Chapter 14

§ 1.

Much more naturally and more elegantly concerning the origin of all things spake one of the old Comic Poets, Antiphanes in his Theogony.¹ For he said that of Night and Silence Chaos was produced, then from Chaos and Night, Desire, and from this Light, then in order the rest of that family of the gods, which is first in his account. After these again he brings in a minor generation of gods, and construction of the world; next from the minor gods he relates the formation of men. From this they have adopted their legend and have made it out as in a sort of phycal exposition, changing only the names of the Beings, but setting forth the very same origin and way of production for the generation of all. For Night and Silence, they use the names Bythus and Sige; for Chaos, Mind; and for Desire (by which, saith the Comic Poet, all things are ordered), these men have brought in the Word; and for the first and chiefest gods, they have formed Æons; and for the minor gods, they tell of that Œconomy of their Mother’s which is without the Pleroma, calling it the second Ogdoad; from which they relate, as he did, the making of the world and the moulding of men, professing to be alone aware of certain unspeakable and unknown mysteries. What Actors every where in theatres recite as actors in the most ornamented tones, that they transfer to their own subject: or rather they teach by the very same arguments, altering nothing but the names.

§ 2.

And not only are they convicted of bringing forward as their own the statements of the Comic Poets,² but also whatever is said among all who know not God, and who are called Philosophers, that they collect, and stitching it together like patchwork of many and very bad morsels of cloth, have contrived themselves a feigned cloke by their subtle talk: introducing a learning which is new, inasmuch as it is but now put in place of another by a new stroke of art; but which is also old and useless, seeing that these same additional bits are made up of old dogmas, smelling rank of ignorance and irreligion. Thales for instance, the Milesian, said that water is the origin and beginning of all things. But it is all one to say Water, and The Deep. The Poet Homer again hath laid it down that Ocean is the originator of the gods, and Thetis their Mother: which very saying these have transferred to the Deep and Silence. And Anaximander hath supposed for the beginning of all, Infinite Space, having in itself seminally the origin of all; of which space, he says, immeasurable worlds are made: and this too they have transferred to their Deep and Æons. And Anaxagoras, who was also surnamed the Atheist, taught for doctrine that animals were made by the seeds of them falling from Heaven to Earth: a thing which these too have transferred to the offspring of their Mother, and say that they are themselves this offspring: thus at once owning in the sight of sensible persons, that themselves are the very seeds of the irreligious Anaxagoras.

§ 3.

But as to the Shadow and Void which they speak of, they took it from Democritus and Epicurus,³ and adapted it to themselves, those Philosophers having in the first place discoursed much of a Vacuum, and of Atoms: the one of which they said was something, while the other they called that which is not: much as these men proclaim those things to be, which are within the Pleroma, as those the Atoms, and those not to be, which are without the Pleroma, as those the Void. Themselves therefore in this world, being without the Pleroma, they have placed by conjecture in the place of non-existence. And as to their affirming that things here are the images of real Beings, again most evidently they set forth the opinion of Democritus and Plato. For Democritus first says, that many and various figures, copied from the Universe, descended into this world. But Plato again speaks of Matter and the Archetype, and God. And they, following them, have styled his Ideas and his Archetype, Images of the things on high: under this change of name boasting themselves to be inventors and framers of the aforesaid imaginary fiction.

§ 4.

Again, their saying that the Fabricator made the world of pre-existing matter,⁴ had been said before them by Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Plato: who, as of course we are to understand, were themselves also inspired by those Men’s Mother. Moreover, that of necessity each thing withdraws itself towards the materials out of which by their account it was made, and that God is the slave of this Necessity, so that He cannot add immortality to the mortal, nor bestow incorruption on the corruptible, but that every person retires⁵ into that substance which is akin to his own nature: this both they affirm, who from the Porch are called Stoics, and all as many as know not God, whether Poets or other writers. Who cherishing the same temper of unbelief,⁶ have assigned to them that are spiritual their proper country, that which is within the Pleroma; to the merely animal, the middle space; and to the corporeal, that which is earthly; and that beyond these limits they say God hath no power, but that each of the aforesaid kinds of persons must retire towards the portions of the same substance with himself.

§ 5.

Again, whereas they say that our Saviour was made of all Æons,⁷ all depositing in Him (so to speak) the flower of their being: they bring nothing new, in addition to Hesiod’s Pandora. For what Hesiod says of her, these imply concerning our Saviour, bringing Him in for a kind of Pandorus, as though each one of the Æons had bestowed on Him the best thing he had. And even their indiscriminate opinion concerning meats and other actions, and their notion that nothing at all can pollute them because of their high origin, eat they or do what they will, these things they have inherited⁸ from the Cynics, being of one and the same league with them. And frivolous talk, and subtilty of disputation, being of Aristotelian origin, they try to bring into the Faith.

§ 6.

But as to their notion of translating this whole world into certain numbers, they took it from the Pythagoreans.⁹ For these laid down numbers as the first principle of all things, having again as their own principle the Even and the Odd; out of which they framed by conjecture both sensible things and things beyond sense. And the one set they said were principles in the way of furnishing matter, the other in the way of Thought and real essence; out of which as original elements they say all is made up, as a statue of its metal and mouldings. And this they applied to all things without the Pleroma. Now by Principles in the way of Thought they meant, in whatsoever cases the mind, taking note of the object which was first received into it, goes on seeking until wearied out it terminate in some one indivisible thing. Moreover, the beginning of all, they say, and the substance of all productive power, is the Unit, i.e., One; and after this the Duad and the Tetrad and the Pentad, and the manifold origination of the rest. All this, word for word, our men say of their Fulness and Deep. Whence also they strive to introduce their combinations which proceed out of absolute Unity; all which Mark boasting as his own, thought he had discovered as something rather new, apart from others, while he was setting forth Pythagoras’ way of producing the number Four as the origin and mother of all things.

§ 7.

And we shall say in reply to them,¹⁰ Whether did all these before-mentioned, with whose sayings yours are proved identical, know the truth, or not know it? Since if they knew it, the descent of the Saviour into this world was superfluous. For to what end did He come down? To bring that truth which was already known within the cognizance of the persons who know it? If on the other hand they knew it not, how is it that ye, saying the same as these who knew not the Truth, boast that ye alone have the knowledge which is above all, which knowledge they also have, who are ignorant of God? By a sort of ironical contradiction, then, they call ignorance of the Truth, Knowledge:¹¹ and well saith Paul, “Novelties in words belonging to a false kind of knowledge.” For their knowledge is indeed found false. But if they shamelessly rejoin hereto, That men indeed knew not the truth, but that their Mother, or the Seed of the Father, did by such men also, as also by the Prophets, declare the mysteries of the Truth, the Framer of the World knowing nothing of it; I answer, first, That the aforesaid statements were not such as to be understood by no one: for the men themselves knew what they said, and their disciples, and the successors of these. And secondly, be it either mother or offspring, if they knew and declared the sayings of Truth, and the Father is Truth, then the Saviour, according to them will have lied in saying,¹² No man hath known the Father but the Son. For if He was known either by the Mother, or by her seed, that saying, That no man hath known the Father but the Son, is refuted: except they say that their seed or their Mother is No man.

§ 8.

Now thus far, by impressions usual with men,¹³ and by statements akin to those of many who know not God, there has been a seeming plausibility in their mode of drawing off certain persons; they entice them, by means to which they have been used, to their mode of discourse on all subjects; setting forth a certain origin for God’s word and for Life, doing moreover a midwife’s part to the productions of Mind, and of God. But in what follows, without plausibility, and without proof, they have uttered all lies from all quarters. Like those who, to take some animal, throw out the usual baits and means of allurement, gently enticing it by its wonted kinds of food, until they take it; but once having made them captive, bind them with all bitterness, and lead and drag them off by force at their own will; even so do these; gradually and gently persuading men by plausible discourse to adopt the aforesaid [doctrine of] emanation, they make inferences not at all consistent, other kinds of emanations, for which the mind was unprepared. For first they speak of ten Æons emanating from the Word and from Life, then of twelve from the Man and the Church. I say having neither demonstration for all this, nor testimonies nor probability nor any such thing at all, but just simply and at random they would have you believe them, that of the Word and Life, being Æons, emanated The Profound and Commixture, The Undecaying and Union, The Natural [or Self-Originated] and Pleasure, The Unmoved and Incorporation, The Only-Begotten and the Blessed One. And that from the Man and the Church being in like manner Æons, emanated The Comforter and Faith, The Paternal One and Hope, The Maternal One and Love, The Ever-Intelligent and Understanding, The Ecclesiastical One and Blessedness, The Desired and Wisdom.

§ 9.

But what they say as to the passions and wandering of this last,¹⁴ Wisdom, and how she was in danger of perishing through her search of the Father, and her doings without the pleroma, and from what kind of decay they say the Framer of the World emanated, we have expounded with all diligence in the former book, setting forth the opinions of the Heretics: about Christ also, or the Saviour whose emanation they say was by birth after all these; or, that he had his being from the Æons who fell into decay. Nor could we avoid reciting those names, thereby to manifest their absurd falsehood, and the confusion of their arbitrary nomenclature—yea, they themselves disparage their Æons by many of these their titles; while the Gentiles give probable and credible names to those who are termed their twelve gods:—whom indeed they will have to be also Images of the twelve Æons, whereas the names of the images are far the more apt and powerful of the two, being such as by their etymology they may connect with some divine association.