Chapter 18

§ 1.

Of the Creation, then, they so speak; and daily each one of them generates something new, as he is able. For none is perfect, unless he have borne fruit of some great fictions among them. Next I must state what passages out of the Prophetic writings they distort, and subjoin the refutation thereof. Thus, Moses, say they, beginning his treatise of the Creation, presently at the outset points out the Mother of all,¹ saying, In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. By naming therefore these four, God, and the Beginning, Heaven, and Earth, he draws, as they say, the form of their Quaternion. And that to signify the invisible and occult nature of it he says,² But the earth was invisible and unformed. And the second Quaternion, the progeny of the first, they will have him to have thus expressed, by mentioning the deep and darkness, in them also water, and the Spirit borne upon the water. After which he, meaning the the Decad,³ speaks, they say, of Light, and Day, and Night, and the Firmament, and Evening,⁴ and what is called Morning,⁵ and dry land and sea, moreover also the Herb and in the tenth place the Wood:⁶ thus by the ten names signifying the ten Æons. And in like manner the virtue of the Twelve they say is imaged out in his writings: in his mention of the sun and moon and of the stars, and times and years, of whales and fishes and creeping things, of birds and quadrupeds and wild beasts, and after all these the twelfth which is Man. Thus, say they, the Thirty are expressed by the Spirit through Moses. Yea further, that the Man who was moulded after the image of the higher Virtue, hath in him the virtue derived from that one Fountain: and that it is situated in the region of the brain, out of which flow four virtues, after the image of the supreme quaternion called, the first Sight, the next Hearing, the third Smell, and the fourth Taste. And the Ogdoad they say is indicated by the Man as follows; by his having two organs of hearing and as many of sight, moreover two of smelling, and a double taste, of the bitter and sweet. And the whole man they teach hath in the following manner the whole image of the thirty.⁷ First in his hands by his fingers he bears the ten, then in his whole body divided into twelve members, the twelve:⁸ now they divide it as the body of Truth is divided among them, concerning which we have before spoken. And as to the Ogdoad, unspeakable and invisible as it is, they say it is understood to be hidden in the bowels.

§ 2.

And the Sun again, the great light, they say was made on the fourth day because of the number of the four.⁹ And of the Tabernacle framed by Moses,¹⁰ the courts being made of fine linen and blue and purple and scarlet, exhibited in their account the same image. And the Priest’s long robe, adorned with four rows of precious stones,¹¹ they define to mean the Tetrad. And whatever such things are found in the Scriptures capable of being brought to the number four, they say were made such because of the Quaternion. And that the Ogdoad again is thus indicated: In the eighth day they say Man was formed, for sometimes they say he had his beginning on the sixth and sometimes on the eighth (except they will tell us that the earthly Man was formed on the sixth day, and the carnal on the eighth, for they make a distinction of these two): and some say that there was a difference between the man made after the image and likeness of God, both male and female (who is also the spiritual man), and him who was formed out of the Earth.

§ 3.

And the dispensation too of the Ark in the Deluge, wherein eight men were saved,¹² they say most evidently indicates the saving Ogdoad;¹³ and the same also David signifies, being eighth in birth among his brethren. Yea, and Circumcision too,¹⁴ taking place on the eighth day, points out the circumcising of the Ogdoad on high. And in a word, whatsoever things are found in the Scriptures reducible to the number eight, they say, fulfil the mystery of the Ogdoad.¹⁵ Also that the Decad is meant by the ten nations which God promised to give Abraham for a possession: and the Œconomy too about Sarah,¹⁶ how after ten years she gives him her own handmaid Hagar, to raise himself up children by her, they say declares the same. The Servant again of Abraham sent after Rebecca,¹⁷ and his gift to her at the well of bracelets with ten pieces of gold,¹⁸ and her brethren detaining her ten days;¹⁹ moreover also Jeroboam who takes the ten tribal sceptres, and the ten curtains of the Tabernacle,²⁰ and the pillars of ten cubits,²¹ and the ten sons of Jacob, sent first to Egypt to buy corn,²² and the ten Apostles to whom the Lord manifests Himself after His resurrection,²³ Thomas not being present;—were types according to them of the Invisible Ten.

§ 4.

But as to the number twelve, in which they say the mysterious Passion of Defect took place, from which Passion they will have all things visible to have been framed: they say it occurs everywhere in a marked and evident manner: as the twelve sons of Jacob, of whom are the twelve tribes;²⁴ and the oracle of embroidered work having twelve stones,²⁵ and the twelve bells,²⁶ and the twelve stones placed by Moses under the mountain:²⁷ and in like manner too those placed by Joshua in the river, and others on the opposite side,²⁸ and those who bear the Ark of the Covenant,²⁹ and those set by Elias in the whole burnt-offering of the bullock; and the number too of the Apostles: and all things in short, as many as keep the number twelve, they say denote their Dodecad. But the uniting of all these³⁰ which is named the Thirty, they eagerly and disputatiously exhibit by the Ark under Noe,³¹ thirty cubits high; and by Samuel causing Saul to sit down first among the thirty guests;³² and by David, when for thirty days he was hidden in the field;³³ and by those who went with him into the cave;³⁴ and by the length of the holy tabernacle having been thirty cubits;³⁵ and by whatsoever other things they find equal in number to these.