Chapter 21

§ 1.

But if they say that the twelve Apostles are the type of that emanation only, of twelve Æons, which proceeded from the Man and the Church;¹ let them for a type of the other ten Æons, who, as they say, were produced by the Word and the Life, exhibit to us some other Apostles, to the number of ten. For it were unreasonable that while those Æons which are younger, and so far inferior, are indicated by the Saviour in His Election of the Apostles, those who are elder and therefore better, should want the like previous indication of themselves: whereas the Saviour (if He at all chose the Apostles with the view of indicating by them the Æons which are in the Pleroma) might choose some other ten also for Apostles, and before them again eight others, by way of indicating that principal and first Ogdoad, by the number of His Apostles, thus made typical² × × × × ×. For after the twelve Apostles our Lord, we find, sent seventy others before Himself:³ but seventy cannot be the type either of eight, or of ten, or of thirty. What then is the reason, that while the inferior Æons, as I said before, are indicated by the Apostles, the better sort, out of whom these were themselves made, have nothing to prefigure them? Yea, and if the twelve Apostles were therefore elected, that by them the number of the twelve Æons might be signified; the seventy also ought to have been elected for a figure of some seventy Æons: let them accordingly say that the Æons have arrived at the number not of thirty but of eighty two. For He Who makes His Election of Apostles after the pattern of the Æons in the Pleroma, would never do so in the case of some but not of others, but through the whole company of Apostles would have endeavoured to keep the image and exhibit the type of the Æons who are in the Pleroma.

§ 2.

But neither must we be silent concerning Paul,⁴ but must get them to tell us, of which of the Æons that Apostle was set forth to us for a type: except you will say, It was the Saviour they talk of, as a compounded Being, who is made up of a gathering from all, whom also they denominate All, because he is made up of all. Of whom Hesiod also, the Poet, hath given a brilliant description, naming him Pandora, i.e., the Gift of all, because all of them lodged in him the best thing they had to give. In which history this is the course of things: “Hermes (so the Greek words run) established within them words of craft and a guileful temper,” to seduce the foolish among men and make them believe their devices. For their mother, i.e., Latona, secretly stirred them up (whence also she was called Leto according to the signification of the Greek word, from her secretly moving men) to utter, without the knowledge of the Creator, deep mysteries and unspeakable to men who had itching ears. And not by Hesiod only did their mother contrive that this mystery should be uttered, but also by Pindar the Lyric Poet, very cleverly, to hide it from the Creator, in the case of Pelops, whose flesh was cut in pieces by his father, and gathered up from all the gods and brought together, and reconstructed. In this way she signified Pandora. And from this their mother those hardened persons deriving the same statements as the Greeks, are of the same sort and spirit as they.