Valentinus

But those from Valentinus, assigning faith to us, the simple, but knowledge to themselves, wish it to be inherent, by the advantage of a superior seed, in those who are saved by nature — knowledge far separated from faith, as they say the spiritual is from the natural.

And Valentinus too, in a certain letter, seems to have had such things in mind, writing in these very words:

But Valentinus too, writing to certain ones, says in these very words concerning the appendages:

More honest and more generous was Valentinus, who at one stroke dared to conceive two, Bythos and Sige, until he poured forth the swarm of his divinity in a brood of thirty Aeons, like the sow of Aeneas.

But if both divine authority and the nature of things and common wisdom do not admit the heretical insanity, there is occasion here too of interposing most briefly concerning the substance of the body, against the phantoms of Marcion.

To this let him answer who shall think that I am introducing some probolē — that is, a bringing forth of one thing out of another, as Valentinus does, producing one Aeon after another from an Aeon.

when another god is set up against the Creator, as with Marcion, and the many gods of the followers of Valentinus and Prodicus — then there is an overthrow of the monarchy, when there is a destruction of the Creator.

Such a monarchy they have perhaps learned from Valentinus, to make two — Jesus and Christ.

This is to paint a mule from an ass, and to delineate Ptolemy from Valentinus.

Valentinus had hoped for the bishopric, because he was powerful both in talent and in eloquence.

Moreover, the face of God is awaited in simplicity of seeking, as that very Wisdom teaches—not, indeed, the wisdom of Valentinus, but of Solomon.

as those would have it who decree that the mind is even the mover of the universe — that god of Socrates, that Only-begotten of Valentinus from the Father ‘Nous’ and the mother ‘Truth.

The school of Valentinus stuffs into the soul the seed of Sophia, through which they recognize the histories and Milesian tales of their Aeons out of the images of visible things.

As if, by that same heretical licence, he could not himself have either admitted the flesh and denied the birth, like Apelles his disciple and afterwards his deserter, or, confessing both flesh and birth, interpreted them otherwise, like Valentinus, his fellow-disciple and fellow-deserter.

It was permitted to Valentinus too, by heretical privilege, to invent for Christ a spiritual flesh.

For us too the psalms shall be patrons to this effect — not, indeed, those of the apostate and heretic and Platonist Valentinus, but of the most holy and most received prophet David.

And therefore, compelled to dispose of Christ in another way lest He be reckoned the Creator's, they first went astray about His very flesh, contending either that it is no true flesh at all (as Marcion and Basilides hold) or that it is of a peculiar quality (as the heresies of Valentinus and Apelles hold).

Marcion to be raised up for Valentinus?

But Valentinus too proposes, "Seek, and you shall find.

Thence the aeons, and I know not what infinite forms, and the trinity of man, in Valentinus:

Where then was Valentinus, the follower of the Platonic sect?

But who is so reckless as now to renew, through sophistical phrases and a supposed witness from the Scriptures, the doctrine of Valentinus, long ago silenced?

Forsooth, when souls have departed from their bodies, and through the several stories of the heavens have begun to be examined concerning their reception, and questioned about those secret sacred mysteries of the heretics, then it must be confessed before the true powers and the true men — Teleti, forsooth, and Abascanti and Acineti of Valentinus.

But if even then a Prodicus or a Valentinus had stood by, suggesting that confession is not to be made on earth before men — nay, that God does not thirst for human blood, nor Christ demand a return of suffering, as though he too were to obtain salvation out of it — he would at once have heard from the servant of God what the devil heard from the Lord: