God, confessed not only their other errors but also this [corruption]. Behold, women corrupted by heretics—not openly, but secretly, with no mortals as witnesses or confidants except the guilty parties themselves—whose crime, therefore, if any other was so, was hidden: yet, having converted to the Church, they confessed it along with their remaining error. Why? If it were not because they understood, from the faith and doctrine of the Church, that such a confession was necessary for them to wash away the stain of their sins? Grabius certainly denies that this can be gathered from the words of Irenæus, but he denies it wrongly and entirely without grounds. For what else would have impelled women, whom shame affects more than others, to uncover hidden crimes [CXXXIX] with such loss of reputation and honor? Was it merely the utility of confession? But surely that is a lighter incentive than to be able by it to break through those barriers installed by nature’s innate modesty, especially if crimes could be safely washed away by some other, less burdensome method. I call upon Grabius himself as a witness, since in those regions in which, having shaken off the heavy yoke of confession (as they call it), only its utility is commended, while its necessity is denied: has he ever heard of any women of his sect, having been secretly corrupted, approaching ministers to reveal and confess that hidden scandal, known to no one else? He will not be able to produce even one example, if he wishes to confess the truth candidly. Perhaps the ministers might call this a shorter and more expeditious way of obtaining an easing of debts; yet, once they reveal another way by which one might safely consult one's reputation as well as one’s salvation, men, being what they are, will follow the latter, toward which they lean, and none will follow the former.

75. But that which perhaps was never once done among the Protestants was done everywhere in the Church in the times of Irenæus. It is certainly an unassailable argument that there was some other cause that impelled men to the confession of hidden crimes than the mere utility of it. For the holy doctor recounts in the same book, ch. 13, n. 5, that Marcus the impostor had laid traps for women with love potions and other seductive arts, and had eventually brought dishonor upon the bodies of many. These women, very often once they had turned to the Church of God, made confessions, and were following the destruction of their bodies by him, just as if by passion, and having been greatly inflamed, they had loved him; so that even a certain deacon of these [heretics], who are ours in Asia, taking him into his house, fell into a calamity of this kind. For when his wife was beautiful, and having been corrupted in both her resolve and body by that magician, had followed him for a long time, then afterward, when the brethren had with great labor converted her, she spent all her time in *exhomologesis*, weeping and lamenting the corruption she had suffered from this magician. Those women confess not only the hidden crime, but also reveal the most secret circumstances of the same crime, namely that they had been desperately in love with Marcus, and they strive to wash this away through public penance imposed on them by the priests. This same fact is confirmed by those things which Irenæus adds at n. 7, [saying] that the disciples of Marcus ^B had seduced many women in the region of Lugdunum, who, having cauterized consciences, some indeed perform open *exhomologesis*, but others, revering this very thing, withdraw themselves slowly in silence, despairing of the life of God; some indeed have departed entirely; others, however, waver between the two, and have suffered what the proverb says, existing neither inside nor outside, having this fruit of the seed of the children of the [Gnostic] *gnosis*. From this passage the most learned men of blessed memory, Billius and Feuardentius, justly gather that public penance was in use in the early Church. But I, says the illustrious Grabius, think that public confession, when it was performed, is demonstrated from this. Others had thought so, and rightly indeed; for this [private confession] was referred to that [public outcome], as everyone knows; but private confession preceded both, by which a person, having made an enumeration of sins, both hidden and public—if there were any—before the legitimate pastor or priest assigned to this office, only thereafter confessed publicly those things which the priest had judged, according to the laws of prudence and charity, could and should be published without any disadvantage to the one confessing. But both confessions, whether private or public, were sacramental: both were followed by the canonical penance imposed on the delinquents, and the latter by absolution from sins and the faculty of receiving the body of Christ. I touch upon these things lightly, because they are well-worn and familiar to everyone. But it was not so free for sinners to confess either privately or publicly that, as Irenæus testifies, some among those women who had cauterized consciences, when they were ashamed to reveal a hidden ulcer, and the remedy of penance or *exhomologesis* terrified them, despairing miserably, would fall away from the Church, or, hanging in spirit between hope and fear, would exist neither within nor without. Certainly, if those women had thought they could help themselves by any other remedy; if confession made to God alone and penance undertaken privately of one's own accord had been sufficient to expiate their crimes, why were they hesitant? Why did they fall away from the Church, or waver in their minds between defection and reconciliation? Why rather did they not consult for themselves through such an easy remedy?

^A Let Grabe resolve this knot if he can, and see whether such shame or anxiety ever tormented the minds of sinners among his own followers. They took careful precautions so that they might never be entangled in such labyrinths, having completely cut away and removed the cause of so many troubles. But such an easy way to salvation was not yet known in the age of Irenaeus.

76. As to what Irenaeus thought about the sacrament of the Eucharist, he explains it clearly in many places, which are soon to be mentioned. And first, we must recall what we showed in Dissertation 1 regarding the deceptions of Marcus: that it was so deeply fixed in the hearts of all who in any way gloried in the Christian name that the Eucharist was the true body and blood of Christ, and that bread and wine, through the invocation of the Holy Spirit and the sacred words, were truly converted by that kind of conversion which is called transubstantiation into the very body and blood of Christ—that even the most profligate of all heretics, the Marcosians, attempted to display this before their own very eyes by their deceptions. For since Marcus was well aware that he had no power of offering the Eucharistic sacrifice, and that this belonged only to those who had been consecrated as priests through the legitimate imposition of hands; yet, in order to persuade his followers that he had been divinely gifted with this by Achamoth, the mother of the seed of election, he pretended in a way as impious as it was ridiculous that he accomplished by magic arts and in a visible manner what the true priests of Christ performed in reality and truth, though in an invisible way. For, pretending to consecrate cups mixed with white wine by pouring forth prayers, he would transform them into a purple and reddish color, so that he might hold them up as blood to the eyes of the spectators—the very blood of supreme virtue, which he boasted it to be—and which, therefore, those standing by, deceived by the trickster, were eager to taste. If Marcus departed far from the apostolic formula of celebrating the Eucharist and brought forth his own delusions, as Grabe maintains, I do not deny what may be concluded from that; yet even he will admit it is most certain that, if anyone lays aside his prejudices for a moment and surveys all things, he would see that no man could ever have brought himself to deceive others with such an insolent prodigy unless he held to the preconceived doctrine of the Real Presence and transubstantiation, as we proved in the referenced location.

77. Not only among the Marcosians, but among all the Gnostics, this was the opinion, and that all agreed with the Catholics on this point—that the Eucharist is the true body and blood of Christ, except that they imprudently overturned with other destructive principles what they asserted with their lips—is clearly evident from Irenaeus. For after he had, in Book IV, chapter 9 and following, proven at great length that the one and same God was the author of both laws, the Mosaic and the Evangelical, and that the old was not therefore abrogated because it was evil, but because it had been given only for a time, so that it might pave the way for the new law and true holiness, which of itself it could not provide; then at last in chapters 17 and 18, he shows that God commanded the old sacrifices to be offered to Him by the Jews, not because He needed them, but because He had judged that these ought to be granted to their infirmity, so that they might not decline into idolatry; not because he deemed that by them true righteousness was imparted to those offering, but because He wished to signify the New Testament, and the true and pure sacrifice and oblation of that same Testament. Thus, therefore, the old sacrifices had to be abrogated, so that the entire genus might be preserved, but the species merely changed. For in each Testament there had to be sacrifices, but in one case they were shadows and figures, in the other the very truth itself; one belonged to servants, the other to the free; one was crude and devoid of true holiness, the other clean and pure, by which God is worshipped in spirit and truth, and man attains true righteousness. Therefore, since God had already signified most clearly through the prophecy of Malachi (ch. 1, 10, 11), that the former people would cease to offer to God, but that in every place a sacrifice would be offered to him, and this a pure one, Christ, fulfilling this prophecy, taught the new oblation of the New Testament, which the Church, receiving from the apostles, offers to God throughout the whole world. Indeed, giving counsel to his disciples to offer the first-fruits of His creatures to God, not as if He were in need, but so that they themselves might neither be unfruitful nor ungrateful, He took that which is from the creature of bread, and gave thanks, saying: This is my body. And likewise the cup, which is from that creature which is according to us, He confessed to be His blood. ^B And this is the oblation of the Church which the Lord taught should be offered throughout the whole world; this is the pure sacrifice which the Church offers with simplicity. For we ought to make an oblation to God, and be found in all things grateful to God the Creator, in a pure mind and faith without hypocrisy, in firm hope, and in fervent love, offering the first-fruits of those things which are His creatures. Therefore, that very sacrifice which Christ offered to God the Father on the day before he suffered, by consecrating bread and wine and confessing it to be His blood, the Church itself offers in all the world, following the example of Christ its master, to God the Creator. This is His sacrifice, this this oblation, a pure sacrifice, an oblation clean and undefiled. Thus in the age of Irenaeus the Church felt, thus it acted, thus it believed: it offered bread and wine as the first-fruits of those things which are God's creatures, and blessed and consecrated them; but once the consecration was done, it did not regard them as common bread and common wine, as Irenaeus will soon explain, but confessed them to be the very body and blood of Christ. This, I say, was the faith of the Catholic Church of the second century throughout the entire world.

78. What, then, was the feeling of those [heretics] of that time? Were they fighting against the faith of the Eucharistic sacrifice, or were they denying that it contained and offered the true body and blood of Christ? Indeed, the Jews, or ^{C D}

^A even those who are cited in book v by Irenaeus, are shown to fight against the faith of the Eucharist, and of the flesh of the divine Word, in which they were clothed and which they crucified, because their hands are full of blood. Since, therefore, they have not received the incarnate Word, which is offered to God the Father in the sacrifice of the Eucharist, what, once that true sacrifice of the new law has been repudiated by those wretches, can possibly remain for them except a vain and impure shadow of sacrifice? Heretics indeed did offer the Eucharist, but because it could not be in honest opinion and faith without hypocrisy, their offering could not be pure; for they themselves did not receive the Word that is offered to God. And although they proclaimed with their mouths that the Eucharist is the body of their Lord and the chalice of his blood, this could not be consistent with their position. "How," says Irenaeus, "will it be consistent for them that the bread over which thanks have been given is the body of their Lord, and the chalice the chalice of his blood? ... Therefore, let them either change their opinion, or abstain from offering those things that have been mentioned." The heretics, therefore, offered bread and wine, they consecrated both, and they confessed it to be the body of their Lord and the chalice of his blood. Nor did they think wrongly in this. But they sinned in this alone, that, fighting against themselves, they held concerning the Word of God that which utterly overthrew the faith of the Eucharist. From which it followed that, although they openly asserted that the bread over which thanks had been given was the body of their Lord, yet by no reasoning could this be consistent for them.

79. That the reader may the more easily grasp this, let him observe, I pray, that the Marcionites and Valentinians are refuted here, and later more fully in book v, chapter 11, by arguments drawn from the mystery of the Eucharist. Moreover, the error of both was such, as we explained in dissertation 1, while dealing with their heresy, that this visible world was not created by the supreme God and Father; but was either from some other power, as Marcion blasphemed; or was the fruit of an Aeon that had lapsed through error and ignorance, as the Valentinians ranted. Hence a twofold further error flowed: 1° that the flesh, being the work either of an evil principle or the fruit of ignorance, was so subject to destruction that once dissolved it could never rise again; 2° that Christ Jesus had not received true flesh from Mary; for he only took to himself that which he was about to save: but he could not bestow salvation upon flesh. Therefore, he bore that which was in some sense a material body—not truly human and made of flesh, but so refined and purified from all coarser matter, and wrought with such skillful art, that it had nothing in common with it, but was in a way spiritual in comparison to it. And from this also flowed another of their blasphemies, that the divine Word was neither the son of the creator of the world, nor had truly become man, but had only been united to Christ Jesus for a time, and that only to the extent of an efficacy, and by that kind of union which was far removed from the hypostatic and substantial. These are the ravings of madmen, which then here, ^B and in book v, as cited, Irenaeus shows to be at odds with the faith of the Eucharist.

80. In the first place, he lays it down that in the Catholic Church alone is the pure Eucharistic offering made to the Creator; because she alone, in honest opinion and faith without hypocrisy, offers to him with thanksgiving from his creation; that is, she alone, believing that God the Father is the maker of this world, offers and consecrates to him, with thanksgiving and mindful of the benefits received from him, the gifts which are truly his and pertain to him by right of creation—namely bread and wine, taken from created things. Then he brings forward that no pure offering is made by the Jews; both because their hands are full of blood; and because they have not received the incarnate Word, "which is offered to God" in the sacrifices of Christians, and which, now that the sacrifices of the old law are abolished, is the sole and only host of the new law. He adds that "neither do all the synagogues of the heretics" offer a pure sacrifice. For although they make the Eucharist from bread and wine, yet their offering is impure, and affects God with reproach rather than honor. He proves this by a twofold argument, corresponding to the twofold error of the heretics which he is refuting. The first is drawn from the fact that the heretics, by denying that God the Father is the maker of this world, "by offering to him the things which are created according to us," either "show him to be greedy for what is alien and craving what is another's," or "by offering the fruits of ignorance, passion, and defect, they sin against him," and consequently bring insult upon him. For whoever feigns that God the Father wishes to have offered to him things which he himself did not create, nor which pertain to him by right of creation, he shows the Father to be greedy for the things of another: and whoever dares to offer to God the Father the fruits of error and ignorance, he does him an injury with these polluted and impure gifts ^C rather than giving thanks. The second argument is repeated from this: that since the heretics denied that our Lord Jesus Christ was the son ^D of the very creator of the world, that is, his only-begotten Word, it could not be consistent for them that that bread over which thanks had been given was the body of their Lord, and the chalice was the chalice of his blood. For those heretics who denied that our Lord was the son of the creator of the world and the only-begotten Word of the Father, they consequently denied that the Word had become incarnate and had been made true man, and that our Lord had assumed true flesh and a true body. But for him who denies that the Word has assumed a true body, it cannot then be consistent that the Eucharist is the body of our Lord. Because whoever denies that our Lord had a true human body, consubstantial with ours, and fashioned from matter created by the maker of the world; he must accordingly deny that our Lord has and makes for himself a true body in the Eucharist. Since he cannot convert bread and wine, things created by the maker of the world, into the true and proper substance of his own body, he who maintains no substance from material...

^A from an inferior source has assumed a body; 2° yet, in that Christ said bread and wine are his body and blood, there would immediately have followed for them, as if by necessity from both, that bread and wine could be the body and blood of Christ in no other way than because they are either a figure of Christ’s body and blood or contain their virtue. And Irenaeus would have denied this in vain; for the adversaries would have immediately replied that there was no contradiction in him who assumed no body for himself from inferior created things representing in the same things the figure and virtue of that more spiritual body which he bore. Whence, so far would the holy doctor be from having helped the Catholic cause with this argument drawn from the Eucharist, that he would rather have furnished arms to the heretics with which they could have run through the Catholics themselves. For, invincibly retorting the argument, they would have said: If the Son of God could have assumed for himself any human and material body from inferior created things, he would most of all have formed for himself from those things which he himself said were his body and blood: but yet, by the confession of the Catholics themselves, those very things which he said were his body and blood by consecrating them, namely, bread and wine, do not become his true body and his true blood, but exhibit and contain the mere figure and virtue of the body and blood; therefore, Christ did not assume a true human body, but the mere figure and virtue of a human body, by which he might act upon the senses of men, and effect that which a true human body could have effected. But on the contrary, if we suppose, which is most true, that it was certain and indubitable to both Irenaeus and his adversaries that bread and wine are converted in the Eucharist into the true body and blood of our Lord, then no argument drawn from the Eucharist will be more valid for suppressing the heretics. For who, Irenaeus would say, converts bread and wine, created material things, into the true substance of his own body and blood, and openly asserted that they are his true body and blood; he, if he is truthful and speaks the truth, must have had a true human body compounded from inferior [CXLII] matter, just as ours is; ‹for blood,› as he rightly notes in lib. v, c. III, n. 2, ‹is not except from veins and flesh, and from the rest of the substance that is according to man.› And yet, as the adversaries themselves admit, our Lord, the very truth, converted bread and wine, created material things, into the true substance of his own body and blood, and said that he had converted them: therefore he possessed a true human body composed of inferior matter, and consubstantial with ours: therefore he is the Son of the creator of the world, and his Word.

81. Against the heretics, whether modern heretics wish it or not, Irenaeus argues, or surely he accomplishes nothing at all. Therefore, both when the heretics are being attacked and when Irenaeus is attacking, it was certain to both sides that the true and substantial body and blood of our Lord are contained in the Eucharist, and that bread and wine are truly converted and transmuted in it. For unless this had been certain and explored by either party, Irenaeus would have sought an argument from the Eucharist in vain and ridiculously, and there would have been nothing more insipid than that kind of arguing. For if both Irenaeus and the Marcionites and Valentinians recognized nothing else in the Eucharist ^B except the mere figure of the body and blood of Christ, or that efficacious virtue which more recent ministers have invented as emanating from the body and blood of Christ; then Irenaeus’s argument must proceed thus: For heretics denying that our Lord is the Son of the maker of the world, that is, his only-begotten Word, it cannot be consistent that the Eucharist is a figure or virtue of his body and blood. For if the Son of God did not receive true flesh and a true human body fashioned from matter created by the maker of the world, nor took to himself any hylic element, but ‹clothed› himself with a certain ‹body prepared by ineffable art,› as the Valentinians asserted, he can exhibit no figure or virtue of his body in the Eucharist. Therefore, for heretics who take away from Christ a material body, it cannot be consistent that the Eucharist is a figure or virtue of his body. Protestants must necessarily pretend that Irenaeus argued thus. But every sober person will admit that such an argument is that of a delirious man, and cannot therefore be attributed to Irenaeus without grave injury. As if, indeed, because Christ took nothing hylic and did not assume a material body, it follows thence that he could not exhibit in the mystery of the Eucharist any figure or virtue of that more spiritual body, ‹prepared by ineffable art,› which he clothed himself with! Nay rather, from this it would most of all have been consistent for the heretics that the Eucharist is a figure or virtue of our Lord's body. For from the point when both these things would have been consistent for the heretics, as they contended it was consistent for them: 1° Christ, having no body ^C formed from inferior matter, [did assume a body]; 2° Yet that Christ said bread and wine were his body and blood; from these two at once, as if by necessity following from both, it would have been established that bread and wine could not be the body and blood of Christ in any other way than because they are the figure of Christ's body and blood, or contain their virtue. And Irenaeus would have denied this in vain; for the adversaries would have immediately replied that there was no contradiction in him who assumed no body for himself from inferior created things representing in the same things the figure and virtue of that more spiritual body which he bore. Whence, so far would the holy doctor be from having helped the Catholic cause with this argument drawn from the Eucharist, that he would rather have furnished arms to the heretics with which they could have run through the Catholics themselves.

82. And perhaps some Calvinist might respond that it was sufficient for Irenaeus to prove that the Eucharist is a figure of the body and blood of Christ, in order to conclude from there that our Lord assumed a true body and blood; for, as Tertullian says, lib. iv

^A cont. Marcion. c. 4, “a void thing, which is a phantom, could not receive a figure.” But we have already occupied ourselves with this most empty response. For it was not merely incumbent upon Irenaeus to prove that Christ had a true body; indeed, those heretics whom he refutes here did not absolutely deny this; but it was especially necessary to demonstrate that our Lord had taken a body for Himself from inferior matter created by the Creator of the world, consubstantial with our own. Now, certainly, he would not have demonstrated this by that argument. For Valentinian would have immediately retorted that Christ had therefore assumed bread and wine, in order to constitute a figure of those things, body and blood, which He had presented to the senses of mortals; and consequently, just as by that body which, while dwelling on earth, had affected the senses of men, He had presented a mere appearance of a human body, not a true human body; so by bread and wine He had intended to signify not a true body, but a phantom of a material body: nay, that by this He had intended to demonstrate that no true matter and substance of a human body was in Him, but only an appearance. But whatever Irenaeus might have added, that some truth must correspond to every figure, Valentinian would have immediately dissolved this, replying that to both figures, namely the natural and the Eucharistic, there corresponds that true body prepared by ineffable art, which Christ had surrounded Himself with by His arrangement, but which was not formed from inferior matter. And thus the whole argument of Irenaeus would have fallen quickly.

83. Irenaeus confirms and restores the same argument drawn from the Eucharist in order to refute another error of the heretics, who deny the resurrection of the flesh. I shall recite the words in Latin; with only those things added from the Greek which were omitted in the Latin translation. “How then again do they say that the flesh departs into corruption, and does not partake of life, which is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord? Therefore, let them either change their opinion, or abstain from offering those things which have been mentioned. But our opinion is consonant with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our opinion. For we offer to Him what is His, appropriately proclaiming the communion and union (in Greek κοινωνίαν καὶ ἕνωσιν, communion and union) (suppl. of the divine Word with the body and blood of the Lord; then add, according to the Greek, καὶ ὁμολογοῦντες σαρκὸς καὶ πνεύματος ἔγερσιν, and confessing the resurrection of the flesh and ^C of the spirit). For as bread, which is from the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two things, earthly and heavenly: so also our bodies, receiving the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection.” Here Irenaeus infers the resurrection of our flesh from a double proposition, namely: That flesh cannot depart into corruption which receives life; that flesh ^D is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord. For once the other proposition is added: But our flesh is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord, there follows from this of itself the conclusion: Therefore our flesh cannot depart into corruption. It would have been superfluous to prove the earlier propositions; for they are manifest from the very words of Christ himself, John vi, 54, 55: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood, has eternal life, and I will raise him up in the last day.” Irenaeus explains, proves, and confirms the assumption, although it also is demonstrated quite openly from those words of the Lord, “My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.” And first, he observes that the opinion of the heretics is so repugnant to the very faith of the Eucharistic sacrifice—which, however, they professed to be the same as the Catholics—that they must either abstain from offering the sacrifice, or change their opinion: whereas the opinion of the Catholics is so wondrously in agreement with the Eucharist that new strength is added to it from this. For we offer, he says, to God what is His, His own proper goods, created and fashioned by Him, namely bread and wine, which by the consecration and blessing of the ministers of the Church become the body and blood of Christ the Lord, the Son of God the Only-begotten and the Word, ἐμμελῶς κοινωνίαν καὶ ἕνωσιν ἀπαγγέλλοντες, neatly proclaiming the communion and union; of what things, if not of those concerning which he spoke a little before, namely of the divine Word with the human body and blood of Christ, both natural and sacramental? καὶ ὁμολογοῦντες σαρκὸς καὶ πνεύματος ἔγερσιν, and confessing the resurrection of the flesh and of the spirit. Then at last, approaching more closely to the cause, he adds: “For as bread, which is from the earth, receiving the invocation of God, etc.,” by which he clearly alludes (nor does Grabe deny it) to that solemn formula of words which occurs in all the ancient Oriental liturgies, and which the Greeks with Irenaeus call by way of excellence ἐπίκλησιν, invocation. It is that by which God is prayed to send the Holy Spirit, who, by His descent upon the proposed gifts and most efficacious operation, may make them the body and blood of Christ; and simultaneously, as the faithful receive them, He may so come upon them through His grace, and settle into their hearts, that the same mysteries may profit them for the remission of sins, the increase of grace, and eternal life. To the same ἐπίκλησιν, invocation, as Grabe himself admits, Cyril of Jerusalem likewise referred, to omit many other Greek Fathers, writing in Catech. 1: “ἐπικλήσεως γενομένης, invocation being made, [the] bread becomes the body of Christ.” And Catech. 5: “We ask,” he says, “the merciful God to send the Holy Spirit upon the proposed [gifts], and to make the bread indeed the body of Christ, but the wine the blood of Christ.” Since he had thus alluded to it

^A one must admit that Irenæus has the same thing in view. And certainly that liturgical invocation, which Irenæus, Cyril, and other Fathers so often mention, excludes from any sense any other transmutation of the sacred gifts than a real and substantial one into the very body and blood of Christ. For the Holy Spirit is asked to descend, not only into the hearts of the faithful, to sanctify them, but also into the sacred gifts themselves, in order to act immediately upon them by His divine and most efficacious operation, ^B and to produce some signal miracle. But what other thing, full of miracle, can the Holy Spirit perform upon the sacred gifts themselves, if not by a true transmutation to cause them to be something they were not before, namely, the body and blood of Christ, as is read in all the Liturgies, [Gk: μεταβαλὼν τῷ Πνεύματι τῷ ἁγίῳ], as the Liturgies of Basil and Chrysostom have it? Here Protestants might imagine I know not what tropes, figures, and virtues: they will never be able to circumvent the clear meaning of the words with false interpretations. For a double descent of the Holy Spirit is openly distinguished, and a double end for each, differing one from the other: one upon the matter itself, that is, upon the sacred gifts, so that they become something which they were not before, namely, the body and blood of Christ; the other into the hearts of the faithful, so that all who are about to receive the sacrament may obtain the fruit of the remission of sins and an increase of grace. Since, therefore, Protestants deny that any other transmutation than a moral one is asked for by the invocation—that is, that in the act of the reception of the sacrament, the sacred gifts become the body and blood of Christ for the faithful who receive them with faith—they must consequently deny that a descent of the Holy Spirit into the sacred gifts themselves is asked for long before communion, in order to make them the body and blood of Christ; and thus, by confounding this double descent, they bring an open violence to clear words. And, I ask, if that is the meaning of the invocation, why has the Church indeed prayed for the Holy Spirit, ^D that by His descent into the baptismal water, or into the chrism, He might impart His virtue and the power of sanctifying to them, and replenish and make them fruitful with the virtue of Christ’s blood, etc., yet never asked Him to cause them, by His most efficacious operation, to become the very blood of Christ, or the Holy Spirit Himself? This knot, whatever rhetoric the Protestants may use, they will never be able to untie. From that invocation, therefore, which is made over the earthly bread, Irenæus rightly concludes that our flesh is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord: because the bread which is from the earth, having once received the invocation of God, ceases to be common bread, but becomes the Eucharist, that is, the true body and true blood of the incarnate Word Himself. ^C This is what he wishes to explain somewhat more clearly when he immediately adds, “The Eucharist consists of two things, an earthly and a heavenly one.” Words clear enough, had the Calvinists not striven to cast a fog over them with their own complexities.

84. However, anyone who wishes to attend to the hypothesis of the heretics who are being refuted here, as well as to the entire series of Irenæus's argumentation, will easily grasp this. A little earlier, the holy doctor said that, according to the opinion of the heretics, there was a creator of the world apart from the supreme Father; and that our Lord was not the Son, nor His Word, because He did not assume a true human body formed from the earthly substance created by the artificer of the world, nor did the divine Word unite Himself to it. By here summarizing that same error, and at the same time proving the resurrection of the flesh, he shows that earthly bread, after the invocation of God, therefore ceases to be common bread, because it becomes the Eucharist, consisting of two things, an earthly and a heavenly one. But what is that earthly thing of which the Eucharist consists, if not the body and blood of the Lord, by which Irenæus had said just before that our flesh is nourished? He calls it an earthly thing, in order to refute the heretics from this, who deny that Christ assumed anything of an earthly body for Himself: earthly, I say, because from earthly bread and wine, truly converted and transmuted into the substance of Christ's body and blood, comes the true body of the Lord, and His true blood. From which it follows that Christ assumed to Himself a body fashioned and made from earthly matter, and truly flesh and true blood; which the heretics denied. But what is that heavenly thing of which the Eucharist is also said to consist, if not that which was mentioned a little before, namely the divine Word, the only-begotten Son of the Father, whom the heretics were unwilling to acknowledge as having been truly and substantially united to the created nature of our Lord Jesus? Rightly, therefore, does Irenæus assert that the Eucharist consists of two things, an earthly and a heavenly one; for by these he strengthens the Catholic opinion against the blasphemies of the heretics; and he proves from the Eucharist, which they confessed to be the body and blood of the Lord, that Christ the Lord existed as true man, and so also as true God, the Son of God and the only-begotten Word of the Father; and that the Word truly and substantially united to Himself the human nature of Christ, His body and blood. It is just as if he had said: The body and blood which impart life to our flesh, and rescue it from corruption, so that they may be an earthly body and earthly blood, concreted and made from earthly things, can nevertheless not be a mere earthly body and mere earthly blood, or the body and blood of a mere man; for a mere human body by its own nature is mortal and subject to corruption, and cannot provide life to others. Yet the body and blood of our Lord in the Eucharist, made from earthly things—bread and wine—through their true conversion, impart life to our flesh. Therefore, they are not a mere earthly thing, or the body and blood of a mere man.

^A Grabius, the grace of the Holy Spirit? Is our flesh therefore fed and do our members grow by relations, or by the grace of the Holy Spirit? Why, in like manner, did Irenaeus, and other Fathers who, proving the resurrection of the flesh, sought arguments from the Eucharist—deriving them from the manna, from the rock of the desert, from the paschal lamb, etc., which were themselves figures of Christ’s body—conclude from this that these were as effective remedies against corruption for the old people as for the new? Yet you will find none who have argued thus. Nay, rather, and perhaps more wisely, would they have said that our flesh cannot perish eternally, which has been washed and regenerated by the saving laver of baptism and anointed and strengthened by sacred chrism? For they have often asserted that these (no less than the bread and wine in the Eucharist, if the opinion of the Calvinists be true) have been fecundated and filled by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, or even by the very blood of Christ itself. Yet no one occurs who has proven the resurrection of the flesh by such an argument. Which fact alone demonstrates that the Fathers acknowledged something else in the mystery of the Eucharist beyond a mere figure or power of Christ’s body and blood. But let us weigh the other propositions of Irenaeus’s argument. Therefore, if we listen to the Calvinists, Irenaeus would have contended from this that our flesh receives life, and therefore cannot pass into corruption, because it is nourished by the figure or power of Christ’s body and blood. He would have proven this proposition from the fact that he who is from the earth, the bread receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread. What then, if indeed it is not converted into the body of Christ, nor changes its substance? The Eucharist consists of two things, earthly and heavenly. But if you ask the Calvinists what those things are, the earthly and the heavenly, they all indeed agree that by the name of the earthly thing, bread is understood; but they disagree about the heavenly thing. For some understand a certain power, I know not what, flowing from the body of Christ, yet separated from it and put into the bread. Others, deservedly deriding such a fictitious power, understand the thing signified by the bread, namely the body of Christ, certainly absent. But both explanations teem with so many absurdities that it is a wonder they could have been proposed by anyone. It is not my intention to pursue everything here: the most learned authors of the book *De perpetuitate fidei Ecclesiae catholicae circa Eucharistiam* (vol. III, lib. 1, ch. 2, and vol. II, lib. v, ch. 10, 11 et seqq.) have abundantly performed that task. Let it suffice to observe a few things for our purpose. And that I may begin from the latter, it could with equal right be said that the paschal lamb consists of two things—a certain animal and the passing over, or if you prefer, the body of Christ; that the rock of the desert consists of stone and Christ; that the marble image of Caesar consists of marble and Caesar, etc. Indeed, let anyone who asserts that that whole [entity], which they call connotative—namely, a thing in itself one, which nevertheless relates to another and signifies it—consists of two parts, of which one is the signifying thing and the other the signified thing, be considered foolish. No thing, which...

is not collective, as the Eucharist certainly is not, is said to consist of another thing as a part, which is absent and outside of it.

86. No less absurd is the other explanation, which the distinguished Grabe was pleased to adopt for himself. For besides the fact that this fictitious virtue, devised by more recent ministers, has been unknown to all antiquity for all time, and does not have even the slightest foundation in Scripture and the Fathers; besides the fact that it is absurd to assert that our bodies are nourished, fed, and increased by a certain virtue separated from the body of Christ; it cannot in any way accord with Irenæus's scope and argument, which were explained above; nor could the holy Doctor ever infer from this the hypostatic union of the divine Word with the human nature of Christ, nor the resurrection of our bodies.

“Our opinion,” he says, “is consonant with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our opinion. For we offer to God what is His,”—namely, the things created by Him—“fittingly declaring the communion and union;” of which things, I ask? Is it of the spirit, or of human souls with flesh? But the Gnostics did not deny the union and communion of these things. Is it of the virtue of Christ's body with the bread? But what does this have to do with the scope of Irenæus, who, from the faith of the Eucharist, confirms what he had previously proven—that Christ is the Son of the Fashioner of this very world, that is, His Word? Therefore, because the virtue of Christ's body is united with the bread, can it be concluded from this that the Word was substantially united with the corporeal nature of Christ? Nay, the Gnostic would rather have inferred the contrary and said: just as Christ's body in the Eucharist is united with the bread only in efficacy and not in reality, so was the divine Word united with our Lord only in efficacy and virtue, and not in substance; which was the very opinion ^C of these impious men, which they would have deservedly contended was in good agreement with the faith of the Eucharist. Therefore, if this had not been the faith of Irenæus and of all Catholics, that the divine Word is substantially united in the Eucharist with those things which were created by God, namely bread and wine—not indeed remaining in their own substance of bread and wine, but being truly transmuted into Christ's body and blood—Irenæus would have pleaded the cause of the Catholics very poorly. “Thus,” the holy man adds, “we offer to God what is His, in order that we may also profess the resurrection of flesh and spirit, and that this opinion of ours may be confirmed from the Eucharist [CXLV].” Why so? Is it because Christ imparts the virtue of His body to the bread which is offered to us in the Eucharist? But so far is the resurrection of our flesh from being proven by this, that the heretic could rather have attacked it more sharply. For, he would have said, just as Christ, while communicating the virtue of His body to the bread in the Eucharist, does not, however, strip it of its own substance of bread; and just as, although He confesses it to be His body, He cannot however transmute it into His own proper body, because it can take nothing for itself from matter that is vitiated and subject to corruption; so our bodies, although ^D they may receive the sacred bread, cannot for all that be set free from the corruption inherent in them, and are therefore no less destined to perish. Thus, with their vain evasions, the Calvinists provide weapons for the most profligate of all heretics, and, in the manner of insane men, bring the Fathers of the Church onto the field to fight along with them.

87. How truly efficacious that class of argument is, and deservedly so, Irenæus might think, is demonstrated by the fact that he uses it quite often against the Gnostics, and challenges them not once to the Eucharist, intending to pierce their errors with this dart. In the same book iv, c. 33, n. 2, already cited, refuting the Marcionites, who imagined two gods—the one good, the Father of our Lord, the other evil, the maker of the world—he proves that unless the Lord is the Son of the Creator of the world itself, He was unjustly confessing that the bread of this creation, which is according to us, was His own body, and He confirmed the mixture of the cup to be His own blood. By this argument indeed, he either effects nothing at all, or most certainly demonstrates that Christ so confessed and confirmed that the bread was His body and the wine was His blood, that He made them from the other into His true body and His true blood by a true conversion and transmutation of each; and therefrom [it would be] unjust that He should say and make things created by another, and placed under another's jurisdiction, to be His own. For if Christ had said that the bread was His body only in that sense that He wished to impart to it the virtue of His body, He no more attributes to Himself the bread created by another and makes it His own, than a prince claims and usurps for himself the coin of another prince, marked with a type, by establishing its value—nay, ordering it to be of greater value than it is in the region where it was minted—for the sake of the subjects using it. As if, forsooth, because someone should institute a certain sign at his own pleasure, by which he might bestow something upon the users, it could be inferred from this that he claims for himself the thing which he instituted as a sign! But it is, furthermore, most worthy of observation that Irenæus, as often as he mentions the Eucharist, does not simply affirm that Christ said the bread was His body and the wine was His blood; but he uses these words studiously and always that “He confessed and confirmed that the bread was His body and the wine was His blood,” and, as he speaks in Greek in lib. v, c. 11, *τὸ ἀπὸ τῆς κτίσεως ποτήριον, αἷμα ἴδιον ὡμολόγησε, καὶ τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς κτίσεως ἄρτον, ἴδιον σῶμα διεβεβαιώσατο*, “he confessed the cup, which is from the creature (not merely ‘his own,’ as the interpreter translates, but *ἴδιον*) to be his own blood, and confirmed the bread, which is from the creature, to be his own body,” he asserted, and made us more certain. By this manner of speaking Irenæus clearly indicates that the matter is most difficult to believe, and which would not obtain faith unless Christ, the Truth itself, should cut away every handle for doubt by speaking clearly and openly; but the holy doctor himself [addressed] that doubt, which from the very nature of the thing, [seizes] the capacity of human minds.

^A Indeed, it arises from the difficulty of a matter that is so far-reaching, as he strive to remove it by inculcating the words of Christ again and again. As if he had said what Cyril of Jerusalem later said in his *Catecheses Mystagogicae* iv: "Since therefore Christ himself so affirms, and says of the bread: *This is my body*; who from then on would dare to doubt? And with him also confirming, *bebaiousamenou*, *This is my blood*; who, I ask, would doubt, and say that it is not his blood?" And Chrysostom, hom. 83 on Matthew: "Let us therefore believe God everywhere, and not oppose him, even if that which he says seems absurd to our sense and thought... For we cannot be defrauded by his words, but our sense is most easily deceived: the former cannot be false, the latter is mistaken again and again. Since therefore he said: *This is my body*, let us be held by no ambiguity, but let us believe, and let us perceive this with the eyes of the intellect." Furthermore, if Irenaeus had not judged that the words of Christ were to be understood literally, and that all the faithful had so understood them, he would have very ridiculously opposed those words, from which all doubts had arisen, to all the doubts: he would have spoken even more foolishly if he had said that Christ had asserted, confessed, and confirmed, and assured us, that the bread is his own body, and the wine his own blood. The words of Christ would have had to be explained, if they were to be accepted figuratively and metaphorically, not inculcated again and again. For who could bear him who says that the Holy Spirit confessed and confirmed that the rock of the desert was Christ, and that therefore it should not be doubted that the rock itself is Christ, truly and properly Christ? Who ever asserted that we drink in baptism the very own and proper blood of Christ; that baptism is the proper body of Christ, his very own blood; that when we receive baptism, we are nourished by the proper body of Christ, and given to drink of his very blood, because its power is applied to the catechumens when they are baptized? ^B 88. Grabe indeed cavils here after his custom, and urges the passages of the Fathers, which others had long since objected, being Calvinists, by which the holy doctors undoubtedly assert that the Church is the proper body of Christ, and we are members of his proper body. He could easily have accumulated many other similar things; but since the most learned authors of the *Perpetuity of the Faith*, Vol. II, Book IV, ch. 8, have invincibly proved all things to be alien to the purpose, I refer Grabe and the readers to them. Grabe, if he wishes to speak that which is fair and good, must seek examples, not of metaphorical propositions, such as is this: *The Church is the true and proper body of Christ*, in which the trope affects the predicate of the proposition; but of figurative propositions, such as the ministers want that proposition to be: *This is my body*; in which the trope [they claim] affects the verb, *Is*. Let him therefore prove by examples, if he can, that it can rightly be said that the image of Caesar is truly Caesar, the Caesar himself, the proper body of Caesar, etc. As long as he does not accomplish this, he has not even lightly touched the state of the question.

89. But let our argument of Irenaeus return, the holy man, book v, ch. 2, 1. Opposing the Eucharist again to the errors of the Gnostics, he undertakes to demonstrate these two things at once: 1. That God came incarnate into his own, and was truly made man; otherwise his advent would not be just, he who, according to them, came into that which was another's, nor did he truly redeem us by his blood, if he was not truly made man. 2. That flesh is capable of incorruptibility, and therefore will not eternally perish. He concludes both from this argument [CXLVI]: "If," he says, "the flesh is not saved, neither did the Lord redeem us with his blood," because he would not have had true blood, nor truly been made man; "it follows that neither is the cup of the Eucharist the communion of his blood, nor is the bread, which we break, the communion of his body." But, he soon subsumes, the cup of the Eucharist is the communion of the blood of Christ, and the bread, which we break, is the communion of his body. Whence he deservedly concludes that the flesh is saved, and that the Lord has redeemed us with his blood. This argument of Irenaeus leans on a double proposition: 1st, and that bipartite, that if flesh is not saved, nor has the Lord redeemed us with his blood, it follows that neither is the cup of the Eucharist the communion of his blood, nor is the bread, which we break, the communion of his body. The second, that the cup of the Eucharist is the communion of the blood of the Lord, and the bread, which we break, is the communion of his body. The holy doctor demonstrates the second part of the former proposition in this way, being about to prove the other presently: "He who has not redeemed us with his blood, because he would not have had true blood, was not truly made man; he certainly could not present true blood and a true body by his presence in the Eucharist. For it is not true blood, unless it be from veins and flesh, and the rest which is human substance." He therefore who communicates his blood to us in the Eucharistic cup must provide blood which is "from veins and flesh, and the rest which is human substance;" for that alone is true blood: therefore, if Christ provides true blood for us in the Eucharist, he had veins and flesh, and the rest of the substance which is according to man. Therefore the true human substance "was truly made the Word of God"; and therefore "he has redeemed us with his blood, just as his Apostle also says: In whom we have redemption, through his blood, the remission of sins." Thus far the argument, which is most certainly that of Irenaeus, troubles all Calvinists. For it rests, placed upon this foundation, that Christ in the Eucharist [provides] true blood...

^A to us, which consequently is from his veins and flesh, and from the rest of human substance: whence it is inferred that he had veins and flesh, and the rest of human substance; and that the Word of God was truly made man, and redeemed us by his blood. For if Christ had presented to us in the Eucharistic cup a mere likeness of blood, even if it were an effective one, and Irenaeus had thought this, he would have proposed an argument to his adversaries that was easier to dissolve than a spider's web. For any Marcionite would immediately have objected that Christ wished the wine to be a figure of his blood for this reason: because, not having true blood to offer, he presented a merely imaginary one, and one similar to what he displayed to the eyes of men. And thus, shaken by even the slightest breath, the whole structure of the argument would have collapsed at once.

90. The other part of the former proposition, namely that if flesh is not preserved, neither is the Eucharistic cup a communion of the blood of Christ, nor the bread which we break a communion of his body; by these reasonings Irenaeus persuades us: If the Eucharist be the true and proper body of Christ, and his true and proper blood, it is impossible that the flesh which is nourished and increased by these, and for this reason adheres more closely to Christ, and is a member of him, should be so dissolved that it will never revive again. For who could bring it about that flesh, fed and nourished by his own life-giving body and blood, should be ^B incapable of the gift of God, which is eternal life? But that the substance of our flesh is nourished and increased by the very own blood of Christ, which is the second proposition of the whole argument, the holy doctor makes plain thus: It is the duty of the Head to provide for its members nourishment which is accommodated both to their nature and to the end for which they are destined. "Since, therefore, we are members of Christ, and as the blessed Apostle says, in the Epistle to the Ephesians: 'For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones' (Ephes. v, 30); and we are so constituted by nature that we feed on created things, it was necessary that He should provide the creation for us himself, 'making his sun to rise, and sending rain, as he wills' (Matth. v, 45). But because a corporeal created thing is of itself subject to corruption, and consequently could not exempt the members of Christ, destined for eternal life, from corruption; it was fitting that that created thing should be transferred from the state of corruption inherent in it into another, whereby, having become life-giving and living, it might impart life to those who feed upon it. Therefore Christ, in his divine goodness, confessed that cup, which is from the creation, to be his own blood (for so the Greek words sound), from which he increases our blood; and confirmed that bread, which is from the creation, to be his own body, from which he increases our bodies." Then at last the holy doctor concludes: "When, therefore, the mingled cup and the made bread receives the word of God, that is, is consecrated by the word of God, and the Eucharist of the body ^C and blood of Christ is made (so the Greek text has it), from which the substance of our flesh attains and consists; how do they deny that the flesh is capable of the gift of God, which is eternal life, which is nourished by the body and blood of Christ, and is his member?"

91. Irenaeus adds another [argument] for the confirmation of the whole contention, and indeed a most weighty one. "Just as," he says, "the wood of the vine planted in the earth bears fruit in its season; and the grain of wheat falling into the earth, and dissolved, rises manifold through the Spirit of God, who contains all things, which then by the wisdom of God (so in the Greek) come to the use of man, and receiving the word of God become the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ; so also our bodies, nourished from it, and laid in the earth, and dissolved in it, shall rise in their time, the Word of God bestowing resurrection upon them, to the glory of God the Father, etc." Here a comparison is instituted between the changes which occur to those things which are made into the Eucharist (the same may be said proportionally regarding the vine), and those which occur to flesh, in order that it may rise. The grain of wheat is committed to the earth, where it is dissolved; then, through the Spirit of God, by which nature is made fruitful, it rises manifold; afterwards, that it may come to the use of man, it is changed into bread; then finally, by the word of God, the bread is changed into the body of Christ. So also, the flesh being buried in the earth, is dissolved in the earth; and afterwards, the life-giving Word of God vivifying it, having laid aside its earthly form, it receives its pristine one. As, therefore, that change which occurs to the rising flesh is substantial; so that which happens to the bread, that it may become the body of Christ, is substantial, and a true transubstantiation, no less than that which takes place in the wheat, that it may be converted into bread. For Irenaeus compares these things with one another; indeed, he compares them in such a way that, from the substantial conversion which occurs both in the wheat, that it may turn out to be bread, and in the bread, that it may pass into the body of Christ, he proves that another substantial transmutation is eventually to occur, by which the earth, into which the flesh was dissolved, is to pass back into flesh. If, he says, the wheat already dissolved can, with the fructification of the Spirit of God who contains all things, rise manifold; if by divine controlling wisdom men have been able to convert wheat into bread, that it might come to their use; if, finally, the bread, by the efficient word of God ^D [CXLVII]—the nature of the bread being laid aside—could be transmuted into the body of Christ: shall it exceed belief that our bodies, nourished by the body of Christ, and then dissolved into the earth, the Word of God bestowing resurrection upon them, should cast off that nature of earth which they assumed when corrupted, so that they may be transmuted into the pristine nature of flesh, and return again? For who can quicken and multiply now-corrupted wheat, convert wheat into bread, and, what is greater, transmute bread into the body of Christ; he certainly can so quicken the now-corrupted body, that he may convert the earth, into whose nature it had passed, back into the nature of flesh.

^A From these things it is clear that Irenaeus proceeds gradually from the most certain transmutations and transubstantiations, which both reason and faith taught all the Christians of that time, to introduce the other, which was called into question by the Gnostics. For the natural conversion of wheat scattered into multiple grains of wheat, and especially that of the same into bread, prepares for the other, which faith alone teaches, namely the ascension of bread into the body of Christ. Both, however, serve as a step toward the conversion of the earth, into which our bodies have been resolved, into the original nature of flesh: so that, surely, by these steps Irenaeus may pave the way for heretics toward the faith of the resurrection, and force them to admit that it is no more impossible for God to convert a body already turned into earth back into flesh ^B than it is to transmute bread into the body of Christ; and indeed that the former is the more possible, as the flesh of Christ, nourished by his body, bears within itself the seed of immortality: "so that we may know," concludes the holy man, "what God can do, and what benefit man receives." Here, certainly, if Irenaeus had acknowledged no kind of substantial conversion in the eucharistic bread, but had held that it is made a figure of Christ’s body, or is imbued with the virtue of the same body while the substance of the bread always remains, no argument could be devised more absurd than his. For this would mean: "He who was able to make bread the figure of Christ’s body, or to impart to bread the virtue of Christ’s body, while the substance of the bread always remains, is able to convert bodies already turned to earth back into flesh." The former, God could do; therefore, he can do the latter. A most absurd kind of argument, if there is one. ^C But in truth, the heretic would immediately have retorted: "He who made bread the figure of his own body, or imparted to it the virtue of his own body, and openly asserts it to be his own body, nevertheless could not convert it into his own proper and substantial body; nor surely will he be able to convert our bodies, now turned into earth, back into flesh, however much he may have imparted the virtue of his own body to those who are alive through the consecrated bread; for the virtue of Christ’s body cannot be more effective in transmuting bodies now corrupted than it was in converting bread." But, as the Catholics admit, the Word of God could not do the latter, although at first glance Christ seems to signify that he could: nor, therefore, can he do the former. Thus, the heretic would have infringed the whole effort of Irenaeus with an easy task.

92. Long ago Grabius spared no annotations to distort and weaken all these places and arguments of Irenaeus. But he wastes his words. All things return, of course, to this: that according to the opinion of Irenaeus, bread and wine are made the body and blood of Christ in no other way than because they are imbued with the virtue of Christ's body and blood. Since we have already precluded this excuse, and have demonstrated that nothing more absurd could have been devised, and that it is inconsistent with Irenaeus's purpose, intention, words, and argument ^D more boldly than is right is proposed their purpose, it must be weighed by us in a few words, so that even from this it may be apparent with how vain blows his adversaries attack the Catholic faith. The distinguished scholar contends, therefore, that once transubstantiation is posited, all of Irenaeus's arguments vanish into nothing—nay, fall back upon the head of the one arguing. For the Marcionites and Valentinians, he says, whom Irenaeus refutes by the mystery of the Eucharist, could have answered him that, indeed, the sacramental symbols of bread and wine are transubstantiated because the God of the New Testament does not wish to accept those things, as being created by the God of another law; but they, that bread and wine are indeed the fruits of ignorance, passion, and defection, yet that they do not sin in offering them to their own Father, nor do they do him an injury, as Irenaeus objects, because their substance immediately, by means of consecration, departs, so that another, better substance is substituted, whereby a pure sacrifice acceptable to God [is prepared].

^A As for the arguments which Grabius is pleased to attribute gratuitously to Irenaeus, I shall not dwell upon them. How vain they are, unworthy of the holy Doctor, and repugnant to his scope, intent, and words, is sufficiently clear from what has been said before; even if I were silent, anyone who wishes to weigh the matter with balanced scales will easily detect it. But I cannot wonder enough at how confidently the learned man proposes to prove that Irenaeus was entirely alien to the doctrine of transubstantiation. For he says, "He repeats again and again that our flesh is fed by the body and blood of the Lord, or rather is nourished, and indeed grows and consists in the substance of our flesh from them. But to attribute this to the bare accidents of bread is absurd; to the heavenly and glorious body of Christ, it is impious." Softly, I pray. ^B And first of all, as for what Grabius supposes here and elsewhere—that accidents which they call absolute, that is, separated from the subject, are admitted by all Catholics as something certain and indubitable in faith—he assumes this entirely gratuitously, and a little more confidently than became an honest man. The question is one agitated back and forth only in the Schools, but nowhere defined by the Church. The Catholic faith teaches only this: that once the consecration is finished, the species of bread and wine remain; but as for what those species truly are, both philosophers and theologians contend among themselves; indeed, the Church has not yet interposed its judgment. But if there is any absurdity or impiety in asserting that our flesh is fed or nourished, etc., by the body and blood of the Lord, then whatever there is of it must be attributed to Irenaeus. For he did not assert simply that our flesh is fed and grows by the body and blood of the Lord, but by the true body and blood of the Lord: which we have shown can only be distorted in a ridiculous and inept way ^C to refer to the figure or separate virtue of Christ’s body. But let him look to himself, he who voices these objections, lest he prove himself guilty of a greater absurdity by thrusting upon us here the figure or virtue of Christ’s body. For does he think it very consistent with reason that the substance of our flesh should be fed, nourished, and grow by a figure or a spiritual virtue? Who can bear such things? I do not think Grabius had yet resolved to confess, clearly and openly, that Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, John of Damascus, and perhaps many others—as we shall soon relate—were persuaded that the very substance of bread is transformed into the true and proper flesh of Christ. For they asserted no less than Irenaeus that we, by partaking of the body and blood of Christ, become one body and blood with Christ, and, if I may say so, ^D "co-corporeal" and "co-sanguineous" with Christ—*Χριστοῦ συσσώμους καὶ συναιμούς*, as Cyril of Jerusalem says in his *Catech. IV Myst.*—that the body and blood of Christ are received into the viscera of man through eating and drinking, and are distributed through them into the whole body, mixed and tempered with the bodies of believers, etc., so that by union with that which is immortal, man becomes a partaker of incorruption, as Gregory of Nyssa says in his *Orat. Catech. c. 37*; that the body and blood of Christ are for the health of our soul and body and for...

our preservation; and that by them we are united to the body of the Lord and to his Spirit, and that we become the body of Christ and are made co-corporeal with Christ, as John Damascene asserts in *De fide orthodoxa*, lib. iv, c. 14. How these things differ from the words of Irenaeus, not even Grabe himself would venture to say. And yet, to the most holy Fathers—who were, by the admission of that learned man himself, the fiercest champions of transubstantiation—these things seemed neither absurd nor impious. ^A

95. If the Catholic faith regarding transubstantiation had been sufficiently explored by Grabe, he would have refrained from such childish objections. That the body of Christ is eaten by the mouth, and that this nourishes, feeds, and increases our flesh, etc., the holy Fathers could both affirm as truly and piously as they could deny, depending on the diverse notions they attached to the aforementioned words. Since the body of Christ is indeed truly and substantially present and set forth to us in the Eucharist, yet not under that sensible form of human flesh which He bore while living on earth, but covered by other species; it is rightly said that this is eaten by us, and that our flesh is fed and nourished by it, in so far as it is received by the mouth of the body while lying hidden under these species, is passed into the stomach, and in these symbols and species themselves, under which the body of Christ is covered, those corporeal actions which are understood by the term "eating," and which follow from it, exert their power. For since it is assumed as certain in faith, as it truly is, that the bread is converted into the body of Christ in such a way that the same species of bread always remain, and that the senses are affected in exactly the same way as if the bread were there in reality; it is necessary that, just as the same color which formerly belonged to the bread is shown to the eyes, so also the mouth, teeth, tongue, palate, and stomach are affected in the same way as they would have been affected had the bread remained. Consequently, all those actions that accompany or follow eating are exercised upon those species themselves, just as they would be exercised upon the bread itself if it still existed. This, indeed, is a great part of the miracle of that stupendous divine power and goodness. But because the body of Christ is joined to those species—which happens only because it is said to become that for the body of Christ hidden under them—it is said to be done upon the body of Christ itself; although it is not exercised upon it in any other way than because it is exercised upon the symbols by which it is covered. Thus, someone who touches the garments of a man is said to have touched the man, although he did not immediately touch the very flesh of the man which is covered by the garments. In that sense, John Chrysostom—whom, with Grabe’s kind permission, we shall also add to our witnesses—writes in *Homily 83 on Matthew* that Christ Himself is touched, seen, and eaten in the Eucharist. "How many," he says, "say: I would like to see His form and appearance, I would like to see His very garments, I would like to see His sandals? You see Him, you touch Him, you eat Him. You desire to see His garments? He, indeed, delivers Himself to you, so that you ^B may not only see, but also touch, and have Him within you." And afterwards: "Many mothers have given their infants to other nurses after childbirth; but He did not wish to do this, but feeds us with His own body, and joins us to Himself, and conglutinates us." But other Fathers, attending to that carnal mode of eating which the Capharnaites imagined for themselves—by which flesh is cut by teeth, tasted, and, once passed into the stomach, is digested—sometimes denied that the body of Christ is eaten by our mouth; and deservedly so, in order to uproot the base and vile ideas of the Capharnaites from the minds of the faithful. Indeed, the same Fathers sometimes assert and sometimes deny that the body of Christ is eaten; yet they do not contend either with themselves or with others, except in the opinion of Protestants, who delight in fashioning for themselves monsters by which to terrify the unlearned.

96. There are, however, two things for which we must be grateful to the learned Grabe. The first is that he candidly confessed in his notes to Irenaeus' *Lib. v*, ch. 17 and 18 (al. 32 and 34), that it is certain that Irenaeus and all the Fathers whose writings we possess, whether they were contemporary with the apostles or followed immediately after them, held the sacred Eucharist to be a true and properly so-called sacrifice of the New Law; and that their words, especially those of Irenaeus, cannot be distorted toward the spiritual sacrifices of a contrite heart, of prayer, of praise, of thanksgiving, and of beneficence, which have been common to every age and law; but that they must be understood of that new, New Testament, and external oblation, which Irenaeus contrasts with external legal sacrifices—which is most true. And hence he inveighs against the error of Luther and Calvin, who, rising up against the public doctrine and practice of the universal Church—which that Church received from the apostles, and the apostles from Christ Himself, as he rightly proves—and either insolently scorning or miserably obscuring the clear testimonies of the Fathers, and especially of Irenaeus, which cannot be eluded by any of the sophists' arts, strive to shake the true and singular sacrifice of the New Law. You will find the learned man’s complete notes at the end of the work. But I wish he had also been willing to give this testimony to the truth candidly: that the same Fathers, who so eloquently affirm the Eucharist to be a true and properly so-called sacrifice of the New Law, no less expressly assert that the same victim, which was immolated ^C on the altar of the cross, is once again immolated in this mystery of the sacred oblation for us. For His body is taken there, His flesh is distributed for the salvation of the people, His blood is poured out, not now into the hands of the unfaithful, but into the mouths of the faithful. This is that body pierced with nails and beaten with lashes, this is the body fixed to the cross, this is that body which was bloodied, which was pierced by the lance, and sent forth saving fountains for the whole world, one indeed of blood, but the other of water: for that which is in the chalice is that which flowed from His side. And there are six hundred other things of this kind, by which anyone who wishes to do so may easily ^D persuade himself regarding the truth.

97. Another thing for which we ought to be grateful to Grabe is that he is more candid than Albertinus, Claude, and other Calvinists, in that he plainly and openly confesses that the Catholic doctrine regarding the Real Presence and transubstantiation is far older, and relies upon the patronage of greater and more ancient authorities, than they would pretend. Since the words of this distinguished man are worthy of singular observation, I shall provide them in their entirety, as they are printed in the *Annotations on Irenæus*, bk. V, ch. 2, edit. Oxon., p. 599: ^A "What, therefore, was the opinion of Irenæus and of the heretics of his age? This is sufficiently clear from what I have discoursed upon here and in the preceding annotations. It is most certainly established that he believed no less than what has been stated concerning the tremendous mystery of the Eucharist—namely, that the consecrated bread is endowed with the virtue of Christ’s flesh, and thus truly is the flesh of Christ. But I do not believe that Irenæus went further, or that he was addicted to that opinion which Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssen, John Damascene, and perhaps many others held. For they were persuaded that the Holy Spirit, descending from heaven, did not ^B only communicate the virtue of Christ’s body to the bread, and so change it in respect of its qualities; but that by divine power He transmuted its very substance into flesh—which is the flesh of Christ, and becomes the same as that which came forth from the womb of the Blessed Virgin, was fixed to the cross, and was thence raised into heaven—by means of an *ἐπαύξησις* ['increase'], and that it possesses the same spirit of life within it. Just as the bread which the Savior ate on earth was turned into His flesh by the force of natural heat, and our daily bread passes into the substance of our body—which body of ours, carried today, is said to be the same as that in which we lived many years ago, since it is quickened by the same soul, although its particles are entirely different and perhaps none of the former ones remain—so, in the same way, the bread... [Wait] after the Fourth Mystagogical Catechesis of Cyril, ^C the Great Catechetical Oration of Gregory of Nyssen, ch. 57, and the work of Damascene, bk. IV *On the Orthodox Faith*, ch. 14, and his epistle to Zacharias, bishop of the Doari. For the sake of brevity, I shall provide the words of John Damascene, and those only translated into Latin: 'Just as bread is naturally changed into the body of him who eats, and wine and water into his blood, through food and drink, so that they become another body, different from the prior body, so the bread of the proposition, and the wine and water, through the invocation and advent of the Holy Spirit, are miraculously turned into the body and blood of Christ, and they are not two, but one and the same.' Again, in the epistle to Zacharias, bishop: 'We signify to your love that we cannot say there are two ^D bodies of Christ; but it is one body. And just as the infant born of woman is perfect—yet eating and drinking it grows by natural faculty, and although it grows, there are not two bodies made, but it is one—so much the more, by the supervention of the Holy Spirit, the bread and wine become one body in *superaugmentation* (*ἐπαύξησις*), the body of Christ, and not two.' And likewise, he speaks of this matter in the chapter attached to said epistle." I do not believe that this was the opinion of Irenæus, because it seems to exclude—or is opposed to, see p. 327 seq.—the doctrine which the Roman Church believes regarding the transubstantiation of bread into the whole personal and glorified body of Christ descending from heaven in the altar, and another substantial mutation (though much different from the former), and because it is not read as having been openly handed down in the monuments of any Father contemporary with Irenæus or older than the Council of Nicaea—just as it was not later universally received in the Church. Rather, it is clear that the contrary was asserted by other Fathers, especially the Africans, as the theologians of the Protestants have abundantly proved.

So far Grabe, from whose words it is most certainly established that the doctrine of the Real Presence and transubstantiation is not a product of a later age, but was born and recognized at least by the times of the Council of Nicaea, and was championed not by one or two men successively, but by Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssen, John Damascene, and perhaps several other Fathers. Whether such an open testimony of the distinguished Grabe is approved by other Protestants, I do not know. This one thing I do know: that once this supposition is admitted, the hypothesis which Albertinus, Claude, and other recent ministers had labored, with so many machinations, arts, and labors, to construct, collapses utterly from its very foundations. They claimed that the dogma of the corporeal presence of Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist and of transubstantiation was first devised among the Latins by Paschasius Radbertus in the ninth century, that it began to permeate the minds of the faithful toward the end of that same century, and finally prevailed everywhere in the Latin Church in the tenth century; while the Greek Church meanwhile persisted in the old and ancestral Calvinist faith. For if we listen to Grabe, the doctrine of the Real Presence and transubstantiation appeared in the light either at the very times of the Council of Nicaea or shortly thereafter, and it seems to have been known to the Greeks before the Latins, and to have passed from the former to the latter. Now, therefore, let the Cisalpine Calvinists object that the opinion we maintain is new; let them boast that the whole Church was concordant in the Calvinian faith for the first eight centuries; let them boldly affirm that all the Oriental societies are even now unstained by any spot of novelty in this regard; this most vain fiction is dissipated by the certain and unshakable authority of Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssen, Damascene (what great men they are!), and perhaps many others, for us and with us.

^A 98. I fear that Grabe, a recent follower of the Calvinist dogma, has strayed somewhat further than he intended, though he seems at last to wish to retract it. For this is the only hope of eternal salvation, this is the only pillar of Grabe’s faith: ‹that in the monuments of no contemporary of Irenaeus, nor of any Father older than the Nicene Council, is the Roman doctrine of the Real Presence and transubstantiation openly taught, just as it was not later universally received in the Church, but rather the contrary is shown to have been asserted by other Fathers, especially the Africans.› But what if that supposition is false? For Grabe does not seem to propose it as confidently as one who thinks it is placed beyond all risk of doubt; this is sufficiently indicated by the words he uses: ‹I do not think Irenaeus went further; I do not believe this was the opinion of Irenaeus;› which seem to smack somewhat of a man offering not private opinions, but doing so a bit timidly. What if Irenaeus, what if Justin Martyr and others older than the Nicene Council thought the same as Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssen, and others? The arguments we brought forward above will persuade any sensible person that the matter regarding Irenaeus is most certain. And whatever cavil Grabe may raise, he will not, I think, have such confidence as to dare to assert that the arguments he brings to the contrary have reached such a degree of certainty as to remove every doubt completely. Therefore, even if we grant (far be it from us to concede it) that his arguments possess some probability, can a man who is mindful of his own salvation rely on a single probability in a matter of the greatest moment for eternal salvation, such that he breaks away from the doctrine of the whole world, which he himself acknowledges to be supported by the authority of the most ancient Fathers—not just one or two, but many, and those not of the lowest standing; while other Fathers either do not openly contradict it, or affirm things that can be explained without great difficulty by those who study truth alone? For it is certain that no testimonies of the Fathers as open, clear, and perspicuous can be brought forward by the Protestants as we bring forward. Grabe indeed boasts of the authority of the African Fathers, that is, Tertullian, Augustine, and Facundus of Hermiane; but if one does not mind reading the third volume of the *Perpetuity of the Faith*, written in French (the learned man certainly knows French), if one is of a candid mind, he will quickly perceive that this boasting is in vain.

99. In the meantime, let him compare Gregory of Nyssen with Justin and Irenaeus, and let him say himself, if he can, how the others differ from them. For just as those assert that the bread and wine of the Eucharist, before the sacred invocation of the adorable Trinity, are mere bread and wine; but once the invocation is completed, the bread in truth ^{B C} is made the Body of Christ, and the wine the Blood of Christ 82 83: 77 78; sanctified by the word of God into the Body of the Word of God 79: 78; so these affirm: ‹that in which graces have been given through the prayer of the Word that came from Christ, is the nourishment, and is both the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus 83 80;› and that the mingled chalice, and the bread having received the Word of God, becomes the Eucharist, the Blood and Body of Christ 80. Just as they announce that, the consecration having been performed, the bread and wine are ‹not to be looked upon as naked bread and naked wine; for it is the Body and Blood of Christ, according to the Lord’s own words 81; bread sanctified by the word of God and prayer, being at once transmuted into the Body of the Word, as it was said by the Word: *This is my body*;› so also these openly announce: ‹that in which thanks have been given—bread, wine, and water—is not received as common bread, nor as a common drink, but as the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus;› that [CLI] which is bread from the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is now no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two things, the earthly and the heavenly 84, namely, the Body of Christ concrete from earthly matter, and the Word of God hypostatically united to it. As they teach, with Christ Himself thus affirming and saying concerning the bread: *This is my body*, let no one thereafter dare to doubt: the same also confirming and saying: *This is my blood*, let there be no one who doubts and says it is not His blood: He who once changed water into wine in Cana of Galilee is worthy that we should believe that He changed the wine into blood; He who, invited to corporeal nuptials, performed a stupendous miracle, is much more to be confessed to have given His Body and Blood to the children of the bridegroom: wherefore with all certainty the Body and Blood of Christ are to be received; for under the species, ἐν τύπω, of bread the Body is given, and under the species of wine the Blood is given: although sense suggests the contrary, faith however ought to confirm it, that the matter is not to be judged by taste, but rather with most certain faith, and without doubt, it is to be believed that Christ’s Body and Blood are given to us 88;› just as the Body of Christ, by the indwelling of the Word of God, has been transmuted to divine dignity ^D; so now rightly do we believe that the bread sanctified by the word of God is transmuted into the Body of the Word of God, and is transelemented into that of the nature of those things which appear 86. Thus too these preach: ‹just as through the word of God Jesus Christ our Savior was made flesh, and had both flesh and blood for the sake of our salvation; so also we have been taught that the nourishment in which thanks have been given through the prayer of the word that came from Him is both the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus 87;› who is from that creature, Christ, ‹and the chalice, which is according to us,›

› confesse ^A that He has confessed His own blood: that it is consistent that the bread, over which thanks have been given, is the body of our Lord, and the chalice is the chalice of His blood: «The Lord, who confessed Himself to be the Son of man, confessed the bread to be His body, and affirmed the mingling of the chalice to be His blood: that chalice, which is a creature, He has confessed to be His own blood, and that bread, which is from a creature, He has affirmed to be His own body: just as the grain of wheat falling into the ground, and having been dissolved, rises multiple through the spirit of God; then through the wisdom of God it is converted into bread, that ‹it may come into the use of man.› And finally, ‹receiving the word of God, it becomes the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ; so also our bodies, nourished by it and deposited in the earth, and resolved in it,› shall rise again in their own time, the Word of God granting them resurrection; that we may know both what God can do, and what benefit man receives º¹.» Finally, Cyril and Gregory say, «Christ's body and blood are distributed into our members, τοῦ σώματος αὐτοῦ καὶ τοῦ αἵματος εἰς τὰ ἡμέτερα ἀναδιδομένου μέλη, and we for that reason ‹become one body and blood with Christ,› and the Christ-bearers ⁹²: ‹Christ’s body, immortal through eating and drinking, is mingled with our inward parts, is inserted through the flesh into all believers, commingled and tempered to the bodies of the believers ⁹³.» Justin and Irenaeus say ‹from that over which thanks have been given, as nourishment, by the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus, our blood and flesh are fed by change: our flesh ‹is fed by the Lord’s body and blood: that by that chalice, which He confessed to be His own blood, our blood is increased, and by that bread, which He confirmed to be His own body, our bodies are increased, the substance of our flesh consists, is nourished, etc. ⁹⁵› All these things are so similar, so much the same, the sentiments entirely the same, and the words all but the same, that whoever wishes to judge each one by the standard of equity, and not weigh them on biased scales, must surely confess that one egg cannot be more like another. If, therefore, that fictitious solution of an efficacious figure and the virtue of Christ’s body cannot be applied to the sayings of Cyril and Gregory, as Grabe himself readily concedes; who could do so with the words of Justin and Irenaeus, while preserving the laws of right reason? The same comparison could have been established between Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssen, and all the other Fathers, and it could have been invincibly demonstrated that these men, even the Africans themselves, said and thought nothing less than the others: Grabe could also be urged with that most troublesome question: why does Cyril of Jerusalem and Gregory of Nyssen, whom he seems to suppose to have been the first of all to bring into the world that strange ^B dogma of the corporal presence of Christ in the Eucharist and transubstantiation, which was unheard of in the first three centuries, if they had brought a Christian [into the world], have expounded that in so few words, with such a simple and calm style; and have found no adversaries in that century, in which the Church was flourishing with praise for both sanctity and erudition, in that matter, not even the Arians themselves, their most bitter enemies; in short, have found none who, by industrious effort, refuted that portentous error, by which the faith of the first three centuries, well known to many Fathers of the fourth century, was being so foully shaken, and have taken care to have the deserters and destroyers of the ancestral faith condemned in the very frequent councils of that time? But I fear lest the dissertation should wander outside the prescribed limits.

100. If, however, we are grateful to the learned Grabe, ^C because being more fair to his own, he has ingenuously confessed that the Eucharist is the true sacrifice of the new law, and that Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssen, and many other Fathers believed that the body and blood of Christ are present in the same Eucharist corporally and substantially through a true and real transmutation of bread and wine; there is one thing that deserves the most just reproach among all, which is that, beyond what is right and just, he attributes an intolerable error to Irenaeus. For indeed, on the occasion of the words of the holy Doctor, which are read in bk. IV, c. 8, n. 3, al. cap. 20: «All the just possess the priestly order,» he writes in his notes: «Irenaeus seems to have been of almost the same opinion as Tertullian, that all the faithful are endowed with priestly order and power, and can perform its exercise whenever necessity requires; although the ordinary function pertains to none but those ordained to sacred ministries.» Then he alleges that oft-cited passage of Tertullian from the book *De exhortat. castit.*, c. 7, and adds many things neither well-considered nor relevant. Thus, perhaps, some Puritan might have written, rashly scraping together any ordinary passage of the Fathers to bolster a desperate cause; but that he, who professes the doctrine of the English episcopalians and wishes the ecclesiastical hierarchy to be kept whole and intact, should deliver Irenaeus to its enemies entirely for free, and perforce, that is a wonder, and perhaps it will seem unjust to the English themselves. Irenaeus in that place proves that the old law was abrogated by Christ, not because it was evil or given by an evil God, but because it had already been fulfilled by Him. If, however, the same Christ performed cures on the Sabbath, He did nothing outside the law; for the law did not forbid men to be cured on the Sabbath, which even required them to be circumcised on that day, and commanded the priests to perform ministries for the people ⁹⁶. Therefore, the priestly ministries were lawful by law because they were spiritual and good works: but the law commanded to abstain from servile works, however, not from spiritual and good ones, which were as lawful for the others as they were for the priests. And from this Irenaeus concludes that Christ, ^D bringing help to the sick, did not break, but fulfilled

^A the law; for he was performing the work of the high priest, propitiating God for men, cleansing the lepers, and healing the infirm. And this work of the high priest, being certainly not servile, but spiritual and good, if it was lawful for other men, even for laymen, to perform, then it was so a fortiori for Christ the Lord. Then, meeting another objection taken from the fact that the Savior's disciples, with his approval, plucked ears of corn on the Sabbath, he replies: "To reap, indeed, and to gather into the barn, the law forbade; but to take food on the Sabbath from those things which were at hand for the hungry it did not forbid." And therefore, he says, the Lord said to those who were accusing his disciples because they ate while plucking the ears, "Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, how he went into the house of God and ate the loaves of the presence, and gave to those who were with him, which it was not lawful to eat except for the priests alone?"—excusing his disciples by the words of the law, and signifying that it is lawful for priests to act freely. David, however, had been accounted a priest by God, even though Saul was persecuting him. For all the just have a priestly order. Now the priests are all the apostles of the Lord, who inherit neither fields nor houses here, but always serve at the altar and God. By these he proves that Irenaeus intended to signify by his words that priests were sometimes released from the law and were able to act freely, because, as he adds later, they were performing the Lord's ministries; and therefore, from those things which were at hand with the loaves of the presence, the hungry were able to take food. Yet, he says, David had been a priest, not by lineage, not by office, not among men, but accounted such before God, who, properly distinguishing the spirit of the law from its letter, judged by right that those things were lawful for him in urgent necessity which the law permitted to the priests; because he too, seeking safety for himself in flight, was performing the Lord's ministries. For all the just have a priestly order: for they perform the Lord's ministries, and therefore they can act freely, and, at least under the pressure of necessity, perform those things which are in accordance with the spirit of the law. But if David was indeed a priest accounted as such by God, if all the just have a priestly order by the same reasoning, who will deny that all the apostles of the Lord are priests, who just like the Aaronic ones do not inherit fields or houses here, but always serve the altar and God; and therefore, since the disciples had the Levitical substance, it was lawful for them in their hunger, to do what was lawful for the ancient Levites and priests, namely to accept food from the crops, for the laborer is worthy of his food. "If," adds Irenaeus, "priests in the temple profaned the Sabbath and were not guilty, for while they were in the temple they were not performing secular, but the Lord's ministries, fulfilling the law, and not transgressing the law; ^B then the disciples of the Lord, they too being of the same condition as the priests while plucking ears of corn on the Sabbath, cannot be accused of having violated the law: for the Lord's ministries, not secular ones, they were performing."

101. This is the argument of Irenaeus, which rests entirely upon the principle that for any man on the Sabbath, and on other occasions for certain causes, it was lawful in a certain way to do that which was lawful for the priests themselves, by the permission of the law; and if these were not held by the law because they were performing the Lord's ministries, which were good works, pious, honest, and spiritual, not secular and servile, then neither were other men restricted by the same law when they were performing good works, pious and spiritual, because they are the Lord's ministries, not forbidden by the law, in respect to which any man is a priest. And from this, Christ the Lord, healing on the Sabbath, did not violate the law because he was performing the work of the high priest. Hence David, fed by the loaves of the presence when hunger urged him, did not commit an offense against the law; because he had been accounted a priest by God, to whom it was lawful to act freely. Hence, finally, the disciples plucking ears on the Sabbath did not break the law; because they were priests, in this more similar to the Levitical ones, in that they had only the Levitical substance. For all the just, performing just and good works, have a priestly order; because it pertains to the priestly order to perform the Lord's ministries freely; and works good, honest, and lawful in themselves are the Lord's ministries. How much this argument of Irenaeus is worth, we do not now inquire: but rather what the holy doctor meant. Let the illustrious Grabe see now how these things aid the cause of the Puritans, whose patron he is; let him see, and let him judge for himself, with what equity he could attribute that insane dogma to Irenaeus, ^C that "all the faithful are endowed with priestly order and power, and can exercise it where necessity requires." For if he thinks that this can be inferred from the words of Irenaeus, certainly by the same and an equally just right any other person could infer that Christ the Lord was the supreme priest of the Old Law; that David, the apostles, the disciples of the Lord, and all the just of the Old Testament, were true priests of that same Testament, and therefore, when necessity urged, could offer victims and sacrifices in the temple, and perform other ministries which were allowed to Aaronic priests alone; for it is of the old law that he is treating here, not of the Lord; but of the priesthood of the New Law, Irenaeus did not think even in the slightest. Which is also most openly clear from Book V, c. 24, n. 3, where, looking back to those things which he wrote in the cited Book IV, he says: "We have shown in the previous book, that all the disciples of the Lord are Levites and priests; who also profaned the Sabbath in the temple and are without blame." So easily could Tertullian and Ambrosiaster in his Commentary on Ephesians IV, 2, whom he alleges in defense of the Puritan cause, be vindicated from the accusations of Grabe, were it not tedious to dwell longer on Eucharistic matters. One may read the singular book of the most learned

Albaspinæus’s *De Eucharistia sacrificio*, written in French, in which he excellently defends Tertullian against the calumnies of the Puritans, and the very learned Petavius’s *Diatriba* on the same subject, with his third book *De ecclesiastica hierarchia*. To refute the arguments brought against them by Ambrosiaster, it suffices to read the cited passage itself.

ARTICLE VIII.

On the nature, orders, sin, and punishments of angels.

102. Irenæus says but little on the nature of angels. He has inserted only a few things in certain places, from which what his sentiment was can be gathered in some way. He writes in Book III, chapter 20, no. 4, that "angels are without flesh;" by which he indeed excludes angels from the mass of flesh and a grosser body; but not from an ethereal and subtler one, which nothing could prevent from being called a spirit. For not a few of the ancient Fathers attributed this latter kind of body to angels. And that Irenæus ^B seems to have conceded to this same opinion can be inferred from what he writes in Book IV, ch. 16, no. 2, and ch. 30, no. 4; and then in Book V, ch. 29, no. 2, that "the transgressing angels fell to the earth for judgment," that is to say, they were cast down from heaven to earth as a punishment for their sin, and there mingled with men, which is to say that, captivated by the appearance of women, they had intercourse with them, from whose seed was born a very wicked race of men, whom God destroyed with the avenging waters of the flood; and that for this reason Enoch came to those lecherous angels, and to the men who were submerged by them into idolatry and a foul quagmire of vices, as God’s legate and prophet, to denounce the divine judgment. The sentiment of Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Lactantius, and not a few others was almost the same; for all of whom, as we have explained in our notes to these cited passages of Irenæus, the occasion for error was both what is read in Gen. vi about the union of the sons of God with the daughters of men, and the apocryphal book of Enoch. In this, however, Irenæus seems to have departed from their opinion, in that most of them mean that the appearance and association of women was the cause of the ruin of the angels, at least of those who are inferior to the devil, whereas Irenæus seems to suppose that they only debauched women after they had already been cast from heaven as a punishment for their sin. This opinion—both of Irenæus and of others—is indeed most false; it shows, however, that he considered angels to be corporeal; for it is absurd to suppose that a nature devoid of a body, or that possesses its own soul and its own body, could be tempted by the enticements of bodies ^C or be mingled with bodies.

103. I said that this was not Irenæus’s opinion, that women were the occasion of ruin for the angels inferior to the devil. For although some among the ancients wish to separate the cause of the devil, the prince of the rebellious angels, from the rest—desiring to say that he fell through envy, while they fell through being stimulated by lust—yet nowhere is Irenæus found to have made such a distinction: nay, he calls the devil the prince of apostasy in such a way that he says the rebellious "angels were made apostates with him;" that the devil was made the cause of defection for himself and the rest; finally, he expressly asserts that "one of these angels, who were set over the spirit of the air, has fallen from God." By which he seems to signify that there was only one sin for all of them. Furthermore, he teaches that the first sin of the devil was envy, with which he was inflamed against the human race. "From that time," he says, "the angel became an apostate and an enemy, from the time he envied the handiwork of God." And elsewhere: "The Devil, since he is one of these angels who were set over the spirit of the air... envying man, became an apostate from divine law; for envy is alien to God." But what was the cause of this envy, our author does not explain: if, however, it is permissible to indulge in conjectures, I would believe that he agreed with Gregory of Nyssa and Cyprian, that the devil, set over the spirit of the air and the administration of earthly things, took it ill that man, a creature so despised compared to him, and especially one subject to his own rule, had been made and fashioned in the image of God: or, with Anastasius of Sinai, he thought that the devil could not bear that the dominion over all earthly things had been conferred upon man by God, which he himself coveted. ^D

104. Although Irenæus, moreover, as will be explained later, established that angels—and the same is to be said of human souls—are endowed with a body, he nevertheless taught clearly that each substance is immortal by its own nature. In Book II, chapter 35, refuting the metempsychosis asserted by the Gnostics, he writes in no. 5: "when the number which God predetermined with Himself is completed, all who are written into life will rise again, having their own bodies and their own souls, and their own spirits, in which they pleased God; but those who are worthy of punishment will go into it, and they themselves have departed from the goodness of God." And the following chapter, bringing in the parable of the rich glutton and Lazarus, he concludes: "It is most manifestly declared by these things that souls persist, and do not pass from body to body." But more clearly in Book V, chapter 4, refuting the same Gnostics who denied the resurrection of the body, he argues thus in no. 1: "Since they say things that are manifest to all, that they persist immortal..."

such as the spirit and the soul, and things of that kind, because they are quickened by the Father; but that another thing, which is not otherwise quickened unless God grants it life, is abandoned; he shows their Father to be either impotent and weak, or envious and malicious. For if the Demiurge also, in this place, is shown to quicken our mortal bodies and promises them resurrection through the prophets, as we have shown; who is shown to be the more potent, and stronger, and truly good? Is it the Demiurge, who quickens the whole man, or their falsely named Father, who feigns that he is quickening those things which are by nature immortal, to whom life belongs by their own nature; but who does not kindly quicken those things which need help from him in order to live, but negligently leaves them to death?" Here Irenæus clearly affirms that it is manifest to all that the spirit and the soul, and such like things—that is, all spiritual substances, such as angels and human souls—persist immortal, and are by their nature immortal, and that life belongs to them by their nature, ^B and from this he argues that the Father of the Gnostics is either lacking in power or lacking in benevolence: because he pretends to quicken those things which are by nature immortal; but denies life to those which need help to live. And in chap. 7, no. 1, strengthening this same resurrection of bodies with these words of the Apostle, Rom. viii, 11: "But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you; he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies"; he shows that these mortal bodies are the "plasma," that is, the flesh; not, certainly, the souls, which, because they are breath of life breathed by God into the face of man, are incorporeal in comparison to bodies, nor consequently can they be called mortal. And for this reason, he says, "David says: And my soul shall live for him, as its substance existing as immortal." Finally, chap. 13, num. 3, he writes that flesh, while it is mortal and corruptible, is made immortal and incorruptible; not according to its own substance, but according to the operation of the Lord; but that the soul is not mortal, that is, according to its own substance, and in this it differs from flesh. All these things were manifest in Irenæus’s age, both to Irenæus himself and to all others; but to Dodwell they appeared obscure. For he abuses that very passage which we have just cited from lib. v, cap. 4, n. 1, to confirm that new and impious fabrication: namely, that human souls are not spiritual, nor consequently immortal by their own nature, except insofar as they remain surviving for some time separated from their bodies, as long, indeed, as God has willed them to survive; and that these alone are gifted with perpetual immortality by the grace of God ^A and by the benefit of the Holy Spirit, which they have received in baptism; while all others, who have lacked the sacrament of the evangelical law, are eventually to be dissolved and to go into nothingness. [CLIV] Which, however, he cannot extract from Irenæus, unless by basely corrupting his words with an adulterous version and a twisted explanation. Irenæus, speaking in Latin, asserts in clear words: "These things are manifest to all, since they persist immortal, such as the spirit and the soul, and such like things, because they are quickened by the Father; that is, the spirit, the soul, and such like things are by nature immortal; to them life belongs from their own nature, etc." But Irenæus, as rendered into English by Dodwell, writes simply (a): "Those things are quickened by the Father, which all agree to continue in their existence after death, such as the spirit, the soul, and such like things; that is (namely, the spirit, the soul, and such like things), they by their own nature survive their dissolution from their bodies, and are by their own nature capable of living separately; not, indeed, always and in perpetuity," as Dodwell explains, "but as long as it pleases the Creator acting according to the accustomed and ordinary laws of His Providence." As if the soul being immortal by its own nature, and life belonging to it by its own nature, meant nothing other than that it remains surviving for some time after the death of the body, and can live separately from it. And yet Dodwell boasts that he has performed the office of a faithful interpreter, and complains that he is unjustly accused of depraving Irenæus; regarding which he calls upon the readers as judges. We shall await what the judgment of the Anglican Church, as they call it, whose business is at stake, will be concerning that abnormal theology. Should one dare to impugn it with solid arguments, I fear that they would straightaway throw at him that line from Terence: "You do nothing more than if you take pains to be mad with reason." It suffices to have observed one thing: namely, the double genus of immortality, which Dodwell never distinguished, but rather so confused that he took one for the other, which is the source of all his errors. For the immortality of souls is twofold: one natural, the other supernatural. The former is proper to substances that are simple by their nature and segregated from all matter; by which they cannot, by the force and efficacy of any created thing at all, be dissolved and extinguished. The latter is peculiar to blessed souls; through which, living eternally in God and with God, they enjoy a happiness that will never cease in the heavens. Both can indeed be called the grace of God, but for an altogether different reason: the latter as the grace of God the author of supernatural gifts and His promises, which, because He is supremely truthful, stands inviolable; the former as that of God the author of nature, who, as He created created things freely, so...

^A He preserves them, yet freely, in the way which that nature, imparted to each individual, demands to be preserved. The latter is owed to none, no more than the supernatural grace itself through which it is acquired: although, strictly speaking, the former is no more owed than creation itself; yet, this once supposed, it is owed to souls by virtue of the laws established by God, so that they may be endowed with immortality by the same laws by which they are founded; to such an extent that they can never be frustrated of it, unless one were to suppose that God is lacking to His own natural laws, and an unskilled artisan, and little consistent with Himself. In this sense, reason is both imparted and natural to souls, and a grace of God: a grace, indeed, because God willed to create souls endowed with the faculty of knowing, spontaneously and freely, and induced by no necessity; but natural, because it is the nature of souls that none can exist which is not endowed with reason. Thus, the various testimonies of the holy Fathers are easily explained, some of which determine that souls are immortal by grace, others by nature. For, to omit many things, that they can be understood as referring to nothing other than blessed immortality; both are true, in the sense presently explained, just as it is true that souls are endowed with the faculty of knowing by nature and by grace combined. Just as, however, from the fact that God as author of nature has freely, and in place of a benefit, imparted the faculty of knowing to souls, it cannot be inferred that it is not natural to human souls; because it is self-contradictory for any soul to exist which cannot think; so likewise, although God as author of nature freely endows our souls with immortality, it cannot be concluded from this that it is not the nature of souls to be immortal, because it is utterly self-contradictory for any soul to exist endowed with the faculty of knowing, which is not spiritual, simple, and immortal. ^C

105. Therefore, what Irenaeus states in Bk. II, ch. 54, n. 2 and 3, that souls and spirits “continue and extend to the length of the ages according to the will of the Creator God, and continue as long as God wills them both to be and to continue,” and that life is given to them, “not by nature, but according to the grace of God,” is not opposed to the things said above. For, anticipating the objection which could have been proposed to him by the Gnostics, ^D “that those souls which began to exist a little while ago cannot continue for a long time, but that they ought either to be unbegotten, to be immortal; or if they received a beginning of generation, to die with the body itself,” he answers that this distinction exists between the immortality of God and that of souls and spirits: that God alone has immortality from Himself, and owes it to no other, who could, if He willed, take it away from Him; He alone has an immutable immortality, and one subject to no vicissitude; while all other things that are created, if they are immortal, have attained immortality by the benefit of God, and they, although they continue forever, yet do not continue except because God wills: in one word, that the immortality of created things is precarious, received from God, and to be attributed to the sole will of God, to return into nothingness, from whence they received their beginning at the outset, unless they were preserved by the aid of God, in the manner we explained above: although these same things are by nature immortal and incorruptible, if account is taken of the laws established by the author of nature, and they are compared with the efficient cause, which is none, by which they could be extinguished. “Let them learn,” he says, “since without beginning and without end, truly and always the same and in the same way existing, is God alone, who is the Lord of all. But whatever things are from Him, all things whatsoever that have been made, and are made, receive indeed their own beginning of generation, and through this are inferior to Him who made them, since they are not unbegotten; but they continue and are extended to the length of the ages, according to the will of the Creator God: so that thus they were created and subsequently, that they may exist, He grants them.” Since God therefore grants life and perpetual perseverance, he holds that souls (the same he said earlier concerning spirits) at first not existing, thereafter continue, since God willed them both to be and to subsist. For the will of God ought to hold sway and dominate in all things; but all other things ought to yield to this and be subject to it, and be given over to service. He repeats exactly the same thing in Book IV, ch. 38, n. 5. [CLV]

106. Nor should it cause trouble to anyone, that in the aforementioned book II, ch. 34, n. 3, he seems to hint that “perseverance is granted by the Father of all unto the age of the age to those who are saved,” as if the spirits and souls of sinners were about to pass into nothingness. “For life,” he says, “is not from us, nor from our nature; but it is given according to the grace of God. And therefore he who has preserved the gift of life, and has rendered thanks to Him who bestowed it, shall receive also the length of days for the age of the age. But he who has cast it away, and has been ungrateful toward his Creator, for this that he was created, and has not acknowledged Him who bestows it, he deprives himself of perseverance for the age of the age.” By these words Irenaeus signifies, as is clear from the whole context of the discourse, that the impious, who in their short temporal life have been ungrateful toward God who bestowed it, will not justly receive from Him the length of days for the age of the age, which is given according to the grace of God, and which alone is true immortality; but will bring upon themselves eternal death, that is, a separation from God and from the blessed life. For where Irenaeus has discoursed concerning the natural immortality of angels and souls, he proceeds to the other species of immortality, which is acquired through the supernatural grace of God, and is granted by the Father of all only to those who are saved, about to return soon to the former. But he fittingly establishes that this is common to both, that both are to be attributed to the will of God; the former, indeed, as God being the author of nature, the latter as God being the author of grace: with this difference, however, that the former immortality, if it is devoid of eternal happiness, is to be considered death rather than life. For, as he excellently says in Bk. IV, ch. 20, n. 5: “Since to live...

without life is impossible, but the subsistence of life comes from the participation of God, and the participation of God is to see God and enjoy his goodness; ^A therefore, men will see God and live, having been rendered immortal through the vision.” Yet he could not therefore have supposed that either wicked angels or wicked men would perish entirely, having written so clearly in Bk. II, ch. 33, n. 5: “The number being completed, which God beforehand determined with himself, all those who are written into life will rise again, having their own bodies and their own souls, and their own spirits, in which they pleased God. But those,” he adds, “who are worthy of punishment will go into it, and they too having their own souls and their own bodies, in which they stood apart from the goodness of God.” Therefore, evil angels and the souls of the impious, who on the day of judgment will yield to eternal punishment ^B will not go into nothingness. Indeed, he proclaims that the punishments of the damned are eternal as clearly as he proclaims them frequently. “For,” he says in the same book, ch. 28, n. 7, “the eternal fire is prepared for the transgressors, as the Lord has manifestly said, and the rest of the Scriptures demonstrate.” And in Bk. III, ch. 23: “The Lord in the Gospel says to those who are found on the left: ‘Depart, you cursed, into the eternal fire, which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels’ (Matt. xxv, 41); signifying that the eternal fire was not prepared primarily for man, but for him who seduced and caused man to offend—for him, I say, who is the prince of apostasy, and for those angels who became apostates with him; which, indeed, they shall justly receive, even those who, like them, without repentance and without return, persist in the works of malice.” But nothing is clearer than what he has in Bk. IV, ch. 28, n. 2, where, proving that the greater grace of the New Testament requires from us also greater perfection: “The punishment,” he says, “of those who do not believe the Word of God, and despise his coming, and turn backward, is amplified; it is made not only temporal, but also eternal. For to whomsoever the Lord shall say: ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire’; these shall be punished forever; and to whomsoever he shall say: ‘Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the beginning’ (Matt. xxv, 34); these shall always receive the kingdom, and will make progress.” Here Irenaeus opposes the punishment of the damned to the happiness of the blessed; and just as he established the latter as eternal, so too he established the former as eternal. Wherefore, let anyone who would twist these phrases—eternal fire, eternal punishment, punished forever—to mean merely the longest possible punishments, but such as will eventually cease through the destruction of the damned, take note that neither Irenaeus, nor the other Fathers, nor indeed Scripture itself, uses any other words to designate the eternal happiness of the blessed; words which the impious, having seized upon this as an opportunity, could similarly twist to mean merely a long happiness that would eventually come to an end. But just as no one, if he be sane, would attribute this latter view to Irenaeus, so neither should he attribute the former. ^C And he who acts otherwise, unless he is one who has never read Irenaeus, or one who desires to obscure even the clearest sayings of the Fathers, even against the will and resistance of the authors, in order to load them with infamy—let him read what the most learned D. Matthæus Petitdidier has written on this subject in his *Adnotationes in Bibliothecam auctorum ecclesiasticorum*, vol. II, p. 403, and following, Paris edition, 1692.

107. But that Irenaeus, at the place just cited, says, “the blessed always receive the kingdom of God, and make progress,” recalls to memory what he writes in Bk. II, ch. 28, n. 3: that there are certain obscure points in the Scriptures which are to be commended to God, “not only in this age, but also in the coming one; so that God may indeed always teach, and man may always learn the things that are of God.” Just as the Apostle also said, that when other parts are destroyed, these remain: faith, hope, and charity. This opinion is reprobated by Scultetus, whom Gallasius also follows, as if it followed therefrom that “in eternal life we are to be taught something; in which alone charity will flourish, not faith, not hope, nor any addition in daily doctrine.” But the censure is unjust. For that the holy doctor wishes the knowledge of the blessed to be capable of growth by new increments does not depart from the common doctrine of theologians, which is also supported by reason; from which it is certain that the saints, possessed of eternal happiness, clearly behold the divine essence and all those things which are necessarily conjoined with it; yet it is likewise certain that they do not see it with any perfect kind of knowledge, in such a way that they perceive entirely everything which is contained in God and his power and capacity, or all those things which depend solely upon the free will of God. Since, therefore, they do not equal their own understanding and knowledge with the infinite amplitude of his omnipotence; what forbids that from those things which God freely does outside of himself, or can do, a new accession of knowledge for the blessed may occur from time to time, when God wills to reveal it? Thus Daniel x, the angels dispute among themselves regarding future events just as much as they do regarding the divine will; which Christ confirms to be unknown even to them regarding the day of the final judgment; which, therefore, when they shall one day know by God’s revelation, their knowledge will take on a new increment. As for what Irenaeus adds, that faith and hope will remain in the other life, I do not dwell upon it; for it is plain to any person of good sense that they are taken here, not as having ^D obscurity or absence of object adjoined to them, but only insofar as the one is a firm assent to things known, and the other is a certain trust in God. But let these things be said in passing, to repel the calumnies of malicious men.

[CLVI] 108. To return to the punishments of the evil angels: Irenaeus believes that they were condemned by a just sentence of God to the eternal fire in such a way that they were not, however, to be tormented therein before the final day of judgment. Therefore, in Bk. I, ch. 10, n. 3, he commends God because he has been magnanimous in the apostasy of the transgressing angels. Which, however, Feuardent explains thus:

that they are called essential, as theologians generally hold; yet he is not to be accused of error, much less of heresy, who asserts that the devil and his angels are not yet being tormented by the supreme and final punishment, or experiencing the efficacy of the fire in which, as far as feeling and suffering go, the sum of their condemnation consists. Hence, St. Thomas, 1 p., q. 64, art. 4, ad 4, when he had mentioned this opinion, does not indeed approve of it, but he imposes on it no mark of error. Cajetan, however, approves and embraces it in his Commentaries on chapter 1 of the second Epistle of St. Peter. "Regarding this opinion of Cajetan," Petavius adds, "it is certain that it is not contrary to the Catholic faith. For neither Scripture, nor any council as yet, has taught that demons undergo those extreme punishments which the Judge himself says are prepared for them." Let the illustrious Grabius consider, therefore, whether it befitted either a learned man or a man of sincere candor to criticize the Roman Church in his Annotations on Bk. I of Irenaeus, ch. 10, al. 4, because, he says, "as in other things, so also in this, she has departed from the opinion of the Holy Fathers and of her own founders, Peter and Paul." Anyone reading this would believe that Peter and Paul had openly supported the opinion of the ancients just expounded, and that this opinion had been openly condemned by the Roman Church, or that the current opinion of most theologians had been approved by solemn decrees of her councils: how far this is from the truth, the things we have just said evidently demonstrate; Grabius himself even saw this, for, being little consistent with himself, when he reaches the annotation of Feuardent in Bk. V, ch. 26—which asserts that this opinion of the ancients has not yet been proscribed by any council—he refers to it and approves it by his silence.

110. Regarding this same narrow-mindedness, another instance appears in the very same work, where Grabius, regarding the angels, produces a specimen. Irenaeus writes in Bk. II, c. 32, n. 5, that the Church "does nothing by angelic invocations, nor by incantations, nor by other perverted curiosity; but purely, clearly, and openly directing prayers to the Lord, who made all things, and invoking the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, performs [these] virtues for the benefit of men, but not for their seduction." Whoever reads this whole chapter and the preceding one attentively will notice that here the miracles of the Church are opposed to the prestidigitations of the heretics: and that some things are attributed to pure and clean prayers and the invocation of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; while others are attributed to the invocations of demons, incantations, and magic arts. This is the very thing which he had set forth more fully in the preceding chapter, concerning the Simonians and Carpocratians, "and if any others are said to perform virtues, they do not do so in the power of God, nor in truth, but for destruction and error, through magical elusions, and by all fraud among them, error and seduction and magical phantasm are impiously brought about in the speculation of men: they do so by all fraud, and by apostatic inspiration, and by demonic operation, and by the phantasm of idolatry in all things.

to be replete; all of which is confirmed sufficiently and more than sufficiently by those things which he himself wrote in book one concerning the Marcosians, the Simonians, the Carpocratians, and other such pests, and by what Epiphanius and others have discussed concerning them: but that in the Church commiseration, mercy, firmness, and truth are brought about for the help of men, etc. See, however, how Grabius, led astray by these little words, "angelic invocations," observes: "I have nowhere read that good angels were called upon by the Church as a help for the performing of miracles; and," he says, "that this was not done is not ineptly gathered from this very passage of Irenaeus." Indeed, it is ineptly gathered, and it is ineptly written in the General Index, by pointing to this very Irenaean passage, that angelic invocations were unused in the Church. It is certain that here malevolent spirits are to be understood, namely those whom the Gnostics considered to be the rulers of this world, and whom they intensely cultivated so they would not harm them, and whom they frequently invoked for help to exercise their sorceries. Since, therefore, Irenaeus testifies that the Church does nothing with such invocations of spirits, from what source did Grabius conclude that invocations of good angels were unused in the Church? A brilliant genre of argumentation: the Church does not study magic arts, it does not evoke demons to exercise sorceries: therefore, it does not invoke good angels. But those are most Protestants, in order that they may arm themselves with every simple saying of the Holy Fathers. Irenaeus writes that the Church does nothing with angelic invocations; that is enough: it makes no difference whether he understands good or evil angels: immediately, just as if he had found a convenient opportunity, the editor will advise that angelic invocations were unused in the ancient Church.

ARTICLE IX. On the perfection of man and free will, and his creation according to the image and likeness of God. On original sin, and the necessity of divine grace.

111. Among the various things concerning which they think Irenaeus’ doctrine is flawed, the Magdeburg Centuriators and Scultetus note this: that he said, not without error, that man was not created perfect by God, and that God as an artisan had omitted something in the old formation, which the Word later fulfilled. But he suffers the censure of malevolent men, to whom, as even to Gallasius, it was displeasing, as they openly profess, that Irenaeus so clearly pronounces and so invincibly proves that man is endowed with the faculty of free will, such that there is no place for evasions. For this is the cause of calumny; which must be explained.

112. This was the statement of the Gnostics, as we said elsewhere, that some men were created by God by nature good, others by nature evil: by which flagitious principle all power of choosing was utterly ruined from the bottom, and the human will was so constricted by fatal necessity that, circumscribed and defined by one thing alone, whether good or evil, it could not wish for the opposite. Irenaeus refutes this destructive doctrine again and again throughout his work. But he sets out to pull it up from the very roots, finally, in chapters 37 and 39 of book four, where he undertakes to prove at the beginning that God made man free from the beginning, having his own power, just as he has his own soul, to use the judgment of God voluntarily, and not forced by God. For force, he says, does not come from God, but a good judgment is always present to him. Nor should you think that only external force is eliminated here, which is applied from the outside; he excludes far from the will every necessity whatsoever, by which it would be determined to one thing, so that the power of willing the other would be taken away, and consequently even the necessity which is called simple. For Irenaeus rightly contends that there is that liberty in man which includes the power of election, so that when the will inclines of its own accord toward one thing, it can, if it so wishes, that being put aside, be carried to the opposite. He placed, he says, God in man the power of election, just as in the angels (for the angels are rational): so that those of them who obeyed, might justly possess the good, indeed given by God, but preserved by themselves. But those who did not obey, will justly not be found with the good, and will receive the merited punishment; since God indeed gave the good benignly, they themselves did not keep it diligently, nor did they esteem it precious, but despised the supereminence of goodness. Abandoning therefore the good, and as it were rejecting it, they all justly fall under the just judgment of God, etc. Then, explaining still more clearly afterwards that power of election, which he attributes to man, and demonstrating that it is situated in indifference toward either side, he adds: "God therefore gave the good, just as the Apostle also testifies; and those who indeed perform it, will receive glory and honor, because they have performed the good, when they could not have performed it; but those who do not perform it, will receive the just judgment of God, because they have not performed the good, when they could have performed it." And he proves this indifference of the will, which even now persists in man, one after another with all the arguments which Catholic doctors are accustomed to use to refute heretics; for instance, that

if men were carried toward good or evil by an unavoidable necessity, neither praise nor blame could be attributed to those who were good or evil. That God would have given commands, counsels, and warnings to men in vain; that there would be no rewards for good deeds, because no further struggle and no crown for the struggle would remain; that man would have received from God the faculty of distinguishing good from evil to no purpose, unless, by making a comparison of both, he could prefer one to the other by his own will and choice; and other things of this kind, which I would prefer to have read in our author himself.

113. ^A But he answers this common complaint: Why did almighty God create such angels or men who would immediately fall away from Him, when it would have been far better if they could not sin in any way? "But it was necessary that He should not have made angels of such a kind that they could transgress, nor men who would immediately be ungrateful toward Him." ^B Irenæus replies that if men, like beasts, "inflexible and without judgment, were dragged to good by necessity and force, then that which is good would not be sweet to them, nor would the communion of God be precious, nor would the good be greatly sought after, which had come about without their own movement, care, and study, but had been implanted from outside and idly; thus they would be of no importance as good people, because they would exist as such more by nature than by will, and would have possessed the good spontaneously, but not according to choice; and on account of this, they would not even understand that what is good is beautiful, nor would they enjoy it. Therefore it would have been better, and it would have befitted the providence of God more, that men should be created such as would pursue good by free choice, and would strive toward it with labor and exercise, lest, ^C as he says, "it should be our senseless good, which would be unexercised, so that we might deem precious the crown which is acquired for us through the struggle, but not spontaneously grown together; and the more it comes to us through the struggle, the more precious it is; and the more precious it is, the more we shall always love it." From this it happens that, being left to ourselves and our own choice, we sometimes slip and fall away from God; yet that evil is compensated by the fact that we are instructed by our own falls, and having made "a comparison of light and darkness, of life and death, we are instructed in all things; so that in the future we may be cautious in all things, and may persevere in all love for God, rationally taught to love God: God indeed showing magnanimity in the apostasy of man; but man being instructed through it," etc.

114. From that response arises another question, which Irenæus immediately proposes to himself, and which gave occasion for the accusation of the Centuriators and Scultet: "If," he says, "anyone should say this: 'Why not? Could not God have made man perfect from the beginning?'" Whoever attends to those things which have gone before, and which we have just summarized, will immediately perceive that the discussion here is not about that perfection ^A which is natural and exists in the order of nature; but solely about that which is of a higher order, and which is to be expected from God, in so far as He is the author of grace. In a word, the context of the whole discourse demonstrates that the question aims at this: Did God create such a man from the beginning who would attain a crown won for himself with such labor and with a doubtful and arduous struggle; and not rather one who, mature at once to see and grasp God, would adhere to Him all the more perfectly the more he was immutably fixed in justice, and safe from every perverse use of free-choice and the danger of sinning? That this is so is also clearly gathered from the subjoined response. For Irenæus replies, "To God indeed, since He is always the same and unbegotten, as far as He is concerned, all things are possible. But the things that have been made by Him, according to the fact that they had a beginning of being made later, ^B must on that account also be smaller than Him who made them; for those things which have been made recently could not be unbegotten. And because they are not unbegotten, on this account they also fall short of the perfect." From this he concludes that God Himself was indeed able to bestow perfection upon man from the beginning, but man, "having regard for the most wise laws established by divine providence, was unable to receive it: for he was an infant." Therefore, man had to arrive, by certain degrees, through a certain order and "convenience," at the vision of God, by which he becomes immortal and by that reason perfect and close to God. "It was necessary for man to be made first, and being made to grow, and having grown to be strengthened, and being strengthened to multiply, and having multiplied to prevail, and indeed having prevailed to be glorified, and having been glorified to see his Lord. For it is God who is to be seen; the vision of God is effective of incorruption: but incorruption makes one close to God." All of which persuades me of what I said, that there is only a question here of that perfection which man attains in the other life by seeing God intuitively; and which it was fitting that he should merit for himself by the legitimate use of free-choice between one thing and another: so that it was not a prerogative of his nature, but a reward of labor and exercise and the wages of virtue. This is also more and more confirmed from those things which he adds in the following chapter, ^D where in n. 2 he says: "How, therefore, will he be God, who has not yet been made man? How, moreover, perfect, who has been made recently, who in mortal nature did not obey the Maker?" Then he adds that this order established by God is such that "first we provide Him with our heart, soft and tractable, and deliver to Him what is ours, that is faith in Him and subjection; then indeed we shall ascend to the perfect, and we shall be the perfect work of God. But if, he says, you will not believe in Him, and you will flee His hands, the cause of imperfection will be in you, who did not obey, but not in Him who called." But that kind of merit, and the indifference of liberty which is necessarily presupposed to this, Magdeburgers — [index: entries preserved]

when these displeased the Gentiles, they became an occasion for constructing calumnies against Irenaeus.

115. Yet the holy Doctor does not so vindicate merit for good works as to exclude the necessity of divine grace. Indeed, he rightly and deservedly contends that the corruption of human nature, vitiated by original sin, is so great that it could never produce any fruit of good works anywhere, unless it were healed by the grace of Christ and strengthened to act. In Book III, c. 22, n. 4, he writes: "Eve having become disobedient, was made the cause of death both to herself and to the whole human race," not temporally only, but also eternally, as is clearly evident from the other member of the comparison: "But Mary, being obedient, was made the cause of salvation both to herself and to the whole human race." He adds later that "the Lord, born as the firstborn of the dead, and receiving into his bosom the ancient fathers, regenerated them into the life of God, He Himself having become the beginning of the living, just as Adam had become the beginning of the dying." ^B Then, in Book V, c. 1, n. 3, he teaches: "That the Father of all had wrought the incarnation of His Son, and had shown a new generation: so that just as we had inherited death through the former generation, we might thus inherit life through this one." This he repeats at the end of the chapter. And in c. 14, n. 1, 2, and 3, he says that "Christ the Lord had saved in Himself in the end that which had perished in the beginning in Adam. That He had reconciled to God that flesh which was held captive in sin, and had brought it into friendship. That through Christ it had been reconciled to God, which through transgression had been turned into an enemy." Similar to all these are the things he writes, both in Book IV, c. 2, n. 7: "Men cannot otherwise be saved from the ancient wound of the serpent, unless they believe in Him who, according to the likeness of the flesh of sin, is lifted up from the earth on the tree of martyrdom, and draws all things to Himself, and gives life to the dead"; and in Book V, c. 16, n. 2, he says: "God in the first Adam indeed offended us, not keeping His commandment; but in the second Adam we were reconciled, having been made obedient even unto death. For we were not debtors to any other, but to Him whose commandment we had transgressed from the beginning"; and in c. 34, n. 2, "man was struck in the beginning in the disobedient Adam"; and finally, that I may not be long, in c. 19, n. 1: "Just as the human race was bound to death through a virgin, it is saved through a virgin, with an equal balance adjusted, virginal disobedience being undone by virginal obedience. For the sin of the protoplast, receiving correction by the amendment of the Firstborn, and the serpent's prudence being defeated in the simplicity of the dove, those chains were resolved by which we had been bound to death." This latter passage, ^C as well as the one we just adduced from Book IV, c. 11, was cited by Augustine in Book I *against Julian*, c. 5, to prove from the constant tradition of the Fathers against the Pelagians that all the descendants of Adam are born stained ^D by the contagion of original sin. Let those, therefore, who offer open violence to such clear testimonies of Irenaeus, and who study to evade them by contending rashly that Irenaeus and the other Fathers of the first three centuries indeed remembered the punishments of original sin, but not its guilt and culpability; let them see if the guilt and stain of original sin could have been asserted more clearly even by Augustine himself. What if the same Irenaeus concludes from this with Augustine that baptism is necessary for all men, even for infants and little children, so that by it those reborn may wash away the filth of their former generation? "Christ," he says, Book II, c. 22, "came to save all through Himself: all, I say, who through Him are reborn into God, infants, and little children, and boys, and youths, and old men." And in Book V, c. 15, n. 3: "And because in that formation which was according to Adam, man was made in transgression, he needed the laver of regeneration; after He (Christ) had spread clay upon his eyes (the man born blind) He said to him: Go to Siloam, and wash, restoring to him at once the formation and that which is through the laver, the regeneration. And for this reason he who was washed came seeing, so that he might both recognize his maker, and man might learn of Him who granted him life." That reasoning is clear: man needs the laver of regeneration because he was made, or born, in transgression. Therefore, Irenaeus considered baptism necessary for this: that through it man might be freed from the guilt of transgression which he contracted in Adam.

[CLIX] 116. It was a necessary consequence that one who had recognized man as dead in Adam, addicted to miserable slavery, bound by chains, and wounded by a lethal wound, should feel and preach the necessity of divine grace, which God imparts to us through the merits of Christ our Redeemer and Liberator, by which we are restored, healed, and gain the strength to obtain eternal life through good works. ^A For this reason he so often asserts the necessity of the incarnation of the divine Word, in order that He might recapitulate in Himself the ancient formation of man, slay sin, empty death, and give life to man. This, indeed, the law, although good and spiritual, could not provide; inasmuch as it only manifested sin, it did not kill it. Hence he warns man ^B so that he may know himself, ^C that he is mortal and infirm; and that the glory of man is God; but that man is the receptacle of God's operation (so I read), and of all His wisdom and virtue. Just as, he adds, the physician is proven in those who are ill; so also is God manifested in men. Wherefore Paul also says: "For God hath concluded all in unbelief, that he may have mercy on all," not saying this of spiritual Aeons, but of man, who was disobedient to God, and cast out from immortality, and from there obtained mercy, receiving through the Son of God that adoption which is toward Him. Hence, regarding human infirmity ^D

^A its author teaches that it is the Lord who saves us. And on account of this, he says, Paul, announcing human infirmity, says: "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?" Then he introduces the deliverer: "The grace of Jesus Christ our Lord...." This, because we have been able to be saved not from ourselves, but by the help of God. Hence, finally, he teaches that the Holy Spirit was sent by Christ, "who might fit us for God. For just as a lump of dough cannot be made one from dry wheat without moisture, nor one loaf, so neither could we, who are many, be made one in Christ Jesus without water, which is from heaven. And just as dry earth, if it does not receive moisture, does not bear fruit; so also we, being initially dry wood, would never bear the fruit of life without the voluntary rain from above. For our bodies have received unity for that incorruption through the washing; but our souls through the Spirit. Whence both are necessary, since both contribute to the life of God, our Lord having had mercy," etc. And afterwards: "Therefore the dew of God is necessary for us, that we be not consumed, nor rendered unfruitful, and that where we have an accuser, there we may also have an advocate: the Lord commending to the Holy Spirit His own man, who had fallen into the hands of robbers, whom He Himself pitied, and bound up his wounds, giving two royal denarii, so that through the Spirit, receiving the image and inscription of the Father and the Son, we might bear fruit, counting the denarius entrusted to us, multiplied, to the Lord."

417. What Irenaeus says here, that through the Spirit we have received the image and inscription of the Father and the Son, receives light from those things which he has at the beginning of the following chapter: "The Son of God having become man, he recapitulated in Himself the long exposition of men; so that what we had lost in Adam, that is, to be according to the image and likeness of God, we might recover in Christ Jesus." This, indeed, Irenaeus establishes, which we read has been affirmed not once by other Fathers thereafter: that the image and likeness of God, first inscribed upon man, then deformed and corrupted by the stain of sin, was restored and refashioned by the Son of God; and for that reason He, who is the image of the Father and the character of His substance, took on flesh, so that He might be used as the archetype and exemplar to restore the effigy of God, by the imitation of which the original state might be reduced to the same lineaments. Our author explains this most clearly in Book V, c. 16, n. 1 and 2, where he says that the same hand of God, namely the divine Word, by which we were created according to the image and likeness of God, "from the beginning even to the end forms us, and adapts us for life, and is present to His own creature, and perfects it according to the image and likeness of God. But then this Word was displayed, that is, visibly appeared, when the Word of God was made man, assimilating Himself to man and man to Himself: so that through the likeness which is toward the Son, the precious image and inscription of the Father and the Son, [man] might become [the image] of the Father." ^B For in past times, indeed, it was said that man was made according to the image of God, but he was not shown: because, of course, the very archetype and exemplar was not exhibited to the eyes, namely the divine Word, the image of the Father, and the character of His substance, to whose imitation, and consequently to that of the Father Himself, man had been created, as Irenaeus soon explains. "For still," he adds, "the Word was invisible, according to whose image [man] had been made. On account of this, however, he also easily lost the likeness. But when the Word of God was made flesh, He confirmed both; and He showed the true image, Himself becoming what was His image, and restored the likeness, making man similar to the invisible Father through the visible Word." The Magdeburgians, having by no means grasped the sense of this passage, miserably entangle it. For, in order to have an opportunity to slander Irenaeus, they imagine him to have said, 1. That man was not created according to the image of God; but that it was necessary that he be made according to the image of God, once knowledge of good and evil had been received. The absurdity and falsity of which charge indeed is clearly demonstrated even from that very place which they cite in the margin, namely cap. 38, alias 76, n. 4, where it is expressly asserted that God "made men similar to Himself and of His own power," and, "it was necessary for man to be made according to the image and likeness of God, once the knowledge of good and evil had been received"; that is, as he himself explains in the same period and in that whole chapter, before man became immortal and impeccable through the intimate vision of God, it was necessary that he be created in Him according to the image and likeness of God, so that through the knowledge of good and evil having been received, he might be free and of his own power. ^C "Then" they imagine "that Irenaeus speaks very dangerously about the image, when he affirms that dictum, 'Let us make man according to our image and likeness,' to have pertained to Christ, who surely had to become man at a certain time, and to represent that image. Before the fall, therefore, man was indeed called the image of God, but not shown; because the Son of God had not yet become man." Then they bring forth the passage which we adduced a little before. But neither in that place, nor anywhere else, does Irenaeus write that dictum: "Let us make man according to our image and likeness," to have pertained to Christ; nor in that place, nor anywhere else, did he say that, before the fall, man was indeed called the image of God, but not shown.

418. But it is true that Irenaeus, among not a few of the ancients, distinguished between the image of God in man and the likeness; as if the nature of the image were one thing, and that of the likeness another. He locates the image, however, in the flesh, or, as he loves to speak, in the creature (*plasmate*). "Flesh," he ^D says in book V, c. 6, n. 1, "is the creature (*plasmata*) according to the image of God." And afterwards: "If the Spirit is lacking to the soul, he is truly animal who is such; and left as carnal, he will be imperfect, having indeed the image..."

in the molded clay, but not assuming the likeness through the Spirit," etc. But as for the fact that he here calls the flesh, or the carnal and animal man, created in the image of God [CLX], this he explains more clearly in chapter 16, cited a little earlier, when he calls man created in the image of the Word, not insofar as He assumed flesh and is Christ, but insofar as He is the Word and the Son of God, as is clear from the words quoted above. This latter point in no way contradicts the former ones. For since the Word is the substantial image of the Father, to be created in the image of the Word is to be made in the image of God, as we have already said. Furthermore, in all these places Irenaeus defines the image of God as including the flesh, yet in such a way that he does not exclude the soul, as is evident from the reading itself; but his meaning surely is that, although it is fitting for man to be the image of God primarily on account of his soul, there is nevertheless something proper in the body as well, by reason of which it is said to have been molded in the image of God. What that is, he explains at length throughout Book V, where he demonstrates that the body, restored by the Word—or, as he often says, "recapitulated" in the Word—will be delivered from death and corruption, to which it was subject by the sin of the first man, in such a way that, gifted in the resurrection with perennial life, incorruptibility, and glory, it may in some manner reflect the immortality of God. "If," he says in ch. 7, n. 1, "we now, having the pledge, cry out, 'Abba, Father'; what will happen when, rising, we shall see Him face to face; when all our limbs shall abundantly pour forth a hymn of exultation, glorifying Him who raised them from the dead and granted them eternal life? For if the pledge, taking man into itself, already makes him say: 'Abba, Father,' what will the whole grace of the Spirit do, which shall be given to men by God? It will make us like Him, and will perfect us by the will of the Father; for it will make man in the image and likeness of God." Similar places occur elsewhere. And by these are illustrated the things he writes in ch. 16, n. 2: that before the incarnation of the divine Word, man was indeed said to be created in the image of God, yet this was not shown until the Word was made flesh, becoming what was His image, and showing the true image. For although man was from the beginning made in the image of God, the reason for that image shone forth ^D much more clearly after the incarnation than before; for by the Word assuming flesh, which was one day to rise again and not to yield to corruption, the truth of the image was manifested all the more clearly, as there was now the most certain hope that our flesh—consubstantial with the flesh of Him who was the firstborn among many brethren and became the firstfruits of those who sleep and rise again—would one day be delivered by Him from corruption and would attain immortality: "that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him," as the apostle John says.

^A the likeness, which Irenaeus distinguishes from the image, he places in the soul, or rather, to speak more accurately, in man himself, insofar as his nature is constituted by such a form; but not in the same way in every instance. For since the twofold state of man may be considered, namely the natural and the supernatural, our author has assigned a different reason for the likeness according to the different character of each. As long as he looked to man's natural state, he taught that his likeness to God consisted in the power to know and the faculty to choose whatever he wishes freely, as in bk. IV, c. 4, n. 2, and c. 37, n. 4. But when he considered man in the supernatural state, he placed this likeness to God in that perfection which he receives from the Holy Spirit dwelling within him, through whom he becomes a spiritual man, pure, living for God, and free, as much as human frailty allows, from the desire of the flesh and the affection of earthly things. He discusses this perfection of man at length in bk. V, c. 6, et seqq., where he shows that three things are so required for the supernatural perfection of man that if one is lacking, he cannot be a perfect man: namely flesh, soul, and Holy Spirit. "By the hands of the Father," he says in n. 1, that is, "through the Son and the Spirit, man is made according to the likeness of God, but not a part of man. For the soul and the Spirit can be parts of man, but the whole man certainly is not; but a perfect man is the commingling and union of the soul assuming the Spirit of the Father, and mingled with that flesh which was molded according to the image of God." For which reason the Apostle also says: "We speak wisdom among the perfect"; calling those perfect who have received the Spirit of God, and speak in all tongues by the Spirit of God, just as he himself spoke. And afterwards: "If anyone should take away the substance of the flesh, that is, of the molded clay, and understand by it only the Spirit alone, it is no longer a spiritual man that is such, but the spirit of man, or the Spirit of God. But when this Spirit, mingled with the soul, is united to the molded clay, by the outpouring of the Spirit a spiritual and perfect man has been made; and this is he who has been made according to the image and likeness of God. But if the Spirit is lacking to the soul, he is truly animal who is such; and left as carnal, he will be imperfect, having indeed the image in the molded clay, but not assuming the likeness through the Spirit," etc. Where his calling the Holy Spirit a part of man cannot be a difficulty. For our author is not, as the context of his discourse clearly demonstrates, arguing here about man in the natural state, or about those things of which the essence of man, insofar as he is man, is constituted; but only about those things which are necessary so that he may become spiritual and perfect in the supernatural order. Nor has he fallen into that kind of absurdity as to think that this man is composed out of the very substance of the Holy Spirit as if from a part properly so called, in the same way as he is composed of body and soul, who [is] of the Holy Spirit.

manifestly signifies that he intends the grace and gifts; and if indeed he calls this the spiritual part of man, he does not intend it as a part for any other reason than that by which charity, justice, etc., are said to be parts of a just man; that is, parts spoken of improperly, because by these qualities man is completed and perfected. Hence Irenaeus, explaining a little more clearly what he had proposed at the beginning of the chapter, calls flesh and soul parts of man, but not the Holy Spirit. "If anyone," he says, "takes away the likeness and despises the formation, he can no longer understand a man, but only some part of a man, or something else besides a man. For neither is the fashioning of the flesh of itself a perfect man; but [his] is the body of a man, and a part of a man. Nor is the soul itself of itself a man; but it is the soul of a man, and a part of man. Nor is the Spirit a man; for the Spirit is called neither a man." ^B Where he no longer calls the Spirit a part of man, but something else besides man, namely, the Spirit. Then, explaining still more clearly what he understands by the Spirit, he adds: "Those, therefore, who have the Spirit of God remaining in them, and who keep the souls and bodies blameless ^A from the complaint; keeping their faith in God, that is, that which is towards their neighbor, and observing the justice which is towards their neighbor." And still more clearly in chap. 9, n. 1: "There are three things, he says, from which, as we have shown, a perfect man consists: flesh, soul, and Spirit; one of which saves and forms, which is the Spirit; another which is united and formed, which is flesh; while that which is between these two is the soul, which sometimes follows the Spirit and is raised by it; and sometimes, consenting to the flesh, falls into earthly concupiscences. As many, therefore, as do not have that which saves and forms, and union, these consequently shall be and be called flesh and blood, since they do not have the Spirit of God in themselves... But as many as fear God, and believe in the coming of His Son, and through faith establish the Spirit of God in their hearts; these such shall be justly called men, and pure, and spiritual; because they have the Spirit of the Father, who cleanses man and raises him up to the life of God." Which cannot be understood except of the grace and gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Article X. On the nature of souls and their state after death.

120. Since Irenaeus held the same view regarding the nature of both angels and human souls, as he believed angels to be concreted from the most subtle matter, so he wished human souls to be composed of the same matter. He calls them spirits and incorporeal not once, especially in lib. v, ch. 6 and 7, but in what sense, he explains himself: "Incorporeal are souls," he says, ch. 7, n. 1, "in comparison with mortal bodies; by which," he clearly signifies, "that souls, if indeed they are compared with bodies, are incorporeal, because the matter of the latter is crasser, and that of the former more subtle; but in reality, and absolutely, they are not incorporeal." What follows confirms this, by which he proves from all those things by which man is either constituted or perfected, that flesh alone is mortal, not the soul: "for it is the breath of life, and therefore immortal;" nor even the Holy Spirit, by which man is completed, so that he may become spiritual; "for He is an uncompounded and simple spirit, who cannot be dissolved, and He Himself is the life of those who perceive Him." Where he places a very wide distinction between the Spirit and the soul: he proves the former to be immortal because it is uncompounded and simple, and cannot be dissolved; the immortality of the latter, however, he does not support by that reason, which nevertheless is the genuine ground of incorruptibility for spirits, considered in the generic sense, but seeks it elsewhere: namely, from the fact that it is the breath of life. And hence it is perhaps that in lib. ii, ch. 19, n. 7, and ch. 34, n. 1, he writes that they have a figure; nay, even after death, they preserve the character of the body in which they are also adapted, and hold the same form of man, so that they may even be recognized. Although, however, as we have said in the notes to this latter place, nothing absolutely compels these things to be interpreted concerning a certain figure and corporeal marks impressed upon souls. That subtle material substances, such as Irenaeus believed souls to be, accommodate themselves to the figure of the bodies in which they reside, just as water assumes the figure of the vessel into which it is poured (which is the holy doctor's comparison), is easily understood: but that the same substances, tenacious of no figure of their own, can nevertheless constantly retain a certain figure and a certain corporeal character after their separation from the body, whoever might be able to impress this upon his mind, Irenaeus, a man of keen judgment, will not easily perceive. I would prefer, therefore, to explain that character and figure of souls concerning a certain order and habit towards the body, which they preserve after death, and by which they are distinguished from angelic substances, which are by no means destined to inform a body. Consult the notes on this place.

121. Furthermore, that Irenaeus, in those things which he then thought regarding the nature of human souls, wandered from the laws of both sound philosophy and theology, cannot be denied. But the error is, just as it is common to many ancient Fathers, so it is the more easily...

to be pardoned, since the Church had not yet interposed its judgment on this question, which has been debated not so accurately in an earlier and a later age. Much the same must be said of the other error, in which he was misled, along with not a few of the ancients, concerning the state of holy souls freed from the bonds of the body, which he denied would be received into heaven to enjoy the divine vision immediately. ^A Bellarmine indeed, in book I *De sanct. beatitud.*, c. 4, strove to purge him of this error, but quite unsuccessfully: for Irenæus’s opinion is so open in the latter six chapters of the fifth book, that to wish to recall it to the opinion received today in the whole Catholic Church would be to wash a sun-dried brick. Wherefore Jerome, who had searched the writings of Irenæus with a diligent hand, and to whom the mind of the holy doctor was well known, does not hesitate to count him among the Chiliasts, both in his Prologue to book XVIII on Isaiah, and elsewhere. And in truth, we must ingenuously admit that Irenæus, while he attacks the Gnostics more sharply—men who pretend that the souls of their "spiritual" ones, immediately upon departing the body, go to the Mother, or to the Father whom they invented, while the flesh is meanwhile to be dissolved for eternity—he goes over into the other precise extreme. For he denies that the souls of the just, immediately after their departure from the body, enjoy the divine vision; but he wants them ^B to "go away into an invisible place determined for them by God, and there to dwell until the resurrection, awaiting the resurrection; then receiving their bodies, and rising perfectly—that is to say, corporally—just as the Lord rose, so they are to come into the presence of God." Indeed—what is a little more astounding—he does not hesitate to rebuke even those among the Catholics who thought otherwise, as if those who "transgressed the order of the promotion of the just, and were ignorant of the movement of meditation (that is, of exercise) toward incorruption," were harboring heretical senses within themselves. He refutes them on the grounds that it is by no means fitting that the disciples of Christ should ascend to heaven before the Master himself has ascended. "How then," he asks, "did our Master not depart by flying away immediately, but, awaiting the time of his resurrection determined by the Father, rose after three days and was assumed? So we must also await the time of our resurrection determined by God, and thus, rising, be assumed, as many as the Lord shall have deemed worthy of this." Irenæus therefore distinguishes, as it were, three stations for holy souls: ^C the first, in a certain invisible place, in which he contends they are detained until the time of the resurrection; the second, in the earthly Jerusalem, restored and renewed, or in the earthly paradise; in these, living under the empire and government of Christ in supreme quiet and an abundance of secondary things, and growing from the vision of the Lord, they will become accustomed "through him to take in the glory of God the Father"; the third, finally, in the kingdom of heaven, in which they will enjoy the sight of the Father himself for eternity. All these things, indeed, Irenæus strives to prove with all his might by gathering testimonies of Holy Scripture from every side. [CLXII] 122. Four things, however, I would wish to be observed here. ^A The first is that Irenæus approached the opinion of the Millenarians in such a way that he receded far from the impiety of Cerinthus. For this leader of the Millenarians, as Eusebius testifies, *Hist.* lib. III, c. 28, used to vent the claim that after the resurrection of human flesh there would be a terrestrial kingdom of Christ, and in Jerusalem men serving the desires of the flesh and the allurements of pleasures would spend a thousand years in wedding feasts and celebrations. The Fathers of the Church have always shuddered at this impiety; but not so at the dogma of another leader of the Millenarians, Papias, a disciple of John (as Irenæus writes) and an associate of Polycarp, who reheated and reworked the ravings of Cerinthus in such a way that that time of a thousand years had to be spent in spiritual delights, such as befit just and pure men. Although this Papias was a man, as Eusebius says in *Hist.* lib. III, c. 39, ‹σφόδρα σμικρὸς ὢν τὸν νοῦν› "being very small in intellect," of very moderate ability (as may be inferred from his writings), who, having poorly understood the narrations of the apostles and not having sufficiently marked those things which were said by them in a certain mystical sense and by way of example, inserted into his books many things closer to fables, and invented that terrestrial kingdom of Christ; which, however, because he had been a disciple of the Apostle John, ^B provided an occasion for the same error to many ecclesiastical writers after him who revered the man’s authority more than was right, and to Irenæus in the first place. Irenæus mentions certain other presbyters, disciples of John, as proponents of the same opinion, but men of the same weight. 2. The holy doctor tempered the weight of their opinion in such a way that he nowhere defined the time of that terrestrial kingdom of Christ, nor circumscribed it by a thousand or any certain number of years; ^C indeed, he did not even once bring forward that common passage of the Apocalypse: "They shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him for a thousand years," which, however, as a foundation, the opinion of the Millenarians relied upon most of all. 3. He seems to establish this distinction between the souls of the martyrs and those of other just men, that the former by a singular prerogative ascend immediately to the Father, and consequently are received into heaven; whereas all others go away to invisible places, awaiting the resurrection of bodies. The Church, he says, *lib.* IV, c. 33, n. 9, "in every place, because of the love which it has toward God, sends the multitude of martyrs in every time ahead to the Father." If the martyrs are sent ahead to the Father, then they precede the other just, who do not arrive there before they have gradually become accustomed "through him, from the vision of the Lord," in the earthly kingdom of Christ "to take in the glory of the Father." 4. Finally, it is more serious than all the rest that Irenæus seems to signify that not all the blessed will be in heaven, but some in heaven, some in paradise, others in the new city of Jerusalem; yet all, wherever they are, will enjoy the sight of God. "Passing over," he says, "this figure, and [with] man renewed and flourishing toward incorruption, so that he can no longer grow old, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, in whi-

new man will persevere, always conversing with God in a new way. And because these things will always persevere without end, Isaiah says thus, etc. And as the elders say, then those who shall be worthy of the conversation of the heavens shall pass over there, that is, into the heavens; others shall enjoy the delights of paradise; others, however, shall possess the beauty of the city: but God shall be seen everywhere, and as they shall be worthy, will they see Him. But that there is a difference in the habitation of those who have brought forth a hundred-fold, and those who have brought forth sixty, and those who have thirty; of whom some shall be assumed into heaven, others shall be conversant in paradise, others shall inhabit the city; and that on account of this the Lord said that there are many mansions with the Father. ^A Wonderful are these things, and an unusual explanation of the parable of the sower and of the various mansions in the other life; for the context of the discourse clearly demonstrates that these things are referred to the other life, or to the second resurrection, after the heaven and earth have been made new, and God is clearly seen by the blessed. But these things, as well as others that I have reported, are blemishes which Irenæus contracted from an excessive veneration for those elders whom he cites again and again, and from a too keen zeal for refuting heretics.

123. A long time ago the fable of the earthly Christ faded away, as Jerome calls it. Yet the distinguished Grabius strives to restore it, having awakened it from its ruins; not straight-forwardly, indeed, for he brings forward no arguments for the matter—or who could bring forward any, if not 'straw,' as he himself speaks? But writing out the pious and learned notes of the most erudite Feuardentius, he corrodes them everywhere with a malignant tooth, and implies throughout that the opinion of the Millenarians has by no one as yet been solidly refuted, and that all the arguments by which it is impugned are easily scattered; nay, it is little short of his referring it to Christ Himself and His apostles. Perhaps that ^B fable seems necessary to Grabius, whereby that new dogma of Calvin and his followers might be propped up, that the saints can neither be invoked, nor ought to be, as those who, not yet dwelling in heaven, cannot hear our prayers. A worthy prop to a fable, indeed, is another fable. Was it the intention of that distinguished man to compensate for the injury he inflicted upon the holy martyr by thrusting so many fictions into his annotations? What a just compensation! Most worthy to place a crowning achievement upon Grabian notes. I would have thought I had wasted my effort if I had undertaken seriously to refute these. They are the little reasonings of the Chiliasts which others, both ancient and more recent, have already thoroughly ground to dust; and if Grabius denies that this has been accomplished by them, he denies it because he either did not deign to read them, or he read them with his mind already wandering in that invisible place of the Chiliasts. Yet that was not to be overlooked by the distinguished man, that the Fathers of the second century, who left behind anything in writings still extant concerning the state of souls after death, had fallen into that opinion in such a way that Justin, in the *Dialogue with Trypho* (p. 306, ed. Morelliana, Paris 1636), and Irenæus (chaps. 31 and 32), candidly warned that many also among the Christians, who are of a pure and pious persuasion, or, as Irenæus says, «some of those who are considered to have believed correctly,» had opposed this ^C opinion of those who are of a pure and pious Christian mind. Since it has been openly impugned by many thereafter, although defended by some—and not ignoble—Fathers of the Church, that which already holds as dogma in the Catholic Church has always prevailed.

124. But at last an end must be put to this dissertation. I would have wished it to be shorter, had it been permitted. But the intricate difficulties of many passages, which could not conveniently be elucidated in fewer words, have made it longer; as have the importunate cavils of the Protestants, and especially of the recent editor of Irenæus, which it was worth the effort to dissolve, so that they might not continue to grate upon our ears. For since nothing was more ancient to men of that sort than to drag a writer of such authority and antiquity, miserably torn apart, over to their own sides, it was not to be allowed that such injury be done to a learned Doctor. If anything else occurs that should be observed in the doctrine of Irenæus, we have either annotated it in the notes placed below the text, and illustrated it where there was need, or it will be easily explained from those things which we have said thus far.

CHR. GUIL. FR. WALCH'S COMMENTARY

The plan which I adopted, of disputing more accurately in your presence concerning the faith and authority of Irenæus, I willingly acknowledge had its origin in the efforts of the venerable Johann Salomo Semler to infringe and weaken it. ^D For the greater is the abundance of most excellent things, which most grave men have testified at almost every time they have learned from the books of Irenæus, and which we ourselves continue to draw from the same source; the more holily

and as it seems to me, the duty of a good man is to place care in this, that we may trust in whether the monuments by which he is inscribed are rightly and by what name assigned to the man, or whether we allow ourselves to be deceived by the impudence of deceivers, and whether it may be established for us and for others by certain and straightforward arguments. No one will deny that it is possible that over a long period of time some works of an ancient writer may be held to be genuine and true, which posterity may be moved to judge as false and unworthy of the author’s talent, doctrine, or age, and to whom they should be ascribed. Therefore, it is right to hear those who, although before them no one has doubted the antiquity or the authorship of books of this kind, now first dare to doubt, and the causes for doubting which they produce should be weighed more considerately and their value estimated with an impartial mind, led by nothing other than the desire to seek the truth. ^B For the dignity and utility of history rests, as on its foundation, upon the authority and faith of witnesses; and for the memory of past events, it is equally pernicious and poisonous to produce false and suborned witnesses as it is to reject good and religious ones without cause and to cast them out from their company. But in order that we may act candidly and wisely, all things must be diligently sought out, and those things which either confirm or diminish and overturn the reputation of a witness called into suspicion must be clearly proposed, so that they may be rightly understood by others. Although this business may often be arduous and difficult, it is nonetheless so much the more necessary, the more negligent we observe learned men to have been in explaining and proving the causes for why they themselves believe in an ancient writer and wish others to believe, whose authority they did not know to be at any time despised or brought into controversy. The lot of Irenæus was certainly similar. For you will see that all — however much they are divided from one another by disagreements in religion and by the variety of opinions concerning other matters of the older Christian age — do miraculously agree in admitting and extolling his faith with praises, and you will understand that anyone is eager to win for his own opinions and his own faction some honor or ornament from such a great name; yet I know of no one who thinks about collecting and declaring the causes why the testimonies of Irenæus should be believed. Whatever can be said about this matter pertains to the five books against heresies, which you know to be of Irenæus, the prelate of the sacred things of Lugdunum, famous in the second century after Christ was born, [by that name] adorned. Concerning these, I wish to premise a few things which shed light on this dispute. That they were written in Greek, no one in our age will deny, nor will he doubt it, provided that he has ever consulted them with his own eyes and has known other arguments of the matter, which learned men have clearly set forth (a). The Greek [texts] have indeed perished, so that, as far as we know, no codex survives in the libraries of Europe which exhibits them entire; yet they have not perished ^A entirely, but, as we see, significant parts of the Greek text, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, have been preserved in the monuments of other Greek writers, which, by a salutary plan, we see were most diligently collected by Grabe and Massuet and placed alongside the Latin. We use, therefore, the opportunity to judge of the books of Irenæus not from their version alone (which some wrongly suspect), but from the very fountains themselves. But that complete version of the whole work has reached our age and is in the hands of everyone. At what time it was finished possesses great uncertainty. Many think it is equal to the age of Irenæus, that is, the end of the second century or the beginning of the third, because Tertullian seems to have read it. But Dodwell (b) contradicted these, and preferred ^B to refer it to the end of the fourth century, when the sect of Priscillian arose and in Spain and Gaul renewed the ancient errors of the Gnostics, which had been laboriously narrated and refuted in the books of Irenæus; nor did he wrongly admonish that Augustine, famous at that same time, had used those. In our age, the Parisian monks (c) went further and rejected it to the barbarous age of the sixth century, because of the squalid and truly barbarous Latinity by which, whoever he may have been, the interpreter translated the Greek. But I do not agree with these either. I do not deny the barbarity of the language, but I could never believe it to be such as, in the sixth century, the nations that brought the Roman provinces under their power corrupted and debased the Latin language. For everyone ought to feel that the man was a little Greek, ^C who, after the manner of boys, translated not that language, but individual words, and, since he was mostly stuck on compound words, invented new and unheard-of ones, which, unless they were found in other monuments of the Middle Ages, could not be counted among the specimens of that barbarous Latinity. For my part, I approve of the prudence of those who, since they understand that no historical argument can be rightly asserted concerning the origin of the version and its age without the authority of a witness — for who has ever seen or produced a witness for both? — define nothing, and prefer to confess their own ignorance, not surely peculiar to them, but common to all. It suffices for us that it was made not in a more recent age, but in an ancient one, and that copies of it sufficiently ancient are found. This very interpretation, although it is alien to all elegance, barbaric, and stained with almost any faults of Latin diction, nor can it be denied that, not only by the negligence of librarians but also by their ignorance, it is often seen to be increased by new corruptions, ^D yet the fidelity of the interpreter in expressing the words of the author is in no way a reason for wanting or calling into suspicion, as is clearly recognized again from the comparison of so many particulars, which are read by us in Greek, with the Latin. He translated ineptly by turns, but never maliciously; never to pervert the mind of the writer,

^B or to change the counsel of correcting, increasing, or omitting what he has written here. From this, it follows that which I studiously desire to be observed in this place: that the things which are disputed concerning the faith of Irenaeus should be consistent and equal in all respects, which we now read in these books, whether they survive only in the Latin version, or whether they have been saved from the wreckage by the Greeks.

But truly our author not only wrote his commentaries in Greek, but also sent them to Greeks and for the Greeks. Whoever will have consulted them, it will not escape them that the author undertook and completed a work requested by a friend. It is worth the effort to gather the clear testimonies of the matter and to examine them. In the preface of the first book, which Epiphanius recited in Greek, two things occur; the former of which is expressed thus ^A: "I thought it necessary, having encountered the commentaries of those who—as they themselves say—are disciples of Valentinus, and having met some of them and grasped their opinion, to make known to you, beloved, the monstrous and deep mysteries which not everyone can contain, since not all have shaken out their brains, so that you too, having learned them, may make them manifest to all who are with you and exhort them to guard against the abyss of folly and of blasphemy against Christ. Yet you will not seek from us, who abide among the Celts and are for the most part occupied with a barbarian dialect, the art of eloquence, which we have not learned; but you will receive with love what has been written with love, and you yourself will increase them within yourself, as you are more capable than us, having received as it were seeds and principles from us, and in the breadth of your mind you will bring forth fruit abundantly from what has been said by us in few words, and you will powerfully set forth to those who are with you things which have been weakly reported by us; and just as we showed zeal long ago, when you asked to learn their opinion, not only to make it clear to you, but also to give you provisions for demonstrating their falsehoods, so too you also will zealously minister to the rest." Similarly, towards the end of the same book ^C: "Wherefore we endeavoured," he says, "to bring into the open and make manifest through you the structure of this poorly constructed little fox... for it is present both for you and for all who are with you, to be trained upon these things which have been said, and to overthrow their wicked doctrines." Then the beginning of the third book is this ^D: "You indeed, most beloved, had ordered us that we should bring into the open the opinions which are of Valentinus, which are hidden, as they themselves think, etc."; furthermore of the fourth: "Sending this fourth book to you, most beloved, concerning the work which is on the detection and overthrow of false knowledge, as we promised, we will confirm through the Lord's words the things which I have previously said, so that you, too, just as you requested, may receive from us on all sides occasions for refuting all heretics, etc."; finally of the fifth: "Having been refuted, most beloved, by all heretics in four books... it is fitting both for you and for all who will read this writing to read more intently the things which have been said by us, so that you may know the arguments against which we make contradictions. For thus you will also legitimately contradict them and you will receive from what has been prepared the contradictions against them."

If we will have considered these things, we shall justly gather therefrom: first, that the writer lived at that time among the Gauls, and although he himself was a stranger, he applied such diligence to securing a barbarous language for himself—whether this was Celtic, or, as seems more probable to many, Latin—that he lacked almost all exercise in Greek; next, that he was asked by a friend, whom he addresses as *agapetos* (beloved), and whose excellence in doctrine he attests; nor does he obscurely signify that he held a place among the teachers and was bound by an office to take care, lest any who were with him, that is, his auditors, should be captured by the most grave errors; then, that he asked this friend to draw the hidden discipline of the Valentinians out of the shadows, and thus prepare and fortify a way to overthrow them; finally, that our author fulfilled these requests with this intention, that the friend might both understand those secret dogmas and happily convert them to the use of others. Whether that friend was conspicuous in the dignity of a bishop, I myself do not dare to define, although there is no reason to contradict those who think so; this, however, may more safely be affirmed: that the friend lived in a region which was most menaced by the followers of Valentinus and their arts of drawing others to their parties. Now that the family of Valentinus, although it attempted to place its seats elsewhere as well, flourished most in Egypt and the East, no one is ignorant. In Egypt, there were also the Marcosians; nor is it proven in any way from Irenaeus's commentaries—as some, seduced by a manifest error of Jerome, contend—that Marcus in the same age as Irenaeus scattered his commentaries in Gaul, although he did write that some of his disciples had penetrated there. Similarly, our author confesses that he used some of Valentinus's followers familiarly and learned these opinions from them just as from the books of the Valentinians; but he never said that the same thing happened in Gaul. Indeed, these things openly show that those are significantly mistaken who think this work was intended for the uses of the Gauls or other Latins, and that others wonder without cause why it was accustomed to be in the hands of the Greeks far more frequently than the Latins. For although it was composed in Gaul, it was nevertheless sent into Egypt or Asia Minor, whence it could easily penetrate to other provinces of the Orient, whereas in the West it could remain almost unknown, until, gifted with Latinity, it should return, as it were, to its homeland. After these things in the middle age, that is, one hostile to letters, it happened that

the Greek books written in Greek perished, but their Latin interpretation arrived at our age through the work and diligence of librarians. You know that the same thing happened to the most ancient book of Hermes, adorned with the title *The Shepherd*, so that only the Latin version remains, while the Greek original is thought to have perished ^A. But he who recalls to memory that in that time Christians dwelling in Asia were bound to the Gauls by a closer bond of friendship and commerce, will certainly not doubt that a man living with the Gauls could have been asked by an Egyptian or Eastern friend to take the trouble of explaining the opinions of heretics, which he knew were understood by him; or that the latter could have rendered to him the duty that was expected of him by that man.

If, therefore, it can be established by suitable arguments that these books were written by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons; then certainly a right judgment may be brought concerning their authority and historical reliability. It is settled by the laws of the critical art that for properly instituting a discussion of this kind, it is required that we search diligently first whether Irenaeus composed books against heresies; next, whether, if he did write any, they are nearly the same as those which we now use.

Whatever is placed in the first rank, since it is among things that were done and came to pass a long time ago, no principles or sources for recognizing the truth about it can be conceived, except the pronouncements of witnesses. ^B The ancients have recorded that Irenaeus fought diligently and elegantly against those who in his own age strove to corrupt Christian doctrine with errors, and that he refuted them with published writings. Primarily from the consideration of age, Tertullian holds the place, whose statement (c) is sufficiently famous: "Nor shall we be said to have invented the materials ourselves from anywhere, which so many men, already distinguished for holiness and excellence, not only our own predecessors but also contemporaries of the heresiarchs themselves, have both recorded and refuted in most learned volumes, such as Justin the philosopher and martyr, such as Miltiades, the sophist of the Churches, such as Irenaeus, the most curious investigator of all doctrines, such as our Proculus, the dignity of virginal old age and Christian eloquence: whom I would have wished to emulate in every work of faith, just as in this one." That these things were said of our work is gathered not only from the very design of this work, since it was truly opposed to the school of Valentinus, against which Tertullian wrote the little book from which these things were taken; but it is also confirmed especially by the wonderful consensus of those things which Irenaeus and Tertullian recorded regarding the discipline of the Valentinians, so that there is a just cause to conclude that the latter had before his eyes ^C what the former had written, and that he transcribed no small part of it. In comparing the monuments of both writers and those places in them which are similar to one another, no one applies greater diligence than the venerable Semler (d): yet he added some things not fortified by the authority of witnesses, but by reasoning, which unless they are diluted, the force and value of the testimony stirred up by me ought to be diminished. He accused Tertullian not without injustice of a crime which bears the name of literary plagiarism. For after he ingenuously confessed at the beginning of his own little book that he had learned his own things from the commentaries of four predecessors, whose names he recites and whose praises he celebrates for each, why there should have been a need to repeat the name of Irenaeus everywhere, I myself am so far from understanding any cause, that I fear that, if he had done so, he might have drawn upon himself suspicion of untimely officiousness. ^D Moreover, after the sources were snatched from our eyes and hands, which besides Irenaeus he used as masters, the monuments of Justin, Miltiades, and Proculus, it is now a very difficult and arduous conjecture from what sources the African derived the individual historical narratives, and which must be placed entirely among them, the dreams of the Valentinians, into their own channels. For it must be well held that clear traces of dissension from Irenaeus are impressed upon Tertullian's book. The two questions which the venerable Semler proposes are easily dispatched. For I marvel at the former, as to how at that time Tertullian used the books of Irenaeus with his eyes and hands, why he cited them but did not prove the matter to be truly *adynaton* [impossible], just as I marvel why he did not remember what had been published by Irenaeus before the end of the century, which could have been read at Carthage after the beginning of the third (e). As to the latter, by what right Tertullian did so, that he might glean his own from the Greek and repeat in Latin what he is believed to have written in Greek, what is rightly to be answered seems to me to be clearly expressed by the very interrogation. For since those four writers of Valentinian matters had all reported the same things in Greek, and the Latin version of Irenaeus had either not yet been completed or not yet been seen by Tertullian, and since he did not want them to be unknown to his fellow citizens, he wisely did the same thing which, to add one example from numberless ones, Cicero did, who in his philosophical books repeated in Latin what he had selected from the Greeks. So far concerning Tertullian.

After him let Eusebius of Caesarea come forward, the most diligent and sincere reporter of things done in the Christian state. Since he spoke very often about our Irenaeus and adorned him with great praises, let it suffice now to collect those passages which he left concerning the work written by him against the heretics. I. After [he spoke] about the errors of Simon Magus from Justin.

^A martyr, and had recited some things, he proceeds (a): and Irenaeus also in the first [book] of the *Against Heresies* adds, and says that he is unwilling to repeat the narratives of Irenaeus, because whoever wishes can, with little effort, inspect his book for themselves, in which he has studiously pursued the origins, dogmas, morals, institutions, and similar things of the heresies. II. Elsewhere (b), where he produced trustworthy witnesses that the apostle John attained to the age of Domitian on account of the signs by which they shone, in their zeal to guard and preserve the pure ecclesiastical doctrine, namely Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria, there follow these words: "Of whom the former..." and after a few words are put in between: "...in the second of the *Against Heresies* writes in this way word for word, and in the third of the same subject he declares this same thing through these... from the things of Irenaeus it is easy to discern." III. What he briefly disclosed about Menander, he advises, is the same (c). IV. Similarly about Cerinthus (d): "But Irenaeus..." V. Where he transcribed a statement of Irenaeus about Cerdo, he adds (e): "These things..." VI. Furthermore, he testifies that he received from Irenaeus the things he narrated concerning the meeting of Polycarp with Anicetus for the purpose of settling the paschal controversy, and he adds this (f): "...and the same man delivers another account concerning Polycarp... from the third of the *Against Heresies*." VII. When he had narrated that after Pothinus, Irenaeus had been moved to the governing of the church of Lyons, he subjoined these things (g): "This man, having set forth the succession of the bishops in Rome at the time in the third composition of the *Against Heresies*, to Eleutherus..." VIII. Interposing the words of Irenaeus, he proceeds (h): "These things Irenaeus... in which he inscribed, being five in number, of the refutation and overthrow of the falsely-named knowledge, in the second of the same subject, it has been said to the aforementioned subject." And in the fifth, concerning the Revelation of John... ^B inscriptum (j); III. In the same [books] that Irenaeus not only fought against the enemies of the purer doctrine, but also employed great care in recounting their opinions; IV. That it appears to Eusebius that they were composed at that time when Eleutherus presided over the Roman sacred affairs, because in this the series of the bishops of the City proposed by Irenaeus ends; V. Finally, that in the age of Eusebius these books of Irenaeus were frequently in the hands of others, so that whoever wished could easily obtain a copy to read.

When Basil had set out to review the sentiments of the ancients concerning the Holy Spirit, he made honorable mention of Irenaeus, and wrote that he was near to the apostles, and recited some fragments placed ^C in the *Against Heresies* (k). In the same way, Cyril of Jerusalem remembers that Irenaeus brought forth the wicked errors of the heretics concerning the Holy Spirit, and warned that it should be studied more fully in the ordinances *Against Heresies* (l).

That Epiphanius drew the greater part of what he recorded in his commentaries concerning the heretics of the second century from the books of Irenaeus, there is no doubt. Indeed, he mentioned his name rarely, but he expressed it in such a way that everyone might believe that he not only read our books, but also that they originated from Irenaeus. Thus, when he treats of Basilides (m), he says: "Amazingly, however, the blessed Irenaeus, the successor of the apostles, while being precise about this, refuted his listlessness and inactivity." Elsewhere ^D under the beginning of the discussion concerning the Valentinians, he boasts of the consensus of the most holy Irenaeus (n), and brings forward a long oration, taken with the addition: *Irenayon de phemi* (o); but when the same was finished, he pursues Irenaeus with enviable praises, and proclaims that he defended [the faith] in his next, second book and in the others (p).

Contemporary with Epiphanius was Jerome, who is not without cause celebrated both for the diligence which he was the first to employ in seeking out and enumerating the monuments of Christian writers, and for the praise of his zeal in discerning the true from the false. He left behind several testimonies which pertain to this place.

1. About Irenaeus, when he sets forth the works given, he narrates that Irenaeus was a presbyter of Pothinus, who ruled the church in Gaul in Lyons; that this man, having been crowned with martyrdom for Christ when nearly ninety years old, was succeeded by him, and he adds: He wrote five books against...

^A heresies (a). II. Elsewhere: "Concerning the heretics and their commentaries," he says, "the apostolic man Irenæus, bishop of Lyons and martyr, writes very diligently, explaining the origins of many heresies (b)."

III. Jerome suffered a human frailty when, in this passage, he understood what Irenæus had said concerning the disciples of Marcus to be concerning Marcus himself, yet he repeated the error, using these words: "Irenæus, a man of apostolic times, bishop of Lyons, relates..." and he finished his sentence with this clause: "this he wrote about three hundred years ago" (here either his memory failed Jerome, or he abused the word "about," for elsewhere he indicated the age of Irenæus quite correctly), and he wrote in those books which he composed against all heresies in a most learned and eloquent style (c).

IV. Finally, when he was praising the studies of philosophical literature and commending them by the examples of illustrious teachers of Christian discipline, he named Irenæus, the successor of the martyr Pothinus, along with others, who explained the origins of each heresy and from what sources of the philosophers they emanated in many volumes (d). I now purposely pass over other statements of Jerome, by which he made mention of Irenæus, and did not obscurely signify that he had that work against heresies in mind. These things are certainly sufficient for us to understand that Jerome not only knew those five books well, but also openly testified that they were published by Irenæus, the prelate of the sacred rites of the Lyonnais after Pothinus.

In this number you will see Irenæus, bishop of Lyons, entirely placed, with his statements recited very often and for the most part at greater length ^B from the third book of *Those Concerning Heresies* (i), from the fourth book of *Those Concerning Heresies* (j), and from the fifth book of the same work (k). Thus also Theodoret made use of the books against heresies and held Irenæus to be their author; nor was he certainly ignorant of who or what manner of man he was.

Therefore, the opinion that Irenæus of Lyons wrote commentaries against the heretics rests upon the statements of so many and such grave witnesses. Whoever has understood the laws of the critical art, by which the truth of historical events is judged or the reliability of witnesses is estimated, will certainly not deny it, whether he considers the number and excellence of the witnesses—for no one of them will be accused of fraud, or of desire to deceive for the sake of sport and insolence in this place without injustice, nor will any one of them be argued to have taken his own from another—or whether he considers the integrity and clarity of the testimonies which they issued; either it is as I have said, or there is nothing of truth in the memory of ancient times.

Moreover, I affirm without hesitation that, of the ancient writers whose monuments of their own genius we know to have been left, whether they survive or have perished, among the multitude of Greeks and Romans, profane and Christian, if you set aside Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Cicero, Augustine, Chrysostom, and their like, there are very few who have obtained so many and such ancient admirers of the works produced by them. Nor should it be neglected by us that the number of Christian monuments which are referred to the third century is certainly small; that the greater part of them has been lost; that besides the books of Tertullian, nothing of them survives which pertained to the telling of the history of heresies; that the memory of many of the ecclesiastical writers has been commended to posterity by Eusebius alone, indeed by Jerome alone, to whom we all assent. What reason, I ask, is there for us to deny the duty of believing those same and so many other witnesses who testify that Irenæus is the author of the books against heresies?

Finally, let it be allowed to add to these Theodoret, a man of great and varied erudition, who confessed, as becomes a good historian, that he received what he narrated concerning the most ancient heresies ^C from the old teachers of the Church, Justin the philosopher and martyr (f), and Irenæus, who cultivated the Celtic lands and enlightened the nations, etc. And since he had touched briefly upon what is customarily handed down concerning the disciples, lest anyone suspect that such accusations were invented, he brought forward as a witness Irenæus, who illuminated the West with the light of the Christian religion, an apostolic man, and he prefaced these things to his cited words (g): "This man says in the first book of those written by him concerning heresies..." That the same Theodoret wrote the three surviving dialogues, honored with the name of *Eranistes* (polymorph), although some may have doubted, I have declared elsewhere the reasons by which I allow myself to be moved so that I firmly believe it myself (h). Whoever has read them, however, ought to know that to each dialogue were appended passages of older teachers, by whose authority the opinions concerning the Person ^D of Christ were confirmed in them.

We proceed to explain the other part of the demonstration of this argument. For here is imposed upon us the necessity of inquiring whether the books against heresies which the writers of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries saw, read, and praised, are the same ones as those which we have in our hands. That this is rightly established and affirmed is proven by many and varied kinds of arguments.

^A I. Whatever the ancients report concerning the form and appearance of the books of Irenaeus, we observe to be expressed without distinction in that work which we now use. Both of his titles—the one, *Against Heresies*; the other, *Detection and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So-Called*, as the Latin translates the Greek—are mentioned by the ancient writers whose statements I have already brought forward; the latter indeed by Eusebius, the former by Eusebius himself, Cyril, Jerome, and Theodoret. The entire work is divided into five books. Eusebius and Jerome confirm this same partition. Besides these, we have seen the first, second, third, and fifth books enumerated individually by Eusebius; the second by Epiphanius; and the third, fourth, and fifth by Theodoret.

II. Whatever the ancients have testified is contained in the books written by Irenaeus, the same—all and every one—is found in our codices. I do not wish to repeat now what is self-evident from the statements of Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome, and Theodoret, namely that they all read those things which are handed down by Irenaeus, including the narratives concerning the origins, opinions, customs, and institutions—especially the successions of the heretics starting from Simon Magus—and the refutations of the errors which they disseminated; this is to say, all and singular the categories of things which our codices comprise within their ambit. ^B Yet it is impossible for me to pass over in silence at this point the remarkable diligence of Photius, by which he recorded an accurate description of the books of Irenaeus—such as they were in his own age, that is, in the ninth century—which indeed corresponds wonderfully with our Latin ones. He relates that their author is Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum, a city situated in Gaul; that their number is five; and that they bear this title: *Ἐλέγχου καὶ ἀνατροπῆς τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως*, or *Against Heresies*. He proceeds to say that in the first book the discourse begins with Valentinus, then, as it were, retreats to repeat the heresies starting from Simon Magus and proceeding up to Tatian, with the addition of the Gnostics and Cainites; in the second, the impious dogmas of the heretics are overturned; in the third, the testimonies of sacred Scripture are opposed to them; in the fourth, responses are made to those things which they were accustomed to object; finally, in the fifth, appropriate arguments are collected against them from the discourses of Christ and the epistles of the apostles. ^C But indeed, it is worthwhile not only to examine these items, but also the individual chapters which the ancients allege from the books of Irenaeus. These are of a twofold nature. For the one kind contains passages where the actual words of Irenaeus are recited, of which I shall say a few things afterwards; the other kind is of those where Irenaeus is merely cited as a witness for those things which each of the writers had handed down using his own words. I shall bring forward a few examples of these. We have heard Tertullian testify that Irenaeus had copiously pursued the affairs of the Valentinians; Eusebius, that he expounded the same [matters] concerning Simon Magus, Menander, Cerinthus, and similar [figures]; Epiphanius, concerning Basilides; Cyril, concerning those who corrupted the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

III. Whatever ornaments the ancients seemed to find in the books written by Irenaeus—especially the diligence in collecting the sentiments of others and the variety of reading—neither need these be missed in our own commentaries of Irenaeus, provided you are fair and consider that all things ought to be estimated from the conditions of the age in which they were written and the lot of the author himself. ^D Tertullian, as we have heard, judged honorably of Irenaeus and decorated him with the distinguished title of a most curious investigator of all doctrines. That this was said most truly, it is fitting that everyone should perceive, provided they have had the leisure to examine the books of Irenaeus with their own eyes. For he not only applied great diligence in investigating so many heretical commentaries and arcane doctrines and institutions; but he also compared the precepts of the ancient philosophers with these. Wherefore Jerome also praised Irenaeus under this name, because he explained from what sources of the philosophers the heresies had flowed; nor has anyone dared to deny that in a similar way he had known the purer dogmas of the Christian religion, for the sake of defending which against slanders and calumnies he had undertaken that work. Wherefore I cannot but agree with Nathan Lardner, who interpreted Tertullian’s phrase "of all doctrines" in such a way that he conjectured the same threefold kind of doctrines which I have mentioned—philosophical, heretical, and the purer Christian—might be signified. Whether he has grasped the opinions of those who think so diversely with a sufficiently right mind and expressed them in words, [and] whether he has always borne a right judgment regarding the origin of heresies, which must be derived from the schools of the philosophers—especially those of Plato and other Greeks—is not, indeed, for us to...

investigate more fully in this place ^A. For it is sufficiently evident from the books against heresies that their author was certainly such a person as the ancients judged Irenaeus to have been when he wrote against the heretics: that is, one studious of examining the opinions of various factions, both among philosophers and Christians, concerning divine matters and those pertaining to morals. Hence, in the same books, you will see the names of the most celebrated philosophers among the Greeks mentioned, or their sayings invoked, whether to be praised or refuted—for example, those of Anaxagoras, Anaximander, Aristotle, Democritus, Epicurus, Plato, Pythagoras, Thales, and in like manner those of the poets, Hesiod, Homer, Pindar, Menander, Sophocles, Stesichorus, and also Aesop ^B. But truly, lest I appear not to be speaking the truth, our books are unworthy of the praise given to Irenaeus’ work by Jerome, who claimed he composed it in this most learned and eloquent style. No one, indeed, would miss the abundance of doctrine, yet no one would find elegance of language or oratory in these commentaries; nor does the Latin translation, nor even the Greek sources themselves, as far as we know them, contain anything that one would admire for eloquence or for the richness or beauty of diction, although all agree that the former greatly excels the latter. For this reason, some have indeed taken it upon themselves to defend Jerome's opinion against the noble modesty of the author himself, by which he confessed himself to be unskilled in the art of speaking well and elegantly, and wished on this account to be held excused by his friend ^C. But since Epiphanius recited this excuse, and it must clearly be understood not of Latin, but of Greek [composition], I prefer to argue that Jerome was imprudent and intemperate in praising Irenaeus too gloriously. Nor does it seem that this can be rightly objected to us, because in this place we do not desire to know the praises of the ancients or judgments of any kind regarding Irenaeus, but historical narratives. Although those may be fallacious, they can nevertheless strictly agree with the truth.

IV. Finally, whatever the ancients, both Greeks and Latins, testify to have described from Irenaeus’ books against heresies—whether the passages be longer or shorter—are found entirely in our Latin codices. Moreover, the multitude of these is so great that it is necessary not only for them to be distributed into certain classes, but also for limits and boundaries to be placed upon my diligence. I therefore purposely omit monuments of a more recent age, such as the books of Anastasius Sinaita, John of Damascus, and various catenae, from which, after Petr. Halloixius, I remember already having announced the efforts of Grabe and Massuet to glean Greek fragments of Irenaeus, and ^D over a space of centuries from Irenaeus—three continuously.

First, therefore, I will set down the places of Irenaeus, recounted by ancient writers in such a way that they show themselves in clear words to be referring to the selfsame things from Irenaeus’ commentaries against heresies, which are indeed read in our Latin books. 1-2. Passages in Eusebius III, 23; in Irenaeus II, 22; III, 3, no. 5; — 3. in Eusebius III, 39; Irenaeus III, 33, no. 4; — 4. in Eusebius IV, 11; Irenaeus I, 27, no. 1; — 5. in Eusebius IV, 29; Irenaeus I, 28, no. 1; — 6. in Eusebius V, 6; Irenaeus II, 3, no. 3; — 7-8. in Eusebius V, 7; Irenaeus II, 32, no. 4, and V, 6, no. 1; — 9-12. in Eusebius V, 8; Irenaeus I, 1, no. 1; V, 30, no. 1 and 4; V, 20, no. 2; — 13. in Eusebius V, 14; Irenaeus III, 3, no. 4. The single passage in Basil, *De Spiritu S.*, cap. 29, exists in Irenaeus, book V, cap. 8, no. 2. The passage described by Epiphanius, *Haeres.* XXXI, 9-32, is read in the Latin books of Irenaeus, book I, preface, and cap. 1, — cap. 11, no. 1. Two passages in Augustine, *Contra Julian.* book I, cap. 3, are in our Irenaeus, book IV, cap. 2, no. 7, and book V, cap. 19, no. 4. In Theodoret, 1. *Haeret. fabular.* book I, cap. 5; 2-8. dial. I; 9-14. dial. II; 15-17. dial. III, in our work there are 1. book I, cap. 24; 2-8. book II. cap. 11, 27, 31, 32, 20, 21, 19; 9-14. book III, cap. 20, 18, book IV, cap. 7, 59, 66; book V, cap. 1; 15-17. book III, cap. 20, 21; book V, cap. 1.

There remain, therefore, thirty-four passages of Irenaeus in the monuments of the most ancient age, and in these, sufficiently long—nay, a great part of the first book—are in Epiphanius; which, if you set aside the variety of reading or the faults of the translator, wondrously agree with the Latin codices, so that he must be altogether ignorant of the laws of the critical art who would deny that these are the same as those the ancients used. The second kind, I willingly confess, is of less value. For besides these, other sayings are detected in the books of Christian doctors, which it is certain they transcribed not from their own confession, but from conjecture alone—not certain, but probable—from Irenaeus’ commentaries. Thus, I noted above that Tertullian, in his work against the Valentinians, drew many things from Irenaeus’ books as from a fountain into rivulets, and I praised the diligence of the venerable Semler in collecting the narratives of both writers similar to each other. Others observed the same thing happening in the works of Epiphanius and Theodoret on heresies, that you may find notable fragments of Irenaeus repeated by them, even though they made no mention of their leader, their own master, in express words [E]. Nevertheless, it would be a sin that good men should be accused of theft, as they say, for this reason.

^A literary men, after they signified clearly that they had read Irenaeus and had learned their own material from his books. Besides these, the utterances of other Fathers are noted in various places, which are very similar to the sayings of Irenaeus; but that they were fraudulently excerpted from him, no one has dared to say (a). With primary right we should add Ephrem the Syrian, concerning whose place these observations of ours are worthy. We owe this to the diligence of Jo. Ern. Grabe, who not only pointed out that a significant and sufficiently long portion of Irenaeus (b), regarding the arts of heretics in abusing the Holy Scripture, is recited by Ephrem (c), but he was also the first to compare it—taken from the Bodleian manuscript—with the Greek text of Irenaeus in Epiphanius, and to add the variety of readings to his own edition of Irenaeus. For at that time the Greek version of Ephrem’s little work had not yet been brought to light. ^B This was in fact accomplished by the efforts of Edward Thwaites, who collected whatever Greek minor works of Ephrem he could find and ordered them to be produced at Oxford, elegantly transcribed. However, Massuet was unaware of this—indeed, it could scarcely have been otherwise—and therefore repeated Grabe’s observations and added his own, with which he compared the transcribed manuscript in the Colbertine library. After the Oxford edition, Assemanni’s Roman edition appeared, who even enumerated nine Greek manuscripts dispersed in various libraries in which that discourse of Ephrem is contained (d). The name of Irenaeus is not expressed there; but the Syrian had enough in prefixing these words to his own: "Against whom one of the saints pronounced well and greatly, teaching so, and he says." There is indeed no cause for doubt that Irenaeus is the one honored by this name; for no one will doubt that the words of Irenaeus are being recited, provided he compares the dicta of both writers with one another. I would not, however, wish too much authority to be attributed to this testimony. For you know that Ephrem did not use the Greek, but the Syriac language, and that we lack his Syriac minor works for what we read translated into Greek. It is therefore a difficult judgment regarding their Greek interpretations, whether they perfectly agree with their sources, and the Greeks themselves perhaps allowed themselves to add certain things from other writers. A cause for suspecting this occurs to me here because of the excessive agreement of the Greek Irenaeus in Epiphanius and in Ephrem; unless you would prefer to believe that the interpreter knew who that one of the saints was, and did not translate this particle from the Syriac of Ephrem, but copied it from the Greek codex of Irenaeus. Therefore, I do not agree with the conjecture of Seb. Nan. Tillemont (e) that the work was already extant in the age of Ephrem, nor that the complete Syriac version existed, nor that Ephrem, as the Parisian monks (f) suggested for the sake of confuting it, could have used the work of others to understand Greek authors. Moreover, I do not know why we should believe Ephrem to have been utterly ignorant of the Greek tongue, whom it is established cultivated the friendship of Greeks, for example, Basil. Those most noble testimonies of Sozomen and Theodoret, that he lacked the use of Greek learning, why they should be twisted to signify ignorance of the Greek language as well, I indeed do not see. But enough of this ὡς ἐν παρεκβάσει.

I have done what I undertook to do, and I have collected all the passages of ancient writers that remain, from which it is safely concluded that the books of Irenaeus, which those men read and transcribed, are the same as those we use. If arguments of this kind are not apt and suitable for proving the authenticity of ancient monuments, and if it is not the duty of a good man and a true scholar to believe those whose authority rests upon such certain and manifest documents, I truly fear that there would be no faith at all in ancient history; it would have no value. We must, therefore, confess that the faith and authority—which most learned men of every age believed were rightly attributed to Irenaeus, whether in Greek or Latin—are firm and unambiguous, but rest upon reasons which possess the greatest weight, and that there is the greatest power to move us to persuade ourselves that it is so.

Nevertheless, the venerable Semler (g) departed in all other respects and applied remarkable diligence to the argument that those books against heresies did not originate from Irenaeus of Lyons, but from a most ancient society, which fraudulently wrote the books and most studiously divided them among various and different writers (h). From this workshop of impostors, therefore, he thinks the commentaries of Irenaeus emerged, which had been accustomed to compiling new writings from those of the ancients. Concerning this very ancient society, I do not wish to dispute here; for I confess that I am ignorant of the witnesses whose statements could establish when and where or for what purpose this fellowship of deceitful men gathered. But such is the constancy of my mind—which others perhaps might prefer to call stubbornness or obstinacy—that in explaining the memory of past events, I trust in no conjectures of others, however ingenious they may be, but only in testimonies which possess just authority, and I wish for them to be believed by others. Yet the ingenuousness and probity of the venerable man pleases me, which to his own society, and thus to the books of Irenaeus ^{C D}

^A known to us, have removed that unique and enviable glory of highest antiquity, which, once it has been left to them, I truly do not know what benefit can be expected from this suspicion. But it is pleasing to look into the reasons why he denies, or at least doubts, that that work was composed by Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons. Indeed, he has noted three places in Irenaeus (a), which he asserts were taken from the books of Clement of Alexandria, and are so composed that it is scarcely possible for that writer, who has collected these things for his own use—even if not in the most convenient manner or most suited to his purpose—to be far from intended theft and imposture (b). Thus, the most famous man has summarized his reasoning: if in the books which the common opinion is accustomed to attribute to Irenaeus there occur passages which are held in a similar way by Clement of Alexandria, it follows that Irenaeus could not have written them. Let us see concerning this very line of reasoning, whether it contains the power to detract as much from the faith of Irenaeus as Semler desires to detract from it. For the sake of which goal I desire these things to be observed.

I. That in both writers many things are similar to each other is no cause for wonder. For each is engaged very often in explaining one and the same argument, and each pursues the dreams of the Gnostics. Nevertheless, they differ just as often, as high-quality historians are accustomed to differ from each other when they recount the same deeds, for example, Tacitus from Suetonius. Thus, the very noble and widespread controversy among learned men is whether the authority of Irenaeus or of Clement is greater in those things which they handed down concerning Basilides, which are certainly various and discrepant.

II. Eusebius already saw, even in his own age, that Irenaeus and Clement were similar to each other, not only in historical narratives regarding heresies, but also in the treatment or even light touching upon other arguments. When he produced two witnesses, Irenaeus and Clement (c), to the fact that the Apostle John had lasted until the age of Trajan, having observed the order of time, he placed the latter in the second place and the former in the first, nor did he even conceive that the things that are read in Irenaeus had been stolen from Clement by intended and deceitful theft.

III. But if we understand that the same opinions are set forth by two writers and expressed in the same formulas, then indeed the suspicion of theft is easy, but it cannot fall upon any but him who is later in age. But the venerable Semler himself (d) confessed that Clement was younger in age than Irenaeus, rather than Irenaeus than Clement. For if the common opinion is admitted, that Irenaeus died a glorious death under Severus around the second year of the third century, and that Clement departed from this life a little before the death of Caracalla, which is ascribed to the year ccxvii, then it is necessarily written openly that Clement was a survivor of Irenaeus. I confess, however, that the entire narrative concerning the martyrdom of Irenaeus is too suspicious to me, and that the opinion of those who think that Irenaeus finished his life before the beginnings of the third century is more pleasing, although it is safer to confess that we are ignorant of whether he reached that time or not (e).

IV. But these things are too remote from the purpose. We draw closer to investigating what we seek, if we turn our attention to the age of the books of each writer. Indeed, it is certain concerning Irenaeus that he wrote his books against heresies at intervals; from the mention of Eleutherus, the Roman bishop, and the interpretation of the Greek sacred Code, which Theodotion founded, made in the third book, learned men collect that they were published within the years clxxvii, when it is believed that Irenaeus was moved to the governing of the sacred things of Lyons, and clxxxv, when Eleutherus died, or if it pleases some to add a few, cxci (f). There is certainly no cause to progress beyond this span. Clement, however, began to write his Stromata after the death of Commodus, that is, after the year cxc (g). Guided, therefore, by these reasons, I willingly assent to the venerable Semler in denying that the Stromata of Clement were read and seen by Irenaeus, although those difficulties, by which he thinks the contrary opinion is implicated—born not from historical arguments but from reasonings—do not seem to me to be sufficient to prove this opinion.

V. I add, which I find surprising, that it escaped the sagacity of the most famous man that, even if Irenaeus had been ignorant of the works of Clement, Clement could still have read the commentaries of Irenaeus. I learn this fact from Eusebius (h), who mentions a now-lost work of the Alexandrian concerning the Passover, with these added words: ^B *He makes mention in it of Melito and Irenaeus and some others, of whom he has also set forth the narrations.* From which of Irenaeus's books he took those things that he related, we scarcely know; but since the little book of Clement pertained to the paschal controversy, it is an easy conjecture that these things were said about those epistles sent by Irenaeus both to Victor and to other bishops, which Eusebius (i) lauded elsewhere, just as he did those of Melito.

two books on the Pasch, likewise lauded by Eusebius (a). Since the paschal epistles of Irenaeus were written at the time when Victor not only presided over the Roman rites but had also debated for quite some time with the Quartodecimans of Asia, it follows that they were written after the books against heresies. In the same way, therefore, that Clement used them, they could have come into his hands, especially if one considers that they may have been written for the use of the Orientals or the Egyptians.

VI. These things, indeed, have not been proposed by me with the intention of accusing Clement of theft, but to show by examples how much caution is needed, lest in passing judgment on the monuments of antiquity and their authority we be too suspicious, but rather that we examine all things as is worthy of our observation, and that we not draw conclusions of reasoning in the handling of history with a certain hasty celerity, never so certain that [the opposite] should be referred to as [ἀδύνατα].

Now, mindful of our duty, let us turn our discourse to the very passages which Semler thinks were stolen by Clement and transferred into the books of Irenaeus. He first cites (b) what Irenaeus wrote concerning the comparison of the impious with the animals that are unclean according to the Mosaic discipline (c); and he thinks these things were taken from a similar discourse of Clement (d), using especially this argument, that in the latter all things cohere well with themselves, while in the former they are attached with little convenience or appropriateness. Regarding this passage, the situation is as follows:

I. Before Semler, readers, Potter noted (e) the agreement of Clement and Irenaeus and took care to ascribe the entire discourse of the former to the place of the latter; though he did not doubt to judge that Clement accepted his own work from Irenaeus.

II. That this section is considered to be joined with no links to the preceding material is something that anyone who looks at it must see is without cause. For when he had intended to speak about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, by which the pious are prepared for future glory, he passes on to describe the morals of the impious, and says: "But those who cast away the counsel of the Spirit, and serve the pleasures of the flesh, and live irrationally and, unbridled, are cast down into their own desires, since they have no aspiration for the divine Spirit, but live after the manner of pigs and dogs, these the Apostle justly calls carnal, since they think of nothing but carnal things." These words are followed by: "And for this same reason the prophets liken them to irrational animals, on account of their irrational conduct, saying: 'Horses made [to rush] toward females, every one of them neighing after his neighbor's wife' (Jer. v, 8); and again: 'Man, when he was in honor, ^A was assimilated to the beasts' (Ps. XLIX, 21). This, because he is assimilated to the beasts according to his own cause, emulating an irrational life. But we also, in common parlance, call such men 'unreasonable cattle and beasts'." When he placed these, what, I ask, could have been added to these words more apt, and more accommodated to the author’s plan, than what follows: "The law foretold all these things figuratively regarding animals, delineating man, whatsoever, he says, have a split hoof, etc." After those words, which he seems to have in common with Clement, he continues: "But, as we have said before, they have assumed the life of pigs and dogs, giving themselves over to uncleanness, gluttony, and the rest of their negligence. Justly, therefore, do all such... The Apostle indeed called them carnal and animal; the prophets called them beasts and wild animals; custom has interpreted them as cattle and irrational things; the law has declared them unclean." ^B Excerpted from all these things that I have brought forward, not even a word is read in Clement. Now, indeed, everyone will easily judge whether these things are sufficient to understand that bond of the section with the preceding and subsequent material and to remove all doubt.

III. Irenaeus's intention in interpreting the laws concerning unclean animals allegorically is very different from the purpose of Clement. The latter wanted these animals to be an image of the vulgar Jews and the heretics, the former of impious men and those addicted to vices; yet on this condition, that neither Irenaeus be silent about the Jews and heretics, nor Clement about those living impiously; Irenaeus indeed makes mention of the pagans, something entirely omitted by the former.

IV. Finally, since the books of Irenaeus are filled with mystical and allegorical interpretations of this kind (f), I for my part do not grasp what reason there might be why the comparison of unclean animals with the various kinds of vicious men could not also be devised by him. But if anyone judges it necessary that one took the matter from the other, then I would certainly believe Potter's suspicion to be more similar to the truth than Semler's. I, however, would not want either to be called to the crime of theft. For the very allegorical exposition of the Mosaic law concerning unclean animals, if you consider its main ^C points, arises from the schools of the Jews, is read in the little book of Aristeas, which Josephus used, it pleased Aristeas and Philo, it occurs in the epistle of Barnabas, which is certainly older than our Clement. It is repeated here and there by Origen, Eusebius, and others; why could it not be known to both, Clement and Irenaeus, and so commended [to them], that each converted it, dilated upon by his own genius, to his own purpose?

The other passage pertains to the most noble history of the origin of the Greek LXX version, which all know both Irenaeus (g) and Clement (h) ... ^D

narrated after Aristaeus, Josephus, Philo, and Justin Martyr. Whether they narrated true things it is not our interest to know at this place, but we must inquire into this: whether the things that are handed down in the books of Irenaeus were derived from Clement. Semler rightly notes (a) that no suspicion of that matter has arisen among learned men, nor did he omit in silence that the passage of Irenaeus was repeated by Eusebius (b). Therefore, he was the first who dared to suspect that this was scraped together from Clement by theft and imposture, partly because it seems not to have been placed there very conveniently or with deliberation, and partly because he who has stolen once is readily believed to steal again. I confess I feel otherwise.

I. What Semler believes was added to Irenaeus from Clement, the same Potter again thought Clement learned from Irenaeus; from which we again conclude that other learned men correctly saw the agreement of both writers. Indeed, Potter restrained himself from contending that everything was taken from Irenaeus, but accurately noted the individual particles that appeared to him to be proper to Irenaeus.

II. From the example of Eusebius, who most certainly read the Stromata of Clement, and who recited the Greek of Irenaeus, it is manifest that the ancients did not even think of calling into suspicion the faith of the books of Irenaeus, although they knew that what is read there is also found in Clement.

III. The places of both writers differ quite a bit from one another.

1) Irenaeus writes that that Greek interpretation was composed under Ptolemy Lagus; Clement, under Ptolemy Lagus, or, as others may prefer, under Ptolemy Philadelphus.

2) The oration of Irenaeus is far more copious and richer than that of Clement. Both narrate that that version was undertaken by divine counsel; but Irenaeus alone [narrates] the reasons for the counsel. Both hand down that the labors of the individual translators had been collated with one another; but Irenaeus alone [hands down] that they had for that purpose gathered together to Ptolemy; both hand down that the things and words agreed; but Irenaeus alone [hands down] that the agreement was observed from the beginning to the end, and that the divine work was acknowledged by the Gentiles who were present. Clement says that the holy books of the Jews had been corrupted during the Babylonian exile and that these old ones were renewed by Ezra through inspiration; Irenaeus, however, [says] that Ezra was led by inspiration to bring the prophecies of all the prophets into their own order and restore the Mosaic laws to the people. ^A

3) Nor are the Greek words everywhere the same. I shall bring forward a few examples. Clement: *Πάσαις γραφαῖς*. Irenaeus: *Πάντων ἀνθρώπων συγγράμμασιν ὅσα με σπουδαῖα ὑπῆρχε*. Clement: *Ἠξίωσε τοὺς Ἱερ.*. Irenaeus: *Ἠτήσατο παρὰ τῶν Ἱερ.*. Clement: *ἑρμηνεύεσθαι*. Irenaeus: *σχεῖν μεταβεβλημένους*. You will observe that Clement is everywhere more elegant than Irenaeus.

IV. But if it is permitted to confess the truth, then certainly Clement seems to have contracted into a brief summary the things which Irenaeus had handed down more copiously, yet with this law, that he also consulted the narrations of others.

Finally, the things which Irenaeus hands down agree excellently with the arguments in which he is engaged. For when he had suspected that Theodotion and Aquila, according to their own opinion, out of hatred for the Christian cause and love for the Judaic, had translated the word of Isaiah not as *parthenos* but as *neanis*, he opposes to them the interpretation of the seventy men, and he commends it both by the name of antiquity and proclaims that it was composed by Jews. Is it possible, I ask, that he could have found a greater opportunity of repeating the story concerning the origin of that [version]? Nor has Semler proved that Irenaeus stole even once, nor is it right to suspect theft everywhere. ^B

Finally, there remains a third place of Irenaeus, which a distinguished man contends was sought from Clement. It is very true that both recite the same words of Plato (c); Irenaeus (d) [recites them] to show that he was more philosophical to those who would wish to sever the kindness of God from justice; Clement (e) [recites them] to explain the doctrine of Plato concerning happiness. But to free both from the suspicion of theft, I am moved by these arguments. ^C

I. Irenaeus elsewhere also cited the dogmas and sayings of Plato (f), which he did not receive from Clement.

II. What is more? What you might wonder at is that to the dictum of Plato, which Clement brought in a similar way, he immediately, with no words interposed, conjoined another place of Plato from the Timaeus; Clement, however, subjected other particles which follow in Plato, *De legibus*. Whence did that thief steal the testimony of Plato from the Timaeus; or why did he abstain from purloining the other words of Plato which Clement placed?

III. That place of Plato is indeed lauded by so many other writers, by Aristotle, by Plutarch, by Justin, as Potter warns; must it have been unknown to Irenaeus alone, so that it could not be read in his books unless compiled from Clement?

Since these things are indeed arranged in this way, I believe that no just causes remain for calling the faith and authority of the books of Irenaeus into doubt. ^D

EXCERPTS FROM THE PROLEGOMENA OF ADOLPH STIEREN

CHAPTER I

Concerning the codices by which the work of Irenæus against heresies is contained.

1. *Concerning the three Erasmian codices.* I call the Erasmian codices those which Desiderius Erasmus, who first brought the work of Irenæus *Against Heresies* out from the hiding places of libraries and submitted it to the press, used in preparing his *editio princeps*. For he himself reveals, in his dedicatory epistle, that he used three manuscripts. One codex, preserved in Rome, was obtained to be described for the use of the most learned editor by Johannes Faber, an outstanding patron of studies; the others were provided from the libraries of monasteries—I know not which. We regret that Erasmus recorded nothing concerning the age, nature, and value of those codices. Yet we are quite convinced that the aforementioned codices were not of very good quality. For the Erasmian editions are riddled with countless errors, lacunae, and mutilated and corrupted periods. Nor can we embrace the opinion of some that those manuscripts were the same as those which bear the name of Joshua Mercer. For although one might concede that the Mercerian and Erasmian codices differ from one another, whoever examines more closely the variety of readings we have recorded cannot deny that they belong to the same family. ^A

II. *Concerning the ancient codex which Francis Feuardent used.* In the *Commonitorium* to the readers prefaced to his edition, Feuardent wrote these things: "A new collation was also added to the edition, including a Vatican manuscript codex, by the attentive reading and study of which—especially provided to us some time ago by the illustrious and learned D. Johannes Sant-André, canon of the Church of Paris—we have corrected more than six hundred places up to now." This is to be numbered among the best codices of Irenæus known to us so far. There were those who said that this ancient codex subsequently belonged to Isaac Vossius. Regarding that opinion, see what I have discussed below concerning the Vossian codex. It certainly seems strange that Massuet’s Vatican codex (see his preface) is sought in vain at Rome in our own time. ^B

III. *Concerning the Ottobonian codex.* The Ottobonian codex, according to Massuet, was preserved at Rome in the library of the most eminent Cardinal Ottoboni; it was paper, written in the 13th century, if Massuet is not mistaken. The later chapters of the fifth book were missing in this manuscript. Various readings, described from the said codex, were transmitted to Massuet from Rome. I do not know where the codex now hides. Massuet said its readings were almost the same as those which Grabe cites from two of Mercer’s codices. But the dependability and authority of the codex have appeared to me to be slight. ^C

IV. *Concerning the Passerat codex.* Massuet reveals that he used various readings which the hand of Passerat wrote along the margins of his copy of the Erasmian edition throughout the entire first book and the eight chapters of the second book. I do not doubt, with Massuet, that those various readings were drawn from a manuscript codex, and indeed an ancient and good one. But it did not fall to me, nor to the learned monk, to find the codex itself, the fact that not all of whose readings were recorded we regret. ^D

V. *Concerning the Claromontanus codex.* In the preface to his own edition, Massuet writes as follows: "A most learned man, the R. P. Johannes Hardouin, the prefect of that same library, provided for my use the first codex, obtained from the library of the Jesuit College of Clermont, whose kindness we have never failed to experience. This codex is of the best quality; since it was written at least 800 years ago, according to the witness of that most learned man of pious memory, D. Jean Mabillon—an assessor of such things as expert as any who ever lived—it appears to be the oldest of all those from which previous editions were made. However, it is mutilated; for having lost many leaves at the end, the fifth book remains truncated of almost the last ten chapters. Whether this happened by chance, or through the improvident zeal of some ignoramus (who perhaps was displeased by the error of the millennium defended by Irenæus), remains obscure. It is certain that the codex was once complete, since a part of the twenty-sixth chapter still survives. The rest, thereafter, perished to the end of the book. Hence it seems manifest that the Claromontanus codex is different from the Feuardentian: for the latter was complete, while the former is much more correct." Thus far Massuet. Seeking where that most ancient codex might now be preserved, there came into my hands the well-known catalog of the Meermann library and the *Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum* which Gust. Hænel edited. Having examined those books, I learned of the fate of the Claromontanus codex. When the Jesuits were expelled from France and the library of the Clermont college was sold publicly, the ancient codex of Irenæus passed into the hands of Meermann in the year 1764 or 1765; after the death of Meermann, in 1824, it migrated to England. For there, in the illustrious library which the most excellent Thomas Phillips established at the Middlehill villa located near the city of Broadway, the cited book of Hænel taught me that the Claromontanus codex is now preserved. D. Schwarz, of Jena, a colleague formerly most closely joined to me, and even now a most beloved friend, when he was visiting England some years ago, was asked by me to approach the most illustrious Thomas Phillips and seek from him the favor of inspecting the very ancient codex of Irenæus. This favor having been kindly granted by the most noble possessor of the manuscript, D. Schwarz committed to letters some things concerning the nature of the codex, which, upon his return to his homeland, he shared with me. It is a parchment codex, written in the 11th century according to the Meermann catalog (but in the 10th century according to the opinion of the most illustrious Thomas Phillips); it has 246 leaves, not 232 as is read in the Catalog; it is mutilated at the end and dirty on the first three leaves, and is of medium size. With the exception of a few pages, the codex is clean and unstained. It appears to have been clearly written in few abbreviations by several scribes. It is inscribed in red ink with these words: "Irenæus of Lyons, Bishop, against all heresies"; and it ends with these: "signified John the disciple of the Lord in the Apocalypse," explaining what the ten horns were...

seen by Daniel to be, saying it was said thus: "And the ten horns which you saw,"—which lib. v, 26, 1 read.

The most illustrious Thomas Phillips, although he had promised that he would transmit to me a specimen of the codex, I have not yet received it to this day.

VI. On the Merceri Codices. In the last paragraph of his Prolegomena, Grabe writes that a copy of the variant readings, which had formerly been extracted from two manuscript codices by Joshua Mercer and given to Isaac Vossius to be described by Dodwell, had been most readily communicated to him. It does not escape me that Harles notes in Fabricius, *Bibl. Græc.*, t. VII, p. 71: "In the Leiden library is the Erasmus Paris edition, compared with manuscripts." Hence the suspicion arose for me that this Erasmus edition contained the variant readings noted by Joshua Mercer. I owed a more accurate account of that book to Mr. Kist, a Leiden theologian, whom the most illustrious Mr. Geelius sent to me. What I had suspected was certain once I had examined the book: it was the same book in whose margins Joshua Mercer had written many variants, undoubtedly extracted from two codices. For to the individual variants the number 1 or 2 is added; these numbers are not to be interpreted as "codex first" and "second," so as to distinguish accurately between the two codices. But by the number 1 it is expressed that one of the two codices offers a reading, and by the number 2 that both codices offer a certain reading. For where the writer found a new reading in both manuscripts, there he did not write 1 and 2, but 1 and 1. From these, let the benevolent reader explain the signs of the codices in my edition thus: Merc. 1 = one of the Mercerian codices (but it is uncertain which one); Merc. 11 = both Mercerian codices.

Which codices these are, from which the critic wrote out the readings, he himself did not divulge. Although they are far different from the Erasmian manuscripts, they seem to belong to the same family as these, as we warned above. The copy communicated to Grabe was not accurately written. Through the new use of this book, it has come about that we are able to note the readings of the Mercer codices in their entirety and to correct the innumerable errors of Grabe, which had even crept into the Massuet edition.

VII. On the Arundel Codex. "The Arundel Codex," says Grabe, "already kept in the library of the Royal Society in London, which I judge to be four hundred years old, I myself compared diligently with the Feuardent edition three years ago; since the very kind gentleman Mr. Woodward, a member of the society, had most benignly procured for me the use of it. However, when the Reverend Mr. Battely, canon of Canterbury, later sent me of his own accord his copy of Irenæus, in which he had noted a large supply of the variant readings of said codex, I did not wish to pass over this benevolence of his, especially since I had used one or two of his observations written in the margin." Thus far Grabe. Since I had discovered, through the most illustrious Mr. Spiker, that this codex is kept in the British Museum in London, I asked Mr. Göttling, whom I esteem and value highly as one I once knew as a colleague for his sincere spirit, since he was about to go to England, to inspect the Arundel manuscript. He said that this parchment codex is numbered 87 among the Arundel manuscripts; that it contains 36 lines in each of its two columns, and that it is beautifully written, dating from the fourteenth century. The prologue, which Göttling noticed on the first page of the codex, I suspected to be the same one that Magnus Crusius mentions in a letter, in which he writes that in a new edition of Irenæus, which he had planned, both the prologue and the Arundel codex were to be printed. The prologue, which I had transcribed in London, is this: *Hyreneus, bishop of Lyons*, etc. We place this prologue before the books against heresies. See below. EDIT. PATR.

VII. On the Vossian or Burellian Codex. Where he treats of the Irenæus codices, Grabe says that Dodwell, who had long before meditated a new edition of the works of Irenæus, had, for that purpose, most accurately compared Isaac Vossius’s best codex with the Feuardent copy and had most readily communicated all the various readings collected thence to him. Massuet did not inspect this codex, as he did others which Grabe used.

Joannes Albertus Fabricius recorded (a) that in the Leiden Library there was kept an Irenæus manuscript codex, which had once been among the books of Isaac Vossius, Canon of Windsor. Since it did not escape me that Fabricius had noted that Irenæus was commemorated among the Latin Vossian codices, I requested, with due respect, through letters from Kist, a theologian of Leiden who is highly esteemed among our own, that he inform me about the character of that codex. The venerable man communicated these things to me by letter: that the Vossian codex was the same one which Henry Dodwell had once compared with the published text. It is established that the various readings collected from that codex were inserted into the Grabian edition. What then was to be hoped for from it? That the codex had been most accurately treated by Dodwell and the variety of readings most diligently noted by Grabe could be in doubt to no one to whom the thoroughness and skill of both men were known and understood. But Kist, to whom I have already testified my greatest thanks in the preface, added to his letters notes in which he had pointed out various readings observed by himself through a fresh comparison of some chapters of the codex with the Massuet edition. From this I learned that there are not a few places in which the codex dissents from the received reading, either having escaped Dodwell or having been omitted by Grabe, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Therefore, having taken into account that specimen communicated to me by Kist, I thought it worth the effort to compare the Vossian codex again, most scrupulously, with the common text.

Since these things were so, it was my greatest wish that the opportunity be given to me to inspect the codex. I rejoiced greatly that Mr. Geelius, a man of the highest distinction, sent the codex, committed to my care, to Jena. I openly profess that the humanity and benevolence of the excellent man, whose most illustrious name is celebrated even in our own lands, have been splendidly proven to me, and a grateful spirit impels me to render public thanks to him.

What fruits I have gathered from this codex, I intend to indicate, having first premised a few things about its nature, and to investigate the relationship that exists between it and the old Feuardent codex. The Vossian codex, numbered either 35 or 63 from the library of the illustrious man Isaac Vossius, is a parchment in smaller folio. Since he who numbered the individual leaves fell into error and numbered the leaf that was leaf 76 as the oldest... Furthermore, the *Catalogus librorum tam impressorum quam manuscriptorum Bibliothecæ publicæ universitatis Lugduno-Batavæ*, edited by the care and work of Wolfred Senguerd, James Gronovius, and John Heymann (Leiden, 1716, fol.), mentions on p. 517: *Irenæi op. Lugd. libb. v contra omnes hær. cod. ms.*

^A It happens that the codex contains not 115 folios, as the last folio indicates, but only 114, although nothing is missing from the context of the discourse. Each page is divided into two columns, as they are called, each of which consists of 49 small lines. The individual verses are marked out by thin lines drawn in ink for each single line. The entire codex is written clearly and beautifully in minuscule letters. Where initial letters were to be written, a space was left blank by the scribe of the codex, to be filled in later with a painting. But only the initial letters of the preface and of Book I are decorated with paintings; all the others still await a painter. Although the ink has sometimes faded a little, so that some words can be interpreted only with difficulty, I do not recall finding any passages regarding whose interpretation one would have to despair entirely.

Since the person who copied the codex seems generally to have followed an unusual method of writing, I have judged it not outside the scope of the matter to review, in my commentary written *On the Vossian Codex* (Leipsic, 1847), the symbols, or abbreviations of writing, which I have known the author of the codex to have used consistently.

The first four books are accurately divided into chapters; both a number and a title are written in red ink for each chapter. Tables precede books II, III, and IV, in which the arguments or titles of the chapters are listed. The person who wrote the codex did not divide Book V into chapters; the result is that the text proceeds from beginning to end without any interval or distinction. But chapter numbers are noted in the margin of Book V—I do not know by whom, certainly not by the person who copied the codex—using Arabic numerals, whereas the chapters of the first four books are indicated by the librarian with Latin numeral markers. But that division of chapters that a later hand gave to Book V did not satisfy readers. For I do not know who, in the space left between the two columns, proposed another division according to chapters, far different from the former.

Lacunae are not infrequently found in the codex, generally arising from the carelessness of the scribe. We do not doubt that the larger lacunae we observe arose because the person who wrote the codex exchanged words on account of the similarity of the final syllables, what they call *homoioteleuton*. These larger lacunae are generally not filled in. Sometimes it has happened that the scribe himself, or a second hand—as is clear from the method of writing and the paler ink—added in the margin small words that had been poorly omitted. ^B Whatever else is read in the margin either pertains to the subject matter of what is contained in the text, or was added for the sake of explanation. Since these seemed to me to be of no great value, I decided they should be omitted entirely.

Furthermore, we have seen that there are not a few defects in the codex ^D which should have been avoided by a learned man who grasped Irenaeus’s meaning everywhere. But however those defects may have crept into the codex, its authority is in no way diminished. Grabe and Massuet valued it highly because of the many excellent readings it offers. For the Vossian codex generally agrees with codices of the best quality; I shall touch only briefly here upon its memorable agreement with the old edition of Feuardent, about which I intend to dispute more below. From this, indeed, it is permitted to conclude that that manuscript exemplar of Irenaeus which the scribe of the Vossian codex followed was of good quality. I admit, indeed, that we are entirely ignorant of where and what the archetype of the Vossian codex was, nor can it be accurately determined when it was written. Let it be permitted, however, to propose a conjecture on this matter.

Where Irenaeus describes the system of the Marcosians and their custom of calculating from letters and numbers, librarians were accustomed to writing Greek even in codices of the Latin version. But indeed he who copied the Vossian codex, being ignorant of the Greek language, changed those Greek letters into Latin in such a way that he seems to have followed the form of the Greek letters more than their meaning. For the letters of each language correspond to each other in our codex as follows:

Ψ = y Γ = i or f A = a Y = v H = h Σ = c P = p Π = n A = a

From this method of writing it is clear that in the manuscript exemplar which was before the eyes of the librarian of the Vossian codex, the Greek letters were written in uncial form. This will not be a matter of doubt for him who has accurately compared with the Greek text the way in which the librarian wrote the two passages which Irenaeus cited from Homer and Hesiod. But if indeed it is certain that the Greek passages in the archetype of the Vossian codex were written in majuscule letters, it appears from this that the codex which the librarian of the Vossian codex followed was very ancient. For it is agreed that only the most ancient Greek codices are written in larger letters. For this reason the excellent character of the Vossian codex rests upon the most ancient codex from which it was copied, and those better readings which it exhibits flowed from a book ruined neither by the ignorance of scribes nor by the rashness of bunglers. For it will be certain to anyone who has understood, through examination of the codex, how great the scribe’s ignorance was, that the defects which are present in the codex arose through the fault of the scribe.

Now, however, we must ask whether Grabe used our codex accurately or not. That the aforementioned codex was never before the eyes of Grabe himself is evident from the fact that he says the collation was made most accurately by Dodwell. For if Grabe had compared even a single page of the codex with the collation provided to him by Dodwell, he would have seen that the codex had been collated so negligently and lightly that he could not have imagined that even Dodwell, a man still lauded among philologists, had collected the variety of readings. For I suspect that Henry Dodwell had handed over that codex to be collated by a man not sufficiently skilled, and did not take care that it should be handled accurately.

For Grabe did not wish to insert into his edition those readings which lacked any sense and were attributable to the error or ignorance of the librarians. On this account, he is certainly not to be blamed. But he omitted many readings which are recommended by a convenient sense. Added to this is the fact that Grabe not infrequently brought forward readings as if they were present in the Vossian codex, which are not found there at all. But those which were most falsely drawn from there, and almost all of which were inserted into his edition even by Massuet, no one has corrected up to this time; in our edition they are corrected.

Finally, Grabe, or rather he who collated the Vossian manuscript with the Feuardent exemplar, not infrequently passed over the best readings which the codex offers. The result of this was that Grabe’s genius sometimes shrewdly guessed what should be read. Thus the better readings of the Vossian codex modestly obtain a place of conjectures in the Grabe edition. However, it sometimes happens to Massuet that he finds in the Clermont codex, which he himself used, readings entirely neglected by the one who handled the Vossian codex. And therefore it does not seem strange that the codex preserved in the Jesuit library at Clermont is lauded by the most celebrated monk, inasmuch as it seems to provide excellent readings very often by itself. I shall propose very few readings of this kind.

^A It is known that it belonged to a canon of Windsor in England. On what occasion Vossius acquired the codex for himself, or who held it before him, we do not know at all. But concerning the first owner of the codex, something certain can emerge. For at the end of it, these words are written:

"These five books which Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon and martyr, the contemporary of the apostles, wrote against heresies, he gave as a gift for the remission of his sins; Friar Laurentius Burelli of Dijon [today: Dijon], Paris, doctor of theology, provincial of Narbonne of the sacred order of the Mother of God of Mount Carmel, to the library of the Parisian convent, in the year in which he himself, as vicar general, visited England and the Parisian convent, which was the fourteen hundred and ninety-fourth, as attested by his own autograph placed here on the day before the Kalends of November. And so, Burelli."

^B In the margin of the first page of the codex, beautiful paintings are to be seen, surrounding the text on three sides. Among the intertwined ornaments of foliage and figures, the painter depicted a coat of arms, in which, if I am not mistaken, three lightning bolts sent downward and three flames burning upward are portrayed. Around this coat of arms, these words are written: "Friar Laurentius, doctor, provincial of Narbonne, of the convent of Dijon, of the Carmelite order." There can be no doubt that these words were written by the same hand that wrote the codex itself. From this, it seems to be concluded that Laurentius Burelli was the first owner of the codex and that the codex was written at his expense with the intention that this most splendid book be given as a gift to the library of the Parisian Carmelite convent. Neither is there reason for us to doubt the time when the codex was written. For it is evident that the book was written at the end of the fifteenth century.

^C It cannot be said whether the Vossian codex was preserved in the Vatican Library at the time when Feuardentius prepared his edition, that is, toward the end of the sixteenth century, or not. Yet it would have been very strange if Feuardentius had called this codex, which was written scarcely fifteen lustra before, "ancient" or "most ancient" [i]. Would not such a learned man, since the true age of the codex could not be in doubt, have appeared to be one who had deceived his readers with fraud?

But there is added the great difference between the readings of the codices, which it cannot be denied that Massuet also considers. Grabius likewise noted many readings by which it is understood that the two codices differ greatly, and he proposed many excerpts from the Vossian which did not appear in the old Feuardentius codex. To these I have added a large abundance of new readings in my edition. Furthermore, the division of chapters differs, such as Feuardentius noted as known in the old codex, from that which I recognized the scribe of the Vossian codex to have followed. Since these things are so, for my part, I judge the Feuardentius codex to be completely different from the Vossian manuscript.

^D It is certain and indubitable that the Vossian codex…

^A must be numbered among the best manuscripts and that it belongs to the same family as the ancient Feuardentius and Claromontanus codices.

IX. The Vratislavian Codex. After having sufficiently discussed the nature and fortunes of the Latin Irenæus codices, I cannot pass over in silence the Greek manuscript of Epiphanius, which I used to correct the text of Book 1 of Irenæus. This codex is found in the Rhedigerian Library, which is in Vratislavia (Wrocław). The most distinguished Mr. Menzelius wrote these things to me about it: "Our parchment codex is of the largest format and displays from the beginning the epistle of Acacius and Paul, presbyters and archimandrites, by which they urge the same (Epiphanius) to write against the heresies, with the lengthier responsory of Epiphanius joined to it; then the *Panarion* itself, or the work against eighty heresies, in its entirety, and at its end is subjoined the *Ancoratus* or ^B *Sermo De fide* (Discourse on the Faith), in which Epiphanius, at the request of Palladius, the bishop of the city of Pamphilia, and the presbyters of the same—whose epistles are also prefixed—asserted and explained the doctrine concerning the Holy Trinity, especially concerning the Holy Spirit against the Macedonian heresy." The most distinguished Mr. Haasius of Vratislavia, who took care to collate with the said manuscript what Epiphanius had transcribed from the work of Irenæus, wrote that these things were noted in the catalogue of the Rhedigerian Library: "A parchment codex of 326 folios in folio, written in the 15th century by the hand of one person, not inelegantly. The binding, made in the Greek fashion and decorated with buckles at the ends, seems to have been fashioned by a Greek craftsman as well." Although the codex has provided us with some things by which the text of Irenæus might be amended, its critical authority nevertheless did not seem so weighty to us that we could follow it everywhere.

CAPTER II. Concerning the editions of Irenæus's work against heresies.

I. Concerning the Erasmian editions. 1526. The most scholarly work of the divine Irenæus, bishop of Lugdunum, digested into five books, in which he wonderfully uncovers and refutes the impious and monstrous opinions of ancient heresies, corrected by the collation of the most ancient codices, as far as possible, by the labor of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, and now for the first time brought to light by the labor of J. Froben. An index of things worth knowing has been added. At illustrious Basel, in the year M. D. XXVI. With Imperial grace and privilege. Folio. This is the edition princeps, which Desiderius Erasmus dedicated to Bernard von Cles, at that time bishop of Trent, with a dedicatory epistle prefixed. The *Obtestatio* of St. Irenæus to the scribes follows the letter, which holds the first place among the fragments of Irenæus. Erasmus prefixed titles to each book, under which the chapters are inscribed. Then the text of Irenæus follows. In the margin, the editor noted from the three codices he used some variant readings and conjectures and interpretations of more unusual terms. The arguments, as he calls them, for books II–V are prefixed; see in our Appendix page 6ff. Moreover, the edition princeps, and the one which appeared two years later, are much more corrected than those which, since the year 1534, were printed under the name of Desiderius Erasmus and sold publicly. I found the edition princeps in the libraries of the University of Leipzig and at Zitzen.

1528. Two years later, another edition in folio appeared from the Froben office, on whose title page, after the words "corrected by the labor of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam," these things are read: "and now recognized by the labor of the same, with those things corrected which had previously escaped." The hand of Erasmus himself removed some errors. The argument for book V, written a little more fully, is read in the new edition, as it is expressed again in our Appendix page 8. For the rest, there are few things by which this edition differs from the edition princeps. This edition is found in the academic libraries of Jena and Erfurt.

1531. Du Pin, in his *Bibliotheca nova ecclesiasticorum auctorum*, mentions an Erasmian edition which he says appeared at Paris in the year 1534. Grabe writes that he did not happen to see it. Massuet mentions no edition other than the first of Erasmus. Du Pin himself later seems to have doubted whether this edition ever really existed. For the learned censor of Massuet’s edition writing in the *Deutsche Acta eruditorum* of 1712 says this: (German text omitted relative to the Paris edition of 1534, which Grabe found in Du Pin but did not see himself, because Du Pin omitted it in the other edition of his *Bibliotheca ecclesiastica*, and thus seems to have recognized his error in this regard). We are permitted to correct the error of Du Pin. For in 1534 a new Erasmian edition appeared at Basel from the Froben office; it has the same form and the same title as the previous editions, except that it reads on the title page: "and now recognized again by the labor of the same, with those things corrected which previously had escaped." Hence it is clear that Erasmus himself reviewed the text of Irenæus with new care. But since better codices had not been at hand for the most learned man, he received into the text of Irenæus many things from variant readings or conjectures noted in the margin of the earlier editions. The result was that the text was ^C corrupted rather than corrected; which must be granted by anyone who has looked more accurately at the variety of readings noted in the margin. This edition is preserved in the library of the University of Göttingen. Desiderius Erasmus died at Basel in July 1536. Since, therefore, the edition of 1534 was the last one which the editor himself had adorned with new care, all the other editions which bear the most celebrated name of Erasmus seem to have been printed according to the standard of that one.

1545. *Against Heresies* of the divine Irenæus, bishop of Lugdunum, digested into five books, in which he wonderfully uncovers and refutes the impious and monstrous opinions of ancient heresies, corrected by the collation of the most ancient codices, as far as was possible, by the labor of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, and now reviewed again by the labor of the same, and brought to light much more corrected than before. To which was added a very copious index of illustrious things and men. Paris, at Mathurin Dupuys, at the sign of the wild man, via to St. James, 1545, 8vo. A very rare edition, completely unknown to Grabe, printed in elegant type. Nothing need be added concerning its critical authority to what we have discussed about the immediately preceding book; for it is very similar to it. This very rare edition is an ornament to my library.

1545. The learned censor of the Massuet edition in the *Deutsche Acta eruditorum* mentions an edition which he says appeared in 1545 at Basel in the largest format. But neither Grabe nor I have seen it.

1554.** Although Fabricius in his *Bibliotheca Graeca* and the censor of Massuet’s edition mention an edition of Erasmus from Basel in this year, I have not been able to find it in any libraries. Grabe also searched for it in vain.

**1560.** *The most learned work of divine Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, in five books, in which he wonderfully uncovers and confutes the impious and monstrous opinions of the ancient heresies; corrected by the labors of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.* Basel, 1560. Folio. Grabe says of this book: "It is not superior to preceding editions in any way, except that in the place of the nude adjuration of Irenaeus, by which he adjured the scribes, it contains the entire words of Jerome in his *Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers* regarding Irenaeus, and that the Index of matters is more copious, as is evident from the first letter A." We already find a more copious Index in the edition of 1548; therefore the book of 1560 has nothing new except the passage of Jerome regarding Irenaeus. See the arguments I have set down regarding the edition of 1534. On the margin of this edition, which was shared with me from the library of the Göttingen Academy, are written conjectures by D. Heumann, about which see what I have written below.

**1563.** *The most learned work of divine Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, in five books, in which he wonderfully uncovers and confutes the impious and monstrous opinions of the ancient heresies; corrected by the labors of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.* Paris, at the shop of Audoenus Parvus, at the sign of the Golden Lily, on the street leading to Saint Jacques. 1563. 8vo. This edition, which contains the same material as the preceding one, is printed more elegantly in larger type than the Parisian edition of 1545; the text is the same as in the editions of 1545 and 1565. You may find this book in the Hamburg library.

**1567.** *The most learned work...* (the title is the same as in the immediately preceding edition). Paris. At the shop of Audoenus Parvus, at the sign of the Golden Lily, on the street leading to Saint Jacques. 1567. This book contains the same material in the same manner as the edition of 1563. A copy of it was sent to me from the Leiden library, in which was written: "From the library of the illustrious Isaac Vossius," and on the margin Joshua Mercerus inscribed various readings gleaned from two codices.

**1570.** *The five books of divine Irenaeus, a most learned Greek writer, Bishop of Lyons, against the monstrous heresies of Valentinus and others, corrected more accurately than ever before, with the addition of the Greek [portions] which could be found; by the work and diligence of Nicolaus Gallasius, Professor of Sacred Theology, together with his annotations. A most copious index is also added.* At the shop of Joannes le Preux and Joannes Parvus. (Geneva) 1570. In this work are contained: a letter to D. Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London, in which the plan for this edition and this mission is set forth; a preface to the reader regarding the design of the entire work, and regarding the utility to be gathered from reading the ancient doctors; Greek terms which appear here and there in Irenaeus in alphabetical order; regarding the Life and writings of Irenaeus from Eusebius and Jerome; the ancient translation accurately corrected by comparing copies; the Greek of the same Irenaeus which could be found up to now, as Epiphanius had inserted it into his writings, then excerpted and converted into the Latin language, so that it might be compared with the ancient translation; summaries prefixed to individual chapters, by which whatever is essential in them is most fully declared; passages of Scripture, mention of which is made in them, are noted in the margin; annotations are added at the end, by which most obscure things are declared; some passages of Scripture are also explained, and a response is given to those who have abused the authority of this holy man against pious doctrine. But if you compare this work of Gallasius with the editions of Erasmus, you will concede that it is far superior to them. However, the Latin text is not corrected from codices, and the Greek is very often corrupt. The explanations, while sufficiently prolix, do not sufficiently illustrate obscure matters, and very many are of no great moment and contribute nothing toward correcting the text. The editor divided the fifth book, which had never before been divided into sections, into chapters.

**1571.** III. The Edition of Joannes Jacobus Grynæus. Only one year after Gallasius had published the books of Irenaeus to the public, Joannes Jacobus Grynæus, pastor of Basel, brought forth the *Opus against heresies*, which he calls "the most learned," illustrated and revised with a new translation of the first book, the arguments of the individual chapters, and an observation of variant readings. In place of the translation of the ancient interpreter, he substituted a new one, and, as he says in his preface, a much better one; that this was done badly by him, others before me have already judged. What he said, that the work was illustrated and revised with an observation of various readings, is openly false; for no variant readings are found in the margin. For which reason we consider the book of Grynæus to be less useful than the Erasmian editions.

IV. The Editions of Franciscus Feuardentius. 1575 and 1576. Massuet states in his preface that the first edition prepared by Franc. Feuardentius was printed by Nivellius in the years 1575 and 1576, and that it was not yet sufficiently purged of the vices of the previous editions. We learned the same from Dupin’s *New Library of Ecclesiastical Authors*. But neither Grabe nor I have been able to find this edition in libraries. Which matters little, since better editions by Feuardentius have not been lacking to us.

**1596.** *The five books of divine Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons and martyr, against the heresies of Valentinus and similar Gnostics, now for the second time purged of numberless errors by a diligent collation of the editors’ codices, of the oldest and most trusted manuscript codex, and of another Vatican one, and enriched with several chapters; furthermore with all the Greek fragments extant among the ancients, and some writings of St. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna and martyr, never before edited, finally with the sum of other parts of the same divine Irenaeus’s works which could be found.* Added to the individual chapters are various annotations by which the rationale of the corrections is rendered, many obscure things are illustrated, and whatever pertains to ecclesiastical antiquity, and to the confutation of both ancient and recent heresies, which could be elicited from these books, is copiously handed down. — Access also was had to the *Conflict of the Catholic Arnobius and Serapion the Egyptian concerning the triune and one God and the two natures in Christ*, never before printed. To the most illustrious prince and most reverend Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, Bishop of Metz and Strasbourg, etc. All by the study and labor of F. Franciscus Feuardentius, of the Order of Friars Minor, doctor of theology in the Paris faculty. Added is an index of Scriptures and of the more memorable matters. The rest, etc.

and more specifically on the following page. Cologne, in the Birckmann office, at the expense of Arnold Mylius. Year 1596. With the grace and privilege of His Sacred Imperial Majesty.

Dupinius has already noted that this second edition of Feuardentius, adorned with the help of two manuscripts—one of the Vatican, the other kept among the books of Jean Saint-André, canon of the Parisian Church—is much better than the former Feuardentian one; besides other things, it even contains Greek passages of Irenaeus inserted from various writers. But since Feuardentius himself explained in his *Commonitio* to the readers what had been accomplished in his edition, I would ask the readers to turn to our *Apparatus*, p. 22, and allow me to be silent on the character of the edition. Yet not even Feuardentius succeeded in restoring the text sufficiently well, nor in clarifying obscure matters with notes that were distinguished for their learning but suffered from prolixity. This edition is found in the libraries of Weimar and Jena.

1625: According to Johann Albert Fabricius (*Bibl. Graec.*, p. 79), the Feuardentius edition of 1625 was reprinted, which neither Grabe nor Massuet mention, and which I myself have not found.

1639: In the title by which the new edition is inscribed, after the words "Paris doctor of theology," the following are read: "Added to this new edition are certain other fragments of Irenaeus, taken from the library of the most eminent Cardinal Rupifucaldus, edited in Greek and Latin." Paris, 1639. With the privilege of the Most Christian King. Besides what is named in the title, nothing new was added to the edition, and it is not more corrected than the former. This book was sent to me from the library of the city of Leipzig.

1675: After the words "that could be found," regarding the enrichment of the parts, these are added to the title: "With the scholia and annotations of Jacques Billius, Fronton du Duc, and François Feuardentius, in which the method of the emendations is rendered, obscure points are illustrated, and whatever pertains to ecclesiastical antiquity is copiously explained." Paris, 1675. Otherwise, the title has the same things as are read in the editions of 1596 and 1639. This edition, expressed in less elegant type than the former, but otherwise in all respects most similar, is found in the Weimar library.

1677: The edition of Feuardentius, with all annotations and the Greek text omitted, was reprinted in the second volume of the *Bibliotheca Patrum Lugdunensis*, 1766.

V. The edition adorned by John Ernest Grabe. 1702. ^A The five books of the Father among the saints, our father Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, on the exposure and subversion of knowledge falsely so-called. Five books of Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, against all heresies. John Ernest Grabe restored no small part of the Greek text; he corrected the very ancient Latin version from four manuscript codices; he appended fragments of other lost treatises; he illustrated all things with the notes of various men and his own. What else has been accomplished in this edition is shown by the Prolegomena. Oxford, at the Sheldon Theatre, at the expense of Thomas Bennet, at the sign of the Half Moon, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, London, in the year of the Lord 1702.

(a) In his *Commonitio* to the readers, Feuardentius wrote not only too briefly but also obscurely regarding the codices whose use was granted to him. It is certain that Feuardentius used the Vatican codex and another which, it seems, was kept at Paris. The Vatican manuscript, which he alleges specifically, was perhaps the same one that Erasmus and later Latinus Latinius consulted...

^B Dupinius praises the edition of Feuardentius so highly that he denies there is any need for a new edition of Irenaeus, unless perhaps, which can scarcely be hoped for, the long and seriously missed Greek text of the *Adversus haereses* should at length be found. But Grabe has brought forth Irenaeus into the light once more, cleared of corruption with much care and incredible industry by himself. He restored the Greek and Latin text by reprinting it according to the model of the Feuardentius edition; he revised the Latin interpretation from two codices of Mercer, the Arundel and the Vossian; and he added many Greek fragments drawn both from printed writings of others and from manuscripts; he noted the variety of readings with the greatest diligence, and with no unhappy success and admirable learning he explained many obscure places. Whoever wishes to learn more accurately what the editor has achieved in this book should turn to Grabe’s own Prolegomena in our *Apparatus*, p. 43 sqq., and the review of the edition published in the *Acta Eruditorum*, 1702, p. 309.

1712:

The five books of the Father among the saints, our father Irenaeus, Bishop and Martyr of Lyon, on the exposure and subversion of knowledge falsely so-called. Five books of St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, etc.

1734: In the year 1734 the Massuet edition was brought to light again at Venice. Besides the Greek fragments discovered by Pfaff in the Turin library and several polemical writings regarding those fragments, it has nothing new; but many typographical errors are contained in the new edition.

1829: A selected collection of the Holy Fathers of the Church, embracing exquisite works both dogmatic and moral, apologetic and oratorical, under the care of D. A. B. Caillau together with D. M. N. S. Guillon. Vol. II, Paris and Brussels, by Méquignon-Havard, publisher. (Leipzig, by F. Fleischer.) 1829. In this book are found passages excerpted from the books of Irenaeus *Adv. haer.*, reprinted from the revision of Massuet.

According to Johann Drusius, *Centuria* 1 *Miscell.*, cap. 44, Matthias Launoius, formerly a senator of Antwerp, attempted a more corrected edition of Irenaeus. But we have not succeeded in being more accurately informed about his plan.

Magnus Crusius had promised a new edition of Irenaeus, augmented by new fragments taken from codices and unpublished notes. Although the design of this book and others which he had promised lacked a happy outcome, I may repeat here Crusius’ own words concerning the new edition of Irenaeus. For he says in a little book which is inscribed: *Dissertatio epistolica* to the most eminent and reverend Lord Christian Wormius, Bishop of the diocese of Zealand in Denmark, concerning certain intact writings and fragments hitherto unpublished, which he happened to find on his French, English, and German travels, and now prepared to be brought to light, and in which Magnus Crusius of Schleswig, minister of the Word of God, very kindly invites learned men to compare notes, Leipzig 1728: "The attempt," he says, "to reprint the works of Irenaeus, most necessary to all lovers of the history of the primitive Christian Church, is indeed daring; but this undertaking is encouraged by the great rarity and lack of copies of both editions, both the Anglican one of J. E. Grabe and the Gallican one of René Massuet, which sell at too dear a price even in the very lands where they were printed and are sought in vain...

...although the codex seems to have been written in the late 15th century and kept in Paris at the end of the 16th century, while the Vossian appears to have been written in Gaul at the end of the 15th century: however, it seems to me, together with Massuet, based on the various readings of the said codices, that those codices are different, and that Feuardentius did not inspect the Vossian manuscript.

(b) We omit the review of the edition of D. Massuet, which lives again in our own. *Edit. Patr.*

often desired. This purpose is supported by numerous additions by which a new edition could be signally enriched: for so many and such great fragments of the Greek text still survive, transcribed from Vatican codices (a supply of which we owe to the most worthy Laurentius Alexander Zacagnius, formerly prefect of the Vatican Library), as well as from Gallican and Anglican ones, so that very many passages could either be supplemented or emended therefrom. The industrious labor of the often-lauded Grabe, who shortly before his death had intended for public circulation his own Irenaeus, revised with second-thought care, cleared of many errors, and augmented with new annotations, also supports this; though his ^A *Vindiciae* against Renatus Massuet, which Casimir Oudin mentions in his *Commentary on Ecclesiastical Writers*, are by no means to be found among Grabe’s manuscripts. Finally, the most learned unpublished observations of Thomas Aisler, Edward Bernard, Francis Junius, Daniel Heinsius, and others, which I found annotated in their own hands and which I selected for public use lest they lie hidden any longer through sterile labor, also support it. I have also described the prologue prefixed to the manuscript Arundel codex of the Works of St. Irenaeus—which had been omitted in the editions of Grabe and Massuet—from the Library of the Royal Society of London, where that codex is preserved.

CHAPTER III. Concerning the critical apparatus of others received into the editions.

1. *Concerning the scholia of Fronto Ducaeus and Jac. Billius.* Fronto Ducaeus and Jacobus Billius (in *Sacris Observationibus* I, 33 sqq. and II, 5; Paris, 1585, edited at the end of the letters of Isidore of Pelusium) had published many scholia on Irenaeus, by which they either emended the Latin text compared with the Greek, or for the most part happily illuminated obscure passages. Billius especially seems to us worthy of praise for his extreme learning, critical acuity of intellect, and elegant manner of writing, which are conspicuous in his own observations. Feuardentius was the first to receive the scholia of these two men into an edition of Irenaeus; nor have they been neglected by Grabe, Massuet, or us; you will find most of them printed in the *Apparatus*.

II. *Concerning the observations of Heumann and Francis Junius received into this new edition.* From the library of the University of Göttingen, the edition of Erasmus Basileensis of 1560 was brought to me, which once belonged to the books of Casp. A. Heumann, Professor of Theology at Göttingen. That most learned man wrote very many emendations in the margin of the said edition, among which I found those which he had made public in *Hamburg, vermischte Bibl.*, vol. I, p. 144 sqq. Other conjectures betray a most sagacious genius; but for a provider editor, whose duty is to protect and preserve the trustworthiness and authority of codices in every way, they were mostly to be rejected; others, however, were of no value at all to one who had grasped the mind of Irenaeus and had known his manner of writing more deeply. Finally, we must mention the critical apparatus of Francis Junius, formerly Professor of Theology at Leiden. For I found in the Grand Ducal Library at Weimar an edition of Gallasius, in the margin of which both a great quantity of emendations and many Greek fragments were written. This edition once passed into the library of Marquard Gudius, who ^B wrote these things on the title page of the book regarding those annotations written by hand: “Francis Junius, Professor of Theology at Leiden, wrote down variations of readings from an ancient codex, and also supplements and Greek fragments, in his own hand in the margin of this book.” But there is reason for me to believe that Gudius was deceived by an error. Whoever is skilled in the writing style of the ancient Interpreter cannot doubt with me that the emendations of Junius flowed not from a codex, but from most sagacious judgment. For it sometimes happened that Junius, aided by elegant learning, would correct the barbarously writing Interpreter according to the style of writing used by the classic authors, as they are called. Many of the things which Junius conjectured and wrote down so beautifully and neatly on paper not thickened by glutinous water reveal so ingenious, learned, and sagacious a man that the opportunity to receive his conjectures into my notes was most pleasant for me. I regret that the annotations of Francis Junius do not exceed the end of the book. The Greek fragments were transcribed by Junius from the most ancient edition of Epiphanius. ^C In the *Supplements to the Introduction to the History of the Greek Language* of Theoph. Christ. Harles, Vol. II, p. 203, I read these things: “Various readings are inscribed in the margin (of the edition of Grynaeus), and Reinesius added many emendations by hand to his own copy, which is kept in the Zitz library. I hoped that I might be able to derive some fruits from the annotations of Reinesius, who was an otherwise most sagacious man. But hope disappointed me. For most of the things which Reinesius wrote in the margin pertain to the inscriptions of the chapters. The rest were written with so trembling a hand, it seems, and so badly, that they can scarcely be read. Those that I was able to decipher with intent eyes did not seem worthy enough to be received into my edition.”

SELECT TESTIMONIES OF THE ANCIENTS CONCERNING IRENAEUS AND HIS WRITINGS.

The Martyrs of Lyon and Vienne under M. Aurelius, in an Epistle to Pope Eleutherius, in Eusebius, *Hist. eccles.*, lib. v, cap. 4.

^D We wish you to be well in all things and always in the Lord, Father Eleutherius. We have urged our brother and colleague Irenaeus to carry these letters to you, and we ask that you hold him in high regard, as he is an emulator of the testament of Christ.

^A And if it were known to us that any man was to be conferred justice, we would have commended him to you among the first, as a presbyter of the Church (for he holds this rank).

Tertullian, Book against the Valentinians, ch. 5

Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book IV [sic], ch. 13

Idem, Book III, ch. 23

Idem, Book V, ch. 5

Idem, Book V, ch. 20

Idem, Book V, ch. 24

Finally, ch. 26

citations from them. And these are the matters that have reached our knowledge concerning Irenæus. ^A

*Epiphanius, Heresies, XXIV, § 8.* That blessed successor of the apostles, Irenæus, disputing more subtly on this subject, admirably refuted the folly of Basilides combined with equal weakness. *The same, Heresies, XXXI, § 53.* These and like things that excellent old man Irenæus discussed in the same words regarding their most vain opinions, a man altogether most thoroughly instructed in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and, if I may so say, anointed with heavenly graces for the struggle: who, with the safeguards of sincere faith and knowledge, laid low and overturned all their deceits. Which he achieved most of all in his second book and others following it, where he refuted them with a richer style; since he seemed to wish to drag a foe, as it were, cast down to the ground and overcome, and in a way to triumph over him, and to openly expose to all the impudent rather than brave audacity of the defeated trifler in provoking the struggle.

*Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses, XV, of the Illuminands.* The most impious of all heretics have whetted their tongues even against the Holy Spirit, and have dared to utter unspeakable things: just as the interpreter Irenæus wrote in his *Constitutions against Heresies*.

*Basil, book On the Holy Spirit, c. 29.* Let us hear how that Irenæus, who was close to the times of the apostles, makes mention of the Spirit in his discourse *Against Heresies*: "But those who are unbridled," etc.

*Ephrem the Syrian, in his treatise On Virtue, c. 8.* A certain one of the saints (Irenæus) declared beautifully and magnificently, teaching in this manner: "Since, therefore, it is such," etc. *Against Heresies, book V, c. 28.* ^C

*Socrates Scholasticus, at the end of his history of the martyrdom of S. Polycarp.* And these things were transcribed by Gaius from Irenæus, the disciple of Polycarp, who also had lived with Irenæus; but I, Socrates Scholasticus, have written them in Corinth from the copy of Gaius. May grace be with all.

*Jerome, in his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers.* Irenæus, at one time a presbyter of Pothinus the bishop, who ruled the Church of Lyons in Gaul, was sent to Rome as a legate by the martyrs of that same place on account of certain questions of the Church, and he carried honorable letters to Bishop Eleutherius concerning his name. Afterwards, already with Pothinus being nearly ninety, he was crowned with martyrdom for Christ, and Irenæus was substituted in his place. It is agreed that he was a disciple of Polycarp, the priest and martyr, of whom we have made mention above. He wrote five books *Against Heresies*, and a short volume *Against the Gentiles*, and another *On Discipline*, and to his brother Marcianus *On the Apostolic Preaching*, and a book of *Diverse Disputations*, and to Blastus *On Schism*, and to Florinus *On the Monarchy*, or, *That God is not the creator of evils*, and an excellent commentary *On the Octad*, in the end of which, signifying that he was near to the apostolic times, he subscribed thus: "I adjure you who transcribe this book, by the Lord Jesus Christ and by his glorious advent, in which he shall judge the living and the dead, that you compare after you have transcribed, and correct it with the greatest diligence against the exemplar from which you have written: and you shall similarly transfer this adjuration as you have found it in the exemplar." There are also current other epistles of his to Victor, Bishop of Rome, on the question of Easter, in which he warns him that he ought not easily to break the unity of the college: since Victor had believed that many bishops of Asia and the Orient, who, in accordance with the Jews, celebrated Easter on the fourteenth day of the moon, were to be condemned: in which opinion those who disagreed with them did not give their hands to Victor. He flourished especially under the Emperor Commodus, who had succeeded Marcus Antoninus Verus in the empire.

The very same words of Jerome were transcribed by Freculphus of Lisieux, *Chronicle, vol. II, book II, c. 22.* *The same in c. LXIV of Isaiah.* Of which (various monstrosities of the ancient heretics) the apostolic man Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons and martyr, writes most diligently, explaining the origins of many heresies, and especially of the Gnostics, who, through Marcus the Egyptian, deceived noble women in the Gauls, first around the Rhone, then in the Spains, mixing pleasure with their fables, and claiming for their own ignorance the name of knowledge. And in *Epistle 53*, al. 29, to the widow Theodora, vol. IV of the new edition: Irenæus reports, a man of the apostolic times, and a disciple of Papias, the auditor of the evangelist John, bishop...

of the Church of Lyons, that a certain Marcus, descending from the stock of the Gnostic Basilides, first came to the Gauls, and infected those parts through which the Rhone and Garonne flow with his doctrine, and especially that he seduced noble women, promising them certain hidden mysteries, and winning to himself their love through magical arts and the secret pleasure of their bodies; passing thence across the Pyrenees, he occupied the Spains; and this was his aim, that he might covet the houses of the wealthy, and therein especially the women, who are led away by various desires, ever learning, and never arriving at the knowledge of the truth. This he wrote about three hundred years ago; and he wrote it in those books which he composed against all heresies in a most learned and eloquent style.

*Augustine, Book I against Julian the Pelagian, ch. 3 and 7.* You who so frequently oppose to us the name of the Manichaeans, see now, if you are awake, what and what manner of men, and how great defenders of the Catholic faith you dare to assail with such detestable slander. — Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, was not far from the times of the apostles. He says: "He is not otherwise saved from the wound of the ancient serpent," etc. (lib. iv, cap. 2). Do you see this ancient man of God, what he thinks of the wound of the ancient serpent? If you demand those witnesses, of whom some of their writings can also be found, and whose doctrine is illustrious, behold there is present a memorable and venerable gathering and consensus of his witnesses. Saint Irenæus says that the ancient serpent's wound is healed by the faith of Christ and the cross, and that we were as it were bound with chains by the sin of the protoplast, etc.

*Justin, in the Response to Question 115 to the Orthodox.* ^D The blessed Irenæus, ^A martyr and Bishop of Lyons, in the discourse *On Pascha*, etc. See the fragments of the lost treatises of St. Irenæus, fragm. VII.

*Theodoret, Dialogue 1, p. 33 B.* Irenæus enjoyed the teaching of Polycarp; and he became a luminary of the Gauls of the West.

*The same, in the Preface to Heretical Fables.* I have collected the myths of the ancient heresies from the ancient teachers of the Church, of Justin the philosopher and martyr, and of Irenæus, who cultivated and illuminated the Celtic nations.

*The same, Book I of Heretical Fables, ch. 5.* I will bring forth the testimony of Irenæus, an apostolic man who illuminated the West. He speaks thus, etc. These things, then, the admirable Irenæus said of them.

*Gregory of Tours, Book I, History of the Franks, ch. 29.* The most blessed Irenæus, successor of the martyr Pothinus, who was sent to this city (Lyons) by the blessed Polycarp, shone with admirable virtue; he who, in a short space of time, by his preaching, restored the city almost entirely to the Christian faith. But when the persecution came, the devil stirred up such wars there through the tyrant, and such a multitude of Christians was slaughtered there for the confession of the divine name that rivers of Christian blood ran through the streets; of whom we could collect neither the number nor the names. For the Lord wrote them in the book of life. The executioner, having subjected the blessed Irenæus to various torments in his presence, dedicated him to Christ the Lord through martyrdom.

*The same, Book I, On the Glory of the Martyrs, ch. 5.* Having been consumed in martyrdom, the glorious bishop Pothinus, who as priest presided over the city of Lyons, was carried to heaven by the merit of his noble struggle. Worthy of him in merit and holiness, Irenæus succeeded him as bishop, and he too was finished by martyrdom. He is buried in the crypt of the Basilica of St. John under the altar; and on one side Epipodius is buried, and on the other Alexander, the martyr.

*Pope Gregory I, Book XI of the Register, Epist. 56 (new ed.) to Ætherius, Bishop of Lyons.* The deeds or writings of the blessed Irenæus are what we have long sought with solicitude; but hitherto nothing could be found from them.

*Anastasius Sinaita, Book VII of Anagogical Contemplations on the Hexaemeron, tom. IX of the Bibliotheca Patrum. - From the Colbertine codex 2255.* ^B Do you hear that from the time when there entered, as it were a certain divine nature, the divine insufflation into the earth-born body of Adam, the Scripture immediately did not call him by a simple name, but, as if he were a composite Christ, called him God and Lord; just as we have found with great accuracy by searching the precise, unadulterated, and ancient copies, in those which were noted by Clement, and Irenæus, and Philo the philosopher, and by him who compiled the Hexapla.

*And a little later, p. 893.* The most ancient of the interpreters of the Churches; I mean, indeed, Philo the philosopher, and contemporary of the apostles, and Papias the great, the student of John the Evangelist, the Hierapolite, and Irenæus the Lyonnaise, and Justin the martyr and philosopher, Pantaenus the Alexandrian, and Clement the Stromateus, and their associates.

^A Clement the Stromateus and his associates spiritually contemplated the things written concerning Paradise, referring them to the Church of Christ.

*Lib. x, p. 910.* Those who take this (sentiment, "And the serpent said to the woman") historically rather than spiritually, cleaving to the literal sense, I know not how they are able to resolve the propositions of Irenæus against them. For he says, arming himself against the heresy of the lewd Ophites: "How is it possible," etc.

*Maximus, Schol. in cap. 9 Dionysii De divin. nomin.* "I have multiplied visions, and in the hands of the prophets I have been likened." That is, I am the same as myself, as Irenæus says in the books *Against Heresies*.

*Idem, Schol. in cap. 7 De eccles. hierarch.* Papias, in the fourth book of his *Expositions of the Lord's Oracles*, spoke of the delights that would be in the resurrection through foods, etc. And Irenæus of Lyons, in the fifth book *Against Heresies*, says the same thing, and produces the aforementioned Papias as a witness of the things said by him. ^B

*Beda in Martyrologio, IV Kalend. Junii.* At Lyons in Gaul, the memory of Saint Irenæus, bishop, is celebrated, who was crowned with glorious martyrdom along with nearly all the people of his city under the Emperor Severus, and was buried by the priest Zacharias in the crypt of the Basilica of Saint John the Baptist, beneath the altar.

*Photius in Bibliotheca, cod. 120.* We have read the volume of Irenæus, bishop of Lyons (Lyons is a city of Celtic Gaul), inscribed as follows: *Five books of the refutation and overthrow of the falsely-named knowledge*, that is, *Against Heresies*. Of these, the first, dealing with Valentinus and beginning from his impious error, goes back as if stepping backward, and having repeated the origin from higher up, it narrates further from Simon Magus to Tatian; who, having been the first disciple of Justin the Martyr, later fell headlong into the error of heresy. He discourses, moreover, about those who are strictly called Gnostics, and about the Cainites, exposing their abominable dogmas; and this is the subject of the first book. ^C The second contains an overthrow of those who dogmatize impiously among the heretics. The third brings forward various testimonies from Holy Scripture against them. The fourth dissolves the difficulties proposed by the heretics. And the fifth demonstrates that all things that were said and done by the Lord through parables—from the rest of His saving doctrine, and from the Apostolic Epistles—are most suitable for the refutation of heretical deceits. Many and various other writings and letters of the same divine Irenæus are also circulated, although in some of them the certain truth of ecclesiastical dogmas seems to be adulterated by spurious arguments, which it is necessary to note. They say he was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a holy martyr and Bishop of Smyrna, and a presbyter of Pothinus, to whom he also succeeded in the bishopric of Lyons. Victor, moreover, was presiding over the Roman pontificate at that time, to whom Irenæus often wrote, exhorting him not to excommunicate some from the Church because of the controversy regarding Easter. ^D

*Ado Viennensis in Chronico, aetate sexta, ad annum 181 et 195.* Irenæus, bishop of Lyons, is esteemed. Severus Pertinax, prompted by the fifth (horrendous) persecution, tortured the Christians, and many of the saints were crowned with martyrdom throughout various provinces. At that time, Irenæus of Lyons also completed his martyrdom with a great multitude.

*Usuardus in Martyrologio, IV Kalend. Junii.* At Lyons in Gaul, of Saint Irenæus, bishop and martyr; who, as Jerome writes, was a disciple of the blessed priest and martyr Polycarp, and close to the times of the apostles. Afterwards, however, under the persecution of Severus, he was crowned with glorious martyrdom along with nearly all the people of his city.

*Menæum Græcorum, ad d. 23 Augusti.* On the same day, the memory of the holy hieromartyr Irenæus, bishop of Lyons. Irenæus hastens to leave the earth by the sword; For he is consumed by a burning desire for the heavens.

^A He lived in the times of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, an ancient man, a successor of the blessed apostles, having served as bishop of the Lyons in Gaul. Who left many books to the Church, confirming our faith; from which those who came after derived the starting points for the interpretation of the divine Scriptures.

He, after Pothinus, bishop of the aforementioned city, who struggled for Christ, having received the helm and having snatched many by many words and exhortations from the error of idols, and having brought many martyrs to Christ, finally he himself, having been perfected by the sword by the persecutors, is crowned.

Anonymous author of the Martyrdom of St. Ferreolus the priest, and Ferruccio the deacon, and their companions, in Surius, Vol. VIII, on the 16th day of June.

At the same time that the high priest and martyr of the Church of Lyons, St. Irenæus, bishop of Christ, had publicly given his preaching in Gaul as an eternal light and splendor of justice, and had assiduously declared the word of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, he sent the holy priest Ferreolus and the deacon Ferruccio to the city of Besançon, truly as a very strong foundation for founding the Church upon the rock of Christ: and as the corner-stone of the heavenly bridegroom, and as pearls they shone brightly, through whom the eternal name and the splendor of glory might shine upon the Gentiles who were lying in darkness; so that by their preaching they might fly to the grace of baptism in whom was the wondrous virtue of Christ. For they were vigorous in word and wisdom, clearly demonstrating to the people an angelic countenance and one apt for the services of the Lord. The catholic faith was increased; Christians rejoiced daily because the devil was confounded and defeated; who, forsaking idols, followed the footprints of Christ. Similarly, St. Irenæus directed the priest Felix, and the deacons Fortunatus and Achilleus, from his own side to the city of Valence before his own glorious martyrdom. Upon their entering, the Lord bestowed such grace upon His athletes, that that multitude of pagans, who were lying in darkness, loved them with the fullest affection.

Excerpt from the Refutation of the Confession of Cyril Lucaris, Patriarch of Constantinople, by the author Meletius Syrigus, Hieromonk, Doctor of the Great Church, who completed that work in the year 1640 (a).

^B Irenæus indeed in book V *Against Heresies*, chap. 34, disputing against those who denied Christ to be the Son of the Creator of all things, and the maker of this world, says thus: "But how will it be known to them that that bread over which thanks have been given is the body of His Lord, and the chalice, His blood, if they do not declare Him to be the Son of the Creator of the world, that is, His Word, by whom the wood brings forth fruit, and the fountains gush forth, and which firstly brings forth grass, then the ear, then the full wheat in the ear?" inferring through these, from the omnipotent strength of Jesus, which shines forth in the creation of created things, the transmutation of bread into His body. And in the same chapter: "How again do they say that our flesh comes into corruption and does not receive life, which is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord?" And a little later: "For just as the bread which is from the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is now no longer common bread, but Eucharist, consisting of two things, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, receiving the Eucharist, are no longer ^C corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection." If therefore our bodies become incorruptible by the very perception of the Eucharist; then not only the soul becomes a participant in Christ's body, which is in heaven, through faith; but the bodies themselves, which are freed from corruption through the Eucharist, participate in that same body which exists in the Eucharist, which differs from that which is in the heavens only in the manner. If, however, after consecration it is no longer simple bread, but Eucharist, consisting of an earthly and a heavenly thing; it has, therefore, in itself that heavenly body, of which it also consists. And if it is true what he says, that just as common bread by divine invocation passes into Eucharist, so also our bodies, having shared in this, are transmuted into incorruption; and our bodies are properly and truly made immortal: then surely, properly and truly, common bread also is transmuted through the blessing into the body of Christ.

PROLOGUE TO THE BOOKS AGAINST HERESIES

PROLOGUE TO THE BOOKS AGAINST HERESIES, BY THE AUTHOR, AS IT APPEARS, FLORUS, DEACON OF LYONS

ARGUMENT. — I. Let it be inquired first who Irenaeus is, or with what mind he wrote; II. then what is contained in his five books; III. then from a fivefold cause it is deduced why these books are being edited anew.

I. ^A Irenaeus, bishop of the city of Lyons, instructed by Polycarp, the disciple of the apostle John, wrote five books to a certain bishop, having been requested by him, Against the Heretics, which were very necessary; in which, like a wise architect and a provident physician, he perfectly instructs us concerning the heresies and the heresiarchs; first detecting their wicked dogmas and perverse works, so that no one might fall into similar examples of unbelief. For, just as a physician cannot cure a sick man unless he first recognizes the cause of the disease, so it was necessary for him first to recognize the heretical pests, with their causes, so that afterwards, with competent medicine, he could more effectively oppose them.

II. In the first place, therefore, he explains the heresies themselves, assigning to each its original causes, that is, from what source they received the material for their existence. During which, he sets forth even the unknown names of fictitious things, which they themselves called Virtues, and worshipped as if they were gods. As for the multitude of these names, O reader, suffer the boredom cast upon you with patience, to be compensated in the end by the abundant sweetness of philosophical reasonings and divine authorities. Afterwards he commemorates the heresiarchs themselves by name, and what or how much, and whence each disciple may have added to the inventions of his own masters, he consequently annexes. Then, approaching each heresy one by one, and, in the manner of a most approved philosopher, having assumed peremptory arguments from the natures of things, he discerns the true from the false; he violently tears away the cloak of sanctity, drawn over wickedness; where there is poison in honey, where a fox hides in the guise of a dove, he inquires with curious discussion. In this way, the heretical deceit, having been most artfully detected in its filthiest phantasies and openly exposed to the eyes of the faithful, finally roots out, casts away, and tramples underfoot the poisonous shoots, inserted by adulterous planting, with a manifold array of divine authorities. Through the occasion of this same intention, he not only corrects what has been corrupted by the heretics, but furthermore, for the bulwark of true faith, faithfully and clearly expounds many things from the New Testament.

III. ^B There are, however, five causes which do not allow the expense and labor of transcribing this book, as we think, to be considered superfluous. First, because it is very rare, owing to a silence regarding heresies—a silence which now, with no one compelling it, has been interrupted more vehemently than usual. Second, because its author is ancient, and existed near to the apostolic times, and is therefore worthy of belief. Third, because he did not learn everything he writes about the heretics through report, but heard many of these things being taught and saw them being practiced by them in person, as being their [original-script column: see facsimile], that is, a contemporary and a fellow-provincial. Fourth, because it is known that no one has argued more fully or more clearly concerning the heresies of that time. Fifth, because the weapons of the militant Church, neglected on account of the occasion of some peace, need to be repaired more than usual, because, with such a rare defender, the heretical tyranny begins to rage against it just as cruelly as it begins to be puffed up with pride.

OF OUR HOLY FATHER IRENAEUS, BISHOP OF LYONS AND MARTYR, DETECTION AND OVERTHROW OF THE FALSELY-NAMED GNOSTICISM, FIVE BOOKS. OF SAINT IRENAEUS, BISHOP OF LYONS AND MARTYR, DETECTION AND OVERTHROW OF THE FALSELY-NAMED GNOSTICISM, OR AGAINST HERESIES, FIVE BOOKS. ANALYSIS OF THE FIRST BOOK.

What the heresy of Valentinus and his followers is, what their false opinions are, and what the vain dreams of these deluded men have been, Irenaeus reveals with the greatest diligence and explains most accurately in the first book of this work. But because he was quite certain that these same Valentinians had founded their heresy upon the errors of other heretics who had hitherto attempted to undermine the Christian faith, he therefore, in one and the same work, examines in detail and refutes the false opinions and the depraved and perverse dogmas of all who preceded Valentinus.

For this reason, he prefixes a brief exordium setting forth the argument of his work, by whose encouragement and even command he was prompted, and for what reason he was moved to write it. Then, addressing the subject itself, he sets before our eyes the errors of the Valentinians, and especially the story of the thirty Aeons—or gods—asserted by them, together with their marriages, their order and division, their genealogies, and their teachings as to how other created things proceeded from them.

After this, he expounds what the true doctrine of the Catholic Church is, and teaches that it is one and the same faith and doctrine in all the Churches dispersed throughout the whole world; whereas the opinions and sentiments of the Valentinians are various, disagreeing among themselves, and almost infinite. This he proves from their own adherents and patrons—namely, Secundus, Epiphanes, Ptolemaeus, Colorbasus, and others who professed their sect and heresies, as well as that of Valentinus.

Furthermore, in order to make manifest that this Valentinian heresy flowed from the corrupt sources of earlier heretics, having first explained the Rule of Truth, he clearly and briefly sets forth what were the heresies of Simon Magus, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, Carpocrates, Cerinthus, the Ebionites, the Nicolaitans, Cerdo, Marcion, Tatian, and various Gnostics, the Barbeliotes, the Sethians, the Ophites, and finally the Caianites, together with their impious and shameful dogmas. And from this enumeration of the monstrous portents of the wandering human mind, he concludes that the Valentinian heresy, which had been forged and compacted from them, could be most easily known and refuted by all.

PROSPECTUS OF THE VALENTINIAN SYSTEM

The Pleroma, Good, Invisible and Spiritual.

Bythus and Sige; Nus and Veritas. The First Pythagorean Root of all things. The First-begotten Quaternity. Verbum and Vita. Homo and Ecclesia. The Duodecad. The Decad. The First-begotten root and substance of all things. The Octonad.

Paracletus and Pistis. Patricos and Elpis. Metricos and Agape. Enos and Synesis. Ecclesiasticus and Macariotes. Theletos and Sophia.

Bythius and Mixis. Ageratos and Henosis. Autophyes and Hedone. Acinetos and Syncrasis. Monogenes and Macaria.

Christus and Spiritus Sanctus.

Jesus or the Savior, fashioned from the symbols of all the Aeons. Horos or the Boundary, Stauros. Angels, the attendants of the Savior. Lutrothes, Carpistes.

The Pleroma, Good, Invisible and Spiritual.

The Enthymesis of Sophia, called Mother Achamoth.

The Passions of Achamoth: Tristitia (Grief). Metus (Fear). Stupor and Anxietas (Stupefaction and Anxiety).

The Passions of Achamoth: Conversio (Conversion). Demiurgus. Archangels and Angels. The Seven Heavens. Spirituale Semen (Spiritual Seed). Animalis Substantia (Animal Substance). Medietas (The Median). Cosmocrator or the Devil and demons. Corporea mundi elementa (Corporeal elements of the world): Ignis (Fire), Aër (Air), Aqua (Water), Terra (Earth).

The Passions of Achamoth.

BOOK FIRST

^A 1. Inasmuch as some men reject the truth and introduce false speeches and empty genealogies, which rather provide questions than the edification of God which is in faith, 2 and by means of them, a likeness which is craftily composed, they pervert the sense of those who are less experienced, and lead them into captivity, falsifying the sayings of the Lord, and becoming bad interpreters of those things which have been well said, and they overthrow many, drawing them away under the pretext of knowledge from Him who formed and ordered this universe, as if they were able to show something higher and greater than the God who made heaven and earth and all things that are contained in their compass.

INTERPRETATION OF BILLIUS

1. Since some, having rejected the truth, introduce empty speeches and genealogies—which indeed provide questions, as the Apostle says, rather than the edification of God which is in faith—and by means of plausibility, craftily brought together, they seduce the mind of the inexperienced, and by corrupting the divine oracles, and by wrongly interpreting those things which were rightly said, they lead them captive, and by the pretext of knowledge overthrow many, and draw them away from Him who established and adorned this universe; just as if they could show something more sublime and more excellent than the God who made heaven and earth, and all things which are contained in their compass.

They successfully entice the simple-minded through the art of language toward a mode of inquiry, but miserably destroy them by constructing a blasphemous and impious opinion concerning the Creator, in that they have no power to distinguish the false from the true.

2. ^A Error does not display itself in its own likeness, lest, being unmasked, it should become exposed; but being artfully adorned with a persuasive covering, it makes a show of appearing even truer than the truth itself by means of an external display for the benefit of the more inexperienced—just as it has been said by one better than us concerning such people: That a glass [vessel], through artistic imitation, insults the precious stone which is the emerald, and which is highly valued by some, whenever there is no one present capable of testing it and proving, by artistic skill, that which has been cunningly ^B contrived. For when copper is mixed into silver, who will easily be able to test it thoroughly?

BILLI’S INTERPRETATION

^C ...certainly, and by an artifice of words applied for the purpose of persuasion, they entice those whose intellect is simple into a mode of inquiry, but otherwise they ignorantly and perversely bring destruction upon them; precisely on this account, because they induce them to hold a contumelious and impious opinion regarding that supreme Creator of all things, so that they are unable to distinguish the false from the true.

...it does not show itself separately, so that it might otherwise be clearly seen like a garment pulled away; but being cunningly adorned in a seductive cloak, it achieves this, that through external appearance it seems, even to the less expert, to be truer than truth itself: just as it has been said by a certain person more excellent than I concerning such men, that glass, crafted by the industry of art into the likeness of an emerald (otherwise a noble stone and of great value among some), brings disgrace upon it, since there is no one at hand who can examine it and, by artistic skill, detect that which has been craftily made. Moreover, when copper is mixed with silver... ^D

who can easily and without corruption test this? Therefore, lest some, through our fault, be snatched away like sheep by wolves, failing to recognize them ^A because of the outer covering of sheep’s skin—from which the Lord warned us to beware—speaking like us, but thinking differently, I considered it necessary, having read the commentaries of those who are, as they say, disciples of Valentinus, and having even met with some of them and apprehended their opinion, to make known to you, beloved, the monstrous and deep mysteries which not all can grasp, because not all have emptied out their brain. Thus, having learned them, you may make them clear to all those with you, and exhort them to guard themselves against the ^B abyss of madness and of the blasphemy against Christ. And, as far as lies within our power, we shall briefly and clearly set forth the opinion of those who now teach falsely, I mean those around Ptolemaeus, which is as it were a blossom of the school of Valentinus, and we shall provide starting points, according to our mediocrity, for refuting it, by demonstrating the things said by them to be strange and inconsistent with the truth, although we are neither accustomed to writing nor trained in the art of rhetoric.

^A But inasmuch as love urges us both to disclose to you and to all those who are with you those doctrines which up until now were hidden, but which now, by the grace of God, have come to light—for there is nothing covered which shall not be revealed, and hidden which shall not be known—you will not require from us, who dwell among the Celts and are for the most part occupied with a barbaric tongue, the art of eloquence, which we have not learned, nor the power of a writer, which we have not practiced, nor the embellishment of words, nor the persuasiveness, which we do not know. But you shall receive those things which have been written to you with love, simply, truly, and in an unpolished manner, and you shall also add to them yourself, according to the love you have, as one ^B more capable than we are. Taking them as it were as seeds and foundations from us, and in the breadth of your mind, you will cause those things which were said by us in few words to be fruitful in much measure, and you will powerfully present to those who are with you the things which were weakly related by us. And just as we have been ambitious, since you have long been seeking to learn their doctrine, not only to make it manifest to you, but also to provide provisions for demonstrating it to be false, so also you, with similar zeal, will minister to the rest, according to the grace given to you by the Lord, so that men may no longer be led astray by their specious arguments, ^C providing them with ready support or assistance.

CHAPTER FIRST.

^A 1. They say that there is in the invisible and ineffable heights a perfect Aeon, who pre-existed: him they call Proarche, Propator, and Bythus. He is invisible and incomprehensible. Being thus incomprehensible and invisible, sempiternal and unbegotten, he existed in silence and deep tranquility throughout infinite aeons of time. And they say that Ennoea co-existed with him, whom they also call Charis and Sige. And that at some point this Bythus, the Beginning of all things, purposed to emit from himself this beginning ^B and to project it, as a seed, into Sige (who co-existed with him), as if into a womb. Having received this seed and become pregnant, she brought forth Nous, who was like and equal to him who had emitted him, and alone capable of containing the greatness of the Father. They call this Nous Monogenes.

**BILLI'S INTERPRETATION.** What has been said to us, you will set forth more fully, and those things which we have narrated feebly, you will declare with strength to those with whom you are accustomed to associate. And just as we, at your persistent urging, have endeavored to understand what their opinion was—studying not only to make it clear for you, but to provide the resources to expose its falsehood—so you too, according to the grace which you have received from the Lord, shall promptly and with eager zeal serve others, so that men may no longer be led astray by their specious arguments, prepared for the purpose of persuasion. It is, however, of this kind:

^C **CHAPTER FIRST.** 1. They assert that there is a certain perfect Aeon existing in those heights, whom neither eyes can perceive nor words can name, whom they call Proarche, Propator, and Bythus. Him, moreover—since he was incomprehensible and invisible, as well as sempiternal and unbegotten—to have remained in infinite aeons of time in supreme quiet and tranquility. With him also existed Ennoea, whom they call Charis and Sige. This Bythus, furthermore, at some time, purposed in his mind to bring forth the beginning of all things, and that this production, which he had determined in his mind, he had deposited as a seed into Sige, who was one with him, not otherwise than into a womb. And she, having received this seed, and having been made pregnant, brought forth Nous, equal to his parent.

^A and equal in form; and they say that he alone was capable of the Father's greatness. Him they call Nous, and Monogenes, and Father, and the Beginning of all things. Together with him, they say, Truth was also brought forth; and this they call the first and originative Pythagorean Tetrad, which they also call the root of all things. For there is Bythus and Sige, then Nous and Truth. And this Monogenes, perceiving the purpose for which he had been brought forth, brought forth himself also Logos and Zoe, the father of all those who were to come after him, and the beginning and formation of the entire Pleroma ^B. From Logos and Zoe, they say, were brought forth by conjunction Anthropos and Ecclesia; and this is the originative Ogdoad, the root and substance of all things, which among them is called by four names: Bythus, and Nus, and Logos, and Anthropos. For each of them, they say, is male-female, as follows: First, that the Propatar was united by conjunction to his own Ennoia; then Monogenes, that is to say Nous, to Aletheia; and

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION

^A and whom they call Grace and Silence; ^B and the Unigenitus, that is, Nous, with Aletheia, that is, Truth; and the Logos with Zoe; and Anthropos with Ecclesia.

2. But these Aeons, ^A wishing also to glorify the Father from their own [abundance], emitted offspring in conjugation: the Logos and Zoe, after Anthropos and Ecclesia had been emitted, [produced] another ten Aeons, whose names they say are these: Bythius and Mixis, Ageratus and Henosis, Autophyes and Hedone, Acinetus and Syncrasis, Monogenes and Macaria. These are the ten Aeons which they assert were emitted from Logos and Zoe. And Anthropos himself, together with Ecclesia, emitted twelve Aeons, to whom these names are given: Paracletus and Pistis, Patricos and Elpis, Metricos and Agape, Ainus and Synesis, Ecclesiasticus and Macariotes, Theletus and Sophia.

3. These are the thirty Aeons of their error, ^B who are silent and unknown. According to them, this invisible and spiritual Pleroma is divided into three parts: into an ogdoad, a decade, and a duodecade. And for this reason, they say that the Savior—for they do not even wish to call Him Lord—did nothing in public for thirty years, thereby demonstrating the mystery of these Aeons. And [they also use] the parable of the laborers who were...

BILLII INTERPRETATION

...female, in this manner: For they say that the first Propatore joined in the bond of marriage with his Ennoea, whom they also call Charis and Sige; then Monogenes, that is, Nous, with Truth; the Word with Life; and finally, Man with the Church.

2. Wishing to glorify the Father from their own ^C abundance, they produced conjugal offspring: namely, the Word and Life, after they had produced Man and the Church, brought forth ten other Aeons into being, whose names they say are these: Bythius and Mixis, Ageratus and Henosis, Autophyes and Hedone, Acinetus and Syncrasis, Monogenes and Macaria. These are the ten Aeons which they claim arose from the Word and Life. And man himself, together with the Church, produced ten Aeons, to whom these names are assigned by them: Paracletos and Pistis, Patricos and Elpis, Metricus and Agape, Ainus and Phronesis, Ecclesiasticus and Macariotes, Theletus and Sophia.

3. These are the thirty Aeons of these erring men, who they claim are shrouded in silence and unknown to anyone: this invisible and spiritual Pleroma of theirs, divided in three, into the Ogdoad, the Decade, and the Duodecade.

^A They say that in the parable of the laborers sent into the vineyard, these thirty Aeons are most clearly set forth. For some are sent about the first hour, others about the third, others about the sixth, others about the ninth, and others about the eleventh. If, therefore, the aforementioned hours are added together, they make up the number thirty. For one, and three, and six, and nine, and eleven, make thirty. They wish it to be understood that the Aeons are signified by the hours; and that these are the great, wonderful, and ineffable mysteries which they themselves bring forth, and if any of the things said in the Scriptures in a general sense can be adapted and likened to their fabrication.

CHAPTER II

The Father is known only to the Only-Begotten. The emulation, perturbation, peril, and formless birth of Sophia. She is restored by Horos. Who is Horos? Christ and the Holy Spirit are sent for the consummation of the Aeons. Jesus is produced from the assemblage of the Aeons.

^B They say that the Propator is known to the Only-Begotten who was born from him, that is, to Nous; but that he is invisible and incomprehensible to all others. And Nous alone, according to them, delighted in beholding the Father, and rejoiced as he contemplated his immeasurable magnitude, and considered communicating this magnitude to the other Aeons: how great and how vast he was, and how…

[Billii Interpretatio]

...he was. And for this reason they claim that the Savior (for they do not even please to call him Lord) did nothing openly for thirty years, and in the light of men, in order, forsooth, that he might demonstrate the mystery of these Aeons. Furthermore, they contend that in that parable regarding the laborers sent to the vineyard, these Aeons are indicated most openly. For some are sent about the first hour, some about the third, some about the sixth, some about the ninth, some about the eleventh. Moreover, all these hours, when gathered into one, fill out the number thirty. For one, and three, and six, and nine, and eleven make thirty. They wish for the Aeons to be signified by the hours; and that these are those huge and wondrous mysteries, not to be uttered to the common folk, which they themselves offer; and if there is anything anywhere in the sacred letters which can be adapted and compared to their invention.

CHAPTER II

^C And regarding their Propator, they say that he could be neither seen nor comprehended by any others than the Only-Begotten only. Therefore, according to their opinion, Nous alone, contemplating the Father, lived in great pleasure, and contemplating his immense magnitude, rejoiced, and pondered on explaining the amplitude of the Father to the other Aeons also, namely how great and how huge he was, ^D and how…

^A he was without beginning, and incapable, and incomprehensible to be seen. But Sige held him back by the will of the Father, because she wished to bring them all to the understanding and desire of searching for their aforementioned Propatōr (Forefather). And the rest of the Aeons likewise quietly longed to see the producer of their seed, and to contemplate that root which is without beginning.

2. But the last and youngest of the ^B duodecade, who had been brought forth by Anthrōpos (Man) and Ecclesia (Church), that is, Sophia, leaped forth; and she suffered a passion without the intercourse of her spouse, Thelētus. This passion had indeed begun among those concerning Nous (Mind) and Aletheia (Truth), but it flowed down to this one, having been turned aside—under the pretext of love, but in reality [impelled] by rashness, because she did not commune with the perfect Father, as Nous did. The passion, moreover, was a searching after the Father; for she wished, as they say, to apprehend his magnitude. Then, not being able to do so, because she was attempting an impossible task, and having become involved in very great agony ^C due to both the magnitude of the abyss and the unsearchableness of the Father, and her longing towards him, she was continually extending herself further forward, until she would have been swallowed up by his sweetness and dissolved into the whole essence, had she not happened upon that power which supports and guards all things outside of the ineffable magnitude.

BILLI'S INTERPRETATION

2. That last Aeon, and the youngest in birth, from the duodecade which had sprung from Anthrōpos and Ecclesia—that is, Sophia—leaped far forward, and contracted a passion without the intercourse of her spouse Thelētus. This, although it had taken its beginning in those who were around Nous and Truth, at length fell upon this depraved Aeon, under the pretext of love, but in reality impelled by rashness, because she had not in the least communed with the perfect Father, as Nous had. This passion, however, was nothing other than the investigation of the Father. For she desired, as they say, to possess [the knowledge of] his magnitude. Since she could not attain this, therefore... ^D [index: entries preserved]

^A she was checked and supported by that power: and having with difficulty turned back into herself, and being convinced that the Father is incomprehensible, she laid aside her former desire, together with the passion which had supervened from that wonder of astonishment. 3. Some of them also fabricate a story ^B about this passion and the conversion of Sophia: that having undertaken an impossible and incomprehensible matter, she brought forth an unformed substance, such as it was in her nature, as a female, to bring forth; and that having contemplated it, she was first grieved because of the imperfection of the generation; then she feared lest even it should not possess existence perfectly; then she was in an ecstasy, and at a loss, seeking the cause, and in what manner ^C she might conceal the event. Being thus established, and supported, and finding it difficult to turn back to herself, and having been persuaded that the Father is incomprehensible, she laid aside her former purpose, along with the passion which had arisen from that stupendous miracle.

3. Some of them, however, thus in a certain way fabricate the passion and conversion of Sophia: that having undertaken an impossible and incomprehensible task, she brought forth an unformed essence, such as it was in her nature, as a female, to bring forth; and having perceived this, she was first grieved because of the imperfection of the birth; then she feared lest it should not even possess existence perfectly; then she was in an ecstasy, and at a loss, and seeking the cause and in what manner she had undertaken an impossible thing. And while she was lingering in extreme anxiety, both because of the magnitude of the depth and the unsearchable nature of the Father, and also because of her singular benevolence toward him, she was always extending herself toward things beyond, by means of his sweetness, until at last she was absorbed and would have been reduced to his entire essence, had she not encountered that power and faculty which supports all things and guards them outside the ineffable magnitude. This power they call Horos, by whom they say she was restrained and supported; and that at length, returning to herself and persuading herself that the Father is incomprehensible, she cast off her former thought, together with that passion which had arisen from that stupendous miracle. ^D

^A And having come to be among the passions, she sought to take a turn, and attempted to return to the Father, and up to a certain point she dared, but then she became weak and became a suppliant of the Father. And the other Eons joined with her in supplication, and especially the Nous. From this they say that the substance of matter took its first beginning from ignorance, and from grief, and from fear, and from astonishment.

4. But the Father puts forth the aforementioned Horos on these [matters] through the Only-Begotten in his own image, unyoked and unwomanized. ^B For the Father [is] sometimes with the conjunction of Sige, but at other times also above male and female.

BILLI’S INTERPRETATION

For regarding her as having undertaken an impossible and incomprehensible thing, she brought forth a formless essence, such a nature as a female could. When she had perceived this, she was first affected with grief on account of the inchoate fetus, and then she feared, lest it should not even fully and perfectly have being; and afterward she went as if out of her power, and remained in great perplexity, seeking the cause of this thing, and in what manner she might conceal that which had happened. But being long exercised in these affections, she at length took on a better mind, and attempted to ascend to the Father. But when she had made the attempt for some time, she grew faint, and became a suppliant to the Father; and the other Æons also besought him with her, and especially Nun. And hence at last they narrate that the substance of matter drew its origin, namely from ignorance, and from grief, and from fear, and from astonishment.

4. But the Father [puts forth] this Horos, of whom we have spoken above, through the Only-Begotten, afterwards in his own image, ^C unyoked and unwomanized. ^D In the image of male-female. Following whom, Billius: in his image destitute of a spouse, and male-female. But it fights against right reason that that should be attributed to an image which merely belongs to persons. For who could bear that an image be called destitute of a spouse, and male-female? I would rather, therefore, with the English editor, blame the diligence of the interpreters than the sincerity of the Greek text. Hence, therefore, unyoked, unwomanized. But unwomanized is hardly understood; I would translate it with Grabius, "male-female," or "woman-male"; for that is not the meaning of this word. The common lexicons themselves teach that it does not mean "effeminate" or "womanish." But what it is for Horos to be neither "womanish" nor "effeminate," Theodoret will teach: "He puts forth the Limit," he says, "without a female spouse," that is, in no way united with a female by the bond of marriage. There was an exception, for "each of the Aons is yoked to a female," for each of the other Eons is conjoined with a female; or, as Irenæus speaks, "he was," that is, each of them by twos, male with female, were conjoined by the bond of marriage. And so, for Horos in Irenæus to be unyoked and unwomanized is nothing else than that same one in Theodoret to be "not with a female spouse," bound by no bond of marriage with a female, as are the other Aons: so that the word unwomanized is just a slightly more distinct explanation of the prior "unyoked," and here sounds as "not bound to a woman." And this perfectly responds to the following words of Irenæus. He had said that Horos was made in the very image of the Father, with no bond of marriage with a female. Which he immediately explains: "Because," he says, "the Valentinians sometimes conjoin the Father with the spouse Sige, but at other times they extol him above the condition of the male and above the female." And in this he made Horos like unto himself, because he is free from the laws of marriage by which the other Aons are held, just as the Father himself is sometimes shown to be free from them.

They call this Horos by the names Stauros (the Cross), Lytrotes (the Redeemer), Carpistes (the Reaper), Horothetes (the Determiner), and Metagogeus (the Conductor). ^A Through this Horos, they say, Sophia was cleansed and strengthened, and restored to her consort. For when the Enthymesis had been separated from her, along with the passion that had supervened, she herself remained within the Pleroma, but her Enthymesis, with the passion, was separated by Horos and excluded. ^{B C D}

rained the assault, and watched over her preservation and safety. ...*crucifixam*. Tertullian and the ancient interpreter read *staurō* (cross), and translated it as "crucified,” but, being outside of Him, it was a spiritual substance, a kind of natural impulse of an Aeon, yet formless and without shape, because it had apprehended nothing. And for this reason they declare its fruit to be weak and feminine.

5. But after this had been separated outside of the Pleroma of the Aeons, and its mother had been restored to her own conjunction, they say that Monogenes again put forth another conjunction, by the providence of the Father, ^A so that none of the Aeons might suffer in like manner to her,—namely, Christ and the Holy Spirit, by whom they say the Aeons were perfected. For they say that Christ taught them the nature of conjunction, and that those who know the comprehension of the Unbegotten are sufficient and fit, ^B and declared also the knowledge of the Father in them, since He is incapable of being contained, and incomprehensible, and it is not possible to see or hear Him, except through the Monogenes alone.

^C And the cause of their eternal perseverance for the rest is the first comprehensible ^D of the Father, while the cause of his birth and formation is His comprehensible [nature], to which He is indeed equal. And these things the Christ, who was just now brought forth, fashioned in them.

6. The Holy Spirit, indeed, taught all of them to give thanks, and introduced true rest. Thus they say that the Æons were made equal in form and opinion, all being made Noas, and all Logoi, and all Anthroposes, and all Christs: and in like manner all the females, Alethias, and Zoas, and Spirits, and Ecclesias. And having been confirmed [464 A] in this, and having rested completely, they say that with great joy they hymn the Pro-Father, participating in great exultation. And on account of this benefit, they might be of one will and resolve. For they say that Christ instructed them in the nature of union, and that those to whom the comprehension of the Unbegotten was known were sufficient unto themselves: He also preached among them the knowledge of the Father, namely that He could not be perceived, nor understood, nor finally seen or heard, except through the benefit of the Monogenes. And the cause, indeed, why they all are perpetual and eternal, consists in that which of the Father cannot be comprehended; but the cause of their origin and formation is situated in that which of Him can be comprehended, that is, in the Son. And these things that recently issued Christ fashioned in them.

...introduced. And in this manner, they report that the Æons were constituted equal in form, as well as in will and opinion; being, to be sure, all Noas, all Sermones, all Homines, and all Christs; and likewise all females, all Veritates, all Vitae, all Spiritus, and all Ecclesiae. And having been confirmed by this, ^B ...the sense flows spontaneously, mindful of the aforementioned. A little earlier Irenæus had said that the Æon who rashly scrutinized the incomprehensible nature of the Pro-Father had almost perished. He adds, lest that happen to any other of the Æons which happened to that imprudent one, that Christ was produced from the Father, who might teach them that the Father is accessible only to the mind of the Unigenitus, and entirely incomprehensible to the rest. Then (which seems to be a corollary of this) that the condition of the Unigenitus is far better than that of the other Æons; and that among the other Æons, the chief cause of eternal perseverance—by which they ward off from themselves the dissolution which almost befell the incautious Æon—is that the Father is incomprehensible, if indeed, being persuaded that the Father is incomprehensible, they do not attempt to scrutinize Him rashly; but that the cause of the eternal perseverance of His offspring, and His form, namely the Monogenes, is that His comprehension of Him to whom He is indeed equal; namely, that He comprehends the Father, to whom He is equal. Thus, by the addition of only one word, ^C if I am not mistaken, we easily solve the difficult knot, and appositely, both with the series of the discourse and the hypothesis of the Valentinians.

(2) The Holy Spirit, etc. The Greek text adds *en*, "one," which the interpreter omitted. Neither Tertullian nor Theodoret read it. Grabe suspects it was added so that the reason might be implied why the Holy Spirit made all the Æons equal, and brought unity to the Pleroma, because, forsooth, He himself also was one; or so that it might be insinuated that there are two Christs, one superior and another inferior, of whom presently; but that the Holy Spirit is one. ^D (3) It is known. This word Billius wishes to expunge. It is indeed useless enough; yet it can be preserved. And then it must be translated: "Neither can He be seen, nor heard, except as much as He is known by the benefit of the Monogenes, or through the Monogenes." (4) The first comprehensible, etc. We have discussed these in note 1 above. Moreover, they do not merely read *akatalēpton*, but also write—not from any codex, but, I suppose, led by the authority of the ancient interpreter.

^A partaking of the joy. And because of this beneficence, by one counsel and judgment, the whole Pleroma of the Aeons—with the approval of Christ and the Spirit, and with their Father likewise setting his seal upon it—brought together what each of the Aeons had within itself that was most beautiful and most flourishing; and by collecting these, and fitting them together appropriately, and harmoniously uniting them, they brought forth as "problems" ^B for the honor and glory of Bythus, a most perfect beauty and a star of the Pleroma, a perfect fruit: Jesus, who is also called Savior, and Christ, and—patronymically—Logos, and [in] All, because he is from all; and along with him they brought forth attendants ^C as their own, angels of the same lineage, for their honor.

CHAPTER III.

By what places of Sacred Scripture would the heretics attempt to support their figments?

1. This, then, is the negotiation as they call it—that which took place within the Pleroma, and concerning the suffering Aeon, and the one that shortly perished, as though in great matter, ^D a calamity resulting from the search for the Father—and that concerning Horos, and the Stauros, and the Redeemer, and Carpistes, and Horothetes, and [Met...*]

[alt-version omitted]

*[*The text of the Latin version (Billius's Interpretation) follows here:*]

...and having brought the whole to the utmost calm, they say that they lauded the Pro-Father with great joy, the Father himself also experiencing great pleasure; and by reason of this kindness, the whole company of Aeons, by common counsel and intent, with Christ and the Holy Spirit also consenting, and their Father also casting his vote, brought into the midst whatever was most beautiful and excellent that each possessed within himself; and by joining these fittingly and coupling them harmoniously, they produced for the honor and glory of Bythus a certain most perfect beauty, a star of the Pleroma, and a perfect fruit, which is Jesus, who is also called Savior, and Christ, and by his father's name, Sermon (Logos), and finally All, because he was born of all; and for their honor, attendants—angels, whose lineage was the same as his—were brought forth together.

CHAPTER III.

*(Note: The page ends here, mid-sentence, at the beginning of the list of AEons in the Latin text.)*

heir Cross, and those of the Redeemer, and Carpistes, and Horothetes, and Metagogeus, and the ^A *hexaonia compago* (coagmentation of the six); and the birth of the first Christ, with the Holy Spirit, which is the later generation of the Æons from the repentance of their Father, and the birth of the second Christ, whom they also call Savior; it is a composition put together from contributions. ^B They say that these things were not openly stated, because not all can grasp the knowledge of them; but were shown mystically by the Savior through parables to those who are able to understand. Thus, they say, the thirty Æons are signified by the thirty years, as we said before, during which they claim the Savior did nothing in public, and by the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. And they say that Paul identifies these Æons most clearly, and moreover maintains their order, speaking thus: “Unto all generations of the age of the age.” ^C And we too, finally, in our thanksgivings, saying the Æons of the Æons—

^A signifying those Æons; and wherever “age” or “ages” are named, they wish for the reference to be made to them.

2. And the emission of the twelve Æons, they say, is signified ^B by the fact that the Lord, being twelve years old, discoursed with the doctors of the law, and by the election of the apostles—for there are twelve apostles. And the remaining eighteen Æons are made manifest by this, that they say He spent eighteen months with his disciples after his resurrection from the dead. But also by the first two letters of his name, the *iota* and the *eta*, the eighteen Æons are clearly signified. And they say that the ten Æons are likewise signified by the *iota* letter, which precedes his name. And for this reason, they say, the Savior spoke: *One iota, or one yota, shall not pass away until all things be fulfilled*.

3. Now, things concerning the twelfth Æon ^C are spoken of to represent the passion, or the falling away. And regarding the twelve apostles, they say that he who was the twelfth— ^D *[Note: Here the translation transitions to the beginning of the next page’s text, which describes the departure of Judas as the sign of the twelfth Æon]*

the who was the twelfth— ^A they say that the passion of the apostasy is signified through Judas, who was the twelfth of the apostles, as the betrayal occurred, and because He suffered in the twelfth month; for they wish Him to have preached for only one year after baptism. Furthermore, they say that this is most clearly signified in the case of the woman who suffered from an issue of blood; for she who had suffered for twelve years was healed by the arrival of the Saviour, upon touching the hem of His garment; and for this reason the Saviour said, "Who touched me?" ^A teaching the disciples the mystery that had occurred among the Æons, the healing of the suffering Æon. For she who suffered for twelve years represents that power which, as they say, would have dissolved into the void, had she not touched His garment—that is, the Truth of the first Tetrad, which is indicated by the hem—and been extended and flowed out into infinite substance.

^B Billius' Interpretation. ...the defection is implied: and hence also that Christ suffered in the twelfth month. For they wish Him to have performed the office of preaching for only one year after baptism. Moreover, they wish this to be most openly declared in that woman who labored with an issue of blood. For since she had been ill for twelve years, ^C just as they say the passion occurred regarding the twelfth Æon, they attempt to show that the Saviour's passion was brought about by the betrayal of Judas, who was the twelfth of the apostles, and in the twelfth month. For they wish Him to have preached for one year after baptism. But in the woman who suffered from an issue of blood, they say it is manifested; for the woman suffered for twelve years, etc. Which are the same words as in Book I, chapter 3. Thus, therefore, from the related words I would deem that the Greek should be restored: (not ^D that the passion which occurred... is signified, as in the Gallus and Feuardent editions of Irenæus, or worse still, as it stands in codex R and the Basilian edition of Epiphanius). But this passion, which they say occurred regarding (or around) the twelfth Æon, is signified in that the Saviour's passion is shown to be brought about by the betrayal of Judas, who was the twelfth of the apostles, and because He suffered in the twelfth month. In this way the corrupted passage is restored from a sound one and from one that is entirely the same; and unless you restore it thus, you will have labored in vain in the explanation of a corrupted period.

^A His substance; but it stood and rested from passion by the outgoing virtue of the Son. They wish this to be the Limit, which cured her, and separated the passion from her.

4. That the Savior, being from all things, is the All, they say is shown by the word: "Every male opening the womb." For He, being the All, opened the womb of the Enthymesis ^B of the suffering Aeon, which was also cast out beyond the Pleroma, which they indeed call the second Ogdoad, of which we shall speak a little later. And they say that this was stated by Paul: "And he is all things." And again: "All things are into him, and from him are all things." And again: "In him dwells all the fullness of the divinity."

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION

4. But that the Savior, who is sprung from all, is the All, they assert is shown by these words of Scripture: "Every male opening the womb." For they say He, being the All, opened the womb of the Enthymesis of ^C the Son's garment, or at least [that I should read] the virtue of the Son instead of "the virtue of this." For these things can by no means be referred to the Savior, who was neither an Aeon of the first tetrad, nor had he any kinship with Truth, the Aeon of the same tetrad; but it must be understood concerning Monogenes, and his spouse Alethia, the Aeons of the first tetrad. And the sense is plain, if you remember the aforementioned things. Namely, when the suffering Aeon was already being extended, and its substance flowing into the immense, it would have been dissolved into all its substance, had it not touched the garment of the Son, or Monogenes—that is, had it not recognized the error, and touched, or apprehended, the Truth of the first tetrad (for so it must be translated, not "of Truth," as I said above), the spouse of Monogenes (mystically signified by the fringe of the garment, because Truth is the last in the first tetrad of the Pleroma), by whose light illuminated, it turned into itself and believed now that the Father is incomprehensible, as is said above. Then the Son, having pity on it, and acting as an intercessor for it before the Father, sent forth from himself a virtue, namely Horos, who cured the suffering one and separated the passion from it. And thus the wretched Aeon stood and rested from the passion, through the virtue that went forth from the Son.

^D (6) "And by Paul." He writes in Colossians 3:2, where the Apostle writes: "All things and in all, Christ." (7) "All things into him," etc. The words of the Apostle are slightly changed. For it is written in Rom. 11:36: "For from him, and through him, and into him are all things." (8) "Of the divinity." The word "corporally," which exists in our codices, and which all the Greeks and most of the Latins read, the Valentinians perhaps omit because it made less toward their purpose. For their intention was only to scrape together here from the Writer those places in which the words "all," "every," "all things" might occur. Perhaps it was missing in Irenaeus' codex, as it also seems to have been missing in the codices of Cyprian and Archelaus; for each of them, as Grab observes, here in the *Disputation with Manes*, § 25, and the former at the beginning of the book *On the Good of Patience*, cites the words of the Apostle, omitting the adverb "corporally."

^A and that, "to sum up all things in Christ through God," they interpret as meaning that these things have been gathered together, and whatever else is of such a kind.

5. Furthermore, concerning their "Horos" (which they also call by many names), they assert that he has two operations: the confirmatory and the separative. And in that he confirms and establishes, they say he is the "Cross"; but in that he divides and defines, he is "Horos." They say that in this way he has indicated the operations of the Cross; and first, the confirmatory one, in the saying: "Whoever does not carry his cross, and follow me, cannot be my disciple"; and, "Taking up your cross, follow me." The separative operation of his, they say, is in the saying: "I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." And they say that John also signified this same thing, saying: "His winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing floor, and he will gather the wheat into his storehouse, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire"; and through this, that he has signified the operation of Horos. For they interpret that winnowing fan as being the Cross, ^B which, indeed, consumes all material things, just as fire consumes chaff; but it cleanses them who are saved, and separates them. And I believe that the ancient interpreter wrote in this way. But the conjunction "and" (*kai*), which has incorrectly crept into the Greek text, led him into error. Hence he thought that "having been separated" (*exoristheises*) was an absolute case, to be rendered by the Latin ablative, which they call "absolute"; although it is evident that it should not have been severed from "Thought" (*Enthymeseos*), lest the sentence, hanging loosely, be completely perverted. Expunge, therefore, the particle "and" from the Greek, and likewise the particle "and" (*et*) with the word "that" (*ea*) from the Latin. Then read: "separated outside the Pleroma, namely, of [the] Excogitation."

THE INTERPRETATION OF BILLIUS

^A ...of that affected [Enthymesis], and cast out of the Pleroma, which they also call the second Ogdoad; concerning which we shall speak a little later. And for this reason they say that it was also explicitly stated by Paul: "And he is all things." And again: "All things in him and out of him are all things." And again: "In him dwells all the fullness of the divinity." And likewise that: "To sum up all things in Christ through God." In this manner they interpret these things, and whatever others are of this kind.

5. Afterwards, regarding their Horos, which they also call by many names, they establish that he is endowed with a double faculty: the one supporting, the other dividing; and inasmuch as he establishes and confirms, they say he is the Cross; but by the reason that he divides and distinguishes, he is Horos. Moreover, they say the Savior indicated his faculties thus. And first, indeed, that by which he supports and confirms, in these words: "Whoever does not carry his cross and follow me, cannot be my disciple." And again: "Taking up your cross, follow me." Then, however, that by which he separates and delimits, when he used these words: "I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." They say John also signified this same thing, when he said: "The winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will cleanse the threshing floor, and he will gather the wheat into his storehouse; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." For by these ^C words he declared the power and faculty of Horos. For they interpret this winnowing fan as the Cross, which indeed consumes all things that consist of matter.

^A And they say that the Apostle Paul himself was mindful of this Cross, thus: "For the word of the Cross is to them that perish foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." And again: "But far be it from me to glory in anything, save in the Cross of Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."

6. All of them say such things concerning their Pleroma and their figment, striving to adapt ^B the things well said to the things evilly devised by them. And they do not only attempt to make their proofs from evangelical and apostolic writings, distorting the interpretations and perverting the expositions, but also from the Law and the Prophets; since many parables and allegories are said to be capable of being drawn ^C into many meanings through various interpretations. And others, craftily and deceitfully applying them to their own figment, lead captive away from the truth those who do not keep steadfast the faith in one God the Father Almighty, and in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God. ^D

CHAPTER IV.

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION

CHAPTER IV.

which they also call Achamoth, having been separated from the Pleroma along with her passion, they say was cast out ^A into places of shadow and void by necessity. For she was outside the light and the Pleroma, without form and without shape, as if an abortion, because she apprehended nothing. They say that the superior Christ pitied her, and by means of the Cross extended himself, and by his own power formed her in substance, but not in knowledge; and that, having accomplished this, he returned, withdrawing his own power, and left her: so that she, feeling the passion which was regarding her by the separation from the Pleroma, might desire better things, having some scent of immortality left in her by Christ and the Holy Spirit. On this account she is also called by two names, Sophia paternally (for her father is called Sophia) and Holy Spirit, from the Spirit that is with ^B Christ. And that, having been formed, and having become sensible, she was immediately emptied of the Word who was invisibly with her, that is to say, Christ, and set out in search of the light that had left her, and was unable [to attain it].*

INTERPRETATION OF BILLIUS

^A catching hold of it, because she was hindered by the Border. And here they say that the Border, hindering her from her impulse towards the front, said "Iao"—whence they claim the name Iao originated. Being unable to pass the Border because she was entangled with the passion, and being left alone outside, she fell into every part of that passion, which was multifarious and manifold; and she suffered: grief indeed, because she did not overtake it; fear, lest life should desert her just as the light had; and dismay over these things. In ignorance, moreover, were all things. And not, ^B as her mother, the first Sophia, and Aeon, had, did she have change in her passions, but contrariety. There happened to her, moreover, another affection: that of conversion toward Him who had given her life.

2. This collection and substance they say was matter, from which this world consists. For they say that every soul of the world and of the Demiurge received its birth from the conversion; but from the fear and the sadness, ^C the remainder took its beginning. For from the tears, ^D the liquid substances, from the laughter, the light, and from the sadness and perplexity, the corporeal elements of the world.

^A For sometimes she would weep and grieve, as they say, because she was left alone in the darkness and the void; sometimes, however, coming into the thought of the light that had abandoned her, she would relax and laugh; at other times again she would be afraid; at others she would be in perplexity and distracted.

3. ^B And indeed, there is much tragedy here already, and the imaginings of each of them, explaining it in different ways and with different arrogance, as to from what passion and from what element a substance received its generation. And these things also seem to me not without reason to be things they do not wish to teach everyone openly, but only to those who are able to pay great rewards for such mysteries. For these are no longer the same as those of which our Lord spoke: *Freely you have received, freely give;* but they are withdrawn, and monstrous, and deep mysteries obtained with great labor by those who are fond of lies. For who would not expend all that is his, in order to learn that from the tears of the Enthymesis of the affected Aeon, the seas, and fountains, and rivers, and all liquid substance received their generation, and from her laughter, the light, and from her astonishment and perplexity, the corporeal elements of the world?

4. I wish, however, to contribute something to their fruitfulness. ^C For since I see the sweet fruits of the world, and of the Demiurge, and finally that every other soul received its origin; but that the rest took their beginning from fear and sadness. For they say that from her own tears every liquid essence existed, from her laughter, the light, and lastly from her sadness and stupor, the corporeal elements of the world. For sometimes she wept and dwelt in sadness, as they say, for the reason that she had been left alone in the darkness and the void: sometimes, however, considering within herself that light which had deserted her, she was filled with joy and laughed. Sometimes again she would fear, and at other times she was in a confused and anxious state of mind, and was even affected by mental delusion.

5. And here now no slight tragedy and imagination arises, with each of them explaining in a different and yet another way from what affection and from what kind of element it has arisen, not without pride and arrogance. Which things also do not seem to me without reason to be things they do not want to hand over openly to everyone, but only to those who can pay an immense reward for such mysteries. For these no longer approach those things of which our Lord said: *Freely you have received, freely give;* but they are set apart, and are monstrous, and deep mysteries, which are not acquired by men studious in lying without great labor. For who would not spend all his resources to learn how from the tears of the Enthymesis, that calamitous Aeon, the seas and rivers and all the substance of waters received their origin; and from her laughter, the light; and from her stupor and anxiety, the corporeal elements of the world? ^D

^A And if they do not maintain that all things were cast forth from her tears, because a tear exists in its quality as salt, it is manifest, therefore, that these salt waters are those which come from the tears. But it is likely that she, having come to be in great agony and helplessness, also sweated. From this, then, according to their hypothesis, one must assume that springs and rivers, and whatever other fresh waters exist, did not have their origin from her tears. For it is unlikely that out of one quality of tears should come waters of different kinds; but this is more plausible, that some are from her tears, and others from her sweat. Since also ^B there are certain hot and acrid waters in the world, you ought to understand what she did and from what part of her body she emitted these. For such fruits are consistent with their hypothesis.

5. They say, then, that after she had traversed every kind of passion, and with difficulty looked up, she turned to the supplication of the light that had abandoned her—that is, of Christ—who, having ascended into the Pleroma, had himself, it is likely, been reluctant to descend a second time, yet had sent the Paraclete to her, that is, the Savior, having granted him all the power of the Father.

^A And granting all things under his authority, ^B and the Æons likewise, so that in him all things might be created, visible and invisible, Thrones, Divinities, Dominions. ^C And he is sent to her with his coeval angels. But they say that Achamoth, out of reverence for him, first put a veil upon herself; ^D and afterward, when she had seen him with all his fruitfulness, she ran to him, having received power from his manifestation. ^A And he formed her with a formation according to knowledge, and brought about a healing of her passions, separating them from her, and yet not neglecting them. For it was not possible for them to be utterly destroyed, as [were those] of the former one, because they were already habituated and capable of existing; but by placing them apart, he mixed and solidified them, and transformed them from an incorporeal passion into an incorporeal matter; and in this way he bestowed upon them an aptitude and nature, so that they might [pass] into compounds and bodies. ^B

BILLI INTERPRETATIO.

He was reluctant to descend again, [and so] sent the Paraclete to her, that is, the Savior, the Father granting him all power, and subjecting all things to his command, and likewise the Æons: so that in him all things might be created, as well those which fall under the sight as those which escape the gaze of the eyes—that is, Thrones, Deities, Dominions. Companions were also added to him, the angels who were his coevals. But Achamoth, as they themselves narrate, revering him, in the first place cast a veil over herself out of modesty; but afterward, when she had beheld him with all his endowments, having collected strength from his presence, she ran to him; and then he imprinted upon her the form of knowledge, and freed her from her perturbations. Yet he did not so separate and cast off these from her that he abandoned all care for them (for they could not be destroyed, as [in the case of] the affections of the earlier Sophia, because they had already taken root and gained strength); but rather he mingled those that were secret, and solidified them, and changed them from an incorporeal affection into a corporeal matter; and thereafter he imparted to them an aptitude and

r he mingled those that were secret, and solidified them, and changed them from an incorporeal affection into a corporeal matter; and thereafter he imparted to them an aptitude and ^A nature, so that they might come into concretions and bodies, and two essences might be produced: one evil, which had existed from the passions, and another subject to passions, which had risen from conversion; and this is the reason why they say the Savior fashioned them by his power. They teach that Achamoth, having become free from passion, and having seized the vision of the lights that were with him—that is, of the angels who were with him—by means of the joy that was in her, and having conceived from them, brought forth ^B fruits after the likeness, a spiritual offspring.

Billius's Interpretation

Nature brought forth [this], so that they might come into concretions and bodies, and two essences might be made: one evil, which had resulted from passions, and the other subject to passions, which had arisen from conversion. This same thing is the cause why they say that the Savior fashioned them by his power. But Achamoth, having been liberated from her affliction, through joy beheld the contemplation of those lights which were with him—that is, the angels whom he himself had as companions—and having been delighted by the sight of them, she...

brought forth offspring according to that image, a spiritual birth made in the likeness of the satellites of the Savior.

CHAPTER V.

1. There are, therefore, these three things already underlying [the process], according to them: the first from passion, which was matter; the second from conversion, which was psychical (animal); and the third, which she brought forth, namely the spiritual. Thus, she turned herself to their formation. But they say she was unable to give form to the spiritual, since it was of the same substance as she was; but she turned herself to the formation of the psychical substance, which had been produced from her conversion, and put forth the teachings which had come from the Savior; and they say that she first gave form to the Father and King of all, that is, of the psychical [beings]—whom they, indeed, call "the right"—and of those from passion and matter, whom they call "the left" ^A. For they assert that he gave form to all things that are after him, ^B moving secretly under the influence of his mother. Whence they also call him Metropator, and Apatore, and Demiurge, and Father; calling him Father of those on the right, that is, of the psychical; and [what is] on the left, that is, of the material. The Demiurge, ^C indeed, was shaped/formed—having been, as I might say, fermented by the very contemplation of the angelic lights—it is shameful to say it, but there is no other way to express it—in a certain way she brought forth [the offspring] within herself towards them; and by that spiritual conception, she immediately became pregnant... Finally, she gave birth.

^D

^A They call him Father, that is of the psychic [beings]; and of the left-handed ones—that is, of the hylic [beings]—they call him Demiurge, but king of all things. For they say that this Enthymesis, wishing to make all things in honor of the Aeons, made images of them, or rather, the Savior [made them] through her. And she herself, they say, remained in the image 1 of the invisible Father, being unknown to the Demiurge; but he [the Demiurge remained in the image] of the only-begotten Son, and the archangels and angels, who were produced by these 2, [remained in the image] of the remaining Aeons.

2 They say, therefore, that he became Father and God of those things which are outside the Pleroma 9, being the maker of all psychic and hylic things. For having separated the two substances [which were] confounded, and having made corporeal [things] from incorporeal [ones], he fashioned those things which are celestial and earthly, and became the maker of hylic and psychic, right-handed and left-handed [beings], of light and heavy, of those tending upward and of those ^B tending downward. For they say that he constructed seven heavens, above which they say the Demiurge is; and for this reason they call him the Hebdomad, but his mother, Achamoth, the Ogdoad, preserving the number of the original and primary Ogdoad of the Pleroma 4. And they say that the seven heavens are not intelligible 5, but intellectual [beings].

BILLI’S INTERPRETATION

^C ...having the same essence with him, that is, of the psychic [beings], which they also call right-handed, [distinguishing them] from those which were produced from passion and matter, which they call left-handed; that he fashioned [them]. For they assert that he formed all things which existed after him in such a way that, secretly and perceiving nothing of this sort, he was impelled by the Mother. Wherefore they also call him Metropator, and Apatore, and Demiurge, and Father; asserting him to be the Father of the right-handed ones, that is, the psychic [beings]; but the maker of the left-handed ones, that is, the hylic [beings], and king of all. For they claim that this Enthymesis, desiring to effect all things for the honor of the Aeons, made images of them, or rather the Savior by her operation. For from him she was preserved in the image of the invisible Father, in such a way that she was entirely hidden from the Demiurge; but he was preserved in the image of the Monogenis [only-begotten] Son, and the archangels and angels were produced from him in the image of the remaining Aeons.

...so they called him the maker of all things... ^D ...being the maker of all psychic, as well as hylic [beings]. For having distinguished those two essences [which were] before confounded, and having changed [them] from incorporeal into corporeal, he fashioned both celestial and terrestrial things... And indeed the term *noerous* [intellectual], which justly and deservedly pleases Billio, was clearly read by Tertullian: he says, in chapter 20, that they considered the heavens *noeros*, and sometimes make them to be angels. And the Valentinian hypothesis itself demands this reading both in Irenaeus and in Tertullian. For they wanted the heavens to be intellectual, not in the sense that they were understood by intelligence alone, but that they were gifted with sense and intelligence, inasmuch as they were angels, and were governed by angels. Hence they posited the paradise existing above the third heaven, [and] by virtue of this, a fourth archangel. They had received this fiction again from the Platonists, who felt that the heavens were gifted with an intellectual soul. Let Plotinus, Ennead II, book 9 be read, and those things which we said in our first Dissertation concerning the Valentinian heresy.

^A They say that these are angels, and that the Demiurge himself is an angel resembling God, just as they say that Paradise, existing above the third heaven, is a fourth angel in power, and that Adam, while he dwelt in it, received something from him.

3. They say that the Demiurge thought he had created all things by himself, but that he had actually created them while Achamoth was projecting. For he created heaven, not knowing heaven; and fashioned man, not knowing man; and brought forth earth, not knowing the earth; and they say that in all these things he was ignorant of the ideas of the things he was creating, and remained ignorant even of the mother herself; and that he alone thought he was everything. They say that his mother was the cause of this opinion in him, in that she wished to bring him forth as the head and beginning of her own substance, but master of the entire operation. This mother they also call Ogdoad, and Sophia, and Earth, and Jerusalem, and Holy Spirit, and, in the masculine, Lord. And they say that she possesses the place of the middle, ^B and that she existed as the architect of the psychic things, and of the right and the left, and of the light and the heavy, and of those things that tend upward and those that verge downward. For they say that seven heavens were built by him, above which they say he exists. On account of this they call him Hebdomad; but they call that mother, Achamoth, the Ogdoad, as she preserves the number of the primeval and sovereign Ogdoad which is in the Pleroma. Furthermore, they say that these seven heavens are spiritual, and they establish the angels themselves, and likewise they assert that the Demiurge himself is an angel resembling God, just as they also assert that Paradise, which is situated above the third heaven, is a fourth angel in power, and that Adam took something from him while he was dwelling within it.

3. And indeed that the Demiurge was involved in such an opinion, as to suppose that he had constructed all these things of himself; but that he had done so with Achamoth producing them. For he had founded heaven, though he was ignorant of heaven; and had fashioned man, though he did not know man; and had revealed the earth, though he did not know the earth; and in the same way they say that in all things he was ignorant of the forms of the things he was making, and even of the mother herself; and that through the error of this opinion he had imagined that he alone was all things. They declare that the mother herself was the cause of this opinion in him, because she had wished to bring him forth as the head and beginning of her own essence, but as master and arbiter of the whole business. This mother, moreover, they call Ogdoad, and Sophia, and Earth, and Jerusalem, and Holy Spirit, and Lord in the masculine. And that she dwells in the middle, and is indeed above the Demiurge, but below, or outside of, the Pleroma, until the consummation.

4. Since they say that physical substance consists of three passions, fear, grief, and perplexity, ^A they relate that it received its formation from these: they wish the Demiurge to have had his genesis from the conversion, and from fear all the rest of the psychical substance, such as the souls of irrational animals, of beasts, and of men. On this account, because he exists in a weaker state regarding the knowledge of what things are spiritual, he considered himself to be the only God, and to have said through the prophets: "I am God, and there is none besides me." ^B And they teach that the spiritual things of wickedness have come to be from grief; whence the devil, whom they also call the Cosmocrator, and the demons, and the angels, and the entire spiritual substance of wickedness have had their genesis. But they say the Demiurge is the psychical son of their mother, and the Cosmocrator is a creation of the Demiurge. And the Cosmocrator knows the things that are above him, because he is a spirit of wickedness; but the Demiurge is ignorant of them, seeing as he is a psychical being. And they say their mother dwells in the supercelestial place, that is to say, in the middle region; but the Demiurge ^C in the supercelestial place, that is to say, in the hebdomad.

BILLIUS’ INTERPRETATION.

^A And the Almighty in this world of ours. From the consternation and perplexity, as from a less noble source, they teach that those corporeal elements of the world were made, as we have said before: the earth according to the state of consternation, water according to the movement of fear, air according to the fixation of sorrow; and that fire is inherent in all of these, bringing death and corruption, just as ignorance also is hidden away in these three passions.

5. They define that he who formed the world made also the choicus (earth-born) man, taking him not from this dry earth, but from an invisible substance, and from that which is effusible and fluid matter; and that into this he breathed the psychical (soul). And they define this man as having been made according to the image and likeness: according to the image indeed, as being hylic (material) and close to him, yet not of the same substance as God; ^B according to the likeness, as being psychical; whence also they claim his substance is called the "spirit of life."

likeness, and the psychical; whence also the spirit of life is said to be its substance, as existing from a spiritual ^A defluxion. Afterward, they say, a skin garment was cast about him; and by this they mean the sensible flesh.

6. The birth of their mother, Achamoth, whom they brought forth according to the contemplation of those who are about the Savior; and they say that he, existing as of the same substance as his mother, was spiritual, and that he himself was ignorant of the Demiurge; and that he was secretly deposited into him, the Demiurge not knowing it, so that through him, into the soul which was from him, ^B having also grown within these, he might be ready for the reception of the perfect. For, as they say, the spiritual man, being co-sown with the Demiurge’s insufflation and her seed—which they themselves also call the Church, an antitype of the Church above—laid hold upon the Demiurge. And even then they claim that the one in them is such, so as to have the soul from the Demiurge, and the body from the earth, and the fleshly part from matter. ^{C D}

CAPUT VI

A threefold man of the heretics. They said good works were useless to them, but necessary only for Catholics. They thought they could not be defiled by any wicked deeds. Their morals were depraved.

1. Since there are, therefore, three types, they say that the material one (which they also call the left-hand one) must perish by necessity, since it is incapable of receiving any breath of incorruptibility. But the animal one (which they also call the right-hand one), since it is the midpoint between the spiritual and the material, goes to where it leans. As for the spiritual, they say it was sent forth in order that it might be fashioned here by being joined to the animal one, and be educated together with it in this manner of life. And they claim this is the salt and the light of the world. ^A For the animal ones had need of sensible instructions. For this reason they say that the world was fashioned, and that the Savior came to this animal nature, because it is within its own power to be saved. For they claim that he took the first-fruits of those whom he was going to save: from Achamoth, the spiritual part; from the Demiurge, he was clothed with the psychic Christ; and from the dispensation, he was invested with a body having an animal substance, ^B constructed with ineffable art, so that it might even be invisible and untouchable and capable of suffering...

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION

CAPUT VI

^A And that it was prepared by an ineffable art so that it might become both visible, and palpable, and subject to suffering. And they say that it took nothing at all from the material, for they claim that the material substance is not capable of salvation. And they maintain that the consummation will take place when all that is spiritual has been fashioned and perfected by knowledge, that is to say, those who are spiritual men, who possess perfect knowledge concerning God and Achamoth. They assume that these are they who have been initiated into the mysteries.

2. For those who are psychic, that is, animal men, they say are confirmed by works and by simple faith, and do not possess perfect knowledge. And they say that these are we, who are of the Church. Therefore, they answer that for us, indeed, a good manner of life is necessary, for otherwise it is impossible to be saved; but they dogmatize that they themselves will be saved in every way and altogether, not through works, but because they are by nature spiritual. For as they say ^B that the earthly is impossible for it to partake of salvation (for they say that it is not capable of it), so again they say that the spiritual (which they themselves wish to be) is impossible to be subject to corruption, in whatever way they may have acted.

BILL'S INTERPRETATION

2. Those who are animal men are imbued with teachings, and they are confirmed through works and simple faith, nor are they gifted with perfect cognition. Such, they say, are we who profess the faith of the Church. From which they also declare that this is necessary for us: that we apply good actions, for otherwise it could not be ^C otherwise.

^A For just as gold deposited in mud does not lose its beauty, but preserves its own nature, the mud being unable to do any harm to the gold: so do they say that they themselves, even if they are involved in whatever material actions, are in no way harmed, nor do they lose their spiritual substance.

3. Therefore, those among them who are "perfect" fearlessly perform all those things which are forbidden, concerning which the Scriptures also bear witness that those who perform them shall not inherit the kingdom of God. [Gal. V, 21.] For they eat of things sacrificed to idols ^B indiscriminately, imagining that they are not defiled by them; and they are the first to gather at every festive entertainment of the heathen, held in honor of idols, so that some of them do not even abstain from that spectacle which is hated by God and men—the slaughter-loving show of wild-beast fighters and gladiators. But others, serving the pleasures of the flesh insatiably, declare that carnal things are given to the carnal and spiritual things to the spiritual. And some of them secretly corrupt the women taught by them this doctrine, as women who have often been deceived by some of them, having afterwards returned ^C to the Church of God, confessed this along with the rest of their error; but others, acting even openly and not even blushing, have snatched away whatever women they desired from their own husbands and made them their own wives. Others again initially behave modestly, pretending to live as if with sisters, but as time goes by they are exposed, having been caught—as some of them have been—with women who are pregnant.

BILLI'S INTERPRETATION.

...the power to attain salvation. But they affirm that they will be safe, not by conduct, but because they are spiritual by nature. For just as they say that a physical person ^D can in no way partake of salvation, because he is not even capable of it: so again they say that a spiritual person (which they wish themselves to be) is in such a condition that he is in no way able to receive destruction and corruption, in whatever flagrant crimes and wickednesses he may be involved. For just as gold placed in mud does not lose its beauty in the same way, but preserves its nature unharmed, and no harm can be brought to it by the mud: in the same way they also, however much they may be involved in material actions, are not harmed by this, nor do they suffer any loss of their spiritual essence.

^A As time went on they were exposed, the sister having been made pregnant by her brother.

But they attack us—who, for fear of God, take care not to sin even in thought or speech—as though we were ignorant, unlearned people; ^B while they exalt themselves, calling themselves perfect and the seeds of election. For they say that we receive grace merely for use—and that, therefore, it will be taken away from us—but that they themselves possess grace as their own property, derived from above from the ineffable and unnameable syzygy; and that for this reason it will be added to them. They argue, therefore, that they must by all means always meditate upon the mystery of the syzygy. And they persuade the unintelligent of this, speaking in these very words: "Whosoever, being in the world, has not loved a woman so as to be mastered by her, is not of the truth, and will not enter into the truth. But he who, being of the world, has been mastered by a woman, will not enter into the truth, because he was mastered by a woman in concupiscence." Therefore, they affirm that Scriptural ^C words call us "psychic," because those who do these things will in no way inherit the kingdom of God, as they commit them without any fear.

For they eat, freely and without any discrimination, things that have been sacrificed to idols, nor do they think themselves defiled by them; and they are the first to swarm to all the festivals and amusements of the Gentiles, which are celebrated in honor and worship of idols, to such an extent that some of them even think that they ought not to abstain from a bloody and deadly spectacle, hateful to God and men, in which beasts are fought or gladiators fight one another. There are also some who, yielding to the pleasures of the flesh to the point of satiety, say that carnal things are to be rendered to the carnal and spiritual to the spiritual. Furthermore, some of them have secret sexual intercourse with the women whom they instruct in their doctrine, ^D just as the women themselves, when they have been circumvented by some of them and led into error, and later have returned to the Church of God, have confessed this together with their other errors; others openly and with shameless faces take whichever women they have fallen in love with, and tearing them away from their husbands, marry them. Others again, having first pretended to live with them honestly as with sisters, when time has passed and their fraud has been discovered, have had the sister made pregnant by her brother.

But they attack most of us—who fear God, and do not sin even in thought or in speech—as though we were unlearned and utterly ignorant; while they exalt themselves miraculously, calling themselves perfect and the seeds of election. For they say that we receive grace in use only, and that it will therefore be taken away from us; but that they themselves possess it as their own, having had it brought down from heaven from that ineffable and all-nameable conjunction, and that for this reason it will increase for them; and that therefore they themselves must by all means exercise the mystery of marriage. And this they persuade foolish men to do.

^A They call [those who are] psychic, and say they are of the world, and that continence and good works are necessary for us, that by them we might come into the place of the middle; but for them, who are called spiritual and perfect, they are in no way necessary. For action does not bring one into the Pleroma, but the seed, which is sent out from there small, but which is perfected here. ^B And they say that Achamoth, their mother, will pass out of the place of the middle, and will enter into the Pleroma, and will receive her bridegroom, the Savior, who became out of all things, so that there might be a union of the Savior and of Sophia, who is Achamoth; and that this is the bridegroom and the bride, and the Pleroma is the bridal chamber; but that those who are spiritual, having stripped off their souls and having become intellectual spirits, having entered incomprehensibly and invisibly into the Pleroma, will be given as brides to the angels who are around the Savior. And the Demiurge himself will pass into the place of his mother Sophia, that is, into the middle; and the souls of those who have practiced justice will rest in that same region. For they [the psychics] will not ^C possess anything...

CHAPTER VII

The whole seed of Achamoth, with the spiritual men, will pass into the Pleroma; the Demiurge, with the psychic [animal] men, into the place of the middle; but the earthly man will depart into corruption. Matter to be consumed by fire. Blasphemy concerning the true Incarnation of Christ from the blessed Virgin. Division of the prophecies, and of their origin. The supine ignorance of the Demiurge.

1. When, however, the whole seed is made perfect, then at last they say that Achamoth, their mother, will migrate from the place of the middle and enter into the Pleroma, and will receive her bridegroom, the Savior, who was produced from all, that the marriage of the Savior and Achamoth may exist. And that this is what is signified by the bridegroom and the bride, just as the Pleroma is signified by the bridal chamber. But the spiritual, having stripped off their souls and having become intellectual spirits, having entered in an incomprehensible and invisible manner into the Pleroma, will be assigned as brides to the angels who surround the Savior. Furthermore, that the Demiurge himself will likewise pass to the place of his mother Sophia, that is, to the place of the middle, and that in that same region the souls of those who have cultivated justice will exist in rest. For regarding the psychic...

^A beings, they teach that nothing psychic can enter the Pleroma. And when these things have come to pass, they teach that the fire which lies hidden in the world will shine forth and be kindled, and having consumed all matter, will be consumed together with it, and will pass into a state of non-existence. They assert that the Demiurge knew nothing of these things before the advent of the Savior.

2. There are also those who say that He did not put forth His own Son, but that He was psychic; and that the prophets spoke concerning this Son. They say that He is the one who passed through Mary, just as water flows through a conduit, and that upon Him, at the time of baptism, there descended that Savior who was from the Pleroma, from all things, in the form of a dove; and that there also existed in Him that spiritual seed of Achamoth. Therefore, they say that our Lord was compounded of these four things, preserving the type of the primordial and first quaternion: from the spiritual, which was from Achamoth; and from the psychic, which was from the Demiurge; and from the dispensation, which was constructed ^B by an ineffable art; and from the Savior, who was the dove that descended into Him. And they say that this latter remained impassible (for it was not possible for Him to suffer, being incomprehensible and invisible); and that for this reason, when He was brought before Pilate, [the Savior] ascended into Him, to rest therein.

^A For they say that not even that seed which was from the Mother did suffer. For that too is impassible, as it is spiritual, and invisible even to the Demiurge himself. But the animal Christ, according to them, did suffer, and he who had been constructed in a mysterious way according to the dispensation; [this was done] in order that his Mother might show through him a type of the Christ above, of Him who was extended upon the Cross, and who had formed the formation of Achamoth according to substance: for they say that all these things are types of those things.

3. Those [souls], moreover, which had the seed of Achamoth, they say were better than the rest: wherefore they were also more loved by the Demiurge, who did not know the cause, but thought that they were such of themselves. ^B For which reason, they say, he placed them into prophets, and priests, and kings. And they expound many things to have been said by this seed through the prophets, inasmuch as they were of a higher nature. They say that the Mother also spoke many things concerning the things above, and indeed [spoke] through this [seed], and [through] the souls which were made by it. And henceforth they divide the prophecies, wishing to teach that some things were said by the Mother, some by the seed, and some by the Demiurge himself. ^C But also regarding Jesus, [they teach] just as much; [they say] that some things were said by the Savior, some by the Mother, and some by the seed, and some by the Demiurge, and *as we shall show as our discourse proceeds. Himself, to be moved according to the things said...*

^D

^A but to have despised them, thinking at one time of one cause, and at another time of another—either the spirit that prophesies (which itself also has its own motion), or man, or the entanglement of the hands—and thus to have persisted in ignorance until the coming of the Lord. But they say that upon the coming of the Savior, he learned all things from Him, and gladly joined Him with all his power, and that he is the centurion in the Gospel saying to the Savior: For I also am a man under my own authority having soldiers and servants, and whatever I order, they do. And that he will complete ^B the economy according to the world until the required time, especially for the sake of the care of the Church, but also for the sake of the knowledge of the reward prepared for him, that he shall pass into the place of the mother.

5. They say that there are three types of men, ^C the spiritual, the earthly, and the psychic, just as there were born Cain, Abel, and Seth; and from these [they draw] the three natures, no longer…

Billius' Interpretation

^A And they state that the material goes into corruption; but the psychic, if it chooses the better things, will find rest in the place of the middle state, but if it chooses the worse, it too will pass to things like unto itself. But as for the spiritual, whatever Achamoth may sow, from that time until now, having been trained and reared here in just souls—because they were sent forth as infants—they teach that these, having later been judged worthy of perfection, will be given as brides to the angels of the Savior, while their souls of necessity rest forever in the middle state with the Demiurge. And they further subdivide these psychic souls themselves, saying that some are by nature good, and some are by nature evil. And these good ones are those that become receptive to the seed, while those that are by nature wicked can never receive that seed.

CHAPTER VIII.

1. Since, therefore, such is their argument, which neither the prophets proclaimed, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles handed down—the which they ^B boast more abundantly to have known than any others, reading from things not written, and, as the saying goes, attempting to weave ropes from sand—that they might credibly apply... ^C

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION.

And that the material tends toward destruction; but that the psychic, if indeed it embraces the pursuit of better things, will rest in the place of the middle state; but if it follows after worse things, it will also proceed to things like unto them. But the spiritual things, which were sown by Achamoth, they hold that—having been trained and educated here from that time until now in the souls of just men, because they were sent forth as yet small and tender—eventually, when they have fulfilled all the measures of perfection, they will be given as brides to the angels of the Savior, and their souls will enjoy eternal rest in the middle region together with the Demiurge. And further distinguishing these very souls, they say that some are by nature good, and some by nature evil. And that those indeed are good which have been made capable of the seed; but those which are by nature evil are so constituted that they never receive that seed at all.

CHAPTER VIII.

1. Since these things have been posited by them, in the way that neither the prophets ever proclaimed, nor Christ taught, nor the apostles handed down, they boast that they have received a knowledge of all things beyond the rest of mortals, readings of course from those things which have by no means been produced in the monuments of the sacred Scriptures... ^D

^A they attempt to adapt to these things which are said, whether the Lord’s parables, or prophetic utterances, or apostolic words, so that their own figment may not appear to be without a witness; transgressing the order and the sequence of the Scriptures, and, as far as lies in them, dissolving the members of the truth. They transfer and refashion, and by making one thing out of another, they deceive many, with the ill-composed wisdom of those who apply the Lord’s sayings ^B. Just as if someone, having taken a beautiful image of a king, crafted of precious gems by a wise artisan, were to dissolve the underlying form of the man, and were to transfer those gems, and change their order, and make the form of a dog or of a fox, and this one having been crafted badly, then were to characterize it, and say that this is that beautiful image of the king which the wise artisan crafted, pointing to the gems which were well put together by the first artisan into the image of the king ^C, but badly moved by the latter into the form of a dog, and through the phantasy of the gems were to lead astray those who are more simple, those who do not have a grasp of the royal form, and were to persuade them that this rotten image of a fox is that beautiful image of the king; in the same way do these men also, having stitched together old-wives' fables, then from these words, and expressions, and parables ^D that are dragged in from here and there, seek to adapt them.

And as for all that they accommodate to those within the Pleroma, we have already spoken. ^B

2. But the things which they attempt to insinuate as being from the Scriptures, regarding those who are outside the Pleroma, are of this kind: They say that the Lord came to his passion in the last times of the world, in order that he might show forth the passion which had occurred to the last Aeon, and through this very end, might signify the end of the operation concerning the Aeons. And they relate that the twelve year old maiden, the daughter of the archisynagogue, whom the Lord approached and raised from the dead, is a type of Achamoth, whom Christ, having extended himself, shaped and brought into the perception of the light which had abandoned her. And they say that Paul, in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, spoke of the fact that the Savior appeared to her, while she was outside the Pleroma, in the state of an abortion, when he said: "And last of all, as to one born out of due time, he appeared also to me." And that he likewise manifested in the same Epistle his own coming, together with those of the Savior's peers, to Achamoth, when he said: "A woman ought to have a veil upon her head, because of the angels." And because, upon the coming of the Savior to her, Achamoth out of modesty assumed a veil, they say that Moses made this evident by placing a veil upon his own face. And they also say that her passions, which she suffered,

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION.

But whatever things they claim to accommodate from the Scriptures, even regarding those who are remote from the Pleroma, are of this sort. They say that the Lord came to undergo torments in the final times of the world for this reason, that he might indicate that passion which had happened to the last Aeon, and through this very end, might declare what the outcome of that affair, which had befallen the Aeons, had been. And that maiden, the daughter of the archisynagogue, twelve years of age, whom the Lord upon arriving recalled from death to life, they say is a figure of Achamoth, whom their Christ, having extended himself, formed, and restored to her the sense of the light that had deserted her. And that Paul, in that Epistle which he wrote to the Corinthians, commemorated the fact that the Savior appeared to her, since she was like some sort of abortion, in these words: "And last of all, as to one born out of due time, he appeared also to me." Indeed, they also declare that the Savior, together with his equals, likewise manifested his own coming to Achamoth in the same epistle, making use of these words: "A woman ought to have a veil on her head because of the angels."

^A They say that the Lord signified the passions which she suffered when he was on the cross. And, in the first place, by saying, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" ^B he showed that Sophia was abandoned by the Light and was prevented by Horos from pressing forward. Her sorrow he indicated by saying, "My soul is sorrowful even unto death," ^C her fear by saying, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," and her perplexity likewise by having said, "And what I shall choose, I know not."

3. They teach that he also manifested the three kinds of men: the material, when he replied to the one who asked, "Shall I follow thee? The Son of man hath not where to lay his head"; the animal, when he said to the one who asked, "I will follow thee; but permit me first to bid farewell to them that are in my house," "No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of heaven." ^D They say that he spoke this concerning those of the middle region.

BILLII INTERPRETATION. That she covered herself with a veil for shame upon the arrival of the Savior, they say Moses made clear when he covered his face with a veil. Moreover, they say that the passions which she underwent were signified by the Savior on the cross. And indeed, in these words, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" he indicated nothing else than that Sophia had been deserted by the Light and prevented by Horos from progressing further; while her sadness he indicated when he said, "My soul is sorrowful even unto death"; her fear, when he used the words, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me"; and likewise her anxiety and perplexity of mind, when he said, "And what I shall choose, I know not."

They say that he too was of the intermediate class, just as they say that he who confessed that he had fulfilled many parts of righteousness, but afterward declined to follow, and was overcome by riches, so that he did not become perfect, was also of the psychic genus.

They indicate the spiritual class in the words: "Let the dead bury their dead, but do you go and announce the kingdom of God"; and when he said to Zacchaeus the publican: "Make haste and descend, for today I must remain in your house." For they proclaim that these were of the spiritual genus. And they say that the parable of the leaven, which the woman is said to have hidden in three measures of meal, signifies the three genera. For they teach that the woman is Sophia; that the three measures of meal ^A are the three genera of men: spiritual, psychic, and choic (material); and that the leaven is the Savior himself.

They also teach that Paul explicitly spoke of choic, psychic, and spiritual men; where he says, "As is the choic, such are also the choic"; and where he says, "But the psychic man does not receive the things of the Spirit"; and where he says, "The spiritual man judges all things." But they say that the expression, "The psychic man does not receive the things of the Spirit," is spoken of the Demiurge, who, being psychic, did not know either his mother, who was spiritual, or her seed, or the Aeons who are in the Pleroma. ^B

Now since the Savior was taking the first-fruits of those whom he was to save, they say that Paul spoke these words: "And if the dough is holy, then also the mass." By the first-fruits, they teach that that which is spiritual is signified; but by the mass, us, that is, the psychic genus, which he sanctified by these first-fruits. But they say that the Choic (or material) genus is entirely incapable of salvation, for it is not capable of participating in the breath of life.

^A 4. And concerning the fact that Achamoth wandered outside the Pleroma, and was formed by Christ, and was sought out by the Savior, they say that he signifies this by his saying that he himself had come to the sheep that had wandered. For they interpret the "wandering sheep" as being their mother, from whom they wish this Church that is here to have been sown. They interpret the "wandering" as her sojourn outside the Pleroma among the passions, from which they suppose matter to have been created. And they explain the woman who sweeps the house and finds the drachma as being the higher Sophia, who, having lost her Enthymesis, later, when all things had been purified through the advent of the Savior, ^B finds it; and therefore they say that she too is restored within the Pleroma. They say that Symeon, who took Christ into his arms and gave thanks to Him, and said, "Now you dismiss your servant, O Lord, according to your word in peace," is a type of the Demiurge, who, upon the arrival of the Savior, learned of his own transposition and gave thanks to Bythus. And through Anna, who in the Gospel is called a prophetess,

^A having lived seven years with a husband and remaining a widow for all the rest of the time, until she saw the Savior and recognized him, and spoke of him to all—they determine that Achamoth is most clearly signified. And she, having seen the Savior for a little while with his contemporaries, remaining during the whole of the rest of the time in the intermediate state, was awaiting him, as to when he should come again and restore her to her own consort. They say, moreover, that her name was revealed by the Savior in his saying: And wisdom is justified by her children; and by Paul, in this way: We speak wisdom among the perfect. They claim also that Paul, in pointing to one, spoke of the unions ^B that are within the Pleroma; for writing concerning that union which is according to this life, he said: This mystery is great; but I speak of Christ and the Church.

5. Furthermore, they teach that John, the disciple of the Lord, signified the first Ogdoad by these very words, speaking as follows: John, the disciple of the Lord, wishing to tell of the generation of all things, according to which the Father produced all things, posits a certain beginning—that which was first begotten by God, which he calls both Monogenes and Son, and God, in whom the Father ^C produced all things seminally. And they say that the Word was emitted from this, and in him the whole essence of the Aeons, which the Word himself later formed. Since then he speaks of the prime generation, he rightly makes his doctrine begin from the beginning—that is,

he performs the teaching of God and the Word. And he speaks thus: *In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, ^A and the Word was God.* He thus distinguishes the three: God, and the Beginning, and the Word; yet again he unites them, in order to show both the emanation of each of them, that is, of the Son and of the Word, and the union ^B which is at once toward one another and toward the Father. For in the Father, and from the Father, is the Beginning, and from the Beginning is the Word. Well, therefore, did he say: *In the beginning was the Word;* for it was in the Son. *And the Word was with God;* for so too was the Beginning. *And the Word was God,* consistently; for that which is begotten of God is God. This ^C *was in the beginning with God;* he indicated the order of the emanation. *All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made;* for to all the Aeons that came after him, the Word became the cause of their form and generation. But *that which was made in him,* he says, *is life;* and here he indicated a syzygy. For he said that all things were made by him, but the life *in him.* This then, which came into being in him, is more intimately related ^D to him than those things made through him; for it is ever with him, and through him it bears fruit. Since he adds, *And the life was the light of men.* By the term "man" he now signified the Church, so that by one name he might manifest the syzygy.

BULL'S INTERPRETATION

^A Having just spoken of Man, he implied the Church by the same name as Man, in order that by the one name he might signify the communion of the syzygy. For from the Word and the Life, Man is generated, and the Church. And he called the Life the light of men, because they have been illuminated by it, which is to be formed and manifested. Paul also says this: *For everything that is manifested is light.* Since, therefore, the Life has manifested and generated both Man and the Church, it is called their light. John has clearly indicated, therefore, through these words, both the other things and the second tetrad, Word and Life, Man and Church. ^B Nay, he indicated the first tetrad as well. For, describing the Savior and saying that all things outside the Pleroma were formed through him, he says that he is the fruit of the whole Pleroma; for he also says that he is the light shining in the darkness, and is not comprehended by it, because, in forming all things which were made through passion, he remained unknown by them. And he speaks of him as Son, and Truth, and Life, and the Word made flesh; whose glory we have seen, he says, and his glory was as that of the Only-begotten, which was given to him by the Father, full of grace and truth. He says also that he is ^C full of grace and truth, and he says that he is the Word, and the glory of the Only-begotten, and he refers "him" to the darkness.

BILLIUS’ INTERPRETATION

He also signified [these] equivocally, in order that by one word he might declare the commercial relationship of the conjunction. For from the Word and the Life, Man and the Church have originated. Furthermore, he called the life the light of men, because they are illuminated by it, that is to say, formed and made manifest. Which also Paul says in these words: *For everything that is manifested is light.* Since, therefore, the Life generated and manifested both Man and the Church, it is consequently called their light. Clearly, therefore, through these words John declared both other things and the second quaternitas, that is, Word and Life, Man and Church. Moreover, the first quaternitas ^D is also indicated by him. For he says regarding the Savior, and teaching that all things that are outside the Pleroma were formed by him, that he is the fruit of the whole Pleroma.

For he called him the light shining in darkness, and not comprehended by it: since, without their knowing, he fashioned all things that were made out of the passion. In addition to this, he calls him Son, and Truth, and Life, and the Word made flesh: "Whose glory," he says, "we beheld, and it was the glory of the Only-begotten, which had been granted to him by the Father, full of grace and truth." Clearly, then, and accurately he also shows the first quaternion, when he spoke of the Father, and Charis, and the Only-begotten, and Truth. And in this manner John has spoken concerning the first and mother of all Aeons Ogdoad. For he spoke of the Father and Charis, the Only-begotten and Truth, the Word and Life, Man and the Church. And in this manner Ptolemaeus.

CAPUT IX.

^A 1. You see, beloved, the method by which those who use it deceive themselves, slandering the Scriptures, and striving to make their own fiction consist of them. For this reason, I have also set forth their own expressions, that from them you might understand the craftiness of the method and the wickedness of the error. For if, in the first place, it had been John’s intention to make known that Ogdoad which is above, he would have observed the order of the emission, and he would have placed the first quaternion—since it is more venerable, as they say, and highly to be revered—among the first names, and thus would have attached the second, so that through the order of the names the order of the Ogdoad might be shown. And he would not have, after such an interval, as if having forgotten and then remembering, mentioned the first quaternion at the very end. ^B Furthermore, if he had wished to signify the pairs, he would not have omitted the name of the Church; but either for the remaining pairs [he would have included it], or—

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION

^A For he was satisfied with the naming of the males, since they too could be understood in the same way, in order to preserve unity throughout; whereas if he were enumerating the syzygies ^B of the remaining [ones], he would also have revealed the syzygy of Man, and would not have left it to us to obtain his name by divination.

2. The falsification of their exposition is therefore manifest. For since John proclaims one God Almighty and one Only-Begotten Christ Jesus, through whom he says all things were made, this Son of God, this Only-Begotten, this Creator of all things, this true light illuminating every man, this Maker of the world, this one who came into his own, this same one who became flesh and dwelt among us—they, distorting the exposition according to plausibility, wish for one to be the Only-Begotten according to emission, whom they also call the Beginning; and they wish for another to be the Savior, and another to be the Word, the son of the Only-Begotten, and another to be Christ, who was emitted for the restoration of the Pleroma. And taking each one of the things mentioned away from the truth, and abusing the names, they have transferred them to their own hypothesis, so that, according to them, John has made no mention of the Lord Jesus Christ in so many words. For if he has spoken of the Father, and Grace, and the Only-Begotten, and Truth, and the Word, and Life, and Man, and the Church, according to that hypothesis of theirs, he has spoken [of them].

BILLI'S INTERPRETATION

2. The plan of their exposition is therefore clearly false. For since John proclaims one God Almighty and one Only-Begotten Jesus Christ, through whom all things were made, [proclaims] this Son of God, this Only-Begotten, this effector of all things, this true light illuminating every man, this creator of the world, this one who came to his own and was made flesh and dwelt among us; they, distorting the exposition by the seduction of fancy language, wish for one [being] to be the Only-Begotten according to production, whom they also call the Beginning, and another to be the Savior, and another the Word, the child of the Only-Begotten, and finally another the Christ, brought forth into light for the restoration of the Pleroma; and removing each one of the things that were said from the truth, and abusing the names, they have transferred them to their own preconceived plan; so much so that, in their opinion, John has made no mention of the Lord Jesus Christ in so many words. For if he has spoken of the Father, and Grace, and the Only-Begotten, and Truth, and the Word, and Life, and Man, and the Church, ^C

according to their argumentation, regarding the first ogdoad, in which there is not yet Jesus nor yet Christ, the teacher of John. But that the Apostle did not speak regarding their syzygies, but regarding our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he also knows to be the Word of God, he himself has made manifest. For as he summarizes what was said by him above in the beginning concerning the Word, he explains further: *And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.* But according to their hypothesis, it was not the Word that was made flesh—who indeed never came outside the Pleroma—but the Savior (who proceeds from all [the Aeons], being later than the Word). But it is this very one who is the Word of God. For if any other of the Aeons had been made flesh for our salvation, it would have been likely that the Apostle was speaking of someone else. But if the Word of the Father, he who descended, is the very same who also ascended—the only-begotten Son of the one God, having become flesh according to the pleasure of the Father for the sake of men—then he has not fashioned his discourse regarding anyone else, nor regarding an ogdoad, but rather regarding the Lord Jesus Christ. For not even the Word, according to them, was primarily made flesh. They say instead that the Savior put on a ^B psychic body, fashioned by ineffable providence from the dispensation, so that it might be seen by eyes and handled by hands. But flesh is that ancient formation of Adam from the clay by God, which John says the Word of God truly became.

3. Learn then, O senseless ones, that Jesus, who suffered for us, who dwelt among us, is the very same who is the Word of God. For if any other one of the Aeons had been made flesh for our salvation, one would have to conclude that the Apostle spoke of someone else. But if the Word of the Father, who descended, is the same one who also ascended—the only-begotten Son of the one God, incarnate for the sake of men according to the pleasure of the Father—then he did not construct his discourse regarding anyone else, nor regarding an ogdoad, but regarding the Lord Christ Jesus. For not even the Word, according to them, was primarily made flesh. They say that the Savior put on a psychic body, formed by ineffable providence out of the dispensation, so that it could be perceived by the eyes and handled by the hands. But the flesh is that ancient formation of Adam from the clay, [which the Word of God truly became].

as John manifested. And thus their first and primogenital Ogdoad is dissolved. For since one and the same is shown to be the Logos, and the Only-Begotten, and Life, and Light, and the Savior, and Christ, and the Son of God, and this same one became incarnate for our sake, the structure of their Ogdoad is dissolved. And this being dissolved, their whole argument falls to the ground, which, dreaming under a false name, they use to mistreat the Scriptures ^B, fashioning it for their own argumentation.

4. Then, collecting words and names scattered about, they transfer them, as we have said before, from that which is according to nature to that which is against nature: doing things similar to those who propose whatever controversies they like to one another, and then attempt to meditate upon them using Homeric verses; so that the more simple-minded might think that ^C Homer had composed the verses for that recently improvised theme, and many are carried away by the composite sequence of the verses, lest perchance Homer might have composed them in this very way. Just as the one who, writing about Hercules being sent by Eurystheus to the dog in Hades by means of Homeric verses, is described thus (for nothing prevents us from mentioning these for the sake of an example, since the attempt is similar and the same for both): Having said this, he sent out from the threshold weeping ^D Hercules the invincible, not ignorant of great deeds, Eurystheus, son of Sthenelus, grandson of Perseus, To bring from Erebus the dog of black Hades to the light.

BILLI'S INTERPRETATION

4. Then they translate some words and names, which are scattered in different places, into one, with a genuine sense, though they translate them into an adulterated one, acting entirely like those who propose whatever arguments they like for themselves, and then they strive to weave them together with Homeric verses; so that all the most unskilled people think that Homer had composed such verses for that recently elaborated argument, and many, through a rite-compacted series of verses, are led to such a point that they doubt whether Homer had composed these things in this way. In which genre is that which a certain person, describing by Homeric verses Hercules being sent by Eurystheus to the dog of the Infernal regions, sang in this manner. For nothing prevents us, for the sake of an example, from mentioning these, since the attempt of both is similar and the same.

^A

He goes, like a lion nurtured in the mountains, keen, Through the midst of the city: known to all, all went along, Both old men and boys, and maidens not yet wed, Wailing much, as if he were to go to death itself. Mercury conducts him, and sea-eyed Pallas: For she knew in her heart her brother, how much sorrow was agitating him.

Who among the simple-minded would not be carried away by such verses as these, and think that Homer had composed them for this argument? But he who knows the Homeric work will indeed recognize the verses, but will not recognize the argument, knowing that one part of them is said concerning Ulysses, another concerning Hercules himself, another concerning Priam, and another concerning Menelaus and Agamemnon. But if he should take them up and restore each one to its own book, he will remove the argument presently at hand. ^B In the same way, he who holds within himself the immovable rule of truth, which he received through baptism, will indeed recognize the names, the expressions, and the parables taken from the Scriptures; but he will not recognize the blasphemous argument.

A METRICAL INTERPRETATION

He speaks thus, and drawing sighs from his deep heart, He bade the noble Alcides, son of Sthenelus, Straightway descend to the houses of the Stygian tyrant, To bring up from there the dog to the upper shores. Therefore he, undaunted, in the manner of a raving lion, Goes forth. Youths and unwed maidens follow him, And aged elders, sad and moistened with tears, Follow him, as if he were going to certain destruction. But Cyllenius and Minerva led him: For they knew the distresses and hard labors of their brother.

Who, I ask, among those who are of a simple and less crafty mind, would not be carried away by these verses, to the point of being of the opinion that Homer had thus played with verses in an argument of this kind? Yet he who is skilled in the argument of Homeric poetry will indeed recognize the verses, but will not recognize the material, being one who has found and explored that something of them was said concerning Ulysses, something concerning Hercules himself, something concerning Priam, something concerning Menelaus and Agamemnon. Whence it happens that if he should move them out of the way, and restore each thing to its own book, he will remove the present material from the middle. In the same way, he who retains in himself the norm of truth, which he received through baptism, firm and constant, will indeed recognize the words, expressions, and parables taken from the Scriptures: but he will not recognize the wicked and impious argument. For even if... ^{C D}

^A he recognizes the gems, he will not accept the fox in place of the royal image. But by restoring each of the things said to its own order, and adapting them to the body of the truth, he will strip [their argument] naked and show their fabrication to be unsubstantial.

5. Since, however, this scene lacks a redemption, ^B so that one might complete their mime and bring in the refuting argument, we thought it well to show first in what respects the fathers of this fable themselves disagree with one another, as though they were from different spirits of error. For from this, indeed, it is possible to perceive accurately, and even before the demonstration, the truth which is preached by the Church, and that which is by them... ^{C D}

falsely fabricated.

Chapter X

^A 1. The Church, though spread throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples the faith in one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven, and the earth, and the seas, and all that is in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who preached through the prophets the dispensations, and the advents, and the birth from a Virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily ascension into the heavens of the beloved Christ Jesus our Lord, and his coming from heaven in the glory of the Father, to "recapitulate ^B all things," and to raise up all flesh of all mankind, in order that to Christ Jesus our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the good pleasure of the invisible Father, "every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth," and that every tongue should confess to him, and that he should execute righteous judgment upon all: that he may send spiritual wickedness, and the angels who transgressed and became apostate, and the impious, and unjust, and wicked, and profane among men, into the eternal fire.

Billius' Interpretation

Chapter X

and the unjust, and the lawless, and the blasphemous among men; but to the just and holy, and to those who have kept his commandments, and have persevered in his love, some from the beginning ^A and others from the time of their repentance, he grants life and bestows incorruptibility, and prepares for them eternal glory.

2. ^B This preaching, and this faith which it has received, as we have said, the Church, although it is dispersed throughout the whole world, diligently guards, as if it inhabited one house; and it believes these things in like manner, as if it had one soul and one and the same heart, and consistently preaches them, and teaches, and delivers them, as if it possessed one mouth. For although the languages of the world are different, the power of the tradition is one and the same. And neither do the Churches which have been planted in Germany ^C otherwise believe nor deliver,

^A nor those among the Celts, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which are established in the middle regions of the world. But as the sun, that creature of God, is one and the same in the whole world, so also the preaching of the truth shines everywhere, and illuminates all men who wish to come to a knowledge of the truth. And neither will the one who is very powerful in speech among those who are set over the Churches say anything different from what these things are (for no one is above his master), nor will the one who is weak in speech diminish the tradition. For whereas the faith is one and the same, neither he who is able to say much about it adds to it, nor does he who is able to say little diminish it.

3. The fact that some know more or less regarding understanding does not come about from changing the hypothesis itself, and imagining another God beyond the Creator, and Maker, and Provider of this whole world, ^{B C D}

but rather consists in examining diligently all that has been said in parables and adapting it to the hypothesis of faith; and in setting forth the dealing and dispensation of God which was brought about for humanity; and in explaining that God showed forbearance both regarding the apostasy of the angels who turned away from Him, and regarding the disobedience of men; and in announcing why God, who is one and the same, made some things temporal and others eternal, some things heavenly and others earthly; and in understanding why God, being invisible, appeared to the prophets not in one form, but differently to different ones; and in signaling why there have been many covenants given to humanity, and teaching what the character of each of the covenants is; and in searching out why God concluded all in disobedience, that He might have mercy upon all; and in giving thanks because the Word of God was made flesh and suffered; and ^A in explaining why the arrival of the Son of God occurred at the final times—that is to say, in the end.

Interpretation by Billius

Not that there is sufficient protection for us in this, that they imagine some other God, or another Christ, or another Only-Begotten: but the matter rests exactly in this, that a person should treat all those things which were spoken in parables somewhat more accurately, and adapt them to the argument of faith, and in that same process also set forth the plan ^B and dispensation of God made for the salvation of the human race, and explain how He bore with the long-suffering of His mind both the defection of the angels who departed from Him and the disobedience of men: and recount what the cause is why one and the same God created some things as passing and others as eternal, some things heavenly and others earthly: and understand for what reason God, though invisible, yet presented Himself to be seen by the prophets not in one form, but differently to different ones: and indicate why it came to pass that several covenants happened to the human race, and teach what the character of each covenant is: and investigate what also was the cause for which God concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy on all: and also for what cause the Word of God was made flesh, and underwent ^C torments, and embrace this with a grateful prayer: and furthermore commemorate why the arrival of the Son of God occurred at the final times, that is, in the end rather than in the beginning: and explain whatever is set down in Scripture concerning the end itself and future things: then also, do not be silent regarding why God made the Gentiles, whose salvation had been despaired of, co-heirs and fellow-bodies and participants of the saints: and explain by what manner this mortal body is to be clothed with immortality, and this corruptible body with incorruptibility: finally, proclaim who is the people that was made, who was no people, and the beloved, who was not beloved; and who are the more numerous children of the ^D desolate, than of her who had a husband. For in these and other things of this kind the Apostle exclaimed: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge!

^A And why in the most recent times the advent of the Son of God, that is, in the end, appeared, and not in the beginning, to announce; and regarding the end, and the things to come, as many as are set down in the Scriptures, to unfold; and why God made the desperate nations heirs together, and of the same body, and partakers of the saints, not to be silent; and how this mortal flesh [1 Cor. xv, 54] shall put on immortality, and the corruptible incorruptibility, to announce: and how He shall say, "a people," [who was] "not a people," and "beloved," [who was] "not beloved" [Hos. ii, 23; Rom. ix, 25], and "the children of her who was desolate," [should be] "more than of her who has a husband" [Isa. liv, 1; Gal. iv, 27], to proclaim. For it was concerning these things, and those similar to them, that the Apostle exclaimed: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! But not in that which is above the Creator and Artificer, in the mother of these and of Him, to devise the Enthymesis of the erring Aeon, and to arrive at such blasphemy; nor in that which is again above this, the Pleroma, to falsely claim at one time one, and at another an ^B innumerable multitude of Aeons, as these people say who are truly destitute of the divine Word! How unsearchable are His judgments and past finding out His ways! In this, I say, the industry of learned men is placed, not in that anyone should, beyond the Creator and Maker, further invent the Enthymesis of an erring Aeon, which might be the parent of Him, and burst forth into such blasphemy: or again in that which is more sublime than this, the Pleroma, to contrive at one time thirty Aeons, at another an innumerable swarm of Aeons: just as those masters, truly destitute of divine wisdom, say: while in the meantime the true and universal Church holds one and the same faith throughout the whole world, as we have said before.

CAPUT XI.

What Valentinus’s opinion is, and in what respects his disciples, Secundus, Epiphanes, and certain others, differ from him in their doctrines.

^ALet us now see the inconstant opinion of these men, when there are two or three of them, how they do not say the same things about the same subjects, but respond with things contrary in both words and themes. For the first of them, Valentinus, who took the ancient doctrines and transferred them to the individual character of his own school, ^B defined it thus from what is called the Gnostic heresy: that there is a certain ineffable duality, one part of which is called the Ineffable, and the other Silence. And then...

from this duality a second duality is emitted, one part of which he calls the Father, and the other the Truth. And from this quaternion he says that the Word and Life, Man and the Church, bring forth fruit; and that this is the first ogdoad. And from the Word and Life he says that ten ^B powers are emitted, as we have said before. And from Man and the Church twelve, of which one—having departed and lagged behind—performed the remaining work. He posited two boundaries (Horoi): one between Bythos and the rest of the Pleroma, distinguishing the begotten Aeons from the unbegotten Father; and another, which separates their mother from the Pleroma. And he says that Christ was not emitted from the Aeons who are in the Pleroma, but was brought forth by the mother when she was outside, according to the memory of better things, with a certain shadow. And since he was male, he cut away the shadow from himself and ascended to the Pleroma; but the mother, being left behind with the shadow, and being emptied of spiritual substance, brought forth another son. And this is the Demiurge, whom he also calls the Almighty of those things which are subject to him. He was produced along with him as his left hand.

Billius' Interpretation

^A having been gathered together with all things, [is produced] from him who has ascended into the Pleroma, that is, the Christ; at other times from the Anthropos and the Ecclesia. And he says that the Holy Spirit was produced by the Ecclesia ^A for the examination and fruit-bearing of the Aeons, invisibly entering into them; through whom he says the Aeons bring forth the fruits of truth.

2. Secundus ^B says that there is a primary Ogdoad, a right-hand quaternion and a left-hand quaternion, and he hands it down to be called thus: the one being light, and the other darkness; and he says that the power which departed and fell short was not from the thirty Aeons, but from their fruits. ^B

3. Another some one, who also is a noted teacher ^D...

BILLIUS'S INTERPRETATION

...contracted itself, and when it had collapsed with the universal things, that is, he says it arose from the Theletos: at other times, on the contrary, from him who had withdrawn himself to the Pleroma, that is, from Christ: occasionally again from the Anthropos and the Ecclesia. Finally, that the Holy Spirit was produced by the Ecclesia for the examination and fecundity of the Aeons, so that entering into them in an invisible manner, it might cause them to bring forth the plants of truth.

2. Secundus, moreover, distinguishes the Ogdoad, that one quaternion is on the right, the other on the left: he hands down that the one is called light, the other darkness. And that power which departed, and removed itself from the others, he says is not of the number of the thirty Aeons, but [is] after the thirty Aeons. 3. ...

extending himself to a more sublime ^A and more Gnostic level, the first tetrad. Thus: "There is a certain Proarche before all things, unthinkable, ineffable, and without a name, which I name Monotes in number." With this Monotes there coexists a power, which I also name Henotes. This Henotes, and likewise the Monotes, being one, brought forth—without themselves undergoing change—and intellectual, unbegotten, and invisible Principle of all things, which the Sermo calls Monas. With this Monas there coexists a power consubstantial with it, which I also name "the One." These powers, Monotes and Henotes, Monas and "the One," brought forth the remaining emissions of the Aeons.

4. ^B Io! Io! and Pheu! Pheu! It is indeed truly tragic to say this regarding such a fabrication of names, and such boldness, that, having cast off all shame, he has set names to his own lie. For in saying, "There is a certain Proarche before all things, unthinkable, which I call Monas"; and again: "With this Monas..."

BILLIUS’ INTERPRETATION

... There is a certain Proarche before all things, surpassing all thought, speech, and nomenclature, which I call Solitas [Solitude]. Together with this Solitas, another power exists, which I also name Unitas [Unity]. This Unitas and Solitas, when they were one, brought forth—without issuing forth—the beginning of all things, intellectual, unbegotten, and invisible: which beginning is called Monas. Together with this Monas, there exists a power of the same essence as it, which I also name "the One." These powers, then—that is to say, Solitas and Unitas, Monas and "the One"—produced the remaining host of Aeons.

4. Io! Heu! Heu! It is indeed fitting to append a tragic exclamation, on account of such boldness in inventing names: just as he, having put aside all shame, assigned names to his own fabrication. For in the passage where he says: "There is a certain Proarche before all things, surpassing all thought, which I call Solitas"; and again: "With this Solitas another power exists, which I also name Unitas"; he has most manifestly confessed that the things he said are fabricated, since he has imposed upon his figment names of such a kind as had never before been imposed by anyone else. It is also clear that it is he who, moved by temerity, these ^C things ... ^D

has dared to fashion these names ^A; and had he not been present in life, the truth would have had no name. Nothing, therefore, hinders another person, upon the same hypothesis, from defining names in this way: To the Monad there coexists a power, which I myself call Unity, and with this unity exists a power which I call Proarche—a kingly, proanennoetos, proanhypostatos power—which spreads itself out. With this power there is a power which I call a gourd; and with this gourd there is a power which I also call perinane. These, the gourd and the perinane, being one, brought forth—though they had not brought forth—a fruit, visible in all things, edible, and sweet, which fruit the discourse calls a cucumber. With this cucumber there is a power of the same authority as it, which I also call a melon. These powers—the gourd, and the perinane, and the cucumber, and the melon—brought forth the remaining multitude of Valentinus’s delirious melons. For if it is necessary for his discourse, which is made about the universe, to be transfigured into the primary quaternation, and for one to impose names just as anyone wishes, who prevents [one from using] these names, which are certainly much more credible, in use, and known to all?

5. But others, in turn, have called their primary and ^B original ogdoad by these names: first Proarche, then Anennoeton, the third Arrheton, and the fourth Aoraton. And from the first, Proarche, there has been projected in the first and fifth places Archen; from the Anennoeton in the second and sixth places, Acatalepton; from the Arrheton in the third and seventh places, Anonomaston; and from the Aoraton in the fourth and eighth places, Agennetum.

BILLII INTERPRETATION

^C Then, following this, the same blessed bishop Irenaeus, as we have said, facetiously subjoins certain other ridiculous names, composed by himself in jest, as being consonant with their vanities; such as kinds of melons, or gourds, or colocynths, whose appellations he attributes to certain things—which those who are skilled in literature will perceive from what they have previously read. ^D

^A and from the Invisible, the Unbegotten. The Pleroma of the first Ogdoad. These they wish to be powers pre-existing Bythos and Sige, in order that they may appear more perfect than the perfect, and more Gnostic than the Gnostics; to whom one might justly exclaim: O prating sophists! For indeed there are many and diverse opinions among them concerning Bythos himself. For some say he is without a consort, neither male nor female, nor indeed existing as anything at all; others, however, say he is androgynous, attributing to him the nature of a hermaphrodite, so that the first conjugation may come into being. Others, again, add Sige to him as a consort, so that the first conjugation may exist.

CHAPTER XII

The doctrine of the disciples of Ptolemy and of the Colorbaseans.

^B 1. But those who are around Ptolemy, being more experienced than their own teacher..... he devised and bestowed two consorts upon God—the God who is called Bythos among them—which they also call dispositions, Ennoia and Thelesis. For he first conceived in his mind something emanated—

^C [The interpretation of Billius:] the complement of the first Ogdoad. And they wish these powers to have been even more ancient than Bythos and Sige, so that they may appear more perfect than the perfect and more learned than the Gnostics. To whom any person might rightly use these words: O prating sophists! For indeed, there are many and diverse opinions among them concerning Bythos himself. For some say he is without a consort, neither male nor female, nor indeed existing as anything at all. Others, however, assert that he is male and female at once, attributing to him, specifically, the nature of a hermaphrodite. Others, again, add Sige to him as a consort, so that the first conjugation may come into being.

CHAPTER XII

^A he called Thought and Will. For, he says, he first conceived of bringing forth, then he willed. And so, from these two affections, or even powers, Thought and Will, as they were blended together, the emission of the Only-Begotten and of Truth occurred by way of a syzygy. These were types and images of the two affections of the Father that came forth, the visible manifestations of the invisible: Truth of the Will, and Mind of the Thought; and through this Will, the male became an image of the unbegotten Thought, and the female an image of the Will; for the will became a power of the Thought. For the Thought indeed conceived of the emission, but was not able on its own to bring forth what it conceived. But when the power of the Will supervened, then it brought forth what it had conceived. 2. . . . who, as soon as he had conceived, and had accomplished that which he willed, and at the same time as he willed, ^B he says,

"Other gods and men, the horse-crested ones, slept all night; but Zeus held no sweet sleep, but he was pondering in his mind how he might honor Achilles, and destroy many at the ships of the Achaeans."

BILLI’S INTERPRETATION

to bring forth, and then the Will, as he himself says, followed. Wherefore, from these two affections, or even virtues—for he calls them virtues again—that is, from Cogitation and Will, as if coupled together, the origin of the Only-Begotten and of Truth came into being from a marriage: these, he says, are the visible types and images of the two invisible affections of the Father that have emerged, that is, the Truth of the Will, and the Mind of the Cogitation: and on this account, upon the arrival of the Will, there existed a male image of the unbegotten Cogitation, and a female image of the Will. And so, the will became the faculty of the Cogitation. For the Cogitation proposed that production to itself, but was unable on its own to produce what it cogitated. But when the faculty of the Will approached, then at last it brought into existence that which it cogitated. 2. . . . Who as soon as he cogitates, also accomplishes that which he willed: ^C they say, that is from the disciples of Ptolemy; but Epiphanius says that he speaks of Ptolemy himself in the singular. ^D

^A And he is understood as having willed that which he also cogitates, that he is cogitated on at the moment he wills, and then he wills when he is cogitated upon, being wholly thought, wholly will, wholly mind, wholly light, ^B wholly eye, wholly hearing, wholly the source of all good things.

3. But those who are thought to be more prudent among them ^C say that the first ogdoad was not produced gradually, one Aeon emitted by another, but that the emission of the Aeons by the Propatōr and his Ennoia was effected all at once and together, as he himself, acting as midwife, asserts. And no longer out of Logos and Zoe [do they say] that Anthrōpos and Ecclesia [are produced], but out of Anthrōpos and Ecclesia [do they say that Logos and Zoe are produced], and that they themselves were their midwives. ^D

When the Propator thought of emitting anything, this was called Father; but when those things which he emitted were true, this was called Alethia (Truth). When, therefore, he willed to show himself, this was called Anthrōpos (Man). And those whom he had predetermined when he emitted them, this was called Ecclesia (Church). And Anthrōpos [emitted] the Logos; this is the first-begotten son. The Logos is followed by Zoe; and thus the first ^A ogdoad was completed.

4. ^B There is, however, much fighting among them even regarding the Savior. For some say that he was produced out of all, and for this reason he is called Beneplacitum (the Well-pleased), because the entire Pleroma was well pleased to glorify the Father through him. Others, however, say that he was produced out of the ten Aeons alone, those which were emitted by the Logos and Zoe; and for this reason he is called Logos and Zoe, keeping the names of his parents. Others, again, prefer that he originated from those twelve Aeons which were made by Anthrōpos and Ecclesia; and for this reason he confesses himself to be the Son of Man, as if an offspring of Anthrōpos. Others say he was produced by Christ and the Holy Spirit, for the strengthening of the Pleroma; and for this reason he is called Christ.

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION

...it, this received the name of Father. ^C But since that which he produced was true, this was called Truth. Furthermore, when he willed to show himself, this was called Man. Finally, after he had produced those whom he had before thought of, this was called Church. Man emitted the Word (Sermo): this is the first-begotten son. Life followed the Word; thus the first ogdoad was finished and made absolute.

4. Concerning the Savior there is also a not minor fight among them, as they say he was produced from all. And for this same reason they call him Eudocetum (Well-pleased), because clearly it pleased the entire Pleroma to illuminate the glory of the Father through him. There are those, moreover, who hand down that he was produced from the ten Aeons alone, whom Sermo and Vita brought forth into light; and for this reason, he is called Sermo and Vita, retaining the names of his ancestors. Others, again, prefer that he arose from those twelve Aeons which existed from Homo and Ecclesia; and hence it happens that he himself confesses himself to be the Son of man, ^D as if [...]

keeping the appellation of his Father, from whom he was sent forth. Others, however, are those who say that the Propatorem of all, and Proarchen, and Proanennoston, is called Homo: and this to be the great and hidden mystery, because that Power which is above all things, and contains all things, is called Homo: and for this reason the Savior calls himself the Son of man. ^A

CHAPTER XIII.

Of the deceits and wicked arts of Marcus.

Another also, one from among those who are with them, glorying that he is a reformer of the master (Marcus, however, is his name), most skilled in magical imposture, through which he seduced many men and not a few women, caused them to turn to himself, as if to one most learned and most perfect, ^B and who possessed the greatest power from invisible and ineffable places, acting as if he were truly a forerunner of the Antichrist.

BILLIUS’ INTERPRETATION.

...as if the grandson of Man. Others besides prefer that he is the offspring of Christ and the Holy Spirit, who were brought forth for the purpose of strengthening the Pleroma: and for this reason he is called Christ, preserving the name of that parent, indeed, from whom he was brought forth. Nor are there wanting those who assert that the Propatorem of all, and Proarchen, and Proanennoston, is called Homo: and that this is that great and abstruse sacrament, namely, that the power which overcomes all things, and holds all things in its embrace, is called Homo: and this is the reason why the Savior calls himself the Son of Homo. ^C

CHAPTER XIII.

Marcus, however, a certain man, having led astray not a few men and women of both kinds, brought them under his influence: for since he was an impostor, as we have spoken of before, he imagined that he was the reformer of those wretched ones, [and after] he had dared…

^D

to combine the tricks of Anaxilaus with the craftiness of those who are called magicians, by these means he made displays and practiced sorcery to the astonishment of those who saw him and believed him… Even they who observe these things through curiosity think that certain powers are being performed by his hands… For they themselves, having lost their minds, do not see—being unable to test—that the composition of the tricks performed by him is, so to speak, the result of magic.

2. For, feigning to give thanks over a cup mixed with wine, and extending the words of the invocation to a great length, he makes it appear purple and red ^B so that it is thought that that Grace which is above all things distills her own blood into that cup through his invocation: and those present are strongly overcome with the desire to partake of that draught, so that the Grace which is named by this magician might flow into them as well. Again, handing mixed cups to women, he bids them— [at this point, the Latin column continues:]

BILLIUS’ INTERPRETATION

2. Feigning that cups mixed with wine are being consecrated, and extending the words of the invocation to a great length, he makes it appear purple and red, so that it is believed that the Grace which is above all things distills her own blood into that cup through his invocation; and those who are present are eager to taste of that potion, so that that Grace which is proclaimed by this magician might also flow into them. Again, he hands mixed cups to women ^{C D} [marginal commentary omitted].

^A and bids them give thanks in his presence. And when this has been done, he produces another cup, much larger than that from which the deceived woman had given thanks, and pours from the smaller one—the one consecrated by the woman—into the one brought by himself, which is much larger, immediately saying: "May that Grace which is before all things, the inapprehensible and ineffable, fill your inner man and multiply in you the knowledge of it, sowing the grain of mustard seed into the good ground." And by saying such things, and having thrown the miserable woman into a frenzy, he appears a worker of wonders, the large cup having been filled from the small one, so that it even overflows from it. And by doing other things similar to these, he has deceived many and led them away after him.

3. It is to be understood that he also has a certain attendant demon, by whom he himself also appears to prophesy, and he makes as many as he deems worthy to become partakers of his Grace also to prophesy. For he busies himself most of all with women, and with those of them who are well-dressed, in purple robes, and very wealthy, whom he frequently attempts to abduct, and flattering them, he says: "I wish to grant you a share of my Grace, since the Father of all things continually sees your Angel before His face. The place of thy greatness ^B is in us."

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION

By "the Sigé ^C" [Silence], which the heretics have named "Charis" [Grace], it is clear from the beginning of this chapter of this book that it is intended. He confirms this conjecture because shortly after, this grace is spoken of: "Grace, which is before all things, the inapprehensible and ineffable."

* * *

He says: "The Father of all things continually sees your Angel before His face." Thus, this heretic describes the angels a little lower down: "The Greatnesses ^D that always see the face of the Father." That this is understood of the angels, Grabius himself admits, and proves it from that epithet, "always seeing the face of the Father," which is explicitly attributed by Marcus to the angels from Matthew XVIII, 10, as may be read on page 64, and is also read in the words with which we are now dealing. The meaning, therefore, of "The place of thy greatness is in us" is: "The place of your angel is in us." For the clever deceiver was blathering, as Irenaeus relates a little later, that he and his own were images of the angels, that is, spiritual humans, whom the mother Achamoth had conceived from the contemplation of the angels of the Savior and had brought forth in their likeness.

^A “Take first from me, and through me, the Grace. Prepare yourself as a bride expecting her bridegroom, that you may be what I am, and I what you are. Establish in your bridal chamber the seed of light. Take from me the bridegroom, and receive him, and be received in him. Behold, Grace has descended upon you; open your mouth, and prophesy.”

When the woman responds, “I have never prophesied, and I do not know how to prophesy,” he performs certain invocations again, in order to cast the deceived woman into amazement and stupor, and says to her, “Open your mouth, speak whatever you wish, and you will prophesy.”

Then she, having been puffed up ^B and made foolish by the aforementioned words, her soul becoming heated by the expectation of her future prophesying, and her heart palpitating more than it ought, dares to speak delirious nonsense, and everything that comes to mind, emptily and boldly, inasmuch as she has been heated by the spirit (as one better than us has said regarding such prophets, that an audacious and shameless soul is one heated by an empty spirit), and from this point on she considers herself a prophetess. She gives thanks to Marcus, who has imparted his own Grace to her, and she desires to reward him ^C not only by the offering of her substance (whence he also gathered a great abundance of wealth), but even by her body.

BILL’S INTERPRETATION

He imparts, they prophesy: for he expends his zeal and effort especially upon women, and particularly those who are elegantly adorned and purple-clad, and possessed of great wealth; whom, desiring to attract to himself, he addresses in a fawning way: “It is my pleasure to impart my Grace to you, since the Father of all perpetually beholds your angel before his face. The place of your greatness, however, is situated within us. It is necessary that we be made one. Take first from me, and through me, the Grace. Adorn yourself, as a bride awaiting her bridegroom: that you may be what I am, and I in my turn what you are. Place the seed of light in your bridal chamber. Take the bridegroom from me, and be capable of him, and do that which you may be received in him. Behold, Grace descends into you: open your mouth, and prophesy.”

When the woman replies: “I have never been, nor do I know the art of prophesying,” he again, performing certain invocations in order to drag that deceived woman into admiration and stupor, addresses her with these words: “Open your mouth: speak whatever you please, and you will prophesy.”

By these words, therefore, she is foolishly puffed up and swollen, and on account of the hope and expectation of prophesying in which she is engaged, becoming heated in soul, with her heart pulsating more than is proper, she is carried along by audacity, and utters mere trifles, and whatever may have rashly occurred to her, emptily and impudently, inasmuch as she is heated by an empty spirit (just as a certain man among us, who is superior regarding such women, says: “An audacious and shameless thing is a soul heated by empty air”), and subsequently she considers herself a prophetess, and gives thanks to Marcus, who has made her a participant in his Grace, and does not only desire to reward him regarding her property,

^A but also regarding her body, that she might be united with him in one.

4. Now there were certain women among the faithful who held the fear of God, and were not seduced, whom he similarly endeavored to lead astray as he had the others, commanding them to prophesy. They, however, having blown upon him in detestation and cursed him, separated themselves from such a guild, knowing accurately that prophecy does not come upon men from Marcus the magician, but from those on whom God from above sends His grace. These have a God-given prophecy, and then they speak where and when God wills, ^B not when Marcus commands. For the one commanding is greater and more authoritative than the one commanded, since the former takes precedence and the latter is subordinate. If, therefore, Marcus or anyone else commands—as these people are accustomed to play at their priestly dinners and command one another to prophesy, and to prophesy for themselves according to their own desires—the one commanding would be greater and more authoritative than the prophetic Spirit, being a man; which is impossible. But such spirits as are commanded by them, and speak whenever they themselves wish, are unstable and ineffective, but bold and shameless, sent forth by Satan ^C for the deception and destruction of those.

who do not maintain the firm faith which they received from the beginning through the Church. ^A

5. That he also makes use of love-potions and stimulants, in order to insult their bodies, this same Marcus frequently does with certain women—though not with all—who, having often returned to the Church of God, have confessed and declared that they had been defiled in body by him, and that they had been inflamed with a very passionate love for him; insomuch that even a certain deacon of our people in Asia, having received him into his house, fell into this calamity. For his wife—a woman of singular beauty—was corrupted both in mind and body by this magician, and after having followed him for a long time, she was afterwards, with much labor on the part of the brethren, converted. She spent the entire remainder of her time in confession, mourning and lamenting over the corruption she had suffered at the hands of the magician. ^B

6. But certain of his disciples also, going about among the same people, have seduced many women and corrupted them, calling themselves "perfect," as if no one could be compared to the magnitude of their knowledge, not even if you were to name Paul or Peter, or any other of the apostles; but that they have known more than all, and have alone imbibed the magnitude of the knowledge of the ineffable Power. They declare themselves to be in the height above every power; therefore they act freely in all things, having no fear in any matter. For through [their] redemption, they become [—] ^C

BILLI'S INTERPRETATION

...are; but [being] bold and shameless, sent by Satan to lead them into fraud and destruction, who do not in the least guard that faith, which they first received from the Church, firm and vigorous.

5. That Marcus [is accustomed to use] certain love-philtres and stimulants (a practice from which he brings disgrace and insult upon their bodies), if not [to all], at least he is accustomed to employ [them] toward some, [who] often, when they returned to the Church of God, confessed that they had been contaminated in body by him, and had been inflamed with a wondrous love for him: insomuch that even an Asian, a certain deacon of ours, when he had received him into hospitality, fell into this calamity. For his own wife, a woman of singular beauty, was corrupted by this magician both in mind and body, and after she had followed him for a long time, she was afterwards, not without great labor, converted by the brethren, and for all the remaining time of her life she did not cease to confess her committed sin, mourning and following with tears the stain which had befallen her from the magician. ^D

^A to be held by the judge. And if he should lay hold of them, those who are present with him for the redemption shall say these things: "O assessor of God, and of the mystical Silence before the eon, ^B whom the Greatnesses always seeing the face of the Father, having thee as guide and introducer, draw upward their own forms, which that very bold one, having conceived in fantasy, because of the goodness of the Forefather, sent forth as our icons, then having the thought of those above as a dream: behold, the judge is near, and the herald commands me to make my defense. But do thou, as one knowing the accounts of us both, stand by the judge for the account of both of us, as being one." ^C But the Mother, having quickly... ^D

^A heard these things, placed the Homeric helmet of Hades upon them, so that they might invisibly escape the judge; and immediately snatching them away, she led them into the bridal chamber and delivered them to their own bridegrooms.

7. But saying and doing such things, and in ^B those regions also which are according to us in the Rhodanusia, they have seduced many women, who, having cauterized consciences, some indeed even make confession in public; but others, being ashamed of this, and quietly in some way having despaired of themselves regarding the life of God, some have departed altogether, and others waver, and have suffered that which is in the proverb, being neither outside nor inside, having this fruit of the seed of the children of Gnosis.

BILLII INTERPRETATION

...and having examined, have the account for both of us, that, being one, you may present it to the judge. But as soon as the Mother received these words, she puts upon them the Homeric helmet of Orcus, that she might snatch their appearance away from the judge, and immediately drags them up into the bridal chamber, and attributes them to their own bridegrooms.

7. By these words and actions they have also led many women in our Rhodanusian region into fraud: who, indeed, as having their conscience branded as with a certain cautery, some performed penance publicly; some, when they could not endure to do this for shame, and for they were tacitly in some measure despairing of the life of God, either altogether fell away from the faith: or certainly they propend to either side, and what is wont to be said by the proverb, they are neither outside, nor inside; and this they garner as the fruit from the seed of the children of knowledge.

CHAPTER XIV. MARCO'S HYPOTHESIS.

He imagines that the supreme Tetrad descended to him in the likeness of a woman, in order to reveal secrets hitherto unrevealed to any. Under an enigmatic farrago of letters, syllables, sounds, and characters, he hands down the Pleroma and the fabrications of the Valentinians. ^A For he asserts that Marcus, saying that he himself was the only one who had received the gift from Colorbasus, and calling himself the Only-Begotten, brought forth that which was placed into him from the defect, in this way. He says that this supreme Tetrad descended to him from those invisible and unnameable places in a feminine form (because, he says, the world could not bear its masculine [nature]), and that it revealed to him what it was, and the origin of all things, which it had never before disclosed to anyone, neither to gods nor to men; and that it told this to him alone, saying: "When first the Father, who is unthought and insubstantial, who is neither male nor female, willed that his ineffable [substance] be brought forth, and that ^B which was invisible—" ^{C D}

^A willed that his ineffable be made narrable, and that which was invisible be formed for himself; he opened his mouth, and brought forth a Word similar to himself; which, standing by, showed him what he himself was, having appeared as the form of the invisible one. The pronunciation of the name, however, came about as follows: He spoke the first word of his name, which was the beginning, and its syllable was of four elements. ^A He joined the second to it; and this, too, was of four elements; next he spoke the third, and this, too, was of ten elements. And the one after that he spoke, and this, too, was of twelve elements. There came to be, then, the pronunciation of the whole name, of thirty elements and four syllables. Each of the elements, however, is to have its own letters, and its own character, and its own pronunciation, and [its own] configurations and images: and that none of them is that which beholds the form of that one, ^B above which the element is. Neither does it know him—

BULL’S INTERPRETATION

in the following words: When first the one who is devoid of a Father, and who does not fall even into thought, and is endowed with no substance, and is neither male nor female—willed that that which in him is ineffable be begotten, and that which is invisible be formed—he opened his mouth and sent forth a discourse similar to himself; which, standing by, showed [him] what he himself was, appearing as the form of the invisible. ^A 9 10 11 12 13 14

nor even that of its neighbor, he knows to call all that which he utters, because he thinks that what he utters is the whole. For every one of them, being a part of the whole, considers its own sound to be the whole, and does not cease sounding until it arrive at the last letter of the last element, having uttered its own sound in a single tongue. Then he said that the restoration of all things will take place, when all things, having descended into one letter, shall resound in one and the same pronunciation; and he feigned that the image of this pronunciation is that "Amen" which we say together. He said that the sounds are those which form the insubstantial and unbegotten Aeon, and that these are the forms which the Lord called Angels, who without intermission see the face of the Father.

2. He called the common and ineffable names of the elements Aeons, and words, and roots, and seeds, and plenitudes, and fruits. He showed how the singular and proper name of each one of them existed, inasmuch as it had been a form of that which escaped the sense of sight. Moreover, the pronunciation of the name was as follows: he uttered the first term of the name itself, which was indeed a principle, and its syllable consisted of four elements. He added the second, which also itself contained four elements. Next he added the third, which also itself comprised ten elements. Finally, he spoke the fourth, which also itself was of twelve elements. And so the pronunciation of the whole name came to be of thirty letters and four syllables. But the individual elements have peculiar letters and notes and a peculiar pronunciation and figures and images, and there is nothing of them that perceives the form of that whose element it is. Nay, it does not even know the element itself, nor does any one of them know the pronunciation of its neighbor; but it considers that which it utters to be as if it were uttering the whole. For since each of these is a part of the universe, it thinks that its own sound is the whole sound, and it does not cease to tinkle until it arrives, tinkling singularly, at the final letter of the final element. Then the restoration of all things into their integrity comes to pass, when all things, falling into one letter, shall have given forth one and the same sound of pronunciation. And he feigned that the icon of this pronunciation is that "Amen" which we say together. He said that these sounds are those which inform that Aeon which is devoid of substance and is unbegotten. And he claimed that these, finally, are the forms (which the Lord called Angels) which perpetually see the Father’s face.

^A He says that they are contained and understood within the Church. He says that the last letter of the final element gave forth its own voice, the sound of which, going forth, generated peculiar elements according to the image of the elements; from which [he says] both the things here have been arranged, and that those things which were before them have been brought into being. And indeed, he says that the letter itself (the sound of which was following the sound below, and which had been taken up on high by its own syllable) was taken up for the completion of the whole; but that the sound remained below, as if cast outside. But he says that the element itself, from which the letter, along with its own pronunciation, descended below, is composed of thirty letters, and that each one of the thirty letters has other letters within itself, by which the name of the letter is [itself] named. And again, that the other [letters] are named by other letters, and those by others, so that the multitude of letters falls away into infinity. ^B And thus you might learn more clearly what is meant. The element delta has in itself five letters—the delta itself, and the epsilon, and the lambda, and the tau, and the alpha—and these letters are again written by other letters, and those others by yet others. If, therefore, the whole substance of the delta falls away into infinity, with others always generating letters from others and succeeding one another, how much greater must the sea of letters be in that [first] element? And if one letter is so infinite, behold the depth of the whole name, from which the Sige of Marcus dogmatized that the Propatur was constituted. Wherefore also he [the Father], ^C knowing that He is incomprehensible, gave to the elements, which he also calls Aeons, each one their own pronunciation, and Pleromata, and he named them fruits. ^D He says that the particulars and the properties of each one are contained and understood in the name of the Church. He says that the last letter of the final element gave forth its own voice, the sound of which, going forth according to the image of the elements, created peculiar elements, from which he relates that both these things here were described and adorned, and that those things which preceded these had come into being. And he says that the letter itself, whose sound followed the sound below, was taken up on high for the completion of the universe, but that the sound, as if cast forth, remained below. But he asserts that the element itself, from which the letter together with its pronunciation descended below, is of thirty letters, of which each one also contains other letters again, by which the name of the letter is expressed. And again, that one [letter] is named by another and yet another [by] other and yet other [letters], so that the letters increase to a certain infinite number. But you will understand what I say more clearly in this way. The element delta comprises five letters, namely delta, epsilon, lambda, tau, and alpha, and again these letters are written by other letters, and others by others likewise. If, therefore, the entire compounding of the element delta falls into infinity, with some things naturally generating others and succeeding one another, how much more vast will that sea of letters be in that element? And if one letter is so infinite, you would wish to observe what is the depth of the letters in the whole name, from which Marcus’ Sige taught that the Propatur is constituted. And for this reason also, because He understood that the Propatur could not be comprehended, He gave to the elements, which He also calls Aeons, to each one their own pronunciation.

^A Since it was

3. Since it was

4. When he had said these things, Truth,

BILLI'S INTERPRETATION

to these individual elements, to which he also assigns the name of Aeons, he gave them the power to produce their own pronunciation, since they were individually unable to pronounce the whole.

3. He said that he wanted to propose the Truth herself to you for inspection. For I have brought her down from the heavens, that you might behold her naked, and understand her beauty, and thus also hear her speaking, and admire her wisdom. See, therefore: her head above is A and Ω, neck B and Ψ, shoulders together with the hands Γ and X, chest Δ and Φ, diaphragm E and Y, back Z and T, belly H and Σ, thighs Θ and P, knees I and II, shins K and O, ankles Λ and Ξ, feet M and N. This, then, according to the magician's opinion, is the body of Truth, this is the figure of the element, this is the character of the letter. And this element he calls Man; and he says that this is the source of all speech, and the beginning of all voice, and the narration of all that is ineffable, and the mouth of the silent Silence. This, I say, is the body of Truth. But you, with your mind's intellect lifted on high, hear the word that is its own progenitor and the giver of the Father, out of the mouth of Truth.

4. When he had held this conversation with her, Truth, having looked upon him, opened her mouth and spoke the word; and he said that this word became a name, and this, I say, is the name which we know and speak, Christ Jesus. And when he had named her, he was silent. But when Marcus thought that he might have heard something more

^A of her to say, the Quaternity again coming into the midst, says: "How contemptible did you consider the Word which you heard from the mouth of Truth? This is not that which you know and think; it is an ancient name. For you have only the voice of it, but you are ignorant of its power. For Jesus is a distinguished name, consisting of six letters, and known by all who belong to the calling. But that which is among the Aeons of the Pleroma, since it exists in many forms, is of another shape and another type, known by those kindred beings whose magnitudes are always with him.

5. Know, therefore, that the twenty-four letters among you ^B are imaginal emanations of the three powers which contain the entire number of the elements above. For consider the nine mute letters to be of the Father and of Truth, because they are mute, that is, ineffable and unutterable; but the eight semivowels to be of the Word and of Life, because they exist, as it were, in the middle between the mutes and the vowels; and they receive the emanation from those above, and the upward movement from those below ^C; while the vowels, which are also seven, are of Man and the Church: since through Man the voice proceeding formed all things. For the sound of the voice bestowed upon them their form. Thus the Word and Life have the eight, Man and the Church the seven, and the Father and Truth the nine. And since the missing Word ^D that was within the Father descended, [by the addition of which] they were completed.

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION

Christ Jesus: having uttered this, he immediately became silent. But when Marcus expected from her some longer discourse, the Quaternity again coming into the midst, used these words: ^A You have thought that speech which you received from the mouth of Truth to be vile and contemptible. But you do not think that you possess what you know: it is an ancient name. For you have only the voice of it; its power, however, you do not know. For Jesus is a distinguished name, consisting of six letters, known and perceived by all who have been called. But that [Name] which is among the Aeons of the Pleroma, since it consists of many parts, is of another form and figure, known and explored only by those who attain to it by relationship, and whose magnitudes ^B are always with him.

5. Therefore, consider that the twenty-four letters which are among you, are as it were three powers, by which the whole number of the elements of those above is contained, sketching them out. For thus, suppose the nine mute letters to be of the Father and of Truth: because, forsooth, they are themselves mute, that is, of such a kind that they cannot be expressed by any words. But the eight semivowels are of the Word and of Life: because they are placed in the middle as it were between the vowels and the consonants, and as they flow down from ^C those above, so in turn, the things below are referred back to them. Moreover, the vowels, which are themselves also seven, are of Man and of the Church: since the voice, having proceeded through Man, informed all things. For the sound of the voice gave them their form. The Word and Life, therefore, have eight, Man and the Church seven, and the Father and Truth nine. But because the number was not sufficiently complete; he who remained in the Father descended, to that [number] namely, from which he was separated ^D

^A to the correction of the things that had been done, so that the unity of the Pleromas, having equality, might bring forth one fruit in all things, which is the power from all. And thus he who is of the number seven received the power of the eight; ^B and there came to be three places similar to the numbers, being ogdoads, which, coming together three times [in multiplication], showed the number of twenty-four. And indeed the three elements (he himself omits that they exist in the conjunction of the three powers, from which the twenty-four elements flowed out), being quadrupled by the ratio of the ineffable quaternion, make the same number as them, which he says belongs to the Innominable. And that they are carried by the three powers unto the likeness of the Invisible, of which elements the images of images are those things which among us are double letters, which, being added to the twenty-four elements, by the power which is according to analogy, make the number thirty.

6. Of this word and this economy he says that the fruit appeared in the likeness of an image, he who after six days ascended the mountain as the fourth, and became the sixth, he who was captured, ^C according to the power of analogy.

BILLIUS’ INTERPRETATION

6. He says that the fruit of this word and administration appeared in the likeness of an image, he who after six days ascended the mountain, and was made the sixth: who descended, and was detained in the hebdomad.

The meaning of these words, the learned man continues, is this: Since the Father and Truth contained nine letters, but Homo (Man) and Ecclesia only seven, and Sermo (Word) and Vita eight, it was done for the sake of correcting this inequality of the numbers, so that one letter, in which the Father abounded, might descend to Homo and Ecclesia: and thus to each of these conjugations its own octonary of letters was constituted. ^D

^A and descending in the week, being the [ἐπίσημον] (the sign-bearing) octad, and holding within itself the entire number of the elements, it manifested—when he had come to baptism—the descent of the dove, which is Ω and A. For its number is eight hundred and one. And because of this, Moses said that man was made on the sixth day; and that the economy on the sixth day, which is the Preparation, manifested the ultimate man unto the regeneration of the first man, of which economy the beginning and the end was the sixth hour, in which he was nailed to the tree. For the perfect mind, knowing the number of the six, and having the power of creation and regeneration, manifested to the sons of light the regeneration which came about through him who was manifested as the [ἐπίσημον] number in him. ^B Hence also he says that the double letters have the [ἐπίσημον] number. For the [ἐπίσημον] number, blended with the twenty-four elements, produced the thirty-letter name.

7. The deacon also uses the magnitude of the seven numbers, as the Silence of Marcus says, so that the fruit of the self-willed will might be manifest.

Billius’s Interpretation

7. Furthermore, the [ἐπίσημον] uses the magnitude of seven numbers, as the Silence of Marcus says, so that the fruit of his self-willed will might be made manifest.

^A And understand that the one who is formed ^B by the sign is he who is, as it were, divided or cut off, and who remained outside, who by his own power and wisdom, through that emission which is from him, animated this world—which is of seven powers, according to the imitation of the heptad of power—and placed soul to be that of the whole which is seen. And he himself also uses this work as though it were created by him of his own will; the others, however, serve, being imitations of the inestimable ones, [ministering] to the thought of the mother. And the first heaven sounds A, the one after it E, the third H, and the fourth, being the middle of the seven, utters the power of I, the fifth O, the sixth Y, and the seventh and fourth from the side the element ^B of A, according to what the Silence of Marcus—which, while prattling about many things, says nothing true—asserts. Which powers, he says, all together intertwined with one another, sound and glorify him by whom they were emitted. And the glory of the sound is sent up to the Propatir. He says, however, that the sound of this doxology being brought down to the earth became the maker and generator of those things which are on the earth.

8. He brings forward as proof [an argument] ^D from infants newly born, whose sound, as soon as they emerge from the womb, ^C is as the soul in infants crying, 8... [The remainder of this page consists of the Latin interpretation by Billius and notes on the text.]

the mouths of infants and sucklings You have perfected praise." And again: "The heavens (of the heavens) declare the glory of God." And for this reason, too, when the soul finds itself in pains and tribulations, it cries out for its own purification ^B the letter O, as a sign of praise, in order that the soul above, recognizing its kinsman, might send down aid to it.

9. And concerning the entire name, which consists of thirty letters, and concerning Bythus, who receives increase from these letters, and furthermore concerning the twelve-membered body of Truth, consisting of two letters, and its voice, which it spoke without having spoken, and concerning the resolution ^C of the name that was not spoken, and concerning the soul of the world and of man, according to the dispensation which they have according to the image, he spoke in such a delirious fashion. Next, we shall relate how the Tetrad showed to him a power equal in number to the names, in order that nothing of what has been spoken by him and has come down to us may escape you, beloved, just as you have often requested of us. ^D

BILLII INTERPRETATION

9. And regarding the whole name which consists of thirty letters, and of Bythus, who takes increase from these letters, and furthermore of the twelve-membered body of Truth, which consists of twelve members, and each member consists of two letters; to these [he adds] about the very voice which it uttered, when it did not utter it, and about the resolution of that name which was expressed by no words, and lastly about the soul of the world and of man, in what manner they have that dispensation which is according to the image, he raved in this way. It follows now that we relate in what manner the Quaternity showed him a power equal to the names, so that nothing of those things which we have accepted as handed down by them may escape you; as you have very often requested of us.]

CAPUT XV.

^A Thus then does Sige declare to him the generation of the twenty-four elements. To the Solitude there also coexists the Unity, from which two emissions, as has been said before, are produced: the Monad and the One. Being two, they became four, for twice two is four. And again, the two and the four, having been joined together, manifested the number of six. And these six being quadrupled, brought forth twenty-four forms. ^B And indeed, the names of the first quaternion, which are understood as the holy of holies, and cannot be spoken, are known only to the Son, and the Father knows what they are. But the august names, which are named with faith in his system, are these: Arrhetos (the Ineffable) and Sige (Silence), and Pater (the Father) and Aletheia (Truth). And the total number of the elements of this quaternion is twenty-four. For the name Arrhetos has within itself seven letters, and Sige five, and the Father five, and Aletheia seven; which, being added together upon the same, twice five and twice seven, completed the number of twenty-four. Likewise, also, the second quaternion, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia, showed the same number of elements. And the expressible name of the Savior consists of six letters; but his ineffable name consists of twenty-four letters. ^C The Son and Christ consists of twelve letters.

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION. CHAPTER XV.

In this manner, therefore, does she, most wise in all things, Sige, set forth to him the origin of the twenty-four elements. For the unity to exist together with the solitude, from which two, as we have said above, the productions came forth, the Monad, namely, and the One; which being joined together among themselves make four, for twice two are four. And again, the two and the four joined into one, declared the number six. The six, furthermore, being taken four times in itself, generated twenty-four forms. And the names of the first quaternion, which are understood to be the holy of holies, cannot be expressed in any words; they are known to the Son alone, and the Father knows what they are. ^D But those august and venerable names, which are used not without faith, are these with him: Arrhetos, Sige, Pater, Aletheia. The total number of this quaternion, moreover, is twenty-four letters. For the name...

^A *Yios* and *Christos*, as it is in Christ, is ineffable, extending to thirty letters. And for this reason he says he is Alpha and Omega, that he might signify the dove, since this bird has this number.

2. Jesus, he says, has this ineffable genesis. For from the mother of all, that is, the first quaternion in the place of a daughter, the second quaternion proceeded, and became an ogdoad, from which proceeded the decas: thus came the decas and the ogdoad. The decas, therefore, being joined to the ogdoad and making it tenfold, raised the number to eighty; and again making the eighty tenfold, it generated the number eight hundred; so that the whole number of the letters from the ogdoad proceeding into the decas [is] 888, which is Jesus. For the name Jesus, according to the calculation of the Greek letters, is 888. You have, therefore, manifest and supercelestial ^B genesis. For from the mother of all, the first quaternion, in the manner of a daughter, the second quaternion proceeded, and the ogdoad came to be, from which the decas proceeded. Thus the decas and the ogdoad came to be. For the decas, therefore, having joined the ogdoad and made it tenfold, advanced the number to eighty; and again, having made the eighty tenfold, it generated the number eight hundred; so that the whole number of the letters, having proceeded from the ogdoad into the decas, is 888, which is eighteen. For the name Jesus, according to the number in the letters, is eighty-eight. It has ^C

BILLI'S INTERPRETATION

and thus [they say] it indicates the supercelestial generation of the eight and the [number] of the ogdoad according to them. For this reason, also, the alphabet of the Greeks has eight units, and eight tens, and eight hundreds, ^B indicating the sum of eight hundred and eighty-eight (then), that is, the *eiê*, which is composed of all the numbers. And by means of the Alpha and Omega, it is named after him, signifying the generation from all. And again in this way: by the progression of the first tetrad, the number of the number being added into itself, the number of ten appeared. For one and two and three and four added together amount to ten, and this they wish to be ^C Jesus. But also Christ, he says, being of eight letters, signifies the first Ogdoad, which, combined with the ten, produced Jesus. It is said also, he says, that the Son [is] Christ, that is to say, the duodecad. For the name *huios* (Son) is of four letters, and *Christos* (Christ) of eight; which, when put together, have shown the magnitude of the duodecad. Before, ^D however, he says, this name’s distinction had appeared, that is, Jesus, in great ignorance of the children [they were].

BILLII INTERPRETATION.

...it produced the number; and again, the eighty-fold [it produced] into ten, making the eight-hundredth number. Thus, since the entire number of the letters has progressed from the octonary to the denary, eight and eighty emerge: which indeed is *Iêsous* (Jesus). For this name, if you count the number of the letters, makes eight and eighty. You have clearly how, in their opinion, the supercelestial birth of Jesus also came about. Whence also [they say] the alphabet of the Greeks contains eight units, eight decads, and just as many hundreds; which yield the number of eight hundred and eighty-eight, that is, Jesus, constant from all numbers, and for that reason [they say] he is called A and Ω, so that his birth from all might be signified. And again, in this way they explain it: by the first quaternation, according to the progression of number, composed in itself, the denary comes forth. For one, and two, and three, and four, gathered into one, make ten, which is *iota*: and this they wish to be Jesus. Furthermore...

with regard to the letters of the name, they say that it represents the Savior, that is, Jesus, ^A unto those who were, until His appearing, in much ignorance and error. But when the six-lettered name was manifested, which clothed itself in flesh, in order that it might descend to the perception of man, having in itself those six and twenty-four; then, having known Him, they ceased from ignorance, and ascended from death to life, the name having become for them a guide unto the Father of Truth. For it was the will of the Father of all to dissolve ignorance and destroy death. Now the dissolution of ignorance became the knowledge of Him. And for this reason, he who was fashioned according to the image of the power above [was] elected according to His will ^B.

3. For from the Quaternity, the Aeons proceeded. And there were in the Quaternity Anthropos and Ecclesia, Logos and Zoe. From these, then, the Powers, he says, having emanated, brought forth Him who appeared on earth, Jesus. And he says that Gabriel filled the place of the Logos, the Holy Spirit that of Zoe, the Power of the Most High that of Anthropos; and the Virgin manifested the place of the Ecclesia. And thus, that man who is according to the dispensation is fashioned through Mary, whom the Father of all chose, as he passed through the womb, through the Word, for the knowledge of Himself. But when He had come to the water, that which had run up on high ^C descended upon Him like a dove, and filled the twelfth nu-

INTERPRETATION OF BILLIUS

3. For the Aeons flowed forth from the Quaternity. For in the Quaternity were Anthropos and Ecclesia, Sermo and Vita. From these, therefore, he says, the emanating Powers produced Him who appeared on earth, Jesus. And indeed, that the angel Gabriel filled the place of the Sermo, the Holy Spirit [that] of Vita, the Power of the Most High [that] of Homines [Anthropos]; and finally, the Virgin indicated the place of the Ecclesia. Thus, indeed, among him, that man who exists by dispensation was brought forth into birth through Mary: whom the parent of all things chose, through the work of the Sermo, as he passed through the womb, for the knowledge of Himself. But when He had betaken Himself to the water, he says that there descended upon Him, in the likeness of a dove, he who had received himself back to the supernal [heights], and had fulfilled the twelfth number.

^A In this was the seed of those who were sown along with him, and who descended and ascended with him. This same Power that descended he says is the seed of the Father, having in itself both the Father and the Son, and the ineffable virtue of Silence that is known through them, and all the Aeons. And this he says is the Spirit who spoke through Jesus, ^B who confessed himself the Son of Man, and manifested the Father, having descended into Jesus, and been united to him; and the Savior, he says, destroyed death, but recognized the Father, namely Christ. He says, therefore, that Jesus is the name of him who is of the Dispensation, but that it was placed there for the assimilation and formation of that Man who was to descend upon him. He who had received him, he says, had in himself both the Man, and the Word, and the Father, and the Ineffable, and Silence, and Truth, and the Church, and Life.

4. These things are beyond "Alas!" and "Woe!" and beyond ^C every tragic exclamation and lamentation.

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION

[He] had fulfilled [the number], in whom was the seed of those who were sown along with him, and at the same time had descended and ascended. This Power, furthermore, which descended, he says is the seed of the Father, having the Father and the Son in itself, and that virtue of Silence which is known through them and cannot be expressed by any faculty of speech, and all the Aeons. And [he says] that this is that Spirit who spoke through the mouth of Jesus, and confessed himself the son of man, and revealed the Father: and who descended into Jesus, and was coupled to him. And, he says, that he took away death, he who is from the Dispensation, the Savior; but he recognized the Father, namely Christ: wherefore he teaches that Jesus is the name of him who existed by the Dispensation; but that it was imposed for the sake of expressing the likeness and formation of that Man who was to descend into him. Moreover, when he had received him, he held both the Man himself, and the Word, and the Father, and the Ineffable, and Silence, and Truth, and the Church.

4. These things also surpass "Alas!" and "Woe!" and every tragic exclamation and lamentation of grief. Who, indeed, would not be moved to hatred against the artificer and compiler of so many lies, perceiving the truth from ^D the Savior himself, who had descended from above? But since it is evident from this very same passage that this was the opinion of certain Gnostics, that the son was indeed Jesus, but the Father was Christ, and that the Father of Christ was God, it seems more probable that this was also the opinion of Marcus, and therefore it should be read, "and he recognized the Father, Christ," not "Christ."

(7) Regarding "of him who is from the Dispensation, the man." This is spoken in distinction to the superior Anthropus [Man], who descended into Jesus through the grandson Christ.

(8) Regarding "He who had received him, he had," etc. For "the word," Billius the ancient interpreter wishes to delete the particle "he." I, however, think that a new period should be started from these words, "he had received him," etc. But because the ancient interpreter wrote "whom," and did not render the particle, he did so because he conflated two periods into one. Otherwise these things concern Jesus, who took the Anthropus into himself.

(10) Regarding "exclamation." I would prefer that Billius translated it as "lamentation."

(11) "Descending indeed into Jesus, he was united to him."

(12) "He recognized the Father, Christ." It is to be read: "He made known the Father, Christ." See note 6.

(13) "Jesus is therefore the name." The word "Jesus" is poorly placed; in all other copies the word "is" closes the preceding period: for from thence the sense is entirely perverted. Both belong to what follows. But also in this, the same word "Jesus" having been wrongly repeated after "therefore" through the oscitancy of the scribe, we have expunged it by the authority of the Greek text.

(14) "Who is to descend into him," [is what is meant] by "who begins to descend into him."

^A Who, then, would not hate the wicked compiler of such great falsehoods, when he sees the truth transformed into an idol by Marcus, and branded as it were with the letters of the alphabet? For just as the Greeks confess that they received the first sixteen letters from Cadmus, and that later, as time progressed, they themselves discovered, at one time the aspirated [letters], and at another the double ones, and finally, last of all, they say that Palamedes added the long ones; so, if we look to the beginning—the "yesterday and the day before," as the saying goes—not yet did these exist among the Greeks. Was there, therefore, no truth before these things came to be among the Greeks? For ^B if your body, Marcus, is later in time than Cadmus and those before him, and later than those who added the rest of the letters, and later even than yourself—for you alone have brought down into an idol that which you call truth—then who will endure your babbling?

[BILLI'S INTERPRETATION] [Regarding the phrase rendering: "Marcus, an idol made, and of the alphabet letters recently, and, as the saying goes, yesterday and the day before, as if marked with certain notes, when it already exists from the beginning?"] For the Greeks confess that they first received sixteen letters from Cadmus; and that later, in the progress of time, they discovered now the aspirates, now the double letters; and finally, they say that Palamedes added the long ones. What then? Before these letters existed among the Greeks, was there no truth? For according to your opinion, Marcus, the body of the truth itself is later than Cadmus and those who preceded the age of Cadmus; and likewise later than those who added the remaining letters, and indeed later than you yourself. For you alone have reduced that which you call truth into an idol.

[Continuing with the text]: ...names him, and explains him as superior to every discourse, and sets him forth as unsearchable; and [you say] that he, whom you assert to be devoid of body and form, opened his mouth and uttered the Word, as if it were some one thing composed of...

^A composite living creatures; and that his Word—being similar to the one who sent it forth, and having become the form of the invisible one—consists of thirty elements and four syllables? The Father of all things will therefore be, according to your likeness of the Word, composed of thirty elements and four syllables. Or again, who will endure you [as you go on] into shapes and numbers, now thirty, now twenty-four, now only six, enclosing the Creator and Maker and Architect of all things, the Word of God, and carving him up ^B into four syllables and thirty elements? And [who will endure you] bringing down the Lord of all, who established the heavens, into a numerical count—following the pattern of the alphabet—as though he himself had become like it; and [who will endure you] subdividing the Father who contains all things, yet is contained by none, into a quaternity, an ogdoad, a decad, and a duodecad, and through such multiplications as these, [professing] to expound what is, as you say, the ineffable and unthinkable [nature] of the Father? And you, who name him ^C incorporeal and insubstantial, construct his essence and his subsistence out of many letters, springing one from another—you yourself having become a false Daedalus and an evil craftsman of the most supreme power. And, [whereas] you say he is indivisible, you subdivide him into mute, vocal, and semi-vocal sounds; the mute ones belonging to the Father of all, and to the conception of the Son. ^D

Billius’ Interpretation.

^A vocal, and semi-vocal sounds, and falsely attributing that which is mute in them to the Parent of all things and to His own thought, you have cast all those who believe in you into the greatest blasphemy and most serious impiety.

6. Wherefore also with justice, and fittingly, for such temerity of yours, the divine elder and herald of truth ^B has inveighed against you in such verses, saying: *Marce, idolorum architecte, et portentorum observator,* *Astrologica et magicæ artis perite,* *Per quas falsis et cum errore conjunctis doctrinis robur concilias,* *His, qui a te seducuntur, facinora* *Apostatica virtutis pro miraculis ostendens,* *Quorum edendorum facultatem pater tuus Satanas tibi suppeditat,* *Per angelicam virtutem Azazelis,* *Ut qui te nefaria atque impiæ versuciæ præcursorem nactus sit.*

And these words indeed the pious elder turned against you. But we shall endeavor to conclude briefly the remainder of their mysteries, which are long, and to bring to light the things which for a long time have been hidden. For so they may easily be refuted by all. ^C

Chapter XVI. The absurd explanation of the parables of the lost sheep and the lost drachma, fabricated by the Marcosians. The author's admonition regarding their astonishing madness.

1. Generationem itaque Æonum suorum, ovisque aberrationem et inventionem in unum conjungentes, mystice audent annuntiare hi qui omnia ad numeros detorquent; ex unitate enim et dualitate dicentes omnia constare, et a monade usque ad quatuor numerantes ^D

[...]*s, thus they generate the decade. For one and two and three and four, when added together, have produced the number of the ten Aeons. Again, the duality, having proceeded from itself to the episemon, as for example two and four and six, has displayed the duodecad. And again, if we count from the duality in the same way up to ten ^A, the number thirty is displayed, in which are the ogdoad, and the decas, and the duodecas. Therefore, they call the duodecad a "passion" on account of the episemon, because it had an episemon following it. And for this reason, they say that a certain error occurred around the number twelve, because once the sheep had gone astray and become wanton, an apostasy from the duodecad had occurred. In the same way, they divine that one Power departed from the duodecad and perished; and that this is the woman who lost the drachma, and lit a lamp, and found it. Thus, therefore, and with the remaining numbers—the nine in the drachma and the eleven in the sheep—when joined together, they produce the number ninety-nine, since nine times eleven makes ninety-nine. Wherefore they also say that "Amen" holds this number. ^B

BILLI'S INTERPRETATION

^A Nor ^B shall I be reluctant to announce to you other explanations of them, so that you may perceive their fruit from every side. For they wish the letter H, when taken with the episemon, to be the Ogdoad, since it is placed in the eighth position from the first letter; and again, by counting the number of the letters themselves without the episemon and adding them up to H, they demonstrate the number thirty. For any person who begins at A and ends at H, taking the number of the letters, but subtracting the episemon and adding the increment of the letters, will find the number thirty. For up to the letter E, they amount to fifteen; then, if the number seven be added to them, it makes twenty-two; and when H, which is eight, is added to these, it fills up the most admirable number thirty. And from this they demonstrate that the Ogdoad is the mother of the thirty Aeons. Since, therefore, the number thirty is united from three powers, it becomes three times itself and makes ninety; for three times thirty is ninety. And this triad, when combined with itself, generated nine. Thus the Ogdoad among them begat the number nine. And since the twelfth Aeon, upon departing, left above the eleven, they say that the form of the letters is properly and appropriately placed in the shape of the *Logos* (for the letter λ is the eleventh of the letters, which is the number 30), and that it is placed after the image of the supernal dispensation; since from Alpha, without the episemon, the total number of the letters up to λ, when added together according to the increment of the letters, makes ninety-nine.

^A Since λ is the eleventh in order, it descended to the investigation of its similar, in order to fulfill the number twelve; and having found it, it was completed—as is manifest from the very configuration of the letter. For Λ, coming as it were to the investigation of its similar, and finding it, and seizing it into itself, fulfilled the place of the twelfth, the letter M consisting of two lambdas. Wherefore they must flee the place of ninety-nine through knowledge, that is to say the deficiency, the figure of the left hand; but they must pursue the one, because that which is added to the ninety-nine transferred them to the right hand.

3. You, however, in passing over these things, O beloved, know well that you will laugh much at such self-conceited foolishness of theirs. For they are worthy of lamentation, those who treat so callously and violently such divine religion, and the magnitude of the truth ^B of the inexpressible power, and such great dispensations of God—by means of Alpha and Beta and by numbers. But as many as depart from the Church and are persuaded by these old-wives' myths, are truly self-condemned, whom Paul commands us to avoid after the first and second admonition. John, however, the disciple of the Lord, extended their condemnation, not even wishing that "Hail" [Ave] be said to them by us. For he who says to them, he says, "Hail," communicates in their most wicked works. And rightly so; for there is no "hailing" for the impious, the Lord says. The impious, however, above every impiety— ^{C D}

impіety—^A those who say that the Maker of heaven and earth, the only God Almighty, above whom there is no other God, was produced from a deficiency, and that he himself was produced from another deficiency; so that, according to them, he is himself the projection of a third deficiency. ^B Such an opinion we ought truly to puff away and anathematize, and we ought to flee far, far away from them; and the more they insist and rejoice in these inventions of theirs, by so much the more we should know that they are being driven by the eight wicked spirits. For just as those who have fallen into a phrenetic condition, the more they laugh and think themselves strong, and as if they were healthy do everything—some things, indeed, even more than healthy people do—by so much the worse they are; so also these, the more they think they are over-wise and exhaust themselves—shooting beyond the mark—by so much the more they are not in their right mind. For the unclean spirit of ignorance having gone out, and then finding them vacant, not for God, but for worldly questionings, taking along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and having softened their judgment as if they were able to conceive of things above God, and having prepared them conveniently for a jolting, it has implanted in them the eight of folly of the wicked spirits.

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION

He enjoins that one should shun them by this warning and another. John, however, the disciple of the Lord, increased their condemnation, as he does not wish for even a greeting to be offered to them from us. For he who says to them, "Hail," he says, communicates in their evil works. And this is not at all without reason. For there is no salvation for the impious, the Lord says. For these are impious, nay, more villainous than all impiety, who say that the Creator of heaven and earth, the only God Almighty, beyond whom there is no other God, was produced from a deficiency, and from another deficiency that had arisen; so that, in their view and opinion, he derived his origin from a third deficiency. This opinion we certainly ought to puff away and execrate, and flee far from them; and the more assertively they speak, and the more intensely they delight in their own inventions, the more persuaded we must be that they are being more vehemently blown about by the spirits of evil. For just as those who have fallen into a frenzy, the more profusely they laugh and think themselves strong, and do everything like healthy men, and some things even beyond what healthy men do, the more gravely and dangerously they are sick; in the same way, these also, the more they seem to themselves to excel in some remarkable wisdom, and exhaust themselves while they draw the bow beyond measure, the more they wander from their senses. ^{C D} [alt-version omitted]

CHAPTER XVII.

BILLI'S INTERPRETATION.

CHAPTER XVII.

^A are contained, whom they also call the eighth heaven; finally, the sun and moon. These, which are ten in number, they contend are images of that invisible Decad which proceeded from the Word and Life. But they say that the Duodecad is indicated by that sphere which is called the Zodiac. For by the twelve signs, they say that that Duodecad, which was born of Man and the Church, is clearly shadowed forth. And since Saturn, holding a more sublime position in the conversion of the universe, the sum of which is speed, is joined in opposition to it, he presses upon that concavity [of the heavens] and compensates for the speed of the remaining orbs with his own ^B slowness: so that he himself completes his conversion from center to center every thirtieth year: for which reason they say he is an image of Horos, who contains their mother, endowed with thirty names. The moon, again, traversing her own heaven in thirty days, has expressed the number of the thirty Aeons through these days. And that the sun, also, traversing his orb in twelve months, and completing his own circular restitution, so to speak, openly demonstrates the Duodecad through the twelve months. Likewise, that the days, which are defined by the space of twelve hours, bear the figure of the illustrious Duodecad. Furthermore, that the hour, which is the twelfth part of the day, is adorned with thirty degrees to express the figure of the tricenary. And that the circumference of the zodiacal sphere itself is of three hundred and sixty degrees: for each sign has thirty degrees. And in the same way, through the circle, they argue that the image ^C of that conjunction which exists between the twelve and the thirty is preserved. Moreover, they also say that the earth is divided into twelve climates, and that in each single climate it receives from the heavens, as it were perpendicularly, a virtue, and brings forth offspring similar to that virtue which sends down the flowing power ^D from above,

on the image of the Duodecad

^A They maintain most clearly that this is a type of the duodecad and of its children.

2. Furthermore, they say that when the Demiurge wished to imitate the interminable, eternal, infinite, and timeless nature of the superior Ogdoad, and could not, because he was produced from a defect, represent its constancy and eternity, he deposited its eternity into the spaces of time, and [distinct] times, and the numbers of many years; ^B thinking that by a multitude of times he might imitate its infinity. Therefore they say that when truth had fled from him, falsehood followed; and that for this reason, when the times are completed, his work will receive its destruction.

CHAPTER XVIII

1. And regarding the creation, they say such things, and each one of them discovers something new every day, as best he can. For no one among them is "perfect" unless he has brought forth great lies. But as for the prophetic writings which they twist and adapt to their own scheme, it is necessary to point them out and then bring the refutation against them. For Moses, they say, beginning the work concerning the creation, immediately at the very start revealed the mother of all, saying: *In the beginning God made heaven and earth.* ^C By naming these four—God and beginning, heaven and earth—he delineated their quaternity, as they say. And he indicated that which is invisible and hidden in her by saying: *The earth was invisible and without form.* ^D The second quaternity, the offspring of the first quaternity, they thus...

[index: entries preserved]

wish him to have named: the abyss, and darkness, in which are the waters, and the spirit which was borne upon the waters. ^A After which, by making mention of the decad, they say that he meant the light, and day, and night, and the firmament, and evening, and that which is called morning, and the dry land, and the sea, and further also the herb, and in the tenth place, the tree: and thus, through these ten names, he manifested the ten Aeons.

And the virtue of the duodecad they hold to be figured by him in this way: for he mentions the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the seasons, and the years, and the whales, and the fishes, and the creeping things, and the birds, and the quadrupeds, and the wild beasts, and after all these, in the twelfth place, man. Thus they teach that the thirty were spoken of by the Spirit through Moses. ^B Furthermore, they teach that man was formed according to the image of the supernal virtue, bearing within himself that virtue which comes from one source. They say it is established in the place of the brain, from which flow four virtues according to the image of the supernal tetrad, which are called: first, vision; second, hearing; third, smell; and fourth, taste. And the ogdoad, they say, is signified through man in this way: as having two ears and as many eyes, and also two nostrils, and a double sense of taste, of bitter and sweet. ^C And they teach that the whole man holds the entire image of the thirty in this way: in his hands, by the fingers, he bears the decad; and in his whole body, since it is divided into twelve members, the duodecad. They divide it, just as the body of Truth has been divided by them, about which we have spoken before. Therefore, the ogdoad, being ineffable and invisible, is to be understood as concealed in the viscera. ^D

BILLIUS'S INTERPRETATION

and show [it] to be the same image among themselves. They also assert that the priest’s robe, adorned with four rows of precious stones, signifies the quaternity. And they define that if any such things ^A are found in the Scriptures that are able to be led back to the number of four, they are said to have come into being because of their tetrad.

Again, they show the ogdoad in this way: they say that man was formed on the eighth day; for sometimes they wish him to have been formed on the sixth, and sometimes on the eighth; unless, perhaps, they wish to say that the earthy [man] was formed on the sixth day, but the carnal [man] on the eighth, for these things are distinct among them. ^B Some, moreover, wish there to be another man—the one who was made according to the image and likeness of God—who is male-and-female, and that this is the spiritual man; while another was formed from the earth.

3. And they say that the arrangement of the ark in the flood, in which eight men were saved, most clearly signifies the saving ogdoad. They say that the same is signified by David, who was the eighth in birth among his brothers. Furthermore, they also say that circumcision, which takes place on the eighth day, ^C signifies the circumcision of the higher ogdoad. And simply, they say that all things found in the Scriptures that can be brought under the number eight fulfil the mystery of the ogdoad.

But Billius' interpretation of the division among them: of which we have spoken above, and which can neither be explained by words nor seen by the eyes, is to be understood as hidden in the inward parts.

2. They assert again that that great luminary, that is, the sun, came into being on the fourth day because of the number of the quaternity. ^D And in the same way, they show that the atria of that tabernacle constructed by Moses, having been worked out of byssus, and hyacinth, and purple, and scarlet, show the same image among them. And the priest's robe, adorned with four rows of stones of great price, in their opinion designates the quaternity. And if there are other things of this kind deposited in the Scriptures, which can be recalled to the quaternary number, they maintain that they were made for the sake of their own quaternity.

Again, they demonstrate the ogdoad thus: they say man was fashioned on the eighth day; for it pleases them that he was sometimes created on the sixth day, and sometimes again on the eighth; unless perhaps they are going to say that the earthy one was created on the sixth day, but the carnal one on the eighth; for these things are distinct among them. But some wish there to be another man, a hermaphrodite, who existed according to the image and likeness of God, whom they also say is spiritual; and another who was fashioned from the earth.

5. They also say that that dispensation of the ark in the flood, in which eight men were delivered from destruction, most clearly signifies the ogdoad.

They also say that the decade is signified by the ten nations which God promised to give to Abraham for a possession; and they say that the dispensation concerning Sarah, in which, after ten years, she gives her handmaid Hagar to him, in order that he might have children by her, signifies the same thing. And the servant of Abraham, sent to Rebecca, and giving her ten golden armlets at the well, and her brothers keeping her for ten days; furthermore, Jeroboam, who receives the ten scepters, and the ten curtains of the tabernacle, and the pillars of ten cubits, and the ten sons of Jacob sent for the first time into Egypt for the purchase of grain, and the ten apostles to whom the Lord appeared after the resurrection, Thomas being absent—they say that these things depicted the invisible decade according to them. ^B 4. But they say that the duodecad, concerning which they maintain the mystery of the passion to have been—from which passion they wish the visible things to have been fashioned—is signally and clearly situated everywhere; as, for example, the twelve sons of Jacob, from whom also are the twelve tribes, and the variegated breastplate having twelve stones, ^C and the twelve bells...

Billius’ Interpretation.

...the index, as they say, of the saving ogdoad. And they say that the same thing is signified by the fact that David was the eighth in birth among his brothers. And likewise, that by circumcision, which was applied on the eighth day, the circumcision of the supernal ogdoad is declared. In sum, they assert that whatever is found in the Scriptures that can be referred to the number eight satisfies the mystery of the ogdoad. In a similar manner, they say that the decade is signified by those nations which God promised to Abraham that He would give him for a possession: and likewise by the fact that Sarah, after ten years had passed, conceded her handmaid Hagar to him so that he might beget children by her, the same is shown. Indeed, that servant of Abraham also, sent to Rebecca, and offering her ten golden armlets as a gift at the well, and her brothers keeping her for ten days: Jeroboam likewise receiving ten scepters, and the ten curtains of the tabernacle, and the pillars of ten cubits in magnitude, and the ten sons of Jacob sent to Egypt for the first time to purchase grain, and the ten apostles to whom the Lord appeared while Thomas was absent—these, they say, expressed the invisible decade among them. ^D 4. Now as for the duodecad, about which the mystery of the fault of the passion occurred, from which passion they wish everything that falls under the gaze of the eyes to have been constructed, they say that it is insignificantly and clearly set and inscribed in any places of Scripture whatsoever. For they say that the twelve sons of Jacob, from whom twelve tribes also sprang, and that variegated breastplate, having twelve stones, and twelve bells, and the twelve stones placed under the mountain by Moses, and likewise those set by Joshua in the river, all signify...

they say, the twelve; and they claim that all things which preserve the number twelve characterize their duodecad. Furthermore, they wish the union of all these things, which is called the triacontas, to signify the thirty through the thirty cubits of the height of the ark of Noah, and through Samuel placing Saul first among the thirty invited guests, and through David, when he hid in the field for thirty days, and through those who entered the cave with him (Israel), and for this reason the length of the holy tabernacle was thirty cubits; and whatever other things they find equal in number to these, they labor to demonstrate their thirty by such proofs. ^A

CAPUT XIX..

1. I thought it necessary to add to these matters as much as relates to their Propatôr, who was unknown to all. ^B

INTERPRETATION OF BILLIUS

CAPUT XIX

before the advent of Christ, seeking to persuade by selecting from the Scriptures, in order that they might show our Lord to be announcing another Father, besides the Maker of this universe: whom, as we have said before, they impiously blaspheme, saying he is the fruit of a defect. Therefore, the prophet Isaiah saying: ^A *Israel did not know me, and the people did not understand me*, they distort to mean the ignorance of the invisible Bythos. And regarding what was said through Hosea: *There is no truth in them, nor knowledge of God*, they struggle to urge that it points to the same thing. And, *There is none that understandeth, or seeketh after God: all have turned aside, they have become useless together*, they attribute to the ignorance of Bythos. And they persuade [others] to refer to him that which was said through Moses: *No man shall see God, and live*.

2. They say that the Maker was seen by the prophets; but that which is written: *No man shall see God, and live*, they wish to be understood as spoken of the invisible and unknown magnitude to all. And that it is said of the invisible Father and Maker of all: *No man shall see God*, is manifest to us all; but that it is not spoken of this Bythos devised by them, ^B but of the Demiurge (and he himself is the invisible God), will be shown as the discourse proceeds. And they say that Daniel signifies this very same thing, in that he asks the angel for the solutions of the parables, as if he did not know them. But [they say] that the angel also, hiding from him the great mystery of Bythos, said to him: *Go thy way, Daniel: for these words are shut up, until the discerning shall discern and the white shall be whitened*; and they boast that they themselves are the white and the discerning ones.

BILLII INTERPRETATION

2. They falsely assert that the Maker was seen by the prophets. But that which is written: *No man shall see God, and live*, they wish to have been spoken of the invisible magnitude unknown to all. And that indeed this was said of the invisible Father and Creator of all things: *No man shall see God*, is clear to any of us; but that it was not of that Bythos they themselves fabricate, but of the Creator of all things (who himself is the invisible God), will be shown to us further on. They say that Daniel also signifies this same thing, when he seeks the solutions of the parables from the angel as if they were in no wise known and explored by him. And that the angel himself, hiding the great mystery of Bythos from him, used these words to him: *Go quickly, Daniel: for these words are shut up until those who understand shall understand, and the white shall be whitened*. They boast, moreover, that they themselves are those white men and those of perspicacious intellect.]

Chapter XX. On the apocryphal and fictitious scriptures of the Marcosians, and the places in the Gospel which they abused.

^A 1. To this they add an ineffable multitude of apocryphal and spurious writings, which they themselves have forged, bringing them forward to the astonishment of the senseless and those who do not understand the letters of truth. They assume for this purpose that fabrication also, as though the Lord, when He was a child and was learning letters, when His master said to Him, as is the custom, "Say Alpha," answered, "Alpha." And again, when the master ordered Him to say "Beta," the Lord answered, "Do you first tell me what Alpha is, and then I will tell you what Beta is." This they interpret as though He alone knew the unknown, which He manifested in the type of Alpha.

^B 2. Some also of those things which are set down in the Gospel they transfigure into this same character: as that answer which He gave to His mother when He was twelve years old, "Do you not know that I must be in those things which are of my Father?" They say that He was proclaiming to them that Father whom they did not know; and that for this cause He sent forth His disciples into the twelve tribes, preaching the unknown God to them. And to him who said to Him, "Good Master," they say that He confessed that the truly good God was the one who said, "Why do you call me good? There is one good, the Father in the heavens"; and they say that the "heavens" are now to be understood as the Aeons. And because He did not answer those...

who asked Him, "By what power dost Thou do these things?" ^A but on the contrary confounded them with His own question, they interpret this as showing the ineffability of the Father, in that He did not speak and did not reveal Him. And in the fact that He said: "Many times I have desired to hear one of these words, and I had not one to tell me," they say that by "one" He points to Him who is truly the one God, whom they did not know. Further, in that when He drew near to Jerusalem, He wept over it and said: "If you had known, even you, today the things that make for peace; but they are hidden from you," they say that by the word "hidden," He has manifested the secret of Bythus. And again, in His saying: "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you; and learn from me," they claim He has announced the Father of Truth. For what they were ignorant of, they say, this He promised to teach them.

93 3. And they bring forward these things as the manifestation of those higher beings and as the conclusion of their rule: "I confess to Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones. Yes, my Father, for so it was well-pleasing in Thy sight. All things have been handed over to Me by the Father." ^B

BILLII INTERPRETATIO.

He had addressed the words: "Master good"; and to Him who was truly good, he ingenuously confessed with these words: "Why do you call me good? There is one good, the Father who is in the heavens"—they claim that "heavens" are called Aeons in this place. Furthermore, because He did not answer those who were questioning Him by what power He did these things, but struck them with a mutual question, they interpret this as showing, by the very fact that He refused to speak, the ineffability of the Father. And likewise in the fact that He said: "I have often desired to hear one of these words, and I had no one available to tell me," they claim that by the word "one," He declared Him who is truly one God, whom they themselves did not know. Moreover, in that when He had approached Jerusalem, He wept over it and said: "If you had known, even you, today the things that make for peace; but they are hidden from you," they claim that by the word "hidden," he made it clear that Bythus is hidden and abstruse. And again, in these words: "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you; learn from me," etc.; in these words, I say, they claim He announced the Father of Truth. For what they were ignorant of, they say, this he promised he would teach them.

3. And in support of the truth of this interpretation, they bring forward this as if it were a peak: "I confess to Thee, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones. Yes, my Father, for so it was well-pleasing in Thy sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and the Son except the Father, and he to whom the Son will have revealed Him." For in these words they claim it is clearly demonstrated by Him...

^A that He is the Father of Truth, whom they themselves have invented, and that before His coming no one had ever known Him; and they wish to establish that the Maker and Creator was always known by all, and that these words were spoken by the Lord concerning that Father who is unknown to all, whom they themselves announce.

CHAPTER XXI

What and of what variety the redemption of the heretics is.

1. As for the tradition of their redemption, it so happens that it is invisible and incomprehensible, seeing that it is the mother of things that cannot be grasped or seen. And ^B for this reason, because it is unstable, it cannot be explained simply or in one account; for each one of them interprets it as he himself wishes. For as many as are the mystical guides of this opinion, there are just as many redemptions. And that this species [of ritual] has been suggested by Satan for the denial of baptism, of the regeneration into God, and for the destruction of the entire faith, we shall demonstrate by refuting them in the proper place.

2. They claim, however, that it is necessary for those who have received perfect knowledge, so that they may be regenerated into that Power which is above all things. For otherwise, they say, it is impossible to enter within the Pleroma; since this is what conducts them into the depth of the Bythus, according to them. For [they say that] the baptism of the apparent Jesus is for the remission of sins, but the redemption of the Christ who is in Him, [is for] ^C the perfection of those who have received perfect knowledge.

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION

CHAPTER XXI

2. They claim, however, that it is necessary for those who have attained perfect knowledge to be regenerated into that power which is supreme over all things. For otherwise it cannot be, that anyone should have access to the Pleroma.

^A For they maintain that by the baptism of Jesus given to him who descended into him, the Spirit—that is, the remission of sins is brought about; but by the redemption, ^B which is Christ—who descended into him—perfection is acquired. And they maintain that the former is animal, while the latter is spiritual. And they say that the baptism was announced by John for repentance, but the redemption was brought by Jesus for the sake of attaining perfection. And this, they claim, is what he refers to when he says: "I have another baptism to be baptized with, and I hasten greatly towards it" [Luke XII, 50]. And they further say that when the sons of Zebedee, through their mother, asked that they might sit at his right hand and left in his kingdom, the Lord added this redemption, saying: "Can you be baptized with the baptism that I am to be baptized with?" [Mark X, 38]. And they say that Paul expressly and very often indicated this redemption which is in Christ Jesus, and that this is the very one which is handed down by them in diverse and inconsistent ways.

BILLII INTERPRETATION

For it is clear—inasmuch as it is such, that it draws them down into the innermost deep of the Abyss—that through the baptism of Jesus, sins are indeed remitted, but through the redemption of Christ, who descended into him, perfection is acquired. They maintain the former to be animal, the latter spiritual. And baptism, they say, was announced by John for repentance; but redemption was brought by Jesus for the cause of attaining perfection. And to this points his statement: "I have another baptism to be baptized with, and I hasten greatly towards it." Furthermore, they say that when the sons of Zebedee, through their mother, demanded that he set them with him in the kingdom, one on his right and another on his left, the Lord added this redemption, saying: "Can you be baptized with the baptism with which I am to be baptized?" They say that Paul also, in clear terms, very often indicated the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, and that this is the same as that which is handed down by them in varying and dissenting ways.

3. For some of them construct a bridal chamber, and perform a mystical rite for those they initiate with the enunciation of certain words; and they call what they do "spiritual marriage," in likeness of the heavenly unions. Others lead them to the water, and while baptizing them, use these words: "In the name of the unknown Father of all things, in Truth, the mother of all, in Him who descended into Jesus..."

Some of them adapt a bridal chamber and perform a kind of mystic initiation for those who are being perfected, with certain invocations, and assert that what is performed by them is a spiritual marriage according to the similitude of the ^A higher conjunctions. Others lead them to water, and baptizing them, say thus: "In the name of the unknown Father of all things, in the truth mother of all things, in the one who descended into Jesus, in union and redemption and communion of the powers." Others invoke certain Hebrew names, for the purpose of striking those who are being initiated with greater amazement, thus: Basyma, cacabasa, eanaa, irraumista, diarbada, caeota, bafobor, camethantki. The interpretation of these is as follows: ^B "In the name of the one who is above every power of the Father, I invoke the light, and the good Spirit, and life; for in the body ^C thou didst reign." Others again propose the redemption in this way: "The name... ^D

which is hidden from all deity and dominion and truth, which Jesus of Nazareth put on in the zones of light, Christ the Lord of the living through the Holy Spirit, for an angelic redemption. A name of restoration: Messia ufar in seenchaldia mosomeda, eaacha faronepseha, of Jesus of Nazareth." And the interpretation of these words is as follows: "I do not divide the spirit, the heart, and the supercelestial virtue, the merciful one: may I enjoy thy name, O Savior of truth." And these things are spoken by those who perform the initiation; but he who is initiated replies: "I have been confirmed and I have been redeemed, and I redeem my soul from this age ^B and from all that proceeds from it, in the name of Iao, who has redeemed his soul into redemption, in Christ who lives." Then those who stand by add: "Peace to all on whom this name rests." Afterward they anoint the initiated with opobalsam. For they say that this ointment is a type of that sweetness which is above all things.

4. But some of them say that it is superfluous to bring water, and mixing oil and water into one, with certain profane ^C expressions similar to those we have mentioned before, they pour it upon the head of those who are being initiated; and they wish this to be the redemption.

BILLI'S INTERPRETATION

4. There are also some among them who say that it is superfluous to bring water; but they mix oil and water together, with certain words like those which were commemorated by us before, not very different, and they cast it upon the head of those whom they initiate: and they intend this to be the redemption. And they also...

anoint themselves with opobalsam.

^A Others, however, rejecting all these things, say that it is not fitting that the mystery of the ineffable and invisible Power should be performed through visible and corruptible creatures, and things that are inconceivable and incorporeal through those that are sensible and bodily. They say that the perfect redemption is the very knowledge of the ineffable Greatness. For when those things which were produced by ignorance of the deficiency and by passion are dissolved through knowledge, the whole state born of ignorance is dissolved; so that knowledge becomes the redemption of the inner man. And they say that it is neither bodily—for the body is corruptible—nor animal, since the soul is also from deficiency, but that it is spiritual, for it is as it were the dwelling-place of the spirit. ^B It is necessary, therefore, for the redemption to be spiritual. For they say that the inner, spiritual man is redeemed by knowledge, and that the knowledge of all things is sufficient for them, and that this is the true redemption.

5. Others there are who redeem those who are at the point of death, and arrive at the same departure, by pouring oil and water, or the aforementioned ointment with water, upon their heads, along with the invocations already commemorated, so that they may become incomprehensible ^C and invisible to the principalities and powers, and that their inner man may ascend further in an invisible manner, just as their bodies are left among the created things; and they bid them, when they have come to the principalities and powers, to use these words: "I am a son from the Father, the Father..."

who pre-existed, and a son in Him who pre-existed. I have come to see all things, both mine and those which are alien; and yet they are not entirely alien, but they are of Achamoth, who is female, and she made these for herself. But I derive my lineage from Him who pre-existed, and I return again to my own, whence I have come." And they say that when he has said these things, he escapes the powers ^B and proceeds to those who are around the Demiurge, and says to them: "I am a vessel more precious than the female who made you. If your mother ignores her own root, I for my part know myself, and I understand whence I am, and I invoke the incorruptible Sophia, who is in the Father, and who is the mother of your mother, who has no father, nor even any male spouse: but a female, born of a female, made you, being ignorant of her own mother and imagining herself to be alone; but I invoke her mother." They say that when those who are around the Demiurge hear these things, they are greatly disturbed and condemn the root and descent of their mother. But he [the Gnostic] himself departs to his own, casting off his bond, that is, the soul. And concerning ^C their redemption these are the things which have come down to us. But since they differ from one another in both doctrine and tradition, and those who are recognized as the more recent among them are eager to invent something new every day, and

BILLIUS' INTERPRETATION

fruit, which no one ever devised; it is difficult to describe everyone's opinions. ^A To blame the genus. But for him to proceed to his own bond, and angel, this is the soul. And these are the things concerning redemption that have come down to us.

CHAPTER XXII.

What the rule of truth is, and wherein all heretics depart from it.

1. Since, however, we hold this rule of truth, that is, that there is one omnipotent God, who created all things by His Word, and ordered them, and made them out of that which did not exist, so that all things might exist, as the Scripture says: *By the word of the Lord were the heavens established, and by the spirit of his mouth all their power* (Ps. xxxii, 6); and again: *All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made* (Joan. I, 3): (from all things, however, nothing has been subtracted; but the Father made all things through Him, whether visible or invisible, or sensible, or intelligible, or temporal on account of some disposition, or eternal, and Æonian) not through angels, nor through any powers separated from His judgment; for God needs nothing of all things: but He makes, arranges, and governs all things through His Word and His Spirit, and provides existence to all things: He who made the world (for the world is out of all things), He who fashioned ^C man, He is the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, above whom there is no other God, nor Beginning, nor Power, nor Pleroma, he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we shall show: holding this rule, therefore, although they speak of things very varied and many, we easily argue that they have deviated from the truth. For almost all, as many heresies as there are, say indeed that God is one, but they change Him through a perverse opinion, being ungrateful to Him who made them, just as the nations do through idolatry. They contemn the handiwork of God, contradicting their own salvation, being themselves most bitter accusers of themselves, and existing as false witnesses. ^D They shall, however, rise in the flesh, though they may not wish it, so that they may recognize the power of Him who raises them from the dead: but with the just they shall not be numbered, on account of their incredulity.

2. Since, therefore, the refutation and conviction of all heretics is varied and manifold, and it is our purpose to contradict all of them according to their own character, we have thought it necessary to first relate their source and root, so that, knowing their most sublime Bythos, you may understand the tree from which such fruits have flowed down.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The opinion and customs of Simon Magus and Menander.

1. For Simon the Samaritan, the magician, of whom Luke the disciple and follower of the apostles speaks: *But a certain man named Simon, who before time in the city was exercising magical art (Act. viii, 9 seq.), and seducing the nation of the Samaritans, saying that he himself was some great one, whom they hearkened to from the least even to the greatest, saying: This is the power of God, which is called great.* They observed him, however, because for a long time he had dazed them with his magic. This Simon, therefore, who feigned faith, thinking that the apostles and they themselves performed cures through magic, and not by the power of God; and that by the laying on of hands they fulfilled those who believed in God through them, who are evangelized by them as Christ Jesus, through a greater magical knowledge, and supposing this to be done, and offering money to the apostles, so that he might receive this power himself, of giving the Holy Spirit to whomsoever he wished, heard from Peter: *Thy money be with thee into perdition, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money: thou hast no part, nor lot in this matter: for thy heart*...

is not right before God. For I see that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity. ^A And when he did not believe God even more, and being covetous, he sought to contend against the apostles, so that he himself might appear to be glorious, and searching still further into all magic, he brought many men into astonishment; for he was under Claudius Caesar, by whom he is even said to have been honoured with a statue on account of his magic. He therefore was glorified by many as if he were God; and he taught that he himself was the one who appeared among the Jews as the Son, descended in Samaria as the Father, and came among the other nations as the Holy Spirit. He claimed to be the highest power, that is, the Father who is over all, and sustained being called whatever men might call him.

2. But Simon the Samaritan, from whom all heresies have derived their source, has the material of such a sect. He ^B had redeemed a certain Helena from the city of Tyre in Phoenicia, a prostitute, and led her about with him, saying that this was the first conception of his mind, the mother of all, by whom in the beginning he conceived in his mind to make the angels and archangels. For this Ennoia, leaping forth from him, knowing what her father wished, descended into the lower regions, and generated the angels and powers, by whom he said this world was made. But after she had generated them, she was detained by them out of envy, because they did not wish to be thought the progeny of any other. For he himself was entirely unknown to them; but his Ennoia was detained by those powers and angels which were emitted by her; and she suffered every indignity from them, so that she would not return upwards ^C to her father, insomuch that she was even included in a human body, and migrated through the ages as if from vessel to vessel into other feminine bodies. She had been, moreover, in that Helena, on account of whom the Trojan war was contracted: wherefore also Stesichorus, having cursed her in his poems, was deprived of his sight; but afterwards, having repented and written those poems which are called palinodes, in which he hymned her, he is said to have seen again. Migrating, however, from body to body, and from that time always enduring indignity, she in the last times even prostituted herself in a brothel: and this is the lost sheep.

3. Wherefore he also came, so that he might first assume her, and liberate her from chains, but grant salvation to men through his own recognition. For since the angels ^D were governing the world badly, because each of them was coveting the pre-eminence, he had come for the amendment of things, and had descended transformed, and assimilated to the Virtues, and Powers, and Angels: so that in men he might appear as a man, when he was not a man; and that he was thought to have suffered in Judea, when he had not suffered. He said that the prophets had uttered prophecies when inspired by the world-making angels: wherefore those who place their hope in him and in his Helena pay no further regard to them, and act as they wish, as free men: for according to his grace men are saved, but not according to just works. For there are no works that are just by nature, but only by accident; just as the angels who made the world established, leading men into servitude through such precepts. Wherefore he promised that the world should also be dissolved, and that those who are his should be liberated from the empire of those who made the world.

4. Therefore, the mystic priests of these people indeed live in luxury, but they perform magic, as each one of them is able. Exorcisms and incantations they employ; and philtres and magic they use.

They also have an image of Simon, formed in the likeness of Jupiter, and of Helena in the likeness of Minerva; and they worship them. ^A They also possess a name from the founder of that most impious doctrine, Simon; they are called Simonians, from whom the knowledge, falsely so called, took its beginnings, as it is possible to learn from their own assertions.

5. His successor was Menander, a Samaritan by birth, who also reached the height of magic. He affirms that the primary Power is unknown to all; but he represents himself as the one sent by the invisible ^B beings as a Savior for the salvation of men. The world, he says, was made by angels; and these, like Simon, he claims were sent forth by Ennoia. He also grants through her, as he teaches, magic science for this purpose: that one may overcome even those very angels who made the world. His disciples receive resurrection through that baptism which is in him, and it is impossible for them to die anymore, but they remain never-aging and immortal.

CHAPTER XXIV

1. From these men, Saturninus, who was from Antioch—a city ^C of Syria—and Basilides, receiving opportunities, displayed differing doctrines: the one in Syria, the other indeed in Alexandria. Saturninus truly, similarly to Menander, made known one Father, unknown to all, who made the Angels, Archangels, Virtues, and Powers. But the world and all that is in it was made by seven certain angels. He said that man is the work of these angels; when a shining image appeared down from the supreme Power, which they ^D could not hold—because it immediately sped back upward—they exhorted themselves, saying: "Let us make man according to the image and likeness." And when he had been made, and the creature could not stand upright on account of the weakness of the angels, but crawled like a worm, the Power overhead pitied him because he was made in His likeness, and sent forth a spark of life, which raised up the man, and gave him joints, and made him live. This spark of life, therefore, after death, runs back to those that are of the same kind, and the rest, from which they were made, are resolved.

2. Moreover, he declared the Savior to be unbegotten, and incorporeal, and without form, and that he was seen as a man only in appearance; and he said the God of the Jews was one of the angels. And for this reason...

he says, the Father of Christ desired to do away with the other angels, and also with the God of the Jews; and he sent Christ into the world for the salvation of those who believed in him, and for the destruction of the God of the Jews, and for the salvation of those who are persuaded. These are the people of this heresy who possess the spark from the Father above. For he claims that two men were fashioned from the beginning, one good and one evil; from these two are the races of men in the world, the good and the evil. And since demons helped the evil, the Savior came for the help of good men, and for the destruction of the evil and the demons. But he claims that marrying and begetting children exist from Satan, whence also most of them abstain from meat, so that by their supposedly feigned manner of life they might draw some into their own deception.

He said that some of the prophecies were spoken by the angels who fashioned the world, and others by Satan. And he also says that Satan himself is an angel, opposing the angels who fashioned the world, and especially the God of the Jews.

^B 3. Basilides, however, that he might appear to have discovered something more profound and plausible, extends the theory of his doctrine into the infinite, showing that from the unbegotten Father was born Mind, and from Mind was born the Word, and from the Word Prudence, and from Prudence Wisdom and Power, and from these, Angels and Archangels. ^C 4. But he says that those who hold the lowest heaven, the angels, as it also seems to us, constituted all things that are in the world, and assigned the parts of the earth and the nations that are upon it to themselves. And he says that their prince is he who is thought to be the God of the Jews. And since this one wished to subject to his own people, that is, to the Jews, the remaining nations, the rest of all the princes stood against him and opposed him. Wherefore also the other nations revolted from his people. But the unbegotten ^D Father, seeing the destruction of these, sent his own first-begotten Mind (which is Christ) to those who believe in him, for the salvation of men from the power of those who fashioned the world. He appeared on earth as a man, and performed wonders. For this reason, he did not suffer, but rather a certain Simon of Cyrene was compelled to carry the cross for him, and so this latter was crucified by error and mistake, having been transfigured by him that he might be thought to be Jesus, while Jesus himself took the form of Simon, and standing by, mocked them. For since he was an incorporeal power and the Mind of the unbegotten Father, he transformed himself at will, and thus ascended to Him who had sent him, mocking them, since he could not be held and was invisible to all. Those, therefore, who know these things have been freed from the princes who fashioned the world.

^A And it is not necessary to confess the one who was crucified, but the one who came in the form of a man, and was thought to be crucified, and was called Jesus, and was sent by the Father, so that through this dispensation he might dissolve the works of the fabricators of the world. If anyone, therefore, he says, confesses the crucified one, he is still a servant here, and under the power of those who made [our] bodies; but he who has denied [the crucified one] has been freed from them, and knows the dispensation of the Unbegotten Father.

5. But ^B they say that the soul alone is saved, [for] the body is by nature corruptible. They say also 102 that the prophecies were [given] by the Princes who were the fabricators of the world, but the law, properly speaking, [was given] by their Prince, who led the people out of the land of Egypt. And [they say] one should despise things sacrificed to idols, and think nothing of them, but use them without any apprehension; and they hold as indifferent the use of other works and of all lust. They use, moreover, both magic and images 13, and incantations, and invocations, and all other such curiosity 14: and they also fashion certain names as if they were those of Angels, announcing that some of these are in the first heaven, others in the second: and then they strive to set forth the names, and the beginnings, and the Angels, and the Virtues of the three hundred and sixty-five falsely-called 16 heavens. And they say that the name of the world, into which they say the Savior descended and ascended, is Caulacau 17.

^A And he who has learned this, and has known all the Angels, and the causes of them, the invisible and incomprehensible being made with the Angels and the Powers, just as Caulacau has been. And just as the Son is unknown to all, so also they themselves ought to be known by no one; but while they themselves know all, and pass through all, they themselves are invisible and unknown to all. For you, they say, know all, but let no one know you. Wherefore they are also ready for denial, those who are such, nay rather they cannot even suffer for the name, since they are like to all. Not many, however, can know these things, but one in a thousand, and two in ten thousand. And they say that the Jews are now no longer, but the Christians are not yet: and that one ought not ^B at all to utter their mysteries, but to contain them in silence.

7. But the three hundred and sixty-five heavens distribute their local positions similarly to the mathematicians. For, accepting their theorems, they have transferred them into the character of their doctrine: and that the prince of them is Abraxas ^A (8), and that on account of this he has the three hundred and sixty-five numbers (9) in himself.

103 CHAPTER XXV.

1. But Carpocrates, and those who are with him, say that the world and those things which are in it were made by Angels much inferior to the unbegotten Father. And they say that Jesus was born from Joseph, and although He was similar to other men, He differed from the others in that His soul, being firm and pure, remembered those things which were seen by Him in that circumlation, which had been with the unbegotten God ^B (13): and that on account of this there was sent to Him a power from Him, that He might be able to escape the makers of the world, and having passed through all (14), and having been liberated in all, He might ascend to Him: and those, who embrace things similar to Him, in like manner (15). But they say that the soul of Jesus...

^A in the Jewish custom having been nurtured, despised them, and on account of this received virtues, through which He was able to accomplish those passions which, for the sake of punishment, were present in men, and He was able to pass beyond the creators of the world: and not only that the soul of Jesus alone was able to do this, but also that any other soul whatsoever is able to despise the angelic creators of the world, if it also should receive powers, and do similar things. And they, having been driven into a great conceit, deem themselves more selectable ^B than Jesus himself; and others of them say they are not more selectable than Jesus, but than Peter, and Andrew, and Paul, and the rest of the Apostles, saying they themselves are more excellent; while others of them assert that they differ in nothing from Jesus; for the souls are from the same circulation, and having in like manner performed a despising of all things after the manner of Jesus, they were deemed worthy of the same power. And if any one again should be able to despise beyond Jesus, he will be more distinguished than He.

3. For they practice magical arts, and incantations, and philtres also, and love-charms (11), and familiar spirits, and dream-senders, and the rest of ^C their malignities, saying that they have power to domineer over the princes and makers of this world: and not only over them, but also over all things that have been made in it. Who themselves (12) also for the detraction of the divine name of the Church (13), just like the Gentiles, were sent ahead by Satan, so that according to one way and another, men hearing what is theirs, and thinking that all of us are such, might turn away their ears from the proclamation of truth: or also, seeing what is theirs, all might blaspheme us, communicating with them in nothing, neither in teaching, nor in morals, ^D nor in daily conversation. But they abuse the name of Christian to cover their own malice, to cloak a luxurious life and an impious sentiment (15), whose judgment is just, of those receiving from God a retribution worthy of their works.

4. And they are carried into such madness (16), that they say they have in their power, and practice, all things whatsoever are irreligious and impious (17). For they say that evil and good things are so only by human opinion (18). And that, according to transmigrations into bodies, it behooves one in every life (19), and in every...

activity, for souls to have been made 21, so that when they depart, they may have nothing less left to perform [autem] in it: lest perchance, because something is lacking to their freedom, they be compelled 22 to be sent again into a body. On account of this, they say that Jesus spoke this parable: When you are with your adversary in the way, make an effort to be delivered from him, lest perchance he deliver you to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and he cast you 23 into prison. Amen I say to you, you shall not go out 24 thence, until you pay the last farthing [*]. And they say the adversary 25 is one of the angels who are in the world, whom they call the devil, saying that he was made for this purpose, that he might lead those souls which have perished from the world 26 to the prince (and this one they say is the first of the world's fabricators); ^B and the other angel, who ministers to him, to deliver such souls, that they may be included in another body: for they say the body is a prison. And as to that which is said: "You shall not go out thence, until you pay the last farthing," they interpret it as if one does not go out from the power of those angels who fabricated the world; so being transcorporated 28 always, until in every single operation that is in the world, it is done; and when nothing is lacking to it, then its liberated soul is raised 29 to that God who is above the angels who are the fabricators of the world. Thus also, they say, all souls are saved, whether they, by anticipating in one advent, are mixed in all operations, or, migrating from body to body, or being sent into each kind of life, fulfilling and paying back their debts, are liberated, so that they may no longer do 30 anything in the body.

5 But if those things which are held by them to be irreligious, and unjust, and forbidden, indeed take place, I would by no means believe it 52. In the written accounts ^C and Theodoret, in the cited locations, it is stated that it is necessary, of course, that souls, while they live in the present life, be fulfilled with every kind of most foul action and even of horrible lusts, lest, if they have omitted anything, being bound by the debt of some action in this world, they have need to be transfused again into other bodies. The sense of these words, and surely according to the transmigrations, etc., is therefore: And that surely it behooves souls to be transfused into varied bodies for so long, until they have been made in every life and in every act, that is, until they have experienced every kind of living and acting; unless perchance one, by anticipating in one advent, that is, in one migration, or life, performs all things once and together, etc. δεσῖν πάντως πᾶσαν χρῆσιν τούτων ποιεῖσθαι, ἵνα μὴ ἐξελθοῦσαι καὶ ὑστερήσασαί τινος ἔργου, τούτου ἕνεκα καταστραφῶσιν εἰς σώματα πάλιν αἱ ψυχαί, εἰς τὸ πρᾶξαι αὖθις ἃ μὴ ἔπραξαν. Καὶ τοῦτό ἐστι, φασίν, ὅπερ ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐν τῷ Εὐαγγελίῳ εἶπε διὰ παραβολῆς, ὅτι "Ἴσθι ἐννοῶν τῷ ἀντιδίκῳ σου, ἐν ᾧ εἶ ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ μετ' αὐτοῦ, καὶ δὸς ἐργασίαν ἀπηλλάχθαι ἀπ' αὐτοῦ, μή πως ὁ ἀντίδικος παραδῷ σε τῷ κριτῇ, καὶ ὁ κριτὴς τῷ ὑπηρέτῃ, καὶ ὁ ὑπηρέτης βάλλῃ σε εἰς φυλακήν· ἀμὴν λέγω σοι, οὐ μὴ ἐξέλθῃς ἐκεῖθεν, ἕως ἂν ἀποδῷς τὸν ἔσχατον κοδράντην. ^D

^A in their writings it is recorded, and they themselves interpret it thus, saying that Jesus confided these things in mystery to his disciples and apostles, and that he spoke to those who were worthy and consenting, and that they handed them down to those who were ^B worthy and obedient. For they say that one is saved by faith and love; but that other things being indifferent, they are termed according to the opinion of men some good and some evil, since by nature nothing is evil.

6. Others again, even from among them, sign 55 their disciples, cauterizing them on the hidden parts of the lower ear. Whence also Marcellina 54, who came to Rome under Anicetus, being of this sect, led many astray. They even call themselves Gnostics: and they possess images 55, some of them painted, and others made of different materials, saying that the likeness of Christ was made by Pilate, at the time when Jesus was with men. And they crown these, and set them up with the images of the philosophers of the world, namely with the image of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle 36, and the others; and they make other observations regarding them, in the same way as the Gentiles.

CHAPTER XXVI.

On Cerinthus, the Ebionites, and the Nicolaitans.

4. But a certain Cerinthus in Asia taught that the world was not made by the first God, but by a Power 37 far separated and distant from that Principality which is above all things, and ignorant of the God who is above all. He supposed, moreover, that Jesus 38 was not born of a Virgin (for it seemed impossible to him); but that he was the son of Joseph and Mary, in the same manner as all other men, and that he was stronger in justice and prudence and wisdom than other men 39. And after his baptism, ^C Christ descended into him from that Principality which is above all things, in the figure of a dove; and then declared the unknown Father, and performed miracles: but in the end Christ flew back again from Jesus, and Jesus suffered and rose again; but Christ remained impassible, being spiritual.

2. [*] But those who are called Ebionites, agree indeed that the world was created by God: but as to those things which pertain to the Lord, they do not think 40 similarly to Cerinthus and Carpocrates. But on that point alone 41 ^D Christ descended upon him from above in the form of a dove, and then declared the unknown God, and... performed miracles.

That which is according to Matthew, they use the Gospel, but they reject the Apostle Paul, calling him a deserter from the law. They endeavor to interpret the prophetic writings more inquisitively; they practice circumcision, and persist in those customs which are according to the Law, and in a Jewish way of life, even to the point that they worship Jerusalem, as if it were the house of God.

3. The Nicolaitans, however, have as their master Nicolaus, one of the seven who were the first to be ordained to the diaconate by the apostles; and they live without restraint. But they are most fully manifested through John’s Apocalypse as to who they are, for they teach that there is no difference in committing adultery and eating things sacrificed to idols. Wherefore the word also said concerning them: "But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate."

CAPUT XXVII. Of Cerdo and Marcion.

1. But Cerdo, taking his points of departure from those who were around Simon, and having come to Rome in the time of Hyginus, who held the ninth place of the succession from the apostles, taught that the God who had been proclaimed by the Law and the prophets was not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the one is known, but the other is unknown; and the one is just, but the other ^B is good. Proceeding from him, Marcion of Pontus amplified the doctrine, blaspheming ^C unashamedly him who is the God proclaimed by the Law and the prophets; styling him the maker of evils, and one who craves wars, and is also inconstant in his judgment, and saying that he is contrary to himself. And he persuaded his disciples that Jesus, who had come from that Father who is above the God who is the fabricator of the world, during the time of Pontius Pilate the governor, who was the procurator under Tiberius Caesar, was manifested in the form of a man to those who were in Judea, abolishing the prophets and the Law and all the works of that God who made the world, whom he also calls the Cosmocrator. And in addition to these things, he circumcised the Gospel which is according to Luke, taking away all that is written concerning the generation of the Lord, and taking away many of the discourses of the Lord’s teaching, in which the Lord is most manifestly described as confessing the Creator of this universe as his own Father; and he persuaded his disciples that he himself was more truthful than those apostles who had handed down the Gospel, delivering to them not the Gospel, but a fragment of the Gospel. In similar fashion, he also cut away the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, taking away whatever things were manifestly spoken by the Apostle concerning that God who made the world, in that he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and...

[demonstrating] that he whose doctrine they had learned, concerning the body—to wit, that it was taken from the earth—could not participate in salvation. And he added to this blasphemy which is against God, also this, truly receiving the mouth of the devil, and speaking all things contrary to the truth: that Cain, and those who are similar to him, and the Sodomites, and the Egyptians, and those who are like them, and all the nations whatsoever that have walked in every mixture of wickedness, were saved by the Lord when He had descended into the underworld, and had run to Him, and had been taken up into His kingdom; but that Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and the rest of the just, and those who are with Abraham the patriarch, with all the prophets and those who pleased God, did not participate in salvation—[a view] which the serpent who was in Marcion proclaimed. For he said, that because they knew that their God was always tempting them, and suspecting that He was tempting them at that time, they did not run to Jesus, nor did they believe His announcement: and for that reason, he said, their souls remained in the underworld.

4. But regarding this man, because he alone ^A manifestly dared to mutilate the Scriptures, and impudently to slander God above all, we shall refute him separately, convicting him from his own writings; and from those discourses which are observed among them, of the Lord and the Apostle, which he himself uses, we shall make his subversion, God granting. But now it is necessary that we make mention of him, so that you may know that all who in any way adulterate the truth and injure the proclamation of the Church are disciples and successors of Simon Magus the Samaritan. Although they do not confess the name of their master, for the sake of the seduction of others, nevertheless they teach his opinion: holding forth the name of Christ Jesus indeed as if it were an enticement, but in various ways introducing the impiety of Simon, they put many to death, badly dispersing their own opinion through a good name, and by the sweetness and attractiveness of the name, offering to them the bitter and malignant poison of the serpent, the prince of apostasy.

Chapter XXVIII

1. But there have been many offshoots of many heresies from these, because many of them—nay, all of them—wish to be teachers, and to depart from the heresy in which they were, and putting together one doctrine from one opinion and then another from another, they persist in teaching new things, declaring themselves to be inventors of whatever doctrine they have stitched together. To give an example: ^B from Saturninus and Marcion, those who are called the Continent proclaimed abstinence from marriage, frustrating the original creation of God, and silently accusing Him who made male and female for the generation of men; and they brought in abstinence from those things which are termed by them 'animate' [foods], being ungrateful to Him who made all things, God. They also contradict the salvation of him who was first formed: and this has now been invented by them, Tatian ^C being the first to introduce this blasphemy. Who, having been a hearer of Justin, so long as he was with him, reported nothing of such a kind; but after his martyrdom, departing from the Church, and being puffed up and inflated by a conceit of his teacher, as if he were better than the rest, he established a peculiar character of doctrine: ^D inventing certain invisible...

Aeons, similar to those who are of the school of Valentinus, or rather narrating a myth; they also treat marriage as corruption and fornication, just like Marcion and Saturninus, saying that the salvation of Adam did not come from the Savior himself, but that he devised a contradiction against it. ^A

2. Others again, taking occasion from Basilides and Carpocrates, have introduced promiscuous intercourse and many marriages, acting with negligence regarding those things offered to idols, to eat them, saying that God is not very concerned about these things. And what indeed is there to say? It is not possible to state the number of those who have fallen away from the truth in one way or another.

CHAPTER XXIX

Of the various sects of the Gnostics, and first of the Barbelites, or Borborians.

1. Beyond these, there arose, among the crowd of Gnostics, the Barbelo ^B sect, and they were manifested like fungi from the earth, whose principal opinions we have narrated. For some of them posit a certain indestructible Aeon, living in a virginal spirit, whom they call Barbelo. They say that Barbelo, who is the Ennoia, asked for foreknowledge from him; and upon this coming forth, and through her again asking, and by their asking these things, there came forth Incorruptibility, and then Eternal Life. Then, they say, Barbelo rejoiced and became pregnant and brought forth the Light; this, they say, through its excellence, was named Christ. This Christ, in turn, announced the Nous, and received him; and the Father added also the Word. Then Ennoia and the Word were joined, and Incorruptibility and Christ, and Eternal Life and the Will, and the Nous and Foreknowledge. They say that from the Ennoia and the Word was produced the Autogenes, and with him Truth, and there came to be *another* ^C dyad of Autogenes and Truth. And they say that this *Being* proceeded and stood in his sight, and asked for Foreknowledge. And when Foreknowledge had finished appearing, and as they requested again, there came forth Incorruptibility, and after that, Eternal Life; in these, they say, Barbelo gloried, and gazing upon the magnitude and conception, she took delight in the light that was generated, which was similar to Him. This, they say, was the beginning of the illumination and the generation of all things; and the Father, seeing this light, anointed it with his own benignity, so that it might become perfect. ^D They say this was Christ: who in turn requests, as they say, that the Nous be given to him as a helper; and the Nous proceeded forth. Beyond these, the Father sends forth the Word. And the unions are of Ennoia and the Word, and of Aphtharsia and Christ: and the Aeonic Zoe is joined to Thelema, and the Nous to Prognosis. And these were magnifying the great light and Barbelo.

2. After that, they say that the Autogenes was sent forth from Ennoia and the Word, for the representation of the great light; and they say he was greatly honored, and all things were made subject to him. And they say that Alethia was joined to him, and that it is a conjugation of Autogenes and Alethia. And from the light, which is Christ, and from Incorruptibility, they say that four luminaries were sent forth to surround the Autogenes; and from Thelema and the Aeonic Zoe, they say that four emissions took place for the ministry of the four luminaries, whom they name Charin, Thelesin, Synesin, and Phronesin. And they say that Charin is joined to the great and first luminary; and they desire this one to be the Soter, and they call him Harmogenes:

^A Thelesis is the second, whom they name Raguel; Synesis is the third luminary, whom they call David; Phronesis is the fourth, whom they name Eleleth.

5. Having thus confirmed all things, over these the Autogenes 78 sends forth the perfect and true man, whom they also call Adamas; since neither was he tamed, nor were those from whom he was, who was also removed by the first luminary from Harmogenes 79. And they say that perfect knowledge 80 was sent forth with the man by the Autogenes, and was joined to him (whence also this one acknowledged him who is over all): and a power was given to him, invincible from the virginal spirit; and they refresh 81 in him all things to hymn the great Aeon. From this, however, 82 they say the Mother was manifested, the Father; the Son: and from the Anthropos and Gnosis was produced a tree, which they also call Gnosis itself.

4. Then they say that the Holy Spirit was sent forth by the first angel, who stands near the Monogenes, whom they also call Sophia and Prunicus 83. This one, then, seeing that all other things had a conjugation, but that she herself was without a conjugation, sought after that to which she might be united: and when she did not find it, she persisted 84, and was extended, and looked toward the lower parts, thinking that she would find a spouse there: and when she did not find him, she wearied, and also because she had made an impetuous movement without the good will of the Father. Afterward, acting out of simplicity and kindness, she produced a work 86, in which were ignorance and audacity. They say that this work of hers is the Proarchon 87, the maker of this creation: and they narrate that she was despoiled of great power by her mother, and withdrew 88 from her into the lower regions, and made the firmament of heaven, in which they also say he dwells. And since he is ignorance, he made those things which are under him, the powers, and the angels, and the firmaments, and all earthly things. Then they say that he, being joined to audacity 89, generated wickedness, and jealousy, and envy, and fury, and desire. When these had been generated, the mother Sophia, grieved, fled away, and withdrew into the higher regions, and forgot those ^A things that were numbering below. As she withdrew, he thought 90 that he was alone, and because of this he said: I am a jealous God, and beside me there is no one. And these indeed utter such lies.

CAPUT XXX. Of the Ophites and Sethians.

1. So then 92 they speak again of monstrous things, that there is a certain first luminary in the power of Bythus 93, blessed, and incorruptible, and infinite: and that...

^A the Father of all, and he is invoked as the first man. They say that his Ennoea, going forth, is the Son; and that this son is the Holy Spirit, and that below the superior Spirit are the separated elements: water, darkness, abyss, chaos, over which they say the Spirit moves, calling her the first woman. Afterwards, they say, when the first man, with his son, was exulting over the beauty ^B of the Spirit—that is, the feminine [power]—and illuminating her, he generated from her an incorruptible light, a third male, whom they call Christ, the son of the first and second man, and of the Holy Spirit, the first woman.

2. And the Father and the Son lie with the feminine [power], whom they call the mother of the living; and since she could not bear nor contain the magnitude of the lights, they say that, being super-replete and super-ebullient, she became agitated on her sinister sides. And thus her son alone, Christ, as if he were the right hand and one carried up into the higher regions, was immediately caught up with his mother into the incorruptible Aeon. ^C And they say this is the true and holy Church, which is the invocation, and pact, and union of the Father of all, the first man, and the Son of the second man, and of Christ their son, and of the aforementioned woman.

3. But they teach that the Virtue which surged forth from the feminine [power], having the humectation of light, fell down from the fathers, yet having in itself the will to possess that humectation of light; which they call sculo-feminine. ^D And they say that she descended simply into the waters while they were immobile, and moved them in a wanton manner down to the abysses: and that all the things of his light rushed toward her, and adhered to her, and surrounded her; and had she not had them, she might perhaps have been wholly absorbed and drowned by the matter. Being bound, therefore, by the body which was from matter, and feeling herself heavily burdened, they say that she eventually "came to her senses," and attempted to flee the waters and ascend to her mother, but could not because of the weight of the surrounding body. And being in a very bad state, she devised how to hide that light which was from above, fearing lest it too be harmed by the inferior elements, just as she herself was. And when she had received power from the humectation of that which was the light [that belonged] to her, she sprang back and was lifted up into the sublimity; and having been made in the high place, she expanded and covered, and made this heaven which appears, from her own body; and she remained under the heaven which she made, still possessing the likeness of an aquatic body. When she had received the desire for the superior light, and had gathered strength in all things, they say that she laid aside her body and was liberated from it. This body, however, they say she cast off—they call her woman from woman—and [having received] a certain breath of incorruptibility left to her by her mother, through which she operates, she herself, being made powerful, emitted—as they say—the son from the waters without the mother: for they do not want to say that he knew his mother. And her son, according to the imitation of the father, emitted another son. This third one also generated a fourth, and the fourth himself generated a son; they say the sixth was generated from the fifth; and the sixth generated the seventh. Thus also the perfect hebdomad is completed among them, with the mother having the place of the eighth: and as in their generations, so also in their dignities and virtues, they precede one another.

^A And the names given to these in their deceit are as follows: for he who is from the mother first, they call Ialdabaoth; he who is from him, Iao; and he who is from him, Sabaoth; the fourth, Adoneus; the fifth, Eloeus; the sixth, Horeus; and the seventh and last of all, Astaphæus. These heavens, and "areothas," ^B and the Virtues, and the Angels, and the creators, they place in order, sitting in heaven according to their generation, though invisible, also ruling over celestial and terrestrial things. First among them is Ialdabaoth, who is indignant at his mother because she created sons and grandsons, including even Angels, Archangels, Virtues, Powers, and Dominions, without the permission of anyone. Having done this, his sons turned against him in strife and discord out of desire for mastery, which caused Ialdabaoth to be deeply saddened and to despair; he looked down into the dregs of matter lying beneath him and fixed his desire upon it, from which they say the son was born (a son whom they claim is Nun himself, twisted into the form of a serpent), and from thence came the Spirit, and the soul, and all things of this world; from this was generated all oblivion, malice, zeal, envy, and death. They say that this serpent-formed and twisted Nun even more thoroughly seduced their Father by his tortuous nature, while he was with their Father in heaven and in paradise.

6. And they say that Ialdabaoth, exulting in all those who were under him, boasted and said: "I am God and Father, and above me there is no one." But his mother, hearing him, cried out against him: "Do not lie, Ialdabaoth; for above thee is the first Father of all, Anthropos, and Anthropos the son of Anthropos." And when everyone was troubled by this new voice and unexpected proclamation, and were asking whence the clamor came, they say that Ialdabaoth, to call them to himself and to seduce them, said: "Come, let us make man in our image." Six Virtues heard this, and with their mother granting them the conception of man, so that through him he might empty them of their principal Virtue, they gathered and formed a man of immense length and breadth; but he merely crawling, they brought him to... that he might empty him of the moisture of the light, so that he could not rise up against those who are above, having power. While he was blowing the spirit of life into the man, they say he secretly emptied him of power, and that the man therefore possessed Nun and Enthymesis (these are the things they say are saved), and he immediately gave thanks to the first man, leaving the fabricators.

7. They say, moreover, that Ialdabaoth, wishing to empty man through a woman, brought forth a female from his own Enthymesis, whom the Prunicus received and invisibly emptied of power. The rest, coming and marveling at her beauty, called her Eve, and desiring her, they generated from her sons, whom they call angels.

Their Mother, however, having plotted ^A to induce Eve and Adam to transgress the commandment of Ialdabaoth through the serpent: Eve, as if hearing this from a son of God, easily believed it, and persuaded Adam to eat of the tree, of which God had said, "Do not eat." And they say that when they ate, they recognized the Power that is above all, and departed from those who had made them. But Prunicus, seeing that they had been conquered by her creature ^B, exclaimed that, although the Father was incorruptible, he had lied long ago by calling himself Father; and that when man was once with the woman, this one, playing the adulterer, sinned.

8. Ialdabaoth, however, because of the forgetfulness that was about them, and not indeed intending these things, had cast Adam and Eve out of the garden, because they had transgressed his commandment. For he wished that sons be generated for him from Eve, and he did not attain it, because his Mother opposed him in all things, and secretly emptied Adam and Eve of the moisture of light, so that neither should they partake of the curse, nor of the ignominy of him who was from the principality of the Spirit. Thus they also teach that, having been made void of the divine substance, they were cursed by him, and cast down from heaven into this world. But also that the serpent, working against the father, was cast down by him into the lower world; and that he brought the angels who are here under his own power, and himself generated six sons, he himself being the seventh, in imitation of that hebdomad which is about the Father. And these they call the seven mundane demons, always opposing and resisting the human race, because for their sake their father was cast down.

9. But they say that Adam and Eve at first had light and clear, and as it were spiritual bodies, just as they were fashioned; but coming hither, they changed into something darker, and grosser, and more sluggish; ^C and that they had only a mundane breath: until Prunicus (38), pitying them, restored to them the odor of the sweetness of the moisture of light, by which they came into the remembrance of themselves, and recognized themselves to be naked, and of the matter of the body; and they recognized that they carry death about with them; and they became magnanimous, recognizing that the body was given to them only for a time. And they also say that they discovered food, with Sophia going before them, and being satisfied, they had carnal intercourse, and generated Cain, whom the detestable serpent, immediately receiving with his sons, subverted, and filled with mundane forgetfulness (39), driving [them] into folly (40) and audacity, so that even when he killed his brother Abel, he first showed zeal and death. After whom, according to the providence of Prunicus, they say Seth was generated; after [him] Norea, from whom they say the remaining multitude of men was generated, and [brought] into all wickedness and into the apostasy of the superior holy hebdomad (41), and idolatry, and all remaining contempt, since their mother was always invisibly contrary to them, and was saving her own, that is, the moisture of light. They will have it that the holy hebdomad is the seven stars, which they call planets; and they say that the cast-out serpent has two names, Michael, and Samael (42).

10. But Ialdabaoth, angered because they were not worshipping him, nor honoring him as Father and God, brought the deluge upon them (43), that he might destroy them all at once. But Sophia standing against him, those who were about Noah were saved in the ark, because of the moisture of that light which was from her, by which the world was again filled with men: from whom Ialdabaoth himself elected a certain Abraham, and established a covenant with him, that if his seed should persevere in serving him, he would give him the inheritance of the land. Then through Moses…

he led them out of Egypt, brought them into the land and gave them the Law; and he made them Jews, ^A from whom he chose seven days, which they also call the holy week, and each one of them has his own herald to glorify himself and to announce God; so that the rest, hearing the glories, might themselves also serve those who were heralded by the prophets of God.

11. But they divide the prophets thus: of Ialdabaoth, they say, were Moses, and Jesus Nave, and Amos, and Habakkuk; of Jao, Samuel, and Nathan, and Jonah, and Micah; and of Sabaoth, Elijah, and Joel, and Zechariah; and of Adonei, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, and Daniel; and of Eloei, Tobiah, and Haggai; and of Horei, Micah, and Nahum; and of Astaphæi, Ezra and Zephaniah. Each of these, therefore, glorifying his own father and God. They say that Sophia herself also spoke many things through them concerning the first man, and the incorruptible Aeon, and concerning that Christ who is from above, ^B sending forth a warning and reminding men of the incorruptible light, and of the first man, and concerning the descent of Christ: in which the princes were terrified, and wondered at the novelty of the things which were announced by the prophets, the Prunicus having worked through Ialdabaoth, who did not know what he was doing, and the emissions of two men having taken place; one, indeed, from the barren Elizabeth, and the other from the Virgin Mary.

12. And because he had no rest, neither in heaven nor on earth, he cried out to his mother for help. But his mother, the former woman, had pity on the repentance of her daughter, and asked of the first man that Christ should be sent to her aid; who also ^C descended, having been sent to her sister, and to the moisture of the light. They say, however, that that Sophia who is below descended to her brother, and announced his advent through John, and prepared the baptism of repentance, and beforehand adapted Jesus so that Christ, descending, might find a clean vessel, and that through his son Ialdabaoth on the woman, the Christ might be announced. They say, however, that he descended through the seven heavens, having been assimilated to their sons, and gradually drained their power. For they say that the whole moisture of the light ran together into him, and that Christ, descending into this world, put on his sister Sophia first, and both exulted, refreshing one another: and they define this to be the bridegroom and the bride. But Jesus, who was generated of a Virgin by the operation of God, to have been wiser, and purer, and more righteous than all men: that Christ, entwined with Sophia, descended, and thus became Jesus Christ.

13. Many, therefore, of his disciples, they say, did not know of Christ's descent into him: but with Christ descending into Jesus, then he began to perform powers, and to heal, and to announce the unknown Father, and manifestly to confess himself the Son of the First Man. At which the princes and the father of Jesus growing angry, they worked to kill him: and when he was being led to this, they say that Christ himself, with Sophia, departed into the incorruptible Aeon; but Jesus was crucified: but that he did not forget his own Christ, ^D but sent down a certain power into him, which raised him in the body: which they call both an animal and a spiritual body; for he had sent away the worldly things into the world. The disciples, however, seeing that he had risen, did not recognize him, nor indeed Jesus himself, by whose favor

^A he had risen from the dead. And they say that this greatest error existed among his disciples, because they thought that he had risen in a worldly body, ignorant that flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of God.

15. Such, indeed, is the opinion held by those from whom, like the Lernaean hydra, a multitude of headed beasts has been generated from the school of Valentinus.

Some, indeed, say that Sophia herself became the serpent: for this reason, they say, she was opposed to the maker of Adam, and infused knowledge into men, and because of this she is called the wisest of all. But also, because of the position of our intestines, through which food is introduced, because they have such a shape, they indicate that the hidden generative substance of the serpent's figure exists in us.

CHAPTER XXXI.

Concerning the Cainites.

1. Others, again, say that Cain was from the superior principality; and they confess Esau, and Korah, and the Sodomites, and all such, as their own kindred; and on account of this they were attacked by the Creator, yet none of them received any harm. For that Sophia, which was her very own, snatched away from them toward herself. And they say that Judas the betrayer was well acquainted with these things, and he, alone beyond all others possessing the truth, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal: by whom they say that all things, both earthly and heavenly, were dissolved. And they bring forward a fabrication of this kind, calling it the Gospel of Judas.

2. And now, they collect their scriptures, in which they encourage the dissolving of the works of Hystera…

for they call her the maker of heaven and earth: nor is it possible, they say, for anyone to be saved, unless they pass through all things, just as Carpocrates also says. And that in every one of their sinful and shameful deeds an angel stands by, and hears the one performing it, and brings forward ^B audacity and impurity—that which is inherent in that act—using the name of the angel: "O you, Angel, I abuse your work: O you, that Power, I complete your action." And that this is the perfect knowledge, to go without fear into such actions as it is not lawful even to name.

3. As for those who are of Valentinus, just as the very opinions and rules of these people show, it was necessary to refute them openly, and to bring into the light their dogmas, ^C so that those who perhaps might repent from among them, and turn to the one only creator and God, the maker of the universe, might be saved: but the rest might already be drawn away from their wicked, though seemingly plausible, persuasion, thinking that they would learn from these people a mystery that is greater and something higher; but by learning well from us what is taught badly by them, they might indeed laugh at their doctrine; but for those who have taken up ^D so much pride in such most miserable and unstable fables—to the point that they consider themselves better than the rest because of such knowledge, or rather ignorance—they might have mercy. And this is their delight, or rather, victory over them is the manifestation of their opinions.

4. Therefore, we have endeavored to bring into the middle the composed body of this little fox, and to make it manifest through you. For there will no longer be need of many words to overturn their doctrine, now that it is made manifest to all. Just as when one has tracked out a beast hidden in the woods and lunging from thence, and devastating many, and one divides and strips the woods, and has brought the wild beast itself to view, one has no longer labored: for it is present for them to see and guard against its charges, and to pelt it from all sides, and to wound and kill that devastating beast. So also for us, when we have brought their hidden things and their secret mysteries into the open, it will no longer be necessary to destroy their opinion with many arguments. For it is present for you, and for all who are with you, to be exercised against these things which have been said, and to overturn their wicked and unrefined doctrines, and to show up the dogmas as fitting for the truth. Since, therefore, these things are so, as I have promised, according to our ability we shall bring forward their destruction, contradicting them in the following book (for the narration goes on at length, as you see); and we shall also provide viatica for their destruction, meeting all their opinions according to the order of the narrative: so that we may be not only showing, but also wounding the beast from all sides.

ANALYSIS OF THE SECOND BOOK

^A 114 Every falsehood of the heretics, and especially those dogmas of the Valentinians which Irenaeus laid bare in the first book, he uproots and utterly overturns in this second book with arguments derived from reason. First, he attacks the very head of the hydra; and against the chief error of the heretics, he proves by various arguments that there is one God, above or below whom no other God, Beginning, Pleroma, or Power can exist, and that He is the supreme being of all, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom alone, as He was conceived in the mind, the world was also created through His Word; not by the God of Marcion, or by Angels, or by any other whatsoever, contrary to His purpose. Therefore, those things are vain and absurd which the Valentinians invented concerning their Bythos, Pleroma, Demiurge, and their ignorance, fall, shadow, and void; for neither in those things which are contained by the Father can a fall, void, or shadow be supposed, since that would redound to the dishonor of the paternal light, and the Christ of the heretics is argued to be the cause of ignorance, but their Savior is exposed as being subject to ignorance. Then he proves that the supreme God, whom natural reason demonstrates, could not have been unknown to the Angels or to the maker of the world. Next, he attacks what the Valentinians used to babble, that in the creation of the world the Savior sought to honor the Pleroma through the images and likenesses of those things which are above, which were emitted by the mother Achamoth: for it is repugnant that created things or Aeons, which are again within the Pleroma, should be images or a shadow of the Pleroma. Hence, by various moments of reasoning, he confirms that the world and matter are the work of one and the only God. ^B After these things, he most powerfully disputes against the thirty Aeons of the Valentinians and the order of the fictitious emission of the same Aeons established by them, and clearly shows that all those things are borrowed from other writers, including pagans, and are mere dreams of waking men and old wives' fables. Furthermore, he demonstrates that they are altogether absurd in asserting that Sophia was in ignorance, diminution, and passion, and that her enthymesis—that is, her thought—was founded apart and separated from her. Nor does he prove it any less ridiculous that these same heretics boasted about their own origin, and about the Demiurge being utterly ignorant of many things very well known to them, and also about their own souls, conceived through a seed from the Mother, which they claimed held a standing more excellent than the others.

Then he proceeds to dissolve their arguments: and he teaches that nothing is lighter or weaker than that which they ineptly objected—when they offered Judas the traitor, the hemorrhagic woman of the twelfth Aeon, the Apostles as a true conjunction of Man and Church, and finally Christ, as the type and image of the same number of Aeons, when He was baptized at thirty years of age. Nor does he urge that those things are of any greater weight which they thought could be gathered from letters, syllables, and numbers for the confirmation of their errors. From which he concludes that more things are not to be curiously inquired into by men concerning God than what are clear and open in the sacred Scriptures, and which it has been granted to them to know and understand. We know, however, that God is most simple: but how from Him either an uttered Word was begotten or matter was created, we are utterly ignorant. Wherefore he shrewdly chastises the boastfulness of the Valentinians concerning their knowledge: and he rightly argues against them, because, having denied the resurrection of the flesh, they asserted that the souls of the just rest in a place of the middle, or that they ascend above the Demiurge (whom they impiously claimed to be better than themselves) to the Mother, and become the spouses of spiritual Angels. ^C By these errors of Valentinus thus subverted, he demonstrates that all the other false opinions of other heretics are overwhelmed and fall of their own accord. Which indeed, just as he excellently strengthens the truth of the Christian faith, he does by the fact that no true miracles were ever performed by the heretics, but only by the orthodox, and are performed daily. Then, having overturned the vicious opinion of the heretics—that every kind of action, even the worst, must be experienced, and that by human opinion alone some things are just and some unjust—he subsequently attacks metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls from body to body; and he makes it manifest that into each one of a man's own bodies, which is neither born with him nor dies with him, the soul is so infused that after death the body must be organized anew by it. Then, having destroyed the opinion of Basilides regarding a false multitude of heavens, he shows that it is wrongly asserted by the Gnostics that the various oracles of the prophets emanated from various gods. Finally, he meets the objection of those who, from the different names of God, were attempting to introduce, quite perversely, many gods.

SECOND BOOK

115 PREFACE. ^D 1. In the first book, prior to this, we pointed out to you, most beloved, the acknowledgment of a falsely-called knowledge, and showed that everything from those who are of Valentinus was invented through many and contrary ways; we have also set forth the falsehoods, and likewise the opinions, of those who existed before them (82), showing them to be at variance with themselves, and much more so with the truth itself. And we have also set forth with all diligence the opinion of the magus Marcus, as it is derived from them, with his works.

(82) Those who existed before them. That is, the Gnostics, Simon Magus, the Nicolaitans, etc., whom he called the fathers and grandfathers of the Valentinians in Book 1, last chapter.

And we have minutely detailed how, by choosing things from the Scriptures and attempting to adapt them to their fiction, they endeavor to confirm their truth by numbers and by the twenty-four letters of the alphabet. And in the same way, we have declared what condition they imagine the invisible Pleroma to have been made in, and what they think and teach regarding the Demiurge; and we have manifested the doctrine of their progenitor, Simon the Samaritan Magus, and of all those who succeeded him. We have also noted the multitude of those who are Gnostics, sprung from him; and we have marked their differences, their doctrines, and their successions; and we have exposed all the heresies that have been instituted by them. And because all the heretics, taking their start from Simon, have introduced impious and irreligious dogmas into this life, we have shown this, and we have manifested their redemption, and how they initiate those who are being perfected, and their invocations, and their mysteries; and [we have shown] that there is one God, the Creator, and that He is not the fruit of a deficiency, and that there is nothing above Him, nor is there anything after Him, ^A to show that neither is there anything above Him, nor is there anything after Him, nor was He moved by anyone, but of His own will and freely He made all things, since He is the only God, and the only Lord, and the only Creator, and the only Father, and the only one who contains all things, and who grants it to all to exist.

2. But in this book we instruct ourselves in what is suitable to us, and what time permits, and we overturn their entire system by large chapters; wherefore I have titled the composition of this work the detection and overthrow of their opinion. For it is necessary, through the indication and overturning of their manifest unions, to dissolve their hidden unions, and to receive a demonstration that Bythus neither ever was, nor is.

116 CHAPTER ONE

That there is one God, and that it is not possible for there to be another God, or Beginning, or Pleroma, or Power, above or below Him.

It is well, therefore, to begin from the first and greatest chapter, from God the Demiurge, who made heaven and earth and all things that are in them, whom they, blaspheming, call the fruit of a deficiency, and ^B 2. For how can there be another Pleroma, or Beginning, or Power, or another God above Him? Since it is necessary that the God of all these things be Pleroma, and that He contain all things in the immense, and be contained by no one? But if there is something outside of Him, the Pleroma is no longer of all things, nor does it contain all things. For that which they say is outside of Him will be lacking to the Pleroma, or to Him who is the God above all. But that which is lacking, and has been taken away by something, is not the Pleroma of all. And it will have a limit, and a middle, and an end, in relation to those who are outside of it. But if there is an end in those things which are below, there is also a beginning in those things which are above. Similarly, also, from the remaining parts, it is a necessity that all things be contained, and determined, and included. For the one who is the end below, of necessity, in every way, circumscribes and surrounds that which is finished in Him. For there will be, according to them, the Father of all (whom they clearly call Proontes and Proarche), with their Pleroma, and the good God of Marcion, founded and closed in ^C something, and surrounded from the outside by another sovereignty, which it is necessary to be greater; since that which contains is greater than that which is contained: but that which is greater is also firmer, and more Lord: and that which is greater, and firmer, and more Lord, this will be God.

3. For since there is, according to them, something else, which they say is outside the Pleroma, into which they suppose that the superior erratic power has also descended, it is necessary in every way that it either contain that which is outside, but the Pleroma itself be contained (otherwise it will not be outside the Pleroma; for if there is something outside the Pleroma, within this very thing, which is outside the Pleroma...

Pleroma, the Pleroma will be contained, and ^A again another sea of God, and from the sides likewise the same thing will be), and thus it will be necessary to exercise the intellect in the direction of the infinite, and always to be under the necessity of devising other Pleromas and other Depths, and never at any point to come to a halt, but always to be seeking others beyond those mentioned. Moreover, it will be uncertain whether these things are downward, which are according to us, or whether these very things are the higher ones; and whether the things which are said by them to be above are indeed above, or whether they are below: and no stability or firmness will contain our mind, but it will be a necessity that it wander off into infinite worlds and indeterminate gods.

4. Similarly, these things are also adapted against those who are of Marcion, for his two Gods also will be contained and circumscribed by an immense interval, which ^B separates them from one another. And in this way, there is a necessity for the mind to devise in every direction many gods separated by an immense distance, beginning from one another, but ending at one another; and by that same reasoning by which they endeavor to teach that there is some Pleroma or God above the creator of heaven and earth, by that same reasoning everyone will argue that there is another Pleroma above the Pleroma, and above that again another, and above ^C the Depth another sea of God.

5. And since these things are so, each one of the Gods will be content with his own, and will not be curiously concerned with the things of others: otherwise, he will be unjust, and greedy, and will cease to be what God is. And each creature will glorify its own maker, and will be content with him, and will not acknowledge another: otherwise, it will most justly be judged as an ^D apostate by all and will suffer the most fitting punishment. For it is necessary that either there should be one who contains all things and has made each of those things which have been made as he himself willed; or else, on the contrary, many and indeterminate makers and gods, beginning indeed from one another, but ending at one another on every side; and it will be a necessity that all others be contained from the outside by some other greater one, and that each of them—as if they were included and remaining within their own bounds—acknowledge that he is not God. For each one of them, having a most minute portion in comparison ^C with all the rest, will be lacking, and the title of omnipotent will be dissolved, and it will be a necessity to fall into such impiety.

Chapter II. That the world was not made by Angels, or by any other, contrary to the judgment of the Father of all, but was founded by the same Father through the Word.

1. Those who say that the world was made by Angels, or by some other maker of the world, contrary to the judgment of Him who is the Father over all, first of all sin in this very point, by saying that the Angels made such and so great a creation contrary to the will of the first God; as if the Angels were more powerful than God, or, again, as if He were neglectful, or existed as lesser, or took no care of those things which are done in His own possessions, whether they be done well or ill, so that He destroys and prevents one thing, but approves and rejoices in another; but no man of sound mind would apply this even to a man—how much more to God?

2. Then let them tell us: were those things which are contained by Him and in His own possessions made in foreign things and outside of Him? But if they say they were outside of Him, all the aforementioned inconsistencies will likewise arise for them, and the first God will be enclosed by him who is outside of Him, in whom he [the first God] will also necessarily have to cease. But if they say they were within His own possessions, it will be very vain to say that, contrary to His judgment, in His own possessions, the world was made by Angels and by those who are in His power, or by some other, as if He Himself did not foresee all things which are in His own, so as not to know what will be done by the Angels.

3. But if they say it was not against His will, but that He knew and wished it, as some opine, then the Angels or the maker of the world will not be the causes of this fabrication, but the will of God. For if He is the maker of the world, He Himself made the Angels, or He Himself was also the cause of their creation; and He Himself will appear to have made the world, He who prepared the causes ^A of its fabrication. Although through a long succession they may say that the Angels were made, or the maker of the world [was made] by the first Father, as Basilides says; nevertheless, that which is the cause of those things which were made will recur to Him who was the bringer forth of such a succession: just as the correction of war is referred to the king, who prepared those things which are the cause of victory; and the condition of this city, or of this work, [is referred] to him who prepared the causes for the perfection of those things which were created below. Wherefore we do not now say that an axe cuts the wood, or a saw cuts, but one might most correctly say that the man cuts and saws, who made the axe and saw themselves for this purpose, and much earlier all the armaments through which the axe and saw were made. Thus, therefore, justly, according to their own reasoning, the Father of all ^B will be called the maker of this world, and not the Angels, nor any other maker of the world, except Him who was the bringer forth, and [was] the first cause existing for this kind of preparation.

4. Perhaps this discourse is persuasive, or seductive, among those who are ignorant of God, and who liken Him to needy men, and to those who cannot immediately make something from what is prepared, but who require many instruments for their ^C fabrication—but it is not at all plausible among those who know that God, needing nothing, created and made all things through the Word, and neither needing Angels as helpers for those things which are done; nor [needing] some Power very inferior to Him, and ignorant of the Father; nor [needing] any contagion or any ignorance, as [if] He who was to begin to know Him were to become a man; but He Himself in Himself, according to that which is ineffable and unthinkable to us, predestining all things, made them as He willed; granting to everything its consistency, and its proper order, and the beginning of its creation; granting a spiritual and invisible nature to spiritual beings, and a heavenly one to supercelestial beings, and an angelic one to Angels, and an animal one to animals, and ^D a swimming one to aquatic creatures, and...

a terrestrial one to land-dwelling creatures, and ^A related all things, saying: In the beginning God made heaven and earth, and thereafter all other things: but not gods, nor angels.

5. It is proper for the supereminence of God not to need other instruments for the creation of those things which are made; and His own Word is suitable and sufficient for the formation of all things, just as John the disciple of the Lord says concerning Him: All things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing. ^B In all things, moreover, is also this which is the world according to us. And this, therefore, was made by His Word, just as the Scripture of Genesis says, that God made all things which are according to us by His Word. But likewise David also follows up: For He spoke, and they were made: He commanded, and they were created. To whom, therefore, shall we rather give credence concerning the fabrication of the world: to these heretics who have been mentioned, babbling so foolishly and inconsistently; or to the disciples of the Lord, and the faithful servant of God, Moses, and the prophets? Whom, and the genesis of the world ^C narrated, saying: In the beginning God made heaven and earth, and thereafter all other things: but not gods, nor angels.

6. But since this God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and for that reason Paul the apostle said: One God the Father, who is above all, and through all, and in all us. Now indeed we have shown there is one God: but from the apostles themselves, and from the Lord’s own discourses, we shall further show it. For what kind of thing is it, to abandon the voices of the prophets, and of the Lord, and of the apostles, to attend to those saying nothing sound? ^D

CHAPTER III.

1. Unstable, therefore, according to them, is this Bythos, that which is the Pleroma of this [sect], and the God of Marcion. If indeed, as they say, he has outside of himself something underlying, which they speak of as vacuum and shadow...

^A its existence is shown to be even greater than the Pleroma itself. It is also unsteady to say that this [creation], containing within itself all things below, was fabricated by some other being. For they must necessarily confess that there exists some vacuum and void, within which this universe was fabricated, below the spiritual Pleroma; and whether the Propathor knew that these things which were to be in it were there, and so left it by design, or whether he was ignorant of it? And if he were ignorant, God would no longer be omniscient. But they will not even be able to give a reason why he left this place so idle for so long a time. But if he is omniscient, and contemplated in his mind the creation that was to be in that place; he himself made it, who also pre-formed it in himself.

2. Let them cease, therefore, to say that the world was made by another: for as soon as God conceived it in his mind, that which he had conceived in his mind was made. For it was not possible for one being to conceive in his mind, and another to make, those things which had been conceived by him in his mind. But either God, according to these heretics, conceived an eternal world in his mind, or a temporal one: both of which are incredible. But if indeed he conceived it in his mind as eternal, and spiritual, and visible, such it would have been made. But if it is as it is, and he himself made it such, who had indeed conceived such a one in his mind. Or did he wish it to be ^B in the presence of the Father in such a way, according to the conception of his mind, that it would be composite, and mutable, and transient? But since it is such as the Father had sketched out within himself, it must be a fabrication worthy ^C of the Father. Moreover, for them to say that what was conceived in the mind by the Father of all, and pre-formed just as it also was made, is the fruit of a fall and a projection of ignorance, is a great blasphemy. For the Father of all, according to them, would—in accordance with his own mental conception—be generating in his bosom the emissions of a fall and the fruits of ignorance: for these things, which he had conceived in his mind, were also made.

CAPUT IV.

The absurdity of the vacuum and fall of the heretics is demonstrated.

1. Therefore, the cause of such an arrangement of God must be sought, but the fabrication of the world is not to be ascribed to another: and all things must be said to have been prepared by God beforehand, so that they were made as they were made, but it is not to be feigned that there was a shadow and a void. But, whence the void? It will be asked. Whether it was emitted by the Father and Prolator of all, according to them, and is also emitted, and is equal in honor, and akin to the remaining Aeons, or perhaps even older than them? But if it is emitted by the same, it is similar to him who emitted it, and to those with whom it was emitted. There will therefore be a necessity, in every way, that even their Bythos, together with Sige, be similar to the void, that is to say, that they be void: and [that they be] ^D that which is in no way able to be sustained, and which abhors all likelihood, and is so prodigious and absurd that it exceeds all likelihood, etc.

^A other Aeons, since they are void, having also a void substance. But if it was not emitted, it was born of itself, and was generated of itself, and is equal in time to him who is, according to them, Bythus, the Father of all; and thus that which is void will be of the same nature and the same honor as he who is, according to them, the Father of all. For it must be that that which is void is either emitted by someone, or is self-generated and born of itself. But if indeed what is void was emitted, then Valentinus is also void, and his followers are void. But if it was not emitted, but was self-generated, then that which is void is similar to, and of the same brotherhood and honor as, that Father who was mentioned by Valentinus: existing, moreover, older and much earlier, and more honorable than the rest of the Aeons of Ptolemy himself, and of Heracleon, and of all the others ^B who think these same things.

2. But if, caught in these difficulties, they confess that the Father of all contains all things, and that there is nothing outside the Pleroma (for there is a necessity that he be defined and circumscribed by something greater): and if they say those things which are outside and those which are inside are so according to knowledge and ignorance, and not according to local distance: yet in the Pleroma, or in those things which are contained by the Father, [they say] that all things whatsoever which we know were made were made by the Demiurge or by the Angels, being contained by an ineffable magnitude, as the center in a circle, or as a stain in a garment: first of all, of what sort will Bythus be, who sustains the stain coming to be in his bosom, and permits another to build or bring forth within his own things, contrary to his own mind? Which, indeed, would begin to bring indecibility to the whole Pleroma, when he could have cut off the stain from the beginning, and those emissions which took their start from him; and not permit the constitution of creation to receive its existence in ignorance, nor in passion, nor in stain. For he who later ^C cleanses the stain, and cleanses it like a spot, could much more have observed beforehand not to allow such a stain to come to be in his own things even at the beginning. Or if he did concede it at the beginning, since those things which were made could not have been done otherwise, it ought to be that they are always made so. For those things which at the beginning cannot receive improvement, how will they receive it afterward? Or how do they say that men are summoned to perfection, when those very things which are the causes, from which men were made, or the Demiurge himself, or the Angels, are said to be in stain? And if, because he is kind, he has had mercy on men in the final times, and gives them perfection; he ought first to have had mercy on those who were the makers of man, and given perfection to them. So indeed men also would have received mercy, having become perfect from those who were perfect. For if he had mercy on their work, he ought much earlier to have had mercy on them, and not to have allowed them to come into such blindness.

3. But those who are of the shade and the void are refuted, [that is, those] in whom they say the condition which is according to us was made, if these things were made in those things which are contained by the Father. For if they think the paternal light of theirs is such that it can fulfill all things which are within it, and illuminate all things—how could a void, or a shade, exist in those things which are contained by the Pleroma and by the paternal light? For they must show a place within the Propathor, or within the Pleroma, not illuminated, nor held by anyone, in which either the Angels or the Demiurge made whatsoever they wished. For it is not a small place in which such a great and such a condition was made. There will therefore be a necessity that something void, and formless, and dark exists locally within the Pleroma or within their Father, in which those things were fabricated which were fabricated. He will also receive the accusation of their paternal [light].

as if He were unable to illuminate and fill the things that are within Him. Furthermore, by speaking of the fruits of the fall ^A and the labors of error, they bring defilement and error within the Pleroma and into the bosom of the Father.

CHAPTER V

That this world was not made by others within those things contained by the Father.

1. Against those, therefore, who say that this world was made outside the Pleroma, or under a good God, those things which were stated by us a little before are fitting; and such people will be enclosed with their Father by Him who is outside the Pleroma, in whom it is necessary for them also to terminate. But against those who say that this world was made by certain others within those things contained by the Father, all the things which have now been said will appear absurd and inconsistent; and they will be compelled either to confess that all things which are within the Father are lucid, full, and operative: or else to accuse the paternal light, as if He were unable ^B to illuminate all things: or else to confess that the entire Pleroma of theirs is, like a part, empty, disordered, and dark. And all the remaining things, whatever belong to the creation, they accuse as if they were temporal: but it must be that they are "eternal-material" [æterno-choica], or blameless, since they are within the Pleroma and in the bosom of the Father; or else these accusations will likewise fall upon the entire Pleroma; and the cause of ignorance is found to be Christ. As for instance, they say that when He had formed the substance of their Mother, He cast it out beyond the Pleroma, that is, He separated it from knowledge. He, therefore, who separated her from knowledge, created ignorance in her. How, then, could the same one provide knowledge to the remaining Aeons, those who were prior to him, while he was the cause of ignorance to his Mother? For he put her outside ^C of knowledge, casting her outside of the Pleroma.

2. Furthermore, if they say that being in knowledge and outside of knowledge exists within the Pleroma and outside the Pleroma, just as certain of them say that he who is in knowledge is within that which he knows; it is necessary that they agree that the Savior Himself (whom all say is all things) was in ignorance. For they say that when He had gone forth outside the Pleroma, He formed their Mother. If, therefore, they say that what is outside is the ignorance of all things; yet the Savior went out for the formation of their Mother; He was made outside the knowledge of all things, that is, in ignorance. How, then, could He provide knowledge to them, when He Himself was outside of knowledge? And we, too, when we are outside of the knowledge of their [Aeons], are said to be outside the Pleroma. And again: If, therefore, the Savior went out beyond the Pleroma for the seeking of the lost sheep, and the Pleroma is knowledge, He was made outside of knowledge, which is in ignorance. For they must either accuse what is outside the Pleroma ^D because they are temporal, or they must confess that they are "eternal-material," or eternal at once and material, or blameless. "Eternal-material," indeed, because within the eternal and incorruptible [realms], within the Pleroma itself and in the bosom of the Father Himself, material and corruptible things were founded. But "blameless," otherwise the accusations will likewise fall upon the entire Pleroma. That this is the mind of Irenaeus, and that our reading is genuine, anyone will concede who attends to that which the holy doctor repeats with greater clarity a little later: "Now, therefore, the fabricator is not the cause of this operation, very well thinking that he himself is the fabricator, but He who in His own [acts] concedes and proves that the emissions of the fall and the works of error are brought to pass, and temporal things in eternal, and corruptible things in incorruptible, and in those which are of truth, those which are of error." Those things which he says here, "temporal in eternal" and "corruptible in incorruptible," are the very things which, in the prior place, he calls by one word "eternal-material."

^A It is necessary that they agree; and all the things which have been said before will be contrary to them. Or if, according to [their] knowledge, they say that which is within is knowledge, and that which is without is ignorance, then their Savior—and Christ much earlier—would have been created in ignorance, having gone forth outside the Pleroma to the formation of their Mother, which is outside of knowledge.

3. But those who say, in any way whatsoever, that the world was made by angels or by some other being besides the true God, will be similarly refuted. For what accusation they make regarding the Demiurge and those things which are made material and temporal, will recoil ^B upon the Father: if indeed, as they say, these things were made in the womb of the Pleroma, things which were soon to begin to be dissolved, according to the permission and at the pleasure of the Father? Now, therefore, the Fabricator is not the cause of this operation, though he very well might think that he is fabricating; but rather He who, in His own [domain], permits and approves that the emanations of slippage and the works of error should occur, and that in eternal things there should be temporal things, and in incorruptible things there should be corruptible things, and in those things which are of truth, there should be those things which are of error. But if these things were made without the Father of all permitting or approving them, He is more powerful, ^C and stronger, and the ruler of those who made, within His domain, those things which He did not permit. But if the Father of them permitted it without approving, as some say; He either permitted it because He was capable of prohibiting it on account of some necessity, or He was not capable. But if indeed He was not able, He is weak and infirm; but if He was able, He is a seducer and a hypocrite, and a slave to necessity; not indeed consenting, yet permitting as if He did consent. And at the beginning, permitting error to stand and to grow, He endeavors in later times to dissolve it, when already many have miserably perished on account of the slippage.

4. But it does not befit Him who is above all ^D as God, being free and of His own power, to be said to be a servant to necessity, such that something exists according to permission contrary to His judgment: otherwise, they would make necessity greater and more dominant than God, when that which is more powerful is also more ancient than all things. And immediately at the beginning, He ought to have cut off the causes of necessity, and not to have concluded Himself to the need of having necessity, by conceding something otherwise than it was fitting for Him. For it was much better, and more consistent, and more deifying, that in the beginning the origin of such a necessity should have been cut off, than afterwards, as if out of repentance, He should try to eradicate such a great fruitfulness of necessity. And if the Father of all is to be a servant to necessity, and will fall under fate, bearing it with annoyance in those things which happen, and can do nothing besides necessity and fate (similarly to the Homeric Jupiter, who says through necessity: "And I truly gave to you, willing it, though with an unwilling mind"): then, according to this reasoning, their Depth will be found to be a slave to necessity and fate.

122 CHAPTER VI.

That the supreme God could not have been unknown to the angels, or to the creator of the world.

1. How then could the angels, or the fabricator of the world, be ignorant of the First God, when they were in His own [domain], and their creatures existed and were contained by Him? Invisible, indeed, He could be to them, on account of His eminence; but unknown, by no means, on account of His providence. For even if, by descent, they were very much separated from Him, as they say; yet, with His domain extended over all, it was fitting that they should know their ruler, and know this very thing, that He who created them is the Lord of all. For His invisible [nature], while being powerful, provides to all a great intuition of the mind and sensibility of His most powerful and omnipotent eminence. Whence even if no one knows the Father except the Son, and the Son except the Father, and those to whom the Son has revealed Him; yet, all things know this very fact, when the reason implanted in their minds moves them, and reveals to them that there is one God, the Lord of all.

2. And for this reason all things are subject to the appellation of the Most High and Omnipotent: and by the invocation of this [name], even before the coming of our Lord, men were saved, and from most wicked spirits, and from all demons, and from all apostasy: not as if the earthly spirits or demons had seen Him;

but because they knew that there exists One who is God over all, whose invocation they trembled at, and to whom all creation, Principality, Power, and every subject Virtue, is in subjection. Or do not those who are under the Roman Empire, although they have never seen the Emperor, but are separated from him by much land and sea, know—because of his dominion—him who holds the greatest supreme power; while the Angels who were above us, or he whom they call the maker of the world, do not know the Almighty, when even mute animals tremble and yield to such an invocation? And although they have not seen Him, yet all things are subject to the name of our Lord: so too by the name of Him who made and fashioned all things, since there is no other than He who made the world. And for this reason, the Jews even until now put demons to flight by this very invocation, since all things fear the invocation of Him who made them.

3. If, therefore, they are unwilling that Angels should be less than brute animals, they will find that it was necessary—even though they had not seen Him who is God over all—that they should know His power and dominion. For it will indeed appear ridiculous if they say that they themselves, who are upon the earth, know Him who is God over all, whom they have never seen; but that they do not permit Him who made them and the whole world—according to their view—to know those things which they themselves, being in humble circumstances, know, when He is in the heights and above the heavens. Unless perhaps they say that their Bythos is in Tartarus under the earth: for which reason they suppose they themselves knew him sooner than the Angels who dwelt in the heights; coming into such madness as to pronounce the maker of the world a madman: of whom it is truly right to have pity, since in such madness they say that neither did the Mother know Him, nor her seed, nor the Pleroma of the Aeons, nor the Propator, nor what those things were which He fashioned; but that these ^B were the images of those things which are inside the Pleroma, secretly operating in this way for the honor of those who are above.

CHAPTER VII. Created things are not images of the Aeons, which are above within the Pleroma.

1. They say, therefore, that the Savior honored the Pleroma in the creation by means of the Mother, who emitted the likenesses and images of those things which are above. But since we have shown that it was impossible for anything to exist outside the Pleroma in which they say the images of those inside the Pleroma were made, or for this world to be fashioned by any other than the first God. If, however, it is agreeable to refute them on every side, and to prove them liars, we shall say against them: if these things were made by the Savior in the image of those things which are above ^C for their honor, it is necessary that they should always endure, so that those which have been honored may always be in honor. But if they pass away, what is the use of this very short time of honor, which at one time did not exist, and again will not exist? The Savior, therefore, will be argued by us to be a seeker of empty glory rather than an honorer of those things which are above. For what honor is it for eternal things, which always are, to be [honored by] things which are temporal; for things which stand, by things which pass away; for incorruptible things, by corruptible things? Since even among men, who are temporal, there is no grace in that honor which quickly passes away: but only in that which endures for the longest time possible. But things which are destroyed as soon as they are made will be justly said to have been made in contempt rather than in honor of those who are thought to be honored: and it is to treat with contumely that which is eternal, by having its image corrupted and dissolved. Moreover, what if the Mother of these had not wept, and laughed, and been in despair; would not the Savior have had ^D things by which He might honor the Fullness, of that extreme confusion which does not have its own substance, through which He might honor the Propator?

2. O honor of vain glory, which passes away immediately, and is, in the mind of the Savior, ignorant of what it was doing, and He who was acting and taking care that it should be done through Him, etc.

^A nor can they say that the Savior, whom they call the All, lacked the power of emission. If, therefore, the image is dissimilar, he is a bad craftsman, and it is the fault of the Savior, according to them. But if it is similar, the same ignorance will be found concerning the Nun of their Propators, that is, the Monogenes: and the Nus of the Father indeed 26 was ignorant of himself, and he was ignorant of the Father, and he was ignorant of the things which were made by him. But if he knows, then he who was made by the Savior in his likeness must also necessarily know the things which are similar: and the greatest blasphemy among them, according to their own rule, is dissolved.

Now is it not apparent? There will be some Aeon, in whom total honor will not be considered to have existed, and the things that are above will then be dishonored: or it will be necessary for the Mother to emit again, weeping and in need, in honor of the Pleroma. O dissimilar, and at the same time blasphemous image! 19 You say to me that the image was emitted by the craftsman of the world 20 of the Unigenitus; and you wish the Nun 21 to be that of the Father of all: yet that this image is ignorant of itself, ignorant also of its condition, and ignorant also of the Mother, and of everything whatever of those things which exist, and of those which were made by him: and are you not ashamed before yourselves, introducing ignorance even up to the Monogenes himself? For if these things were made by the Savior according to the likeness of ^B those things which are above, while he who was made according to the likeness is ignorant of such great things; it is necessary that, concerning him, and according to him, in whose likeness he who is ignorant was made, this kind of ignorance should exist spiritually 22. For it is not possible, since both were emitted spiritually, and were neither molded nor composed, that in some they should have preserved the likeness, but in others should have corrupted the image of the likeness 23, which was emitted for this purpose, that it should be according to the likeness of that which is above, which is an emission. But if it is not similar 24, there will be an accusation against the Savior, who emitted a dissimilar substance.

3 And without this, how can the things which are creatures, thus various and many 27, and innumerable, be images of those Aeons who are within the thirty of the Pleroma, whose names, according to what they say, we have set down in the book that is before this one? And they will not be able to adapt to the smallness of their Pleroma not only the variety of the whole creation, but not even that of a single part 28, whether of celestial, or superterrestrial, or aquatic things. For they testify that their Pleroma is thirty Aeons; but since in one part 29 of the things which have been said, they reckon not thirty, but many thousands of species, to show...

^A that they are images of the Pleroma—how can things that are so many, of such a nature, and existing with contrary conditions, and mutually repugnant, and destroying one another, be images and likenesses of the thirty Aeons? Since, as they say, they exist of one nature, from an equal and similar source, and have no difference. But if these are their images, it was necessary, just as they say that men are by nature some of one kind and others by nature good, that they should also show such differences in the Aeons themselves, and say that some were emitted that are by nature good, and others that are by nature evil, so that the discovery of the images might be congruent with the Aeons. Moreover, since in the world some things are tame, while others are wild, and some are harmless, while others are harmful and destroy the rest; and some are superterrestrial, some aquatic, some winged, some celestial: in like manner they ought to show that the Aeons have such affections, if indeed these are their images. And they must interpret also of what Aeon of those which are above the image is: the eternal fire which the Father prepared for the devil and his angels [*], for he too is counted in the creation. ^B

4. But if one says that these are images of his conception [†], they will first be acting impiously toward their Mother, saying that she is the originator of evil and corruptible images. Furthermore, how will those things which are many, and dissimilar, and contrary in nature, be images of one and the same Being? And if they say that there are many angels of the Pleroma, and that those things which are many are images of them; not even thus will their reasoning hold. For first, they must show that the differences of the angels of the Pleroma are contrary to one another, just as the underlying images are of contrary nature to one another. But then, since the angels around the Creator are many and innumerable, as all the prophets confess, ten thousand times ten thousand stand before Him [‡], and many thousands of thousands serve Him; and according to them, the angels of the Pleroma will have the angels of the Creator as their images, and the state ^C remains intact in the image of the Pleroma, no longer following the thirty Aeons into the multiform variety of creation.

5. Furthermore, if these things were made according to the likeness, to whom then will they have been made in the likeness of? For if the fabricator of the world did not make these of his own self, but as no one else... ^D

of those who have a role as an artisan—like a boy who is just learning—he translated them from alien archetypes; whence did their Bythus have the species of his, which he first sent forth, of the arrangement? It is consistent, therefore, for him to have received the example from another who is above him; and for that one again from another. And yet the account of these images will wander into the infinite, just as with the gods ^A, if we do not fix our understanding upon one creator, as upon one God, who of himself made the things that were made. Or does one allow that men, indeed, have discovered something useful for life by themselves, but to that God who finished the world, one does not allow that he made the species of the things that were made, and the invention of an ordered disposition by himself?

6. And whence, therefore, are these their images, since they are contrary to them ^B, and can in no way communicate with them? For those things which are contrary, those of which they are contrary can indeed be destructive; but images, in no way: just as water is to fire, and again light to darkness, and other such things, they will by no means be images of one another. So neither will the things that are corruptible, and earthly, and composite, and passing away, be images of those things which are, according to them, spiritual: unless they also are confessed to be composite, and in limitation, and in configuration, and no longer spiritual, and diffuse, and rich, and incomprehensible. For it is necessary that those things be in configuration and limitation, so that they may be true images: and it is absolute that they are not spiritual. But if they say that those things are spiritual, and diffuse, and incomprehensible; how can those things which are in configuration and limitation be images of those who are without configuration and incomprehensible ^C?

7. But if they say that they are not according to configuration, nor according to formation, but according to number and the order of emission that they are images; first of all, these would not be called images and likenesses of those who are the Æons above. For those things which have neither habit nor form ^D of them, just as images are of them. Then, furthermore, they should adapt the numbers and the emissions of the superior Æons, the same and similar to those who are of the creation. Now, however, by showing thirty Æons, and such a multitude of them which are in the creation, saying that they are images of those who are the thirty, they are justly argued against by us as insensate.

CHAPTER VIII.

1. But if they dare to say, as some of them do, that these are a shadow, so that according to this they are images, it will be necessary to confess that the bodies themselves are those things which are above. For those things which are above make a shadow; but not now spiritual things, since they can obscure nothing. But if we even grant them this—which is indeed impossible—that there is a shadow of those things which are spiritual and lucid, into which they say their Mother descended: yet, since those things are eternal, even the shadow which is made from them remains everlasting, and these do not now pass away, but remain with those things which shadow them. If, however, these pass away, it is necessary that those also, of which these are a shadow, pass away: but if those remain, their shadow also remains.

2. But if they do not say that it is a shadow in regard to what it is, but in regard to that which is far separated from them; they will accuse their paternal light of littleness and infirmity, as if it did not reach even to these, but failed to fill that which is vacuum, and to dissolve the shadow, and this when no one was an impediment. For it will be converted into darkness, according to them, and their paternal light will be blinded, and will fail in those places which are of the emptiness, since it is in no way able to fulfill all things. Let them not, therefore, any longer say that their Bythus is the Pleroma of all things, if they omit that which is vacuum and again shadow and vacuum; if the shadow has neither filled nor illuminated: or...

if they ^A can imagine that the Father of all, who is above all things, is contained by anything. It is irrational and impious to invent a place in which He who according to them is the Propator, the Proarche, the Father of all, and of this Pleroma, ceases and finds an end. Nor, again, is it right to say that someone else in the bosom of the Father created such a vast creation, whether with His consent or without it, for the reasons already stated. For it is similarly impious and insane to say that such a vast creation was fashioned by Angels, or by some emission ignorant of the true God, in the things which are His own: nor is it possible that within their Pleroma, since it is wholly spiritual, things which are earthly and material were produced: nor indeed is it possible, according to their image, when they are said to be few and of a similar formation and one, that things which are of many conditions and mutually contrary could have been made. Their argument, then, has appeared false ^B and derived from the shadow of the *cenoma*, that is, of the vacuum, in every respect. And so the vacuum, that figment of theirs and inconstant doctrine, has been shown to be void: and those who attend to these vacuities are truly descending into the depths of perdition.

Chapter IX. That there is one creator of the world, God the Father; and that all the ancients agree with the Church in this tradition.

1. That the God who is the maker of the world is one, is evident even to those who in many ways contradict Him, for they confess Him by calling Him the maker and speaking of Him as an Angel: so that we need not say it, since all the Scriptures cry aloud and the Lord teaches that this Father who is in the heavens is one, ^C and no other, as we shall show in the course of our argument. For the present, it is sufficient that the testimony even of those who speak against us is, for all men, in agreement with this, and in the first place with those who have kept the tradition from the first-formed man, and who hymn one God, the maker of heaven and earth: while the rest, after them, receive the commemoration of this matter from the Prophets of God: but the heathen learn it from creation itself. For creation itself shows Him who created it; and the handiwork suggests Him who made it; and the world manifests Him who disposed it. The Church, however, throughout the whole world, has received this tradition from the Apostles.

2. Being constant, therefore, in this God, as we have said, and receiving testimony from all, we see that he who is discovered according to them to be the Father, is inconstant and without witness; ^D since Simon Magus first said that he himself was God above all things, and that the world was made by his Angels; and after him those who succeeded him, according to what we showed in the first book, brought round various impious and irreligious doctrines against the creator: whose disciples, as they are, make those who assent to them worse than the heathen. For the latter, serving the creature rather than the Creator, and those who are not gods, nevertheless attribute the first place of deity to the creator of this universe, God. But these men, calling Him the fruit of a defect, and naming Him animal, and saying that He did not know the Power that is above Him, which also said: "I am God, and beside me there is no other God,"—by saying that He lies, they themselves are the liars; and by attributing all malice to Him—that He who is not above Him is the shaper—they are exposed, according to their own opinion, blaspheming Him who is indeed God, and forging a God who is not, to their own condemnation. And those who call themselves perfect, and to have the knowledge of all things, are found to be worse than the heathen, and in their sense even more blasphemous against their own maker.

Chapter X. How poorly the Scriptures are explained by heretics. God created all things from nothing, not from underlying matter.

1. How irrational it is, therefore, to pass over...

him who is truly God, and who has testimony from all, into inquiring if there be another above him, who is not, and who has never been announced by anyone! For it is manifest that nothing has been said about him, and they themselves bear witness to this. But that they transform the parables—which are also being inquired into as to how they were spoken—wickedly toward him who has been invented by them, creating another who was never before sought after, is manifest. By the fact that they wish to resolve obscure Scriptures (obscure, however, not as to another God, but as to the dispensations of God), they have fashioned another God ^B; as we have said, binding ropes like those of sand, and generating a greater question from a lesser one. For every question will have its resolution, not through another thing which is also being questioned, nor will an ambiguity be solved by another ambiguity among those who have sense, or enigmas by another greater enigma; but they receive solutions for such things from those that are manifest, and consonant, and clear.

2. But they, seeking to resolve Scriptures and parables, introduce a greater and impious question—if indeed there be another God above the Creator of the world—not resolving questions (for whence could they?), but attaching a great question to a smaller one, and inserting an insoluble knot. For in order that they might know (to know this very thing, that the Lord indeed came to the baptism of truth at thirty years of age), they do not learn this; but they impiously disdain the God who is the Creator himself ^C, who sent him for the salvation of men; and that they may be thought able to explain whence the substance of matter arose, not believing that God made all things from things that were not, as he willed, so that those things which were made should exist, using his own will and power as a substance, they have gathered empty discourses; truly showing their infidelity: for since they do not believe in those things which are, they have fallen into that which is not.

3. For what they say—that a moist substance proceeded from the tears of Achamoth, but a solid one from her laughter, and a mobile one from her sorrow, and one prone to fear from her dread, and that in these things they are wise and inflated—how is this not worthy of mockery and truly ridiculous? They do not believe, indeed, that God, being powerful and rich in all things, created matter itself, being ignorant of how much a spiritual and divine substance can do; but they believe that their Mother, whom they call female from a female, emitted such a great substance of creation from the aforementioned passions: and they ask, indeed, whence she provided substance for the maker of the creation; but they do not ask whence the tears, or sweats, or sorrows ^D, or other emissions of matter came to their Mother, whom they call the Enthymesis and impulse of an erring Aeon.

4. For to attribute the substance of those things which were made to the virtue and will of him who is the God of all is both credible, and acceptable, and consistent, and this will be well said: for the things which are impossible with men are possible with God. For while men cannot make anything from nothing, but only from subjacent matter; God, however, is on this account first better than men, because he himself found the matter of his own fabrication, when before it did not exist. But to say that matter was brought forth from the Enthymesis of an erring Aeon—and that the Aeon is far removed from her Enthymesis, and that again the passion and affection of this one is matter existing outside of her herself—is both incredible, and fatuous, and impossible, and inconsistent.

CAPUT XI.

1. And not believing, indeed, that he who is God over all has fashioned things, in those that are his, in various and dissimilar ways by his Word, as he himself willed, being the maker of all, as a wise architect and greatest king, they are all the more prone to error. ^AB

^B For if they believe that angels, or some power separated from God, and ignorant of Him, created this universe, they have in this way not believed the truth, but wallowing in falsehood, have lost the bread of true life, as did Aesop’s dog, who indeed left the bread, but made a dash for its shadow, and so lost the food. Moreover, from the very words of the Lord, it is easy to demonstrate that He confesses one Father, and the maker of the world, and the fashioner of man, who was announced by the law and the prophets, and knows no other who might be the God over all things; but rather that He teaches, and through Himself attributes to all the just, that adoption of sons which is toward the Father, which is eternal life.

2. But because they love to accuse, and to twist things that are without reproach and reproach them, bringing upon us a multitude of parables and questions; we have judged it good to first interrogate them in turn concerning their own dogmas, and to show that which is not plausible in them, and to cut off their rashness: and thereafter to bring forward the Lord’s discourses, so that they may not be left merely proposing [questions], but for this reason, that because they cannot answer what is asked of them with reason, seeing their own argumentation dissolved, either returning to the truth, and humbling themselves, and ceasing from their manifold fantasy, they might appease God for the things they have blasphemed against Him, and be saved: or if they persist in that vain glory which has preoccupied their mind, they might diminish their argumentation.

128 CHAPTER XII.

1. First of all, we say that their Triacontad is strangely decided on both sides, both according to what it lacks, and according to what it has more; on account of which they claim the Lord came to baptism at thirty years of age. Such is the overturning of their argumentation. And according to their enumeration, it is thus: in the first place, because they count the Pro-pator along with the rest of the Aeons. For the Father of all ought not to be enumerated with the rest of the emission: he who is not emitted, with those which are emitted: and the unborn, with those that are born: and he whom no one grasps, with those that are grasped by him, and on account of this are incapable [of being grasped]: he who is without form, with those that are formed. For according to that which he is better than the rest, he ought not to be enumerated with them; and this with an Aeon liable to suffering, and set in error, who is impassible and unerring. For since they start from Bythos, they enumerate the Triacontad up to Sophia, whom they call the erring Aeon, as we have shown in the book which is before this book, and we have set down the names which they give them: but in this counting of the Aeons, they are not thirty, but twenty-nine.

2. Next, the first emission, Ennoea, whom they call Sige, from whom again they claim Nus and Alethia were emitted, they err in both respects. For it is impossible that the *ennœa* of anyone, or silence, be understood separately, and apart from him have its own proper configuration. But if they do not say that she was emitted outside, but united to the Pro-pator; why do they enumerate her with the rest of the Aeons, to those who are not united, and on account of this are ignorant of her magnitude? But if she is also united (let us consider this too), all that is from the united conjugation is necessarily inseparable, and existing as one; and it is fitting that the emission which is from her be indistinguishable and united, so that it is not dissimilar to him who emitted it. But this being so, it becomes one and the same, just as Bythos and Sige, so also Nus and Alethia, always adhering to one another. And that one cannot be understood without the other, just as water without moisture, or fire without heat, or a stone without hardness (for these are united to one another); and neither can one be separated from the other, but must always coexist with it: so also it is fitting that Bythos be united with Ennoea, and Nus with Alethia in the same way. Again, Logos and Zoe also are emitted from the united ones, as united ones.

And for the feminine Aeon, since she is as it were his affection, it is necessary that she exist together with the masculine according to them.

3. And since things are thus, and since these things are stated by them, they again shamelessly venture to teach that the younger Aeon of the duodecad, whom they also call Sophia, without the mingling of a spouse—whom they call Theletus—suffered a passion, and without him brought forth fruit in separation, whom they name a female from a female; having progressed into such madness that they most manifestly hold two contrary opinions about the same thing. For if Bythos is united with Sige, and Nus with Alethia, and Logos with Zoe, and the rest in order; how could Sophia, without the perplexity of a spouse, suffer anything, or generate? But if she suffered these things without him, it is necessary that the other conjugations also receive division and separation in themselves: which is impossible, as we have already said. It is impossible, therefore, that Sophia suffered without Theletus: and their entire argument is again dissolved. For about the passion which they say she suffered without the embrace of a spouse, they have again attached all the rest as if it were the composition of a tragedy.

4. But if they impudently say that the other conjugations were separated from one another—because of the most recent conjugation—so that their vain talk might not be dissolved: first of all, they persist in an impossible thing. For how will they separate the Propatôr from his Ennoea, or Nus from Alethia, or Logos from Zoe, and the rest similarly? And again, how do they themselves say that they return to unity and that all are one, if indeed these conjugations which are within the Pleroma do not maintain unity, but are distant from one another: to such a degree that they both suffer and generate without the embrace of another, just as hens do without capons?

5. Finally, and thus, their first and arch-ancestral ogdoad will again be dissolved. For there will be, especially, in the same Pleroma, Bythos and Sige, Nus and Alethia, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia. ^B But it is impossible for Sige to exist when Logos is present, or again for Logos to be shown when Sige is present. For these are mutually destructive, just as light and darkness, by no means, exist in the same place: but if there is light, there is no darkness; but where there is darkness, there will be no light: for upon the coming of light, darkness is dissolved. Thus, where Sige is, there will be no Logos; and where Logos is, there is certainly no Sige. But if they say that Logos is "endiathetos" (immanent), Sige will also be "endiathetos," and nevertheless she will be resolved by the immanent Logos. But since he is not "endiathetos," this very arrangement of their emission signifies it.

6. Let them not, therefore, say that the ogdoad consists of Logos and Sige, but let them refute either Sige or Logos: and their first and principal ogdoad is dissolved. For if they say that the conjugation is a unity, their entire argument is dissolved. For how, since they are united, did Sophia generate ruin without a spouse? But if, as in the emission, they say that each of the Aeons has a proper substance: how can Sige and Logos be shown to be in the same place? And these things are according to decrease.

7. But according to what is more, their thirty is again dissolved thus: For they say that Horos was emitted from the Monogenes, as were the other Aeons—whom they call by very many names, as we have already said in the book which is before this. ^C But some say that this Horos was emitted from the Monogenes, others, however, believe it was from the Propatôr himself in his own likeness. Furthermore, they also say that Christ and the Holy Spirit were emitted from the Monogenes, and these they do not count into the number of the Pleroma: but neither [do they count] the Savior, whom they also say is the Total. For this is manifest even to the blind, since not only thirty emissions are emitted according to them, but four along with these thirty. For they count the Propatôr himself into the Pleroma, and those who were emitted from one another by succession. Moreover, why are these not counted among them, existing in the same Pleroma, who obtained the same emission? For what just cause can they state?

^A And we have thus shown that their system is worthy of rejection. For they say that the Nous and Aletheia were emitted from Bythos and his Ennoia; which is indeed shown to be contrary to reason. For the Nous is itself that which is the principal, the supreme, the very principle, and the fountain of all sense. But Ennoia, which is from him, is any motion whatsoever made about anything. It is not possible, therefore, that the Nous should have been emitted from Bythos and Ennoia: it would have been more plausible for them to say that the daughter Ennoia was emitted from the Propatore and from this Nous. For Ennoia is not the mother of 130 the Nous, as they say; but the Nous is the father of Ennoia. ^B But just as the Nous was emitted from the Propatore—who contains the place of his principal, his first, and his interior, hidden, and invisible affection—from which sense is generated, and Ennoia, and Enthymesis, and such things, which are nothing other than the Nous himself, but rather, as we have said, any of his own motions disposed in thought about something; receiving names according to perseverance and growth, not according to change, and terminated into cognition, and co-emitted into the word, with the sense remaining within, and storing up, and administering, and governing freely and by his own power, according to what he wills, which are the aforesaid things.

8. Since, therefore, their triad has been dissolved, as we have shown, and [since the system is flawed] according to that which is less, and according to that which is more (for in such a number, if there be more or less, it will make the number worthy of rejection, how much more so such great things?): unstable, therefore, ^C is the fable concerning their Ogdoad and their Duodecad. Unstable also is their entire rule, with their very foundation dissipated, and dissolved into Bythos, that is, into that which is not. Therefore, let them seek from now on to show other causes why the Lord came to baptism at thirty years of age; and [why there is] a duodecad of apostles; and [what concerns] her who suffered the flow of blood; and the rest of those things about which they labor in vain and rave.

CHAPTER XIII

1. And the same first order of emission... ^D [the text continues] ...is called; but when it persists and expands and apprehends the whole soul, it is called enthymesis. This enthymesis, when it lingers long on the same thing and is as it were proven, is named sensation. This sensation, when it is expanded further, becomes counsel; but the growth and movement, when extended further into counsel, is the examination of thought: which, persevering also in the mind, is most rightly called the word; from which is emitted...

^A that which has been done, so that He is not even thought to be small. But they attribute affections and passions to Him. If, however, they had known the Scriptures and had been taught by the truth, they would certainly have known that God is not as ^B men; nor are His thoughts as the thoughts of men. For the Father of all differs greatly from these things that befall men, from affections and passions: and He is simple and not composite, and a whole of like members, and is wholly Himself like and equal to Himself; since He is all mind, and all spirit, and all sensibility, and all thought, and all reason, and all hearing, and all eye, and all light, and all the fountain of all good things; as it is pious and religious to speak of God.

4. And He is furthermore ineffable. For the mind, being capable of all things, will well and rightly be called, but not like the mind of men; and He will most rightly be called light, but there is nothing like to that light which is among us. And so also in all other things, the Father of all will be unlike the smallness of men: and He is indeed said ^C to be this according to love, but He is understood as being beyond this according to magnitude. If, therefore, in men the mind itself is not emitted, nor is that which emits other motions separated from the living one; but His affections and movements reach the manifest; how much more so with God, who is all mind, and thus ineffable, beyond ^D all [human thinking]!

^A itself will in no way be separated from itself, nor is one thing emitted from another as if by some other [agent] (37). 5. For if He emits a sense, according to them, He is understood as composite and corporeal, so that God—He who has emitted—is one thing, and the sense that has been emitted is another, separately. But if they say that a sense is emitted from a sense, they cut up and divide the sense of God. And from where and out of what is it emitted? For that which is emitted by something is emitted into some subject. And what was older, lying underneath, than the sense of God, into which they say it was emitted (38)? And how great was the place, so that it might receive and contain the sense of God? But if they say it is as a ray from the sun; just as the air here lies underneath as a receiver (39); then it will be more ancient than the ray itself: and there they must show some subject into which the sense of God was emitted (40), capable of it and more ancient. Afterward, it will be necessary—just as we see the sun to be smaller than all things, emitting rays far from itself—to say that the Propatorem also emitted a ray outside and far from itself. But what can be felt outside or far from God, into which He emitted a ray? 6. But if they do not say it was emitted outside the Father, but within the Father Himself; first, it will be superfluous even to say that it was emitted. For how is it emitted, if it was inside the Father? For emission is the manifestation of that which is emitted, outside the emitter. Furthermore, with this emission (42), even He who is from Him, the Logos, will be inside the Father; and similarly, the other emissions of the Logos (43). Now, therefore, they will not be ignorant of the Father, since they are within Him; nor, according to the descent of the emissions, will anyone know Him less (44), since all are equally surrounded by the Father on all sides; but they will all likewise remain impassible, since they are in the paternal heart, and there will be no reduction in any of them. For the Father is not a reduction: unless perhaps by man they are separated: much less God, who is all mind, [for] mind would be emitted, and the actions of that mind would be emitted divided and separated from Him, so that God would not be separated from God.

^B Just as in a great circle a smaller circle is contained, and within this again another smaller one, or as if by the likeness of a sphere or a tetragon. Let them say that the Father contains within Himself on all sides the likeness of a sphere, or the remaining square emission of the Aeons, with each one of them surrounded by the one who is greater than him, who is above him; and the one who is after him surrounds him, being smaller. And because of this, the one who is smaller and the last of all, established in the center and far separated from the Father, was ignorant of the Propatorem. But if they say these things, they will conclude their Bythos, and the one surrounding and the one surrounded, in figure and circumscription; for they will be compelled to confess that there is also something outside Him, which surrounds Him. And nevertheless, the discussion will fall into the infinite regarding those who contain (45) and are contained: and it will appear manifest that all are included bodies.

7. Furthermore, they will confess either that He is a vacuum, or that everything which is inside Him will all likewise participate in the Father. Just as if one were to make circles in water, or round or square figures, all these will likewise participate in the water: just as those things which are fashioned in the air (47) must needs participate in the air; and those in the light, in the light: so also those who are within Him will all likewise participate in the Father, with ignorance having no place among them. For where is the participation of the fulfilling Father? But if He has fulfilled, then there will be no ignorance there. Their work of reduction, therefore, will be dissolved, as well as the emission of matter and the remaining fabrication of the world; for they wish these to have had their substance from passion and ignorance. But if they admit that He is a vacuum, falling into the greatest blasphemy, they will deny that which is spiritual of Him. For how is He spiritual who cannot even fulfill those things which are inside Him?

8. These things, which are said concerning the emission of a sense, have been well posited by Grabe from the Arundel codex. But he thinks in vain that either these four words have crept into the text, or that more have fallen out. The meaning seems sufficiently convenient if something—not sought from afar—is supplied by the mind: just as we see the sun situated far from us, and therefore smaller than all things, etc.

^A similarly also against those who are from Basilides these things have been adapted: and against the remaining Gnostics, from whom these too received the beginnings of emissions, they were convicted in the first book. But since indeed the first emission of *Nous*—that is, of their intelligence—is reprobate and impossible, we have manifestly shown. Let us see, however, also about the rest. For from this they say *Logos* and *Zoe*, the fabricators of this Pleroma, were emitted; and they receive the emission of *Logos*—that is, of the Word—from human affection, and conjure against God, as if finding something great in what they say, that *Logos* was emitted from *Nous*: which indeed everyone naturally knows is spoken consistently in the case of men. But in Him who is God over all, since He is entirely *Nous* and entirely *Logos*, as we have said before, and has in Himself nothing more ancient or more recent, nor anything of another, but remains entirely equal and similar and one, such an emission of this ordination does not follow. Just as he who says He is entirely vision and entirely hearing (in whom He sees, in Him He also hears; and in whom He hears, in Him He also sees) does not sin; so also he who says He is entirely that intelligence, and entirely the Word, and that in whom intelligence is, in Him also the Word is, and the Word is this *Nous* of His, will indeed think less of the Father of all; yet they translate the generation of the spoken word of men into the eternal Word of God, granting it a beginning of prolation and genesis, just as with their own word. And in what will the Word of God—nay more, God Himself, when He is the Word—differ from the word of men, if He has the same ordination and emission of generation?

^B They sinned also concerning *Zoe*, saying that she was emitted in the sixth place, whom it behooved to set before all, since God is life, and incorruptibility, and truth. And not according to a descent, and things such as these, did they receive emissions; but they are appellations of those virtues which are always with God, as it is possible and worthy for men to hear and to speak of God. For by the appellation of God, intelligence, and the Word, and life, and incorruptibility, and truth, and wisdom, and goodness, and all such things are understood together. And no one can say that intelligence is more ancient than life; for the very intelligence is life: nor later than intelligence, so that He who is the intelligence of all, that is God, may never exist without life. But if they shall say that life was in the Father indeed, but was brought forth in the sixth place, that the Word might live; it behooved that she be emitted by far in the fourth place, that *Nous* might live, and still even before this with Bythus, that their *Bythus* might live: for to count *Sige* with their Propatore, and to grant this spouse to him, but not to count *Zoe*, how is this not above all foolishness?

^C But concerning that which is from these, the second emission of *Man* and *Church*, their own fathers, the falsely named Gnostics, fight against one another, claiming their own things, and convicting themselves as evil thieves; saying that it is more adaptable to the emission—as is likely—that the Word was emitted from *Man*, but not *Man* from the Word: and that *Man* is prior to the Word, and that he is the one who is God over all. And up to this point indeed, as we have said, all human affections, and motions of the mind...

and the generation of intentions, and the emissions of words, by conjecturing them in a likely manner, they have lied about God in an unlikely manner. For those things which happen to men, and whatever they themselves recognize by experience, by attributing them to the divine nature, they seem to say fitting things among those who are ignorant of God; and by transferring these human affections to their own way of thinking, ^A while narrating in the fifth place the generation and emission of the Word of God, they say that they teach wonderful, unutterable, and lofty mysteries, known to no one else, concerning which the Lord also said: *Seek and you shall find*; so that those indeed may seek who have proceeded from Bythus and Sige, from Nus, and Alethia; if there are again from them Logos and Zoe, and then from Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia.

CAPUT XIV. That Valentinus and his followers received the principles of their doctrine from the Gentiles, with only the names changed.

1. Much more reasonably and gratefully does one of the old comic poets, Antiphanes, speak in his Theogony regarding the generation of the universe. For he says that Chaos was emitted from Night and Silence, then from Chaos and Night, Desire, and from this, Light, and then the rest of the first generation of the gods according to him. After these he again introduces a second generation of gods, and the fabrication of the world; then he narrates the creation of men from the secondary gods. From whence they themselves, taking to themselves this fable, have invented it as if it were a natural disputation, only changing their names, and representing the beginning of the generation of the universe ^B and its emission: naming Bythus and Sige instead of Night and Silence; but for Chaos, they name Nun; and for Desire (through whom, says the comic poet, all other things were disposed), they have drawn in the Word; and for the first and greatest gods, they have formed Aeons, and for the secondary gods, they narrate the disposition of that which is outside the Pleroma, the Mother of them all, calling her the second Ogdoad; from which they announce the fabrication of the world and the creation of men, in the same way as he, saying that they alone know ineffable and unknown mysteries: which are everywhere made into comedy in the theaters by hypocrites with most splendid voices, transferring [these things] into their own argument, or rather teaching by these same arguments, while only changing the names.

2. And not only are they refuted as if they were putting forward [teachings] of their own; but also the things which have been said by all who are ignorant of God and are called philosophers are gathered by them, and as if sewing together a patchwork quilt out of many and very poor rags, ^C they have prepared for themselves a fabricated garment using subtle eloquence: introducing indeed a new doctrine, on the account that it has now been substituted by a new art; but the old and useless one, since indeed these things are sewn on from the old dogmas, which reek of ignorance and irreligion. Thales the Milesian indeed said that water was the generation and origin of the universe.

^A And it is the same thing, to speak of water and of Bythos. Homer the poet, moreover, taught that Oceanus was the genesis of the gods, and Thetis their mother; which things these men have transferred into Bythos and Sige. Anaximander, however, submitted that it is the boundless which is the beginning of all things, possessing the genesis of all things potentially in itself, from which he says the boundless worlds consist; and this too they have transfigured into their Bythos and their Aeons. Anaxagoras, furthermore, who is also called an atheist, taught that animals were made by seeds falling from heaven to earth: which seed even these men have transferred into their Mother, and affirm that they themselves are this seed: at once confessing, to those who have understanding, that they themselves are the seeds of Anaxagorean irreligion.

^B Taking also from Democritus and Epicurus the notion of a shadow and a vacuum, they have adapted it to themselves, since those men first held much discourse concerning the vacuum and atoms; of which they termed the one "what is," and the other "what is not": just as these men also call those things which are within the Pleroma "that which is," as they call those atoms; and they call those things which are outside the Pleroma "that which is not," as they call the vacuum. Thus, since they are outside the Pleroma, they have consigned themselves, in this world, to a place which is not. Moreover, in that they say these are images of those things which are, they are once again most clearly expounding the opinion of Democritus and Plato. For Democritus was the first to say that many and diverse figures, expressed from the totality of things, have descended into this world. Plato, on the other hand, mentions matter, ^C and the pattern, and God; following whom, these men have called the figures of that [pattern] and the pattern itself the images of those things which are above, boasting themselves to be the inventors and makers of this sort of imaginary fiction through a change of name.

4. And this, moreover, that they say the fashioner made the world from underlying matter, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles, and Plato, said before them—the first of these; so that it may be understood that they themselves were inspired by their own Mother. But that each thing, of necessity, withdraws into her—from which also they say it was made—and that God is a slave to this necessity, in such a way that He cannot add immortality to the mortal, nor bestow incorruptibility upon the corruptible, but that each one must withdraw into the substance similar to its own nature; this also is affirmed by those who are called Stoics from the portico, and by all the poets and writers who are ignorant of God. ^D Those who, possessing this same faithlessness, have attributed their own region to spiritual things, namely that which is within the Pleroma; but to animal things, that which is of the middle; and to corporal things, that which is material; and they affirm that God can do nothing except these things, but that each of the aforementioned withdraws to those things which are of the same substance.

5. Furthermore, in saying that the Savior was made from all the Aeons, all contributing to him as to their own flower, they bring in nothing new beyond Hesiod’s Pandora. For what he says of her, these men insinuate concerning the Savior, introducing a Pandora, as if each one of the Aeons had donated to him that which was best. And as for their indifferent attitude toward foods and other actions, and their belief that they cannot be defiled at all by anyone, on account of their nobility, even if they eat or do whatsoever, they have possessed this from the Cynics, since they are of the same testament as they are. And they strive to introduce a trifing use of words, and subtlety in questions, since it is Aristotelian.

6. That they wish to transfer the whole of this into numbers, they have received from the Pythagoreans. For these first of all set numbers as the beginning of all things,

^A and the generation of all other things in many ways. These things they say word for word about the Pleroma and Bythus; whence they endeavor to introduce even those conjugations which are of the One, which Marcus, vaunting as his own, seems to have discovered as something new, beyond the rest; the quaternion of Pythagoras, as the genesis and mother 89 of all things, and the beginning of these, the even and the odd, from which they lay down that both things sensible and things insensible exist. And they say that some are the beginnings of substitution, others of sensation and substance; from which first things 86 they say that all things are perfect, just as a statue is made of bronze and of a molding. But they have applied this to those who are outside the Pleroma. They said 87 that the beginnings of sensation are that into which the intelligent sense of that which is first assumed seeks, until, wearied out, it concurs into ^B the one and indivisible. And that the beginning of all things, and the substance of the whole generation, is Hen, that is to say, the one;

[The Greek here says:] unto the active cause and the formal, which is the mind, God; but that which is unto the passive and material, which is the visible world.

The whole matter, if any doubt still remains, Simplicius explains in *Phys. lib. 1*: ^C

[The Greek here says:] "But if the form is one, and matter two, according to the Pythagorean custom, signifying things by numbers, reasonably he said one was the form, as defining whatever it might grasp, and bounding it; but two was matter, as indefinite, and the cause of bulk and division."

have they known? And if they have indeed known, the descent of the Saviour into this world is superfluous. For why did He descend? Was it to bring the truth which was already known into the cognition of those who know it men? But if they did not know, how can they claim, in common with those who did not know the truth, that you alone possess the knowledge which is above all things, which even those who are ignorant of God possess? By antiphrasis, therefore, they call ignorance of the truth "cognition": and well does Paul say, "profane novelties of terms and oppositions of false knowledge." For their "knowledge" is truly found to be false. If, however, acting shamelessly, they proceed to say that while men did not know the truth, yet their Mother, [or] the paternal seed, announced the mysteries of the truth through such men, just as they did through the prophets, while the Demiurge was ignorant, in the first place, those things which were spoken were not of such a nature as to be unintelligible to anyone; for the men themselves knew what they were saying, as did their disciples and their successors. Furthermore, if the Mother or the seed knew and declared the things that were of the truth, and the Truth is the Father, then the Saviour, according to them, will have lied when He said: "No one has known the Father, except the Son." For if He was known by either the Mother or her seed, then that saying—"no one knows the Father, except the Son"—is dissolved; unless they say that their seed or their Mother is no one.

8. And up to this point, through human affections, and because they say things that are similar to many who are ignorant of God, they have appeared to entice some; attracting them through things to which they are accustomed, into the one who is the discourse about all things, the genesis of the Word of God and of the emissions of God that act as midwives. But those things which they have falsely invented from these, without likelihood and without any evidence—all of them—are completely false. Just as those who bait hooks with familiar food in order to entice and capture some animal, gradually coaxing them with the accustomed bait until they take it; and then, having captured them, they bind them most bitterly and lead them away by force, dragging them wherever they themselves wish; so also these men, gradually coaxing [the simple] by persuasion to accept the aforementioned emission, introduce neither logical nor plausible species of these other emissions. For from the Word and Life they say that ten Æons were emitted, and from Man and the Church, twelve; and for these they have neither demonstration, nor proof, nor likelihood. Having nothing at all of such things, they wish, in vain and as it happens, to have it believed that from the Word and Life—who are Æons—were emitted the Deep and the Mixture, the Unaging and the Unition, the Natural and the Delight, the Immovable and the Temperament, the Only-Begotten and the Blessed; and from Man and the Church, similarly being Æons, were emitted the Advocate and Faith, the Paternal and Hope, the Maternal and Love, the Æon and the Understanding, the Ecclesiastical and the Blessedness, the Volitional and Sophia.

9. But we have, with all diligence, explained in the book that precedes this one—where we recounted the opinions of the heretics—how this Sophia was in danger of perishing because of her search for the Father, as they say, and her preoccupation outside the Pleroma, and from what kind of fall they teach the fabricator of the world was emitted: Christ...

^A whom they call the latest emitted of all these, and the Savior; or that he had his substance from those who were made in the fall.

136 We must now necessarily mention these names, so that from these things their lying and the confusion of their feigned nomenclature may be manifest. They themselves, moreover, strip their own Aeons of such names, while applying to those who are called their twelve gods those names which are more plausible to the heathens and more credible, who in turn they wish to be the images of the twelve Aeons; having names that are much more decent and powerful than the images, and that carry the mind toward the goal of divinity.

CHAPTER XV.

That no reason can be offered for the emissions.

1. Let us return to the aforementioned question of the emission. And first of all, let them tell us the cause of such an emission of Aeons, while touching nothing of those things which are of the creation. For they do not say that these were made because of the creation, but that the creation exists because of them; nor do they say that these are images of those, but that those are images of these. Since, therefore, they provide a cause for the images by saying, for instance, that a month has thirty days because of the thirty Aeons, and a day has twelve hours, and a year has twelve months because of the twelve Aeons which are within the Pleroma, and whatever other such ravings they utter; let them now tell us the cause of this emission of Aeons—why it happened to be such: for what reason, ^B moreover, was the first and archetypal octad of all things emitted, and not a quinary, or a trinity, or a septad, or some other of those things which are reckoned into a different number? And the division itself, why was it made into three, and not into four, or five, or six, or some other number, while touching nothing of those numbers which belong to the creation (for they say that those are older than these, and they ought to have a proper reason, that which is before the constitution, but not that which is according to the constitution), while agreeing in consonance?

3. We say that this rhythmization is fitting (for this rhythmization is fitting for those things which were created); but for them to declare the proper cause of those things which are prior and perfect in themselves, without dragging them in, is of necessity to fall into total perplexity. For those who interrogate us as if we were ignorant of the constitution, when they are themselves interrogated to the contrary about the Pleroma, ^C either recount human affections, or descend into that kind of discourse which concerns the consonance that is in the creature, improperly referring...

to second things, and not according to them to the first things. For we do not question them regarding the harmony which is according to the creature, nor regarding human affections; but because their Pleroma, the image of which they say the creature to be, is octiform, and deciform, and duodeciform, they will surely confess that the Father of them made a Pleroma of such a figure in vain and improvidently, and they will envelop the Father in deformity, if He made anything irrationally. Or again, if they shall say that the Pleroma was thus emitted according to the providence of the Father, for the sake of the creature, in order that the essence itself might be well-harmonized—then the Pleroma will not have been made for its own sake, but for the sake of that which, according to the likeness of it, was to be the image: (just as the statue which is made of clay is not fashioned for its own sake, but for the sake of that which is to be made of bronze, or gold, or silver) and the creature will be more honorable than the Pleroma, if for its sake those things were emitted.

137 Chapter XVI

^A If, however, none of them shall be willing to agree with us, since they are convicted of having no cause to render for such an emission of their Pleroma, they will be compelled to conclude, as they confess above, that the Pleroma is some other disposition, more spiritual and more dominant, according to which the Demiurge fashioned the form of the creature—not indeed such as it is, but according to the figure of those things which were above; or [they must say that] their Bythus, who surely carried out the Pleroma of this kind of configuration, is he from whom he received the figure of those things which were made before him? For it is necessary that either the notion should endure in that God who made the world, that by His own power, and from Himself, He received the exemplar of the fabrication of the world; or if anyone should be moved from this, there will be a necessity of always seeking whence, to Him who is above Him, was the configuration and the number of those things which were created, and the exemplar of the substance itself? But if it was lawful for Bythus to accomplish such a configuration of the Pleroma from himself, why could it not be lawful for the Maker to have created such a world from Himself? ^B Therefore, if the configuration is the image, what prevents saying that the things which are above them are images of them, and those which are above those are images of others again; and so falling into the immense [abyss of] images of images?

2. Just as Basilides suffered, when he had not attained the truth, and, thinking that through the immense succession of those things which were made one from another he might escape such an aporia; when he announced that three hundred and sixty-five heavens were made by succession and likeness one after another, and that the demonstration of these was the number of the days of the year, as we have mentioned: and above these, the Virtue which they also call the Unnameable, and the disposition of this: and not even thus did he escape such an aporia. For being asked: "Whence is the image of the configuration to the heaven for him who is above all, from whom you wish the rest to have been made by succession?" he will say: "From that disposition which is according to the Unnameable." And he will either say that the Unnameable made it from Himself; or he will necessarily have to agree that there is some other power above Him, from which his Unnameable received such a configuration of those things which are according to Him.

3. How much safer and more diligent, therefore, is it to confess from the very beginning that this Creator God, who made the world, is the alone God, and there is no other God besides Him; having received from Himself the exemplar and configuration of those things which were made: rather than, after so much irreligion and circuitous reasoning, being exhausted, to be compelled at last to settle the sense in some one thing, and from that to confess the configuration of the things made?

4. But this which they impute to us, who are from Valentinus, in that they say we remain in the hebdomad below, as if not lifting up the mind on high, nor perceiving things which are above, because we do not receive their portentous talk; the same thing those who are from Basilides impute to them, as if they, still wallowing around those things which are below even to the first and second octonary, and after thirty Æons, ignorantly think that they have immediately found Him who is above all, the Father, not investigating in their sense into that which is above the three hundred and sixty-five heavens—the Pleroma, which is above those.

^C And one might justly impute to those, who fabricate four thousand and three hundred and eighty heavens, or Æons, the fact that these days of the year have so many hours. If, however, one were to add the nights as well, doubling the aforementioned hours, and thinking to have discovered a great multitude of ogdoads and some ineffable activity of the Æons, he would, by suspecting of the Father who is above all things—being Himself more perfect than all—the very same things he imputes to the others, find that the multitude of heavens or Æons which he said came from Him is not sufficient for His height; rather, they fail either in that which is below, or they persist in the middle.

138 CHAPTER XVII.

1. And so, since they have so many contradictions and aporias regarding their own arrangement—and especially that which is according to the first ogdoad—let us also examine the rest; on account of their senselessness, we ask ourselves as well concerning those things which do not exist; but we do this of necessity, since the administration of this matter has been entrusted to us, and because we wish for all men to come to a knowledge of the truth: and since you yourself have requested to receive from us many and universal opportunities for their refutation.

2. It is asked, therefore, how the remaining Æons were emitted? Are they united to Him who emitted them, just as rays from the sun, or ^C efficaciously and partibly, so that each one of them exists separately, and has its own configuration, just as man exists from man, and beast from beast? Or according to the generation, just as branches from a tree? And whether they were of the same substance as those who emitted themselves, or whether they had their substance from some other material? And whether they were emitted in the same [instance], so that they were of the same time as one another; or according to a certain order, so that some of them were older, and others younger? And whether they are indeed simple and uniform, and every way equal and similar to themselves, just as spirits and lights are emitted; or whether they are composite and different, and unlike their own members?

3. But if each one of them was emitted individually and according to its own genesis in the likeness of men; then either the generations of the Father will be of the same substance as they and similar to the generator; ^D or, if they appear dissimilar, it is necessary to confess that they are from some other substance. And if, indeed, the generations of the Father are similar to the emitter, those things which were emitted will persist impassible, just as He who emitted them; if, however, they are from another substance, which is capable of passions, whence this dissimilar substance within that which is of incorruption, the Pleroma? Furthermore, according to this reasoning, each one of them will be understood to be separately divided from the other, just as men, not commingled, nor united one to another, but in discrete configuration, and defined boundary, and each one of them deformed by the quantity of magnitude; which are attributes of the body, and not of spirit. Now, therefore, let them not say that the Pleroma is spiritual, nor that they themselves are spiritual; since, just like men, their Æons sit feasting beside the Father, and they reveal the Father Himself as existing in such a configuration as those who were emitted by Him.

4. But if, as lights are kindled from light...

^A or branches from a tree, they should claim that Eons were emitted from the Logos, just as, for example, one torch is from another; though they may perhaps differ from each other in generation and magnitude, yet because they are of the same substance as the principle of their emission, either all must remain impassible, or the Father Himself will ^B share in their passions. For that torch which is kindled later will not have a different light than that which was before it. Therefore, their lights also recur when that one light, which existed from the beginning, is formed. What is younger and what is older cannot be understood in the light itself (for the whole is one light), nor in the torches which have received the light (for these themselves possess a temporal 48 quality according to the substance of their material; for the material of the torches is one and the same): but only according to the act of kindling, since one was kindled a short time ago 49, and the other just now.

5. Therefore, if their taint, which arises according to ignorance and passion, comes upon the entire Pleroma—since they are of the same substance—it will result in the stain of ignorance, that is to say, the Propator himself will be ignorant: otherwise, all the lights which are within the Pleroma must remain similarly impassible. Whence, then, could passion exist in the younger Eon, if the paternal light 139, from which all lights were established, is naturally impassible? How, moreover, can one be called younger or older among the Eons, when there is one light of the whole Pleroma? And if one should call them stars, nevertheless they will all appear to participate in the same nature. ^C For if a star differs from a star in brightness, it does not do so according to quality, nor according to substance, regarding whether they are passible or impassible; but either they all, since they are from the paternal light, must naturally be impassible and immutable: or else they are all, together with the paternal light, both passible and capable of changes and corruption.

6. But the same reasoning follows, even if ^D they should say that they have had the emissions of Eons; since they are all of the same substance and from the same source, either they will all be capable of passion along with Him who emitted them, or all will remain impassible. For they cannot now claim that some are impassible, but others passible from such an emission. If, therefore, they say that all are impassible, they dissolve their own argument. For how could the lesser Eon have suffered, if all were impassible? But if they say that all have participated in this passion 53, as some dare to say—claiming that it began from the Logos, but that the derivation was into Sophia 54; and by referring the passion to the Logos, the Mind (Nous) of the Propator 55—then they will be refuted, confessing that both the Mind of the Propator and the Father Himself have been in passion. For the Father of all, except for the Mind, is not, as we have shown, a kind of composite animal; but the Mind is the Father, and the Father is the Mind. Therefore, it is necessary that he who is from Him, the Logos—nay, rather the Mind itself, since it is the Logos—be perfect and impassible; and that the emissions which are from Him, since they are of the same substance as He is, must remain perfect, impassible, and always similar to Him who emitted them.

8. And so, the Logos is no longer to be placed in a third order

^A of generation, having ignored the Father, as these men teach: for this indeed might perhaps be thought plausible in the generation of men, because they often do not know their parents; but in the Logos of the Father, it is altogether impossible. For if He exists in the Father and knows Him in whom He is—that is, Himself—then He is not ignorant; and the emissions which are from Him, being His own powers and always attending Him, will not be ignorant of Him who emitted them, just as the rays are not ignorant of the sun. It does not follow, therefore, that the Sophia of God, she who is within the Pleroma, should have fallen into passion because of such an emission, or have conceived such ignorance. However, it is possible for that wisdom which is of Valentinus, since it is an emission from the devil, to be produced in every passion and to bear the fruit of the depth of ignorance. For where they themselves bear testimony concerning their Mother, saying that she is the generation of an erring Aeon, they need no longer seek the cause for why the children of such a Mother of ignorance are always swimming in the depth.

9. Furthermore, I do not understand how they can say there is another; but they themselves, while never ^B at any time offering any other specific property that was emitted, were not known to us, even though we have had a great deal of questioning with them concerning such kinds: this only do they say, that each one of them was emitted, and that they knew only that One who emitted them, but were ignorant of Him who is before them. But they do not proceed with a demonstration of how they were emitted, or how such a thing can happen among spiritual beings. For wherever they shall have progressed, they will be bound, and, wandering away from the truth of right reason, they reach the point where they say that the Sermo of their Propator, who is emitted, was emitted into a state of diminution (for they say that the perfect ^C Nu, having been progenerated by the perfect Bythos, could no longer make the emission which is from Him perfect, but one blinded concerning the knowledge and greatness of the Father: and they say that the Savior is the symbol of this mystery, having shown it in Him who was blind from birth, because, in this way, he was emitted blind ^D by the Monogene Aeon—that is, in ignorance—thereby attributing ignorance and blindness to the Word of God, who, according to them, has the second emission from the Propator. Admirable sophists, who investigate the heights of the unknown Father and recount the supercelestial sacraments, into which the angels desire to look, that they might learn that the Word was emitted from the Nu of his Father, who is above all, as blind—that is, as ignorant of the Father who emitted Him.

10. And how, you most vain sophists, when the Nu of the Father—or, indeed, the Father Himself—is both Nu and perfect in all things, did He emit His own Logos as imperfect and blind, when He could have emitted with Him the knowledge of the Father at once? Just as you say that Christ, although born after the rest, was emitted perfect; much more, therefore, should the Logos, who is older in age than He, have been emitted perfect by that same Nu, and not blind; and neither would He, in turn, have emitted Aeons more blind than Himself, until your Sophia, always blinded, brought forth such a substance of evils. And the cause of this malice is your Father; for you say that the greatness and power of the Father are the causes of the ignorance, assimilating Him to Bythos and applying this name to the ineffable Father. But if you define ignorance as an evil, and all evils as having flowered from it, yet say the greatness and power of the Father are the cause of this, you show Him to be the creator of evils. For that which was unable to contemplate His greatness, you call the cause of evil. But if indeed it was impossible for the Father to make Himself known from the beginning to those things which were made by Him, He was inexcusable, He who could not take away the ignorance of those who are after Him. But if He could later, by His will, take away the ignorance that had increased according to the progression of the emissions and had been sown in the Aeons, He could much more have done so beforehand.

^A For if He knew beforehand that these things would come to pass, why, indeed, did He not abolish the ignorance of those things before it came to be, rather than later curing it, as if by repentance, through the emission 73 of Christ? For the knowledge that He granted to all through Christ, He could have granted long before through the Word, who was also the firstborn, the Monogenes 75. But if, foreknowing, He willed that these things should come to pass, the works of ignorance persist forever, and pass away never. For those things which were done by the will of your Propator ought to persist together with the will of Him who willed it; or, if these things pass away, then the will of Him who willed that they should have substance 76 must pass away with them. For why, moreover, did the learning Aeons attain rest, and attain perfect knowledge, since the Father is uncontainable 77 and incomprehensible? Yet they could have had this knowledge before they were brought into passions, for the greatness of the Father was not diminished to those who knew from the beginning that the Father is uncontainable and incomprehensible. For if He was unknown on account of His immense magnitude, and if He ought to have kept those who were born from Him in an impassible state ^B on account of His immense love, then nothing prevented—and it was even more useful—that they should have known from the beginning that the Father is uncontainable and incomprehensible.

CHAPTER XVIII

1. How do they say that His Sophia was in ignorance, in the diminishment of reason, and in passion? For these things are foreign ^C to Sophia, and to the contraries; indeed, they are not even her affections. For where there is a lack of providence and a lack of perception, Sophia is not there. Therefore, let them no longer call the Aeon a suffering one 78; or let them pass over her vocabulary, or pass over the passions. Moreover, let them not call the entire Pleroma 79 spiritual if this Aeon, while in such great passions, moved within it. For not even a strong soul, let alone a spiritual substance, would perceive these things 80.

2. But again, how could her Enthymesis, proceeding with passion, exist separately? For it is understood that the Enthymesis is *towards* someone; but it itself 81 can never exist on its own. For the evil is exterminated and absorbed by the good Enthymesis, just as sickness 82 is by health. For what was the prior Enthymesis of the passion 83? To search for the Father, and to consider His magnitude. But why was she afterwards persuaded, and recovered? Because the Father is incomprehensible and cannot be found. It was not good, therefore, that she should wish to know the Father, and for this reason, there is that which is passible 84; but she was persuaded that the Father was unsearchable 85, and recovered 86. But that very Nous himself, who was searching for the Father, ceased according to them from searching any further, learning that the Father is incomprehensible.

3. How, therefore, could the Enthymesis conceive passions separately, which were themselves also her affections? For an affection is directed towards someone, and it cannot exist or subsist of itself apart. But not only is this position unstable, it is also contrary to that which was said by our Lord: *Seek, and you shall find* 10. For the Lord, by searching and finding the Father, makes disciples perfect; but he who is above, their Christ, by the fact that he commanded the Aeons not to search for the Father—persuading them that even if they labored much, they would not find Him—made them perfect. And if, indeed, they call them perfect 87 in that they say they have found their Bythos; while they call the Aeons perfect in that...

^A they were conversing with similarities and familiar things, and were seeking spiritual things within spiritual things. For fear, and consternation, and passion, and dissolution, and suchlike 93, in those things which are according to us and are corporeal, perhaps come from contrary things: but in spiritual matters, and in those that possess diffused light, such calamities no longer follow. But it seems to me that they have surrounded their Aeon with the passion of him who is found in the comic poet Menander, a man very much loving and yet hateful. For they who fashioned these things had a conception and mental grasp of a certain miserably loving man, rather than of a spiritual and divine substance.

6. ^B Furthermore, they conceive of this 94: that from seeking the perfect Father, and the desire to be within Him, and to have a comprehension of Him—not ignorance, nor passion—could infect 95 this 96 spiritual Aeon; but rather perfection, and impassibility, and truth. For they themselves, though they are men, when excogitating about Him who is before them, and as if already grasping the perfect One and being established within the knowledge of Him, do not say that they themselves are in a passion 97 of consternation, but rather in the knowledge and apprehension of the truth. For they say that the Savior spoke to the disciples, "Seek and ^C you shall find" 13, for this reason: that they might seek Him who was fashioned by them through excogitation, above the Maker of all things, the ineffable Bythos: and they wish themselves to be perfect, since they, searching, have found the perfect One, while they are still on earth. But they say that that Aeon who is within the Pleroma, who is wholly spiritual, seeking the Propatorem [Forefather], and striving to be within His greatness, and desiring to have a comprehension of the paternal truth, fell into passion: and a passion of such a sort that, had not ^D that Power which firms all things met him, he would have been dissolved into the universal substance, and exterminated 99.

142 7.

Madness

^A rule, saying that they themselves are the fruit of the conception of the Enthymesis of that Aeon who suffered; so that this Aeon is the father of their Mother, that is to say, their grandfather. And while for their later descendants, the inquiry into the Father produces truth, and perfection, and confirmation, and deliverance from fluid matter, as they say, and reconciliation to the Father; yet upon their own grandfather, this same inquiry inflicted ignorance, and passion, and fright, and fear, and consternation, from which they also say the substance of matter was made. To seek and investigate the perfect Father, therefore, and the longing for communion and unity with him, they hold to be a salutary thing for themselves; but for the Aeon from whom they have their origin, they say it was the cause of dissolution and destruction—how is this not in all respects inconsistent, foolish, and irrational? And those who assent to these things are truly blind, following blind ^B guides, and they justly fall into the underlying depth of ignorance.

CAPUT XIX. That the claims the heretics make concerning their seed are futile and vain. It is most alien to all reason that the Demiurge should have received this seed within himself, and yet have been ignorant of it and of the things that are above, and that he should be animal; while they themselves boast, having received only a particle of the same, that they are spiritual and understand all things.

1. What is this account of their seed, the "conception" according to the shaping of those who are around the Saviour, by the Mother, formless, and without shape, and imperfect; and then this "deposit" into the Demiurge, without his knowing, so that through him the seed that was in the soul should receive perfection and formation? In the first place, it must be said that these angels who are around their Saviour are imperfect, unshaped, and formless; since, according to their own depiction, such a thing as a "conception" was generated.

2. In the second place, that they say the Maker was ignorant of it, that is, of the sowing of the seed into him, and again the sowing of it which was done through him into man; this is a futile and vain statement, which can in no way be demonstrated. For how could he have been ignorant of it, if it had had any substance and quality of its own? ^C But if it was without substance, and without quality, and was nothing at all, then consequently he was ignorant of it. For things that possess some proper movement and quality—whether of heat, or speed, or sweetness, or some distinct brightness—do not escape the notice even of men, when they are among men; so far is it from being the case that the Creator of this universe, God—by whom their seed is not rightly acknowledged, since it is devoid of any useful quality and devoid of the substance of any action, and is altogether existent of nothing—could be unaware of it. And for this reason, it seems to me, the Lord also said: "Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment." For all who are such, scattering idle words into the ears of men, will stand at the judgment, being about to render an account of those things which they have vainly conjectured, and have lied against God; to such an extent that they say they themselves know the spiritual Pleroma on account of the substance of the seed, because the man who is within them demonstrates the true Father to them (for there is need for the animal [man] to be trained by sensible elements). But that the Demiurge, when the Mother deposited this whole seed and he received it into himself, should have been altogether ignorant of all things, and have had no perception of those things which are towards the Pleroma,

3. and that some particle of the universal Father was deposited in their soul; while they have souls from the same substance as the Demiurge, as they say: and that he, having once received the whole seed from the Mother, and having it within himself, should have remained animal, and perceived nothing at all of the things that are above—which they, while still on earth, boast that they themselves understand—how is this not beyond all irrationality? For to think that this same seed bestowed knowledge and perfection upon their souls, but bestowed ignorance upon the God who made them, is truly the mark of those who are insane and altogether destitute of mind.

4. It is also altogether vain that they say that in this "deposit" it is [as it were] figured, and grows, and is made ready for the reception of ^D perfect knowledge.

^A For there will be an admixture of that matter, which they allege to have had its substance from ignorance and defect, [which is] more suitable and useful than their paternal light was: since, born according to his inspection, it was without form and figure; but from this [admixture] it assumed formation, and shape, and growth, and perfection. 18 For if the light which is from the Pleroma was the cause of the spiritual [seed], so that it neither had form nor proper magnitude; but this descent that is here added all these things to it, and brought it unto perfection: much more operable and useful will appear to be this conversation which is here, than even their paternal light, which they call darkness. How, moreover, is it not ridiculous to say that their Mother was in danger within matter, so that she was almost suffocated, and nearly corrupted, had she not then with difficulty extended herself and escaped from herself, receiving aid from the Father; while her seed in this same matter grows, and is formed, and is made ready and fit for the reception of the perfect discourse; and this bubbling up in dissimilar and unaccustomed places: as they themselves say, that the earthly is contrary to the spiritual, and the spiritual to the earthly? How then, in things contrary and unaccustomed, could the small thing emitted, as they say, both grow, and be formed, and arrive at perfection?

5. ^A Furthermore, this also will be required regarding these things: whether the Mother brought forth that seed of theirs all at once, as she saw the angels, or bit by bit? But if indeed once and for all, that which was conceived from thence, now surely would not be infantile: empty, therefore, among those who are now men, is its descent. But if bit by bit, now it is not according to the figure of those angels whom she saw that she made the conception; for if she saw them and conceived them all at once, she ought to have made the birth all at once, the figures of which she had thereupon conceived.

6. ^B But what of the fact that when she saw the angels with the Savior, she conceived the images of them, but not those of the Savior, who is more beautiful than them? Did he not please her, and for this reason did she not conceive him? How, moreover, is the Demiurge, whom they call psychic, having a proper, according to them, magnitude and figure, emitted perfect according to his substance; while that which is spiritual, which ought also to be more operable than the animal, was emitted imperfect; and it was necessary for it to descend into the soul, so that it might be formed in it, and thus existing perfect, it might be made ready for receiving the perfect Word? ^C If therefore it is formed in earthly men and in animals, it is no longer according to the likeness of the angels, whom they call lights; but according to those who are men here. For it will not have the likeness and shape of the angels, but of the souls in which it is also formed (just as water put into a vessel will have the shape of the vessel itself; and if it should now freeze in it, it will have the shape of the vessel in which it froze), when it has the ^D figure of the soul's body, as we have already said. If, therefore, that seed also is here congealed and formed, it will have the figure of a man; but not having the form of the angels. How, therefore, to the images of the angels is that seed which is figured according to the likeness of men? And what, when it was already spiritual, was the need for it to descend into flesh? For the flesh has need of the spiritual, if…

it is to begin to be saved, ^A so that it may be sanctified in it, and be glorified, and the mortal may be absorbed by immortality; but for the spiritual, there is no need of those things which are here. For it is not that which improves us, but that which improves us in it.

7. Moreover, the argument which is of their own seed is refuted even more clearly, and it may be perceived by anyone, in that they say those souls which have had the seed from the Mother are better than the rest; and for this reason they are honored by the Demiurge, and have been appointed as princes, and kings, and priests. For if this were true, the high priest Caiaphas, and Annas, and the rest of the high priests, and the teachers of the law, and the princes of the people would certainly have believed the Lord, concurring in that kinship; and before them, even Herod the king. But since neither he, nor the high priests, nor those who presided, nor the notable men among the people ^B ran to him, but on the contrary, those who were beggars sitting by the ways, deaf and blind, and were trampled and despised by the rest, as Paul also says: For see your calling, brethren, that not many wise among you, not many noble, nor many strong; but God chose those things which were the contemptible things of the world. Those souls, therefore, were not better because of the deposition of the seed, nor were they on this account honored by the Demiurge.

8. And since, indeed, their rule is infirm and unstable, and further even vain, those things which have been said are sufficient. For one ought not, as the saying goes, drink up the whole sea if one wishes to learn, since its water is salty. But just as a statue made of clay, but colored on the surface so that it might be thought to be golden when it is of clay, whoever takes from it any bit at all, and by laying it open ^C reveals the clay, will liberate those who seek the truth from their false opinion; in the same way we also, not a small part, but those things which are the greatest content of their rule, resolving the heads of their argument, have manifested to all who wish to know—and are not seduced—what is malignant, and deceitful, and seductive, and pernicious, from those of the school of those who are from Valentinus, and from the rest of the heretics, as many as treat the Demiurge—that is, the fabricator and maker of this universe—who alone is the true God, with malice, manifesting the dissoluble way of their system.

9. For who having sense, and touching even a little on the truth, will endure those who say that above the Demiurge God is another Father; and that one is the Monogenes, and another the Word of God, whom they also say was emitted in a state of ^D diminution; and another Christ, whom they say was made later than the rest of the Aeons with the Holy Spirit; and another the Savior, whom they say was not even from the Father of all, but was collected and gathered from those who were made in the state of diminution, even the Aeons, and that he was necessarily emitted because of the diminution? So that if the Aeons had not been in ignorance and diminution, according to them, neither would Christ have been emitted, nor the Holy Spirit, nor Horos, nor the Savior, nor the Angels, nor their Mother, nor her seed, nor the rest of the fabrication of the world; but all things would have been desert and destitute of so many goods. Not only, therefore, are they irreligious toward the fabricator alone, calling him the fruit of a defection; but also toward Christ, and the Holy Spirit, saying they were emitted on account of the defect; and the Savior likewise after the defect. For who will endure the rest of their vain talk, which, attempting to adapt it astutely to parables, they have turned both themselves, and those who believe them, into the greatest impiety?

CAPUT XX Demonstrating that the proofs are empty by which they were asserting the perturbations and anxieties of the twelfth Aeon, and that not even through the apostasy and defection of Judas can they be confirmed. Finally, by various antitheses, he shows that the passion of our Lord has nothing in common or akin to the fictive passion of the Aeon.

1. Since they infer things improperly and inconsequently to their own fabrication, we thus show this. For the passion which they say happened to the twelfth Aeon, they attempt to show that the passion of the Savior was derived from the twelfth.

r own fabrication, we thus show this. For the passion which they say happened to the twelfth Aeon, they attempt to show that the passion of the Savior was derived from the twelfth. ^A For in the twelfth month—or indeed in the twelfth year—they wish to claim he preached after his baptism. But they clearly say it was shown in her who suffered from the flow of blood; for the woman suffered for twelve years, and, touching the hem of the Savior, she obtained health from that power which went forth from the Savior, which they say had preceded Him. For that power which suffered, being extended and flowing forth immeasurably, so that the whole quaternio, which is signified by the hem, was in danger, stood still and ceased from its passion.

2. Regarding this, what they say—that the passion of the twelfth Aeon is demonstrated by Judas; how can Judas be compared in similarity ^B who was cast out from the number of the twelve, and was not restored to his own place? For the Aeon of whom they say Judas is the type, his Enthymesis having been separated, was restored, or recalled; but Judas was rejected and cast out, and Matthias was ordained in his place, according to what is written: *And his bishopric let another take*. They ought, therefore, to have said that the twelfth Aeon was cast out from the Pleroma, and another brought forth or emitted in his place; if indeed it is shown in Judas. Furthermore, they themselves say that the Aeon suffered; but Judas, that he is a traitor. But Christ came to the passion as one suffering, and not Judas; and they themselves confess this. How therefore could Judas, his traitor, who had to suffer for our salvation, be the type and image of the suffering Aeon?

3. But neither is the passion of Christ similar to the passion of the Aeon, nor did it happen in similar circumstances. For the Aeon suffered a passion of dissolution and perdition, so that he himself, who was suffering ^C and being corrupted, was in danger; but our Lord Christ suffered a passion that was valid, and one which would not yield; not only was he himself not in danger of being corrupted, but he also strengthened the corrupted man with his own power and recalled him to incorruption. And the Aeon indeed suffered a passion himself seeking the Father, and not being able to find Him: but the Lord suffered that he might lead those who had wandered from the Father to knowledge, and bring them near to Him. And for them, indeed, the inquiry into the greatness of the Father became a passion of perdition; but for us, the Lord having suffered, conferred the knowledge of the Father and bestowed salvation. And his passion produced as fruit ^D a feminine one, as they say, invalid and infirm and formless and ineffective; but the passion of the latter produced strength and virtue. For ascending on high, the Lord led captivity captive, gave gifts to men, and conferred upon those who believe in him the power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy—that is, of the prince of apostasy. And the Lord indeed destroyed death through the passion; and he loosened error, and exterminated corruption, and destroyed ignorance; but he manifested life, and showed truth, and bestowed incorruption. For the Aeon of those men, having suffered, substituted ignorance, and gave birth to a formless substance, from which all material works were produced, according to them—death, corruption, error, and things similar to these.

4. Therefore Judas, the twelfth disciple, was not a type of the suffering of the Aeon; nor, indeed, was the passion of our Lord; for throughout, it is shown to be dissimilar and inconvenient in turn, not only in those things which we have previously said, but also according to the number itself. For Judas the traitor, that he is the twelfth, is agreed upon by all, with twelve apostles named in the Gospel; but this Aeon is not the twelfth, but the thirtieth: for not only twelve Aeons were brought forth by the will of the Father according to these, nor was he emitted in the twelfth order; they count him as emitted in the thirtieth place. How therefore can Judas, in the twelfth order, be the type and image of him who is the Aeon in the thirtieth order?

5. If they say that he is the image of his Enthymesis, not even so will the image be similar to that which, according to them, is of truth. For the Enthymesis separated from the Aeon, itself afterwards formed by Christ, thereafter made prudent by the Savior, and all things which are outside the Pleroma...

^A are said to be received into the Pleroma at the very end, and through their conjunctions are united to the Savior, he who was made from all things. But Judas, having been cast out once, never returns to the number of the disciples; otherwise, no other would ever be numbered in his place. And the Lord also said of him: "Woe to the man by whom the Son of Man shall be betrayed." And, "It were better for him if he had not been born," and he is called by Him "the son of perdition." But if they do not say that Judas is a type of the Enthymesis separated from the Aeon, but of its entanglement with passion, not even so can the number twelve be a type of the number three. For here Judas was cast out, and Matthias was ordained in his place; but there, the Aeon is said to have been in danger of being dissolved and having perished, along with the Enthymesis and the passion; for they separate the Enthymesis also from the passion: and they make the Aeon to be restored, the Enthymesis to be formed, and the passion, having been separated from them, to be matter. Since, therefore, there are these three—the Aeon, the Enthymesis, and the passion—Judas and Matthias, being two, cannot be a type.

CHAPTER XXI.

That the Twelve Apostles are not a type of the Aeons.

1. But if they say the twelve apostles are a type of that single emanation of twelve Aeons, which Man brought forth with the Church; and that the other ten apostles are a type of the remaining ten Aeons, who, they say, were brought forth by the Word and Life; it is irrational that the younger Aeons, and on that account the minor ones, should be shown by the Savior through the election of the apostles; but that the ^B elder ones, and for this reason the better ones, should not now be prefigured: since the Savior could (if indeed He chose the apostles in order to show through them the Aeons who are in the Pleroma) choose other ten apostles, and before these also eight others, in order that He might show that principal and first ogdoad, made a type through the number of the apostles; and indeed He could not show the second decade ^C either. For after the twelve apostles, our Lord is found to have sent seventy others before Him; but the seventy can be a type neither in the number eight, nor in the number ten, nor in the number thirty. What then is the cause that the minor ones, as I have said before, should be shown by the apostles, but the better ones, from whom even these were made, are no longer prefigured? And the twelve apostles, if they were chosen on this account, that through them the number of the twelve Aeons might be indicated; and the seventy ought to have been chosen as a type of the seventy Aeons: let them not now speak of thirty Aeons, but say that eighty-two were made. For he who makes the election of the apostles according to the type of those who are in the Pleroma would never make it for some and not for others; but through all the apostles he would have attempted to preserve the image, and to show the type of those who are in the Pleroma Aeons.

2. But neither must we pass over what is said of Paul, but we must demand of them in whose Aeon's type the Apostle has been handed down to us: unless perhaps he consists of the composite Savior of them, who also subsists from the gathering of all, whom they also call "All," because he is from all: concerning whom the poet Hesiod also signified clearly in Pandora, that is, the gift of all, naming him thus because the best gift from all has been placed in him. In which this is the reasoning: Hermes, as is expressed in the Greek language, *Aimulious te logous kai epiklopon ethos es autous katheto*, that we may say this very thing in the Latin tongue: "He placed into them words of fraud, or seduction, and insinuating morals," for the seducing of the foolish of men, that they might believe their lies. For the mother, that is Leto, secretly moved them (whence also she was named Leto according to the significance of the Greek language, because she secretly moved men) while the Demiurge knew not, and the rest: that we may say this very thing in the Latin language; that it is the work of a Latin interpreter, not of Irenæus who wrote in Greek, even without our pointing it out, the reader may easily discover.

For the words of Hesiod are in *Works and Days*, where, after the poet has described what every one of the other gods and goddesses bestowed upon Pandora, referring to the gift of Mercury, he adds, verse 77:

*En d' ara oi stethesi diaktoros Argeiphontes* *Pseudea th' aimulious te logous kai epiklopon ethos* *Teuxe.*

Which is in Latin:

And in her breast, the messenger, the Slayer of Argus (an epithet of Mercury), Made lies, and flattering speeches, and dolorous morals.

This Irenæus applies to the vain discourses of the heretics for the seducing of the foolish of men.

^A to state profound and inenarrable mysteries to itching ears. And not only by Hesiod did they say that the mystery of their Mother was told, but also very wisely by Pindar the Lyric poet, in such a way as to conceal the Demiurge in Pelops, whose flesh was divided by his father and collected and brought and compacted by all the gods, and in this manner he signified Pandora: from which those who are pricked likewise, saying the same things according to them, are of the same genus and spirit as they.

CHAPTER XXII

That the thirty Æons were not represented by the thirtieth year in which they say Christ was baptized: nor that Christ suffered in the twelfth month after his baptism, but was more than forty years old; which is a peculiar opinion of Irenæus.

1. Since the number thirty of their Æons ^B is altogether excluded, as we have shown, according to some by a few, but according to others by many Æons immediately found in the Pleroma. Therefore, he did not come to baptism being thirty years old, so as to show their thirty silent Æons: otherwise he would have been the first to discern them and cast them out of the Pleroma of all things. But they say he suffered in the twelfth month, so that he was preaching for one year after baptism, and they attempt to confirm this very thing from the prophet (for it is written: “To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of retribution”), being truly blind, who say they have discovered the deep things of Bythos, and do not understand the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of retribution spoken of by Isaiah. For neither was it spoken in the prophet concerning the day which has a space of ^C twelve hours; nor concerning the year which has the measure of twelve months. For even they themselves confess that the prophets spoke most things in parables and allegories, and not according to the literal sound of the words.

2. Therefore, the day of retribution is said to be that in which the Lord shall render to each according to his works; this is the judgment. But the acceptable year of the Lord is this time in which those who believe in him are called by him, and become acceptable to God: that is, from the time of his advent right up to the consummation, in which he acquires as fruit those who are being saved. For it follows, according to the diction of the prophet, "the year of the day of retribution"; and the prophet will have lied, if the Lord preached for only a year, and he says concerning him: Where is the day of retribution? For the year has passed, and it is not yet the day of retribution; but still he makes his sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust. And the just indeed suffer persecution, and are afflicted, and are killed; but sinners are in abundance, and with the harp they reach out. But they ought, according to the diction, to be coupled, and the day of retribution should be the successor to the year. For it was said, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of retribution. Well, therefore, is this time understood, in which they are called and saved by the Lord, as the acceptable year of the Lord: which is followed by the day of retribution, that is, the judgment. And not only is this time called a year; but it is also named a day, by the Prophet, and by Paul; in which the Apostle also, mindful of Scripture, in the Epistle which is to the Romans, says: "As it is written: For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we have been accounted as sheep for the slaughter." Now, however, "all the day long" is said for this whole time in which we suffer persecution, and are killed as sheep. As therefore this day does not signify that which subsisted in twelve hours, but every time in which those who believe in him for Christ’s sake are suffering and being killed: so also the year there is not said to be one which is of twelve months, but the whole time of faith, in which men hearing the preaching believe, and become acceptable to the Lord, who unite themselves to him.

3. It is, however, very much to be wondered at how they, saying they have discovered deep things, have not searched in the Gospels how many times, according to the time of the Passover, the Lord after his baptism went up into Jerusalem, according to the custom which was for the Jews to convene at this time from every region, every year.

And first, indeed, when he made water into wine in Cana of Galilee, he went up to the feast of the Passover, when ^A it is also written: "For many believed in him, seeing the signs which he did," as John the disciple of the Lord remembers. Then, again withdrawing himself, he is found in Samaria, when he also debated with the Samaritan woman, and healed the centurion's son from a distance with a word, saying: "Go, your son lives." And after these things, he went up again a second time for the feast of the Passover in Jerusalem, when he healed the paralytic who had been lying by the pool for thirty-eight years, ordering him to rise and take up his bed and go. And again, departing thence across the sea of Tiberias, where also, when a great crowd had followed him, he satisfied all that multitude with five loaves, and twelve baskets of fragments were left over. Then, when he had raised Lazarus from the dead, and plots were being made by the Pharisees, he withdrew to the city of Ephraim; and from thence, six days before the Passover, coming to Bethany, it is written, and from Bethany going up into Jerusalem, and eating the Passover, and on the following day suffering. But that these three Passover seasons are not one year, everyone will confess. And indeed, that the very month in which the Passover is celebrated, in which also the Lord suffered, is not the twelfth, but the first, they who boast that they know all things, if they do not know, can learn from Moses. Therefore, their resolution of both the year and the twelfth month has been shown to be false, and they must either admit their own resolution or reject the Gospel; otherwise, how did the Lord preach for one year only?

4. Being indeed thirty years of age when he came to baptism, then having the perfect age of a master, he came to Jerusalem, so that he might justly hear "Master" from all: for he was not one thing and appeared another, as they say who introduce a putative Christ; but what he was, that he also appeared to be. Being therefore a Master, he also had the age of a master, not rejecting, ^B nor going beyond human nature, nor breaking the law in himself for human nature, but sanctifying every age by that likeness which was towards him. For he came to save all by himself: all, I say, who through him are reborn into God, infants, and little children, and boys, and youths, and elders. Therefore, he came through every age, and to infants he became an infant, sanctifying infants; to little children he became a little child, sanctifying those who have this very age, and at the same time becoming for them an example of piety, and of righteousness, and of subjection; to youths, a youth, becoming an example to youths, and sanctifying them for the Lord. So also an elder among elders, so that he might be a perfect master in all things, not only according to the exposition of truth, but also according to age, sanctifying at the same time the elders also, becoming an example to them as well: then he reached even to ^C death, so that he might be the firstborn from the dead, himself holding the primacy in all things, the prince of life, prior to all, and preceding all.

5. But they, to support their own fiction—that which is written, to call the acceptable year of the Lord—affirm that he preached for one year, and suffered in the twelfth month: they have forgotten themselves, destroying all his business, and taking away his more necessary and more honorable age, that, I say, more advanced age, in which he was presiding over all as a teacher. For how did he have disciples, if he did not teach? And how did he teach, not having the age of a master? For he came to baptism not yet having completed thirty years, but as one beginning to be about thirty years of age: (for so Luke, who signified his years, placed: "Now Jesus was, as it were, beginning thirty years of age," when he came to baptism) and after baptism ^D he preached for only one year; completing his thirtieth year he suffered, still being a youth, and not yet having a more advanced age. But since the age of thirty years is the first of a young man, and extends even to forty...

everyone will admit it; but at the fortieth and fiftieth year he is already declining into the older age; which our Lord having, He was teaching, just as the Gospel and all the seniors testify, who in Asia gathered with John the disciple of the Lord, that John handed these things down to them. For he remained with them until the times of Trajan. ^A

Some of them saw not only John, but other apostles also, and heard this same account from them, and testify to this kind of relationship. To whom ought one rather to give credence? To such as these, or to Ptolemaeus, who never saw the apostles, and has not even attained to a trace of an apostle in his dreams?

6. But even they, the Jews, who were then disputing with the Lord Jesus Christ, very plainly signified this very thing. For when the Lord said to them: *Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad*, they answered Him: *Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?* This is said to Him consistently as one who had already passed forty years, but had not yet reached His fiftieth year, though He was not far from the fiftieth year. But to one who was thirty years of age, it would certainly have been said: *Thou art not yet forty years old.* For if they wished to prove Him a liar, they would not have extended the years far beyond the age they saw Him to have; but they spoke of the nearest age, whether truly knowing ^B it from the record of the census, or conjecturing according to the age which they saw Him to have, beyond forty—but not as though He were thirty years old. For it is altogether unreasonable for them to have lied by twenty years, wishing to show Him younger than the times of Abraham. What they saw, that they also spoke; and He who was seen was not a putative person, but the truth. He was, therefore, not far from fifty years: and for this reason they said to Him: *Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?*

786. He did not, therefore, ^A preach in one single year, nor did He suffer in the twelfth month of the year. For the time from the thirtieth year to the fiftieth will never be one year, unless in their view the years of the Aeons are so great as are assigned to those who reside in order by Bythus in the Pleroma, concerning whom the poet Homer also said, himself inspired by the mother of their error:

*And the gods, sitting by Zeus, held council* *In the golden place.*

Chapter XXIII.

But even concerning that woman who, suffering from an issue of blood, touched the fringe of our Lord's garment and was healed, their ignorance is laid open: (for they say that through her it is shown that the twelfth Power suffered, and flowed forth into the infinite—that is, the twelfth Aeon). Firstly, because, according to their sect, this is not the twelfth Aeon, as we have shown. Moreover, as to their being from the overflow, eleven indeed are said to have persevered as impassible, ^B but the twelfth to have suffered; the woman, however, on the contrary, was healed in the twelfth year; it is manifest that she had endured the suffering for eleven years, but was healed in the twelfth. If, then, the eleven Aeons were said to have been in an incurable state of suffering, while the twelfth was healed, it was persuasive to say that the woman was a type of them. But because she suffered for these eleven years and was not healed, but was healed in the twelfth year; how can she be a type of the twelfth Aeon, of whom eleven have suffered nothing at all, but the twelfth alone has participated in the suffering? For a type and an image, as regards their matter, and as ^C regards their substance, are sometimes different from the truth: but as regards their habit and lineament, they must preserve a resemblance, and similarly show forth through things present those things which are not present.

for they are described in such a way that they are said to be fitted to their own fabrication. But look, another woman, similarly afflicted for eighteen years, was healed, of whom the Lord says: *This daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years, ought she not to be loosed on the Sabbath day?* ^A If, then, she was a type of the twelfth suffering Aeon, then let this one be a type of the eighteenth suffering Aeon. But they cannot show this; otherwise their primary and principal Ogdoad [(1)] will be counted as having suffered along with the Aeons. And further, another man was healed by the Lord having been in his affliction for thirty-eight years; let them say he is the thirty-eighth suffering Aeon. For if they say that the things done by the Lord are types of those things that are in the Pleroma, the type ought to be preserved in all instances. But they can adapt to their fabrication neither her who was healed after eighteen years, nor him who was healed after thirty-eight years. It is altogether foolish and inconsistent to say that the Saviour preserved the type in some, but in others did not. The type, therefore, of the woman and of the man appears to be different from the business of the Aeons. [(2)]

CHAPTER XXIV

1. Furthermore, they demonstrate their falsehood and their unstable fabrication by this very fact: that they attempt to provide proofs ^B sometimes by means of numbers, sometimes by means of the letters of syllables, and sometimes by means of numbers which, according to the Greeks, are contained in the letters. They show most clearly the consternation, or confusion, and instability of their knowledge, and that it is forced. [(3)] For they take the name *Jesus*, which is a word of another language, and transfer it to the Greek number, sometimes calling it an *episemon*, and saying it has six letters [(4)]; at other times they call it the fullness of the Ogdoads, [(5)] having the number 888. But they are silent about His Greek name, which is *Soter*, that is, Saviour, because it does not fit their fabrication, either according to number or according to letters. And yet, if they had received the Lord’s names from the providence of the Father, it ought to have shown the mystery of the Pleroma ^C by number and by letters, as *Soter*, being a Greek name, was susceptible of being shown according to Greek usage, both by letters [(6)] and by numbers. But it is not so, because it has five letters, while the number is 1408. [(7)] These things, however, have nothing in common with their Pleroma: therefore, that *negotiation* which is said to exist by them in the Pleroma is not true. [(8)]

2. But the name *Jesus*, according to the proper language of the Hebrews, has two and a half letters, [(9)] as those skilled in them say, and signifies the Lord who contains heaven and earth: [(10)]

^A for Jesus, according to the ancient Hebrew language, is called *heaven*, and earth again is *sura user*. The Word, therefore, which contains heaven and earth, is Jesus himself. Their false return of the episemoi is therefore made naught, and their number is manifestly overthrown. For, according to their own language, *Sôter* [Saviour] in the Greek vocabulary consists of five letters: but Jesus, again, according to the Hebrew language, has two and a half letters. The number therefore collapses.

^B Furthermore, I do not doubt that the Latin interpreter wrote *upher*, or *vapher*, instead of *ph*, but unskilled scribes changed it into *s*, whence *user* was made. Now, what those Hebrew voices have to do with the name of Jesus is plain from what has been said. For if you place *y* before either, it will exhibit the last letter of this name. If you remove it, the first letter of the word *Dy* will give the last of the name *yw*, as will also the first letter of the word *Vax*; for it is not without probability that Irenæus, ignorant of Hebrew, thought that the name Jesus was written by the Hebrews *nw*. Hence it becomes plain what follows: *The Word which contains heaven and earth, is Jesus himself.* For Jesus is a word which by its force embraces those things which among the Hebrews signify heaven and earth.

^C After these matters have been observed, that dense fog cast upon our author’s words is scattered elsewhere. The ancient and first of the Hebrew letters, he says, are also ten in number, the last letter being joined to the first. That is to say, the Hebrew letters agree with the Greek in this, that they also, being nine in each column, always end in a decad, which is the first letter of the subsequent column: and therefore if the last letter of each column be joined to the first letter of the subsequent column, they make ten, or are ten in number. As, for example, if the *m* which is the last letter of the first column be joined with *y*, which is the first of the subsequent column, they will become ten. They are written by tens; for they are so ordered that, the last letter of any column ending in a decad, all the letters divided into various columns are written by tens, or by decades: and five, the final ones, namely. For since the third nonary, or the third column, would consist only of letters...

written as we also do, but some backwards ^A (18) turning the letters from the right to the left. Yet Christ also ought to have had a calculation of His name convenient to the Aeon of their Pleroma, who was brought forth—according to what they say—for the stability and correction of their Pleroma. And the Father, likewise, both by letters and by number, ought to have contained the number of the Aeons who were brought forth by Him; and Bythus too, likewise; nevertheless, also the Only-Begotten, and especially the name ^B (20) which is called God above all, which is itself called Baruch (21) in Hebrew, and has two letters and a half (22). From this, then, it is manifest that since their firmer names do not agree with their figment either according to the Hebrew and Greek language, nor according to the number of the letters, nor according to the calculation, the calculation impudently extorted from the rest is manifest.

3. For since they choose from the Law whatever things of their sect coincide in number, they attempt to produce violent arguments. But if it were the purpose for their Mother, or the Savior, to show through the Demiurge the types of the things which are in the Pleroma, they would have performed the types in more truthful and holier things ^C: and especially in the Ark of the Testament itself, through which (23) also the whole Tabernacle of the Testimony was fashioned. For this was made: its length indeed two cubits and a half, its breadth one cubit and a half, and its height one cubit and a half: but this number of cubits in no way agrees with their figment, through which (24) the type ought especially to have been shown. And the propitiatory, likewise, in no way agrees with their expositions. Furthermore, the table of proposition, two cubits in length, and one cubit in breadth, and its height one cubit and a half ^D, (before the holy of holies), contains through these things not even a single quantity of number, a significance of the quaternary, or of the octonary, or of the rest of their Pleroma. But what of the lampstand, having seven reeds (25), and seven lamps? And if indeed it had been made according to the type (26), it ought to have had eight reeds, and as many lamps, according to the type of the first octonary, which shines forth in the Aeons, and illuminates the whole plenitude. But they have diligently counted the ten courtyards (27), calling them the type of the ten Aeons; but they have no longer counted the skins as being made according to the number eleven. But neither have they measured the magnitude of the courtyards themselves, each courtyard having a length of twenty-eight cubits. And they explain the length of the columns as being made ten cubits on account of the decad of the Aeons. But the breadth of one (28) and a half cubits was that of each column; they no longer explain this, nor the number of all the columns, nor their bars, since it does not communicate with their argument. But what of the oil of unction, which sanctified the whole tabernacle?

^A Perhaps it escaped the Savior, or their demiurge while his mother was asleep, to judge from the weight of his own, from which it also dissonates from their Pleroma, having as it does five hundred shekels of myrrh, two hundred and fifty of cinnamon, two hundred and fifty of calamus, and over these oil, so that it consists of five mixtures. And incense, likewise, of stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, and steddymoss, which can communicate in nothing, neither in mixtures nor in weight, with their argument. It is therefore unreasonable and altogether rustic that the types of the law were not preserved in the sublime and more elegant matters, but in other things, wherever some number coincides with those things which they themselves mention, they should assert them to be types of those things which are in the Pleroma, ^B when every number is placed in the Scriptures in a manifold way: so that whoever wishes may construct not only the ogdoad, and the decad, and the duodecad, but any number whatever from the Scriptures, and claim this is the type of the error devised by him.

4. But since this is true, that this number, which is called five, communicates in nothing with their argument, nor concurs with their figment, nor is it suitable to their type of those things which are in the Pleroma, let it receive proof from the Scriptures in this way. *Soter* (Savior) is a name of five letters, and the Father also has five letters; but the name *Agape* (Love) also has five letters, and our Lord, blessing five loaves, satisfied five thousand men; wise virgins are said by the Lord to be five, and the foolish likewise five. Again, five men are said to have been with the Lord when the testimony of the Father occurred, namely Peter, and Jacob, and John, and Moses, and Elias; and the fifth, the Lord, entered to the dead maiden and raised her: for he allowed no one, he says, to enter except Peter, and Jacob, and the father and mother of the maiden. That rich man among the dead says he has five brothers, to whom he asks one to go, rising from the dead. The swimming pool had five porches, from which the Lord ordered the healed paralytic to go into his house. And the figure of the cross has five ends, two in length and two in width, and one in the middle, upon which he who is crucified is supported. ^{C D}

^A Each of our hands has five fingers; we also have five senses; and the things that are within our viscera can be counted in five: the heart, the liver, the lungs, the spleen, and the kidneys. Furthermore, the whole of man can be divided into this number: head, chest, belly, thighs, feet. The human race passes through five ages: first infant, then boy, then little child, and after this youth, and then old man. In five books Moses delivered the law to the people. Each tablet, which he received from God, had five precepts. The holy veil covering the columns of the holy of holies had five. And the altar of burnt offering, its height was five cubits. The priests chosen in the wilderness were five: namely, Aaron, Nadab, Abiu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. The tunic, and the breastplate, and the rest of the priestly composition were woven from five things; for they had gold, and hyacinth, and purple, and scarlet, and linen. And Joshua, son of Nun, shutting up the five kings of the Amorites in caves, gave their heads to be trampled by the people. And there are also many other thousands of this kind, in this number, and in whatever anyone might wish to collect, whether from the Scriptures or from the underlying works of nature: and because of this we do not say that there are five Aeons above the Demiurge, nor do we consecrate the number five as if it were some divine thing, nor do we attempt to confirm unstable things or ravings through this empty labor, nor do we force the creature well-fashioned by God to be transferred badly into types of non-existent things, and to introduce impious and nefarious dogmas, since the detection and overthrow of these things can exist for all who have sense. ^B 5. For who would grant them 365 days for the year, so that there should be twelve months of thirty days, in a type of the twelve Aeons, while the type itself is dissimilar? For there, each one of the Aeons is the thirtieth part of the entire Pleroma, but the month is said by them to be the twelfth part of the year. If indeed the year were divided into thirty, and the month into twelve, it would be thought a convenient type for their falsehood. But now it is the reverse. For their Pleroma is divided into thirty, but some part of it into twelve: here, however, the whole year is divided into twelve parts, but some part of it into thirty. Therefore, it is absurd that the Savior made the month a type of the entire Pleroma, but the year a type of the duodecad which is in the Pleroma; for it would be more fitting to divide the year into thirty, just as the entire Pleroma; and the month into twelve, just as the Aeons are in their Pleroma. And they indeed divide the whole Pleroma into three, that is, into the ogdoad, and the decad, and the duodecad: but this year is divided into four, that is, spring, summer, autumn, and winter. But neither do the months, which they say are a type of the thirty, pre-definitively have thirty days, but some have more, others less, because five days are superimposed upon them. And the day itself does not always have twelve pre-defined hours, but ascends from nine to fifteen, and again descends from fifteen to nine. The months were not made of thirty days on account of the thirty Aeons; otherwise they would have pre-defined thirty-day periods: nor again is the length of the days such that they figure the twelve Aeons by twelve hours; for they themselves would always have pre-defined twelve hours.

^A 6. Moreover, those who call material things the "left hand," and from necessity say that the things which are on the left [hand] yield to corruption, and that the Savior came to the lost sheep in order to transfer it to the right ^B (that is, to those ninety and nine sheep which are of salvation, which did not perish but remained in the fold), are compelled to agree that the "raising" (levamen) of the left hand signifies that which is not of salvation. And they will be compelled to confess that this which has not likewise the same number—that is, the left [hand], of corruption—bears this name also, which in Greek is called *Agape* (Love); for according to the letters of the Greeks, by which the calculation is signified among them, having the number ninety-three, it is likewise a "raising" of the left hand. And *Alethia* (Truth) also, in the same way, according to the aforementioned reasoning, having the number sixty-four, subsists in the part of things material; and absolutely all things whatever whose names do not fulfill the number one hundred, but have only left-hand numbers, will be compelled to be confessed as corruptible and material.

CHAPTER XXV

1. If, however, anyone should say to these things: "What then? Is it in vain that the positions of names occur, as well as the election of the apostles and the Lord’s—" We say to them: Not so; but with great wisdom and diligence were all things made by God, well-fitted and adorned, both the ancient ones and whatsoever his Word has wrought in the final times; and they ought to attach these things not to the number thirty, but to the underlying argument or reason. Neither is one to receive an inquiry concerning God from numbers, and syllables, and letters (for this is weak because of their multifarious and varied character, and because every argument today, equally contrived by someone, can take testimonies from them contrary to the truth, since they can be transferred into many things); but they ought to adapt the numbers themselves, and the things that have been made, to the underlying argument of truth. For the rule is not from numbers, but numbers are from the rule; nor is God from the things that were made, but the things that were made are from God. For all things are from one and the same God.

2. But since the things that have been made are various and many, and indeed well-fitted and well-consonant to the entire creation, but as far as concerns each one of them are mutually contrary and not in agreement—just as the sound of the lyre produces one melody through the *distance* of each one's consonant, subsisting from many and contrary sounds—the lover of truth must not be led astray by the distance of each sound, nor suspect a different maker and creator of this one, and another of that one; nor that one has fashioned the sharper sounds, another the deeper ones, and still another has adapted the mean ones; but [must understand that all these things] are from God. For all things are from one and the same God.

and ^A one and the same demonstration of the entire work and wisdom, and justice, and goodness, and gift. But those who hear the melody ought to praise and glorify the artist, and to marvel at the expansion of some, to attend to the relaxation of others, and to hear the temperament of others between the two; and to consider the type of others, and to what each one refers, and to inquire into the cause [assigned] to them; never shifting the rule, nor straying from the artist, nor casting away the faith which is in the one God, who made all things, nor blaspheming our Creator.

3. And if anyone should not find the cause for all things that are sought after, let him realize that man is ^B infinitely inferior to God, and that he has received grace in part, and that he is not yet equal or similar to his Maker, and that he cannot have the experience and thought of all things, as God can; but that in proportion as he is inferior to Him who is unmade and who is always the same, while he himself was made today and received the beginning of his creation, in that proportion is he inferior, in regard to knowledge and to investigating the causes of all things, to Him who made him. For you, O man, are not unoriginate, nor did you always coexist with God, as did His own Word; but ^C because of His eminent goodness, now receiving the beginning of your creation, you learn by degrees from the Word the dispositions of God, who made you.

4. Keep therefore the order of your knowledge, and do not, ignorant of goods, reach out beyond God Himself; for He is not to be passed over: nor seek what is above the Demiurge; for you will not find it. For your Artist is indeterminable: and do not, as if you had measured this whole, and as one who had traveled through His entire fabric, and had considered all that is in Him—the depth, the height, and the length—imagine another Father above Him. ^D For you will not imagine [such a one], but feeling against nature, you will be a fool; and if you persevere in this, you will fall into insanity, deeming yourself higher and better than your Maker, and that you are passing beyond His realms.

154 CHAPTER XXVI.

1. It is better, therefore, and more useful, to be unlearned and to know little, and by means of love to become near to God, than that, thinking oneself to be learned and practiced, one should be found blaspheming against one’s own Master. And therefore Paul cried out: "Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies"; not because he blamed true knowledge about God—otherwise he would first have accused himself—but because he knew that some, under the opportunity of knowledge, becoming elated, fall away from the love of God, and for this reason imagine themselves to be perfect, while introducing an imperfect Demiurge; therefore, cutting down the arrogance of those who have such knowledge, he says: "Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies." Now there is no other such great inflation as for a man to imagine himself better and more perfect than Him who made, and fashioned, and gave the breath of life, and granted this very existence. It is better, therefore, as I have said, for one to know nothing at all, not even one cause of any of those things which have been made, [but] to believe in God and to persevere in love, than by such knowledge to be puffed up and fall away from the love which quickens man; and not to seek anything else for knowledge, unless it be Jesus Christ the Son of God, who was crucified for us, or to fall into impiety through the ^A subtleties of questions and long-windedness.

2. For what, if one, puffed up by the fact that the Lord said, "The hairs of your head are all numbered," should wish to inquire curiously into the number of each man's

^A hairs, and seek the reason why this man has so many, while that man has so many—when all do not have them equally, but they are found in different numbers, by many thousands above thousands, because some have larger heads and others smaller; and some have hair that is always thick, others thin, and some have very few hairs indeed; and if those who think they have discovered the number of hairs should attempt to refer it as a testimony to their sect, which they have devised? Or again, if someone, because it is said in the Gospel: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and one of them shall not fall to the earth without the will of your Father?" should wish to enumerate the sparrows caught everywhere ^B daily, or in every region, and seek the reason why so many were caught yesterday, and so many in time past, and why today again there are so many that have been caught; and should attach the number of sparrows to his own argument: does he not thoroughly deceive himself, and drive those who agree with him into great madness, men always being so ready to think that they have discovered something more than their teachers?

3. But what if one should ask us, since the number of all things that have been made and are being made is known to God, and since according to His providence each one of them has received the quantity which belongs to it: if we agree and confess that absolutely nothing of those things which have been made, and which are being and shall be made, escapes the knowledge of God, but by His providence each one of them receives its own habitude, ^C order, number, and quantity, and that nothing at all was made or is being made in vain, or as it happens, but with great adaptation and sublime knowledge, and that the reason which can discern such things and declare their proper causes is admirable and truly divine: if, receiving from us such testimony and consent, he should proceed to this, that he might also enumerate the sand, and the pebbles of the earth, but also the waves of the sea, and the stars of heaven, and to excogitate the causes of the number which is found, would he not justly be called a man laboring in vain, and one who is indeed delirious and unreasonable by all who have sense? And the more he is occupied in such questions beyond others, and the more he thinks he has discovered more than others, calling the rest ignorant and idiots and animal, because they do not accept his such ^D vain labor; the more is he insane and stupid, as if struck by lightning, in nothing yielding to God; but through the knowledge which he thinks he has found, he changes God Himself, and hurls his own opinion upon the magnitude of the Creator.

CHAPTER XXVII

1. The healthy mind, and one which is without danger, and religious, and a lover of truth, will eagerly practice those things which God has given into the power of men, and has submitted to our knowledge, and will progress in them, by daily exercise making the learning easy for itself. And these are the things which fall under our eyes, and those which are clearly and unambiguously stated in the holy Scriptures by word of mouth.

And therefore parables must be adapted to non-ambiguous things; for thus also he who explains, explains without danger, and the parables will receive a like explanation from all; and the body of truth remains whole, with a similar adaptation of members, and without division. But those things which are not stated openly, nor placed before our eyes, to couple them with explanations

of the parables, ^A which each person invents as he pleases. For if there is no rule of truth among anyone, but there are as many conflicting truths ^B as there are those who resolve the parables, and they establish doctrines contrary to one another, just like the questions of the Gentile philosophers; who that loves the truth will not admit that they are leaving behind what is certain, and indubitable, and true, and are plunging themselves into danger, and that this is irrational? And is this not to build one’s house not upon a firm and solid rock, and one that is set in the open, but upon the uncertain and scattered sand? Whence the destruction of such a building is easy.

156 CHAPTER XXVIII

For as they have the testimony of God set in the open, ^A we ought not, by ^B declining through the resolutions of questions into other and yet other interpretations, to cast away the firm and true knowledge of God; but rather, directing the resolution of questions toward this standard, it is fitting indeed to be exercised through the investigation of the mystery and the existing dispensation of God; but to increase in the charity of Him who has done and does so many things for our sake, and never to fall away from that conviction, by which it is most clearly proclaimed that He alone is truly God and Father, who both made this world, and fashioned man, and granted increase in His creature, and from his lesser works calls him to greater things which are with Him, just as He brings the infant conceived in the womb into the light of the sun, and, after the wheat has strengthened in the stalk, stores it in the barn. But it is one and the same Demiurge, who both fashioned the womb and created the sun; and one and the same Lord, who both brought forth the stalk, and multiplied the wheat as it grew, and prepared the barn.

2. But if we cannot find the resolutions of all things that are sought in the Scriptures, we do not require another God besides Him who is. For this is the greatest impiety. We ought to yield such things to God, who also made us, ^C as a man will always be searching, yet never find, because he has thrown away the very discipline of discovery. And when the bridegroom comes, he who has his lamp unprepared, not shining with the clarity of manifest light, runs to those who distract the resolutions of the parables in darkness, leaving Him who freely grants access to him through manifest preaching, and he is excluded from His bridal chamber. Since, therefore, all the Scriptures, and the Prophecies, and the Gospels, can be heard by all in the open, and without ambiguity, and in like manner, even if not all believe;—that they proclaim one and only God, to the exclusion of others, to have made all things through His Word, whether visible or invisible, whether heavenly or earthly, whether aquatic or subterranean, as we have demonstrated from the very words of the Scriptures, and since the very creature in which we are, by those things which come into view, testifies to this same fact: that He is one who made and rules it—those will appear very dull-witted who go blind in their eyes toward such a lucid manifestation, and do not wish to see the light of preaching; but they constrain themselves, and through the dark resolutions of the parables each of them thinks he has found his own God. For because nothing is said openly and without controversy in the whole of Scripture concerning the thought of those who hold contrary opinions about the Father; and they themselves testify, saying that the Savior taught these same things in secret not to all, but to some of the disciples, who are able to grasp them, and through arguments, ^D and enigmas, and parables, those things signified by Him are understood by those who understand. But they arrive at the point of saying that He who is preached as God is one, and that the Father who is signified through parables and enigmas is another Father.

^A

Knowing most assuredly that the Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit; but we, according to our lowliness and our being the latest-born, are in need of the knowledge of His mysteries; and it is not surprising if, in spiritual and celestial matters and in those things that are yet to be revealed, we suffer this: for even concerning those things that are before our feet (I mean those things which are in this creation, which are also handled by us, and are seen, and are with us), much has escaped our knowledge, and we commit these very things to God. For it is fitting that He should excel above all. For what if we should attempt to explain the cause of the rising of the Nile? We say many things, and perhaps they are persuasive, but perhaps they are not persuasive; but what is true, and certain, and firm, belongs to God. But even the habitat of the birds which come to us at the time of spring, and depart immediately in the time of autumn, though this happens in this very world, escapes our knowledge. ^B And what can we explain about the access and the recession of the Ocean, when it is certain that there is a definite cause? Or what can we say about those things which are beyond it, what they are like? Or what can we say about how rains, and lightnings, and thunders, and collections of clouds, and mists, and the emissions of winds, and similar things are effected? And to announce also the treasuries of the snows, and hail, and things closely related to these: yet what is this preparation of the clouds, or what is the state of the mist, or what is the cause through which the moon waxes and wanes, or what is the cause of the distance of the waters, and of metals, and stones, and similar things? In all these things we shall indeed be talkative, searching for their causes; but he who makes them, God alone, is truly wise.

3. But if in the matters of creation some are reserved for God, and some have come into our knowledge, ^C what is the harm if, of those things which are sought in the Scriptures (since all the Scriptures are spiritual), we resolve some according to the grace of God, while we entrust others to God—and not only in this age, but also in the coming one—so that God may always teach, and man may always learn the things that are of God? As the Apostle 157 also said, when the other parts were destroyed, these things then remain: faith, hope, and charity. For faith, which is toward our Master, always remains firm, assuring us that He alone is truly God, and that we should love Him truly always, because He alone is the Father; and that we should hope to receive and learn something more from God at all times, because He is good, and has immeasurable riches, and a kingdom without end, and immense discipline. If, therefore, ^D according to the method we have spoken of, we commit some of our questions to God, we shall both preserve our faith, and we shall remain without danger; and all Scripture, given to us by God, will be found to be consistent with us, and the parables will harmonize with what has been plainly spoken, and what has been spoken clearly will resolve the parables; and through the manifold variety of the words, one harmonious melody will be felt within us, praising in hymns God who made all things.

If anyone should ask: Prior to creating the world, what was God doing? We reply that such a question falls under the jurisdiction of God. Since this world was made ^A *apotelestos* (perfected) by God, receiving a temporal beginning, the Scriptures teach us this; but what God did before this, no Scripture reveals. Therefore, this answer rests with God, and it is not right to be so foolish and, lacking discipline, to invent blasphemous emanations, and through this, thinking you have found an emanation of matter, to reproach God himself, who made all things.

4. Think, then, all of you who invent such things, how God alone is called Father, who also truly is, whom you call the Demiurge; but also, since the Scriptures know him alone as God, and since the Lord confesses him alone as his own Father, and knows no other, just as we shall show from his own words: ^B when you say that he is a "fruit of deficiency," 21 and an "emanation of ignorance," not knowing what is above him, consider the magnitude of the blasphemy against him who is truly God. You seem indeed to speak seriously and honestly, that you believe in God; then, while you can demonstrate this at least, you pronounce this very one in whom you say you believe to be a "fruit of deficiency" and an "emanation of ignorance." 22 But this blindness and foolish talk arises for you from this: that you reserve nothing for God. But you wish to announce the births and emanations even of God himself, and of his Ennœa, and of the Word, and of Life, and of Christ; and you do not derive these from any other source, ^C but from human emotion; and you do not understand that, indeed, in man, who is a composite creature, it is acceptable to speak (as we have said before) of a man’s *sensus* (thought) and *ennœa* (conception); and because from *sensus* comes *ennœa*, from *ennœa* comes *enthymesis*, and from *enthymesis* comes *logos*: (but which *logos*? For according to the Greeks, *logos* is one thing, 24 that is, the principle that reflects; another is the organ, through which the *logos* is sent forth) and sometimes a man is quiet and silent, and at other times speaks and acts: but since God is all mind, all reason, and all operating spirit, and all light, and always exists in the same and similar manner, as it is useful for us to understand about God, and as we learn from the Scriptures, such affections and divisions do not properly follow in his case. For the tongue of men, because it is carnal, does not suffice to serve the speed of the mind, and for this reason our word is stifled 25 within, ^D and is brought forth not all at once, 26 as it was conceived by the mind, but in parts, according to what the tongue is able to provide.

5. But God, since he is entirely mind and entirely Logos, what he thinks, that he also speaks; and what he speaks, that he thinks. For his thinking is Logos, and the Logos is mind, and the mind which encompasses all things is the Father himself. Therefore, he who speaks of the mind of God, and grants to the mind a specific emanation, pronounces it as a composite being, 27 as if God were one thing, and the primary mind were another. But similarly, again, granting a third emanation from the Father to the Logos, 28 (from which he also remains ignorant of his magnitude) he has separated the Logos far from God. And the prophet indeed says concerning him: "Who shall recount his generation?" [Isa. LIII, 8] But you, divining his generation from the Father, and transferring to the Word of God 29 the emanation made through the tongue of men, are justly exposed by yourselves, 30 that you know neither human things nor divine.

6. Being puffed up, you audaciously claim to know the ineffable mysteries of God: since even the Lord, the Son of God himself, allowed the day and hour of judgment to be known to the Father alone, plainly saying: "But of that day 31 and hour no one knows, not even the Son, 32 except the Father alone." [Mark XIII, 32] If, therefore, the Son was not ashamed to refer the knowledge of that day to the Father, but said what is true;

^A nor let us be ashamed to reserve to God the greater questions that are beyond us. For no one is above his master. [*] If, therefore, someone should say to us: "How, then, was the Son sent forth by the Father?" we say to him that as to the nature of that sending forth—or generation, or naming, or opening, or whatever name one might give to His inexpressible generation—no one knows; not Valentinus, not Marcion, not Saturninus, not Basilides, not Angels, not Archangels, not Principalities, not Powers, except alone the Father who generated and the Son who was born. Since, therefore, His generation is inexpressible, whoever attempts to narrate generations and sendings forth is not master of himself, promising to narrate things that cannot be narrated. For all men certainly know that a word is sent forth from thought and sense. ^B They have not, therefore, discovered anything great, those who have devised "emissions," nor any hidden mystery, if they have transferred what is understood by all men to the only-begotten Word of God: and whereas they call Him inexpressible and unnameable, they assert His sending forth and generation of His primary generation, as if they themselves had acted as midwives, assimilating Him to the human word of emission.

7. But in saying the same thing regarding the substance of matter, we shall not be wrong, since God brought it forth. For we have learned from the Scriptures that God holds the sovereignty over all things. Whence, however, or in what manner He sent it forth, neither has any Scripture explained, ^C nor ought we to imagine things, casting forth infinite guesses about God from our own opinions; but this knowledge must be granted to God. Similarly also regarding the cause why, when all things were made by God, some things indeed have transgressed and departed from the subjection to God; while others, indeed the majority, have persevered and do persevere in the subjection of Him who made them; and whose ^D nature are those things that have transgressed, and whose nature are those that persevere, it behoves us to yield to God and to His Word, to whom alone He said: "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet." [*] But we, still living on the earth, are not yet sitting upon His throne. For even if the Spirit of the Savior who is in him searches all things, even the depths of God, [*] yet as far as we are concerned, there are divisions of gifts, and divisions of ministries, and divisions of operations; [*] and we are upon the earth, just as Paul also says, we know in part, and we prophesy in part. [*] As, therefore, we know in part, so also regarding all questions it behoves us to yield to Him who grants the grace to us in part. For that eternal fire has been prepared for transgressors, both the Lord has stated clearly, and the remaining Scriptures demonstrate. And that God foreknew that this would happen, the Scriptures similarly demonstrate, just as He prepared the eternal fire from the beginning for those who were to transgress; but the cause itself of the nature of those who transgress, neither has any Scripture reported, nor has the Apostle said, nor has the Lord taught. It behoves us, therefore, to leave this knowledge to God, just as the Lord leaves the knowledge of the hour and the day; and not to be in such danger that we grant nothing to God, and while receiving grace in part, yet in this question, when we inquire into things that are above us, and which it is not for us to attain, we come to such audacity that we pretend to explain God, and as if we had already found what has not yet been found, by the babbling of "emissions" we assert that God, the Maker of all, and the very substance of things, had its origin in defection and ignorance, and so compose an impious argument against God.

8. Furthermore, they have no testimony for their figment, which is recently invented by them; sometimes using any numbers whatever, sometimes

using syllables, and sometimes names. And there are times when they ^A try to establish that fabulous narrative which is conjured up by them even through things that are in the scriptures, sometimes through letters, and sometimes through badly interpreted parables, or through certain surmises. For if anyone seeks the reason why, while the Father communicates with the Son in all things, the Father alone is manifested by the Lord to know the hour and the day; he will not find at present any reason more suitable, or more becoming, or without danger, than this; [for since the Lord alone is the true Master (51)] we may learn through Him that the Father is above all things. For, He says, the Father is greater than I. And therefore, according to knowledge, the Father is announced by our Lord as being set above as to the hour, so that we, as long as we are in the figure of this world, may concede perfect knowledge and such questions to God; and lest, by chance, ^B seeking to investigate the height of the Father, we fall into so great a danger that we should even ask whether there is another God above God.

9. But if anyone who loves contention should be a dissenter from those things which have been said by us, and those things which have been related by the Apostle, since we know in part, and we prophesy in part, let him suppose (52) that he has not grasped the knowledge of those things which are, in part, but universally and entirely, being some Valentinus, or Ptolemy, or Basilides, or any of those who say that they have searched out the heights of God; not in those things which are invisible or which cannot be shown, while decorating himself with empty boasting, he glories that he has known more than the rest; but because he diligently searches out the causes of those things which are in this world, which we do not know (54), such as the number of the hairs ^C of His head, and of those sparrows which are caught daily, and of the rest not provided for by us, and learning from the Father, he announces them to us, so that we might believe regarding the greater things also. But if they do not yet know the things which are at hand, and before their feet, and in their eyes, and in earthly things, and especially the disposition of the hairs of their own head, how shall we believe them regarding spiritual and super-celestial things, and regarding those things which they confirm with a vain persuasion about things above God (55)? And let this much be said by us concerning their numbers, and names, and syllables, and their questions which are above us, and concerning the fact that they inappropriately expound parables, since many more things could still be said by you.

Chapter XXIX

That it is absurd for heretics to assert that some souls will go into the Pleroma, and others into the middle space; while their bodies are devoid of salvation.

1. But let us return to the remaining parts of their argumentation. For in the consummation (56) they say (57) that their Mother will return within the Pleroma, and will receive her spouse the Savior; but that they themselves, because they call themselves spiritual, having stripped off (58) their souls, and having become intellectual spirits, will be the spouses (59) of the spiritual angels: but that the Demiurge, because they say he is animal (60), will give way to the place of the Mother: but that the souls of the just rest in the place of the middle; saying that like gathers to like because of their ^D psychic nature; spiritual things to spiritual, but material things remain in material things: but they define things contrary to themselves, saying that souls do not now go into the middle space to like things because of their substance, but because of their operation; saying that the just indeed go thither, but that the souls of the impious remain in fire (61). For if because of their substance all souls go into the refreshment, and are all of the middle space, according to the fact that they are souls, since they are of the same substance; then it is superfluous to believe, and the descent (63) of the Savior would be superfluous. But if it is because of justice, then it is no longer because they are souls, but because they are just. If, however, souls would have perished (if they had not begun to be just); justice is powerful enough to save even bodies: why then would it not save those which

have likewise participated in justice? For if nature and substance save, all souls will be saved; but if it is justice and faith, why does it not save bodies, which in like manner with souls begin to fall into corruption? For, in such a case, justice will appear either powerless or unjust, if it saves some 160 on account of their participation, but not others.

But if it is manifest that all souls will necessarily enter fully into the place of the middle, and there is no judgment anywhere, then either the bodies, which have participated in justice, will, together with the souls which have likewise participated, obtain a place of refreshment—if indeed justice is powerful enough to translate into that place those which have participated in it—and a true and firm argument will emerge regarding the resurrection of bodies. This, indeed, we believe; since God, raising up our mortal bodies which preserve justice, will make them incorruptible and immortal.

Moreover, God is better than nature, having in himself the will to be good, because He is good: the power to be able, because He is potent: and the accomplishment, because He is rich and perfect.

3. ^B These people, however, according to their own teachings, speak self-contradictorily, not defining that all souls enter the middle, but only those which are of the just. For they say that three kinds were sent forth by the Mother naturally and according to substance: the first, which is of failure, from weariness and fear, which is matter; another, from impetus, which is animal; and that which she brought forth according to the vision of those angels who are around Christ, which is spiritual. If, therefore, those which she brought forth enter in every way within the Pleroma, because it is spiritual; but that which is material resides below, because it is material, and is consumed in total by the fire which is inherent in it—why does not the animal part in its entirety depart into the place of the middle, into which they also send the Demiurge? And what is that which will depart within the Pleroma?

For they say that they persist in the middle; but that their bodies, since they have a material substance, are resolved into matter and burned up by Him who is the fire within it. But their body having been corrupted, and the soul remaining in the middle, there is nothing left of the man that might depart into the Pleroma. For the sense of man, his mind, thought, and mental intent, and things of such a kind, are nothing else than parts of the soul; but the soul's own motions and operations have no substance without the soul. What, therefore, will still belong to them, which succeeds into the Pleroma? For they themselves, in so far as they are souls, remain in the middle; in so far as they are body, they will be burned up along with the rest of matter.

CHAPTER XXX.

1. And since things are so, these senseless people say that they ascend above the Demiurge: and in this respect, that they pronounce themselves better than that God who made and adorned the heavens, and the earth, and the seas, and all things that are in them, they wish themselves to be called spiritual—dishonorably, since they are carnal ^A because of such great impiety of theirs; whereas He who made His angels spirits, and is clothed with light as with a garment, and holds the circle of the earth as in His hand, before whom those inhabiting it are reckoned as locusts, is the One whom they call the Demiurge of all spiritual substance and an animal God. They show their madness beyond doubt and in truth, and, as if truly struck by lightning, regarding those who in fables are called the Giants, they lift up their opinions against God, with vain presumption and swollen with unstable glory, to whom all the hellebore of the earth is insufficient for a purging, that they might vomit forth such great folly of theirs.

2. For they ought to show themselves better than the Demiurge by their works. Wherefore, how do they show themselves better than the Demiurge, so that we too, by the necessity of our argument, may verge into impiety, making a comparison between God and insane men, and descending into their logic, often refuting them by their own dogmas; but for us it is more proper that God be ^B; for we are not comparing Him to them, but refuting and overthrowing their madness, we say these things at which many of the senseless stand agape, as if they could learn something more from them than the truth itself! And that which is written, "Seek and ye shall find," they interpret as having been said for this purpose: that they might find themselves to be above the Demiurge, calling themselves greater and better than God, and themselves spiritual, but the Demiurge animal: and for this reason, that they ascend above God; and that they themselves go into the Pleroma, but God into the place of the middle. Therefore, let them show themselves better than the Demiurge by their works. For it is not in what is said, but in what is, that a better should be shown.

3. What then are the works they will show, made by their Savior, or by their Mother, which are either greater, or more splendid, or more rational than those things which were made by Him who disposed all these things? Which heavens have they made firm? Which earth have they made solid? Which stars have they sent forth? Or which luminaries have they caused to shine? With what circles have they restrained them? Or what rains ^C or frosts, or everything else suitable in time and for each region, have they brought to the earth? What heat or dryness have they, conversely, applied to them? Or what rivers have they caused to abound? What fountains have they caused to flow? With what flowers and trees have they adorned that which is under the heaven? Or what multitude of animals have they formed, partly rational, partly irrational, all of them adorned in form? And as for all the other things which are constituted by the power of God and governed by His wisdom, who can enumerate them one by one, or investigate the magnitude of the wisdom of Him who made them? And what of those things which are above the heaven, and which do not pass away, how great are they—the Angels, Archangels, Thrones, Dominions, countless Powers? Against which of these, then, do they set themselves in opposition, as one work among them? What such thing do they have to show as made by themselves or from themselves, when they themselves are also His handiwork and creation? For whether it be their Savior, or whether it be their Mother (as ^D

^A we say in accordance with their own tenets, refuting them by their own arguments), she used this for the making of the image of those things which are within the Pleroma, and for a contemplation of the whole which she beheld regarding the Savior; and she used it as being better and more apt for the doing of her will through him; for she did not fashion the images of so many things by means of an inferior, but by a better one.

4. ”For they admit that they themselves, at that time, were a spiritual conception according to the contemplation of those who are set in attendance upon Pandora. And these, indeed, remained empty, [the Mother perfecting nothing through them for the Savior, a useless conception, and fit for nothing; for nothing appears to have been made by them. But he who was sent forth, being, according to them, a God inferior to themselves, according to their line of reasoning (for they wish him to be animal), was ^B both effective and active, and apt to be used, so that through him the images of all things might be made: and not only these things which are visible, but also the invisible things, the Angels, Archangels, Dominations, Powers, Virtues, through him were all things made, namely as through a better one, and one who could serve her will. But the Mother appears to have made nothing through these, as even they themselves confess: so that one may justly judge them to have been an abortion of their Mother who brought them forth with difficulty. For the midwives did not deliver her, and because of this they were cast out as an abortion, being useless for anything, and made for no work for the Mother. And they call themselves better than him through whom so many and such things were made and arranged, although by their own line of reasoning they are found to be far inferior.

5. As if there were two instruments or ^C tools, of which the craftsman always has the one in his hands and in use, and through it does as much as he wishes, and shows his art and wisdom; while the other remains empty and idle, and persists without operation, by means of which it appears that the craftsman makes absolutely nothing, and uses it for no action: would one then say that this useless, empty, and idle one is better and worth more than the one which he uses in the work, through which the craftsman himself is also glorified? It will rightly be judged that one who is such is dull and not in his right mind. But they likewise, calling themselves spiritual and better, and the Demiurge animal, and for this reason superascending and penetrating into the Pleroma to their fellows (for they are females, as they themselves admit), while the God is inferior, and for this reason remains in the middle, and while they offer no display of this (for he who is better is shown by his works; for all works were produced by the Demiurge; and they themselves have nothing worthy of reason that they can show was made by them), are insane with a total and incurable insanity.

6. But if they contend saying that whatsoever things are indeed material, as for instance the heaven, and the whole world which is contained beneath it, were made by the Demiurge; but that all things which are more spiritual than these, those which are above the heaven, as for instance, ^D Principles, Powers, Angels, Archangels, Dominations, Virtues, were made through a spiritual emission (which they say they themselves are): first of all, we show from the Lord's Scriptures that all things which have been mentioned, visible and invisible, were made by one God. For they are not more reliable than the Scriptures: nor, if we abandon the words of the Lord, and Moses, and the rest of the prophets who preached the truth, is it right to believe these men, who say nothing that is sound, but wander in unstable ravings. Then, even if these things which are above the heavens were made by them, let them tell us what the nature of the invisible things is; let them recount the number of the Angels and the order of the Archangels; let them demonstrate the mysteries of the Thrones, and teach the diversities of the Dominations, Principalities, and Powers and Virtues. But they have nothing to say: therefore they were not made through them. But if these things were made by the Demiurge, just as they were made, and they are spiritual and holy: then he who perfected the spiritual things is not animal; and their great blasphemy is dissolved.

7. For the whole Scriptures cry out that spiritual conditions are in the heavens; and Paul himself bears witness, being signified to be caught up even to the third heaven, that they are spiritual; and again, that he was carried away into paradise...

and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter. ^A And what profit is it to him, either the entrance into paradise, or the assumption up to the third heaven, if all those things are under the power of the Demiurge; if he were to begin to become a speculator and hearer of those mysteries which are said to be above the Demiurge, as some dare to say? For if he were to learn the disposition which is above the Demiurge, he would by no means have remained in those things which are of the Demiurge, nor indeed would he have surveyed all things; (for according to their discourse, there remained for him yet a fourth heaven, that he might approach the Demiurge, and see the subject septenary) but he would perhaps have been received even up to the middle, that is, to the Mother, that he might learn from her the things that are within the Pleroma. For his inner man, who also spoke in him, could have existed invisibly, as they say, and attained not only to the third heaven, but even to their Mother. For if they say that he—that is, their very own man—immediately transcends the Demiurge and goes away to the Mother, ^B much more would the Demiurge have forbidden him, since he himself is also subject to the Saviour, as they say. But if he had even forbidden him, he would have accomplished nothing. For it is not possible for him to be stronger than the providence of the Father, and these things are said even while the inner, invisible man is said to be from the Demiurge. But since he related that assumption which went up to the third heaven as something great and glorious; not such are those who ascend above the seventh heaven: for they are not better than the Apostle. If they say that they are more excellent, they are refuted by their works: for nothing of the sort has been boasted by them. And on account of this he added: *Whether in the body, or out of the body, God knows*; that the body might not be thought to be a participant of his vision, as though it were also to participate in those things which he had seen and heard: nor, on the other hand, because of the weight of the body, should anyone say that he was not caught up further; but for this reason he is permitted even without the body to perceive the spiritual sacraments, which are the operations of God, who made...

^A the heavens and the earth, and fashioned man, and placed him in paradise, so that they might become witnesses to those who, like the Apostle, are very perfect in the love of God.

8. The Apostle was made a witness to the third heaven, and to ineffable words, which it is not permitted for a man to speak, because they are spiritual; and He himself grants these to those who are worthy, just as He wills; for the paradise is His: and truly it is the Spirit of God [that is the creator], and not the animal Demiurge, otherwise He would never have accomplished spiritual things. But if this one, through whom spiritual things were made, is animal, let them tell us. But they have nothing to show even by the emission of their Mother as to how these things were made. For they are not only unable to produce anything concerning spiritual matters, but not even a fly, or a gnat, or any such thing out of these, which are contemptible little animals, except by that reason which [from the beginning by God through the ] sowing of seeds was naturally produced in those which are of the same kind, and which become animals. And not even anything is made by the Mother alone: they say that this Demiurge and Lord of universal operation was emitted. And they actually say that he who is the Demiurge and Lord of universal operation is animal; but they themselves call themselves spiritual, who are the fabricators or lords of no operation, ^B not only of those things which are outside them, but not even of their own bodies. In short, they often suffer many things according to the body against their will, while calling themselves spiritual and better than the Demiurge.

9. Therefore they are justly argued against by us, and are shown to have strayed far from the truth. For whether the Saviour performed those things which were made through him; he is shown to be not inferior to them, but better, since even their own ^C factor is found: for they too are from those things which were made. How therefore is it consistent that these should be spiritual, but this one himself, through whom they also were made, should be animal? Or (which is the only truth, and which we have shown by very many proofs, as with clearest demonstrations) He himself made all things freely and from His own power, and arranged and perfected them, and the will of Him is the substance of all things; ^D uniquely this God is found to be He who makes all things, the only omnipotent, and the only Father, founding and making all things, both visible and invisible, and sensible, and insensate, and celestial, and terrestrial, by the Word of His power; and by His wisdom He adapted and arranged all things, and He alone holds all things, while He cannot be held by anyone: He is the fabricator, He is the founder, He is the inventor, He is the maker, He is the Lord of all: and neither besides Him, nor above Him, is there a Mother, whom they falsely attribute to Him; nor another God, whom Marcion invented; nor the Pleroma of thirty Aeons, which has been shown to be vain; nor Bythus, nor the Proarche, nor the heavens; nor the virginal light, nor the unnameable Aeon, nor in total anything of those things which are raved about by these and by all the heretics. But there is one only God the fabricator, He who is above every Principality, and Power, and Dominion, and Virtue: this is the Father, this is God, this is the founder, this is the maker, this is the fabricator, who made them by Himself, that is by His Word and by His Wisdom, the heaven, and the earth, and the seas, and all things which are in them: this is the just one, this is the good one: this is He who fashioned man, who planted paradise, who built the world, who brought on the flood, who saved Noah: this is the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of the living, whom the law announces, whom the prophets proclaim, whom Christ

^A reveals, whom the apostles hand down, and whom the Church believes. This Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, through his Word, who is his Son, is revealed and manifested to all to whom he is revealed; for they know him to whom the Son has revealed him. Since the Son is always co-existing with the Father, he has from old and from the beginning always revealed the Father to the Angels, and Archangels, and Powers, and Virtues, and to all to whom God wills to reveal him.

CHAPTER XXXI

[i]He summarizes almost all things that he has discussed at length in this whole book, confirming specifically that what was said against the Valentinians can be said against the rest of the heretics as well.[i]

1. So, these things having been destroyed, the whole multitude of the heretics is overturned. For as to what, and how much, we have said against their Pleroma and against those things which are outside, showing that the Father of the universe would be concluded and circumscribed by that which is outside of him (if indeed there be anything outside of him); and that there must necessarily be many Fathers, and many Pleromas, and many fabrications of worlds—begun by some, but failing for others—being so in every respect; and that all of them, persisting in their own, do not curiously meddle in the affairs of others, in which they have neither participation nor any communion; and that there is no other God of all, but only ^B the One, who is called Omnipotent—these things will be equally applicable to those who are from Marcion, and Simon, and Menander, or whoever else they may be who similarly divide the creation which is according to us from the Father. But as for what we have said again against those who say that the Father of the universe indeed encompasses all things, but that the creation which is according to us is not made by him, but by some other Virtue, or by angels who are ignorant of the Forefather, circumscribed in the immense magnitude of the universe in the place of a center, like a stain on a garment—showing that it is not likely that some other being created the creation which is according to us: the same will be said against those who are from Saturninus, and Basilides, and Carpocrates, and the rest of the Gnostics, who say the same things in a similar way. Moreover, those things which have been said concerning proelations, and Aeons, and diminution, and how their Mother is unstable, similarly overturn the "Knowers," who say the same things under other names; but even more than these, [who] transfer those things which are outside of the truth to the character of their own doctrine. And whatever things we have said concerning numbers will be said against all who reduce the things which are of the truth into a species of this kind. And whatever things have been said about the Demiurge, showing that he alone is God and Father of the universe; and whatever things shall yet be said in the following books, I speak against all heretics. You will turn away and confound those who are the milder and more humane of them, so that they may not blaspheme their own builder, and maker, and nourisher, and Lord, nor fabricate his genesis from decay and ignorance; but the fierce, and horrible, and irrational ones you will drive far from you, that you may no longer endure their verbosity. ^C

2. Furthermore, those who are from Simon and Carpocrates, and if there be any others who are said to perform virtues, are argued against: not by the virtue of God, nor in truth, nor as doing these things for the benefit of men; but for ruin and error, through magical illusions and all-encompassing fraud, doing more harm to them in that they seduce them. For they can neither give sight to the blind, nor hearing to the deaf, nor drive out all demons, except for those which are sent in by them—if indeed they even do this—nor cure the weak, or lame, or paralytics, or those vexed in some other part of the body; just as it often happens to occur according to bodily infirmity, or to restore to health those infirmities which happen from outside. ^D So far are they from raising the dead, as the Lord raised them.

and the apostles did by prayer, and in the brotherhood frequently, on account of a necessity of the whole local Church, when it had petitioned with much fasting and supplication, the spirit of the dead man returned, and the man was bestowed by the prayers of the saints. ^A nor will one find that they have one and the same behavior as the demons.

CHAPTER XXXII

He refutes their wicked dogmas, which assert that no kind of activity should be experienced, and that actions are just or unjust only by human opinion, and that their soul is similar to the soul of Jesus, and even sometimes better, impiously.

1. Furthermore, this wicked opinion of theirs, which says that it is necessary to engage in all works, even in whatever is evil, is dissolved by the Lord’s doctrine; by whom not only is he who commits adultery cast out, but even he who desires to commit adultery; and not only he who kills will be liable to the judgment of murder, but he who is angry with his brother without cause; ^B who has commanded not only not to hate men, but to love one's enemies; and has commanded not only not to perjure oneself, but not even to swear; and not only not to speak evil of one's neighbor, but not even to call anyone "Raca" or "fool"; lest, if one did, he should be liable for such things to the fire of Gehenna; and not only not to strike, but even to offer the other cheek to those who strike; and not only not to deny what is another's, but even if one’s own are taken away, not to demand them back; and not only not to harm neighbors, nor do any evil to them, but also to be magnanimous to those who are treated badly, and to exercise kindness toward them, and to pray for them, that by doing penance they may be able to be saved; in no respect imitating our reproach, and lust, and pride. When, therefore, he whom these men boast of as their master, and whom they say possessed a soul much better and stronger than the rest, commanded with great diligence that certain things be done as good and excellent, but that one should abstain from certain others, not only from acts but even from those thoughts which lead to acts, as if they were evil and harmful, and

^A incline toward pleasures and lusts and shameful deeds, they are judged by themselves, since they act in accordance with their own doctrine. For since they lack all those things which have been foretold, they will approach them for their own correction. They, indeed, emulating the philosophy of the Epicureans and the indifference of the Cynics, boast that Jesus is their teacher, ^B who not only averts his disciples from evil works, but even from words and thoughts, as we have shown; for how, as they say, can he be a teacher stronger and better than the rest, while they manifestly command things contrary to his doctrine, and are not ashamed? And if there were nothing evil, or on the other hand, nothing good, but things were considered only by human opinion as some unjust and others just, he would surely not have declared, dogmatizing, that is, teaching: "The just shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father" (Matth. XIII, 43); "but the unjust, and those who do not perform the works of justice, he shall send into eternal fire, where their worm shall not die, and the fire shall not be extinguished" (Matth. XXV, 41; Marc. IX, 45).

2. Moreover, they say that they ought, in every work and in all conversation, to become, if possible, such that in one single life’s advent they might perform all things and attain to perfection; yet those things which pertain to virtue, and are laborious, and glorious, and artificial, which even by all are approved as good, they are nowhere found to have attempted to do. For if it is necessary to go through every work and every operation; first, indeed, all ought to learn all ^C the arts—whatever they may be, whether they are consumed in the reasonings of words or in works, or are taught through continence, and are acquired through labor, and meditation, and perseverance; such as every kind of music, and computation, and geometry, and astronomy, and all things that are occupied with the reasonings of words: furthermore, universal medicine, and the science of herbs, and (all things) which have been elaborated for human health; and painting, and the fabrication of statues, and the copper-smith’s art, and the mason’s, and things similar to these; and besides these every kind of farming, and veterinary (science), and pastoral (art), and the crafts of artisans, which are said to run through all the arts, and those things which are occupied with the sea, and those that cater to the body, and hunting, and military, and royal (arts), and as many as there be, of which they cannot toil to learn even the tenth or the thousandth part in their whole life. And yet they attempt to learn none of these things, who say that in everything they ought to become such that they have souls like Jesus and be like him, and sometimes even better than he; but when brought to the works which he performed for the utility and stability of men, they are found to perform nothing of the sort, nor anything like it, nor anything that can come into comparison. But even if they do anything, ^D acting through magic (as we have said), they attempt to lead astray the senseless by fraud: performing no fruit or utility for those in whom they claim to perfect virtues; but, bringing in unchaste boys, and deluding the eyes, and showing phantasms which instantly cease, and which do not even last for a falling drop of time, they are shown to be like not to Jesus our Lord, but to Simon Magus. And from this fact, that the Lord rose from the dead on the third day and manifested himself to the disciples, and in their sight was received into heaven—which they themselves, dying and not rising again, nor being manifested to certain ones, are refuted as having in no way souls like to Jesus.

4. If, however, they say that the Lord did such things through phantasms of this kind, leading them back to the prophetic (writings), we shall demonstrate from the same, both that all things were thus foretold concerning him and that they were most firmly accomplished, and that he alone is the Son of God. Wherefore also…

in his name those who are truly his disciples, receiving grace from him, perform [it] for the benefit of the rest of mankind, as each of them ^A has received the gift from him. For some of them do certainly and truly drive out demons, so that very often those who have been cleansed from evil spirits also believe [in him], and are in the Church; but others have foreknowledge of things to come, and visions, and prophetic utterances; and others heal the sick by the laying on of hands, and restore them to health. And further, as we have said, even the dead have been raised, and have remained with us for many years. And what more? It is not possible to enumerate the gifts which the Church, throughout the whole world, having received from God, performs in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, ^C every day for the benefit of the nations, neither deceiving anyone, nor taking money from anyone. For just as she has received freely from God, she also ministers freely.

5. She does not do anything by angelic invocations, nor by incantations, nor by any other ^B curious arts; but, in a pure and sincere manner, directing prayers to the Lord who made all things, and invoking the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, she performs miracles for the benefit of mankind, not for their seduction. If, therefore, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ even now bestows benefits, and heals most firmly and truly all who everywhere believe in him—but not [the name] of Simon, nor of Menander, nor of Carpocrates, nor of any other whatever—it is manifest that, having been made man, he associated ^C with his own creation, and truly did all things by the power of God, according to the will of the Father of all, even as the prophets foretold. But what these things were, they shall be recounted in those [works] which are [derived] from the prophets, in the demonstrations.

167 CHAPTER XXXIII

1. Moreover, we shall subvert the transmigration of [souls] from body into body, from the fact that souls do not remember anything at all of what was before them. For if they were sent forth for this reason, that they might be perfected in every operation, it behooved them to remember those things which were done before, that they might fulfill what was lacking, and not be always revolving around the same things, continuing…

^B to labor miserably; (for the commixture of the body could not totally extinguish the memory and contemplation of all those things which they had previously possessed) and especially as they approach this state. For how is it that, when men are now asleep ^A and the body is at rest, whatever the soul sees within itself, and acts out in imagination, and remembering many of these things, communicates them to the body; and since there are times when, even after a long while, a person announces upon waking whatever he saw in a dream: so, in the same way, one would remember also those things which one did before coming into this body. For if that which was seen in the briefest space of time, or conceived in imagination, is recalled by the soul alone through a dream, after it has been mixed with the body and dispersed into the total member; much more would it remember those things in which it had dwelt for such vast times and the whole age of its past life.

2. To these things, Plato, the Athenian, who was the first to introduce this opinion, when he could not excuse it, brought in the cup of forgetfulness, thinking that by this means he escaped an aporia of this kind; providing no demonstration, but answering dogmatically that souls entering into this life are made to drink of forgetfulness, before they enter into bodies, by that daemon which is above the entrance. And ^B he fell into another, greater aporia himself. For if the cup of forgetfulness ^C is able, after it has been drunk, as they say, to destroy the memory of the things done; how do you know, O Plato, since your soul is now in a body, that before it entered into the body, it was made to drink the medicine of forgetfulness by a daemon? For if you remember the daemon, and the cup, and the entrance, you ought also to know the rest; but if you are ignorant of those things, then neither is the daemon true, nor is the cup of forgetfulness artificially compounded.

3. But against those who say that the body is the medicine of forgetfulness, this will occur. How, therefore, does the soul remember whatever it sees by itself, both in dreams and according to the thought and intention of the mind, while the body is at rest, and tell it to those nearby? But neither would the soul, while existing in the body, remember even those things which were once learned, either through the eyes or through the hearing, if the body were forgetfulness; but as soon as the eye was absent from the objects seen, that memory which was of them would also be taken away. For the soul, existing in the very oblivion itself, could know nothing else except only that which it saw in the present. How then could it learn, and remember, divine things while existing in the body, when the body itself is (as they say) forgetfulness? But even the prophets themselves, when they were on earth, remembered whatever they saw or heard spiritually according to visions of heavenly things when they returned to being human, and announced them to the rest; and the body does not cause the oblivion of those things which its soul saw spiritually, but the soul teaches.

^A For it is because, when the number is filled which He Himself designated beforehand with Himself, all who are written into life shall rise, having their own bodies and their own souls and their own spirits, in which they pleased God. But those who are worthy of punishment shall depart into it, having also their own souls and their own bodies, in which they withdrew from the grace of God. And both parties shall cease then to beget and to be begotten, and to marry and to be given in marriage; so that the proportional multitude of the human race predestined by God might be accomplished, and that it may preserve the harmony of the Father.

CHAPTER XXXIV. That souls not only remember what they did in the body, but also persevere as immortal, even though they have a beginning.

1. Moreover, the Lord has taught most fully that souls do not pass from body to body, but that they preserve the same character of the body in which they are also adapted, ^C and remember the works which they did here, and from which they have ceased, in that account which is written of the rich man and of Lazarus, who is refreshed in Abraham's bosom: in which [account]...

[835] in the bosom of Abraham: in which he says that the rich man recognized Lazarus after death, and that Abraham in like manner recognized him, and that each of them remained in his own order, and that the rich man asked for Lazarus to be sent to bring him aid, to whom he would not even communicate the crumbs from his table: and [he speaks] of the answer of Abraham, who knew not only the things that concerned himself, but also those that concerned the rich man; and he commanded him to listen to Moses and the prophets, to those who were unwilling ^A to arrive at that place of torment, and who were receiving the proclamation of him who has arisen from the dead. By these things it is manifestly declared that souls both persevere, and do not pass from body to body, and that they possess the form of a man, so that they may even be recognized, and remember the things that are here; and that the prophetic gift is also present with Abraham, and that every nation receives a fitting habitation, even before the judgment.

2. If anyone should say in this place that those souls which began to exist a little while ago cannot persevere for a long time, but that they must either be unbegotten so that they may be immortal, or, if they received a beginning of generation, perish with the body itself; let such a person learn that God alone, who is the Lord of all, is without beginning and without end, truly and ever the same, and subsisting in the same way. But all things that are from him, whatsoever have been made and are being made, do indeed receive their beginning of generation, and on this account are inferior to him who made them, because they are not unbegotten; but they persevere and are extended to the length of the ages, ^B according to the will of God the Creator; so that they owe it to him that they began to exist, and afterwards, that they exist.

5. For just as the heaven, which is above us, and the firmament, and the sun, and the moon, and the remaining stars, and all their ornaments, were made when formerly they did not exist, and persevere for a long time according to the will of God: so also, if one considers the souls and the spirits, and entirely all those things which have been made, one will not sin; since all things that have been made truly have a beginning of their being made, but they persevere for as long as God wills them both to exist and to persevere. The prophetic Spirit also testifies ^C to these sentiments, saying: *For he spoke, and they were made: he commanded, and they were created. He established them for the age, and for the age of the age.* And again concerning the man to be saved, he says thus: *He asked life of thee, and thou gavest him length of days for ever and ever*; just as the Father of all bestows perseverance for the age of the age upon those who are being saved. For life is not from ourselves, nor from our own nature, but it is given according to the grace of God. And therefore, he who shall have kept the gift of life, and rendered thanks to him who bestowed it, shall receive the length of days for the age of the age. But he who shall have cast it away, and proved ungrateful to his Creator for this, that he was made, and has not acknowledged him who bestows it, deprives himself of perseverance for the age of the age. And therefore the Lord said to those who were ungrateful towards him: *If you have not been faithful in that which is small, who will give you that which is great?*—signifying that those who in this temporal life have been ungrateful to him who provided it, will justly not receive from him the length of days for the age of the age. ^D

^A Likewise, as the animal body is not indeed soul, but partakes of the soul [note 10] as long as God wills, so also the soul itself is not life, but partakes of the life bestowed upon it by God. Whence also the prophetic utterance regarding the Protoplast [note 12] says: He became a living soul; [Gen ii, 7] teaching us that the soul became living according to the participation of life; so that the soul may be understood separately, and separately that life which is toward it. Therefore, since God gives life and perpetual perseverance, he produces also the souls, which previously did not exist, to persevere thereafter, since God willed them to be and to subsist. For the will of God ought to rule in all things, and to have dominion; while all other things ought to yield to it, and be subject to it, and be given over to its service. And regarding the creature and the perseverance of the soul, this much has been said.

CHAPTER XXXV

1. But Basilides himself, and those who argue regarding these things, will be compelled to say, according to their own rule, that not only three hundred and sixty-five [heavens] were made in succession, one after another, but a certain immense and innumerable multitude of heavens is always being made, and is currently being made, and will be made in the future, and that such a fabric of heavens never ceases. For if it is of a flux [note 15] to the species, and to the third of the second: and similarly all the rest that follow: and of this, which is according to us, which he also calls the ^C last [note 14], it is necessary that another be made from that flux, similar to itself, and another again from that one: and that they never cease, neither the flux of them that have already been made, nor the fabrics of the heavens; [note 16] but that they fall into an immense and not a limited number of heavens.

2. But the others also, who are called by the name Gnostics, who say that the prophets made prophecies from different gods, will easily be destroyed by this, that all the prophets preached one God and Lord, and the Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things which are in them, and that they signified the coming of his Son, as we shall demonstrate from the Scriptures themselves ^D in the following books.

3. But if certain men, following the Hebrew language, oppose diverse words found in the Scriptures, such as Sabaoth, and Eloe, [note 17] and Adonai, and whatever else is of this kind, striving to show from these different Virtues and gods; let them learn that all such things are significations and titles [note 19] of one and the same. For that which is called Eloe [note 20], according to the Jewish tongue, signifies God, and Eloe Verum; and Elloeuth, according to the Hebrew language, signifies that which contains all things. But what he says, Adonai, sometimes...

^A nominable, and admirable signifies, and sometimes, with the letter delta doubled and with an aspiration, as Addhonai, signifies Him who defines and separates the land from the water, so that the water may not be able to rise upon it. In like manner also Sabaoth, written with the Greek omega ^B in the final syllable, signifies the Voluntary; but with the Greek omicron, as Sabaoth, it manifests the first heaven. In the same way also Jawth, extended with the last aspiration, manifests a defined measure; but when it is shortened by the Greek omicron, as Jaoth, it signifies Him who puts to flight the evils. And all the other things are of one and the same naming: just as, according to the Latin, the Lord of hosts, and the Father of all, and God Almighty, and the Most High, and the Lord of the heavens, and the Creator, and the Fabricator, and the heavens and the earth. But when among the Rabbis ^C Elohuth signifies Divinity, Irenæus may also have had regard to that. Since Divinity is infinite, it contains all things in itself.

^D Discrimen—The distinction between long and short vowels in the word Sabaoth is not recognized by the Hebrews. Indeed, neither the LXX, nor the Greek Fathers who make mention of this name, write it otherwise than with an omega, namely Zabaώθ. Wherefore some smatterer seems to have played a trick here upon our Irenæus, who is not sufficiently skilled in Hebrew. Be that as it may, that double notation of this name which he brings forward can be admitted in some way. If Sabaoth is derived from the Chaldean root meaning to will, to desire, or will, it will be able to be said to signify the voluntary. If it [is derived] from the Hebrew *tsaba*, militia, army, nothing forbids it being transferred to manifest the first heaven, that is, the Empyrean and starry [heaven]. For in the Scriptures *tsaba hashamayim* is sometimes said of the army of the stars, which are so stationed as soldiers that they are ready at the command of God and serve Him. Deuteronomy 4:19: Lest perhaps you lift up your eyes to heaven, and see the sun, and the moon, and the stars, all the *tsaba hashamayim*, the army of the heavens.

similar to these, these are not of one and another, but of one and the same ^A denominations and pronouns, through which one God and Father is shown, who contains all things, and is pre-eminent for all so that they may exist.

4. Since, however, the preaching of the apostles, and the teaching of the Lord, and the announcement of the prophets, and the dictation of the apostles, and the administration of the Law, all praise one and the same God and Father; and not one and another, nor having substance from diverse gods or powers: but all things from one and the same Father, (who nevertheless adapts according to the ^B natures of the things placed under [Him], and [their] disposition) and neither ^C by Angels, nor by any other Power, but by God the Father alone, [things] visible and invisible, and all things whatsoever that have been made: I think it has ^D been sufficiently shown, even through these things, once one God the Father, the maker of all things, has been shown. But lest we be thought to evade that proof which comes from the Dominical Scriptures, as the Scriptures themselves proclaim this very thing much more manifestly and clearly—to those, however, who do not perversely try them—we shall set forth in the midst for all who love the truth the proper book which follows these Scriptures, returning proofs from the divine Scriptures.

ANALYSIS OF BOOK THREE

172 In the preceding book, our author had for the most part slain the Valentinians with their own sword; that is, he had eradicated their errors from the root, by arguments and reasons taken from their own false doctrine. But now he proceeds to refute them by the authority of the divine Sacred Scripture and Tradition. Therefore, first, he teaches that there are four Gospels handed down to us, which proclaim the one God so clearly that the heretics, being defeated thereby, asked for the corruption of these same Scriptures and appealed to Tradition. But they themselves, shattered and crushed by the no less clarity and evidence of this same Tradition, foolishly boasted that they were more excellent than all other presbyters and even the apostles. But in vain. For Irenaeus irresistibly urges against them the Tradition which is preserved in the Church, especially the Roman Church, through the successions of presbyters, or bishops: which indeed he confirms by the authority of Polycarp, the disciple of the apostles, and also by that of the Ephesian and Smyrnean Churches. Whence he concludes that truth must be sought from the Catholic Church alone, the guardian of Apostolic Tradition and doctrine; and he demonstrates that all heresies carry upon them the open marks of novelty, and are more recent than the apostles.

10 From here, returning to the argument taken from the Scriptures, he demonstrates from them that there is one God alone, the maker of the world, and clearly dilutes, by deduction, the double objection from these words of Paul: *The god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers*; and of Matthew: *You cannot serve God and mammon*. Then, from the testimonies of each of the Gospels, he follows up the argument concerning the one God; and from John, he destroys various errors concerning the creation of the world and the human flesh assumed by Christ. But in order to close off every path to the various sophistries of the heretics, he makes it plain that there are only four Gospels of Christ, neither more nor fewer, and that they had been wrongly corrupted and depraved by these same enemies of evangelical truth.

Furthermore, from the book of the Acts of the Apostles, he proves that the total divinity of the one maker of the world was preached by the apostles and other disciples of theirs and of Christ. And there he deservedly rebukes those who prattled that the same apostles spoke according to the preconceived opinions of the unlearned crowd. But Marcion, who said that the author of the Old Testament was different from the [author of the] New, and also those who contended that Paul alone of the apostles knew the truth, or who disparaged his authority—these he refutes at length.

17 Next, he overturns the threefold fiction handed down by the heretics concerning Christ the Lord: and clearly shows that Christ and Jesus are one and the same, who is truly God and man; truly generated from the most high Father from eternity; who took on true flesh for the sake of redeeming men. Wherefore, he teaches that He derived his mortal origin from the Virgin, just as Isaiah had predicted in these words: *Behold, a virgin shall conceive and shall bear [a son]*. Furthermore, he disputes at length and learnedly concerning the true reading and genuine sense of these words of Isaiah. And incidentally, having commended the authority of the translation of the LXX interpreters, he demonstrates clearly, against all heretics who deny it in various ways, that Christ was true God and man. What more? From the same testimony of the holy Prophet, he gathers that Christ is [descended] from the lineage of David, although by no means originating from Joseph, [but] that He descended from heaven into the world; which he subsequently confirms by multiple arguments, both by reason and by authority.

Nor does the most learned man stop there, but having progressed further, he makes it entirely plain that Christ, who...

having arrived to redeem the man who had fallen in Adam through the virgin Eve, he ought to have put on the true flesh of man through a virgin. Having obtained here an opportunity to discuss more fully concerning Adam, he proves, against the opinion of Tatian and his followers, that the sins of that first parent of mankind had been forgiven, and that he had attained eternal happiness. Finally, after he has summarized those things which he had hitherto said against the heresies, he asserts that the world is governed by the providence of the one God; and he refutes Marcion, who altogether foolishly introduced two gods, the one good and the other evil.

BOOK THREE. PREFACE.

^A You have indeed, my dearest, enjoined upon us to bring into the open those doctrines which are of Valentinus, as they themselves think them to be concealed; and to show their variety, and to bring forward a discourse that destroys them. But we, attacking them from Simon, the father of all heretics, have undertaken to manifest both their doctrines and their successions and to contradict them all: for which reason, since the refutation of them and their destruction is a work of many parts, we have sent you books, of which the first indeed contains the opinions of them all, and shows the customs and characters of their conversation. But in the second, those things which are evilly taught by them have been destroyed and overturned, and have been laid bare and shown for what they are. In this third book, however, we shall bring forth proofs from the Scriptures, so that nothing of those things which you have enjoined may be lacking to you from us; but also that, beyond what you supposed, you may receive from us means for refuting and overturning those who in any way teach evil. For the charity which is in God, being rich and existing without envy, grants more than one asks of it. Remember therefore those things which we said in the previous two books; and adding these to them, you will have from us a most complete contradiction against all heretics, and you will faithfully and most insistently resist them for the sake of the only true and life-giving faith, which the Church received from the apostles, and distributes to her children. For the Lord of all gave to his apostles the power of the Gospel, by whom we also have known the truth, that is, the doctrine of the Son of God; to whom the Lord also said: "He who hears you, hears me; and he who rejects you, rejects me, and him who sent me."

CHAPTER ONE.

That the apostles did not preach the Gospel and commit it to writing before they were instructed with the gifts and virtues of the Holy Spirit. That by them was announced one God, the creator of heaven and earth.

1. We have learned ^B the disposition of our salvation through no others than those through whom the Gospel came to us; which indeed they preached then, but afterwards by the will of God handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the foundation and pillar of our faith. For it is not lawful to say that they preached before they had perfect knowledge; as some dare to say, boasting themselves to be correctors of the apostles. For after our Lord rose from the dead, and they were clothed with the power of the Holy Spirit coming down from on high, they were filled with all things and had perfect knowledge; they went out into the ends of the earth, evangelizing the good things that are from God to us, and announcing heavenly peace to men, who indeed ^C all and each of them have the Gospel of God.

Matthew also published among the Hebrews in their own dialect a written Gospel, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome.

^A And after their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. And Luke, the attendant of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel which was preached by the latter. Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also reclined upon His bosom, did himself publish a Gospel, during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.

2. And all these handed down to us that there is one God, the Maker of heaven and earth, announced by the law and the prophets, and one Christ, the Son of God; and if anyone does not assent to these, he truly despises the sharers in the Lord, ^B and he also despises Christ the Lord Himself, and he even despises the Father, and is self-condemned, resisting and opposing his own salvation: which is what all heretics do.

CAPUT II.

That heretics do not follow either Scripture or Traditions.

1. For when they are confuted from the Scriptures, they turn into accusers of the Scriptures themselves, as if they were not correct, and were not of authority, and because they are interpreted in various ways, and because the truth cannot be found from them by those who are ignorant of the tradition. For they say that it was not delivered by means of written documents, but by the living voice: ^C on account of which Paul also said: "But we speak wisdom among the perfect; yet not the wisdom of this world." And this wisdom each one of them calls that which he has devised for himself, a fiction, namely, so that, according to them, the truth is sometimes in Valentinus, sometimes in Marcion, sometimes in Cerinthus: and then afterwards in Basilides, or even in him who disputes against us, who can speak nothing of a saving nature. ^D

^A Every one of them, being perverted in every way, is not ashamed to preach himself, corrupting the rule of truth.

2. But when we call upon them to appeal to that Tradition which is from the apostles and which is preserved in the Churches by the successions of the presbyters, they set themselves against Tradition, saying that they are wiser not only than the presbyters, but even than the apostles, and have found the sincere truth. For [they say that] the apostles (46) mixed the things that are legal with the words of the Savior; and that not only the apostles, but even the Lord himself, spoke sometimes from the Demiurge, sometimes from the intermediate power, and sometimes from the highest, while they themselves know the hidden mystery without any doubt, and [with] incorruption (47), and sincerity: which is most impudently to blaspheme their own Maker. It comes to pass, therefore, that they do not agree either with the Scriptures or with Tradition.

3. Against such persons a contest is ours, ^B my beloved, since they strive to escape from every quarter, like slippery serpents (48). Wherefore we must resist them on all sides, if perchance, by disproving them, we may be able to bring some of them to the conversion of the truth. For although it is not easy for a soul that has been caught in error to return to repentance, yet it is not altogether impossible (49) to escape error when the truth is set before it.

CAPUT III. That the heretics are invincibly refuted by the tradition of the apostles, preserved in the churches by the continuous succession of the bishops instituted by them.

1. So then, this Tradition that is from the apostles, ^C being manifest in every Church, all who wish to see the truth can behold (50); and we are able to number those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors (52) down to us, who have taught no such thing, nor have they known what is wildly imagined by these men. For if the apostles had known hidden mysteries, which they taught privately and secretly to the perfect (53), they would have delivered them especially to those to whom they were committing the very Churches. For they surely desired those whom they were leaving as their successors ^D to be perfect and irreproachable (54) in all things, handing over to them their own place of teaching: by whom, if they acted in conformity, great profit was to be gained, but if they fell, the greatest calamity.

2. But since it is very long in such a volume to enumerate the successions of all the Churches, [by pointing to] the Church of Rome, which is the greatest and the most ancient (56), and known to all, founded and constituted at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul (57), [by pointing to] that tradition which it has from the apostles (58), and the faith announced to men, which comes down to us through the successions of bishops, we confound all those who, in any way, whether by...

^A self-pleasing, or vainglory, or by blindness and evil opinion, assemble otherwise than as it is fitting (60). For to this Church, on account of its more powerful ^B primacy, it is necessary that every Church should resort, that is, those who are on every side faithful, in which [Church] the Tradition which is from the apostles has always been preserved by those who are on every side.

3. The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Of this Linus, Paul mentions in his epistles to Timothy. Anacletus succeeds him. After him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement is allotted the episcopate, he who had both seen the blessed apostles (64) and had conferred with them, and still had the preaching of the apostles ringing in his ears, and their tradition before his eyes; not alone, for there were still many ^C who had been instructed by the apostles. Under this Clement, no small dissension having occurred among the brethren who were at Corinth, the Church which is at Rome sent a most powerful letter (67) to the Corinthians, gathering them into peace, and renewing their faith, and announcing the tradition which it had lately received from the apostles (69), announcing one God omnipotent (71), maker of heaven and earth, the framer of man, who brought on the cataclysm, and called Abraham, and led the people out of the land of Egypt, who spoke with Moses, who arranged the law, and sent the prophets, and who has prepared fire for the devil and his angels. That this Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is announced by the Churches, from the Scripture itself ^D those who wish to learn can understand, and [they can understand] the apostolic tradition of the Church; since this letter is more ancient than those who now teach falsely, and who feign that there is another God above the Demiurge and the framer of all these things which are.

^A To this Clement succeeds Evaristus, and to Evaristus, Alexander; then, sixth from the apostles, Sixtus is appointed, and after him Telesphorus, who also suffered martyrdom most gloriously; then Hyginus, then Pius, after whom came Anicetus. And since Soter succeeded Anicetus, now Eleutherius holds the episcopate in the twelfth place from the apostles. By this ordination and succession, the tradition from the apostles in the Church and the preaching of the truth have arrived at us. And this is a most complete demonstration that it is one and the same life-giving faith which, preserved in the Church from the apostles until now, has been handed down in truth.

4. ^B And Polycarp was not only taught by the apostles, and lived in familiar intercourse with many who had seen Christ, but he was also appointed by the apostles in Asia as bishop in the Church at Smyrna, whom we also saw in our early youth (for he remained a long time, and, being very old, gloriously and most remarkably suffered martyrdom and departed this life), having always taught those things which he had learned from the apostles, which the Church hands down, and which alone are true. ^C The Churches in Asia, and those who until now have succeeded Polycarp, all bear witness to these things—a man who was a much more trustworthy and reliable witness of the truth than Valentinus and Marcion and the rest of those of evil mind. When he also visited Rome in the time of Anicetus, he turned many of the aforementioned heretics back to the Church of God, proclaiming that he had received from the apostles this one and only truth which had been handed down by the Church. ^D There are those who heard him tell how John, the disciple of the Lord, went to bathe at Ephesus, and seeing Cerinthus within, rushed out without bathing, exclaiming, "Let us flee, lest even the bath fall, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within." And Polycarp himself once, when Marcion confronted him and said, "Do you recognize us?", replied, "I recognize you, the firstborn of Satan." So great was the caution which the apostles and their disciples maintained to avoid even holding any verbal communion with any of those who mutilated the truth, as Paul also said, "A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject, knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself" (Tit. III, 10, 11). There is also a very complete letter of Polycarp written to the Philippians, from which those who desire to do so, and who are concerned about their salvation, can learn the character of his faith and the preaching of the truth.

^A And there are those who have heard him tell how John, the disciple of the Lord, went to bathe in Ephesus, and when he saw Cerinthus within, he leapt out of the bath without bathing, exclaiming, "Let us flee, lest even the bath fall, since Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within." And Polycarp himself, when Marcion once met him and asked, "Do you acknowledge us?" answered, "I acknowledge the firstborn of Satan." Such was the fear that the apostles and their disciples had, so as not to communicate even by word with any of those who had corrupted the truth, as even Paul said: "A man who is a heretic after one and a second admonition reject, knowing that such a one is subverted and sins, being condemned by himself" (Tit. 3:10). ^B There is also an epistle of Polycarp written to the Philippians, which is most perfect, from which those who desire to do so, and who are concerned about their own salvation, can learn both the character of his faith and the preaching of the truth. ^C But also the Church in Ephesus, ^D founded by Paul, but with John having remained among them 856 until the times of Trajan, is a true witness of the apostolic tradition.

CHAPTER IV.

1. Since, therefore, there are so many proofs, one ought not to look for the truth among others, which is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, as if depositing into a rich bank, deposited in her most fully all things that pertain to the truth: so that everyone who wishes may take from her the drink of life. For this is the entrance to life; but all others are thieves and robbers. On account of which it is necessary to avoid indeed those [heretics]; but to love with the utmost diligence1 those things which belong to the Church, and to apprehend the tradition of the truth. For what then? And if there were a dispute concerning some slight question, would it not be necessary to recur to the most ancient Churches, in which the apostles lived, and from them to learn, concerning the present question, that which is certain and clear? What, however, if the apostles had not left us the Scriptures; would it not be necessary to follow the order of tradition which they delivered to those to whom they entrusted the Churches?

2. To this order many nations of barbarians assent, those who believe in Christ, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit without paper ^A and ink, and diligently practicing the old tradition; believing in one God, the maker of heaven and earth, and all that is in them, through Christ Jesus the Son of God. Who, because of His most eminent love toward His own handiwork, endured the generation that was from the Virgin, Himself through Himself uniting man to God, and suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rising again, and being received in glory, shall come in glory the Savior of those who are saved, and the judge of those who are judged, and sending into eternal fire the perverters of the truth, and the despisers of His Father, and of His coming. Those who believed this faith without written documents, as far as our language is concerned, are barbarians; but as far as the doctrine, and the custom, and the manner of life are concerned, because of the faith, they are most wise, and they please God, living in all justice, and ^B chastity, and wisdom. To whom, if any one should announce those things which have been devised by the heretics, speaking in their own language, they would immediately stop their ears, fleeing as far away as possible, not even enduring to hear the blasphemous speech. Thus, through that ancient tradition of the apostles, they do not even admit into their minds whatever their monstriloquence is: for not yet was there a congregation among them, nor was their doctrine instituted.

3. For neither was Valentinus before Valentinus, nor were those who are from Marcion before Marcion; nor at all were the rest of the malignant sentiments, which we enumerated above, before the originators and inventors of their perversity came to be. ^C For ^C Valentinus came to Rome under Hyginus; he flourished indeed under Pius, and remained until Anicetus. And Cerdon, who was before Marcion, and he ^D himself who was before Marcion, and he [alt-version omitted] Valentinus indeed came to Rome under Hyginus; he grew strong indeed under Pius, and prolonged the time until Anicetus. But Cerdon, who was before Marcion,

^A and he who was the eighth bishop, coming to the Church and making confession, thus continued, sometimes teaching falsely, then again making confession, sometimes being convicted of the things he taught evilly, and withdrawing from the convocation of the brethren.

Marcion, indeed, succeeding him, grew strong under Anicetus, who held the tenth place of the episcopate. But the rest, who are called Gnostics, taking their beginnings from Menander, Simon’s disciple, as we have shown, each one of them appeared to be the father and high priest of that doctrine of which he has been a partaker. But all these, much later, the times of the Church being already involved, rose up into their own apostasy. ^B

CHAPTER V.

1. Since, therefore, the tradition which is from the apostles is so held in the Church, and remains among us, let us return to that proof which is from the Scriptures of those who wrote the Gospel, the apostles, from whom they wrote out their sentiment concerning God, demonstrating that our Lord Jesus Christ is truth, and there is no untruth in Him. Just as David also, prophesying His generation which is from the Virgin, and that resurrection which is from the dead, says: “Truth has sprung from the earth.” And the apostles, being disciples of the truth, are outside all untruth; for they do not communicate untruth to the truth, just as darkness does not communicate with light; but the presence of the one excludes the other. Therefore, our Lord ^C being truth, did not lie: and the one whom He knew to be the fruit of the lips, He would not surely confess as God, and the God of all, and his own supreme King and Father, the perfect One as imperfect, the spiritual one as animal, he who is in the Pleroma as he who is outside the Pleroma. Nor would His disciples name some other god, or call him Lord, except Him who is truly God and Lord of all: as they say, who are most vain sophists, because the apostles made their doctrine with hypocrisy according to the capacity of the hearers, and their answers according to the suspicions of those who questioned, ^D speaking vain things to the blind according to their blindness, but to the languid according to their languor, and to those wandering according to their error, and to those who thought that the Demiurge was the only God, that they announced him; but to those who comprehended the unnameable Father, that they made the mystery ineffable through parables and enigmas: so that not as truth itself holds, but in hypocrisy, and just as each one was able to comprehend, the apostles also set forth their magisterium.

2. But this does not heal or vivify; but rather burdens and increases their ignorance: and the law is found to be much more truthful than these.

^A And it pronounces a curse upon anyone who leads the blind into error. For the apostles who were sent for the discovery of those who were wandering, and for the vision of those who were not seeing, and for the medicine of the ailing, were certainly not conversing with them according to present opinion, but according to the manifestation of truth. For no men would act rightly if they were to encourage blind men, already beginning to be carried over a precipice, to persist in that most dangerous path, as if it were truly the right one and as if they were going to arrive safely. But what physician, wishing to heal a sick man, would act according to the desires of the sick, and not according to what is fit for the medicine? That the Lord, however, is the physician of those who are unwell, He Himself testifies, saying: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." How, then, will those who are unwell be strengthened? And how will sinners do penance? Whether by persisting in those same things? Or on the contrary, by receiving a great change and transgression of their prior manner of life, through which they brought upon themselves not a little sickness and many sins? Ignorance, however, the mother of all these things, is emptied by knowledge. The Lord, therefore, was effecting ^B knowledge for His disciples, through which He was also healing those who were laboring and restraining sinners from sinning. Therefore, He was no longer speaking to them according to previous opinion, nor was He answering them according to the suspicion of those asking, but according to saving doctrine, and without hypocrisy, and without partiality.

3. This is further shown by the Lord's own words: for while He was showing to those who were from the circumcision the Son of God, He whom we had believed [to have been] preached through the prophets, Christ; that is, He was manifesting Himself, who restored liberty to men and granted [them] the inheritance of incorruptibility. The apostles, moreover, were teaching the Gentiles, that they should leave behind vain wood and stones, which they suspected to be gods, and worship the true God, who had appointed and made all the human race, and by His own condition nourished and increased it, and made it stable; and that they should await His Son Jesus Christ, who redeemed us from apostasy with His own blood, to this end, that we too might be a sanctified people, [who is] to descend from the heavens in the power of the Father, who is also about to pass judgment on all, and to bestow those good things which are from God upon those ^C who keep His commandments. This One, appearing in the last times, as the highest cornerstone, gathered into one and united those who were far off and those who were near, that is, the circumcision and the uncircumcision, enlarging Japheth, and establishing him in the house of Shem.

CHAPTER VI

Neither did the Holy Spirit in the scriptures of the Old Testament name any other God and Lord, except Him who is truly God, namely the Father and His Son.

1. Neither, therefore, the Lord, nor the Holy Spirit, nor the apostles would ever have definitively and absolutely named as God him who was not God, unless he were truly God; nor would they have called any one Lord in his own person, unless it were He who rules over all, God the Father, and His Son, who received dominion from His Father over every creation, just as that passage has it: "The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet." For He shows the Father conversing with the Son: who gave Him the inheritance of the Gentiles, and subjected all His enemies to Him. Since, therefore, the Father is truly Lord, and the Son is also truly Lord, ^D the Holy Spirit rightly marked them with the name of Lord. And again, in the destruction of the Sodomites, the Scripture says: "And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone from the Lord from heaven." For He signifies the Son here, who, having conversed with Abraham, had received from the Father the power to judge the Sodomites, on account of their iniquity. Similarly, it has that passage: "Your throne, O God, is for ever; a rod of equity is the rod of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you." For [it speaks of] both as God.

^A It marks by the title of Spirit, both Him who is anointed, the Son, and Him who anoints, the Father. And again: "God stood in the synagogue of the gods; in the midst, however, He discerns the gods." Concerning the Father, and the Son, and those who have received the adoption, He says: "But these are the Church." For this is the synagogue of God, which God, that is, the Son Himself, has gathered through Himself. Of Whom He says again: "The God of gods, the Lord hath spoken, and hath called the earth." What God? That of Whom He said: "God shall come manifestly, our God, and He shall not be silent" — this is the Son, who came according to His manifestation to men, who says: "I appeared openly to those who do not seek me." But of what gods? To whom He says: "I said, You are gods, and sons of the Most High" — to these, namely, who have attained the grace of adoption, through which "we cry: Abba, Father."

2. No one else, therefore, as I have said, is named God, or called Lord, except Him who is the God and Lord of all, who also said to Moses: "I am who I am. And thus shall you say to the children of Israel: He who is, has sent me to you"; and His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who makes the sons of God to be those who believe in His name. And again, the Son speaking to Moses: "I have descended," He says, "to deliver this people." It is He Himself who descended and ascended for the salvation of men. Through the Son, therefore, who is in the Father, and has the Father in Himself, He who is, has been manifested as God, the Father bearing witness to the Son, ^B and the Son announcing the Father. Just as Isaiah also says: "And I myself, he says, am a witness, the Lord God declares, and the child whom I have chosen, that you may know, and believe, and understand, that I am."

3. But since they are not gods, Scripture, as I have said, doesdoes not speak [of them] in total, but with some addition and significance through which they are shown not to be gods. As in David: "The gods of the nations are the idols of demons." And: "You shall not follow after strange gods." For from that which He says, "the gods of the nations" (and the nations do not know the true God), and by calling them "strange gods," He took away the fact that they are gods. But He speaks of them from His own perspective as to what they are: "For they are," He says, "the idols of demons." And Isaiah: "Let them be confounded, all who blaspheme God, and carve useless things; and I am a witness, says the Lord." He took away that they are gods; but He uses the name only so that we may know of whom He is speaking. Jeremiah also speaks of this same thing: "The gods," he says, "that have not made the heaven and the earth, let them perish from the earth, which is under the heaven." For by the fact that He added their destruction, He showed that they are not gods. And Elias, when all Israel was gathered at Mount Carmel, wishing to turn them away from idolatry, said to them: "How long will you limp on both legs? If one is the Lord God, come after Him." And again, over the holocaust, he said thus to the priests of the idols: "You shall call upon the name of your gods, and I will call upon the name of the Lord my God; and the God who shall answer today, He is God." For in that the prophet was saying these things, he was arguing that those who were indeed thought by them to be gods, were not gods. But he turned them back to that God who was both believed in by him and who truly was God, whom also, when calling upon Him, he cried out: "O Lord, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, hear me today: and let all this people understand that You are the God of Israel."

4. And I, therefore, call upon Thee, O Lord, God of Abraham...

and God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, and Israel, who art ^A the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God who, through the multitude of Thy mercies, hast willed to act well in us, that we may know Thee; who hast made heaven and earth, who rulest over all, who alone art the true God, above whom there is no other God: grant us, through our Lord Jesus Christ, also the dominion of the Holy Spirit: grant to everyone who reads this writing to know Thee, that Thou alone art God, and to be confirmed in Thee, and to abstain from every heretical, and Godless, and impious opinion.

5. But the apostle Paul, saying, "For then indeed to those who were not gods you did service, now knowing God, or rather being known by God," separated those who were not gods from Him who is God. And again, speaking of the Antichrist: "Who opposes and exalts himself," he says, "above everything that is called God, or that is worshipped"; he signifies those who are called gods by those who do not know God, that is, idols. For the Father of all is called God, and is; and the Antichrist shall not be exalted above Him; but above those who are indeed called, but are not, gods. And since this is true, Paul himself says: "We know that an idol is nothing, and that there is no God but one. For even if there are those who are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth; for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him." For he distinguished, ^C and separated those who are indeed called, but are not, gods, from the one God the Father, from whom are all things; and he most firmly confessed one Lord Jesus Christ according to his own person. But as for "whether in heaven or on earth," he does not mean, as they interpret it, claiming they are makers of the world; but it is similar to what was said by Moses: "You shall not make for yourself any ^A likeness of God, whatever is in heaven above, or whatever is on earth beneath, or whatever is in the waters under the earth." But he himself explains what things in heaven are: "Lest," he says, "looking up to the heaven, and seeing the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and all the ornament of the heaven, being deceived you should adore them, and serve them." And Moses himself, being a man of God, was indeed given as a god before Pharaoh; but he is not truly called Lord, nor is he called God by the prophets, but he is called by the Spirit "Moses the faithful, the servant of God"; which he also was.

182 CHAPTER VII

1. But as for what they say, that Paul clearly said in the second letter to the Corinthians: "In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelievers," and that they say one God is the god of this world, and another, truly, who is above every principality, and beginning, and power: we are not to blame if those who claim to know the mysteries that are above God do not even know how to read Paul. For if anyone, according to Paul's custom, as we have shown elsewhere from many examples, reading him using hyperbaton, should read it thus: "In whom God"; then distinguishing, and making a small pause, read the rest together, "hath blinded the minds of the unbelievers of this world," he will find the truth, so that the meaning is: "God hath blinded the minds of the unbelievers of this world." And this is shown by the sub-distinction. For Paul does not speak of the god of this world as if he knew of some other god above him; but he has confessed God to be God; and he speaks of the unbelievers of this world, because they will not inherit the coming world of incorruption. And in what way God hath blinded the minds of the unbelievers...

^A show by Paul himself, as our discourse proceeds, so that we do not now distract our mind much from the subject at hand.

2. Since the Apostle frequently uses hyperbaton, because of the velocity of his speech and the impetus of the Spirit within him, it is possible to find it in many other places. ^B Yet even in that which is to the Galatians, he says thus: "What then is the law of works? It was established until the seed should come, to whom the promise was made, ordained by angels in the hand of a Mediator." For the arrangement is thus: "What then is the law of works? It was established by angels in the hand of a Mediator, until the seed should come, to whom the promise was made": so that it is the man who is asking and the Spirit who is answering. And again in the second to the Thessalonians, speaking of the Antichrist, he says: "And then shall be revealed the wicked one, whom the Lord Jesus Christ shall slay with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy by the presence of his coming, whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power and signs and lying wonders." For in this arrangement of words, it is thus: "And then shall be revealed the wicked one, whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy by the presence of his coming." ^C For he does not say that the coming of the Lord happens according to the working of Satan, but the coming of the wicked one, whom we also call the Antichrist. If, therefore, anyone does not attend to the reading and manifest the intervals of breathing in which it is spoken, there will be not only incongruities, but also blasphemies, reading as if the coming of the Lord happened according to the working of Satan. As therefore in such matters it is necessary through reading ^D to show the hyperbaton and the consequent sense of the Apostle; so also in that place we read not "the God of this world," but God, whom we truly call God; but concerning the incredulous and those blinded by this world, we shall hear that they will not inherit the future world of life.

CHAPTER VIII

He solves another objection from the words of Christ in Matthew vi, 24, and shows that God alone, since He is without beginning and ending, can be truly called God and Lord; and that all other things, since they were created by His Word, cannot receive the name of God and Lord.

1. Having thus solved that calumny of theirs, it is manifestly shown that neither the prophets nor the apostles ever named another God, or called another Lord, besides the true and only God. Much more did the Lord himself, who commands that "what is Cæsar's" should "be rendered to Cæsar," and "what is God's to God"; naming Cæsar indeed as Cæsar, but confessing God indeed as God. Similarly, regarding that which he says: "You cannot serve two masters"; he himself interprets it, saying: "You cannot serve God and Mammon," confessing God indeed as God, but naming Mammon that which it is. He does not call Mammon a master, saying: "You cannot serve two masters"; but he teaches his disciples who serve God not to be subject to Mammon, nor to be dominated by him. For whoever, he says, "commits sin, is a servant of sin." As, therefore, he calls those who serve sin the servants of sin, yet does not call sin itself God: so also those who serve Mammon he calls the servants of Mammon, not calling Mammon God. But Mammon is, according to the Jewish dialect, which even...

^A poets have invented as a god. Tertullian agrees (lib. 1, cont. Marcion., cap. 33). But Irenaeus uses "Mammon" metonymically, that is, the cause for the effect, namely money and wealth for the desire of them.

(76) *According to the Hebrew... it is called Mam*, or signifies a glutton, that is, one who cannot restrain his throat. According to both, therefore, which are signified, we cannot serve God and Mammon.

2. And when he said the devil is strong, he did not mean it absolutely, but as a comparison with us; the Lord shows himself to be truly strong in all things, saying: "No one can otherwise plunder the vessels of a strong man, if he does not first bind the strong man himself; and then he will plunder his house." (Now we were his vessels and house when we were in apostasy; for he used us as he wished; and the unclean spirit dwelt in us.) For he was not strong ^B against Him who was binding him and plundering his house, but against those who were in his use, namely, men; because he had caused their opinion to depart from God. Whom the Lord rescued, as Jeremiah also says: "The Lord has redeemed Jacob, and rescued him from the hand of one stronger than he." If, therefore, He had not indicated Him who binds and plunders his vessels, but had only said he was strong, he would have been an invincible strong man. But He also added "holding him"; for the one who binds holds, but the one who is bound is held. And He did this without comparison, so that an apostate servant should not be compared to the Lord: for not only this one, but nothing of those things which have been created and are in subjection will be compared to the Word of God, through whom all things were made, who is our Lord Jesus Christ.

3. For since either Angels, or Archangels, or Thrones, or Dominations, were created and made by Him who is God over all through His Word, John indeed signified this. For when he had spoken of the Word of God, that He was in the Father, he added: "All things were made through Him, and without Him was made nothing." David also, when he had enumerated the praises, naming all things whatsoever we have said, both the heavens and all their powers, added: ^C "For He commanded, and they were created: He spoke, and they were made." To whom, therefore, did He command? To the Word, of course: through whom, he says, "The heavens were established, and by the breath of His mouth all their power." Since, however, He made all things freely and as He willed, David says again: "But our God is in the heavens above, and on the earth, all things whatsoever He willed, He did." But others are those things which are established, by Him who established, and those things which are made, by Him who made. For He is unbegotten, and without beginning, and without end, and needing nothing, He is self-sufficient, and further, He grants this very thing—that they should be—to all others: but those things which were made by Him took a beginning. And whatever took a beginning can also perceive dissolution, and are subject to the need of Him who made them; it is necessary in every way that they should have a different name among those also who have even a little sense in discerning such things; so that He indeed, who made all things, may be justly called God and Lord alone with His Word; but those things which were made must no longer be capable of participating in the same title, nor justly take that name which belongs to the Creator.

CHAPTER IX

1. Having thus proven (and it will be proven ^D more manifestly) that no one other of Lord or God, neither prophets, nor apostles, nor the Lord Christ Himself, confessed in His own person, but especially God and Lord: with the prophets indeed and the apostles confessing the Father and the Son; but no one else, neither naming God nor confessing Him as Lord: and the Lord Himself handing down to the disciples that the Father alone is God and Lord of him who is the only God and ruler of all, we ought to follow them, if we are indeed their disciples, for their testimonies are thus constituted. For Matthew the apostle, knowing one and the same...

God ^A who made the promise to Abraham, that He would make his seed as the stars of heaven, [Gen. xxii, 17.] who through His Son Christ Jesus called us from the worship of stones into His own knowledge, so that those who were not a people might become a people [Rom. ix, 25; Ose. i, 10; ii, 24.]—Matthew, I say, says that John, while preparing the way for Christ, declared to those who boasted of their carnal kinship but yet had a mind full of every malice, that repentance which would call them back from malice: "Brood of vipers, who has shown you how to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of repentance. [Matth. iii, 7 et seqq.] And do not say within yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father'; for I tell you that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham." [Matth. iii, 9.] He thus preached to them that repentance which was from malice; but he did not announce another God, ^B apart from Him who had made the promise to Abraham, he the precursor of Christ; concerning whom Matthew again says, [Matth. iii, 3.] and similarly also Luke: [Luc. iii, 4 seqq.] "For this is he who was spoken of by the Lord through the prophet: The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be humbled, and the crooked shall be made into straight paths, and the rough into smooth ways; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." There is therefore one and the same God, the Father of our Lord, who also promised that He would send His precursor through the prophets: and He made His salvation, that is, His Word, visible to all flesh, ^C having made Him incarnate as well, so that in all things the King of them might be made manifest. Now, those who are judged must see the judge, and know Him by whom they are judged; and those who come into glory must know Him who bestows the gift of glory.

2. Moreover, Matthew says that the angel said to Joseph in sleep: "The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in his sleep." [Matth. i, 20, et ii, 13.] Of which Lord, he himself interprets: "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: Behold, a Virgin shall conceive in the womb [Matth. i, 23.] and shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us." Of Him who is from the Virgin, Emmanuel, David said: "Do not turn away the face of Thy Christ. The Lord swore the truth to David, and He will not reject him; of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne." [Psal. cxxxii, 10, 11.] And again: "God is known in Judea, and His place has been made in peace, and His dwelling place in Sion." [Psal. lxxv, 2.] There is therefore one and the same God, who is preached by the prophets and announced by the Gospel, and the Son of Him who is of the fruit of David's womb, that is, of the Virgin David, and Emmanuel: whose star Balaam also thus prophesied: "A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a leader shall rise in Israel." [Num. xxiv, 17.] ^D Matthew, however, says that the Magi coming from the East said: "For we have seen His star in the East, and have come to worship Him." [Matth. ii, 2.] And having been led by the star into the house of Jacob to Emmanuel, through the gifts which they offered, they showed who He was who was being worshipped: myrrh, because He was the One who would die and be buried for the mortal human race;

gold, because He was a King whose kingdom has no end; ^A incense, because He was God, who also “became known in Judea,” and was manifested to those who were not seeking Him.

3. Matthew further says concerning the baptism: ^B “The heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God, as a dove coming upon him. And behold, a voice from heaven, saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” For Christ did not descend upon Jesus at that time; nor was Christ one, and Jesus another; but the Word of God, who is the Savior of all and Ruler of heaven and earth, who is Jesus (as we have shown before), He who also took on flesh and was anointed by the Father with the Spirit, became Jesus Christ; just as Isaiah says: “There shall come forth a rod from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall ascend from his root, and the Spirit of God shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety, and the spirit of the fear of God shall fill him. He shall not judge according to glory, nor shall he argue according to speech, but he shall judge the humble with judgment, and shall argue the glorious of the earth.” And the same Isaiah once again pre-signifies his anointing, and for what reason he was anointed, saying: “The Spirit of God is upon me, wherefore He has anointed me; He has sent me to evangelize the humble, to cure the broken-hearted, to proclaim remission to the captives, and sight to the blind, to call the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of retribution, to console all who mourn.” ^C For according to that which the Word of God was man, from the root of Jesse and son of Abraham, according to this the Spirit of God rested upon him, and he was being anointed to evangelize the humble. But according to that which He was God, he did not judge according to glory, nor did he argue according to speech: “For there was no need for him, that anyone should bear witness concerning man, since he himself knew what was in man.” He was gathering, however, all men who were mourning, and granting remission to those who had been led into captivity for their sins, setting them free from the bonds of which Solomon says: “Everyone is bound with the ropes of his own sins.” The Spirit of God therefore descended upon him, of Him who had promised through the prophets that He would anoint Him, so that we, receiving from the abundance of His anointing, might be saved. And thus, indeed, does Matthew.

CHAPTER X

Arguments from the Gospels of Luke and Mark

1. But Luke, the follower and disciple of the apostles, referring to Zechariah and Elizabeth, from whom John was born according to the promise of God, says: “But they were both just before God, walking in all the commandments and justifications of the Lord without blame.” And again, speaking of Zechariah: “But it happened that, while he was performing his priestly duty in the order of his course before God, according to the custom of the priesthood, it fell to him by lot to set the incense, and he came to sacrifice, entering into the temple of the Lord.” He who presides in the sight of the Lord, simply and absolutely and firmly confessing God and Lord in his own person, he who chose Jerusalem and made the legislation of the priesthood, whose angel is Gabriel. For he did not know of another above this one; for if he had possessed the understanding of any more perfect God and Lord besides this one, he would certainly not have confessed this one, whom he knew to be the fruit of the lips, absolutely and in total, as Lord and God, as we have shown before. But also speaking of John, he says thus: “For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and many of the sons of Israel will he turn to the Lord their God; and he himself will go before in his sight, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to prepare a perfect people for the Lord.” For whom, then, did he prepare the people, and in whose sight of the Lord did he become great? Assuredly, in His who said: “For John had something more than a prophet; there is no one greater among those born of women than John the Baptist”; who indeed was preparing the people for the coming of the Lord.

^A servants, foretelling and preaching repentance to them, that they might receive remission from the Lord who was present, turning to Him from whom they had been alienated on account of sin and transgression; just as David says: “Sinners are alienated from the womb, they have erred from the belly.” And on account of this, turning them to their Lord, he was preparing for the Lord a perfect people, in the spirit and power of Elias.

2. And referring again to the angel, he says: “In that time the angel Gabriel was sent from God, who also said to the Virgin: Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God.” And of the Lord he says: “He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of His kingdom there shall be no end.” But who is this other who reigns in the house of Jacob without intermission for ever, except Christ Jesus our Lord, the Son of the highest God, who through the law and the prophets promised that He would make His salvation visible to all flesh, so that He might be the Son of man, to the end that also man might become the Son of God? On account of which also Mary, exulting, cried out for the Church, prophesying: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For He hath taken up His child Israel, to remember His mercy: as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed for ever.”

Through these, therefore, and such great things, the Gospel shows that He who spoke to the fathers is God, and He it is who through Moses made the dispensation of the law, through which dispensation of the law we learned that He spoke to the fathers. ^B This same God, according to His great goodness, poured out His mercy upon us, in which mercy “the Orient from on high hath visited us, and hath appeared to them that sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, and hath directed our feet into the way of peace;” just as Zacharias, ceasing to be mute, which he had suffered on account of his unbelief, filled with the new Spirit, was blessing God in a new way. For all things were new, the Word disposing the fleshly 186 advent, so that He might ascribe to God that man who had gone away from God: on account of which they were also taught to worship God in a new way; but not another God, since indeed there is one God, who justifies the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith.

Prophesying, moreover, Zacharias said: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, because He hath visited and wrought the redemption of His people. And He hath raised up a horn of salvation to us in the house of David His servant. As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, who are from the beginning: salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us. To perform mercy with our fathers, and to remember His holy testament. The oath which He swore to Abraham our father, that He would grant to us, that being delivered from the hand of our enemies, we may serve Him without fear, in holiness and justice, before Him all our days.” Then to John he says: “And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou ^C shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways. To give knowledge of salvation to His people, for the remission of their sins.” For this is the knowledge of salvation which was lacking to them, which is of the Son of God, which John was performing, saying: “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.” This was He of whom I was saying: After me comes a man, who was made before me, because He was prior to me; and of His fullness we have all received. This, therefore, was the knowledge of salvation; but [it was] not another God, nor another Father, nor Bythus, nor the Pleroma of thirty Æons, nor the mother Ogdoad: but the knowledge of salvation was the knowledge of the Son of God, who is both salvation, and Saviour, and salutary, and is truly called so.

^A And the [Scripture] says: "I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord." And the Saviour again: "Behold God my Saviour, I will trust in him." And [regarding] the salutary it says: "The Lord has made known his salvation in the sight of the nations." For the Saviour is [so] because He is the Son and Word of God; but the salutary, because [He is] the Spirit: for it says, "The Spirit of our face, Christ the Lord." But salvation [is] because [He is] flesh: "For the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." This knowledge of salvation, therefore, John was imparting to those who were repenting and believing in the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

4. "And he appeared," he says, "and to the shepherds [the] angel of the Lord brought the good news, saying that there is born in the house of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord." Then a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will." These angels, the false Gnostics ^B say, came from the Ogdoad, and manifested the descent of the superior Christ. But they contradict themselves again, saying that he who is above, Christ and the Saviour, was not born, but that after his baptism, he who is of the dispensation, Jesus, descended into him like a dove. The angels of the Ogdoad, therefore, lie, according to them, when they say: "For there is born today to you the Saviour, who is Christ the Lord in the city of David." For neither Christ, nor the Saviour, was born at that time according to them: but they say that he who is of the dispensation, Jesus, who is the maker of the world, is he into whom the supernal Saviour descended after his baptism, that is, after thirty years.

But what need was there to add in the city of David, if not to manifest the promise which was made by God to David, that of the fruit of his belly there would be an eternal king, the gospel having been fulfilled? For indeed the Maker of this whole universe had made this promise to David, just as David himself says: "My help [is] from the Lord, who made heaven and earth." ^C And again: "In his hand are the ends of the earth, and the heights of the mountains are his. For his is the sea, and he himself made it, and his hands founded the dry land. Come, let us adore, ^D and fall down before him, and let us weep in the presence of the Lord, who made [us], for he is the Lord our God." The Holy Spirit clearly declaring by David to those hearing him, that there would be those who would despise Him who fashioned us, who alone…

is God. For which reason He said what has been aforementioned, signifying: "That you might not err; besides Him, or above Him, there is no other God to whom one ought more [carefully] to attend"; making us religious and grateful to Him who has made, constituted, and nurtured us. What then will become of those who have devised so much blasphemy against their own Fashioner? The angels also [do] the same. For in that they say: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace," they glorified with these words Him who is of the highest, that is, the Fashioner of the super-celestial [realms] and the Creator of all things that are above the earth, who sent down His own kindness of salvation upon His handiwork, that is, upon men. For which reason also ^B "the shepherds, he says, were returning, glorifying God for all things which they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them." For the Israelite shepherds were not glorifying another God, but Him who was announced by the Law and the prophets, the Fashioner of all things, whom the angels also were glorifying. If, however, the angels who were from the Ogdoad were glorifying one [God], and the shepherds another [God], then those who were the angels from the Ogdoad brought them error and not truth.

5. Furthermore, Luke says concerning the Lord: "When the days of purification were fulfilled, they brought him into Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord: That every male opening the womb shall be called holy to the Lord; and that they might offer a sacrifice, according to what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons"—manifestly calling the Lord, by His own person, Him who made the legislation. And "Simeon," he says, "blessed God, and said: Now dismiss your servant, Lord, in peace; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples; a light for the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel." And "Anna," moreover, "the prophetess," he says, "in like manner was glorifying God, seeing Christ; and was speaking of him to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem." Through all these things, however, one God is demonstrated, opening to men a new dispensation of liberty ^C through the new advent of His Son.

6. Wherefore also Mark, the interpreter and follower of Peter, began his gospel composition thus: "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God, just as it is written in the prophets: Behold, I send my angel before your face, who

shall prepare your way [64]. A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths before our God" [65]. ^A He clearly states that the beginning of the Gospel consists of the voices of the holy prophets; and he points forward to Him whom they themselves confessed to be Lord and God, as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who also promised that He would send His angel before His face; who was John, "in the spirit and power of Elias," crying in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths before our God." Since indeed the prophets did not announce one God and then another, but one and the same, though under various significations 188 and through many appellations: for the Father is manifold and rich, as we have shown in the book which precedes this one; and we shall show it further from the very words of the prophets themselves. Finally, in the conclusion of the Gospel, Mark says: "And indeed the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was received up into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God,” confirming what was said by the Prophet: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool" [21]. Thus indeed there is one and the same God ^B and Father, who was announced by the prophets, but delivered by the Gospel, whom we Christians worship, and love with our whole heart, the Maker of heaven and earth [68], and of all things that are in them.

CHAPTER XI.

4. The disciple of the Lord, wishing to remove by the preaching of the Gospel the error which had been sown in men by Cerinthus, and long before him by those who are called Nicolaitans, who are an offshoot [69] of that which is falsely called knowledge, so that he might confound them and persuade them that there is one God who made all things through His Word; and not, as they say, one who is the maker, another who is the Father of the Lord, and another again the son of the maker, and yet another from the higher realms, Christ, whom they also say continued impassible, descending upon Jesus, the son of the maker, and again flew back into his Pleroma: and that the beginning was the Monogenes [70], but the Logos the true son of the Only-Begotten: and that this creation, which is according to us, was not made by the first God, but by some Power far removed and ^C below, and separated from the communication of those things which are invisible and ineffable. Desiring therefore to circumscribe [71] all these things, the disciple of the Lord, wishing to establish a rule of truth in the Church, that there is one God Almighty who by His Word made all things, both visible and invisible; signifying also that through the Word, by which God made the creation, He also granted salvation to men who are in this creation; thus he began his doctrine according to the Gospel [22]: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: this was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was nothing made. That which was made in Him [72] was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. All things, he says, were made through Him." In all things, therefore, is also contained this creation which is according to us: for it will not be granted to them that all things ^D be said to be our own, but rather it is shown that this reading of ours is supported by the context and by a passage akin to this later one in chap. 16, n. 7, where the same words are repeated: Our Lord being one and the same, yet rich and manifold. For He serves the Father's manifold and abundant will. He calls the Father manifold and rich, of whom is this discourse, because He is infinite and most abounding in every kind of perfection; nor is it therefore strange if, being one and the same, He is announced by the prophets under various significations and many appellations.

^A those things which are within their Pleroma. For if these contain their Pleroma, then so great a creation is not outside it, as we have shown in the book which is before this. But if these things are outside the Pleroma, which has indeed been seen to be impossible, then they are not all their Pleroma: therefore so great a creation is not outside them.

2. But John removes from us all these dissensions, saying: "He was in this world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not." But according to Marcion, and those who are like him, neither was the world made by Him, nor did He come unto His own, but into a strange land. But according to certain of the Gnostics, this world was made by angels, and not by the Word of God. But according to those who are from Valentinus, again it was not made by Him, but by the Demiurge. For he (the Demiurge) was working to make such likenesses for the imitation of those things which are above, as they say: but the Demiurge was perfecting the fabrication of the creation. For they say that he was emitted by the Mother, and the Demiurge of this arrangement, which is according to the creation, through whom they wish this world to have been made: whereas the Gospel manifestly says that through the Word, who was in the beginning with God, all things were made: which "Word," he says, "was made flesh, and dwelt among us."

3. According to them, however, neither was the Word made flesh, nor was Christ, nor the Savior who was made from all things. For they do not wish the Word and Christ to have come into this world at all: but they say that the Savior was not incarnate, nor did He suffer; but that Jesus descended as a dove into Him, who had been made out of the arrangement, and when He had announced the unknown Father, had again ascended into the Pleroma. But some say that he who is from the arrangement is the one who was incarnate and suffered, whom they say passed through Mary as water through a tube; others, however, say that it was the son of the Demiurge, into whom that Jesus who is from the arrangement descended; others again say that Jesus was indeed born of Joseph and Mary, and that Christ descended into him, who was from the things that are ^B above, without flesh and existing impassible.

But according to no opinion of the heretics was the Word of God made flesh. For if anyone searches into the rules of all of them, he will find that the Word of God is brought forward by all of them as being without flesh and impassible, and that Christ is among those in the higher regions. For some think Him manifested as a transformed man; but they do not say that He was born, nor that He was incarnate; others say that He did not even assume the figure of a man; but that Jesus, who was born of Mary, was the one into whom He descended like a dove. Therefore, the disciple of the Lord, showing all these to be false witnesses, says: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us."

4. And that we may not inquire whose Word of God was made flesh, he himself moreover teaches, saying: "There was a man sent from God; whose name was John: he came for a testimony, to bear witness of the Light. He was not himself the light, but that he might bear witness of the light." Therefore, by what God was the precursor John, who bears witness of the light, sent? Surely by Him whose angel Gabriel is, who also brought the good news of His generation, and who also promised through the prophets that he would send His angel before the face of His Son, and to prepare His way, that is, to bear witness of the light, "in the spirit and power of Elias." But again, whose servant and prophet was Elias? Of Him who made heaven and earth, as he himself also confesses. By the creator and fabricator of this world, therefore, was John sent; how could he testify of that light which had descended from those things which are unnameable and invisible? For all the heretics have decreed that the Demiurge is ignorant of that Power which is above him, of whom John is found to be a witness and manifestor. For this reason the Lord said he had "more than a prophet." For all the rest of the prophets announced the coming of the paternal light; but they desired to be worthy to see Him whom they were preaching: but John not only announced Him like the others, but also saw Him when He came, and demonstrated Him, and persuaded many to believe in Him, so that he himself had the place of both prophet and apostle. For he is more than a prophet; because in the first place he...

^A is king of Israel. From whom also Peter, having been taught, recognized Christ the Son of the living God, saying, “Behold my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: I will put my Spirit upon him, and he shall announce judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not contend, nor cry out, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets: a bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, until he sends forth judgment unto victory, and in his name shall the Gentiles hope.”

5. For this event also which was done by God in the vineyard is good, and wine was drunk first. For no one of those who drank blamed it; but the Lord Himself even received of it: yet it is better that it was made through the Word compendiously and simply from water for the use of those who were invited to the wedding. For although the Lord could have provided wine for the guests and food to satisfy the hungry from no underlying created things, He did not do this: but taking loaves that were from the earth, and giving thanks, and again making water into wine, He satisfied those who were reclining, and gave drink to those who were invited to the weddings: showing that God, who made the earth and commanded it to bring forth fruit, and established the waters and produced ^B fountains, He also now in the last times through His Son grants to the human race the blessing of food and the grace of drink, the incomprehensible through the comprehensible, and the invisible through the visible; since He is not outside of Him, but exists in the bosom of the Father.

6. “For no one,” he says, “has seen God at any time, unless the only-begotten Son of God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.” For the Son, who is in His bosom, declares to all the Father who is invisible. On account of this, those recognize Him to whom the Son has revealed Him; and again the Father through the Son, the Son gives knowledge of Himself to those who love Him. From whom also Nathanael, learning, recognized Him, to whom also the Lord bore witness that he is a true Israelite, ^C in whom there is no guile. The Israelite recognized his own king; and he says to Him, “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the king of Israel.”

7. And these indeed are the beginnings of the Gospel, announcing one God the maker of this universe, Him who was announced through the prophets and who through Moses made the disposition of the law, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and knowing no other God besides Him, nor any other Father. And so great is this firmness concerning the Gospel, that even the heretics themselves render testimony to them, and each one of them departing from them attempts to confirm his own doctrine. For the Ebionites, using only that Gospel which is according to Matthew, ^D are convinced from that very thing, not rightly presuming concerning the Lord. But Marcion, truncating that which is according to Luke, from those things which are told about Jesus is shown to be blasphemous against the one only existing God. But those who separate Jesus from Christ, and say that Christ remained impassible, but that Jesus suffered, preferring that Gospel which is according to Mark; when they read it with love for the truth, they can be corrected. But those who are of Valentinus, because they use that which is according to John most fully, for the demonstration of their conjunctions; from that very thing they will be detected saying nothing rightly, as we have shown in the first book. Since, therefore, these who contradict us...

^A bear witness and use these, our demonstration concerning them is firm.

8. Nor, again, can the Gospels be either more or fewer in number than these are. For since there are four regions of the world in which we are, and four principal spirits, and the Church is scattered over all the earth, and the pillar and ground of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out on every side incorruptibility, and vivifying men. From which it is manifest that the Word, the Artificer of all things, who sits upon the cherubim and contains all things, being made manifest to men, gave to us the quadriform Gospel, which is held together by one Spirit. As also David, requesting His advent, says: ^B "You who sit upon the cherubim, appear." For the cherubim have four faces, and their faces are images of the dispensation of the Son of God. "The first living creature," He says, "was like a lion," signifying His efficacy, and princedom, and royal character; "the second was like a calf," signifying His sacrificial and priestly order; "the third has the face of a man," describing His advent according to man; "and the fourth was like a flying eagle," signifying the grace of the Spirit flying into the Church. And the Gospels, therefore, are in harmony with these...

^A occurrences, in which Christ is seated. For that which is according to John relates his authoritative and glorious generation from the Father, saying thus: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," and: "All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made." Therefore, this Gospel is full of all confidence; for such is his person. But that which is according to Luke, since it is of a priestly character, began from Zacharias ^B the priest sacrificing to God. For already the fatted calf was being prepared, which was about to be sacrificed for the finding of the younger son. But Matthew proclaims his generation according to man, saying: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham," and: "The birth of Jesus Christ on this wise was." This Gospel, therefore, is in the form of a man. Thus, this Gospel is according to man; for this reason, ^C through the whole Gospel, he is represented as humble, and a meek man. But Mark, beginning from the prophetic Spirit, descending from on high upon men, makes his beginning, saying: "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet," showing the winged figure of the Gospel; and for this reason he made his proclamation brief and rapid: for this is a prophetic character. And the Word of God himself spoke ^D to the patriarchs before Moses according to his divine and glorious nature, but to those under the law he established the priestly order; and after that, having become man, he sent the gift of the Spirit over all the earth, protecting men with his wings.

^A Just as the dispensation of the Son of God is, so also is the form of the animals; and just as is the form of the animals, so also is the character of the Gospel. For the animals are fourfold, and the Gospel is fourfold, and the dispensation of the Lord is fourfold. And for this reason four covenants were given to the human race: one, indeed, before the flood upon Adam; the second, after the flood under Noah, with the rain-bow; the third, the giving of the law under Moses; the fourth is that of the Gospel, through our Lord Jesus Christ, which renews man, and recapitulates in itself all things, which is through the Gospel, raising up and lifting men on wings into the heavenly kingdom.

9. ^B 9. Things being thus, vain are all, both unlearned and moreover also bold, who frustrate the species of the Gospel, and either introduce more or fewer persons of the Gospel than those which have been mentioned: some that they may seem to have discovered more than for the truth: others, however, that they may reject the dispensations of God. For Marcion indeed entirely rejecting the Gospel; nay truly ^C separating himself from the Gospel, he glories that he possesses the Gospel: others however, so that they may frustrate the gift of the Spirit, which in the last times according to the pleasure of the Father has been poured out upon the human race, do not admit that species which is according to the Gospel of John.

In which the Lord promised that He would send the Paraclete; but at the same time they reject both the Gospel and the prophetic Spirit. They are truly unhappy who wish to be pseudoprophets, yet reject the ^A prophetic grace from the Church: suffering things similar to those who, because of men who come in hypocrisy, abstain even from the communion of the brethren. But it is given to be understood that, of this kind, they do not even receive the apostle Paul. For in that Epistle which is to the Corinthians, he spoke diligently concerning prophetic charisms, and knows men and women prophesying in the Church. Through all these things, therefore, they sin against the Spirit of God, and fall into the irremissible sin. But those who are from Valentinus, being once more outside of all fear, bringing forward their own compositions, boast that they have more than the Gospels themselves. Indeed, they have proceeded to such a pitch of audacity that they entitle what was not written by them long ago as the "Gospel of Truth," which in nothing agrees with the Gospels of the apostles, so that not even the Gospel is among them without blasphemy. For if what is brought forward by them is the Gospel of truth, and yet this is unlike those things which have been handed down by the apostles; those who wish may learn, as it is shown from the Scriptures themselves, that what was handed down by the apostles is no longer that which is the Gospel of truth. But that only that alone is true and firm, and that the Gospels can be neither more, beyond what has been foretold, nor fewer, we have shown through so many and such great arguments. For since God made all things ^B set in order and fitly joined, it was proper that the appearance of the Gospel also be well set and well joined. Having therefore examined the opinion of those who handed down the Gospel to us, let us come from their own principles to the remaining apostles, and inquire their opinion concerning God: then, afterward, let us listen to the words of the Lord Himself.

193 CHAPTER XII.

Peter, therefore, the apostle, after the resurrection of the Lord and His assumption into the heavens, wishing to fulfill the number of the twelve apostles, and to choose in place of Judas another who had been elected by God, from among those who were present, said: "Men and brethren, this Scripture must needs be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke before by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who took Jesus, for he was numbered among us: Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein, and his bishopric let another take": ^C fulfilling the number of the twelve apostles from those things which were spoken by David.

Again, when the Holy Spirit had descended upon the disciples, so that all might prophesy, and speak in tongues, and certain ones mocked them as though they were drunk with new wine, Peter said that they were not drunk, since it was the third hour of the day; but that this was what was spoken by the prophet: "It shall be in the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and they shall prophesy."

^A Therefore, let all the house of Israel know that God, who promised through the prophet that He would send His Spirit upon the human race, has Himself sent Him; and He is announced by Peter as the One who has fulfilled His own promise.

2. "You men," says Peter, "Israelites, hear these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man approved by God among you by portents, and signs, and wonders, which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves know; Him, delivered up by the definite counsel and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men: whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of hell, because it was not possible for Him to be held by them. For David says regarding Him: 'I foresaw the Lord always before my face, because He is at my right hand, that I might not be shaken. Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue exulted, moreover my flesh also shall rest in hope. Because you will not abandon my soul to hell, nor will you give your Holy One to see corruption.'" ^B Peter then speaks again faithfully to them concerning the patriarch David, that he died, and was buried, and his sepulchre is with them until this day. "But being a prophet," he says, "and knowing that God had sworn to him with an oath that of the fruit of his loins He would seat one upon his throne; foreseeing this, he spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that He was not abandoned in hell, nor did His flesh see corruption. This Jesus, God raised up," he says, "of whom we all are witnesses: who being exalted by the right hand of God, and receiving the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, He has poured forth this gift, which you now see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens; but he himself says: 'The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.' Let therefore all the house of Israel know ^C that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." When the crowds said therefore: "What then shall we do?" Peter said to them: "Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus, for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

... The apostles did not announce another God, nor another fullness; nor did they announce one Christ who had suffered and risen again, and another who had flown upward and remained impassible; but they announced one and the same God the Father, and Christ Jesus, who rose from the dead; and they announced the faith which is in Him to those who did not believe in the Son of God; and they exhorted them by the prophets, that God, who promised that He would send Christ, sent Jesus, whom they themselves crucified, and whom God raised up. ^D 5. Furthermore, since Peter and John together saw a man who was lame from birth, sitting before the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, and asking for alms, he said to him: "Silver and gold I have none; but what I have, this I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, rise up and walk." And immediately his feet and soles were strengthened, and he walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God. And the whole multitude being gathered together to them because of the unexpected event, Peter said to them: "You men, Israelites, why do you marvel at this, and why do you gaze...

^A at us, as if by our own power we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his Son, whom you indeed delivered up to judgment, and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he would have released him. But you burdened the holy and the just one, and asked for a man who was a murderer to be granted to you; but you killed the author of life, whom God has raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. And in the faith of his name, this one whom you see and know, his name has confirmed, and the faith which is through him has given him this perfect health in the presence of you all. And now, brethren, I know that you did it in ignorance. But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all his prophets, that his Christ should suffer, he has fulfilled. Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, and that times of refrigerium may come from the presence of the Lord, and he may send Jesus Christ, who has been prepared for you, whom heaven indeed must receive until the times of the restoration of all things, which God spoke by his holy prophets. ^B Moses indeed says to our fathers: 'For a prophet shall the Lord your God raise up for you from your brethren, as he did me; him you shall hear in all things whatsoever he shall have spoken to you. And it shall be: Every soul, whatsoever it shall not hear that prophet, shall perish from among the people. And all from Samuel and thereafter, as many as have spoken, have also announced these days.' You are the sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God disposed to our fathers, saying to Abraham: 'And in your seed shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed.' To you first, God raising up his Son, sent him blessing you, that he might turn everyone from his wickednesses."

^C The promise, which God made to the fathers, he fulfilled by announcing it to Jesus: not indeed announcing another God, but the Son of God, who both became man, and suffered, bringing Israel into the knowledge of God; and in Jesus announcing the resurrection from the dead, and signifying that whatever the prophets announced concerning the passion of Christ, these things God has fulfilled. ^D Manifest therefore was the preaching; Peter with John preached to them, as the apostles did not change God, but were announcing to the people that Christ is Jesus who was crucified, whom God raised up. Who, having sent the prophets, the same being God, raised him up, and gave salvation in him to men.

^A For, as Scripture says, ^B there was more than forty years of age in the man in whom the miracle of healing had taken place; and when they had, through the teaching of the apostles and the explanation of the prophets, been sent away by the high priests, and had returned to the rest of the co-apostles and the disciples of the Lord—that is, into the Church—and had related what had happened, and how they had acted with confidence in the name of Jesus: "Hearing this," it says, "the whole Church, with one accord, lifted up their voice to God and said: Lord, You are the God who made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; who, through the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of David our father, Your servant, have said: Why did the nations rage, and the peoples meditate vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together in one against the Lord and against His Christ. For in this city there truly assembled against Your holy Son Jesus, whom You anointed, Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the nations and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your will had predestined to be done." These are the voices of the Church, from which every Church received its beginning; these are the voices of the great city, the citizens of the New Testament; these are the voices of the apostles, these are the voices of the disciples of the Lord, of those who after the assumption of the Lord were perfected through the Spirit and called upon God, who made heaven and earth and sea, who was proclaimed by the prophets, and His Son Jesus, whom God anointed, and of whom they knew no other. For there was not then ^A Valentinus, nor Marcion, nor the rest of his kind, or those who assent to them, the subverters. For which reason ^B the Maker of all things also heard them. "For the place was shaken," it says, "in which they were gathered, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with confidence to all who wished to believe." ^C "For with great power," it says, "the apostles gave testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus," saying to them: "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you laid hands on and killed, hanging Him on a tree. This prince and Savior God has exalted by His glory, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins; and we are witnesses of these words in Him, and the Holy Spirit, whom God gave to those who believe in Him." And every day, it says, in the temple and in the house, they did not cease teaching and evangelizing Christ Jesus, the Son of God. For this was the knowledge of salvation, which makes perfect toward God those who know the advent of His Son.

6. But since some of them impudently say: "The apostles, preaching among the Jews, could not announce to them another God, except Him who had been believed in by them," we say to them: if the apostles were speaking according to the opinion formerly implanted in men, no one learned the truth from them, and much less before that from the Lord; for they say that He Himself spoke in this way. Nor do these people themselves, therefore, know the truth, but since their opinion about God was such, they had received the doctrine just as they were able to hear it. According to this argument of theirs, therefore, there will be no rule of truth in anyone, but

all the disciples will attribute it to all, since the word was made to him according to what each one thought and what each one could grasp. ^A Moreover, the advent of the Lord will appear superfluous and useless if He came to allow and preserve the opinion about God that was long since innate in each one. Furthermore, it was much harder still that this man, whom the Jews had seen and whom they had fixed to the cross, should be announced as being Christ the Son of God, their eternal King. They did not, therefore, speak to them according to their former opinion. For those who told them to their faces that they were the murderers of the Lord would much more boldly have announced to them the Father who is above the Demiurge, and not according to what each one thought; and it would have been much less of a sin if, since the superior Savior to whom they needed to ascend was impassible, they had not fixed Him to the cross. ^B For just as they did not speak to the Gentiles according to their own view, but said with confidence that their gods were not gods, but idols of demons, in the same way they would have announced even to the Jews—if they had known another, greater and more perfect Father—not nourishing, nor increasing their opinion about God, which was not true. While dissolving the error of the pagans, and taking them away from their gods, they were not, surely, bringing another error upon them; but moving them away from those that were not gods, they showed Him who alone is God and true Father.

7. Now, from the words of Peter, which he spoke in Caesarea to the centurion Cornelius and those who were with him from the Gentiles, to whom the word of God was first recounted, we must learn what the apostles were announcing, what kind of preaching they had, and what opinion they held about God. “For there was,” he says, “this Cornelius, religious and fearing God with all his house, and doing many alms among the people, and praying to God always. He saw, therefore, about the ninth hour of the day, an angel of God entering ^C to him, and saying: ‘Your alms have ascended into remembrance in the sight of God. Therefore send to Simon, who is called Peter.’”

Peter, however, when he had seen the revelation, in which a voice from heaven answered him: “What God has cleansed, do not you call common,” this was because God, who through the Law distinguished between clean and unclean, He Himself cleansed the Gentiles through the blood of the Son of God, whom Cornelius also worshipped. To whom Peter, coming, said: “In truth I have found that God is not a respecter of persons, but in every nation, he who fears Him, and works justice, is acceptable to Him.” ^D Manifestly signifying that the God whom Cornelius previously feared, whom he had heard of through the law and the prophets, and through whom he performed alms, this One is in truth God. Yet there was lacking to him the knowledge of the Son.

For which reason he added: “You know what has happened throughout all Judea: beginning from Galilee after the baptism, which John preached: Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power; He went about doing good and healing all those who were oppressed by the devil, because God was with Him. And we are witnesses of all things that He did in the region of the Jews, and in Jerusalem: whom they killed, hanging Him on a tree. Him God raised on the third day, and granted Him to be made manifest, not to all the people, but to witnesses foreordained by God, who did eat and drink with Him after His resurrection from the dead. And He commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that He Himself is the one foreordained by God to be the Judge of the living and the dead. To Him all the prophets bear witness, receiving remission

of sins for everyone who believes in Him. The apostles, therefore, proclaimed the Son of God, whom men did not know, and His advent to those who had been previously instructed concerning God; they did not bring in another God. For if Peter had known of any such thing, he would have freely preached to the Gentiles that the God of the Jews was one thing, and the God of the Christians another. But because they were all terrified by the vision of the angel, they believed whatsoever it was that he had said to them. It is manifest from the words of Peter that he kept for them the God who was already foreknown, yet he testified to them that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Judge of the living and the dead, in whom he also commanded them to be baptized for the remission of sins; and not only this, but also that this same Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, is called Jesus Christ. And this person is the same one ^A born of Mary, just as the testimony of Peter contains. Or did Peter not yet have at that time the perfect knowledge which these men later discovered? If so, according to these men, Peter was imperfect, and the rest of the apostles were imperfect; and it will be necessary for them to come back to life and become disciples of these men, so that they themselves may become perfect. But this, indeed, is ridiculous. For they are proved to be disciples not of the apostles, but of their own evil opinion. And for this reason, there are also various opinions among every one of them, as each one received the error however he could manage. But the Church, having received firm beginnings from the apostles throughout the whole world, perseveres in one and the same opinion concerning God and His Son.

8. But again, whom did Philip preach to the eunuch of the queen of the Ethiopians, as he was returning from Jerusalem and reading the prophet Isaiah, when they were alone? Was it not He of whom the prophet said: «As a sheep to the slaughter he was led, and as a lamb before the shearer is silent, so he opened not his mouth. But who shall declare His generation? For His life shall be taken from the earth»? ^B And he taught that this was Jesus, and that the Scripture was fulfilled in Him, just as the eunuch himself, believing and asking immediately to be baptized, said: «I believe that Jesus is the Son of God.» ^C Who also was sent into the regions of Ethiopia, to preach what he himself had believed: that God is one, proclaimed through the prophets; and that His Son had made His advent according to the flesh, and was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and the rest of the things which the prophets say concerning Him. 9. Paul also himself, after the Lord spoke to him from heaven and showed that he was persecuting his own Lord, and sent Ananias to him, that he might see again and be baptized; «In the synagogues,» he says, «in Damascus he preached with all boldness Jesus, that this is the Son of God, the Christ.» This is the mystery, which he says was made known to him by revelation, that He who suffered under Pontius Pilate, this One is the Lord of all, and King, and God, and Judge; receiving power from Him who is the God of all, since He «became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.» And because this is true, preaching the gospel to the Athenians on the Areopagus, where, as the Jews were not standing by, it was permitted to him to preach the true God with boldness, he said to them: «God who made the world, and all things that are in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made with hands, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, seeing that He Himself gives to all life and breath, and has made all things, who has made of one blood every race of men to inhabit the whole face of the whole earth...

determining the times ^A set by the appointment of their habitation, to seek that which is divine, if by any means they might touch it or find it, although it is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and are; and as certain ones among you have said: For we are also His offspring. Since then we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine is like gold or silver, or stone fashioned by the art and device of man. The times of ignorance, therefore, God overlooking, now commands all men ^B everywhere to repent unto Him, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the inhabited earth in justice, in the man Jesus, in whom He has established faith, raising Him from the dead. And in this place He not only announces to them God as the maker of the world, no Jews being present, but also that He made the one human race to inhabit the whole earth, as Moses also says: When the Most High divided the nations, when He scattered the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God; but the people who believe in God, is no longer under the power of angels, but under the Lord’s: For the Lord’s portion was ^C His people Jacob, the cord of His inheritance Israel. And again at Lystra of Lycia, when Paul was with Barnabas, and had caused a man lame from birth to walk in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and when the crowd wanted to honor them as gods because of the wonderful deed, he said to them: We are mortal men like you, bringing you the gospel of God, that you should turn from these vain idols to the living God, who made ^D heaven and earth and sea and all things that are in them: who in past generations allowed all nations to go their own ways, although He did not leave Himself without witness, doing good, giving from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness. Since, however, all the Epistles consist with these announcements of His, we show from the Epistles themselves in an appropriate place, by expounding the Apostle. But with us collaborating in these demonstrations which are from the Scriptures, and which announce briefly and concisely the things that were spoken in manifold ways, do you also attend to them with magnanimity, and not think it a long speech: understanding this, that the demonstrations which are in the Scriptures cannot be shown except from the Scriptures themselves.

10. But Stephen, who was chosen as the first deacon by the apostles, and who was the first of all men to follow the footsteps of the Lord’s martyrdom, being the first killed for the confession of Christ, speaking confidently among the people and teaching them, saying: The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham and said to him: Go forth from your land and from your kindred, and come into the land which I will show you: and He removed him into this land, where you now also dwell, and He gave him no inheritance in it, nor a foot-breadth; but promised to give it for a possession to him and to his seed after him. And God spoke to him thus: that his seed would be sojourning in a foreign land, and they will be reduced to servitude, and they will be vexed for four hundred years: and the nation to whom they shall serve, I will judge, says the Lord. And afterwards they will go forth, and they will serve Me in this place. And He gave him the covenant of circumcision, and so he begat Isaac. And the rest...

^A of his words announce the same God who was with Joseph, and with the patriarchs, and who also spoke to Moses.

11. And that all the doctrine of the apostles announced one and the same God, who brought Abraham over, who made the promise of the inheritance to him, who at a fitting time gave the covenant of circumcision, who called his seed out of Egypt—kept manifest through circumcision (for He gave it as a sign, so that they might not be like the Egyptians)—this Creator of all, this Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, this God of glory, those who desire can learn and contemplate from the very words and Acts of the apostles, that He is this one God, above whom there is no other. But if there were another God above Him, we would say by way of comparison that He is better than the other. For He appears better from His works, as we have also said before: and while they have no work of their Father to show, He alone is shown to be God. But if anyone, ^B sick over questions, thinks that those things which were said by the apostles about God should be allegorized, let him discuss our aforesaid words, in which we have shown one God, the maker and creator of all, and have destroyed and laid bare those things which are said by them: and he will find them consonantly in agreement with the doctrine of the apostles, and holding just as they used to teach and were persuaded, that God is the one maker of all: and when he has repelled from his judgment so great an error, and the blasphemy which is against God; he will find the reason from himself, recognizing also that law which is according to Moses, and the grace of the New Testament, both fitting for their times, provided by one and the same God for the benefit of the human race.

12. For all who hold evil opinions, moved by the legislation, which is according to Moses, deeming it dissimilar and contrary to the doctrine of the Gospel, are no longer ^C converted, so as to inquire into the causes of either Testament. Deserted, therefore, since they are from paternal love, and puffed up by Satan, they have turned to the doctrine of Simon Magus, and have abstained in their sentiments from Him who is God, and have thought that they themselves found something more, discovering another God. And they thought that the apostles indeed still held the sentiments of the Jews, but that they themselves were more sincere and more prudent than the apostles. Whence Marcion and those who are from him have turned to cutting up the Scriptures, in some things not knowing them at all, but, according to Luke, are cutting up the Gospel and the Epistles of Paul, saying that these alone are legitimate which they themselves have diminished. But we, with God granting, shall refute them in another work, even from those things which are still preserved among them. But all the rest, puffed up by the false name of knowledge, confess the Scriptures, indeed, but pervert the interpretations, as we have shown in the first book. And indeed these who are from Marcion immediately blaspheme the Maker, saying that He is a maker of evils, having a purpose of their beginning that is more tolerable, saying that there are two gods by nature, distant from one another, the one indeed good, but the other evil: but these who are from Valentinus, using names more honestly, and showing this one who is the Maker to be Father, and Lord, and God, have a purpose or sect that is more blasphemous, neither from anything of those which are within the plenitude, saying He was sent forth by the Eons, but ^D from the stain which was expelled outside the Pleroma. But all this has brought upon them an ignorance of the Scriptures and of the dispensation of God. We shall also report the cause of the difference of the Testaments, and again their unity and consonance, in those things which are to follow hereafter.

13. For since the apostles and their disciples were teaching thus, as the Church preaches, and those teaching thus were perfect, on account of their [alt-version omitted]

^A being called to perfection; Stephen, teaching these things while he was still upon the earth, saw the glory of God, and Jesus at his right hand, and said: "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God." And he said these things, and was stoned, and thus fulfilled the perfect doctrine, imitating in all things the master of martyrdom, and praying for those who were killing him, and saying: "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." So perfect were they, who knew the one and the same God, who from the beginning unto the end assists the human race in various ways; just as the prophet Hosea says: "I have multiplied visions, and I have been made like in the hands of the prophets." Who then, having delivered up their souls unto death for the Gospel of Christ, how could they have spoken to men according to an innate opinion? Had they done even this, they would not have suffered: but because they preached things contrary to those who did not assent to the truth, 199 for this reason they suffered. It is manifest, therefore, that they were not abandoning the truth, but with all confidence were preaching to the Jews and Greeks: to the Jews indeed, that Jesus, who was crucified by them, is the Son of God, the judge of the living and the dead, and that He received from the Father an eternal kingdom in Israel, as we have shown; but to the Greeks, announcing one God who made all things, and His Son Jesus Christ.

14. But this is also made manifest from the epistle of the apostles, ^B which they sent neither to the Jews, nor to the Greeks, but to those who were believing in Christ from among the Gentiles, confirming their faith. For when some had come down from Judea to Antioch, in which place first of all the disciples of the Lord for the faith which they had in Christ were called Christians, and they were persuading those who had believed in the Lord to be circumcised, and to perform the rest according to the observance of the law; and Paul and Barnabas had gone up to Jerusalem to the other apostles concerning this question, and the whole Church had come together into one, Peter said to them: "Men and brethren, you know that from ancient days God chose in you that the Gentiles should hear the word of the Gospel from my mouth, and believe: and God, who searches the heart, bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He did to us, and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. Now therefore why do you tempt God, to impose a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers, nor we have been able to bear? But by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we believe that we are able to be saved in the same way as they." After whom James said: "Men and brethren, Simon has related how God has devised to take from the Gentiles a people for His name. And thus the words of the prophets agree, as it is written: 'After these things I will return, and I will rebuild the tabernacle ^C of David which has fallen, and I will rebuild the parts of it that have been destroyed, and I will erect it; that the residue of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles, in which my name has been invoked upon them, says the Lord, who does these things.' It is known from eternity to God His work: therefore I according to my judgment decide not to molest those who from among the Gentiles are converted to God; but to instruct them, that they abstain from the vanities of idols, and from fornication, and from blood: and whatsoever things they do not wish to be done to themselves, let them not do to others." And when these things had been said, and all had consented, the Apostles and the elder brethren wrote to them thus: "To those who are in Antioch, and Syria, and Cilicia, the brethren from the Gentiles, greeting. Since we have heard that some going out from among us have disturbed you with words, destroying your souls, to whom we have given no command, saying: 'Be circumcised and observe the law'; it has seemed good to us, having gathered ^D into one, to send chosen men to you with our most beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have delivered their soul for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, and they themselves by word announcing our decision. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to impose no further burden upon you than these things, which are necessary: that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from fornication; and whatsoever you do not wish to be done to you, do not do to others: from which keeping yourselves, you shall do well.

^A And in the same way we also, persuading at the same time those who were present with us, and signifying that if the Holy Spirit had not rested upon them, there would have been one to prevent them from baptism.

200 But those apostles who were about James, while they permitted the Gentiles to act freely, yielding us to the Spirit of God, yet they themselves, knowing the same God, persevered in their former observances: so that even Peter also, fearing ^B lest he should be blamed by them, though he had previously eaten with the Gentiles on account of the vision and the Spirit that had rested upon them, yet when certain men came from James, he withdrew himself and did not eat with them. Paul says that he and Barnabas did this very thing. Thus the apostles, whom the Lord made witnesses of all His acts and all His doctrine (for Peter and James and John are found everywhere assisting with Him), acted religiously ^C regarding the dispensation of the Law which is according to Moses, signifying that it is from one and the same God. And this, indeed, they would not have done, according to what we have said before, if they had learned from the Lord that there was another father besides Him who made the dispensation of the Law.

CHAPTER XIII.

Against those who say that only Paul among the apostles knew the truth.

1. As for those who say that only Paul knew the truth, to whom it was manifested by revelation...

^A ...and that is a mystery, let Paul himself convince them, saying that it is one and the same God who worked in Peter for the apostolate of the circumcision, and in himself for the Gentiles. Peter was, therefore, an apostle of the same God of whom Paul also was; and the God—and the Son of God—whom Peter announced in the circumcision, this same one Paul also announced to the Gentiles. For the Lord our God did not come to save Paul alone; nor is God so poor that He would have but one apostle who might know the dispensation of His Son. And Paul, furthermore, saying: "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good tidings, of those who bring tidings of peace!" made it manifest ^B that there were not one, but many, who preached the truth. And again, in that Epistle which is to the Corinthians, when he had spoken of all those who saw God after the resurrection, he added: "Whether it be I or they, so we preach, and so you have believed," confessing the same preaching of all those who saw God after the resurrection from the dead.

2. And the Lord, to Philip who wished to see the Father, replied: "Am I so long with you, and have you not known me? Philip, he who sees me, sees also the Father. How do you say, 'Show us the Father'? For I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and from now on you have known Him, and have seen Him." Those, therefore, to whom the Lord gave testimony that they both knew Him and saw the Father (and the Father is the truth), to say of these that they did not know the truth is the act of men who bear false witness and who have become ^C alienated from the doctrine of Christ. For indeed, the Lord sent the twelve apostles to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; if they did not know the truth, how did they preach? How, moreover, could the seventy have preached, unless they themselves had first known the power of the preaching? Or how could Peter have been ignorant, to whom the Lord gave testimony, that flesh and blood had not revealed it to him, but the Father who is in heaven? As therefore Paul the apostle was not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus and God the Father, the Son indeed bringing them to the Father, and the Father revealing the Son to them.

3. Since, moreover, those who had called him regarding the question agreed, Paul ascended to them with Barnabas to Jerusalem, not without cause, but so that the freedom of the Gentiles might be confirmed by them themselves, as he says in the Epistle which is to the Galatians: "Then after fourteen years I went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking also Titus. And I went up according to revelation, and I conferred with them the Gospel which I preach among the Gentiles." And again he says: "To the hour we yielded in subjection, so that the truth of the Gospel might remain with you." If anyone therefore diligently searches out from the Acts of the Apostles the time of which it is written, "I went up to Jerusalem" because of the aforementioned question, he will find that those who are mentioned by Paul are in agreement ^D with the years. Thus it is harmonious, and the testimony of Paul is as if the same as that of Luke regarding the apostles.

CHAPTER XIV.

If Paul had known any deeper mysteries than the others, Luke, his constant companion and sharer and participant in his labors, could not have been ignorant of them. Nor could the truth have been hidden from him, through whom alone we know many and most necessary chapters of evangelical history.

1. Moreover, that Luke was inseparable from Paul and his fellow worker in the Gospel, he himself makes manifest, not out of boasting, but led by the truth itself. For he says: "After Paul and Barnabas were separated, and John, who was called Mark, and when they had sailed to Cyprus, 'we came to Troas'; and when Paul had seen in a dream a man of Macedonia, saying: 'Come into Macedonia and help us, O Paul'; immediately," he says, "we sought to go into Macedonia, understanding that the Lord had called us to evangelize to them. Sailing therefore from Troas, we directed our ship to Samothrace; and thenceforth he diligently signifies their entire remaining journey as far as Philippi, and how they first spoke: 'For sitting down,' he says, 'we spoke to the women who had gathered,' and who believed, and how many. And again he says: 'But we sailed after the days of unleavened bread from Philippi and came to Troas, where we stayed seven days.' And all the rest he relates in order with Paul, demonstrating with all diligence the places and cities and the number of days, until they ascended to Jerusalem; and what happened there to Paul, and how he was sent as a prisoner to Rome, and the name of the centurion who received him, and the sign of the ships, and how they suffered shipwreck, and on what island they were delivered, and how they received kindness there, Paul attending to the chief of that island, and how ^A thence they sailed to Puteoli, and from there arrived at Rome, and how long a time they stayed at Rome. Since Luke was present for all these things, he wrote them down diligently, so that he cannot be caught as being either a liar or a boaster, because all these things were consistent, and he was older than all who now teach otherwise, nor did he ignore the truth. For not only was he a companion, but also a fellow worker of the apostles, and especially of Paul; and Paul himself manifested this in his epistles, saying: 'Demas has forsaken me and has gone to Thessalonica, Crescens to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia; Luke is with me alone.' Whence he shows that he was always joined to him and inseparable from him. And again in the Epistle which is to the Colossians, he says: 'Luke the beloved physician greets you.' If, therefore, Luke, who always preached with Paul and was called beloved by him, and evangelized with him, and was trusted to hand down the Gospel to us, learned nothing else from him, as has been shown from his words, how do those who were never joined to Paul boast that they have learned hidden and ineffable sacraments?

2. Moreover, that Paul simply taught what he knew, not only to those who were with him, but to all who heard him, he himself makes manifest. For at Miletus, having called together the bishops and presbyters who were from Ephesus and from the other ^B neighboring cities, because he was hastening to keep Pentecost at Jerusalem, testifying many things to them, and saying what must happen to him at Jerusalem, he added: 'I know that you will now no longer see my face; I testify therefore to you this day, that I am clean from the blood of all. For I have not shrunk from announcing to you the whole counsel of God. Take heed therefore to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has placed you as bishops,' acting with the other apostles; which was done in the council held at Jerusalem. Now if you gather the fourteen years mentioned by Paul, the sum will be seventeen years; which squares perfectly with the epoch of the Jerusalem council. For Paul gave his name to Christ at the end of the year of Christ 34. He arrived at Jerusalem for the first time in the year 37. From then, if you count fourteen years, you arrive at the year 51, in which he ascended to Jerusalem again, to be present for the council to be held there. What difficulties Pearson in his ^C Annals of Paul and Hammond in his notes on the Epistle to the Galatians oppose to this clear method of calculation, is not for this place to resolve. One should read the learned notes of the most learned Tillemont on the life of St. Paul, tom. II, Commentaries on Ecclesiastical History, notes 5 and 7.

^A to govern the Church of the Lord, which he acquired for himself through his own blood. Then, signifying the future evil teachers, he said: "I know that 202 after my departure grievous wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, so as to draw away the disciples after them." I have not shrunk, he says, from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Thus the apostles, simply and envying no one, delivered to all what they themselves had learned from the Lord. Thus, therefore, ^B and Luke, envying no one, delivered to us what he had learned from them, just as he himself testifies, saying: "Even as they delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word."

5. But if anyone rejects Luke, as if he did not know the truth, he will be shown to be one who casts away the Gospel of which he is deemed a disciple. For we have learned from him many and more necessary things of the Gospel, such as the generation of John, and the history of Zechariah, and the coming of the angel to Mary, and the exclamation of Elizabeth, and the descent of the angels to the shepherds, and the things that were said by them, and the testimony of Anna and Simeon concerning Christ, and that he was left in Jerusalem at twelve years of age, and the baptism of John, and at what age the Lord was baptized, and that it was in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar. And further, in his teaching, that which was said to the rich: "Woe to you, rich, for you receive your consolation"; and: "Woe to you who are full, for you shall hunger; and you who laugh now, for you shall weep"; and: "Woe to you when all men bless you. For according to these things their fathers did to the false prophets"; and all things of this kind we have learned through Luke alone; and we have learned through him many acts of the Lord which all use: such as the multitude of fish which they caught when the Lord commanded them to cast their nets; and the woman who had suffered for eighteen years and was cured on a Sabbath day; and concerning the dropsical man whom the Lord cured on a Sabbath day, and how he disputed regarding the fact that he cured him on that day; and how ^C he taught his disciples not to seek the first places at table; and that one ought to invite the poor and the weak, who have no means of return. And he who knocks at night to receive loaves, and because of his persistence and importunity receives them; and that when he was reclining at the house of the Pharisee, the sinful woman kissed his feet, and anointed them with ointment, and whatever the Lord said to Simon on account of this woman regarding the two debtors; and the parable of that rich man whose ground brought forth plentifully, to whom it was also said: "In this night they will demand your soul from you: and whose shall those things be which you have provided?" Similarly also of the rich man who was clothed in purple and lived elegantly, and poor Lazarus; and the answer which he gave to his disciples when they said: "Increase our faith"; and the conversation which took place with Zacchaeus the tax collector; and concerning the Pharisee and the Publican, who prayed together in the temple. And concerning the ten lepers, whom he cleansed simultaneously on the road; and that he ordered the lame and the blind to be gathered from the streets and lanes to the marriage feast; and the parable of the judge who did not fear God, whom the persistence of the widow compelled to avenge her. And concerning the fig tree that was in the vineyard, which did not produce fruit. And there are many other things which may be found to have been stated by Luke alone, which both Marcion and Valentinus use. And in addition to all these things, after the resurrection, what he spoke to his disciples on the way, and how they recognized him in the breaking of bread.

4. It is necessary, therefore, to receive the remaining things that were said by him, or to renounce these as well. For it is not permitted to them, by those who have sense, to receive some of the things said by Luke as if they were of the truth, and to reject others, as if he did not know the truth. And if indeed they who are of Marcion’s party reject them, they will have no Gospel (for this which is according to Luke, as we have said, by mutilating it, they boast that they possess the Gospel); but those who are of Valentinus’s party will cease from their much vain talk (for from this they draw many occasions for their subtleties).

^A If, however, they are compelled to accept all the rest, holding to the perfect Gospel and the doctrine of the apostles, they must repent, so that they may be saved from the danger.

CHAPTER XV.

1. Moreover, we say the same thing again to those who do not recognize the apostle Paul, for they must either renounce the rest of the words of the Gospel, which have come to our knowledge through Luke alone, and not make use of them; or, if they accept all those things, they are under the necessity of accepting also that testimony which is about Paul, since he himself says that the Lord first spoke to him from heaven: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? I am Jesus Christ, whom you persecute": then to Ananias, saying concerning him: "Go, for he is a chosen vessel to me, to carry my name among the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him himself how much he must suffer for my name." Therefore, those who do not receive him who was chosen ^B by God to carry his name faithfully, as he was sent to the Gentiles we have mentioned, despise the election of the Lord and separate themselves from the assembly of the apostles. For they cannot contend that Paul was not an apostle, when he was chosen for this; nor can they show that Luke was a liar, who reported the truth to us with all diligence. Perhaps, indeed, and for this reason, God deemed it necessary that the ^C Gospel be demonstrated through Luke, using which all must necessarily be able to be saved, according to his testimony which he has concerning the acts and doctrine of the apostles, all following, and holding the rule of truth unadulterated. Therefore his testimony is true, and the doctrine of the apostles is manifest and firm, and deducting nothing, nor teaching some things in secret and others in public.

2. This is the artifice of impostors and hypocrites, just as those who are from Valentinus do. For they, toward the multitude—on account of those who are from the Church, whom they themselves call "common ecclesiastics"—bring in arguments by which they catch the simpler ones, and entice them by simulating our manner of discourse, so that they may hear more often; they even complain of us, saying that although they hold similar views to ours, we refrain from their communion without cause, and because they say the same things and have the same doctrine, we call them heretics. And when they have cast some down from the faith through the questions that arise from them, and have made their listeners not contradict them, they explain to these, separately, the ineffable mystery of their Fullness. But all are deceived who think they can discern that which is plausible in words from the truth. For what is persuasive ^D and plausible is a searcher for the pigments of error; but truth is without pigment, and for this reason it is entrusted to children. And if any one of those who hear them asks for solutions, or contradicts them, they say in no way anything to him—asserting that he does not grasp the truth, and does not have the seed from his Mother concerning the superior beings—saying that he belongs to the intermediate parts, that is, of the psychic ones. But if anyone, like a little sheep, hands himself over to them once and for all, having followed their imitation and redemption.

e intermediate parts, that is, of the psychic ones. But if anyone, like a little sheep, hands himself over to them once and for all, having followed their imitation and redemption. ^A Such an inflated person thinks that he is neither in heaven nor on earth, but has entered into the Pleroma, and has already embraced his angel; he walks about like a merchant, with a haughty brow, having the arrogance of a rooster. Furthermore, there are those among them who say that it is necessary for a man, who has come down from above, to attain a good conversation: on account of this, they also feign a certain gravity of brow. Most, however, have become scorners, as if already perfect; living without reverence and in contempt, they call themselves spiritual and say that they already know that place of refreshment which is inside their Pleroma.

3. But let us return to the same topic. For since it has been declared manifestly that those who were preachers of the truth and apostles of liberty named no other God or Lord, except only the true God the Father and His Word, who has the primacy in all things ^B and the Lord God who spoke with Moses, and gave the disposition of the law, who called the fathers, and wished them to acknowledge no other—it is therefore manifest that the judgment of the apostles and their disciples regarding God is made through their own words.

CHAPTER XVI

1. But since there are those who say that Jesus was a receptacle of Christ, into whom Christ descended from above like a dove, and since he had indicated ^C the unnameable Father, he entered into the Pleroma incomprehensibly and invisibly: (for he was not grasped by men alone, nor even by those things which are in heaven, the Powers and Virtues), and that He was indeed the Son, Jesus, but the Father was Christ, and the God of Christ was the Father; while others say he suffered putatively, existing naturally impassible; but those who are from Valentinus say that Jesus, who is from the disposition, is himself the one who passed through Mary, into whom the Savior from above descended—the one who is also called Christ, because he had the names of all those who sent him forth—but that he shared with the one who was from the disposition of his power and of his name, so that death might be rendered void through him, but the Father might be known through him. And [they say] that this Savior who descended from above, whom they also call the receptacle of Christ and of the whole Fullness—confessing one Christ Jesus with their tongue, but divided in opinion: (for this is their rule, as we have said before, that they say one Christ was sent forth from the Only-Begotten for the correction ^D of the Fullness; another Savior was sent for the glorification of the Father; and yet another [was] from the disposition, whom they also say suffered, while the Savior returned into the Pleroma, who carried Christ)—we find it necessary to adduce the entire judgment of the apostles concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, and to show that they not only thought nothing of the kind concerning Him, but further signified through the Holy Spirit those who would begin to teach such things, having submitted themselves to Satan, so that they might overturn the faith of certain ones and draw them away from life.

9. ^A And since John knew one and the same Word of God, and that this same one was the Only-Begotten, and that this same one was incarnate for our salvation, Jesus Christ our Lord, we have sufficiently demonstrated this from John’s own discourse. But Matthew also, acknowledging one and the same Jesus Christ, and expounding his generation according to man from the Virgin, just as God promised to David that he would raise up from the fruit of his belly an eternal King, having made the same promise long before to Abraham, says: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham." Then, in order to free our mind from the suspicion which is held regarding Joseph, he says: "But the generation of Christ was on this wise. When his mother was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost." ^B Then, when Joseph was thinking to put away Mary, since she was pregnant, the angel of the Lord stood by him, saying: "Fear not to take Mary thy wife: for that which is in her womb is of the Holy Ghost. She shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins." This, however, was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "Behold, a virgin shall receive in her womb, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is, God with us"; ^C manifestly signifying that the promise which had been made to the fathers was fulfilled, that the Son of God was born of a virgin, and that this same person is the Saviour Christ whom the prophets preached: and not, as they themselves say, that Jesus is indeed the one who was born of Mary, but that Christ is he who descended from above. Moreover, the Holy Spirit could have said, "But the generation of Jesus was thus," but foreseeing the depravers, and guarding against their fraud, he says through Matthew: "But the generation of Christ was on this wise"; and because this is Emmanuel, lest we should perchance think him merely a man—("for not of the will of the flesh, ^D nor of the will of man, but by the will of God was the Word made flesh")—and lest we should suspect that one was Jesus and another was Christ, but should know that it is one and the same.

3. Paul the apostle interprets this very thing, writing to the Romans: "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, predestinated unto the Gospel of God, which he promised by his prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made to him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestinated the Son of God in power, by the Spirit of sanctification from the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord." And again, writing to the Romans concerning Israel, he says: "Whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all blessed for ever." And again, in the Epistle which is to the Galatians, he says: "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem them who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption"; manifestly signifying one God, who through the prophets made the promise concerning his Son; and one Jesus Christ our Lord, who is of the seed of David according to that generation which is from Mary; this one, predestinated Son of God, Jesus Christ, in power according to the Spirit of sanctification, from the resurrection of the dead, that he might be the first-born of the dead, just as he is the first-born in all creation; the Son of God, made Son of man, that through him we might receive adoption, the man bearing, and receiving, and embracing the Son of God. For this reason Mark also says: "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets"; knowing one and the same Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was announced by the prophets, who is from the fruit of the belly of David, Emmanuel, the "messenger of the great counsel" of the Father, through whom God caused to arise for the house of David a "just Branch," and raised up for him a horn of salvation, and "raised up a testimony in Jacob," just as David causes...

^A of his generation, saying: "And he established a law in Israel, that another generation might know: the sons who will be born of them, and they themselves rising up will tell their sons, that they may place their hope in God, and seek out his precepts" (Ps. LXXVII, 5, 6, 7). And again, the angel evangelizing Mary says (Luc. I, 32): "He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord will give him the throne of David his father." He confesses that he who is the Son of the Highest, this same one is the son of David. And David, knowing the dispensation of his advent through the Spirit (53), through which he is Lord (54) of all the living and the dead, confessed him to be Lord, sitting at the right hand of the most high Father (Ps. CIX, 1).

4. And that Simeon, who had received an answer (55) from the Holy Spirit that he would not see death unless he first saw Christ Jesus, receiving this firstborn of the Virgin (56) into his hands, blessed God and said (Luc. II, 29 seqq.): "Now you dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word, in peace: because my eyes have seen your salvation: which you have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light for the revelation (57) of the Gentiles, and the glory of your people (58) Israel." Confessing that the infant Jesus, whom he carried in his hands, born of Mary, is the Christ the Son of God, the light of men (59), and the glory of Israel himself, and the peace and refreshment of those who have gone into sleep. For he was now stripping men, taking away their ignorance, and bestowing his own knowledge upon them, and making a distribution to those who knew him, just as Isaiah says (Isa. VIII, 3): "Call," he says, "his name: Quickly spoil, swiftly distribute." But these are the works of Christ. He therefore was the Christ whom Simeon, carrying him, blessed (60) the Most High; whom the shepherds, when they had seen him, glorified God; whom John, when he was still in his mother's womb, and he in the womb of Mary, knowing the Lord, saluted him while leaping; whom the magi, seeing, and adoring, and bringing gifts which we have mentioned before (Sap. c. X).

^B and laying themselves under the eternal King, having departed by another way, not now returning by the way of the Assyrians. "For before the child knows (61) to call father or mother, he will receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, against the king of the Assyrians" (Isa. VIII, 4); revealing, hidden indeed, but powerfully (62), that by a hidden (63) hand the Lord was fighting Amalek. On account of this, he also snatched away the children who were in the house of David, having been well allotted to be born at that time, that he might send them ahead into his kingdom; while he himself, being an infant, was preparing martyrs for men, on account of Christ, who was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the city of David, slaughtered according to the Scriptures.

5. On account of which the Lord said to the disciples after the resurrection (Luc. XXIV, 25, 26): "O foolish and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have spoken! Was it not fitting for Christ to suffer these things, and to enter (64) into his glory?" And he says to them again (Ibid. 44 seqq.): "These are the words which I spoke to you, when I was still with you, that it is necessary that all things be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms concerning me." Then he opened their mind, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said to them: "Because it is so written, that Christ should suffer, and rise from the dead, and that in his name should be preached remission (65) of sins unto all nations." He is the one who was born of Mary. "It behooves," he says (Marc. VIII, 31), "the Son of man to suffer many things, and to be rejected, and to be crucified, and on the third day to rise again." The Gospel does not know another son of man, except this one who is from Mary, who also suffered; nor Christ flying away from Jesus before the passion; but it knows this one who was born, Jesus Christ the Son of God, and that this same one who suffered has risen again, just as John the disciple of the Lord confirms (66), saying: "These things, however, are written, that you may believe that Jesus is (67), the Son of God, and that believing you may have eternal life (68) in his name" (Joan. XX, 31); providing (69) for these blasphemous rules, which divide...

^A the Lord, as far as they are concerned, and say he was made of one substance and another. For this reason, he has testified to us in his epistle: "Little children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, now many antichrists have arisen; whence we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but that they might be manifested, that they are not of us. Know therefore (70) that every lie is strange, and is not of the truth. Who is a liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is Antichrist."

6. But since all the aforementioned, although they confess in speech one Jesus Christ, mock themselves, since they think one thing, but say another (indeed their arguments are various, as we have shown); they proclaim that one who was born and suffered is this Christ, and that there is another of the Demiurge, (however) (71) who is from the dispensation, or one who is from Joseph, whom they argue to be passible; but the other of them they claim to have descended from the invisible and ineffable [beings], whom they confirm to be invisible, and incomprehensible, and impassible, erring from the truth, in that their opinion diverges from Him who is truly God: ^B not knowing that the Only-begotten Word of Him (72), who is ever present to the human race, united and mingled (73) with His own workmanship according to the good pleasure of the Father, and made flesh, He is the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who suffered for us, and rose again for our sake; and who is again to come in the glory of the Father, to raise up all flesh, and to show the salvation and the rule of just judgment to all who have been made under Him (74). Therefore, one is God the Father, as we have shown, and one is Christ Jesus our Lord, coming through the whole dispensation, and recapitulating all things in Himself (75). In all these things there is also man, the workmanship of God: and so He is ^C recapitulating man in Himself, the invisible become visible, and the incomprehensible become comprehensible, and the impassible become passible, and the Word become man, recapitulating all things in Himself: that just as in supercelestial, and spiritual, and invisible things the Word of God is prince, so also in visible and corporeal things He might have the primacy, taking the preeminence unto Himself, and setting Himself up as head of the Church, might draw all things unto Himself at the fitting time.

7. For nothing is unseasonable or untimely with Him, just as it is not incongruous with the Father. For all things (76) are foreknown by the Father, but are perfected by the Son, as is fitting and consequential, at the appropriate time. For this reason, when Mary was hastening to the marvelous sign of the wine, and wished before the time to partake of the compendious cup (77), the Lord repelling her untimely haste, said: "What have I to do with thee, woman? Mine hour is not yet come" (78); awaiting that hour which is foreknown by the Father. For this reason, when men often wished to apprehend Him: "No one," He says, "laid hands on Him: for the hour of His apprehension had not yet come" (78), nor the time of the passion, which had been foreknown by the Father; just as the prophet Habakkuk also says (79): "In that the years draw near, thou shalt be known; in the coming of the time, thou shalt be shown; in that my soul is troubled in wrath, thou shalt remember thy mercy." But Paul also says (80): "But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son." Through which it is manifest, that all things that were foreknown by the Father, the Lord finished in order, and at the time and hour foreknown and fitting, being one and the same, yet also rich and manifold. For He ministers to the rich and manifold will of the Father, being Himself the Savior of those who are saved, and Lord of those who are under dominion, and God of those things which are established, and the Only-begotten of the Father, and Christ who was preached, and the Word of God incarnate, when the fullness of time had come, in which it behooved the Son of Man to be made the Son of God.

8. Therefore all are outside the dispensation (79), who under the pretense of gnosticism understand one Jesus, but another Christ,

and another Only-Begotten (from whom, moreover, they say the Word is), and another Savior, whom they also say is an emission of those Aeons who were made in diminution—those who are disciples of error; who on the outside indeed are sheep (for through the speech which they have externally, they appear similar to us, saying the same things as we do), but internally are truly wolves. For their murderous opinion, while fabricating many gods and simulating many fathers, yet diminishes and through many divisions shreds the Son of God; whom the Lord also told us to beware of, and His disciple John in the aforementioned Epistle (81) commanded us to flee from, saying: "Many deceivers have gone out (83) into this world; who do not confess Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an Antichrist. Look to yourselves (83), that you may not lose what you have worked (84)." And again in the Epistle he says: "Many pseudo-prophets have gone out of the world (85). In this know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that dissolves Jesus (86) is not of God, but is of the Antichrist." Now these things are similar to that which was said in the Gospel, that "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." ^A

^B And again in the Epistle he cries out: "Every one who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God;" knowing one and the same Jesus Christ, to whom the gates of heaven were opened on account of his carnal assumption: who also in the same flesh in which he suffered will come, revealing the glory of the Father.

9. And Paul is in agreement with him. Addressing the Romans, he says: "Much more they who receive the abundance of grace and justice (88) will reign in life through one Jesus Christ." Therefore, he does not know—that fool who has flown away—another Christ than Jesus, nor does he know the Savior who is above, whom they call impassible. For if one suffered, and another remained impassible; and if one was born, but another descended into him who was born, and again left him; not one, but two are shown. But because the Apostle knew Him to be one—both he who was born and he who suffered—Christ Jesus, he says again in the same Epistle: "Do you not know, that as many as were baptized in Christ Jesus, were baptized in His death? That as Christ (89) rose from the dead, so we also should walk in newness of life." And again, signifying that Christ suffered, and that He is the Son of God, who died for us and redeemed us with His blood in the predetermined time, he says: "For why (90), when we were yet weak, did Christ die for the ungodly according to time? But God commends His love toward us, because when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us: much more, being now justified in His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved in His life." This same one who was apprehended, and suffered, and poured out His blood for us, this Christ, this Son of God, he most clearly announces, who also rose again, and was taken up into the heavens, as he himself says: ^C "But at the same time Christ died, indeed (91) and rose again, who is at the right hand of God." And again: "Knowing that Christ (92) rising from the dead, now dies no more." (For he himself, foreseeing by the Spirit the subdivisions of the evil teachers, and wishing to cut off their every occasion for dissension, says what has been said before.) "But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells (93) in you; He who raised Christ from the dead ^D will also bring to life your mortal bodies...

^A Bringing the distant tribes to unity by the Spirit, and offering the first-fruits of all nations to the Father. Whence also the Lord promised to send the Paraclete, who would fit us for God. For just as from dry wheat a single mass cannot be made without moisture, nor one loaf; so neither could we, being many, become one in Christ Jesus without the water which is from heaven. And just as parched earth, if it does not receive moisture, brings forth no fruit; so we also, being initially dry wood, would never have brought forth the fruit of life without the voluntary rain from above. For our bodies received that unity which is for incorruption through the washing, but our souls through the Spirit. Whence both are necessary, since both contribute to the life of God, our Lord having pitied the Samaritan woman, that faithless one, who did not remain content with one husband, but committed adultery in many weddings, and pointing out to her and promising the living water, lest she should thirst again or be occupied with the laborious drawing of water, having within herself a draught leaping up unto eternal life. Which gift the Lord receiving from the Father, He Himself also bestowed upon those who partake of Him, sending the Holy Spirit into all the earth.

208 CHAPTER XVII

1. They could have claimed that Christ descended into Jesus; or that the higher Savior did so, into him who is of the dispensation; or that he who is from the invisible realms did so, into him who is of the Demiurge; but they neither knew nor said anything of the kind. For if they had known and said so, it would be as they claim; but what actually was, this they also said: that the Spirit of God descended upon Him like a dove, this Spirit about whom it was said by Isaiah: "And the Spirit of God shall rest upon Him; ^B as we have said before. And again: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me." This is the Spirit, of whom the Lord says: "For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you." And again, giving to the disciples the power of regeneration into God, He said to them: "Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." For He promised by the prophets to pour Him out in the last times upon servants and handmaids, that they might prophesy: whence also He descended upon the Son of God, made the son of man, becoming accustomed to dwell with Him in the human race, and to rest in men, and to dwell in the creature of God, working the will of the Father in them, and renewing them from their oldness into the newness of Christ.

2. David sought this Spirit for the human race, saying: "And confirm me with Your principal Spirit." Regarding whom Luke says that He descended upon the disciples after the Lord's ascension at Pentecost, having power over all nations ^C for the entrance of life and the opening of the New Testament; whence also they all began to speak in every tongue, singing a hymn to God.

3. Gideon the Israelite, foreseeing the grace of this office, whom God chose to save the people of Israel from the power of the Gentiles, changed his petition, and concerning the fleece of wool, in which alone the dew had first been—which was a type of the people—he prophesied the future [spiritual] drought; that is, that they were no longer to have the Holy Spirit from God, as Isaiah says: "And I will command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it." But upon all the earth there came to be dew, which is the Spirit of God, who descended upon the Lord, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and piety, the spirit of the fear of God; which He Himself gave again to the Church, sending the Paraclete from heaven into all the earth, where the Lord says the devil was cast out as lightning. ^D Wherefore the dew of God is necessary for us, that we may not be burned up, nor become fruitless, and that where we have an accuser, there we may also have the Paraclete: the Lord commending to the Holy Spirit His own man, who had fallen into the hands of robbers, whom He Himself pitied, and bound up his wounds, giving two royal denarii, that through the Spirit, receiving the image and inscription of the Father and the Son, we may cause to bear fruit our entrusted coin.

^A For when the Spirit descended to the ordained dispensation, and the only-begotten Son of God, who is also the Word of the Father, came in the fullness of time, incarnate in man for the sake of man, and fulfilled every dispensation according to man—Jesus Christ our Lord, being one and the same, as the Lord himself testifies and the apostles confess and the prophets announce—the doctrines of all those who have invented ^B ogdoads, and tetrads, and supposed opinions were proved false, and they even devised subdivisions. For they destroy the Spirit, while they understand another Christ and another Jesus, and teach that there was not one Christ, but many; and if they say that they are united, they show again that the one participated in suffering, while the other remained impassible; and that this one ascended into the Pleroma, while the other remained in the middle; and that this one feasted and took delight in the invisible and ineffable things, while the other sat with the Demiurge, emptying him of his power. Wherefore it behooves you, and all who pay attention to this writing and are anxious for their own salvation, not to yield of your own accord when you hear their external discourses. For while they speak things similar to the faithful, as we have said, they not only think differently, but contrarily, and are through and through full of blasphemies, by which they slay those who, through the similarity of words, draw into themselves the poison of their dissimilarity of sentiment: just as one who gives plaster mixed with water instead of milk, would seduce [the drinker] by the similarity of color, as someone above said ^C of all who in any way corrupt the things of God and adulterate the truth. Into the milk of God, gypsum is evilly mixed.

CHAPTER XVIII

He returns to the argument he had taken up, and proves, both from Paul and from the words of the Lord Himself, that Christ is not to be divided from Jesus, nor was He the Son of God merely in appearance, but was truly made man.

Manifestly shown is that the Word existing in the beginning with God, through whom all things were made, and who was always present to the human race, uniting this one in these last times according to the preordained time by the Father to his own workmanship, was made a passible man; all contradiction of those who say: "If then he was born, then Christ was not before," is excluded. For we have shown that the Son of God did not then begin, existing always with the Father; but when he was incarnate and became man, he recapitulated the long exposition of men in himself, procuring for us in a compendium salvation, so that what we had lost in Adam—that is, to be according to the image and likeness of God—we might recover in Christ Jesus.

For since it was not possible for man, who had once been conquered and crushed by disobedience, to be remade and to obtain the prize of victory; and since it was again impossible that he who had fallen under sin could perceive salvation: the Son, existing as the Word of God, worked both, descending from the Father, and being incarnate, and descending even to ^D death, and consummating the dispensation of our salvation. Exhorting us to believe this without doubt, he says again: "Say not in thy heart: Who ascended into heaven? that is, to bring down Christ? Or, who descended into the abyss? that is, to liberate Christ from the dead." Then he infers: "For if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." And he rendered the reason for which the Word of God did these things, saying: "For to this end Christ both lived, and died, and rose again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living." And again, writing to the Corinthians, he says: "But we preach Christ Jesus crucified." And he infers: "The cup of blessing, which..."

we bless, is it not the ^A communion of the blood of Christ?"

3. But who is this who communicates to us of foods? Is it he who is imagined by them to be the Christ above, ^B reaching out to the end—that is, to the boundary—and who fashioned their Mother? Or is it rather he who is from the Virgin, Emmanuel, who ate butter and honey, of whom the prophet says: "And he is man, and who shall know him?" This same one was proclaimed by Paul: "For I delivered unto you first of all, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." ^C It is manifest, therefore, that Paul knows no other Christ but this one alone, who both suffered, and was buried, and rose again, and who was also born, whom he calls man. For having said: "But if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead," he adds, providing the reason for his incarnation: "For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead." And everywhere, regarding the passion of our Lord, and his humanity, and his death, he has used the name of Christ, as in the passage: "Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died." ^D And again: "But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. And again: "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written: Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." And again: "And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died," signifying that it was not an impassible Christ who descended into Jesus, but that he himself, Jesus Christ, when he was, suffered for us, who lay down and rose again, who descended and ascended, the Son of God, made Son of man: just as the name itself signifies. For in the name of Christ, there is understood he who anointed, and he who is anointed, and the very anointing in which he was anointed. And the Father indeed anointed, but the Son was anointed, in the Spirit, who is the anointing; just as the discourse says through Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me;" signifying both the anointing Father, and the anointed Son, and the anointing, which is the Spirit.

4. And the Lord himself makes manifest him who suffered. For when he had asked his disciples: "Whom do men say that the Son of man is?" and Peter had answered: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God;" and when he had been commended by him: "Because flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven," he made it manifest that this Son of man is Christ the Son of the living God. "For from that time," he says, "he began to show unto his disciples, that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be rejected, and be killed, and be raised again the third day." He himself who was acknowledged by Peter as Christ, who pronounced him blessed because the Father revealed to him the Son of the living God, said that he himself must suffer many things and be crucified: and then he rebuked Peter, who, according to the opinion of men, thought him to be the Christ, and the passion

^A of him who turned away, and said to the disciples: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his soul shall lose it; and whoever shall have lost it for my sake, shall save it.” For Christ was manifestly saying these things, existing himself as the Savior of those who, because of their confession of him, were to be delivered unto death and would lose their souls.

5. But if he himself were not to suffer, and if he were not exhorting his disciples to take up the cross and follow him—which he himself was not taking up according to them, but was leaving aside the arrangement of the passion—why then did he say this? Since he is speaking not of the recognition of a superior cross, as some dare to explain, but of the passion which he had to suffer, and which it was also going to be the lot of his disciples ^B to suffer, he added: “For whoever shall have saved his soul shall lose it; and whoever shall have lost it, shall find it.” And because his disciples were about to suffer for his sake, he said to the Jews: “Behold, I send to you prophets, and wise men, and teachers, and of these you shall kill and crucify.” And he said to his disciples: “You shall stand before leaders and kings for my sake, and they shall scourge you, and kill you, and persecute you from city to city.” He therefore knew those who were about to suffer persecution, and he also knew those who were to be scourged and killed for his sake. And it was not concerning another cross, but concerning the passion that he himself was to suffer first, and then his disciples, that his discourse was, while also exhorting them: “Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot ^C kill the soul; but rather fear him who has the power to cast both body and soul into hell”; and to preserve those confessions which were made to him. For he himself promised that he would confess before his Father those who confessed his name before men; but that he would deny those who denied him, and would put to shame those who were ashamed of his confession. And since these things are so, some have proceeded to such temerity ^D that they even despise the martyrs, and revile those who are killed for the confession of the Lord, and who sustain all the things predicted by the Lord, and according to this strive to follow the footsteps of the passion of the Lord, having become "passible" martyrs; which we also concede to the martyrs themselves. For when their blood is inquired into, and they obtain glory again, then all those who have dishonored their martyrdom will be confounded by Christ. And from this fact also, that the Lord said on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do,” the long-suffering, and patience, and mercy, and goodness of Christ are shown, in that he himself both suffered, and himself excused those who had treated him badly. For the Word of God, who said to us: “Love your enemies, and pray for those who hate you,” did this himself on the cross, so greatly loving the human race that he even interceded for those who were killing him. If, however, anyone should make a judgment about these things as if there were two distinct beings, he will be found much better, and more patient, and truly good, who is beneficent even in the very wounds and scourges and remaining things which they inflicted upon him, and is not mindful of the malice committed against him, than he who has flown away [from suffering] and has suffered no injury or reproach.

6. But this same thing also meets those who say that he suffered only in appearance. For if he did not truly suffer, there is no grace for him, since there was no passion: and we, when we begin to suffer truly, will appear to be deceived, exhorting us to be scourged and to turn the other cheek, if he himself did not first suffer that in truth; and as he seduced them, so that it appeared to them that he was that which he was not, so he also seduces us, exhorting us to endure those things which he himself did not endure. But we shall be above the master, while we suffer and sustain things which the master neither suffered nor sustained. But because our Lord alone is truly the master; and the Son of God is truly good, and patient, the Word of God became the Son of man for the Father. For he has struggled, and—

^A by his obedience, he rendered obedience: he bound the strong man, and freed the weak, and gave salvation to his own workmanship, destroying sin. For the Lord is most compassionate and merciful, and a lover of the human race.

7. He therefore joined and united, as we have said before, man to God. For if man had not conquered the enemy of man, the enemy would not have been justly conquered. And again, if God had not granted salvation, we would not have possessed it firmly. And if man had not been joined to God, he could not have shared in incorruptibility. ^B For it was fitting that the Mediator of God and of men, by his own relationship to both, should bring both to friendship and concord, making God to assume man, and man to surrender himself to God. For in what way could we be partakers of the adoption of his children, if we had not received from him that communion which is toward him through the Son; if his Word had not communicated to us, having been made flesh? Therefore he also passed through every age, ^C restoring to all that communion which is toward God. Those, therefore, who say that he was manifest only in appearance, and was not born in the flesh, nor truly made man, are still under the old condemnation, providing an advocacy for sin, because death, which "reigned from Adam unto Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression," has not been overcome in them. But the Law coming, which was given through Moses, and testifying of sin, that he is a sinner, took away its kingdom, exposing the thief and not the king, and ^D showing him to be a homicide: it burdened man, who had in himself sin, as guilty of death, showing him as it were, so that it might reveal sin, but not destroy it; for sin did not rule over the Spirit, but over man. For it was fitting that he who should begin to kill sin, and redeem man who was liable to death, should himself become what he was, that is, man: who indeed had been dragged into servitude by sin, but was held by death, so that sin might be killed by man, and man might depart from death.

As therefore by the disobedience of one man, who was the first fashioned from untouched earth, ^A many were made sinners and lost life; so it was fitting that also by the obedience of one man, who was the first to be born of a virgin, many should be justified and receive salvation. Thus, therefore, the Word of God was made man, just as Moses also says: "God, his works are true." But if he had not been made flesh, he only appeared as flesh, and it was not his true work. But what he appeared to be, that he was also; God recapitulating in himself the ancient ^B formation of man, so that he might kill sin indeed, but abolish death, and vivify man; and for this reason his works are true.

212 CHAPTER XIX

1. Again, however, those who say that he was only a man born from Joseph, and who persist in the former servitude of disobedience, die; not yet having been mixed with the Word ^C of God the Father, nor receiving liberty through the Son, as he himself says: "If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed." But those who are ignorant of him who is from the Virgin, Emmanuel, are deprived of his gift, which is eternal life: not receiving the Word of incorruption, they persist in mortal flesh, and are debtors to death, not receiving the antidote of life.

To whom the Word (49) speaks, recounting his gift of grace: ^A 'I said: You are gods, and sons of the Most High (51); but you like men shall die.' To those who do not receive the gift of adoption, but despise the incarnation of the pure generation of the Word of God, and defraud humanity of the ascent to God, and are ungrateful to the Word of God who was incarnate for them, he speaks without doubt. For this reason the Word of God became man (54), that man, receiving the Word and taking the adoption (56) (57), might become a son of God. ^B And we could not otherwise receive incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been joined to incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality, if incorruptibility and immortality had not first been made that which we are, so that what was corruptible might be absorbed by incorruptibility, and what was mortal by immortality, that we might receive the adoption of sons?

2. On account of this, his generation also is recounted (52): because 'he is a man, and who shall recognize him (59)?' But he recognizes him to whom the Father who is in heaven has revealed it, so that he may understand that he who 'was born not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man' (53), is this Christ the Son of the living God. For because no one among all the sons of Adam is called God or named Lord according to him, we have demonstrated from the Scriptures. But that he himself, properly and beyond all who were then men, is preached (60) as God, and Lord, and eternal King, and Only-begotten, and the Word incarnate by all the prophets, the apostles, and by the Spirit himself, is present for all to see who have reached even a little bit of the truth. These Scriptures would not testify of him if he had been merely a man, just like everyone else. But because he had in himself, beyond all others, the pre-eminent generation which is from the most high Father, and also partook of that pre-eminent generation which is from the Virgin, both of divine Scripture testify of him: and that he is a man 'uncomely and passible' (55), and 'sitting upon the foal of an ass' (56) (61), and is 'given vinegar and gall to drink' (57), and is despised in [the eyes of men].

^A For the people, and he descended even unto death; and because the Lord was holy, and a wonderful counselor, and comely in appearance, and was the mighty God, coming upon the clouds as judge of all, all the Scriptures prophesied concerning him. ^A 3. For just as man was, so that he might be tempted; so also was the Word, so that he might be glorified: the Word meanwhile remaining quiet, so that he could be tempted, and dishonored, and crucified, and die; but man being absorbed in that which he overcomes, and sustains, and rises again, and is assumed.

He, therefore, the Son of God, our Lord, being the Word of the Father, and the son of man: because he was from Mary, who had her descent from among men, and who was herself a human being, he had his generation according to man, and was made the son of man. On this account also our Lord himself gave us a sign in the depth, and in the height above, which man did not ask for, because he did not hope that a virgin could become pregnant, being a virgin, and bring forth a son, and that this birth was God with us, and that he descended into those things that are below the earth, seeking the sheep which had perished, which indeed was his own creation, and ascending into the height, offering and commending to the Father that man who had been found, making the first-fruits of the resurrection of man in himself: so that, just as the head rose from the dead, so also the rest of the body of every man, who is found in life, when the time of his condemnation, which was on account of disobedience, is fulfilled, might rise again, coalescing through joints and connections, and confirmed by the increase of God, each of the members having its own proper and fitting position in the body. For there are many mansions with the Father, because there are also many members in the body.

CHAPTER XX

4. God was therefore magnanimous when man was failing, foreseeing the victory which was to be rendered back to him through the Word. For when strength was being perfected in weakness, he showed forth the benignity and most magnificent power of God. For just as he patiently sustained Jonah to be swallowed by the whale, not so that he might be swallowed and perish entirely, but that, being vomited out, he might the rather be subjected to God, and might the more glorify him who had granted him life against all hope, and that he might make the Ninevites to practice firm repentance, so that they might turn to the Lord, who would deliver them from death, being terrified by that sign which had taken place concerning Jonah, just as the Scripture says concerning them: "And they returned every one from his evil way, and from the injustice which was in their hands, saying: Who knows if God will repent, and turn away his anger from us, and we shall not perish?" So, too, from the beginning, God was patient that man should be swallowed by the great whale, who was the author of the prevarication, not so that he, having been swallowed, might entirely perish, but preparing and providing the device of salvation, which was made by the Word through the sign of Jonah, for those who had the same opinion concerning the Lord as Jonah had, and who confessed, and said: "I am the servant of the Lord, and I worship the Lord God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land": ^C so that man, receiving from God salvation against all hope, might rise from the dead, and glorify God, and say that voice which was prophesied by Jonah: "I cried to the Lord my God in my tribulation, and he heard me from the belly of hell"; and might always remain, glorifying God and without ceasing rendering thanks for that salvation which he has obtained from him: so that "no flesh should glory in the sight of the Lord," nor should man ever receive a contrary opinion about God, judging that which was around him to be naturally his own property.

For it is even more ungrateful toward Him who made him, to obscure and blind his own sense, by not perceiving what is worthy of God, through comparing himself to God and judging himself equal to Him.

2. This, therefore, was the magnanimity of God, that man, passing through all things and receiving knowledge of his ways, ^B and then coming to the resurrection from the dead, and learning by experience from whence he has been delivered, should ever be grateful to the Lord, having received from Him the gift of incorruption, so that he might love Him the more (for he to whom more is forgiven, loves the more); and that he might know himself, how he is mortal and infirm, but might also understand God, how He is so immortal and powerful that He can bestow immortality upon the mortal and eternity upon the temporal; and that he might understand also all the other virtues of God displayed in himself, through which, being instructed, he might perceive how great God is. For the glory of man is God; but of God, and of all His wisdom and power, the receptacle is man. Just as a physician is proven in those who are ill, so also is God made manifest in human beings. Wherefore Paul also says, "For God has concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all" (Rom XI, 32); not saying this about spiritual Aeons, but about man who was disobedient to God and cast off from immortality, and then obtained mercy through the Son of God, which is through Him, receiving adoption. For here, holding without inflation or boasting the true glory of the things which have been made, and of Him who made them, who is the most powerful God of all, and who granted to all that they might be; and remaining in His love, and ^C subject to action, and action of thanks, he will receive greater glory from Him, receiving progress, while he becomes like Him who died for his sake; for He also was made in the likeness of the flesh of sin, so that He might condemn sin, and now, as though it were condemned, cast it out of the flesh; but might provoke man to His own likeness, assigning him to be an imitator of God, and placing him under the paternal rule, to see God; and granting the Word of God for man to receive the Father, who dwelt in man and was made the Son of man, that he might accustom man to receive God, and accustom God to dwell in man, according to the pleasure of the Father.

3. For this reason, then, the sign of our salvation, ^D who is Emmanuel from the Virgin, is the Lord Himself: for it was the Lord Himself who saved them, because they could not be saved by themselves. And for this cause Paul, announcing the infirmity of man, says, "For I know that in my flesh dwells no good thing" (Rom VII, 18); signifying that the good of our salvation is not from us, but from God. And again: "Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom VII, 24). Then he brings in the deliverer: "The grace of Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom VII, 25). This also Isaiah says: "Be strengthened," he says, "you relaxed hands and feeble knees: be exhorted, you who are faint-hearted in your sense, be strengthened, do not fear: behold, our God will recompense judgment, and will recompense: He Himself shall come and save us" (Isa XXXV, 3, 4). This, because we had to be saved not by ourselves, but by the help of God.

4. Again, because neither will a mere man be he who saves us, nor without flesh (for angels are without flesh), he preached, saying: "Neither an elder, nor an angel, but the Lord Himself shall save them, because He loves them, and will spare them; He Himself shall..."

deliver them ^A (93)." And because this same true, visible man will begin to be, since He is the saving Word, Isaiah again says: "Behold, Sion the city, our salvation, your eyes shall see (94) 52." And because it was not only a man who was dying for us, Isaiah says (95) 53: "And the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, remembered His dead who had fallen asleep in the land of the sepulcher; and He descended to them to preach the salvation that is from Him, that He might save them." The same thing is also said by the prophet Amos (96): "He Himself shall turn and have mercy upon us; He shall dissolve our iniquities, and cast our sins into the depth of the sea (97)." And again, signifying the place of His advent, he says: "The Lord has spoken out of Sion, and from Jerusalem has given His voice ^B (98) 54." And because from that part which is towards the south of the inheritance of Judah, the Son of God shall come, who is God, and who was from Bethlehem (99), where the Lord was born, He shall send forth His praise throughout all the earth (1), as the prophet Habakkuk (2) says (3): "God shall come from the South, and the Holy One from mount Ephrem. His virtue covered the heavens, and the earth is full of His praise. His Word shall go before His face, and His feet shall go forth in the plains (4) 55." Manifestly signifying that He is God, and that His advent is in Bethlehem, and from mount Ephrem, which is toward the south of the inheritance, and that He is man. "For His feet shall go forth," he says, "in the plains": this indeed is a sign proper to man.

CHAPTER XXI.

^A 1 God therefore became man, and the Lord Himself saved us, giving the sign of the Virgin. Therefore, the interpretation of certain men is not true, who dare thus to interpret the Scripture: "Behold, the young woman shall have in the womb, and shall bear a son," as Theodotion the Ephesian interpreted it, and Aquila the Pontic, both Jewish proselytes; whom the Ebionites, having followed, say that He was generated from Joseph: ^B thus dissolving as much as in them lies the dispensation of God, and making void the testimony of the prophets, which God has wrought. For it was prophesied before the transmission of the people happened to Babylon—that is, before the Medes and Persians received the principality—but it was interpreted in Greek by the Jews themselves long before the times of the advent of our Lord, so that no suspicion might remain, lest the Jews, out of a desire to please us, might have interpreted these things in such a way. For indeed, if they had known that we were to come and to use these testimonies which are from the Scriptures, they would never have hesitated to burn their own Scriptures themselves, which manifest to all the other nations that they partake of life, and that those who boast themselves to be of the house of Jacob...

^A show themselves to be disinherited of the grace of God.

2. For before the Romans possessed their kingdom, while the Macedonians still held Asia, Ptolemy, son of Lagus, being ambitious to adorn the library which he had built in Alexandria with the writings of all men, as many as were of any importance, asked the people of Jerusalem to have their Scriptures translated into the Greek language. And they—for they were still obedient to the Macedonians at that time—sent to Ptolemy seventy of their elders who were the most experienced in the Scriptures and in both languages, God bringing about that which He willed. But he, wishing to test them individually and fearing that they might perhaps conspire together and by their interpretation conceal ^B the truth that was in the Scriptures, separated them from one another and commanded them all to write the same interpretation. And this he did for all the books. But when they gathered together in one place before Ptolemy and compared each one his own interpretation, God was glorified, and the Scriptures were truly recognized as divine, since all of them had declared the same things in the same words and with the same names from beginning to end, so that even the nations present knew that the Scriptures had been interpreted through the inspiration of God. And it is not at all wonderful that God should have wrought this, He who also, in the captivity of the people under Nebuchadnezzar, when the Scriptures had been corrupted and the Jews had returned to their own land after seventy years, later, in the times of Artaxerxes King of Persia, caused Ezra ^C the priest of the tribe of Levi to record all the ancient words of the prophets and to restore to the people the law given by Moses. ^D

^C 3. Since the Scriptures are interpreted with such truth and grace from God, by which God prepared and formed our faith, which is in His Son, and preserved for us the simple Scriptures in Egypt, where the house of Jacob grew up, escaping the famine which was in Chanaan, in which also our Lord was preserved, escaping the persecution which was from Herod; and this interpretation of the Scriptures having been made before our Lord descended, and before the Christians were shown (for our Lord was born about the forty-first year of the reign of Augustus, and Ptolemy, under whom the Scriptures were interpreted, was much older); those who now wish to make other interpretations, when they are refuted by us from the very Scriptures, and are concluded into the faith of the advent of the Son of God, are shown to be truly impious and bold. For that faith is firm, and the only true one, which according to us is the faith, having ^D manifest proof from these Scriptures which were interpreted in that manner which we have described; and the preaching of the Church is without interpolation. For the apostles, since they are more ancient than all these, agree with the aforesaid interpretation, and the interpretation agrees with the tradition of the apostles. For Peter, and John, and Matthew, and Paul, and the rest in succession, and their followers, have announced all things concerning the prophets just as the interpretation of the elders contains.

4. For one and the same Spirit of God, who in the prophets indeed foretold who and what the advent of the Lord would be, and in the elders interpreted well what had been well prophesied; He Himself also in the apostles announced that the fullness of the times of adoption had come, and that the kingdom of heaven had approached, and that he dwells within the men who believe in Him, who was born of the Virgin, Emmanuel, just as they themselves testify, because before Joseph came together with Mary (she remaining therefore in virginity), she was found to have in her womb from the Holy Spirit; and because Gabriel the angel said to her: "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: therefore that which shall be born of thee shall be called holy, the Son of God"; and because the angel said in sleep to Joseph: "Now this..."

[remainder of the passage which] came to pass, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb," ^A And the elders (29) interpreted it as follows, saying that Isaiah said: "And the Lord added to speak unto Achaz: Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God in the depth below, or in the height above (30). And Achaz said: I will not ask, neither will I tempt (31) the Lord." And he said: "Is it a small thing for you to weary men, and how does the Lord provide a struggle? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall receive in the womb, and shall bear a son, and ye shall call (33) his name Emmanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat (34): before he knows or chooses the evil, he shall exchange (35) the good: for before the infant knows good or evil, he shall not consent to iniquity, that he may choose the good."

The Holy Spirit therefore diligently signified by those things which were spoken, his generation which is of the Virgin, and his substance, because he is God (for the name Emmanuel signifies this): and declares that he is man, in that which he says, "Butter and honey shall he eat"; and in that he names him an infant, and "before he knows good and evil"; for all these things are signs of a human infant. But that which he says, "he shall not consent to iniquity, to choose the good," is proper to God, so that we might not, from the fact that he shall eat (36) butter and honey, understand him to be merely a man; nor, on the other hand, because of the name Emmanuel, suspect him to be God without flesh.

^B "Hear, O house of David"; it was signifying that which God promised to David, that of the fruit of his womb he would raise up an eternal king; this is he who was born of the Virgin ^C that was of the lineage of David.

For on this account he promised that which was to be from the fruit of the womb, which was proper to the pregnant Virgin; and not from the fruit of the loins, nor from the fruit of the reins, which is proper to a man begetting, and to a woman [as] conceiving from a man. The Scripture therefore circumscribed (38) the male genitalia in the promise: nay rather, it is not even mentioned, since he who was being born was not according to the will (39) of man. But it established and confirmed the fruit of the womb, that it might announce his generation, which was to be from the Virgin, just as Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, testified, saying to Mary: "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb" (42); the Holy Spirit signifying to those willing to hear, that the promise which God promised, to raise up a king from the fruit of her womb, was fulfilled in the birth of the Virgin—that is, in the birth of Mary. Those, therefore, who pervert that which is in Isaiah, "Behold, a young woman shall conceive in the womb," and who wish it to be Joseph's son, do pervert that which is of the promise, which was placed with David where God promised him to raise up a horn from the fruit of his womb, namely the kingdom of Christ (43). But they did not understand: otherwise, they would have dared to pervert this as well.

"In the depth below, or in the height above"; ^D signifying...

^A that He who was descending was the same as He who was ascending. Moreover, in that He said: "The Lord himself shall give you a sign," He signified the unexpected nature of His generation, which could not have happened otherwise, unless the Lord God of all had Himself given the sign in the house of David. For what wonder, or what sign would have been brought about in Him, if a young girl had conceived by a man and given birth, which happens to all women who bring forth? But because an unexpected salvation was beginning to come to men, with God assisting, an unexpected birth of the Virgin took place, with God providing this sign, but not man working it.

7. ^B And for this reason Daniel also, seeing His coming, said that a stone came into this world "cut out without hands" (46) (this is what "without hands" signified); which meant that His arrival into this world was without the operation of human hands, that is, of those men who are accustomed to cut stones, that is, without Joseph's operation upon Him, but with Mary alone cooperating with the dispensation (47). For here the stone comes from the earth, consisting of the power and art of God. On this account Isaiah also says: "Thus saith the Lord: Behold, I send into the foundations of Sion (48) a precious, ^C elect, supreme, corner-stone, honorable;" so that we may understand that His coming, which is according to man, is not by the will of man, but by the will of God.

8. For this reason also, Moses, showing the type, cast his rod into the earth (49), so that, being incarnate, it might convict and absorb all the wickedness of the Egyptians, which was rising up against God's dispensation; and so that the Egyptians themselves might testify that it is the finger of God (50), which works salvation for the people, and not Joseph's son. For if He were Joseph's son, how could He be more capable than Solomon (51), or have more than Jonas, or be greater than David (52), when He was produced from the same seed and was their offspring? Why also did the blessed Peter say that he recognized Him to be the Son of the living God (53)?

9. Over and above this (54) He could not even be king, if indeed He had been the son of Joseph; nor ^D heir, according to Jeremiah (55). For Joseph is shown to be the son of Joachim and Jechonias, just as Matthew also sets forth his genealogy. But Jechonias and those from him were all cast out from the kingdom, Jeremiah saying thus: "As I live, saith the Lord, if Jechonias the son of Joachim, king of Juda, had been a signet on my right hand, I would pull him thence, and deliver him into the hand (56) of those who seek thy soul (57)." And again: "Jechonias is dishonored, like a vessel for which there is no use (58), since he has been cast into a land which he did not know. Earth, hear the word of the Lord: Write this man as an abdicated man, because he shall not prosper (59) from his seed sitting upon the throne of David, a prince in Juda (60)." And again God says concerning Joachim his father (61): "For this reason thus saith the Lord concerning Joachim his father (62), the king of Juda: For there shall not be of him one sitting upon the throne of David, and his dead body (63) shall be cast out to the heat of the day, and in the frost of the night, and I will look upon him, and upon his children, and I will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, upon the land of Juda, all the evils which I have spoken against them (64)." Those, therefore, who say that He was generated from Joseph, and have their hope in Him, make themselves cast out from the kingdom, falling under the curse and reproach that were against Jechonias and his seed (65). For it was for this reason that these things were said about Jechonias, the Spirit foreknowing the things which are spoken by false teachers: that they might learn that He will not be born from his seed—that is, from Joseph—but according to the promise of God, the eternal King is raised up from the womb of David, who recapitulates (66) all things in Himself, and has recapitulated in Himself the ancient formation.

10. For as through the disobedience of one man sin had an entrance, and through sin death prevailed; so also through the obedience of one man, justice, having been introduced, brings forth life for those men who had once been dead. And as that protoplast Adam [was made] from untilled earth and from as yet a virgin (for God had not yet rained, and man...

^A had not yet been made), and Adam was fashioned by the hand of God, that is, by the Word of God (for "all things were made by him," and the Lord took clay from the earth and fashioned man): so also, recapitulating in himself Adam, he, being the Word, rightly received generation from Mary, who was even then still a virgin, as the recapitulation of Adam.

If, therefore, the first Adam had a human father and was born of the seed of a man, they might rightly say that he was also generated from Joseph in the person of the second Adam. But if he was taken from the earth and fashioned by the Word of God, it was necessary for that same Word, in making the recapitulation of Adam in himself, to have the same likeness of generation ^B as he had. Why then did God not take clay again, but worked to have the fashioning take place from Mary? So that no other fashioning might come to be, nor another [creature] be that which was to be saved, but that it might be the very same one recapitulated, keeping the likeness.

CHAPTER XXII

1. Greatly, therefore, do they err who say that he received nothing from the Virgin, so that they may cast away the inheritance ^C of the flesh, and cast away [its] likeness. For if he, indeed, had his fashioning and substance from the earth, and by the hand and art of God, but he [the second Adam] did not have it by the hand and art of God, then he did not maintain the likeness of the man who was fashioned according to his image and likeness, and he will seem to be an inconstant piece of workmanship, not having that toward which he might show his wisdom. To say this, however, is to say that he appeared putatively as a man, when he was not a man; and that he was made a man, while assuming nothing from man. For if he did not receive from man the substance of flesh, then he was neither made a man nor the Son of Man: and if he was not made that which we were, it was no great thing that he suffered and endured. But we, since we are a body taken from the earth, and a soul receiving spirit from God, all whoever shall confess (66). ^D This, therefore, became the Word of God, recapitulating his own plasma into himself: and on account of this he confesses himself to be the [Son] of Man, and blesses the meek, "for they shall inherit the earth." And the apostle Paul, in that Epistle which is to the Galatians, manifestly states: "God sent his Son, made of a woman." And again in that which is to the Romans: "But concerning his Son," he says, "who was made from the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestined to be the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of sanctification, by the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord."

2. But his descent into Mary is also [a matter of consideration]. For why did he descend into her, if he were about to take nothing from her? Or if he had taken nothing from Mary, she would never have accepted those things which were from the earth.

And water. For these are all symbols of flesh, which was taken from the earth, which he recapitulated in himself, saving his own handiwork.

3. ^A For this reason, Luke shows that the genealogy which is from the generation of our Lord down to Adam contains seventy-two generations, joining the end to the beginning and signifying that he himself is the one who recapitulated in himself all the nations dispersed from Adam, and all tongues, and the generation of man along with Adam himself. Hence, he was even called by Paul a “type of the future” Adam, because the Word, the framer of all things, had preformed in himself the future dispensation of the human race concerning the Son of God, God preforming the first animal man, in order that he might be saved by the spiritual one. For since the one who saves pre-existed, it was necessary that what was to be saved should also come into being, so that the one who saves might not be ^B without effect.

4. Consequently, the Virgin Mary is found being obedient, saying: “Behold your handmaid, O Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.” But Eve was disobedient; ^C for she obeyed not, while yet a virgin. ^D

^A For although she had a husband, Adam, she was still a virgin (for they were both naked in paradise, and were not ashamed, since, having been created but a little while, they had no understanding of the generation of children; for it was necessary that they should first grow up, and then multiply), having become disobedient, she was made the cause of death both to herself and to the entire human race; so also did Mary, having a man betrothed to her, and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, become the cause of salvation both to herself and to the entire human race. And on account of this the law terms her who was betrothed to a man, even if she is still a virgin, his wife, signaling the recirculation from Mary to Eve; because that which is tied cannot be untied otherwise, unless the very knots of the bond be turned back; so that the first conjunctions are untied by the second, and the second, in turn, release the first. And it happens that the first bond is untied by the second bond, and the second bond ^B takes the place of the first solution. And for this reason the Lord said that the first shall be last, and the last first. And the Prophet also signifies this same thing, saying: “Instead of your fathers, sons have been born to you.” For the Lord, having been born the First-born of the dead, and receiving into His own bosom the ancient fathers, regenerated them into the life of God, having Himself become the beginning of the living, just as Adam became the beginning of the dying. For this reason also Luke, beginning the genealogy from the Lord, referred it back to Adam, signifying that they did not regenerate Him into the Gospel of life, but He them. Thus also the knot of Eve’s disobedience received its solution through the obedience of Mary. For what has been bound…

CHAPTER XXIII

^C He contends against Tatian that it was consistent with divine equity and mercy that Adam should be the first of all to receive salvation from Christ.

1. It was necessary, therefore, that the Lord, coming to the lost sheep, and making a recapitulation of such a great disposition, and seeking out His own workmanship, should save that very man who had been made according to His image and likeness, that is, Adam, fulfilling the times of his condemnation, which had been brought about on account of disobedience, which the Father had placed in His own power; since the entire disposition of salvation which concerned man was taking place according to the good pleasure of the Father, so that God might not be conquered, nor His craft be weakened. For if he who had been made by God to live, this one, losing life, having been injured by the serpent who had corrupted him, should no longer return to life, but should be cast utterly to death; God would have been defeated, and the malice of the serpent would have surpassed the will of God. But since God is unconquered and magnanimous, He indeed showed Himself magnanimous for the correction of man and the probation of all, as we have previously stated; but through the second man He bound the strong one, and plundered his vessels, and emptied out death, vivifying him the man who had been deadened. For the first vessel of his possession was Adam, whom he also held under his power, this is to say, bringing the prevarication iniquitously upon him, and through the opportunity of immortality, causing death in him. For promising them that they would be as gods (which is not at all possible for him), he caused death in them: whence he was also justly recaptured by God, he who had led man captive.

2. ^A This Adam, however—if one must speak the truth—is that primal man of whom the Scripture says the Lord spoke: "Let us make man in our image and likeness" (Gen. i, 26). But we are all from him; and because we are from him, we have therefore also inherited the appellation of him. But when man is saved, it is necessary that he who was formed first as man should be saved. For it is utterly irrational to say that he who was vehemently wounded by the Enemy and who first suffered captivity is not rescued by Him who has conquered the enemy, while his sons, whom he begat in that same captivity, are rescued. Nor will the conquered enemy still appear to be in control, with the old spoils remaining in his possession. Just as if enemies should conquer certain men and lead them away as captives, holding them in servitude for a long time so that they groan under them, and someone, grieving for those who have been made slaves, should conquer those same enemies: he would not act justly if he were to free some of those who had been led captive from the power of those who had led their fathers into servitude, but were to leave those very ones who had endured the captivity subject to the enemies for whose sake he had also accomplished the protection; having granted freedom to the sons by reason of a paternal claim, but not having left the fathers themselves, who endured the captivity, to their fate. For God is neither infirm nor unjust, who has succoured man, and restored him to his own freedom.

3. Because of this, even at the beginning of the transgression of Adam, ^B as the Scripture narrates, He did not curse Adam himself, but the earth in his works, just as one of the ancients says: that God transferred the curse onto the earth, so that it might not remain ^C in man. But man received the condemnation of transgression as a captive. Man received weariness and earthly labor, and to eat bread in the sweat of his face, and to return into the earth from which he was taken; and in like manner the woman received weariness, and labors, and groans, and the sorrows of childbirth, and servitude—that is, that she should serve her husband: so that neither should they perish entirely, being cursed by God, nor, remaining without correction, should they contemn God. But all the curse descends upon the serpent, who had seduced them. "And God said," it says, "to the serpent: Because you have done this, you are cursed among all cattle (Gen. iii, 14), and among all the beasts of the earth." This same thing, moreover, the Lord also says in the Gospel to those who are found on the left: "Depart, you cursed, into the eternal fire, which my Father prepared (Matt. xxv, 41) for the devil and his angels"; signifying that eternal fire was not prepared primarily for man, but for him who seduced him and caused man to offend, and, I say, for those who became princes of apostasy together with him: which fire those will also justly receive who, in like manner to them, persist in the works of malice without repentance and without return.

4. Just as Cain, ^D having accepted counsel from God, that he should be quiet in himself—because he had not correctly divided that which concerned his brother's communication, but had suspected with zeal and malice that he could have dominion over him—not only did not acquiesce, but even added sin upon sin, manifesting his intent through his own operation. For what he pondered, that he also performed; he held dominion, and he killed him, God having subjected the just to the unjust, so that the one, from those things which he suffered, might be shown to be just; while the other, through those things which he committed, might be exposed as unjust. And not even so was he mitigated, nor did he rest after the evil deed; but being questioned as to where

is his brother? "I know not," he says; "am I my brother's keeper?" ^A thus extending and multiplying the evil through his response. For if it is an evil to kill one’s brother, it is much worse to answer thus boldly and irreverently to God who knows all things, as if one could frustrate Him. On this account he himself also bore the curse, because he took the sin upon himself, neither reverencing God nor being confounded by his fratricide ^A.

5. Regarding Adam, however, nothing of the sort occurred, but all was to the contrary. For having been seduced by another under the pretext of immortality, he is immediately seized by fear and hides himself: not as if he could escape God, but because he was confounded, since, having transgressed His commandment, he was unworthy to come into the presence and discourse of God. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning ^B of wisdom," but the understanding of his transgression brought forth repentance: and to those who repent, God bestows His own kindness. For through his brevity in the act he showed his repentance, covering himself with fig leaves, there being many other leaves available which would have been less bothersome to his body; yet he made a garment appropriate to his disobedience, terrified by the fear of God. And, repressing the petulance of his flesh, since he had lost his childhood nature and sense, and had come into the thought of worse things, he provided a bridle of continence for himself and his wife, fearing God and awaiting His arrival, and signifying something like this: "Since," he says, "I have lost through disobedience the robe of holiness which I had from the Spirit, I now acknowledge that I am worthy of such a covering, which affords no pleasure, but bites and pricks the body." And this garment he clearly would have kept always, humbling himself, had not the Lord, who is merciful, clothed them with skins of animals in place of the fig leaves. For this reason also He questions them, so that the accusation might come to the woman; and He questions her in turn, so that she might transmit the cause ^C to the serpent. For she said what had happened: "The serpent," she says, "beguiled me, and I ate."

But He did not cross-examine the serpent; for He knew it was the author of the transgression: but He first cast the curse upon it, so that a second reprimand might come upon man. For God hated him who seduced man; but the one who was seduced He gradually and by degrees had mercy upon. He exiled him from the tree of life—not grudging him the tree of life, as some dare to say, but taking pity on him, so that he might not remain a transgressor forever; nor should that sin which was around him be immortal, and the evil interminable and incurable. For He checked his transgression by introducing death, and making sin to cease, bringing an end to it through the dissolution of the flesh, which would occur in the earth, so that man, ceasing at some point to live in sin, and dying to it, might begin to live to God.

7. Therefore He placed enmity between the serpent and the woman, and their seed, watching one another: the one indeed whose heel was bitten, ^D and who had the power to tread upon the head of the enemy; the other truly biting, and killing, and waylaying the entry of man, until the seed comes that is predestined to tread upon his head, which was the offspring of Mary, of whom the Prophet says: "You shall walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and you shall trample the lion and the dragon," signifying that that sin which was being erected and dilated against man, and rendered him cold, would be evacuated when death reigned; and that the lion that was springing upon the human race would be crushed by Him in the last times—this is the Antichrist. And He binds that dragon, the ancient serpent, and subjects him to the power of man, who had been conquered, in order to tread upon all his power. Adam had been conquered, all life being taken away from him: for this reason, the enemy being conquered again, Adam received life; "the last enemy," moreover, "is destroyed, death," which had first possessed man. Therefore, man being liberated, "it comes to pass as it is written: Death is swallowed up in victory; O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?"

8. Therefore, all who contradict his salvation lie, always excluding themselves from life, in that they do not believe that the sheep which was lost has been found. But if it has not been found, the entire generation of man is still held in perdition. Liar, therefore, is he who first introduced this doctrine, nay rather this ignorance and blindness, namely Tatian; who became a connector of all heretics, as we have shown: this, however, he invented of himself, so that by bringing in some new thing beyond the others, speaking vanity, he might prepare for himself hearers void of faith, seeking to be esteemed as a teacher, attempting and ever using those things spoken assiduously by Paul: "For in Adam all die"; but ignoring that "where sin abounded, grace did superabound." Having shown this manifestly, let all those who are from him be ashamed, and let them contend about Adam, as if they gain some great thing if he is not saved, when they profit nothing; just as the serpent gained nothing by persuading man, except for the fact that it showed him to be a transgressor, having as the beginning and matter of its apostasy man; yet it did not overcome God. So too, those who contradict the salvation of Adam profit nothing, except in this, that they make themselves heretics and apostates of the truth, and show themselves to be advocates of the serpent and of death. ^B

CHAPTER XXIV

He summarizes what he has discussed so far against the various impieties of the Gnostics. But to those who are fluctuating in every wind of doctrine, he opposes the one, and to himself always and everywhere constant, doctrine of the Church.

1. It is therefore necessary for all who have brought in wicked sentiments about our Creator and Maker, who also fashioned this world, above whom there is no other God; and by these very ^C demonstrations ^D overthrowing those who teach falsely concerning the substance of our Lord, and concerning the dispensation which He made for the sake of His man; and having their testimony from the prophets and apostles, and from all the disciples, as we have shown through the beginnings, and intermediate stages, and end, and through the entire dispensation of God, and that which is according to the salvation of man is the customary activity, which is in our faith; which, having received from the Church, we guard, and which always, by the Spirit of God, like a precious deposit in a good vessel, is made young and makes young the very vessel in which it is. For this gift of God has been entrusted to the Church, just as the inspiration 223 was entrusted to the creation, to the end that all members receiving life might be vivified; and in it is disposed the communion of Christ, that is, the Holy Spirit, the earnest of incorruption, and the confirmation of our faith, and the ladder of ascent to God. "For in the Church," he says, "God hath set apostles, prophets, doctors," and all the rest of the activity of the Spirit: of which all those are not partakers who do not run to the Church, but defraud themselves of life through their evil opinion and wicked activity. For where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there the Church is, and every grace: but the Spirit is truth. Wherefore those who do not partake of Him, neither are nourished into life from the breasts of the mother, nor do they receive from the most clear fountain proceeding from the body of Christ: but they dig for themselves broken cisterns.

fleeing from the faith of the Church lest they be confuted, and rejecting the Spirit so that they may not be instructed.

2. But those who are alienated from the truth are deservedly tossed about in every error, led astray by it, thinking differently at different times about the same things, and never possessing a settled firm opinion; wishing rather to be sophists of words than disciples of the truth. For they are not founded upon the one rock, but upon sand, which has within itself many stones. On account of this they also fashion many gods, and while they always have in their excuse that they are seeking—for they are blind—they can never find. For they blaspheme the Maker, that is, him who is truly God, who also provides that he may be found; thinking that they have discovered another God above God, or another Plenitude, or another Dispensation. Wherefore also the light that is from God does not shine upon them, because they have dishonored and spurned God, deeming him of little account, because through his love and immense kindness he has come into the knowledge of men: (into knowledge, however, not according to his magnitude, nor according to his substance; for no one has measured it, nor has any man grasped it; but according to this, that we might know that he who created, and fashioned, and breathed into them the inspiration of life, and nurtures us through the creation, confirming all things by his Word, and binding together all things by his Wisdom, is the one who is the only true God); but as for him who is not, dreaming of him above this one, so that they may be thought to have discovered a great God, whom no one can know as communicating with the human race, nor as administering earthly things: having found, in other words, an Epicurean God, bestowing nothing upon himself or upon others, that is, possessing no providence.

CAPUT XXV.

^A Ruling this world through the providence of one God who is endowed at the same time with infinite justice, so that he may punish the wicked, and with goodness, so that he may benefit the pious and bestow salvation.

1. But God possesses providence over all things, and for this reason he gives counsel; and he who gives counsel is present to those who possess a care for their morals. It is necessary, therefore, that those things which are provided for and governed should recognize their director; which things are not irrational nor vain, but possess a sensitivity of perception regarding the providence of God. And on account of this, certain of the heathens, who served less the enticements and pleasures, and were not so much ^B led astray by the superstition of idols, were moved by his providence, and although only slightly, yet they were converted, so as to call the Maker of this universe the Father of all, providing for and disposing the world according to us.

2. Again, they bring against the Father an accusing and judicial quality, thinking it unworthy of God, and, deeming that they have discovered a God who is without anger and is good, they have said that one acts as judge and another as savior; not knowing, they take away the sense and justice of both. For if the judicial one is not also good, so as to reward those to whom he ought, and to reproach those to whom he ought, he will appear as neither a just nor a wise judge. Again, if the good one is only good, he is not a probator, into whom he might infuse goodness; he will be outside of justice and goodness, and his goodness will be seen as infirm, not saving everyone, since it is done without judgment.

3. Marcion, therefore, dividing God into two, and calling one good and the other judicial, destroys God from both. For he who is judicial, if he is not also good, is not God, because there is no God to whom goodness is lacking: and that one, in turn, ^C of created things. For the ancients are witnesses that Epicurus fashioned such a God—Clement of Alexandria, Theophilus, Justin, Lactantius, Laertius, Plutarch, and Cicero. Tertullian also, in book IV, calls the God whom Marcion fashioned an Epicurean God. And in book I, he calls Epicurus the counselor of Marcion.

^A if He is good, yet not judicial, He is the same as the one who suffers this, so that He would be removed and not be God. But how can they call the Father of all things wise, if they do not also assign to Him a judicial nature? For if He is wise, He is also a prover; but to a prover belongs a judicial quality; a judicial quality is accompanied by justice, so that He may justly prove; justice provokes judgment; judgment, when it is practiced [(51)] with justice, leads on to wisdom. Therefore, the Father excels all human and angelic wisdom in wisdom, since He is Lord, and judge, and just, and ruler over all. For He is also good, and merciful, and patient, and saves whom He ought: nor is the good in Him deficient of a just effect [(52)], nor is His wisdom diminished; for He saves those whom He ought to save, and judges those who are worthy of judgment: nor is the Just One shown to be cruel, since goodness [(53)] precedes Him.

^B For God, being benign, and sending rain upon the just and the unjust, will judge those who, having equally received His kindness, have not lived in a manner corresponding to His bestowal [(54)] of reward; but have engaged in delights and luxuries, contrary to His benevolence, and furthermore blaspheming Him, who has bestowed such great benefits upon them.

5. [(55)] To whom Plato is shown to be more religious, who confessed the same God both just and good, having power over all, Himself performing judgment, saying thus: "And God indeed, as the ancient saying is, having the beginning, and [the] end, and the midpoints of all things that are, fulfills them, proceeding according to nature: and justice, the avenger of those who fall away from the divine law, always follows Him." ^C And again, he shows the maker and fabricator of this universe to be good. "For the good," he says [(56)], "hopes that there is no envy in anyone towards anyone": making this the beginning and cause of the creation of the world, [namely] the goodness of God; and not ignorance, nor the Aeon who wandered, nor the fruit of sorrows, nor the Mother weeping and lamenting, nor another God, or Father.

6. But just as the Mother, such are her ^D exciters and inventors: for they have pondered things worthy of themselves, and they have devised [(57)] them upon their own heads, since their Mother is outside the Fullness—that is, outside the knowledge of God—and their collection was formed as an abortion, unformed and without shape: for it apprehended nothing of the truth; it fell into a vacuum and into a shadow; for their doctrine is empty and darkened; and Horus did not permit it to enter into the Pleroma; for the Spirit did not receive them into refreshment. For their Father, begetting ignorance [(58)], wrought the passions of death within them. We do not defame these things, but they themselves confirm them, they themselves teach them, they glory in them, and they think something lofty of the Mother, whom they say was begotten without a father, that is, without God, female from female, which is corruption from error.

7. But we pray that they may not persist in the pit which they themselves have dug, but be separated from this...

from the Mother, and to depart from the Depth, and to withdraw from the emptiness, and to leave behind the Shadow, and to be legitimately begotten, to be turned toward the Church of God, to have Christ formed in them, and to know Him who is the fabricator and maker of this universe as the only true God and Lord of all. We pray thus for them, loving them more usefully than they think they love themselves. For the love that comes from us, since it is true, is salutary for them, if indeed they receive it. For it is like an austere medicine, consuming the corrupt and superfluous ^A part of the wound. Therefore, attempting with all our strength to reach out a hand to them, we shall not grow weary. We shall, moreover, in the following book, add the Lord’s sayings to what has been said, if by them we might be able to convince those who are of this party by the very doctrine of Christ, to persuade them to cease from such error and to desist from that blasphemy which is against their own maker, who is also the only God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

ANALYSIS OF THE FOURTH BOOK

225 Just as our author in the previous book had refuted the errors of the heretics by the sentiments of the apostles, as he puts it, so in this book he declares that the same are to be refuted by the sayings of Christ himself. Therefore, at the beginning he lays down a firm and fixed principle: that no one is called God by Christ except His own Father. And he makes it clear first that he proves this not only from the New, but also from the Old Testament, stating that the scriptures of Moses are the words of Christ, and that all the prophets poured forth their oracles by the holy inspiration of the divine Word, and wrote their own books, epistles, and commentaries. From here he runs out into the open field of demonstrating the truth, and proves from the words of Christ himself, and indeed from those of Moses and Isaiah, that there is one only God, the creator of the whole world ^B. Then he excellently repels certain weapons, brandished with a weak arm by the adversaries from the future end of the world and the destruction of Jerusalem.

Another argument, and one which he presses more sharply, he draws from the fact that Christ, by showing Himself to be seen by the ancient patriarchs and prophets and by speaking with them, clearly made manifest to them the divinity of one God, His Father. Nor do the objections brought by the heretics concerning the words of Christ, "No one knows the Father except the Son, etc." — by which they used to argue that the Father was unknown to all before Christ's own birth — delay our author in the slightest. For he shows that both the reading and the meaning of this passage in its true sense make for his own side. He then confirms his assertion with other apparitions of Christ the Lord, in which He was seen by Moses, Aaron, and most especially by Abraham. From these he refutes the Marcionites, who excluded this same Abraham from the salvation imparted through Christ, and shows that Christ existed as the vindicator and savior both of Abraham and of his seed, namely, the faithful.

Following this, he asserts against the same heretics that Christ indeed fulfilled the law of Moses, but did not dissolve it; and that the Old Testament, just like the New, is the work of one and the same God. Hence he rightly concludes for his purpose that the same Father is announced by Christ through Moses and the prophets in the Old and New Testaments. This he wondrously confirms by the scope and end of both Testaments, by the traditions and customs reprobated by Christ as repugnant to the Old, and by the law of loving God, which is established in both but extended and amplified in the New. When the heretics objected that many things in the Old Covenant were contrary to the New, he replies to this argument at length, and shows why God imposed the Mosaic law upon the Israelites—the yoke and chains of which He henceforth took away—and why He willed that victims be offered by them, just as the eucharistic sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ is offered by Christians; which he proves is offered to God as a true and pure sacrifice with simplicity and justice in the Catholic Church alone.

After these things, he proves by various places of Holy Scripture that it is altogether absurd and foolish to search for another beside the one God, whether it be Bythos, or Pleroma, or the Aeons. For although He cannot be comprehended by us, we nevertheless easily know Him from the creation of the world, which He founded through the Word and the Holy Spirit. And to the foundation of this truth he adds the authority of the Shepherd or Hermas. But because the heretics obstinately denied that the Son of God had appeared to the prophets, he refutes this by a threefold argument which is derived from their own visions, words, and reasonings. Indeed, he demonstrates that the same prophets spoke by His inspiration.

From this doctrine he wisely gathers that the discourse in the prophecies of the same prophets is about Christ; and that the faith of Abraham and our own was one and the same, which the ancient patriarchs ^C prefigured in many ways by both words and deeds, preparing for their descendants the way to faith in Christ. But since every prophecy, before it attains its outcome, is obscure, he concludes from this that Christ lay hidden in them like a treasure in a field. Wherefore, in order that He might be known, he most clearly proves that one must have recourse to the tradition of the elders, who learned the true senses of Scripture from the apostles. Prudently, therefore, he counsels that to those alone to whom the deposit of the Christian faith had been entrusted—the bishops, who trace their succession from the apostles—the faith is to be held, and that with them, and along with the apostle himself, the public profession of one God is to be received by all. And when the heretics attacked this with various objections, he reviews them one by one, and with the solid [authority] of the elder...

of a certain individual who had often disputed against them, providing for the most part responses, and he weakens and thoroughly dilutes them. All of these things he confirms by the authority of the apostles, by which the two Testaments, the Old and the New, are invincibly asserted to have proceeded from one and the same God. But he who holds a firm faith in these, he says, will certainly judge everything: the nations, the Jews, the Marcionites who deny that Christ was a man, the Valentinians who dream vain things about the Pleroma and the emissions of their Aeons; he will judge also the Gnostics and the Ebionites who preached Christ as mere man, and others who preached him only as phantom and simulation, and finally the false prophets, and all schismatics and heretics.

But, continues Irenaeus, the true knowledge of Christian doctrine is to be sought from the traditions of the Church, which alone has always had its martyrs. The types and figures of these are the ancient prophets, by whom the persecutions of the righteous were not only foretold, but one and the same Christ was predicted, though in various ways. For which reason he not only corrects the Marcionites and other heretics, who say that the prophets were from another God, but thoroughly uproots their vain arguments. Nor with less force does he strike at the Valentinians, who contended that the Holy Scriptures proceeded either from the highest, or from the middle Pleroma, or even from the creator of the world, from whom they imagined the prophets were sent. But all Catholics, our author adds, affirm with great consensus that all things were created by one and the same God, who truly sent the prophets. This he proves not only from the parables, but from the very words of Christ the Lord.

From these he overthrows their opinion, who claimed that some are good by nature, while others are evil. But that he may satisfy their arguments, he explains lucidly why angels and humans were not of such perfection from the beginning of their creation that they could no longer sin. Yet, the learned man says, human infirmity is not therefore to be cast back upon God. For man, since he was created free, is himself the author of his own good and evil; and for that reason he is justly and deservedly afflicted by God with either punishments or rewards. Therefore, it is one and the same God who decrees all these things for humans, as is clear from the parable of the tares. Finally, he discusses why the impious are called children of the devil: and after he has set forth the argument of the following book, he puts a finishing touch upon this book.

BOOK FOUR. PREFACE. 227

1. Sending to you, my dearest, this fourth book of the work regarding the detection and overthrow of false knowledge, as we promised, we shall confirm what we have foretold through the words of the Lord: so that you, as you have requested, may receive from us on all sides occasions for refuting all heretics, and, having thoroughly quelled them, may not allow them to proceed further into the deep of error, nor be choked in the sea of ignorance; but by converting them into the harbor of truth, may cause them to perceive their own salvation.

2. But he who wishes to convert them must diligently know their rules or arguments. For it is not possible for anyone to cure those who are ailing, who is ignorant of the condition of those who are unwell. Therefore, those who were before us, and indeed were much better than us, were yet not able sufficiently to contradict those who are of Valentinus, because they were ignorant of their rule, which we have handed down to you in the first book with all diligence; in which we also showed their doctrine to be a recapitulation of all heretics. Wherefore, in the second, as a mirror, we held them up to the view ^A of destruction. For those who contradict these in the way they ought, contradict all those who are of an evil mindset; and those who overthrow them ^B, overthrow every heresy.

3. For above everything is the blasphemy of their own rule: since they say that the maker and fashioner, who is one God, according to what we have shown, was emitted from a defect or deviation. They blaspheme also against our Lord, cutting and dividing Jesus from Christ, and Christ from the Savior, and the Savior again from the Word, and the Word from the Only-Begotten. And just as they say the fashioner was emitted from a defect or deviation, so too they have taught that Christ and the Holy Spirit were emitted on account of the defect, and that the Savior was a fructification from those Aeons who were emitted ^C from the defect; so that there is nothing among them without blasphemy. In that book, therefore, which is before this one, the opinion of the apostles regarding all these things has been shown, that not only did they feel no such things, they who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers ^D of the word of truth; but they also preached to us to flee such opinions, 228 in the Spirit foreseeing those who were about to seduce the simpler ones.