§ 1.
Wherefore the Deep which they talk of is a thing incongruous1; as is also this man’s2 Pleroma, and Marcion’s God:3 if at least, as they say, it hath without itself somewhat which is a base to it, which they call Void, and Shadow: and this void is proved greater than their Pleroma. And this statement again is incongruous—that while it contains all within itself, yet something else was the artificer of the Creation. For they must necessarily confess that there is something void and without form, wherein was made this now existing Universe, beneath the spiritual Pleroma: and that this space without form, was left by him on purpose, the First Father either knowing or not knowing what would take place in it. And if indeed He was ignorant, God will of course not have foresight of all things. Yea, and they will have no cause to assign, why He left this space for so many ages unemployed. But if He foreknow, and did mentally consider the creation which was to be in that space, He Himself made it, forming it as He did beforehand within Himself.
§ 2.
Let them cease therefore to say, that the world was made by another:4 for at one and the same moment did God conceive it in His mind, and that was wrought which He had mentally conceived. It not being even possible for one to conceive in his mind and for another to make what the first had so conceived. But God conceived the world in the way supposed by these Heretics, either eternal, or temporal: both of which is incredible. If however He had conceived it in His mind to be Eternal and spiritual, and an object of contemplation, such also would it have been made. But being such as it is, the Being Who made it such was of course the same Who had conceived it such in His mind. Or with the cognizance of the Father that Being willed it to exist according to the said mental idea, both compounded, and changeable, and transitory: and that being such as the Father had sketched out within Himself, it should be a work worthy of the Father. Now that which was mentally conceived by the Father of all, and formed before, as it was also made, to call this the fruit of defect, and an emanation from ignorance, is a word of great blasphemy. For according to them we shall have the Father of all, in the Idea of His own mind within His own bosom, giving birth to emanations from defect and fruits of ignorance; for such as He had conceived things in His mind, such also were they made.