Book 4

1.1. It seems right, I think, to treat next of martyrdom, and who the perfect man is; in which discussion there will be included, as the demands of what we are to say require, the things that go along with these, and how one must philosophize alike whether one be a slave or free, and whether one's kind be man or woman. And next, having more fully completed the discussion concerning faith and concerning inquiry, we shall set out the symbolic form, so that, having concluded the ethical discourse as in a rapid survey, we may present summarily the benefit that passed over to the Greeks from the barbarian philosophy. After this sketch will be delivered the setting forth, by way of epitome, of the Scriptures, both against the Greeks and against the Jews; and all that, in the Stromateis before this, we had purposed, at the very entry of the preface, to complete in a single notebook, but which, being of necessity in bondage to the multitude of matters, we could not encompass.

1.2. After this, when the sketch concerning the matters before us has been completed as fully as possible, we must give a full account of what has been treated, concerning first principles, in natural philosophy by the Greeks and the other barbarians, whose opinions have come down to us, and we must take in hand the most authoritative of the things devised by the philosophers. Following upon these, it would be fitting, after the survey of theology, to treat of the things handed down concerning prophecy; so that, having shown that the Scriptures in which we have believed are authoritative by the authority of the Almighty, we may be able to proceed through them in due connection, and from this point to show, against all the heresies, one God and Lord Almighty, who was genuinely proclaimed through the law and the prophets, and besides through the blessed gospel. And many controversies against the heterodox await us, as we attempt both to resolve in writing the things they bring forward, and to persuade them even against their will, convicting them out of the Scriptures themselves.

1.3. When, then, our whole purpose has been completed, in those notebooks in which, if the Spirit will, we serve the pressing need (for great is the necessity of the things that must be said first concerning the truth), then indeed we shall pursue the truly gnostic natural philosophy, being initiated into the lesser mysteries before the greater, so that nothing may stand in the way of the truly divine teaching of holy things, the things that must be related and handed down beforehand having been already purified and prefigured. Now the natural philosophy, or rather the contemplation, according to the rule of the truth of the gnostic tradition, hangs upon the discussion concerning cosmogony, ascending from there to the theological kind. Hence with good reason we shall make the beginning of the tradition from the prophesied generation, setting down in part the doctrines of the heterodox too, and trying as far as we are able to resolve them. But this shall be written, if God will and as He inspires; for the present we must pass on to what lies before us, and complete the ethical discourse.

2.4. Let our notebooks, as we have often said, on account of those who read them carelessly and without skill, be variously, as the name itself indicates, spread out like a patchwork, passing continually from one thing to another, and indicating one thing by the connection of words while pointing to something else. For those who seek gold, says Heraclitus, dig up much earth and find little; but those who are truly of the golden kind, mining what is akin to them, will find the much in the little; for the Scripture will find one man who understands it. The Stromateis of these notebooks aid both toward recollection and toward the manifestation of the truth, for the man able to inquire with reason. And we too must work further at these and find out other things besides, since, for those going on a road they do not know, it is enough merely to point out the way that leads there;

2.5. and after this, one must already walk on, and find out for oneself the rest of the way—just as, they say, when a certain man who once had a slave asked what he might do to please his master, the Pythia answered, "You will find if you seek." It is truly hard, it seems, to find out a good that is hidden, since the sweat of virtue is set before us, and

long and steep is the path to her, and rough at first; but when one reaches the summit, then it is easy, hard though it was before.

For truly narrow and pressed is the way of the Lord, and the kingdom of God is for those who use force; whence He says, "Seek, and you shall find," holding to the truly royal road and not running off from it.

2.6. With good reason, then, much is the fertile power in the small seed of the doctrines contained in this work, like "the all-herb of the field," as the Scripture says. Hence the Stromateis of these notebooks bear an apt title, plainly culled like that ancient offering of which Sophocles writes:

For there was wool of sheep, and there was from the vine a libation and a grape well stored away, and there was within all kinds of fruit mixed with barley-grains, and the fatness of olive-oil, and the most varied wax-fashioned work of the yellow bee.

2.7. So our Stromateis, like the farmer in Timocles the comic poet, yield as revenue

figs, olive-oil, dried figs, honey,

as from an all-bearing plot. For which good harvest he adds:

You are speaking of a harvest-wreath, not of farming.

For the Athenians used to cry out:

The harvest-wreath bears figs and rich loaves, and honey in a cup, and oil to anoint oneself.

We must, then, often, as in winnowing-fans, shake and toss the mixture of seeds, and pick out the wheat.

3.8. Now the many have a disposition like the condition of a stormy season, unsettled and unreasoning.

Many good things has unbelief done, and faith evil things.

And Epicharmus says, "Remember to be distrustful: these are the joints of the mind." So then, to distrust the truth brings death, as to believe brings life; but, on the contrary, to believe falsehood and to distrust the truth drags one down to destruction. The same account holds of continence and incontinence. For to be continent toward good works is the work of vice; but to abstain from injustice is the beginning of salvation. So the Sabbath, by abstinence from evils, seems to me to hint at continence, and at what it is by which man differs from beasts. And again, the angels of God are wiser than this: "You made him a little lower," it says, "than the angels"—for they do not take the Scripture as referring to the Lord (and yet He too bore flesh), but to the perfect and gnostic man, who is made lower than the angels in respect of time and of his clothing. I say, then, that wisdom is something other than knowledge, since it does not differ from life; for the common possession of mortal nature—that is, of man—with the being deemed worthy of immortality is life, the habit of contemplation and of continence being what differs.

3.9. So Pythagoras too seems to me to say that God alone is wise (since the apostle in the epistle to the Romans writes: "made known unto the obedience of faith to all the nations, to the only wise God through Jesus Christ"), and that he himself, on account of his friendship toward God, is a philosopher. "God conversed with Moses," it says, "as a friend with a friend." Now the truth is plain to God. He, then, at once begets truth; and the gnostic loves truth. "Go to the ant, O sluggard," says Solomon, "and become a disciple of the bee." For if the proper work of each thing according to its own nature is one, both of the ox and likewise of the horse and of the dog, what shall we say is the proper work of man? He seems to me like a centaur, a Thessalian fiction, composed of a rational and an irrational part, of soul and body; but the body works the earth and hastens toward the earth, while the soul is stretched out toward God—the soul that, educated through true philosophy, hastens toward its kindred above, having turned away from the desires of the body, and from these toward toil and fear too; although we have shown that endurance and fear are good. For if through the law comes the knowledge of sin, as those who run down the law say, and "until the law sin was in the world," yet "apart from the law sin is dead," we answer them. For when you take away the cause of fear, which is sin, you have taken away fear, and much more punishment, when that which is by nature given to desire is absent; "for the law is not laid down for the righteous," the Scripture says.

3.10. Well, then, does Heraclitus say, "They would not have known the name of justice if these things did not exist"; and Socrates, that the law would not have come into being for the sake of the good. But the accusers did not even know this, that, as the apostle says, "he who loves his neighbour works no evil; for 'You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal,' and if there is any other commandment, are summed up in this one saying, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.'" So, then, "You shall love the Lord your God," it says, "with your whole heart, and your neighbour as yourself." If, then, he who loves his neighbour works no evil, and every commandment is summed up in this, in loving one's neighbour, the commandments that hang fear over us produce love, not hatred.

3.11. Fear, then, of which the law is the begetter, is not a passion. So the law is holy and truly spiritual, according to the apostle. We must, it seems, having inquired curiously into the nature of the body and the substance of the soul, grasp the end of each, and not regard death as evil. For "when you were slaves of sin," says the apostle, "you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit, then, did you have at that time? The things of which you are now ashamed; for the end of those things is death. But now, having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

3.12. It seems, then, to have been shown that death is the communion of the soul, while sinful, with the body, and life is the separation from sin. But many are the stakes and trenches of desire at our feet, the pits of wrath and passion, which the man who is no longer to behold the knowledge of God through a mirror must leap over, and flee from every dismantling of the plots laid for him;

for far-seeing Zeus takes away half of a man's virtue, when the day of slavery comes upon him.

And the Scripture knows as slaves those who are under sin and sold to sins, the lovers of pleasure and lovers of the body, and as beasts rather than men those who have been made like the cattle, "horses mad for the female, neighing after their neighbours' wives"; the licentious man is an insolent ass, the covetous a savage wolf, and the deceiver a serpent. So the separation of the soul from the body, practised throughout life by the philosopher, fashions in him a gnostic readiness easily to bear the death of nature, which is the loosing of the bonds of the soul toward the body. For "to me the world has been crucified, and I to the world," he says; "and I now live, though in the flesh, as one whose citizenship is in heaven."

4.13. Hence with good reason the gnostic, when called, obeys readily, and to the one who asks for his poor body he hands it over willingly, and his passions too, stripping these off beforehand from his fleshly frame, not insulting the tempter but, I think, instructing and convicting him:

from what honour and what length of bliss,

as Empedocles says, having come hither, he dwells among mortals. This man truly bears witness for himself that he is a genuine believer toward God; and for the tempter, that he has striven in vain against the man faithful through love; and to the Lord, his god-given persuasion toward the teaching, from which he will not depart through fear of death. Indeed, he confirms by deed the truth of the preaching, showing that the God toward whom he hastens is able. You would wonder at his love, which he plainly teaches as he is united thankfully to what is akin to him; and moreover he abashes the unbelievers by his precious blood.

4.14. This man, then, will not, out of fear, turn aside from denying Christ for the sake of the commandment, so as to become a martyr through fear; nor again, selling his faith in hope of rewards prepared, but out of love toward the Lord he will most gladly be released from this life—giving thanks, perhaps, both to the one who furnished the cause of his departure hence and to the one who contrived the plot, since he has received a reasonable pretext, which he did not himself supply, of showing himself for what he is: to the one through endurance, but to the Lord through love, by which he was already shown forth to the Lord, who knew, even before his birth, the purpose of the one who would bear witness. Taking courage, then, he goes to the Lord as to a friend, for whom he has willingly given up his body, and besides, as the judges expected, his soul too; having heard, in the words of the poet, "dear brother" from our Saviour, on account of the likeness of his life. So at once we call martyrdom "perfection," not because the man received the end of his life as the rest do, but because he displayed a perfect work of love. And the men of old among the Greeks too praise the death of those who died in war—not counselling a violent death, but because the man who dies in war is released, free from fear of dying, cut off from the body, having neither toiled beforehand in soul nor grown soft, as men do in their sicknesses; for they pass away made womanish and yearning for life.

4.15. For this reason they do not even release the soul pure, but carrying with itself the desires like leaden weights—unless some of these have become noteworthy for virtue. And there are those too who die in war along with their desires, and these are in no way different than if they had withered away in sickness. If, then, confession toward God is martyrdom, every soul that has lived purely with the knowledge of God, that has obeyed the commandments, is a martyr both in life and in word, however it is released from the body—pouring out faith like blood throughout the whole of life, and at its departure too. For at once the Lord says in the gospel: "Whoever shall leave father or mother or brothers," and so on, "for the sake of the gospel and my name, is blessed"—indicating not the simple martyrdom but the gnostic one, of the man who has conducted himself according to the rule of the gospel through love toward the Lord. For the knowledge of the name and the understanding of the gospel signify knowledge, not the bare appellation . . . to leave behind the worldly kindred, and to leave behind substance and all possession, in order to live without passionate attachment. For the fatherland and nurse are allegorized as the mother, and fathers as the civic laws; which the high-minded righteous man must thankfully despise, for the sake of becoming a friend of God and attaining the right-hand portions of the sanctuary, as the apostles too did.

4.16. Then Heraclitus says, "Gods and men honour those slain in war"; and Plato writes in the fifth book of the Republic: "Of those who have died on campaign, whoever ends his life having earned a good name—shall we not first say that he is of the golden kind? Most certainly." And the golden kind is among the gods in heaven and the fixed sphere, who chiefly have the leadership of providence over men. But some of the heretics, having misheard the Lord, impiously and at the same time cowardly love life, saying that the true martyrdom is the knowledge of the truly existent God—which we too confess—but that the man who confesses through death is a murderer and a slayer of himself, and bringing forward other such sophisms of cowardice. To these we shall speak when the occasion demands; for they differ from us about first principles.

4.17. But we too blame those who leap upon death; for there are some, not ours, partners only in the name, who hasten to give themselves up out of hatred toward the Demiurge, the wretches, with a death-wish. These, we say, take themselves off as no martyrs, even if they are publicly punished. For they do not preserve the character of the faithful man's martyrdom, not having known the truly existent God, but give themselves over to an empty death, just as the gymnosophists of the Indians give themselves to a vain fire. But since these falsely-named men slander the body, let them learn that the good proportion of the body too contributes to the mind toward good natural endowment.

4.18. For this reason Plato said in the third book of the Republic—he whom they most invoke as their witness in disparaging generation—that one must care for the body for the sake of the soul's harmony, through which it is possible to live and to live rightly, proclaiming the message of the truth; for it is by living and through health that we make our way and learn knowledge. But for the man to whom it is not even possible to come a little way up to the heights without being among the necessities and through them doing all that conduces to knowledge—how is the good life not to be chosen by him? In living, then, the good life is set right, and the man who through the body has practised good living is sent forward into the habit of eternity.

5.19. It is worth wondering at the Stoics too, certain of whom say that the soul is not at all affected by the body—neither toward vice by sickness nor toward virtue by health—but that both these things are indifferent. And yet Job too, by surpassing continence and excellence of faith, having become poor from rich, dishonoured from honoured, ugly from comely, and sick from healthy, is set down for us as a good example, abashing the tempter, blessing his Maker, bearing the latter state as he had borne the former, teaching very well that the gnostic can in all circumstances make good use of them. And that the right deeds of old are set forth as images for our own correction, the apostle shows when he says: "So that my bonds became manifest in Christ in the whole praetorium and to all the rest, and that the more of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my bonds, are far more bold to speak the word of God fearlessly," since the martyrdoms too are gloriously sanctified examples of conversion. "For whatever was written," he says, "was written for our instruction, that through the endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have the hope of encouragement."

5.20. The soul, when pain is present, seems somehow to incline away from it and to count precious release from the present suffering. Indeed, at such a time it grows slack toward learning, when the other virtues too are neglected. And we do not, of course, say that virtue itself suffers (for virtue does not fall sick), but that the man who has shared in both, virtue and sickness, is pressed by what bears down on him; and unless he should be high-minded, the man who has not yet acquired the habit of continence is unsettled, and is found to be on a par—since not to endure is the same as to flee.

5.21. The same account holds of poverty too, since this also forces the soul away from what is necessary—I mean from contemplation and pure freedom from sin—compelling the man who has not wholly dedicated himself to God through love to spend his time on the getting of provisions; just as, on the contrary, health and abundance of necessities keep the soul free and unhindered, the soul that knows how to make good use of what is present. "For such men will have affliction in the flesh," says the apostle, "but I spare you; for I wish you to be without anxiety, for what is seemly and waits well upon the Lord without distraction."

5.22. These things, then, are to be held to, not for their own sake but for the sake of the body, and the care of the body is for the sake of the soul, to which the reference is made. For in this the man who conducts himself in a gnostic way must of necessity learn what is fitting, since it has been agreed that pleasure is not the good, from the fact that some pleasures are bad. And next, if we choose some pleasures and flee others, not every pleasure is good. The same account holds likewise of pains, of which we endure some and flee others, and the choice and avoidance come about according to knowledge; so that knowledge is the good, not pleasure—on account of which we shall sometimes even choose a particular pleasure.

5.23. So at once the martyr chooses the pleasure that comes through hope, through the present pain. But if pain is conceived in connection with thirst, and pleasure in connection with drinking, then the pre-existing pain becomes productive of the pleasure; and evil could not be productive of good, so neither of them is evil. Simonides, then, like Aristotle, writes:

To be healthy is best for a man,

and:

second, to be born comely in form, third, to be rich without deceit.

And Theognis of Megara:

One must flee poverty, even into the deep-monstered sea to hurl oneself, Cyrnus, and down the sheer rocks.

But on the contrary Antiphanes the comic poet says: "Wealth, taking men who see more than the other, makes them blind."

5.24. So at once by the poets a man is proclaimed blind from birth:

And she bore him a son, who never saw the cock,

says Euphorion the Chalcidian.

It was then a bad education for manliness— wealth for men, and excessive luxuries,

Euripides has written in the Alexander. And it has been said:

Poverty obtained wisdom, because of their kinship.

And:

The love of money would take not Sparta only, but every city.

It is not, then, only white silver or gold that is currency, but virtue too for mortals,

as Sophocles says.

6.25. Our holy Saviour ranked both poverty and wealth, and the like, in the realm of the spiritual and of the perceptible alike; for in saying, "Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness," He plainly teaches us to seek the martyr in every circumstance. He who is poor for the sake of righteousness bears witness that the righteousness which he loved is good; and he who hungers or thirsts for the sake of righteousness bears witness that righteousness is the best thing.

6.26. Likewise too the man who weeps and mourns for the sake of righteousness bears witness that the best law is good. As, then, He calls those who have been persecuted blessed, so too those who hunger and thirst for the sake of righteousness—He who accepts the genuine longing, which not even hunger had power to break off. And if they hunger after righteousness itself, they are blessed; and blessed too are the poor, whether in spirit or in substance, for the sake of righteousness, that is plain. So then it is not simply the poor, but those who have willed to become poor for the sake of righteousness, whom He counts blessed—those who have looked down on the honours here for the sake of acquiring the good; and likewise the noble in character and in body through purity, and the well-born and renowned, those who through righteousness have pressed on into adoption and through this have received authority to become children of God, and to walk upon serpents and scorpions, and to have lordship over demons too and over the army of the adversary.

6.27. And in general the Lord's discipline leads the soul away from the body thankfully, if indeed the soul itself draws itself off by transposition. For "he who finds his soul shall lose it, and he who loses it shall find it," if only we cast our perishable part upon the incorruption of God. Now the will of God is the knowledge of God, which is the communion of incorruption. He, then, who recognizes, according to the doctrine of repentance, that his soul is sinful, will lose it to the sin from which it has been drawn off, but having lost it he will find it, according to the obedience that lives again to faith but has died to sin. This, then, is to find the soul—to know oneself.

6.28. The turning toward divine things the Stoics say comes about from a change, the soul changing into wisdom; but Plato, by the soul's taking a turning toward the better and a conversion from a kind of nocturnal day. And at once the philosophers too concede a reasonable departure from life to the earnest man, if something should so deprive him of action that there is no longer left to him even the hope of action. But the judge who has forced a man to deny the one he loves seems to me to test who is a friend of God and who is not. Here no comparison is any longer left—which one might rather choose, a human threat or the love of God; and somehow the abstinence from evil deeds is found to be a diminution and quenching of vices, the activity of them being taken away through inaction. And this is, "Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and come, follow me"—that is, follow the things spoken by the Lord.

6.29. Some say that He meant by "possessions" the things in the soul that are alien to it; and how these are distributed to the poor, they cannot say. But God distributes all things to all according to merit, the dispensation being just. "Despising, then," He says, "the possessions which God distributes, through your greatness of soul, follow the things spoken by me," hastening toward the ascent of the spirit, justified not by abstinence from evils alone, but moreover perfected by doing the Lord's good. So at once He convicted the man who boasted of having perfectly fulfilled the commands from the law of not having loved his neighbour; and love, which is lord of the Sabbath by a gnostic ascent, professes beneficence. And one ought, I think, to have come to the saving word neither from fear of punishment nor through any promises of a gift, but for the sake of the good itself.

6.30. Such men stand at the right hand of the sanctuary; but those who think to exchange the things of incorruption through the giving of corruptible things are called, in the parable of the two brothers, "hired servants." And does not here too the "according to the likeness" and "image" come to the surface, so that some live as fellow-citizens according to the likeness toward the Saviour, while those standing on the left live according to the image of these? . . . There are, then, three things from the truth, the one root being laid under both, but the choice not equal—or rather the difference according to the choice not equal. For it differs, I think, to choose according to imitation from one who chooses according to knowledge, as the thing made fiery and the thing illumined differ from the fire and the light. So Israel is the light of the likeness according to the Scripture, but the other is the image. And what does the parable of Lazarus mean to the Lord, showing the image of a rich man and a poor man? And what is "No one can serve two masters, God and mammon"—the Lord so naming the love of money?

6.31. So at once, at the call to the supper, the lovers of possessions, though invited, do not come—not because of possessing, but because of possessing with passionate attachment. "The foxes, then, have holes." He called the malicious and earth-born men, those who spend their time about the wealth that is mined and dug out of the ground, "foxes." Likewise too, concerning Herod: "Go, tell that fox: Behold, I cast out demons and accomplish cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I am perfected." For He called "birds of heaven" those who, in heaven, are distinguished from the other birds—the truly pure, those who are able to fly toward the knowledge of the heavenly Word. For indeed not only of wealth and glory and marriage, but also of poverty, are there countless cares for the man who cannot bear it; and perhaps it was these cares that He hinted at in the parable of the fourfold sowing, when He said that the seed of the Word, falling among thorns and hedges, was choked by them and could not bear fruit.

6.32. It is necessary, then, to learn how one must deal with each of the things that befall, so as to be trained, through gnostic good living, into the habit of eternal life. "I saw," it says, "the impious man exalted exceedingly and lifted up like the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by," says the Scripture, "and behold, he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found. Guard innocence and behold uprightness, for there is a remnant for the man of peace." This would be the man who unfeignedly believes from the whole heart and is calm with his whole soul. For "the other people honour me with their lips, but their heart is far off from the Lord. With their mouth they bless, but with their heart they curse; they loved Him with their mouth and with their tongue they lied to Him; but their heart was not upright with Him, nor were they faithful in His covenant."

6.33. "Therefore let the deceitful lips be made dumb, that speak lawlessness against the righteous." And again: "May the Lord utterly destroy all deceitful lips and the boastful tongue, those who said, 'We will magnify our tongue; our lips are our own; who is lord over us? From the misery of the poor and the groaning of the needy I will now arise,' says the Lord; 'I will set them in safety; I will speak boldly in him.'" For Christ belongs to the humble-minded, not to those who exalt themselves over His flock. "Lay not up, then, for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break through and steal"—perhaps the Lord says this rebuking the lovers of possessions, perhaps too those who are simply anxious and full of care, and indeed the lovers of the body too. For loves and sicknesses and base reckonings break through the reasoning and the whole man; but our true treasure is where the kinship of the mind is. He hands down, further, the social aspect of righteousness, showing that we must give back to the habit of the old way of life the things acquired for us by it, and run back to God, asking for mercy. This is truly a purse not growing old, the provision of eternal life, an unfailing treasure in heaven, because "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy," says the Lord.

6.34. He says these things also to those who wish, for the sake of righteousness, to be poor; for they have heard through the commandment that "broad and spacious is the road that leads to destruction, and many are they who go through it." He discourses about nothing else than profligacy and love of women, love of glory, love of rule, and the like passions; for "fool," He said thus, "this night they require your soul of you; and what you prepared for it, whose shall it be?" And the words of the commandment run, word for word, thus: "Guard yourselves, then, against all covetousness, for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. For what does a man profit if he gain the whole world but suffer the loss of his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? Therefore I say: Do not be anxious for your soul, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on; for the soul is more than food and the body than clothing." And again: "For your Father knows that you need all these things; but seek first the kingdom of heaven and righteousness, for these are great, and the small things and those about this life shall be added to you."

6.35. Does He not exhort us outright to pursue the gnostic life, and urge us to seek the truth in deed and in word? Christ, who educates the soul, reckons a man rich not by his giving but by his purpose. So Zacchaeus—but some say it was Matthias—the chief tax-collector, when he had heard the Lord deeming him worthy to come to him, said: "Behold, the half of my possessions I give as alms, Lord; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore fourfold." Of whom the Saviour too said: "The Son of Man, coming today, has found that which was lost." And again, watching at the treasury, He said that the rich man cast in proportionally to his wealth, but the widow had cast in more than all—two coppers—for the one contributed from his abundance, but she out of her want.

6.36. And that He referred everything to the education of the soul: "Blessed," He says, "are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." The meek are those who have brought to rest the truceless battle in the soul, of wrath and desire and the kinds subordinate to these. And He praises those meek by choice, not by necessity. For with the Lord there are both rewards and many mansions, according to the proportion of lives; for "whoever receives," He says, "a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and whoever receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward; and whoever receives one of these little disciples shall not lose his reward." And again, the differences according to merit, the noble recompenses of virtue—through the unequal hours, and besides through the equal wage given to each of the workmen (that is, salvation, which the denarius hints at), He has indicated the equal justice toward those who worked during unequal hours.

6.37. They will work, then, in the mansions proportionate to the rewards of which they were deemed worthy, fellow-workers of the ineffable dispensation and ministry. And those who are reckoned to have been preferred toward living a holy life, says Plato, "are those who, set free and released from these places in the earth as from prisons, attain to the pure dwelling above"; and again, by clearer terms, he says the same thing in some such way: "Of these themselves, those who have been sufficiently purified in philosophy live altogether without bodies for all time"—although he gives them certain forms, to some airy, to others fiery. He adds further: "And they come to dwellings still fairer than these, which it is neither easy to show nor is the time sufficient at present." Hence with good reason "blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." For those who have repented of the evil life they led before will be present at the call; for this is to be comforted. And there are two ways of the man who repents: the more common, fear over the things done; and the more particular, the soul's shame before itself out of conscience—whether here or also elsewhere, since no place is idle of the beneficence of God.

6.38. Again He says: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." Now mercy is not, as some of the philosophers have supposed, grief over others' misfortunes, but rather something noble, as the prophets say: "I desire mercy and not sacrifice." And He wishes us to be merciful not only by doing mercy but also by willing to show mercy, even if we cannot, to whom the doing is present according to purpose. For sometimes we wish, through the giving of money or through bodily zeal, to do mercy—to aid the needy, or to serve the sick, or to stand by one fallen into difficulty—and we are not able, whether through poverty or sickness or old age (for this too is a natural sickness), to minister to the purpose toward which we set out, being unable to bring to completion what we had willed. The willing, then, will share in the same honour with those who were able, of whom the purpose is equal, even if others have the advantage in abundance.

6.39. And since there are found to be two ways that lead to the perfection of salvation—works and knowledge—He called blessed the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And indeed, if we look at the truth, knowledge, by which the purification of the soul's ruling part comes about, is also a good activity. Some goods, then, are good in themselves, others by sharing in the goods, as we say of noble deeds; but apart from the intermediate things, which hold the place of matter, neither good nor bad deeds come about—I mean such as life and health and the other necessary or circumstantial things. He wishes, then, that those who arrive at the knowledge of God be pure in respect of bodily desires and holy in their reasonings, so that the ruling part may have nothing spurious set before its own power.

6.40. Whenever, then, a man dwells in contemplation, conversing purely with the divine, the one who gnostically shares in the holy quality comes more closely into the habit of an impassive identity, so as no longer to have knowledge and to possess understanding, but to be understanding and knowledge. Blessed, then, are the peacemakers. Those who have tamed and made gentle the law that wars against the mind of our intellect—the threats of wrath and the lures of desire and the other passions, all that wage war against the reasoning—and who have lived their lives with knowledge and good works and true reasoning, shall be restored to the most beloved adoption. And the perfect peacemaking would be that which keeps the peaceful state unchanged whatever befalls, calling the dispensation holy and good, established in the knowledge of divine and human things, through which it reckons the contraries in the world to be the fairest harmony of creation. And they make peace also for those here who are warred upon by the stratagems of sin, teaching them to pass over to faith and peace.

6.41. The summary, I think, of every virtue is what the Lord teaches us, namely, that one must, in a more gnostic way, despise death out of love toward God. "Blessed," He says, "are those who have been persecuted for righteousness' sake, for they shall be called sons of God"; or, as some who alter the gospels have it: "Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for they shall be perfect; and blessed are those who have been persecuted for my sake, for they shall have a place where they shall not be persecuted. And blessed are you when men hate you, when they separate you, when they cast out your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man"—if, plainly, we do not loathe our persecutors and endure the punishments from them, not hating them, considering that we have been tested more slowly than we expected, but knowing this too, that any trial whatever is an occasion of martyrdom.

7.42. Then the man who has lied, and shown himself faithless, and gone over to the army of the devil—in what evil, do we think, is he? He lies, then, against the Lord—or rather, he has cheated himself of his own hope—who does not believe God. And he does not believe who does not do what He has commanded. And what? Does not the man who denies the Lord deny himself? For he takes away the master from his lordship, who deprives himself of his intimacy with Him. He, then, who denies the Saviour denies life, since the life was the light. He does not call these men "of little faith," but "faithless" and "hypocrites," who have the name inscribed but deny the being faithful; for both a slave and a friend are called faithful. So that if anyone loves himself, he loves the Lord and confesses salvation,

7.43. that he may save his soul. And yet, even if you die for your neighbour out of love—and you suppose the Saviour to be our neighbour (for God, who saves, was called "the near one" to the one being saved)—you will die having chosen death for the sake of life, having suffered for your own sake rather than for his. And is it not for this that He is called "brother"—that the man who suffers out of love toward God suffers for his own salvation, while the man who dies for the sake of his own salvation endures it through love toward the Lord? For He too, being life, willed to suffer for those for whom He suffered, that by His suffering we might live. "Why do you call me, Lord, Lord," He says, "and do not do what I say?" For the people who love with the lips, but have the heart far from the Lord, are another people, persuaded by another, and have willingly sold themselves to him; but those who fulfil the commandments of the Saviour bear witness in every action, doing what He wishes, and consistently naming the Lord, and by deed bearing witness to the one they are persuaded is, those who have crucified the flesh with its desires and passions. "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit," He says. "He who sows to his own flesh shall reap corruption from the flesh; but he who sows to the Spirit shall reap eternal life from the Spirit."

7.44. To the wretched among men, the martyrdom through blood for the Lord seems to be the most violent death, not knowing that such a gate of death is the beginning of the truly existent life. And they are not willing to understand either the honours after death of those who have lived holily, or the punishments of those who have conducted themselves unjustly and lewdly—I do not say only from our Scriptures (for almost all the commandments make these things plain), but they are unwilling even to obey their own writers. For Theano the Pythagorean writes: "Life would indeed be a feast for the wicked who, having done evil, then die, if the soul were not immortal"; and Plato in the Phaedo: "For if death were a release from everything," and so on.

7.45. It is not, then, according to the Telephus of Aeschylus, that one should think a single path leads to Hades; but many are the ways that lead off, the sins that lead far astray. These faithless men, it seems, Aristophanes mocks when he says:

Come, men of dim life, like the race of leaves, of little strength, things moulded of wax, shadowy tribes, feeble, wingless, creatures of a day.

And Epicharmus: "This is the nature of men—blown-up wineskins." But to us the Saviour has said: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak"; for "the mind of the flesh is enmity toward God," the apostle explains, "for it does not submit to the law of God, nor indeed can it; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God." And, further explaining, he adds—lest anyone, like Marcion, should ungratefully take creation to be evil: "But if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." And again: "For if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die; for I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is going to be revealed in us, if indeed we suffer together, that we may also be glorified together, as joint heirs of Christ."

7.46. "And we know that to those who love God all things work together for good, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers; and those whom He predestined, these He also called; and those whom He called, these He also justified; and those whom He justified, these He also glorified." You see martyrdom taught through love. And if you would bear witness in return for goods, you will hear again: "For by hope we were saved; but hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man sees, why does he also hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it through endurance." But "even if we suffer for righteousness' sake, blessed are we," says Peter. "And do not fear their fear, nor be troubled; but sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts, and be always ready for a defence to everyone who asks of you a reason for the hope that is in you, but with meekness and fear, having a good conscience, that in the thing in which you are spoken against, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better, doing good, if the will of God should so will, to suffer than doing evil."

7.47. And if anyone, mocking, should say, "And how is it possible for the weak flesh to set itself against the powers and the spirits of the authorities?"—let him recognize this, that, taking courage in the Almighty and the Lord, we set our citizenship against the rulers of darkness and against death. "While you are still speaking," it says, "He will say, 'Behold, I am here.'" See the unconquered helper, the one who shields us. "Do not be surprised, then," says Peter, "at the fiery trial among you that comes to test you, as though something strange were happening to you; but rejoice, in so far as you share in the sufferings of Christ, that you may rejoice exulting in the revelation of His glory also. If you are reproached in the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you"; as it is written: "For your sake we are put to death all the day long; we are reckoned as sheep for the slaughter. But in all these things we more than conquer through Him who loved us."

7.48. The things you wish to learn from my mind, neither by burning, nor by letting down terrible saws from the top of my head to my feet's ends, could you learn, nor if you should put all bonds upon me,

says a woman, playing the man fearlessly in tragedy. And Antigone too, despising the proclamation of Creon, boldly says:

For it was not Zeus who proclaimed these things to me;

but God proclaims to us, and we must obey Him. "For with the heart it is believed unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." So the Scripture says: "Everyone who believes in Him shall not be put to shame." With good reason, then, Simonides writes:

There is a saying that Virtue dwells upon rocks hard to climb, and that the swift, holy chorus of nymphs attends her; nor is she to be seen by the eyes of all mortals, save by the one in whom heart-biting sweat comes from within, and who reaches the summit by manliness.

7.49. And Pindar:

The cares of the young, whirled about with toils, find glory; and in time their works shine, kindled above the heavens.

Aeschylus too, laying hold of this thought, says:

To the one who toils there is due from the gods the offspring of his toil, glory.

For "greater deaths obtain greater portions," according to Heraclitus.

Who is a slave who has no thought of dying?

For God has not given us a spirit of slavery again unto fear, but of power and of love and of self-discipline. "Do not, then, be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner," he writes to Timothy. Such a man would be the one who, according to the apostle, cleaves to the good, abhorring the evil, having unfeigned love; for he who loves the other has fulfilled the law. And if the God of hope is the one to whom we bear witness, as indeed He is, we confess our hope, hastening toward the hope; but they are "full of goodness," he says, "filled with all knowledge."

7.50. The philosophers of the Indians say to Alexander the Macedonian: "You will transfer bodies from place to place, but our souls you will not compel to do what we do not wish. Fire is for men the greatest instrument of torture; this we despise." Hence Heraclitus chose for himself one thing in place of all—glory—but the many, he says, glut themselves like cattle.

For the sake of the body are the many toils, for its sake have we found a sheltering house, and to dig out white silver, and to sow the earth, and all the other things that we know by names.

7.51. To the many, then, this vain toil is to be chosen; but to us the apostle says: "This we know, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be brought to nought, so that we should no longer be slaves to sin." Does not the apostle also plainly add those words, showing the disgrace of the faith among the many? "For I think God has set forth us apostles last, as men appointed to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world and to angels and to men; even to this present hour we hunger and thirst and are naked and are buffeted and have no fixed abode; persecuted, we endure; defamed, we entreat; we have become as the refuse of the world."

7.52. Such too are the things in Plato's Republic: even if the just man be racked, even if his two eyes be gouged out, he will be happy. The gnostic, then, will never have his end lying in fortune, but happiness and being blessed and being a royal friend of God would lie in himself. And even if a man should wrap him in dishonour and exile and confiscation, and over all in death, he will never be torn away from his freedom and his most sovereign love toward God, which "bears all things and endures all things." For love is persuaded that divine providence administers all things well.

7.53. "I beseech you, then, become imitators of me," he says. Now the first step of salvation is the teaching with fear, by which we abstain from injustice; the second is hope, by which we reach out toward the best things; and love perfects, as is fitting, educating now in a gnostic way. For the Greeks, having somehow given over the things that befall to an irrational necessity, confess that they obey unwillingly. Euripides, at any rate, says:

What I counsel, take this from me, woman. There is no mortal born who does not toil; he buries his children and sows new ones, and himself dies. And mortals are grieved at these things.

Then he adds:

These things one must bear, which one must pass through by nature; none of the necessary things is terrible to mortals.

7.54. There is set before those hastening toward perfection the rational knowledge, of which the foundation is the holy triad: faith, hope, love; but the greatest of these is love. Indeed, "all things are permitted, but not all things are profitable; all things are permitted, but not all things build up," says the apostle. And "let no one seek his own only, but also the other's," so as to be able both to do and to teach at once, building and building further. For that "the earth is the Lord's and its fullness" has been agreed; but the conscience of the weak is offended. By "conscience" I mean not one's own, but the other's. "For why is my freedom judged by another's conscience? If I share with thanks, why am I blasphemed for that for which I give thanks? Whether, then, you eat or drink or do anything, do all to the glory of God." For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh; "for the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but mighty before God for the casting down of strongholds, casting down reasonings and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of the Lord."

7.55. The gnostic, armed with these weapons, says: "O Lord, grant occasion and receive the display; let this terror come; I despise dangers for love of you,"

because virtue alone among the things of men takes its rewards not from outside, but itself has itself as the prize of its toils.

"Put on, then, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering; and over all these put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful"—you who are still in the body, like the just men of old, reaping freedom from passion and tranquillity of soul;

8.56. since not only Aesopians and Macedonians and Laconians endured being racked, as Eratosthenes says in his work On Goods and Evils, but Zeno the Eleatic too, when compelled to tell something of the secret things, held out against the tortures, confessing nothing, but in the end bit out his tongue and spat it at the tyrant, whom some call Nearchus, others Demylus. Likewise too Theodotus the Pythagorean did, and Paulus the acquaintance of Lacydes, as Timotheus of Pergamum says in his work On the Courage of the Philosophers, and Achaeus in his Ethics. But Postumus the Roman too, taken by Peucetio, not only did not reveal any of the hidden things, but even, putting his hand upon the fire, let it melt like bronze with a wholly unchanged bearing. I pass over in silence the deeds of Anaxarchus, who cried out, "Pound the pouch of Anaxarchus; for Anaxarchus you do not pound," when he was being pounded by the tyrant with iron pestles.

8.57. Neither, then, the hope of happiness nor the love toward God is impatient at what befalls, but remains free, even if it should fall among the most savage beasts, even if into the all-devouring fire, even if it be slain by tyrannical tortures, hanging upon the divine friendship, unenslaved, it circles aloft, having handed over the body to those who alone are able to lay hold of it. The Getae, a barbarian nation not untouched by philosophy, choose each year an envoy to the hero Zamolxis; and Zamolxis was one of the acquaintances of Pythagoras.

8.58. So the man judged most worthy is slaughtered, to the grief of those who have studied philosophy but were not chosen, as having been rejected from a blessed service. But the whole Church is full of those who, throughout their lives, have practised the life-giving death into Christ—men, and likewise prudent women too. For it is possible for the one who conducts his life according to us to philosophize even without letters, whether he be barbarian or Greek, slave or old man or child or woman; for prudence is common to all men who have chosen it; and it has been agreed by us that each kind has the same nature and likewise has the same virtue.

8.59. The woman, then, does not appear to have one nature toward humanity and the man another, but the same; so that also the same virtue. And if a man's virtue is, of course, prudence and righteousness and all that are reckoned to follow upon these, is it fitting for a man alone to be virtuous, and for a woman to be licentious and unjust? But this is unseemly even to say. Prudence, then, and righteousness and all the rest of virtue must be cared for alike by a woman and alike by a man, by free and slave, since the same and one virtue belongs to the same nature. We do not say that the nature of the female is the same as that of the male in so far as it is female; for surely there had to be some difference between each of them, on account of which the one became female, the other male. We say, then, that conceiving and bearing belong to the woman, in so far as she happens to be female, not in so far as she is human; for if there were no difference between man and woman, each of them would do and suffer the same things.

8.60. In so far, then, as it is the same—according to the soul—it will arrive at the same virtue; but in so far as it is different—according to the peculiarity of the body—it inclines toward childbearing and housekeeping. "For I wish you to know," says the apostle, "that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of woman is the man. For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nevertheless neither is woman without man nor man without woman in the Lord." For as we say the man must be prudent and superior to pleasures, so we would deem it right that the woman too be likewise prudent and practised in fighting against pleasures. I say, "Walk by the Spirit and you shall not fulfil the desire of the flesh," the apostolic commandment counsels; "for the flesh desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh." These, then, are set against each other not as evil against good, but as fighting beneficially. So he adds:

8.61. "that you may not do the things you wish. And the works of the flesh are plain, which are fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, strifes, jealousies, fits of anger, factions, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkennesses, revellings, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, as also I told you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, continence, goodness, faith, meekness." By "flesh," I think, he means the sinners, as by "Spirit" the righteous. And indeed the quality of manliness is to be taken in the sense of good courage and endurance, so as to offer the other cheek to the one who strikes, and to yield even the tunic to the one who takes the cloak, mastering wrath strongly. For we do not train our women to be Amazons in manliness for war, since we wish even the men to be peaceful.

8.62. But I hear that the Sauromatian women practise war no less than the men, and others, the Sacian women, who shoot backwards, pretending to flee, equally with the men. I know too that the women near Iberia work and toil in a manly way, and even when they are about to give birth do not give up any of their tasks, but often in the very contest of their labours the woman, having given birth, takes up the infant and carries it home. Indeed, the bitches no less than the males both keep the house and hunt and guard the flocks.

The Cretan hound Gorgo ran upon the deer's track.

The women, then, must philosophize in a manner like the men, even if the males be better and take the first place in all things, except in so far as they grow soft.

8.63. Education, then, and virtue are necessary for the whole race of men, if indeed they would hasten toward happiness. And somehow Euripides not in vain writes variously: at one time,

For every wife is worse than her husband, even if the worst man should marry the woman of good repute;

and at another, "For a prudent woman is the slave of her husband, but the imprudent one surpasses the man who is with her in folly."

For there is nothing greater and better than when a man and a woman keep house being of one mind in their thoughts.

The head, then, is the ruling part. And if the Lord is the head of the man, and the head of woman is the man, then the man is lord of the woman, being the image and glory of God.

8.64. Wherefore in the epistle to the Ephesians he writes: "Submitting yourselves to one another in the fear of God. Wives, to your own husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the Church, He being the Saviour of the body. But as the Church is subject to Christ, so also let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church"; so too the husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. "He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh."

8.65. And in the epistle to the Colossians: "Wives," he says, "be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they be discouraged. Slaves, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but in simplicity of heart, fearing the Lord. And whatever you do, work from the soul as serving the Lord and not men, knowing that from the Lord you shall receive the recompense of the inheritance. For you serve the Lord Christ; for the unjust man shall receive back what he did unjustly, and there is no respect of persons. Masters, give to your slaves what is just and equal, knowing that you too have a Master in heaven, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all."

8.66. The earthly Church is an image of the heavenly, for which we pray that the will of God may come to pass on earth too as in heaven: "having put on bowels of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; as Christ also forgave us, so also we. And over all these is love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful." For nothing hinders us from often setting down the same Scripture for the rebuke of Marcion, in case he should somehow change, being persuaded, having learned that the faithful man must be thankful to the Demiurge God who called us and brought us the good news in a body.

8.67. From these things, then, it has been plainly shown to us what the unity from faith is, and who the perfect man is; so that, even against the will of some and though most things stand in the way, even if punishments be hung over them by the husband or the master, both the slave and the woman will philosophize. Yes, and the free man too, even if death be threatened him by a tyrant, even if he be led to courts and dragged into the extremest dangers and put in peril concerning all his possessions, will not in any way let go of piety. Nor will the woman ever despair, living with a worthless husband, nor the son if he has a worthless father, nor the slave if a wicked master, but they hold nobly to virtue. For as it is noble for a man to die for virtue and for freedom and for himself, so likewise for a woman; for this is not proper to the nature of males, but to that of the good.

8.68. Faithfully, then, the old man and the young and the slave, obeying the commandments, will both live and, if need be, die—which would be to be made alive through death. For we know that children and slaves and wives have often, against the will of fathers and masters and husbands, become most excellent. None the less, then, ought those who are about to live piously to be eager, when some seem to hinder them; but it is far more fitting, I think, to hasten and strive especially, that they may not, being overcome, fall away from the best and most necessary counsels. For I do not think it admits of comparison whether it is better to become a fellow-worshipper of the Almighty or to choose the darkness of the demons. For the things we do for the sake of others, we would do each time, trying to look toward those for whose sake they seem to be done, reckoning as our measure what is pleasing to them; but the things that are more our own than another's, these we would do with equal zeal, whether they seem to please some or not.

8.69. If, then, some of the indifferent things have obtained such honour that they seem to be choiceworthy even against the will of some, much more must virtue be reckoned worth fighting for, looking to nothing else but to the very thing that is able to be nobly done, whether it seem otherwise to some or not. Well, then, does Epicurus too write to Menoeceus: "Let no one, while young, delay to philosophize, nor when old grow weary of philosophizing. For no one is too young or too old to be healthy in soul. And the one who says that the time to philosophize has not yet come or has passed is like one who says that the time for happiness has not yet come or is no longer. So that both the young and the old must philosophize—the one, that growing old he may be young in good things through gratitude for what has been; the other, that he may be young and old at once, through fearlessness toward what is to come."

9.70. Concerning martyrdom the Lord has spoken expressly, and let us set in order the things written variously. "I say to you, everyone who confesses Me before men, the Son of Man too shall confess him before the angels of God; but the one who denies Me before men I shall deny before the angels. For whoever is ashamed of Me or of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man too shall be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with His angels. Everyone, then, who confesses Me before men, I also will confess him before My Father who is in heaven. And when they bring you into the synagogues and before the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious beforehand how you shall make your defence or what you shall say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what must be said."

9.71. Heracleon, the most esteemed of the school of Valentinus, explaining this passage, says, word for word, that confession is of two kinds—the one in faith and conduct, the other in voice. The confession in voice, then, takes place also before the authorities, which alone, he says, the many wrongly suppose to be confession; and this confession the hypocrites too are able to make. But this saying will not be found to be spoken universally; for not all those who are saved made the confession through voice and so departed, among whom were Matthew, Philip, Thomas, Levi, and many others. And the confession through voice is not universal but partial. But the universal one, which He now speaks of, is the one in works and deeds corresponding to the faith in Him. And upon this confession there follows also the partial one, the one before the authorities, if it be necessary and reason require. For this man will confess also by voice, having rightly confessed beforehand in his disposition.

9.72. And rightly, concerning those who confess, He said "in Me," but concerning those who deny He added "Me." For these, even if they confess Him by voice, deny Him by not confessing Him in deed. But those alone confess in Him who live in the confession and deed according to Him, in whom He too confesses, being clasped by them and held by them. Therefore they can never deny Him; but those deny Him who are not in Him. For He did not say "whoever denies in Me," but "Me"; for no one ever, being in Him, denies Him. And the "before men" applies likewise to those who are saved and to the Gentiles: before the former by conduct, before the latter by voice.

9.73. Thus far Heracleon; and in other respects he seems to hold the same opinion as we do in this passage, but he did not attend to this: that even if some have not confessed Christ before men in deed and in life, yet by confessing in voice in the courts and not denying Him even to death under torture, they show that they have believed from disposition. And a confessed disposition, especially one not turned aside even by death, makes a cutting-off, at one stroke, of all the passions that were begotten through bodily desire. For there is, so to speak, at the end of life a sudden repentance in deed and a true confession to Christ, the voice bearing witness. And if the Spirit of the Father bears witness in us, how are they still hypocrites, of whom He said that they bear witness by voice only? But to some it will be granted, if it be profitable, to make a defence, so that through both the martyrdom and the defence all may be benefited—those in the Church being strengthened, and those of the Gentiles who have inquired curiously into salvation being filled with wonder and led to faith, and the rest held fast by amazement.

9.74. So that one must confess in every case, for this lies in our power; but to make a defence is not in every case, for this too is not in our power. "But the one who endures to the end, he shall be saved." For who of those who think rightly would not choose to reign in God rather than to serve? Some, then, confess that they know God, according to the apostle, but by their works deny Him, being abominable and disobedient and reprobate toward every good work; while others, even if they confess only this, have accomplished at the end one good work. Martyrdom, then, seems to be a purifying of sins with glory. So at once the Shepherd says: "You shall escape the energy of the wild beast if your heart becomes pure and blameless." But the Lord Himself too says: "Satan asked to sift you; but I prayed for you."

9.75. The Lord, then, first drank the cup, for the purifying of the men who plotted against Him and of the unbelievers; in imitation of whom the apostles, as being truly gnostic and perfect, suffered for the churches which they founded. So then those gnostics too who walk in the apostolic footstep ought both to be sinless and, out of love toward the Lord, to love their neighbour too, so that, if the occasion should call, enduring the afflictions without stumbling for the Church's sake, they may drink the cup. And those who bear witness in deed throughout their life, and in word in the court—even if they look forward to a hope, even if they shrink in fear—these are better than those who confess salvation with the mouth only. But if anyone should go beyond, to love, he is truly blessed and a genuine martyr, having confessed perfectly both to the commandments and to God through the Lord, whom, loving, he recognized as brother, having given himself wholly out of love toward God, giving back, like a deposit, in a grateful and loving way, the man who was demanded back.

10.76. And when, on the contrary, He says, "When they persecute you in this city, flee to the other," He does not counsel flight as though being persecuted were evil, nor does He command us to shun it by flight as though fearing death; rather He wishes us to become to no one a cause or fellow-cause of any evil, whether to themselves or to the persecutor or to the slayer. For in a way He commands us to keep clear of it, and the man who disobeys is rash and reckless.

10.77. And if the man who kills a man of God sins against God, the one who brings himself to the court becomes guilty also of the deed of the man who kills him. This would be the man who does not keep clear of persecution, but offers himself to be taken through rashness. As far as in him lies, he becomes a fellow-worker in the wickedness of the persecutor; and if he should provoke besides, he is wholly the cause, calling forth the beast. And likewise, if he should provide some cause of strife or loss or enmity or lawsuit, he has begotten an occasion of persecution. For this reason it has been commanded us to hold to nothing of the things in this life. But even to the man who takes the cloak we are to give the tunic besides, not only that we may remain free from passionate attachment, but that, not contending, we may not enrage those who claim things against us, and through us stir up blasphemy against the name.

11.78. "Yes," they say, "if God cares for you, why are you persecuted and killed? Or does He Himself give you over to this?" But we do not suppose that the Lord wished us to fall into these circumstances; rather, He foretold prophetically the things that were going to come to pass, namely, that on account of His name we shall be persecuted, killed, impaled. So that He did not wish us to be persecuted, but foretold what we should suffer, training us by the foretelling of what was to come into endurance, to which He promised the inheritance. And yet we are not punished alone, but along with many. "But those," they say, "being evildoers, justly undergo punishment."

11.79. So then unwillingly they bear witness to our righteousness, who are unjustly punished for the sake of righteousness. But the injustice of the judge does not touch providence. For the judge must be lord of his own judgement, not pulled by strings like lifeless instruments, perhaps receiving merely occasions from the cause outside. So he is put to the test in his judging, just as we are in the choice of what is choiceworthy and in endurance; and even if we do no wrong, yet the judge looks on us as though we did wrong. For he does not know our affairs, nor does he wish to learn, but is carried away by an empty prejudice—and therefore he too is judged. They persecute us, then, not because they have found us to be unjust, but supposing, by the mere fact of our being Christians, that we do wrong to our life, both ourselves conducting ourselves thus and urging others to choose the like life.

11.80. "But why," they say, "are you not helped when persecuted?" For in what are we wronged, as regards ourselves, being released by death to the Lord, and undergoing, as it were, a change of age, so too an alteration of life? But if we are of sound mind, we shall be thankful to those who have furnished the occasion of a swift departure, . . . if we bear witness out of love. But if we did not seem to the many to be worthless men, and they too knew the truth, all would leap upon the road, and there would be no election. But our faith, being the light of the world, convicts unbelief. "For Anytus and Meletus might indeed kill me, but harm me they could in no way; for I do not think it lawful that the better should be harmed by the worse." So that each of us takes courage to say: "The Lord is my helper, I will not fear; what shall man do to me?" For "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them."

12.81. Basilides, in the twenty-third book of his Exegetica, concerning those punished in martyrdom, says, in these very words: "For I say that all who fall into the so-called afflictions—either, having sinned in other faults that escape notice, are led to this good thing by the kindness of the one who leads them about, being truly accused of other things than those for which they really suffer, so that they may not suffer as condemned for confessed evils, nor reviled as the adulterer or the murderer, but because they are by nature Christians—which will console them so that they do not even seem to suffer. And even if anyone, having altogether not sinned, should come to suffer—rare though this be—yet not even this man will suffer anything by the plotting of a power, but will suffer as the infant suffers that seems not to have sinned."

12.82. Then, going on a little, he again adds: "As, then, the infant, having not sinned beforehand—or, actively, having sinned in nothing, but having in itself the capacity to sin—when it is subjected to suffering, is benefited, gaining many hard things; so likewise too, even if a perfect man should happen to have sinned in nothing by deed, yet, whatever he suffers, this he suffered in a manner like the infant. For, having in himself the capacity to sin, but not having received occasion to have sinned, he did not sin. So that his not having sinned is not to be reckoned to his credit. For as the man who wishes to commit adultery is an adulterer, even if he does not succeed in committing adultery, and the man who wishes to do murder is a murderer, even if he is unable to kill, so likewise too, even if I see the sinless man of whom I speak suffering, even if he has done nothing evil, I will call him evil for his wishing to sin. For I will say anything rather than call providence evil."

12.83. Then, going on, he speaks even outright concerning the Lord, as though concerning a man: "If, however, leaving aside all these arguments, you come to abash me by means of certain persons, saying perhaps, 'So-and-so, then, sinned, for so-and-so suffered'—if you permit me, I will say, he did not sin, but was like the suffering infant; but if you should force the argument more vehemently, I will say that any man whom you may name is a man, but God is just. For 'no one is clean,' as someone said, 'from filth.'" But the hypothesis of Basilides says that the soul, having sinned beforehand in another life, undergoes punishment here—the elect soul honourably through martyrdom, the other being purified by its own appropriate punishment. And how is this true, since the confessing and being punished, or not, lies in our power? For on the man who will deny, the providence according to Basilides is undone.

12.84. I ask him, then, concerning the confessor who has been seized: will he bear witness and be punished according to providence, or not? For if he denies, he will not be punished. But if he should say, from the result, that this man too ought not to be punished, he will unwillingly bear witness besides to the destruction of those who deny as coming from providence. And how, then, is the most glorious reward laid up in heaven for the one who has borne witness, because of his bearing witness? And if providence did not allow the man with a capacity to sin to come to sinning, it becomes unjust on both counts—both not rescuing the man who is dragged to punishment for righteousness' sake, and rescuing the man who wished to do wrong, the one having done the things he willed, the other being one who hindered the deed and did not justly attend to the man capable of sin.

12.85. And how is he not godless, deifying the devil, and daring to call the Lord a man capable of sin? For the devil tempts, knowing what we are, but not knowing whether we shall endure; but, wishing to shake us from the faith and to draw us to himself, he tempts—which alone has been permitted to him, both because we must be saved by ourselves, having received occasions from the commandment, and because of the shame of the tempter who has been tempted and failed, and because of the strengthening of those in the Church, and because of the conscience of those who have wondered at the endurance. But if martyrdom is a recompense through punishment, then faith and teaching too, on account of which the martyrdom comes, are fellow-workers of the punishment—than which what greater absurdity could there be? But against those doctrines, whether the soul is reincarnated, and concerning the devil, it shall be spoken at the proper times; for now let us add to what has been said these things too: where any longer is faith, if martyrdom comes as a recompense for sins committed beforehand? Where is the love toward God that is persecuted and endures for the truth's sake? Where is the praise of the confessor or the blame of the one who denies? To what end is right conduct any longer useful—the mortifying of the desires and the hating of none of the creatures?

12.86. And if, as Basilides himself says, we have supposed one part of what is called the will of God to be the having loved all things, because they preserve a relation to the whole of all, and another to desire nothing, and a third to hate not one thing, then by the will of God the punishments too will be—which is impious to think. For neither did the Lord suffer by the will of the Father, nor are the persecuted persecuted by the will of God; since, of two, one: either persecution will be something good by the will of God, or those who afflict and oppress are guiltless. But indeed nothing among all things is without the will of the Lord of all. It remains, then, to say briefly that such things come about because God does not prevent them; for this alone preserves both the providence and the goodness of God.

12.87. We must not, then, suppose that He actively brings about the afflictions—for far be it to think this—but it is fitting to be persuaded that He does not prevent those who bring them about, and that He turns the rash deeds of the adversaries to good use ("I will throw down the wall, then," He says, "and it shall be for trampling under foot"), since such providence is an educative art—in the case of others on account of each man's own sins, but in the case of the Lord and the apostles on account of ours. So at once the divine apostle says: "For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from fornication; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honour, not in the passion of desire, even as the Gentiles too who do not know the Lord; that no one go beyond and defraud his brother in the matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as also we told you before and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in sanctification. Therefore the one who rejects this rejects not man, but God, who also gave His Holy Spirit unto you." For the sake of this sanctification of ours, then, the Lord was not prevented from suffering.

12.88. If, then, one of them, making a defence, should say that the martyr is punished for the sins before this embodiment, but will receive back in turn the fruit of his conduct during this life, for so the dispensation has been arranged—we shall ask him whether the recompense comes from providence. For if it should not be of the divine dispensation, then the dispensation of purifications is gone, and their hypothesis has fallen; but if the purifications are from providence, then the punishments too are from providence. And though providence, as they say, begins to be set in motion from the Archon, yet it was sown into the substances, along with the generation of the substances, by the God of all. This being so, they are forced to confess either that the punishment is not unjust (and those who condemn and persecute the martyrs act justly), or that the persecutions too are wrought by the will of God. Therefore the toil and the fear, as they themselves say, no longer supervene upon things as rust upon iron, but come upon the soul from its own will.

13.89. And concerning these things the discussion is long, which we shall reserve to consider later, treating it at the proper time. But Valentinus, in a certain homily, writes, word for word: "From the beginning you are immortal, and you are children of eternal life, and you wished to apportion death among yourselves, that you might spend it and use it up, and that death might die in you and through you. For when you dissolve the world but yourselves are not dissolved, you are lords over the creation and over all corruption." For he too, like Basilides, supposes a kind saved by nature, and that this different kind has come down from above to us here for the destruction of death, and that the generation of death is the work of the one who created the world. Wherefore he understands that Scripture too thus: "No one shall see the face of God and live"—of God as the cause of death. Concerning this God he hints those things, writing in these very words: "By however much the image is inferior to the living face, by so much is the world inferior to the living aeon."

13.90. What, then, is the cause of the image? The majesty of the face that provided the type to the painter, that it might be honoured through His name; for the form was not found authentically, but the name filled up what was lacking in the moulding. And the invisibility of God too contributes toward the faith of the thing moulded. For the Demiurge, called god and father, he addressed as image of the true God and as prophet, but Sophia as painter, of whom the moulded thing is the image, unto the glory of the invisible—since whatever comes forth from a conjugal pairing is fullnesses, but whatever from a single one is images. And since the visible part of him is not the soul from the middle state, there comes the "different" element, and this is the in-breathing of the different spirit, which is breathed into the soul, the image of the spirit. And, in general, the things spoken concerning the Demiurge who came to be after the image, these, they say, were prophesied in Genesis, in the rank of a perceptible image, concerning the generation of man. And indeed they transfer the likeness to themselves too, handing down that the insertion of the different spirit came about unknown to the Demiurge.

13.91. Whenever, then, we treat of the one God being the one proclaimed through the law and the prophets and the gospel—and we shall discourse on this too (for the argument is fundamental)—but for the present we must answer the pressing point. If the different kind comes for the destruction of death, then it is not Christ who has destroyed death, unless He too be said to be of the same substance with them; but if He destroyed it to this end, namely, that He might not touch the different kind, then it is not these counterfeits of the Demiurge who destroy death—those who breathe into the soul from the middle state, their own image, the life from above according to the heresy of their doctrine, even if they say this comes about through the mother. But even if they should say that they wage war together with Christ against death, let them confess the hidden doctrine, that they dare to run down the divine power of the Demiurge, setting right His creation as though they were better, attempting to save the psychic image which He Himself had not the power to deliver from corruption. The Lord too, then, would be better than the Demiurge God; for the Son would never contend with the Father, and that among gods.

13.92. But that this one is the Father of the Son, the Demiurge of all things, the Lord Almighty, we have postponed to that examination in which we promised to discourse against the heresies, showing that this is the only one proclaimed by Him. But for us the apostle, writing for the endurance of afflictions, says this too is from God: "Because to you it was granted in behalf of Christ not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer in His behalf; having the same conflict which you saw in me and now hear of in me. If, then, there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation of love, any fellowship of the Spirit, any bowels and compassions, fulfil my joy, that you be of the same mind, having the same love, joined in soul, minding the one thing." And if "he is poured out upon the sacrifice and ministry of the faith, rejoicing and rejoicing together with all"—and he calls those to whom the apostle's discourse is addressed, the Philippians, "sharers in the grace"—how does he call them "joined in soul" and "psychic"? Likewise, writing concerning Timothy and himself: "For I have no one like-souled," he says, "who will genuinely care for the things concerning you; for all seek their own things, not the things of Jesus Christ."

13.93. Let not, then, the aforesaid call us "psychic" in the way of reproach—nor the Phrygians; for these too already call those who do not attend to the new prophecy "psychic," against whom we shall discourse in the books On Prophecy. The perfect man, then, must practise love, and from this hasten toward the divine friendship, fulfilling the commandments out of love. And to love one's enemies does not mean to love the evil, nor impiety or adultery or theft, but the thief and the impious and the adulterer—not in so far as he sins and defiles by his particular activity the appellation of "man," but in so far as he is a man and a work of God. To be sure, the sinning lies in activity, not in substance; therefore it is not a work of God either.

13.94. The sinners are called enemies of God, having become enemies of the commandments which they have not obeyed, just as those who have obeyed are called friends—the one set named for their kinship, the others for the estrangement that comes of their own choice; for neither enmity nor sin exists without the enemy and the sinner. And "to desire nothing" does not teach us to have no longing, as though the objects of desire were alien to us—as those have supposed who lay down as doctrine that the Creator is other than the first God—nor as though generation were abominable and evil, for these opinions are godless; but we say the things of the world are "alien," not as being out of place, nor as not belonging to God the Lord of all, but because we do not abide among them for all eternity, they being, by way of possession, alien and belonging to the line of succession, but by use, the proper things of each of us, for whose sake they came to be—only in so far as it is necessary for them to be present with us. We must use, then, in accordance with natural appetite, the things not forbidden, nobly, declining every excess and passionate attachment.

14.95. And how great too is the kindness! "Love your enemies," He says, "bless those who curse you, and pray for those who despitefully use you," and the like; to which He adds: "that you may become sons of your Father who is in heaven," hinting at the likeness to God. And again He says: "Be of good will toward your adversary quickly, while you are in the way with him." Now the adversary is not the body, as some would have it, but the devil (and those who make themselves like him), who journeys with us through men who are zealous for his works in this earthly life. It is not possible, then, for those who confess themselves to be of Christ but spend their time in the works of the devil not to suffer the most hateful things; for it is written: "Lest he hand you over to the judge"—and the judge to the servant of the rule of the devil.

14.96. "For I am persuaded that neither death"—the one that comes by the assault of the persecutors—"nor life"—the one according to this present life—"nor angels"—the apostate ones—"nor principalities" (and a principality belongs to Satan, namely the life he chose; for such are the principalities and authorities of darkness according to him); "nor things present, in which we are during the time of life, as the soldier's hope, the merchant's gain; nor height nor depth, nor any other creature acting according to its own activity against the man who chooses faith" (and a creature is called, by the same name, also an activity, being our own work); "such an activity will not be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." You have the summary of the gnostic martyr.

15.97. "And we know that we all have the knowledge"—the common knowledge in common things, and that there is one God; for he was writing to believers; whence he adds: "but the knowledge that is handed down among the few is not in all." And there are those who say that the knowledge concerning things sacrificed to idols is not present in all . . . "lest somehow this authority of yours become a stumbling-block to the weak; for the weak man is destroyed by your knowledge." And though they assert that "everything sold in the meat-market one must buy," bringing in, by way of question, "asking no question," on a par with "asking no question," they will set forth a ridiculous interpretation. For the apostle says: "All the other things buy from the meat-market, asking no question"—with the exception of the things made plain, by way of an exception, in the catholic epistle of all the apostles, with the good pleasure of the Holy Spirit, the one written in the Acts of the Apostles and conveyed to the believers by the very ministry of Paul. For they made known that it is necessary to abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication, by keeping themselves from which they would do well. It is, then, another thing that is said by the apostle: "Have we not the right to eat and to drink? Have we not the right to take about a sister, a wife, as also the other apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas? But we did not use this right," he says, "but we bear all things, that we may give no hindrance to the gospel of Christ"—whether carrying burdens about, when one ought to be free and ready for all things, or becoming an example to those who wish to be continent, who are built up unto eating fearlessly what is set before them and conversing with the wife as occasion serves; but especially is it fitting that those entrusted with so great a stewardship should be set forth as an undefiled example to the learners.

15.98. "For though I am free from all, I have made myself a slave to all," he says, "that I might gain all"; and "everyone who competes is continent in all things." But "the earth is the Lord's and its fullness." For the sake of conscience, then, one must abstain from what one must abstain. By "conscience" I mean not one's own, for it is gnostic, but the other's, lest he be badly built up, imitating in ignorance what he does not know, becoming a despiser instead of high-minded. "For why is my freedom judged by another's conscience? If I share with thanks, why am I blasphemed for that for which I give thanks? Whatever, then, you do, do to the glory of God"—whatever it has been granted to do under the rule of faith.

16.99. "For with the heart it is believed unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." So the Scripture says: "Everyone who believes in Him shall not be put to shame." This is the word of faith which we preach, that "if you confess the word with your mouth, that the Lord is Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved." He plainly outlines a perfect righteousness, filled with both work and contemplation. We must, then, bless the persecutors: "Bless and do not curse." For "this is our boast, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and sincerity we have known God"—through this small occasion displaying the work of love—"that not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God we have conducted ourselves in the world."

16.100. These things the apostle says concerning knowledge; but the common teaching of faith he called "the fragrance of knowledge" in the second epistle to the Corinthians. "For until this present day the same veil remains for the many at the reading of the old covenant, not being unveiled in their turning to the Lord." For this reason too He showed resurrection to those able to see clearly, the resurrection that, while still in the flesh, comes from the life of the thing that creeps upon its belly. Hence too He called such men "offspring of vipers"—the lovers of pleasure, those who serve belly and genitals, and who cut off one another's heads for the sake of worldly desires. "Little children, let us not love in word nor in tongue," says John, teaching them to be perfect, "but in deed and in truth. In this we shall know that we are of the truth." And if God is love, then piety too is love; "there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments." And again, to the gnostic who longs to come into being it is written: "But become a pattern of the faithful in word, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity"; for the perfection of faith, I think, is distinguished from the common faith.

16.101. And indeed the divine apostle sets forth a rule of the gnostic through such words, on the one hand writing: "For I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. I know both how to be abased and how to abound; in everything and in all things I have been initiated, both to be filled and to hunger, both to abound and to suffer want; I can do all things in Him who strengthens me." And on the other hand, discoursing for the rebuke of others, he does not hesitate to say: "Remember the former days, in which, after you were enlightened, you endured a great struggle of sufferings—partly being made a spectacle by reproaches and afflictions, and partly becoming sharers with those so treated. For you both suffered together with my bonds, and accepted with joy the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you have for yourselves a better and abiding possession. Do not cast away, then, your boldness, which has a great recompense. For you have need of endurance, that, having done the will of God, you may receive the promise. For yet a little while, the coming One shall come and shall not tarry. But my righteous one shall live by faith; and if he draw back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who draw back unto destruction, but of faith unto the gaining of the soul."

16.102. Then he sets before you a swarm of divine examples. "For was it not by faith," he says, "through endurance, that those triumphed who took a trial of mockings and scourgings, and besides of bonds and prison? They were stoned, they were tested, they died by the slaughter of the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being in want, afflicted, ill-treated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth. And all these, having been borne witness to through faith, did not receive the promise of God." It remains to understand the word spoken by way of silence: "alone."

16.103. So at any rate he adds: "God having foreseen something better concerning us"—for He was good—"that they should not be made perfect apart from us. Therefore we too, having so great a holy and translucent cloud of witnesses surrounding us, laying aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us, let us run with endurance the contest set before us, looking to the author and perfecter of faith, Jesus." That, then, he speaks of one salvation in Christ, of the righteous and of us, he has said plainly before; and none the less, speaking of Moses too, he adds: "esteeming the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt; for he looked to the recompense. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing the Invisible." The divine Wisdom says concerning the martyrs: "They seemed in the eyes of the foolish to have died, and their departure was reckoned an affliction, and their going from us a destruction; but they are in peace. For even if in the sight of men they are punished, their hope is full of immortality."

16.104. Then it adds, teaching that martyrdom is a glorious purification: "And having been disciplined a little, they shall be greatly benefited, because God tested them"—that is, He allowed them to be tested, for a proving and for the shaming of the tempter—"and found them worthy of Himself," plainly, to be called sons. "As gold in the furnace He proved them, and as a whole-burnt sacrifice of offering He received them. And in the time of their visitation they shall shine forth, and as sparks in stubble they shall run to and fro. They shall judge nations and have dominion over peoples, and the Lord shall reign over them for ever."

17.105. Yes, and in the epistle to the Corinthians the apostle Clement too, himself sketching for us a kind of pattern of the gnostic, says: "For who that has sojourned among you has not proved your all-virtuous and steadfast faith? And has not marvelled at your prudent and gentle piety in Christ? And has not proclaimed the magnificent character of your hospitality? And has not counted blessed your perfect and secure knowledge? For you did all things without respect of persons, and walked in the ordinances of God," and so on. Then more plainly: "Let us fix our eyes, then, on those who perfectly served His magnificent glory. Let us take Enoch, who, being found righteous in obedience, was translated; and Noah, who, having believed, was saved; and Abraham, who, for faith and hospitality, was called the friend of God and the father of Isaac. For hospitality and piety Lot was saved from Sodom; for faith and hospitality Rahab the harlot was saved; for endurance and faith, in goatskins and sheepskins and woven camel's hair, they went about, proclaiming the kingdom of Christ—I mean Elijah and Elisha, Ezekiel and John, the prophets."

17.106. For indeed Abraham, called the friend of God on account of his free faith, was not lifted up by the glory, but, moderating his feeling, said: "But I am earth and ashes." And concerning Job it is thus written: "Job was righteous and blameless, true and god-fearing, abstaining from every evil." This is the man who conquered the tempter through endurance and bore witness, and was at the same time borne witness to by God; he holds to humility and says: "No one is clean from filth, not even if his life be one day." Moses, the faithful servant in his whole house, said to the one who spoke from the bush: "Who am I, that you send me? But I am of feeble voice and slow of tongue"—to minister the voice of the Lord through a human tongue. And again: "But I am a vapour from a pot." For "God sets Himself against the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

17.107. Yes, and David too, concerning whom the Lord says, bearing witness: "I found a man after my own heart, David the son of Jesse; with holy oil I anointed him." But he too says to God: "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy, and according to the multitude of your compassions blot out my transgression. Wash me more thoroughly from my lawlessness, and cleanse me from my sin; for my lawlessness I acknowledge, and my sin is ever before me." Then, hinting at the sin that does not fall under the law, in gnostic moderation of feeling he adds: "Against you only have I sinned, and done the evil before you." For the Scripture somewhere says: "The spirit of the Lord is a lamp, searching the chambers of the belly." And the more a man, doing righteously, becomes gnostic, the more closely is the luminous Spirit present to him. So the Lord draws near to the righteous, and none of the thoughts and reasonings that we make escapes Him—I mean the Lord Jesus, who, by the will of the Almighty, is the overseer of our heart, whose blood was sanctified for us.

17.108. Let us, then, reverence those who lead us and respect them; let us honour the presbyters; let us educate the young in the education of God. For blessed is he who teaches and does the things of the Lord according to worth; and he is of a high-minded mind and contemplative of the truth. "Let us set right our women toward the good. Let them display the lovely character of purity," he says; "let them show forth the sincere will of their meekness; let them make manifest, through their silence, the gentleness of their tongue; let them give their love not according to partialities, but holily and equally to all who fear God. Let our children share in the education that is in Christ; let them learn what humility avails before God, what pure love can do before God, how the fear of the Lord is good and great, saving all who conduct themselves holily in it with a pure heart." For He is a searcher of thoughts and reflections, whose breath is in us, and when He wills, He will take it away.

17.109. And all these things the faith in Christ confirms. "Come, children," says the Lord, "hear me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Who is the man that wills life, that loves to see good days?" Then He adds the gnostic mystery of the hebdomad and the ogdoad: "Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit; turn aside from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it." For through these things He hints at knowledge, teaching that one is perfected both by abstinence from evils and by the activity of good, in deed and in word. "The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears toward their petition; but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off their memory from the earth."

17.110. "The righteous cried, and the Lord heard him, and delivered him out of all his afflictions." "For many are the scourges of sinners, but mercy shall encircle those who hope in the Lord." He says that the one who genuinely hopes is encompassed by a multitude of mercy. For in the epistle to the Corinthians it is written: "Through Jesus Christ our foolish and darkened mind springs up anew into the light. Through Him the Master willed that we should taste of the immortal knowledge." And, displaying more expressly the property of knowledge, he added: "Since, then, these things are plain to us, and we have peered into the depths of the divine knowledge, we ought to do all things in order, all that the Master commanded us to accomplish at appointed times. Let the wise man, then, display his wisdom not in words only, but in good works; let the humble-minded bear witness not to himself, but let him allow himself to be witnessed to by another; let the man pure in the flesh not boast, knowing that it is another who supplies him his continence. Consider, brothers, that by however much more knowledge we have been deemed worthy, by so much the more are we exposed to danger."

18.111. The dignified and pure conduct of our love of mankind, according to Clement, seeks the common benefit—whether it bears witness or educates, in deed and in word, and this in a twofold way, both unwritten and written. This is love—to love God and one's neighbour. This leads up to the unspeakable height: "Love covers a multitude of sins"; love bears all things, suffers long with all; love joins us to God; love does all things in concord. In love all the elect of God were perfected; without love nothing is well-pleasing to God. "Of its perfection there is no explanation," he says. "Who is fit to be found in it, save those whom God Himself deems worthy?" So at once the apostle Paul says: "If I give over my body"—and have not love—"I am sounding brass and a clanging cymbal"; unless from elect disposition, through gnostic love, I bear witness, he says—but through fear.

18.112. If, then, even with a reward expected, beating my lips toward the testimony of the Lord, I confess the Lord, I am a common man, sounding "the Lord," not knowing Him. For there is the people that loves with the lips, and there is another who gives over his body to be burned. And "though I distribute all my goods," he says—not according to the law of loving fellowship, but according to the law of recompense, either from the man benefited or from the Lord who promised—"and though I have all faith, so as to remove mountains" and cast off the passions that overshadow, "but be not made faithful to the Lord through love, I am nothing"—being reckoned, in comparison with the man who bears witness gnostically, in the multitude and in the realm of what makes no difference. And all the generations from Adam to this present day have passed away; but those perfected in love, according to the grace of God, have a place among the pious, who shall be made manifest at the visitation of the kingdom of Christ.

18.113. Love does not permit one to sin; but if a man fall unwillingly into some such circumstance, through the assaults of the adversary, imitating David, he will sing: "I will confess to the Lord, and it shall please Him better than a young bullock that has horns and hoofs. Let the poor see and be glad." For He says: "Offer to God a sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Lord; and call upon me in the day of your affliction, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me"; for "a sacrifice to God is a broken spirit." Love, then, God too is called, being good. He whose love works no harm to the neighbour, neither wronging nor ever requiting wrong, but doing good to all without exception, after the image of God. The fullness of the law, then, is love, as Christ is—that is, the presence of the Lord who loves us, and our loving teaching and conduct according to Christ. By love, then, the not committing adultery and the not coveting the neighbour's wife are perfected, which were before forbidden by fear. The same deed, then, has a difference, whether done through fear or accomplished through love, and whether wrought through faith or gnostically.

18.114. With good reason, then, their prizes too are different. For the gnostic there are prepared the things "that eye has not seen nor ear heard nor have entered into the heart of man"; but to the one who has simply believed He bears witness of a hundredfold of what he has left behind—a promise that has happened to fall within the comprehension of men. Having come to this point, I was reminded of a certain man who called himself a gnostic. For, explaining the words "But I say, the one who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery," he held that the bare desire is not judged, but only if to the desire the deed corresponding to it, going beyond the desire, is accomplished in it; for "if it be in a dream, through imagination, it already misuses the body too."

18.115. So those who composed the histories tell of such a judgement of Bocchoris the just. A young man in love with a courtesan persuades the girl, for a fixed price, to come to him on the next day. But, his desire having been satisfied beforehand by a dream beyond his hope, when his beloved came according to agreement, he barred her from entry; and she, having learned what had happened, demanded the price, saying that she had in this way fulfilled the desire of the lover. They came, then, to the judge. He, ordering the young man to hold out the purse of the price in the sun, commanded the courtesan to take hold of its shadow—gracefully bidding her receive an image of payment for an image of intercourse.

18.116. So a man dreams when the soul consents to the imagination; but the man who looks toward desire dreams waking—not only, as that supposed gnostic said, if together with the sight of the woman he conceive in thought the intercourse (for this is already a work of desire as desire), but if anyone, reason says, look toward the beauty of a body, and the flesh seem to him beautiful for desire, he is judged, having looked carnally and sinfully, by the very thing at which he wondered. For, on the contrary, the man who looks at beauty through pure love does not regard the flesh as beautiful, but the soul, marvelling, I think, at the body as at a statue, and through whose beauty sending himself on to the Craftsman and to the truly beautiful, displaying to the angels set over the ascent a holy symbol, the luminous character of righteousness—I mean the anointing of well-pleasing, the quality of the disposition that lies upon the soul made bright by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

18.117. This glory that shone upon the face of Moses the people were not able to look upon, wherefore he took a veil of the glory toward those who looked carnally. For those who bring along anything of the worldly things, the ones who demand the toll hold fast, weighed down by their own passions; but the man who is bare of the things subject to the toll, but full of knowledge and of the righteousness that comes from works, they send on with their prayers, counting the man blessed together with his work. "And his leaf shall not fall off"—the leaf of the tree of life, the tree nourished by the channels of the waters; for the righteous man is likened to fruit-bearing trees, not only to those in the offering of the things raised on high . . . in the sacrifice. And in the offerings of the sacrifices under the law there were inspectors of the victims for blemishes. The men skilled in these matters, then, distinguish appetite from desire, and they assign desire, which is concerned with pleasures and licence, to the irrational; but appetite, which is concerned with the necessary things according to nature, they reckon a rational motion.

19.118. Of this perfection, then, it is possible to partake alike for a man and alike for a woman. At once, it was not Moses alone who, hearing from God: "I have spoken to you once and twice, saying, I have seen this people, and behold, it is stiff-necked; let me utterly destroy them, and I will blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make you a great and wonderful nation, far more than this"—answers, entreating, not looking to his own advantage, but to the common salvation: "By no means, Lord; forgive the sin to this people, or blot me too out of the book of the living." How great the perfection of the man who wished to die together with the people rather than be saved alone! But Judith too, perfected among women, when the city was besieged, having begged the elders, goes out into the camp of the foreigners, despising every danger, giving herself over to the enemies for her country's sake, in faith of God; and at once she receives the reward of her faith—a woman who triumphed over the enemy of the faith, having become mistress of the head of Holofernes.

19.119. And again, Esther, perfect in faith, delivering Israel from the tyrannical power and from the cruelty of the satrap, a single woman, afflicted with fastings, set herself against ten thousand armed right hands, undoing through faith the tyrannical decree; and indeed she tamed the one, and held back Haman, and through her perfect prayer to God kept Israel unharmed. For I pass over Susanna and the sister of Moses—how the one was fellow-general with the prophet, taking the lead of all the women renowned among the Hebrews for wisdom; and the other, by surpassing dignity, holding out even to death when condemned by her licentious lovers, remained, unwavering, a martyr of purity.

19.120. Yes, and Dio the philosopher records that a certain woman, Lysidice, out of excess of modesty bathed in her very tunic; and Philotera, whenever she was about to enter the bath, quietly drew up the tunic as far as the water covered her bare parts, and then, rising up again little by little, put it on once more. And did not Leaena the Athenian too bear tortures manfully? She, being privy to the plot of Harmodius and Aristogeiton against Hipparchus, did not in any way tell of it, though well tortured. And they say too that the Argive women, with Telesilla the poetess leading them, merely by appearing routed the Spartans, valiant in war, and gained for those women fearlessness of death. The author of the Danaid says the like concerning the daughters of Danaus:

And then swiftly the daughters of Danaus armed themselves before the fair-flowing river of lord Nile,

19.121. and so on. And the rest of the poets sing of Atalanta's swiftness in the hunt, and of the tender love of Anticleia, and of Alcestis' love of her husband, and of the good courage of Macaria and of the Hyacinthides. And what? Did not Theano the Pythagorean come to such a height of philosophy that, when a man, looking at her inquisitively, said, "A fair arm," she answered, "But not a public one"? Of the same dignity is reported also this saying: for, being asked on what day a woman goes down to the Thesmophoria after being with a man, she said, "From her own, at once; but from another's, never." Yes, and Themisto of Lampsacus, the wife of Leonteus of Lampsacus, philosophized in the Epicurean way, as did Myia the daughter of Theano in the Pythagorean way, and Arignote who wrote the things concerning Dionysus; for the daughters of Diodorus, surnamed Cronus, all became dialecticians, as Philo the dialectician says in the Menexenus, whose names he sets down as follows: Menexene, Argeia, Theognis, Artemisia, Pantacleia. I remember too a certain Cynic woman, called Hipparchia, the Maronite, the wife of Crates, in whose honour he even celebrated the "dog-wedding" in the Stoa Poikile.

19.122. And Arete of Cyrene, the daughter of Aristippus, educated Aristippus surnamed the Mother-taught. And with Plato there philosophized Lasthenia the Arcadian and Axiothea the Phliasian. For of Aspasia the Milesian, of whom the comic poets too write much, Socrates made use for philosophy, and Pericles for rhetoric. I pass over the others, then, for the length of the discourse, neither cataloguing the poetesses—Corinna and Telesilla and Myia and Sappho—nor the women painters, such as Eirene the daughter of Cratinus and Anaxandra the daughter of Nealces, of whom Didymus speaks in the Symposiaca.

19.123. And the daughter of Cleobulus the wise man and monarch of the Lindians was not ashamed to wash the feet of her father's guests; just as Sarah, the wife of Abraham, that blessed woman, herself prepared the cakes for the angels, and royal maidens among the Hebrews tended the sheep, whence too Nausicaa in Homer went to the washing-places. The prudent woman, then, would choose first to persuade her husband to be her partner in the things that lead to happiness; but if she is unable, let her hasten toward virtue alone—obedient to her husband in all things, so as never to do anything against his will, except in so far as it is judged to make a difference toward virtue and salvation. But even if anyone should hinder a woman, or a maidservant too, who unfeignedly sets out toward such a disposition, the man who does this then plainly does nothing other than purpose to lead her away from righteousness and prudence, and to make his own household at once unjust and licentious.

19.124. It is not possible, then, for a man or a woman to become noteworthy in anything whatever without using learning and practice and training; and we say that virtue depends on nothing else so much as on ourselves. Other things one may hinder by warring against them, but the things in our power not at all, even if one should especially set himself against them; for the gift is god-given and not subject to anything else. Hence licence would be reckoned the evil of none other than the man who is licentious, and prudence the good of the man who is able to be prudent.

20.125. Euripides sketches a husband-loving woman with dignity, counselling:

She must seem to speak well, when he says something, even if he does not speak, and to work out what she means to say so as to please the man who is with her.

And again somewhere, the like to these:

And it is sweet, if he fares ill in anything, for the wife to be downcast together with her husband, and to have her share in common of grief and pleasure.

And showing the gentle and tender-loving spirit somehow thus, he adds, even in misfortunes:

But I, when you are sick, will be sick along with you and endure, and I will bear your evils with you, and nothing is bitter to me;

for with friends

one must

fare well and fare ill; for what else is friendship but this?

20.126. So marriage too is sanctified when it is perfected according to reason, if the union submits to God and is administered with a true heart in fullness of faith, the hearts being purified from an evil conscience and the body washed with pure water, and holding the confession of hope; for faithful is He who promised. And the happy marriage must be judged neither by wealth nor by beauty, but by virtue. "No woman," says the tragedy,

ever did her husband good by beauty; but virtue has done good to many; for every good woman, who has been welded to her husband, knows how to be prudent.

Then, as though giving counsels, she says:

First of all, this holds: even if the husband be unshapely, he must seem to be shapely to the woman who has got a mind. For it is not the eye that judges, but the mind that sees,

and the things following. For very properly the Scripture said that the woman was given to the man by God as a helper.

20.127. It is plain, then, I think, that she will choose to heal by reason, with persuasion, each of the grievous things that befall from the husband in the housekeeping; but if he should not obey, then she will try, as far as is possible for human nature, to lead a sinless life—whether she must die with reason or live—reckoning God to be the helper and partner of such conduct, who is truly her support and saviour both for the present and for the future, having made Him the general and leader of every action, considering prudence and righteousness her work, and making love of God her end.

20.128. Gracefully, then, in the epistle to Titus, the apostle says that the elder women must be in a state befitting holiness, not slanderers, not enslaved to much wine, that they may train the young women to be husband-lovers, child-lovers, prudent, pure, keepers of the house, good, subject to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. "But rather," he says, "pursue peace with all men, and sanctification, without which no one shall see the Lord, looking carefully lest anyone be a fornicator or profane, as Esau, who for one meal gave up his birthright; and lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by it the many be defiled."

20.129. Then, as though setting a coping-stone on the question concerning marriage, he adds: "Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God shall judge." And, one aim and one end having been shown to man and woman, what the perfect thing is, Peter says in his epistle: "Though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the proof of your faith, far more precious than perishing gold yet tested through fire, may be found unto praise and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ; whom not having seen you love, in whom now, though not seeing Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of faith, the salvation of souls." Wherefore Paul too boasts that he has been, for Christ's sake, in labours more abundantly, in stripes above measure, in deaths often.

21.130. Here I find "the perfect" taken in many ways, according to the man who succeeds in each virtue. One is perfected, then, both as devout and as patient and as continent and as a worker and as a martyr and as a gnostic; but perfect in all things at once I do not know if any man is, while still being a man, save only the One who put on man for our sake. And yet by the bare law a man might be perfect, the law that professes abstinence from evils; but this is a road both to the gospel and to good-doing. But the gnostic perfection of the man under the law is the taking on of the gospel, that the man under the law may become perfect; for so Moses, who was under the law, foretold that one must hear, that we might receive, according to the apostle, Christ the fullness of the law. And in the gospel the gnostic already advances, not using the law merely as a step, but understanding it and perceiving it as the Lord who gave the covenants handed it down to the apostles. And even if he should conduct himself rightly (as indeed it is impossible for knowledge to follow upon evil-doing), and be moreover a martyr, having most rightly confessed out of love—he would receive greater worth, as among men; yet not even thus will he be reckoned "perfect" while still in the flesh, since the consummation of life has anticipated this appellation, the gnostic martyr having already anticipated the displaying and presenting authentically of the perfect work through gnostic love, the spirit being sent forward when the blood is offered with thanks.

21.131. Blessed, then, would he be from this point, and rightly proclaimed perfect, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God and not from us, as the apostle says; only let us preserve the power of choice and the love, "being afflicted in everything, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed." For those who hasten toward consummation must, according to the same apostle, "give no offence in anything, but in everything commend themselves," not to men, but to God. And let it be, as a consequence, that we obey men too; for this too is reasonable on account of the slanderous blasphemies. And the commendation is "in much endurance, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings, in purity, in knowledge, in long-suffering, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in unfeigned love, in the word of truth, in the power of God," that we may be temples of God, "cleansed from every defilement of flesh and spirit"; "and I," He says, "will receive you, and will be to you a Father, and you shall be to me sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." "Let us perfect, then," he says, "holiness in the fear of God." For though fear begets grief, "I rejoice," he says, "not that you were grieved,

21.132. but that you were grieved unto repentance; for you were grieved according to God, that you might suffer loss in nothing through us. For godly grief works repentance unto a salvation not to be repented of; but the grief of the world works death. For behold, this very thing, your being grieved according to God, what diligence it has wrought in you—nay, what defence, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging! In everything you have commended yourselves to be pure in the matter." These are the preliminary exercises of gnostic training. And since the Almighty God Himself gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministry, unto the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ—we must hasten to come to maturity in a gnostic way and to be perfected, as much as possible while still remaining in the flesh, having practised, from the perfect like-mindedness here, to run together with the will of God unto the restoration of the truly perfect nobility and kinship, unto the fullness of Christ, the thing perfectly completed out of the perfecting. We already see in what way and how and when the divine apostle speaks of "the perfect," and how he shows the differences of the perfect. And again, to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable. "For to one is given through the Spirit a word of wisdom, to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings in the same Spirit, to another workings of powers, to another prophecy, to another discernment of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another interpretation of tongues; but all these things the one and the same Spirit works, dividing severally to each as He wills."

21.133. This being so, the prophets are perfect in prophecy, the righteous in righteousness, the martyrs in confession, and others in preaching—not without share in the common virtues, but succeeding in the things in which they were appointed. For who that thinks rightly would say the prophet is not righteous? And what? Did not the righteous too, like Abraham, prophesy?

For to one God gave warlike works, to another the dance, to another the lyre and song,

says Homer. But each has his own gift from God, this one in this way, that one in that; but the apostles were filled in all things.

21.134. You will find, then, if you wish, from their deeds and writings, the knowledge, the life, the preaching, the righteousness, the purity, the prophecy. And yet one must know that, even though Paul is younger in time, having flourished immediately after the Lord's ascension, still his Scripture hangs upon the old covenant, breathing and speaking from there; for the faith in Christ and the knowledge of the gospel are an explanation and a fulfilment of the law. And for this reason it was said to the Hebrews: "Unless you believe, you shall not understand"—that is, unless you believe the one prophesied through the law and decreed by the law, you shall not understand the old covenant, which He Himself explained at His own coming.

22.135. The man who understands and is keen-sighted, this is the gnostic. And his work is not the abstinence from evils (for this is a stepping-stone to the greatest advancement), nor indeed the doing of any good thing either through fear (for it is written: "Where shall I flee, and where shall I hide from your face? If I go up into heaven, you are there; if I depart to the ends of the sea, there is your right hand; if I go down into the depths, there is your Spirit"), nor through hope of the promised honour (for it is said: "Behold, the Lord, and His reward is before His face, to give back to each according to his works"—"things which eye has not seen nor ear heard nor have entered into the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love Him"), but only the good-doing through love, which is choiceworthy for the gnostic for the sake of the good itself.

22.136. At once it is said to the Lord, in the person of God: "Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance"—teaching Him to ask the most royal request, the salvation of men, without reward, that we ourselves may inherit and possess the Lord. For, on the contrary, to long for the knowledge concerning God for the sake of some need—that this may happen to me and that may not—is not proper to the gnostic; rather, the knowledge itself suffices him as a cause of contemplation. For I would dare to say that the man who pursues knowledge for the sake of the divine science itself will not choose knowledge for the sake of wishing to be saved. For thinking, by exercise, is stretched out into ever-thinking; and ever-thinking, becoming the substance of the knower by an undivided commingling, abides as an eternal contemplation, a living subsistence. If, then, one should set before the gnostic, by way of hypothesis, which he would wish to choose—the knowledge of God or eternal salvation—and these were separated (though they are most of all in identity), he would, without any hesitation whatever, choose the knowledge of God, judging that to be choiceworthy for its own sake which is the property of the faith that has ascended through love into knowledge.

22.137. This, then, is the first good-doing of the perfect man, when it comes about not for the sake of any need of the things that tend toward himself, but, judging that it is good to do good, the activity, carried out earnestly, does good in every action—not in some things but not in others, but established in the habit of good-doing, no longer for the sake of glory or, as the philosophers say, of good repute, nor for the sake of a reward, whether from men or from God; . . . that he may carry out his life after the image and likeness of the Lord. And if, while doing good, something contrary should meet him, he will, as a good recompense, send it forth without remembering wrong, becoming just and good to the just and the unjust. To such men the Lord says: "Be as your Father, perfect." For such a man the flesh has died, and he himself alone lives, having consecrated the tomb into a holy temple to the Lord, having turned the old sinful soul toward God.

22.138. This man is no longer continent, but has come into the habit of freedom from passion, awaiting to put on the divine form. "If you do alms," it says, "let no one know; and if you fast, anoint yourself, that God alone may know, and of men not one"—but neither ought the man who does the mercy himself to know that he is doing mercy; for so he will be sometimes merciful and at other times not. But when he does the beneficent thing in habit, he will imitate the nature of the good; and the disposition will be both nature and training. One must not, however, be lifted up and transported, but, walking, arrive where one must, having passed through the whole of the narrow road; for this is to be drawn by the Father—to become worthy to receive the power of grace from God and to run up unhindered. And even if some hate the elect man, he knows their ignorance, pitying the mind of their stupidity.

22.139. With good reason, then, this knowledge loves even those who are ignorant, and teaches and educates the whole creation to honour the Almighty God. And if it has learned to love God, this man will in no way have his virtue cast away, neither waking nor sleeping nor in any imagination; since the habit never goes out of itself, falling away from being a habit, whether knowledge be called a habit or a disposition. For, by never letting in differing notions, the ruling part, remaining unaltered, does not take on any alteration of imaginations, dreaming the image-makings that come from the daytime motions. For this reason indeed the Lord commands us to keep awake, so that not even in a dream may our soul ever suffer passion, but He bids us preserve the conduct even of the night, as wrought in the day, pure and unspotted. For this is the likening to God, as far as is possible—to keep the mind in the same relation. And this is the relation of mind as mind; but the varied disposition comes about through the passionate attachment to material things.

22.140. So that they seem to me to have called the night "the kindly time" [euphrone], since at that season the soul, having ceased from the senses, inclines toward itself and shares more in understanding. For this reason too the initiations are held mostly by night, signifying the night-time contraction of the soul from the body. "Let us, then, not sleep as the rest, but let us watch and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep by night, and those who are drunk are drunk by night; but let us, being of the day, be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation."

22.141. And the things they say concerning sleep, the same must be understood concerning death too. For each shows the withdrawal of the soul, the one more, the other less; which is also to be got from Heraclitus: "Man in the kindly night kindles a light for himself, dead, his eyes being quenched; living, he touches the dead while sleeping, his eyes being quenched; awake, he touches the sleeper." For "blessed are those who know the season," according to the apostle, that "it is now the hour for you to be raised from sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far advanced, and the day is at hand. Let us, then, put away the works of darkness, and put on the weapons of light." By "day" he allegorizes the Son and light, and again the commandments as the "weapons of light" metaphorically. So they say one must come washed to the sacred rites and the prayers, pure and bright.

22.142. And this—the being adorned and purified outwardly—is done for the sake of a symbol; but purity is to think holy things. And indeed an image of baptism would be the one handed down to the poets from Moses in some such way:

And she, having washed herself, having clean garments on her flesh,

Penelope comes to her prayer; and Telemachus,

having washed his hands in the grey sea, prayed to Athena.

This was a custom of the Jews, as also the frequent washing themselves after the bed. Well, then, is that also said:

Know that you are pure not by washing, but by the mind.

For perfect purity, I think, is that of the mind and of the works and of the thoughts, and besides the sincerity of words, and, lastly, sinlessness in dreams.

22.143. And it is sufficient, I think, as a purification for a man, an exact and sure repentance, if indeed, having condemned ourselves for our former deeds, we put away the past, and after these things having understood, and having drawn the mind up out of both the things that delight according to sense and the former errors. If, then, one must give the etymology of "knowledge" [epistēmē], and must take its application from "standing" [stasis], because it sets [histēsi] our soul among the things, the soul that before was carried now this way, now that, then likewise faith [pistis] must be etymologized as the standing of our soul about that which is. But we long to learn of the man who is always and in all things just—who, neither fearing the punishment from the law, nor being cautious of the hatred of evil felt by those who are present and who pursue evildoers, nor suspecting the danger from the wronged men themselves, remains just; for the man who, on account of these things, abstains from doing anything unjust is not willingly good, but good through fear. And Epicurus too says that the wise man according to him does not wish to do wrong for the sake of some gain; for he cannot get assurance of escaping notice. So that, if he should be persuaded he will escape notice, he will do wrong, according to him.

22.144. And such are the dark doctrines. But if, in hope of the recompense from God for the just, a man should abstain from doing wrong, this man too is not willingly good; for as fear justified the one, so a reward justifies this man—or rather, makes him seem to be just. But the hope after death—that it is good for the good and the contrary for the base—not only those who pursue the barbarian wisdom know, but the Pythagoreans too; for they too laid down hope as the end for those who philosophize. So that Socrates too in the Phaedo says that the good souls depart hence with a good hope, and again, blaming the base, he sets against them: "For they live with an evil hope." With this Heraclitus too plainly agrees, in what he says discoursing about men: "Things await men, when they have died, which they neither expect nor suppose."

22.145. Divinely, then, Paul writes outright to the Romans: "Affliction works endurance, and endurance proof, and proof hope, and hope does not put to shame." For endurance is for the sake of the hope to come; but "hope" is also called, by the same name, the giving-back and the restoration of hope, which also "does not put to shame," being no longer reproached. But the man who obeys the bare call, in so far as he has been called, hurries on toward knowledge neither through fear nor through pleasures; for he does not look around whether any profitable gain or enjoyment follows him from outside, but, drawn by love of the truly existent Beloved and led toward what is fitting, he is pious.

22.146. Hence not even if, by hypothesis, he should receive authority from God to do the forbidden things without punishment, nor even if he should receive the promise of receiving, as a reward for these, the goods of the blessed—nay, not even if he should be persuaded that he will escape the notice of God in the things he does, which is impossible—would he ever wish to do anything contrary to right reason, having once chosen the truly good and choiceworthy of itself, and on this account lovely. For we have understood that the good does not lie

in the food of the belly.

But that man has heard that "food does not commend us, nor indeed marriage, nor again abstinence from marriage in ignorance, but the gnostic work according to virtue"—since the dog too, the irrational animal, might be called continent, that fears the man lifting the staff and on this account abstains from the meat. And of such men, know well, that when the promise made beforehand has been taken away, and the threatened fear circumscribed, and the impending danger removed, their purpose is convicted.

23.147. For they do not become familiar with the very nature of the thing, so as truly to grasp gnostically that all things created for our use are good—as, for example, marriage and the begetting of children received with prudence—but that it is better than good to become free from passion and virtuous through the likening to the divine. But, being drawn by the external things, useful or unuseful, they abstain from some and not from others; and indeed the things from which they hold off, they plainly loathe, slandering the creation and the Demiurge, and in their seeming to conduct themselves faithfully they have an unholy judgement. But "You shall not covet" needs neither the necessity that comes from fear, which forces abstinence from pleasant things, nor the reward which by promise persuades one to check the impulses; nor is the obedience for the sake of the commandment. But those who have obeyed God for the sake of the promise choose it for the sake of the promise, having been chosen by the lure of pleasure;

23.148. nor would the turning away from perceptible things consequently produce the familiarity with the intelligible; rather, on the contrary, the familiarity with the intelligible produces a natural turning of the gnostic from the perceptible, when he has chosen the good gnostically by an election of the noble things—marvelling at the generation and sanctifying the Maker, and sanctifying the likening to the divine. "But I will free myself from desire," he will say, "for the sake of my familiarity with you, O Lord. For good is the dispensation that was created, and all things are well administered; nothing comes about without cause. I must be among your things, Almighty; and even if I am here, I am with you. I wish to be free of fear, that I may be able to draw near to you, and to be content with little, practising your just election of the noble things from the like things."

23.149. Most mystically and most holily the apostle, teaching us the truly thankful election—an election not by way of rejection of the others as base, but of making nobler things out of noble ones—indicated this when he said: "So that both the one who gives his virgin in marriage does well, and the one who does not give her in marriage does better, toward what is seemly and waits well upon the Lord without distraction." And we know that the things hard to procure have, in the love of the good, been made by God not necessary, and the necessary things easy to procure. Wherefore Democritus says well that nature and teaching are nearly the same; and he has briefly added the reason: "for teaching reshapes a man, and reshaping makes his nature, and it differs in nothing whether one was moulded such by nature or remodelled in time and by learning." But the Lord has provided both—the one according to creation, the other according to the re-creation and renewal from the covenant. And the thing profitable to the more sovereign is the more choiceworthy; and most sovereign of all is the mind. To the man, then, to whom the truly noble things appear most pleasant, he procures from himself the fruit he longs for, the stability of the soul. "But he who hears me," it says, "shall rest in peace, confident, and shall be quiet, fearless of every evil. Be confident, with your whole heart and your mind, in God." By this way it is possible for the gnostic already to become a god: "I said, You are gods, and sons of the Most High."

23.150. And Empedocles too says that the souls of the wise become gods, writing in some such way:

And at the end they become seers and hymn-singers and physicians and leaders among men upon the earth; whence they spring up gods, highest in honours.

Man, then, simply, is moulded thus according to the form of the spirit that is congenital with him; for he is fashioned neither shapeless nor formless in the workshop of nature, where mystically the generation of man is accomplished, the craft and the substance being common. But the particular man is characterized according to the impress that comes into the soul of the things he has chosen. Hence we say that Adam was perfect as regards his moulding; for none of the things that characterize the form and shape of man was lacking to him. But that which he was to receive in the becoming—the perfection, and to be justified through obedience—this was the thing laid upon him, namely, to come to maturity. But of him who chose by his own cause, and still more chose the forbidden, God is not the cause; for generation is twofold—the one of things begotten, the other of things coming to be.

23.151. And the manliness [andreia] of man, who is by substance subject to passion, makes, they say, the one who partakes of it fearless and unconquerable; and wrath is the spear-bearer of the mind in endurance and steadfastness and the like; and over desire are ranked prudence and saving practical wisdom. But God is free of passion, free of wrath and free of desire; and He is not fearless in the sense of avoiding terrors, nor prudent in the sense of ruling over desires; for neither could the nature of God fall into any terror, nor does God flee cowardice, just as neither will He desire, so as to rule over desire. So mystically, concerning us, the Pythagorean saying was uttered, that man too must become one, since the high priest himself is one, there being one God, according to the unchangeable habit of the good ever running on.

23.152. So at once the Saviour, along with desire, took away wrath too, wrath being a desire of vengeance; for, in general, the passible part . . . to every kind of desire; but the man who is made divine into freedom from passion becomes purely monadic. As, then, those at sea, drawn taut from an anchor, draw the anchor, but do not drag it to themselves, but rather themselves to the anchor, so those who, in the gnostic life, draw God to themselves, unawares are themselves led toward God; for the man who serves God serves himself. In the contemplative life, then, a man takes care of himself, worshipping God, and through his own sincere purification he beholds the holy God holily; for prudence, conceived as standing by and watching over itself and contemplating itself unceasingly, is likened, as far as possible, to God.

24.153. So at once the thing in our power is that of which we are equally lords, both of it and of its opposite—as the philosophizing or not, and the believing or disbelieving. Through our being equally lords of either of the opposites, the thing in our power is found possible. And indeed the commandments are such as can be both done and not done by us, upon which there reasonably follows praise and blame; and again those who are punished on account of the sins committed by them are punished for these alone; for the things done have passed away, nor could the thing done ever become undone. So the sins before faith are forgiven by the Lord, not that they should not have come to pass, but as not having come to pass. Yet not all of them, Basilides says; only the involuntary and those in ignorance are forgiven, as if it were a man, but not God, who provided so great a gift. To this man the Scripture says: "You supposed, lawless one, that I would be like you." But even if we are punished for the voluntary ones, we are punished, not that they should not have come to pass, having come to pass, but because they came to pass. And punishment does not profit the sinner toward his not having done it, but toward his no longer sinning, nor any other man falling into the like.

24.154. Here, then, the good God educates for these three causes: first, that the one being educated may become better than himself; next, that those able to be saved through examples may be checked beforehand, being admonished; and third, that the wronged man may not be easily despised and fit to be wronged. And two are the modes of correction—the one didactic, the other punitive, which we have called also educative. One must know, however, that those who fall into sins after the washing are the ones being educated; for the things done before were forgiven, but the things supervening are purged out. Concerning the unbelievers it was said that they are reckoned "as dust, which the wind drives from the face of the earth, and as a drop from a bucket."

25.155. Blessed is the man who has gained learning of inquiry, neither setting out to the harm of the citizens nor toward unjust deeds, but beholding the ageless order of immortal nature, in what way it came together, and where and how. To such men there never clings the practice of shameful deeds.

With good reason, then, Plato too says that the contemplator of the ideas will live a god among men; "and mind is the place of the ideas, and mind is God." He said, then, that the contemplator of the invisible God lives a god among men; and in the Sophist Socrates named the Eleatic stranger, who was a dialectician, "a god"—"such gods, like strangers from abroad, who visit cities." For when the soul, having risen above generation, is by itself and converses with the forms, like the chief one in the Theaetetus, having become as it were an angel, it shall be with Christ, being contemplative, ever beholding the will of God; truly "alone wise, but the others flit about as shadows"; for "the dead bury their own dead." Whence Jeremiah says: "I will fill her with dead, earth-born men, whom my wrath has struck."

25.156. God, then, being indemonstrable, is not an object of scientific knowledge; but the Son is wisdom and knowledge and truth and all else akin to this, and indeed has demonstration and exposition. And all the powers of the Spirit, becoming together one thing, are summed up unto the same, the Son; but He is uncircumscribed by the notion concerning each of His powers. And indeed He becomes neither absolutely one as one, nor many as parts, the Son, but as all things one. Whence also all things; for He is a circle of all the powers rolled up and unified into one.

25.157. For this reason the Word is called Alpha and Omega, of whom alone the end becomes beginning, and again ends at the upper beginning, taking no separation anywhere. Therefore to believe in Him and through Him is to become monadic, unified without distraction in Him; while to disbelieve is to be in doubt and to stand apart and to be divided. For this reason the Lord says these things: "Every alien-born son, uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh"—that is, unclean in body and spirit—"shall not enter the holy place, from among the aliens in the midst of the house of Israel, but only the Levites." And by "aliens" He meant those who have not wished to believe, but choose to disbelieve.

25.158. Only those, then, who live purely are truly priests of God. For this reason, though all the tribes were circumcised, the tribes that anoint the high priests and kings and prophets were reckoned holier. Whence too He bids them not even touch the dead nor enter to the departed—not as though the body were defiled, but because sin and disobedience are fleshly and embodied and dead, and therefore abominable. To the father alone, and to the mother and son and daughter who have died, is the priest permitted to enter, because these alone are kindred of flesh and seed, from whom the priest too has received the immediate cause of his entry into life. And these too are purified for seven days, the number through which generation is completed; for on the seventh the rest is worshipped, and on the eighth he offers propitiation, as it is written in Ezekiel, according to which propitiation it is possible to receive the promise.

25.159. And the perfect purification, I think, is the faith that comes through the law and the prophets unto the gospel; and the propitiation is the purity that comes through all obedience, together with the putting off of the worldly things, unto the thankful giving-back of the tabernacle at the release of the soul. Whether, then, it be the time which, through the seven periods numbered, restores into the highest rest, or the seven heavens, which some reckon by ascent, or even the fixed region that borders on the intelligible world, which is called the ogdoad—still he says the gnostic must rise up out of generation and sin. So at any rate on the seven days the victims for sins are sacrificed, for there is still caution about turning, and the seventh revolution too is touched.

25.160. And Job the just himself says: "Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I depart thither"—naked not of possessions (for that is a small and common thing), but, as a righteous man, he departs naked of vice and sin and of the formless image that follows those who have lived unjustly; for this was the thing said, "Unless you turn and become as the little children," pure in the flesh, holy in the soul through abstinence from evil works—God showing that He wishes us to be such as He has begotten us from the womb of water; for generation, succeeding generation by way of advancement, wishes to make us immortal, but "the lamp of the impious shall be quenched."

25.161. Yes, and the purity in body and soul which the gnostic pursues, the all-wise Moses, using the repetition fittingly, indicated, describing the incorruption of the body and of the soul in the case of Rebecca thus: "But the virgin was fair, she was a virgin, no man had known her." And Rebecca is interpreted "the glory of God"; and the glory of God is incorruption. This is the truly righteous thing—not to have advantage in either part, but to be a wholly sanctified temple of the Lord. Righteousness, then, is peace of life and stability, to which the Lord released, saying, "Depart in peace"; for Salem is interpreted "peace," of which our Saviour is recorded as king, whom Moses calls "Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God," the one giving the wine and the bread, the sanctified food, as a type of the Eucharist. And indeed Melchizedek is interpreted "righteous king"; and there is a synonymy of righteousness and peace.

25.162. But Basilides supposes Righteousness and her daughter Peace to be subsistent beings, abiding ranked in the ogdoad. We must pass over, then, from the more natural matters to the more manifest ethical ones; for the discussion concerning those things will follow after the work in hand. The Saviour Himself, then, plainly, as in the tragedy, leads us into the mysteries,

seeing those who see, and gives the sacred rites.

And if you ask:

And these rites—of what form are they to you?

you will hear again:

Things not to be spoken, for mortals uninitiated to know.

And if anyone busily inquires of what kind they are, let him hear again:

It is not lawful for you to hear, but they are worthy to know: the rites hate the man who practises impiety against God.

God is without beginning, the wholly complete beginning of all things, the maker of the beginning. In so far, then, as He is substance, He is the beginning of the natural realm; in so far as He is the good, of the ethical; in so far again as He is mind, of the rational and judging realm. Whence too the Word alone is teacher, the Son of the Father-mind, the one who educates man.

26.163. Not reasonably, then, do those run down the moulding and disparage the body, not perceiving that the structure of man was made upright for the contemplation of heaven, and that the organization of the senses tends toward knowledge, and the limbs and parts toward the good, not fitted out for pleasure. Hence this dwelling becomes receptive of the soul most precious to God and of the Holy Spirit, through the sanctification of soul and body, being deemed worthy and perfected by the equipping of the Saviour. And indeed the reciprocal sequence of the three virtues is found in connection with the gnostic man, who busies himself ethically and naturally and rationally about the divine. For wisdom is the knowledge of divine and human things; righteousness is the harmony of the parts of the soul; and holiness is the service of God. And if anyone should assert that the flesh, and through it generation, is slandered, citing Isaiah, who says, "All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass; the grass withered and the flower fell off; but the word of the Lord abides for ever," let him hear the Spirit interpreting the thing inquired into through Jeremiah: "And I scattered them like dry twigs blown by the wind into the desert.

26.164. This is the lot and portion of your disobeying, says the Lord; because you forgot me and hoped in lies, I too will uncover your hinder parts to your face, and your dishonour shall be seen, your adultery and your neighing," and so on. For this is the flower of the grass—both walking according to the flesh and being fleshly, according to the apostle, being in sins. The soul, it has been agreed, is better than the man, and the body inferior; but neither is the soul good by nature nor again the body evil by nature, nor is that which is not good straightway evil. For there are indeed certain middle things, and among the middle things things preferred and things rejected. The composition of man, then, having come into being among perceptible things, had to be constituted of different things, but not of opposites—of body and soul.

26.165. So the good deeds, then, are always, as better, attached to the better part, the spiritual; but the pleasure-loving and sinful ones are assigned to the inferior, the sinful part. So at once the soul of the wise and gnostic man, as though lodging as a guest in the body, conducts itself toward it gravely and honourably, not with passionate attachment, ready, whenever the time of departure should call, to leave the tabernacle. "A sojourner," it says, "in the land, and a pilgrim am I with you." And from this Basilides took to say that the election is a stranger to the world, as being by nature supramundane. But it is not so. For all things are of one God, and no one would be by nature a stranger to the world, the substance being one and the God one; but the elect man conducts himself as a stranger, knowing all things as things to be possessed and things to be given up.

26.166. And all the things the Peripatetics wish to be threefold goods, he uses, even the body too, as a man setting out on a far journey uses inns and the dwellings by the road—taking care of and adorning the place where he lodges, but leaving the dwelling and the possession, like its use, without passionate attachment, readily following the one who leads him away from life, in no way turning back for any cause whatever, having given thanks for the sojourning, but blessing his departure, embracing the abode in heaven. For "we know that, if our earthly house of the tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this we groan, longing to be clothed upon with our dwelling from heaven, if indeed, being clothed, we shall not be found naked; for we walk by faith, not by sight," as the apostle says. "But we are willing rather to be away from the body and at home with the Lord." Now the "rather" is in comparison; and comparison is among things that fall under likeness, as the more courageous is more courageous than the courageous, and most courageous of the cowardly.

26.167. Whence he added: "Wherefore we are ambitious, whether at home or away, to be well-pleasing to Him"—plainly to the one God, of whom all things are work and creation, both the world and the things above the world. I admire Epicharmus when he plainly says:

The man pious in mind would suffer no evil when he is dead; the spirit abides above in heaven;

and the lyric poet when he sings:

The souls of the impious flit below heaven over the earth in murderous pains, under inescapable yokes of evils; but the souls of the pious dwell in heaven, singing in hymns the great Blessed One.

The soul, then, is not sent down hither from heaven to the worse things—for God works all things toward the better—but the soul that has chosen the best life exchanges, by the righteousness of God, the earth for heaven.

26.168. With good reason, then, Job, having become possessed of knowledge, said: "Now I know that you can do all things, and that nothing is impossible for you. For who reports to me things I did not know, great and marvellous things which I did not understand? But I despised myself, reckoning myself to be earth and ashes." For the man who is in ignorance is sinful and earth and ashes; but the man established in knowledge, made like to God so far as he can be, is already spiritual and on this account elect. And that the Scripture calls the foolish and disobedient "earth," Jeremiah the prophet will make plain, speaking against Joachim and his brothers: "O earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord; write this man down as a man banished by proclamation."

26.169. And again another prophet says: "Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth"—calling understanding the "hearing," and the soul of the gnostic, who has taken upon himself the contemplation of heaven and of divine things, and in this way has become an Israelite, the "heaven"; for, on the contrary, he called the man who has chosen ignorance and hardness of heart "earth," and the "give ear" he addressed from the organs of hearing, the ears, assigning the fleshly things to those who cleave to the perceptible things. These are they concerning whom Micah the prophet says: "Hear, O peoples, the word of the Lord, you who dwell among pains." And Abraham said, "By no means, Lord, you who judge the earth"—since the man who has disbelieved is, according to the saving voice, already judged.

26.170. And it is written too in Kingdoms, the judgement and the decree of the Lord being thus: "God hears the righteous, but the impious He does not save, because they do not wish to know God; for the Almighty will not accomplish absurd things." What against this voice do the heresies still utter, when the Scripture proclaims the Almighty to be a good God and guiltless of vice and injustice—if indeed ignorance arises through not knowing, but God does nothing absurd? For "this is our God," it says, "and there is none beside Him who saves"; for "there is no injustice with God," according to the apostle. And still more plainly the prophet teaches the counsel of God and the gnostic advancement through these words: "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you, but to fear the Lord your God and to walk in all His ways and to love Him and to serve Him alone?" This He asks of you, who have the authority to choose salvation.

26.171. What, then, did the Pythagoreans intend when they bade men pray aloud with the voice? It seems to me, not that they supposed the divine could not hear those who speak softly, but that they wished the prayers to be just—such as one would not be ashamed to make with many witnesses. But concerning prayer we shall treat at the proper season as the discourse proceeds; and as for works, we ought to have them crying aloud, walking as in the day: "For let your works shine." "And behold, the man and his works are before his face." "For behold, God and His works." One must imitate God, as far as is possible for the gnostic. And to me it seems that the poets too call the elect among themselves "godlike" and "divine" and "like to the gods" and "equal to Zeus in counsel" and "having counsels like the gods" and "godlike in form"—nibbling, as it were, at the "according to the image and likeness."

26.172. Euripides, then, says:

Golden wings indeed are about my back,

and:

and the lovely sandals of the Sirens are fitted on, and I shall go, lifted high into the vast aether, to mingle with Zeus.

But I would pray that the Spirit of Christ might wing me into my own Jerusalem; for the Stoics too say that heaven properly is a city, but the things here on earth are no longer cities—they are called so, but are not; for a city is something earnest, and a people a noble assembly and a multitude of men governed by law, as the Church is by reason—an unbesieged, untyrannized city upon earth, a divine will upon earth as in heaven. The poets too create images of this city in their writings; for the Hyperborean and the Arimaspian cities and the Elysian plains are commonwealths of the just. And we know too Plato's city, laid up as a pattern in heaven.