Book 5

1.1. Having said this much about the gnostic, by way of a rapid survey, let us now proceed to what comes next; and faith, in its turn, must be examined again. For there are those who draw a distinction, holding that our faith has to do with the Son, but knowledge with the Father. They fail to notice that, in order truly to believe in the Son, one must believe that he is the Son, that he came, and how, and for what purpose, and concerning his passion; while it is necessary also to know who the Son of God is. Now neither is knowledge without faith, nor faith without knowledge; nor again is the Father without the Son, since the very name of Father implies a Son, and the Son is the true teacher concerning the Father. And in order that one may believe in the Son, he must know the Father, to whom the Son also belongs; and again, in order that we may come to know the Father, we must believe in the Son, because it is the Son of God who teaches. For we pass from faith to knowledge, and through the Son to the Father. The knowledge of the Son and the Father, which is according to the gnostic rule that is truly gnostic, is the apprehension and grasp of truth by means of the truth. We, then, are those who are believers in what is disbelieved, and gnostics in what is unknown — that is, gnostics in what is unknown and disbelieved by all, but believed and known by the few; gnostics not in word, registering deeds, but in contemplation itself.

1.2. Blessed is he who speaks into the ears of those who hear; and faith is the ears of the soul. It is this faith that the Lord hints at when he says, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" — that, by believing, one may understand what he says, and as he says it. Indeed Homer too, the most ancient of poets, in using "hearing" for "perceiving" — the particular for the general — writes most pointedly, "and they themselves heard it." For, taken as a whole, the concord and harmony of the faith on both sides comes to one and the same end, salvation. We have for our unerring witness the apostle, who says: "For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be strengthened" — that is, "that I may be encouraged together in you, through our mutual faith, both yours and mine." And again, a little further down, he adds: "For the righteousness of God is revealed in it, from faith to faith." So the apostle plainly proclaims a twofold faith — or rather one faith, admitting of growth and perfecting. For common faith lies underneath like a foundation; thus, to those who longed to be healed and were moved by faith, the Lord would say, "Your faith has saved you." But the special faith, built up upon it, is brought to perfection together with the believer, and is rounded off along with that faith which comes through learning, and through fulfilling the commandments of the Word — such as the apostles were, of whom it was said that faith can move mountains and transplant trees.

1.3. Hence, perceiving the greatness of the power, they asked that faith be added to them — that faith which, like a grain of mustard seed, bites into the soul to its profit and grows mightily within it, so that upon it may rest our reasonings about things on high. For if a man knows God by nature, as Basilides supposes — calling the special faith intelligence, and at once a kingdom, and the creation of beautiful things, and worthy of the substance of its maker, existing close to him — interpreting it as substance and not as a thing in his own power, as nature and as hypostasis, the boundless beauty of an undeferred creation, and not as the rational assent of a soul that has freedom of will, then the commandments, both those of the old covenant and those of the new, are superfluous, since one is saved by nature, as Valentinus would have it, and is by nature faithful and elect, as Basilides thinks. In that case nature would have been able, at some time or other, even without the Saviour's coming, to shine out of itself. But if they say that the Lord's sojourn was necessary, then the special properties of nature have departed from them, since election is saved by learning and purification and the doing of good works, and not by nature. For Abraham, who believed by hearing the voice that under the oak in Mamre promised, "To you I give this land, and to your seed" — was he elect or not? If he was not, how did he believe at once, as it were by nature? But if he was elect, their hypothesis is undone, since election is found even before the Lord's coming, and is indeed saved; for "it was reckoned to him for righteousness."

1.4. If anyone, daring to follow Marcion, should say that the Creator saves the man who believes in him with a salvation proper to himself, the power of the Good will be outdone by it, coming late and after the Creator they so applaud, and itself only then setting about to save, either by teaching or by imitation of the other. But even if the Good thus saves, according to them, he does so neither over his own creatures nor with the consent of him who made the creation, but by force or by guile. And how is he still good, who is thus and is later? But if his place differs, and the abode of the Almighty falls short of the abode of the Good God, still the will of him who saves does not fall short of the Good, since it was that which made the beginning. Foolish, then, are the unbelievers, as is shown from what we have already gone through; for "their paths are crooked, and they do not know peace," says the prophet. "Foolish and unlearned questionings avoid," the inspired Paul exhorted, "because they breed quarrels." And Aeschylus has cried out: "Do not toil in vain at things that bring no profit."

1.5. For we know that the inquiry which proceeds together with faith, building upon the foundation of faith the magnificent knowledge of the truth, is the best of all. We know, too, that what is plain is not inquired into (as whether it is day, when it is day), nor what is obscure and will never become plain (as whether the stars are even or odd in number), nor again what admits of opposite arguments — and those things admit of them which can be argued with equal force by those who handle the contrary position, as whether the unborn child is a living being or not. There is a fourth kind, when from one of these two sides an irrefutable and indissoluble argument is put forward. If, then, the ground for inquiry is removed in every one of these ways, faith is made firm; for we set before them that irrefutable proposition, namely that it is God who speaks, and who, concerning each one of the matters I am investigating, supplies the answer in Scripture.

1.6. Who, then, is so godless as to disbelieve God, and to demand of God proofs as one demands them of men? Again, of inquiries, some require sense-perception — as if one asks whether fire is hot or snow white; some require admonition and rebuke, as Aristotle says, like that question, whether one ought to honour one's parents. And there are some that deserve punishment, such as demanding proofs whether there is providence. Providence, then, existing, it is impious to hold that the whole work of prophecy and of the dispensation concerning the Saviour did not come about according to providence; and perhaps one ought not even to attempt to prove such things, since the divine providence is manifest both from the sight of all visible things, which are works of skill and wisdom — some of them coming to be in order, others manifested in order — and from the fact that he who gave us being and life gave us also reason, wishing us to live rationally and well. For the Word of the Father of all is not this uttered word, but the wisdom and most manifest goodness of God, and again a power all-mastering and truly divine, not incomprehensible even to those who do not confess him — an all-sovereign will.

1.7. But since some are unbelievers and some contentious, not all attain to the perfection of the Good. For neither is it possible to attain it without choice, nor again does the whole rest upon our own resolve — as, for instance, the outcome. For by grace we are saved — yet not without good works, but we must, being by nature disposed toward the Good, acquire a certain zeal for it; and we must possess a sound resolve, unrepenting in the pursuit of what is noble, for which above all we have need of the divine grace, of right teaching, of pure docility, and of the drawing of the Father toward himself. For, being bound to this earthly body, we apprehend the things of sense through the body, but lay hold of the things of mind through the rational faculty itself. And if anyone expects to grasp all things by sense, he has fallen far from the truth. Spiritually, then, the apostle writes concerning the knowledge of God: "For now we see as through a mirror, but then face to face." For to few is the vision of the truth given. So Plato too says in the Epinomis: "I do not say it is possible for all men to become blessed and happy, except a few — as long, that is, as we live; this I lay down. But there is a good hope that, when one has died, he may attain all things." The same is the purport of the words in Moses: "No one shall see my face and live." For it is plain that no one can, during the time of this life, grasp God clearly; but "the pure in heart shall see God," when they have come to the final perfection. For since the soul was too weak to apprehend the things that are, we had need of a divine teacher. The Saviour is sent down, both teacher and supplier of the acquisition of the Good, the holy token of the great and unutterable providence.

1.8. "Where, then, is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" he says. And again: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will bring to nothing" — meaning, plainly, these would-be wise men and these contentious ones. Beautifully, then, does Jeremiah say: "Thus says the Lord: Stand upon the ways and ask for the everlasting paths, which is the good way, and walk in it, and you shall find purification for your souls." "Ask," he says, and learn from those who know, without contentiousness and without strife. And having learned the way of truth, let us walk it straight, without turning back, until we light upon what we long for. With reason, then, did the king of the Romans — Numa was his name — being a Pythagorean, first of all men found a temple to Faith and Peace. And to Abraham, who believed, righteousness was reckoned. He, while pursuing the lofty philosophy of things in the air, and the sublime study of the motions of the heavens, was called Abram, which is interpreted "lofty father"; but afterwards, when he looked up to heaven — whether he saw the Son in the Spirit, as some explain it, or a glorious angel, or in some other way came to know a God greater than the creation and than all the order within it — he takes on the alpha, the knowledge of the one and only God, and is called Abraham, having become, instead of a natural philosopher, wise and a lover of God. For it is interpreted "elect father of sound." For the audible word resounds; and the father of this is the mind, and the mind of the earnest man is what is chosen out.

1.9. And I am moved very greatly to praise the poet of Acragas, who sings the praises of faith in some such fashion as this: "O friends, I know indeed that truth is in the words I shall declare; but very grievous it is to men, and the onset of faith upon the mind is full of envy." For this reason the apostle too exhorts us, that our faith may be "not in the wisdom of men" — of those who profess to persuade — "but in the power of God," which alone, even without demonstrations, by bare faith, is able to save. "The most approved knows how to guard against what is merely believed; and moreover justice will lay hold of the framers and witnesses of falsehoods," says the Ephesian. For he too, having learned from the barbarian philosophy, knows of the purification by fire of those who have lived ill — which the Stoics afterwards called conflagration; in accordance with which they teach that the individual man will rise again, thus paying court to the resurrection. Plato says that the earth is at certain times purified by fire and water, somewhat thus: "Many and various destructions of men have come to pass, and will come to pass — the greatest by fire and water, and others, lesser, by countless other means." And a little after he adds: "But the truth is, there is a shifting of the bodies that move about the earth and through the heavens, and at long intervals there comes a destruction of things upon the earth by a great fire." Then concerning the deluge he goes on: "But when, in turn, the gods purge the earth with waters and flood it, the herdsmen and shepherds in the mountains are preserved, while those in the cities among us are swept by the rivers into the sea.

1.10. We have shown, in the first book of the Stromateis, that the philosophers of the Greeks are called thieves, as having taken the most authoritative of their doctrines from Moses and the prophets without acknowledgement. To these things we shall add this also: that those angels who had obtained the lot above, slipping down into pleasures, told out the secrets to the women — as much of them as had come to their knowledge — while the other angels concealed them, or rather kept them for the Lord's coming. From that source flowed the teaching of providence, and the revelation of things on high. And when prophecy had already been spread abroad among the poets of the Greeks, the dogmatic treatment of the philosophers came into being — in part true, when they fell upon the truth by conjecture, in part going astray, when they failed to understand what was hidden in the prophetic allegory. This it is our purpose to mark out briefly as we run through the more pressing matters.

1.11. We say, then, that faith must go forward not idle and alone, but together with inquiry. For I do not say this, that one should not inquire at all; for "Seek, and you shall find," he says. "What is sought is to be caught, but what is neglected slips away," according to Sophocles. And Menander the comic poet says the like: "All things that are sought, the wisest say, have need of care." But one must stretch out the discerning part of the soul toward the discovery, and clear away the obstacles, and cast away utterly contentiousness and envy, and strife itself, that worst of things, which shall most miserably perish from among men. For most beautifully does Timon of Phlius write: "Strife, the bane of mortals, goes about with empty din, sister and handmaid of man-slaying Quarrel; and blind she rolls about over all things, and then fixes herself upon a mortal's head and casts him down from hope." Then, a little further on, he adds: "Who set these to fight in deadly strife? The rabble that runs in the train of Echo; for, angered at their silence, it stirred up against men a chattering disease." And many perished over the argument that denies falsely, and the horned argument, and the hidden one, and the crocodile, and the sorites, and the veiled one, and over ambiguities and sophisms.

1.12. But to inquire about God, if it tends not to strife but to discovery, is salutary. For it is written in David: "The poor shall eat and be satisfied, and they shall praise the Lord who seek him; their heart shall live for ever and ever." For those who seek according to the true seeking, praising the Lord, shall be filled with the gift that comes from God — that is, with knowledge — and their soul shall live; for the soul is allegorized as the heart that supplies the life, since through the Son the Father is made known. Yet we must not give over our ears unreservedly to all who speak and write, since cups too, when taken hold of by many by the handles and so befouled, lose their handles, and, falling besides, are themselves broken. In the same way those who have befouled the pure hearing of the faith with many trivialities, becoming at last deaf to the truth, prove useless and fall to the ground.

1.13. Not without reason, then, do we bid little children, taken hold of by the ears, to kiss their relatives — hinting, surely, by this, that the fellow-feeling of love comes to birth through hearing. And God is love, who is known to those who love, as God is faithful, who is delivered to the faithful through learning. And we must make ourselves at home with him through the divine love, that we may behold like with like, hearkening to the word of truth guilelessly and purely, after the manner of children obedient to us. And this is what was hinted at by whoever it was that inscribed over the entrance of the temple at Epidaurus: "Pure must he be who goes within the fragrant shrine; and purity is to think holy thoughts." "Unless you become as these little children," he says, "you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." For here is the temple of God, founded upon three foundations — faith, hope, and love.

2.14. We have set down sufficient testimonies, then, from the writings of the Greeks concerning faith. But that we may not wander on at excessive length, ambitious to gather together very much also concerning hope and love, it is enough to say only this: that in the Crito Socrates, setting living well and dying above mere living, thinks he has some hope of another life after his end. For in the Phaedrus, too, saying that the soul, becoming by itself alone, is able to share in true wisdom, a wisdom higher than human power, when the love of this world has given it wings toward heaven, he says that, coming through philosophic love to the goal of hope, it receives the beginning of another, everlasting life.

2.15. And in the Symposium he says that there is mingled in all a natural love for the begetting of like to like — in men, of men only; in the earnest man, of his counterpart. But it is impossible for the earnest man to do this, unless he has the virtues in perfection, by which he will instruct the young who come to him, and, as he says in the Theaetetus, will beget and bring forth men. For some are pregnant in body, some in soul; since among the barbarian philosophers too, to instruct and to enlighten is called regenerating. "And I begot you in Christ Jesus," the good apostle says somewhere. Empedocles reckons love also among the first principles, conceiving a certain combining affection: "this do you behold with the mind, and sit not amazed with the eyes." And Parmenides too, in his poem, hinting at hope, speaks thus: "Yet behold things absent as firmly present to the mind; for you shall not cut off what is from clinging to what is, neither scattering itself wholly in every way throughout the world, nor drawing together."

3.16. For he who hopes, like him who believes, sees with the mind the things of mind and the things to come. If, then, we say that something is just, and say also that something is beautiful, and speak too of a truth, yet have never beheld any such thing with the eyes but only with the mind — and the Word of God says, "I am the truth" — then the Word is to be contemplated by the mind. "And whom do you call the true philosophers?" he asked. "Those," said I, "who love the contemplation of the truth." And in the Phaedrus Plato, speaking of truth as an idea, will make it plain . . . And the idea is a thought of God, which the barbarians have called the Word of God. The words run thus: "We must dare to speak the truth, especially when speaking about truth; for the substance that is truly existent, colourless and shapeless and intangible, is to be seen by the pilot of the soul, the mind, alone." And the Word, coming forth, became the cause of creation; and afterwards he begets even himself, when the Word became flesh, that he might also be seen. The just man, then, will seek the discovery that comes of love, and, hastening toward it, is happy; for "to him who knocks," he says, "it shall be opened. Ask, and it shall be given you." For those who take the kingdom by violence are said to force their way, not by contentious arguments, but by the perseverance of a right life and by unceasing prayers, wiping out the stains of their former sins. "And one may choose evil in crowds. But for him who toils, God also lends a hand. For not in the midst do the unconquerable gifts of the Muses lie, for the chance comer to bear away."

3.17. The recognition of one's own ignorance, then, is the first lesson for him who walks according to reason. Being ignorant, a man sought; and seeking, he finds the teacher; and finding him, he believed; and believing, he hoped; and loving, he is thenceforth made like to the beloved, striving to be that which he first came to love. Such a method Socrates points out to Alcibiades, who asks thus: "Do you not think I could know about the just in any other way?" "Yes, if you should find it out." "But do you not hold that I could find it out?" "Most certainly, if you should seek it." "Then do you not think I would seek it?" "I do, if you should think you did not know." In this way too the lamps of the prudent virgins, lit by night in the great darkness of ignorance — which night the Scripture hinted at — are the prudent souls, pure as virgins, who, perceiving themselves set in worldly ignorance, kindle the light and rouse the mind and illumine the darkness and drive out ignorance and seek the truth and await the appearing of the teacher. "A multitude of philosophers," said I, "is impossible." "Many are the bearers of the wand, but few are the bacchants," according to Plato; for "many are called, but few chosen." And "not in all," says the apostle, "is knowledge." "And pray that we may be delivered from absurd and wicked men; for faith is not for all." And the philosophic poetry of Cleanthes the Stoic writes the like, somewhat thus: "Look not to opinion, wishing to become wise on a sudden, nor fear the undiscerning and shameless opinion of the many. For the multitude has no understanding judgement, whether of just things or of noble; only among few men shall you find it."

3.18. More sententiously the comic poet says, in brief: "It is shameful to judge of noble things by the loud din." For they have heard, I think, that beautiful Wisdom that says to us: "In the midst of the witless, watch your opportunity; but in the midst of the thoughtful, persevere." And again: "The wise will hide knowledge." For the many demand demonstration as a pledge of the truth, not content with the salvation that comes by bare faith. "But to evil men it is altogether natural to disbelieve those who hold sway over the truth; but as our Muse bids you to give pledges, learn, now that the argument has been cloven within your inward parts." For to evil men it is habitual, says Empedocles, to wish to master the truth through disbelieving it. But that our things are reputable and worthy of belief, the Greeks shall come to know as the argument is more closely examined in what follows; for by the like we are taught the like. "Answer," says Solomon, "the fool out of his folly." Therefore to those who ask after their own kind of wisdom we must hold out what is proper to them, so that as easily as may be, through what is their own, they may with good reason arrive at faith in the truth. For "to all I became all things," he says, "that I might gain all"; since the rain of the divine grace too is sent down upon just and unjust. "Or is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, if indeed God is one," cries the noble apostle.

4.19. But since they are not willing to believe, with right reason, either in the Good or in knowledge unto salvation, we ourselves, reckoning their own things to be ours — because all things are God's, and especially since what is noble came to the Greeks from us — set our hand to them as they are by nature able to hear. For the great mob does not judge what is intelligent, or what is just, out of the truth, but out of whatever pleases it. And it would be pleased by none more than by those like itself. For so much of a man as is still blind and deaf, having no understanding, nor the undaunted and keen-sighted vision of a soul that loves to behold — which the Saviour alone implants — must, like one uninitiated at the rites or unmusical in the dance, being not yet pure nor worthy of the holy truth, but discordant and disorderly and material, stand still outside the divine choir; "for we compare spiritual things with spiritual." For this reason, indeed, the manner of concealment, being truly divine and most necessary to us on account of the holy Word that lies stored away in the sanctuary of truth, was hinted at by the Egyptians through what they call their inner shrines, and by the Hebrews through the veil; through which it was permitted to enter only to those who were consecrated — that is, to those dedicated to God, who had circumcised the desires of their passions through love toward the divine alone. For Plato too agreed that it is not lawful for the impure to touch the pure.

4.20. Hence the prophecies and the oracles are spoken through riddles, and the rites are not shown to all who come unreservedly, but with certain purifications and forewarnings: "For the Muse was not yet greedy of gain in those days, nor a hireling; nor were sweet, honey-voiced songs, soft of utterance, sold by Terpsichore with silvered faces." Take, for instance, those who are educated among the Egyptians: first of all they learn the method of the Egyptian letters called epistolographic; second, the hieratic, which the sacred scribes use; and last and finally the hieroglyphic, of which one kind, by means of the primary elements, is literal, and the other symbolic. Of the symbolic, one kind is literal by imitation, another is written as it were figuratively, and another is downright allegorical by means of certain riddles. Thus, wishing to write "sun," they make a circle, and "moon" a crescent shape, according to the literal kind. But figuratively, transferring and shifting things according to affinity, and altering some and reshaping others in manifold ways, they engrave them.

4.21. Thus the praises of their kings they hand down in myths treated as theology, and inscribe by means of reliefs. Of the third kind, according to riddles, let this be a specimen: the other stars, on account of their oblique course, they likened to the bodies of serpents, but the sun to that of the beetle, since it moulds a round shape out of ox-dung and rolls it facing it. And they say that this creature lives six months under the earth, and the other part of the year above the earth, and that it sows its seed into the ball and brings forth young, and that no female beetle comes into being. All those, then, so to speak, who have treated of theology, both barbarians and Greeks, hid away the first principles of things, and handed down the truth in riddles and symbols, and again in allegories and metaphors and such-like devices — like the oracles among the Greeks; and the very Pythian Apollo is called Loxias, "the oblique."

4.22. Yes, and the apophthegms of those called among the Greeks the wise men show forth, in a few words, the unfolding of a greater matter — such as, doubtless, "Spare time": either because life is short, and one ought not to spend this time in vain; or, in the opposite sense, "Spare expense" in private outlay, so that, even if you live many years, the necessaries of life may not fail you.

4.23. In the same way "Know yourself" points to many things: both that you are mortal, and that you were born a man; and further, in comparison with the other excellences of life, that you are of no account — calling oneself glorious, or rich, or, on the contrary, that, though rich and glorious, you pride yourself on no abiding advantage. And "Know for what you came into being," he says, "and whose image you are, and what is your substance, and what your fashioning, and what your kinship with the divine," and the like. The Spirit says too, through Isaiah the prophet, "I will give you treasures dark and hidden." And the treasures of God, and the wealth that does not fail, is wisdom hard to track down.

4.24. But the poets too, taught their theology by these prophets, philosophize much by way of hidden meaning — I mean Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod, and those who are wise in this way. The persuasive charm of their poetry is to them a veil before the many. Dreams and symbols are all the more obscure to men, not out of envy — for it is not lawful to think of God as subject to passion — but in order that inquiry, slipping in toward the meaning of the riddles, may run up to the discovery of the truth. Thus Sophocles, the poet of tragedy, says somewhere: "And I know God to be such as this: ever to the wise a propounder of oracles in riddles, but to the dull a poor teacher, and that in few words" — using "poor" for "simple."

4.25. Plainly, at any rate, concerning all our Scripture it is written in the Psalms that it is spoken as in a parable: "Hear, my people, my law; incline your ear to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter problems from of old." And the noble apostle says the like, somewhat thus: "We speak wisdom among the perfect, yet a wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age that come to nothing; but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God foreordained before the ages unto our glory, which none of the rulers of this age has known; for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." The philosophers, indeed, were not empowered to outrage the Lord's coming; it remains, then, that the apostle is rebuking the conceit of the wise among the Jews. Therefore he adds: "But we preach, as it is written," he says, "things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love him. For to us God has revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God." For he knows the spiritual man, the gnostic, to be the disciple of the Holy Spirit supplied by God, which is the mind of Christ. "But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit; for to him they are foolishness."

4.26. Thus the apostle, to set the common faith over against gnostic perfection, calls it in one place a foundation, in another milk, writing in this fashion: "Brethren, I could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to fleshly, as to babes in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able. But neither even now are you able, for you are still fleshly. For where there is among you jealousy and strife, are you not fleshly, and walking after the manner of men?" The objects of choice belong to the sinful among men; but those who have abstained from these set their minds on the things of God and partake of gnostic food. "According to the grace," he says, "given to me, as a wise master-builder I have laid a foundation, but another builds upon it gold and silver and precious stones." These are gnostic structures upon the base of faith in Jesus Christ; but stubble are the additions of the heresies, and wood and hay. "Of what sort each man's work is, the fire shall test." The gnostic edifice he hints at also in the Epistle to the Romans, saying: "For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, to the end that you may be strengthened." But it was not possible to write of such gifts openly.

5.27. Take, for instance, the Pythagorean symbols, which hang very closely upon the barbarian philosophy in a hidden way. The Samian, then, counsels not to keep a swallow in the house — that is, not to receive a chattering, whispering, ready-tongued man, who cannot keep within him the things he is given a share in. "For the swallow and the turtle-dove, the sparrows of the field, have known the seasons of their comings," says the Scripture; and one ought never to dwell together with idle talk. Indeed the turtle-dove, murmuring, showing forth the thankless slander of reproach, is with reason expelled the house: "so do not sit by me and mutter, one from this side, one from that." But the swallow, by which the myth of the son of Pandion is hinted at, is worth abominating because of the sufferings noised abroad concerning her, of which we have received that Tereus partly suffered and partly wrought. And it pursues the musical cicadas; whence he who is a pursuer of the Word is rightly thrust away. "Yes, by Olympus-watching, sceptred Hera, I have a faithful storehouse upon my tongue," says the poetry. And Aeschylus: "I too have a key, a guard upon my tongue." Again, Pythagoras enjoined, when the pot was lifted from the fire, not to leave behind the imprint in the ashes, but to confound it; and to disturb and stir up the bedclothes upon rising from sleep. For he was hinting that one ought not only to make conceit vanish, but to leave behind not even a trace of anger — that, when it has boiled up and ceased, it should settle, and wipe out all remembrance of wrong. "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath," says the Scripture; and he who said "You shall not covet" took away all remembrance of wrong; for anger is found to be an impulse of desire in a gentle soul, set above all upon defence, irrationally.

5.28. In the same way too the bed is bidden to be disturbed, so that one may no longer keep in mind any nocturnal emission, nor any sleep by day, nor even the pleasure of the night. And perhaps he was also hinting that the murky imagination must be confounded by the light of the truth: "Be angry, and sin not," David says, teaching that one ought not to give assent to the impression, nor to bring on the deed that ratifies the wrath. Again, "Do not sail on land" is a Pythagorean symbol, and it shows that the taxes and the like, the wages of hire, being troublesome and unstable, ought to be declined. For this reason, indeed, the Word says that the tax-gatherers are hardly saved. Again, Pythagoras enjoins not to wear a ring, nor to engrave on it images of the gods — just as Moses long before plainly laid down in law that one must make no carved or molten or moulded or painted statue and likeness, that we may not cleave to things of sense, but pass over to the things of mind. For the familiarity that comes of having the sight ready to hand cheapens the majesty of the divine; and to worship the intelligible substance through matter is to dishonour it through sense. Hence the wisest of the Egyptian priests set apart the seat of Athena unroofed and open to the sky, as the Hebrews founded the temple without an image. And there are some who, worshipping God, make a likeness of the heaven that encompasses the stars, and bow down to it.

5.29. Indeed, since the Scripture says, "Let us make man after our image and likeness," I think it worth while to set down also the saying of Eurytus the Pythagorean, which runs thus. In his work On Fortune, having said that the Creator made man using himself as a pattern, he goes on: "And the body is like the rest, as being come of the same matter, but wrought by the best of craftsmen, who fashioned it using himself as an archetype." And, in a word, Pythagoras and his followers, together with Plato above the rest of the philosophers, had very close converse with the Lawgiver, as one may gather from their very doctrines. And, by some happy hitting of a divining utterance, not without God they fell together upon certain prophetic words; and grasping the truth in parts and kinds, they honoured it with names not without light, nor going outside the showing-forth of the things — having taken an impression of their kinship with the truth. Whence the Greek philosophy is like the gleam from a wick, which men kindle, stealing the light skilfully from the sun; but when the Word was proclaimed, all that holy light shone forth. Then in the houses the stolen fire is of use by night; but by day the fire is outshone, and all the night is lit up by so great a sun of the intelligible light.

5.30. Take, for instance, how Pythagoras has made an epitome of what was said by Moses concerning righteousness, saying "Do not step over the yoke-beam" — that is, do not go beyond what is equal in the distributions, honouring the justice that ever binds friends to friends, cities to cities, allies to allies; for "the equal is by nature lawful among men, but the lesser is ever set in enmity to the greater, and begins the day of hatred," as the poetry gracefully has it. For this reason the Lord says, "Take up my yoke," because it is kindly and without weight. And to the disciples who quarrelled about precedence he enjoins equality with simplicity, saying that they must become as the little children. In the same way the apostle too writes that in Christ there is no slave or free, no Greek or Jew; for the creation in Christ is new, free from contention and from greed, and is a just equality. For envy stands outside the divine choir, and jealousy and grief — wherefore the initiates also forbid eating the heart, teaching that one ought never, by heavy moods and griefs over things that befall against our will, to bite and devour the soul. Wretched, then, is that man whom Homer too speaks of as wandering alone, "devouring his own heart."

5.31. Again, since the Gospel and the apostles, like all the prophets, set down two ways, and call the one — that which is hedged about by commandments and prohibitions — narrow and straitened, and the opposite one, which leads to destruction, broad and wide, unhindered by pleasures and by passion; and since they say, "Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners"; the myth of Prodicus of Ceos concerning Virtue and Vice comes forward in like manner, and Pythagoras does not shrink from forbidding men to walk the public roads, enjoining that one ought not to follow the opinions of the many, which are undiscerning and inconsistent. And Aristocritus, in the first book of his Replies to Heracleodorus, mentions a certain letter that runs thus: "Atoeas, king of the Scythians, to the people of the Byzantines: Do not harm my revenues, lest my mares drink your water." For the barbarian was symbolically signifying the war that was about to be brought upon them. In like manner too the poet Euphorion brings in Nestor saying: "And we had not yet watered our Achaean mares at the Simoeis." For this reason, indeed, the Egyptians set up sphinxes before their temples, as showing that the discourse about God is full of riddles and obscure — and perhaps also that one ought both to love and to fear the divine: to love it as gentle and kindly toward the holy, but to fear it as inexorably just toward the unholy. For the sphinx hints at the image of a beast and a man together.

6.32. It would be a long task to go through all the prophetic and legal sayings that are spoken in riddles, picking them out one by one; for nearly the whole Scripture utters its oracles in some such way. It is enough, I think, for one who has understanding, by way of demonstration of what is set before us, that a few examples be put forward. Take, for instance, how the concealment is owned by the reference, recorded among the Hebrews, of the seven enclosures about the ancient temple, and by the arrangement of the high priest's robe reaching to the feet, which through its varied symbols related to things visible hints at the whole framework that stretches from heaven to earth. And the covering and the veil were variegated with hyacinth and purple and scarlet and fine linen, hinting that the nature of the elements holds the revelation of God: for the purple is from water, the fine linen from earth, the hyacinth is likened to the air, being dusky, as the scarlet to the fire.

6.33. And between the covering and the veil, where the priests were permitted to enter, lay the altar of incense, a symbol of the earth set in the middle of this world, from which come up the exhalations. And that place was midway between the inner part within the veil, where it was permitted to the high priest alone to enter on stated days, and the outer enclosing court, open to all the Hebrews. Therefore they say it is the very midmost of heaven and earth; while others say it is a symbol of the intelligible and the sensible world. The covering, then — a hindrance to the unbelief of the laity — was stretched before the five pillars, keeping back those in the enclosure. Thus, most mystically, five loaves are broken by the Saviour and multiplied for the multitude of the hearers. For great is the number of those who cleave to the things of sense as though these alone existed. "Look round about, and take heed," says Plato, "lest one of the uninitiated overhear." And these are they who think that nothing else exists except what they can lay firm hold of with both hands, but who do not admit actions and processes of becoming and everything invisible as having a share in being; for such are they who cleave to the pentad of the senses alone. But the apprehension of God is not to be trodden by the ears, nor by those of like kind.

6.34. Hence the Son is called the face of the Father, having become the bearer of flesh through the pentad of the senses — the Word who is the announcer of the Father's distinctive being. "And if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. We walk by faith, not by sight," the good apostle says. Within the covering, then, the priestly ministry was hidden, and it keeps off from those within it many that are without. Again, the veil of the way into the holy of holies — there four pillars stood, a token of the holy tetrad of the old covenants. And the mystic name of four letters was set upon those to whom alone the inner sanctuary was to be trodden; it is pronounced Iaoue, which is interpreted, "he who is and who shall be." And indeed among the Greeks too the name "God" contains a tetrad of letters. And into the intelligible world the Lord alone, having become high priest, enters, slipping in through the sufferings to the knowledge of the unspeakable, withdrawing above every name that is made known by the voice. Indeed the lamp-stand too lay on the south side of the altar of incense, by which were shown the motions of the seven light-bearers that make their circuits to the south. For three branches grow from each side of the lamp-stand, and upon them the lamps; since the sun too, like the lamp-stand, set in the midst of the other planets, gives of its light to those above it and to those below it, according to a kind of divine music.

6.35. The golden lamp-stand has yet another riddle, of the sign of Christ — not by its shape alone, but also by its casting light in manifold ways and in many parts upon those who believe in him and hope and look toward him through the ministry of the first-created. And they say that the seven eyes of the Lord are the seven spirits resting upon the rod that flowers from the root of Jesse. And on the north side of the altar of incense the table had its place, on which lay the setting-out of the loaves, because the things of the north are the most nourishing of the spirits. And there might be certain abodes of churches breathing together into one body and one assembly. And the things recorded upon the holy ark signify the things of the intelligible world, hidden away and shut off from the many. Indeed, those golden figures too, each of them six-winged, whether they show forth the two Bears, as some would have it, or rather the two hemispheres — and the name Cherubim means "much knowledge" — but both together have twelve wings, and by the zodiacal circle and the time that is borne along it they show forth the world of sense.

6.36. Concerning these things, I think, tragedy too, philosophizing on nature, says: "Unwearying Time goes round, full with ever-flowing stream, begetting itself; and the twin Bears, with the swift-wheeling rushings of their wings, keep watch over the Atlantean pole." And Atlas, the pole that does not suffer, may be the fixed sphere, but better perhaps it is to be understood as the unmoved age. But I think it better that the ark, called by the Hebrew name thēbōtha, signifies something else; it is interpreted "one in place of all places." Whether, then, the Ogdoad and the intelligible world is signified, or the God who comprehends all things, shapeless and invisible, let it be set aside to say now; except that it indicates rest in the company of the glorifying spirits, which are hinted at by the Cherubim. For he who had charged that not even a carved idol be fashioned would never himself have figured a statue of holy things; nor is there at all in heaven any such composite and sensible living creature. But the face is a symbol of the rational soul, and the wings are the lofty ministries and operations of the powers on the right and on the left together, and the voice is the thankful glory in unceasing contemplation.

6.37. Let it be enough to have carried the mystic interpretation thus far. The high priest's robe reaching to the feet is a symbol of the sensible world: of the seven planets, the five stones and the two carbuncles, for Cronos and the Moon. For the one is southern and moist and earthy and heavy, the other is airy; whence Artemis is called by some "the air-cleaver," being a kind of being, and the air is dusky. And the powers set over the planets, which co-operate in the generation of things here according to the divine providence, he with reason represents as set upon the breast and the shoulders, through which the generation-producing action, the first hebdomad, comes about; and the breast is the dwelling-place of the heart and the soul. And in another way too the variegated stones might be modes of salvation, set, some among the higher, some among the lower parts of the whole body that is being saved. And the three hundred and sixty bells hung from the robe are the year's time, "the acceptable year of the Lord," proclaiming and announcing the greatest appearing of the Saviour. And the golden plate, lifted up, signifies the kingly authority of the Lord, since the Saviour is the head of the church.

6.38. The plate above the head, then, is a sign of a most commanding rule; for we have heard, as it is said, that "the head of Christ is God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Indeed the breast-piece is made up of the shoulder-piece, which is a symbol of work, and of the oracle-pouch — and this hints at the Word — and it is an image of heaven, which came to be by the Word, lying beneath the head of all things, Christ, and moving in the same way and after the same fashion. The shining emerald stones, then, upon the shoulder-piece signify the sun and the moon, the fellow-workers of nature. And the shoulder, I think, is the beginning of the hand. And the twelve set in four rows upon the breast describe for us the zodiacal circle according to the four turns of the year. And it was fitting, besides, that the law and the prophets should be set beneath the Lord's head, through which the righteous of both covenants are shown forth; for in saying that the apostles are both prophets and righteous men we should speak well, since one and the same Holy Spirit works through all. And as the Lord is above the whole world — or rather beyond the intelligible world — so too the name written upon the plate was held worthy to be above every rule and authority; and it is written by reason of the written commandments and of the sensible presence. And it is called the name of God, since, as the Son beholds the goodness of the Father, he works, being called God the Saviour, the beginning of all things, which was figured first, before the ages, from the invisible God, and has stamped all things that came to be after it.

6.39. Indeed the oracle-pouch signifies the prophecy that cries aloud and proclaims by the Word, and the judgement that is to come; since it is the same Word that prophesies and that at once judges and distinguishes each thing. And they say that the garment, the robe reaching to the feet, prophesies the dispensation according to the flesh, by which he was more nearly seen in the world. Thus the high priest, having put off the consecrated tunic — for the world, and the creation in the world, has been consecrated by him who agreed that the things made were good — bathes and puts on the other tunic, a holy of holy, so to speak, which goes in with him into the inner sanctuary; showing forth, as I think, the Levite and the gnostic, as ruler over the other priests, those others having been washed with water and clothed with faith alone and awaiting their own abode, while he himself has distinguished the things of mind from the things of sense, and, by an ascent above the other priests, hastens to the passage into the intelligible, being washed of the things here no longer with water, as before he was purified when he was being enrolled into the Levitical tribe, but now by the gnostic Word.

6.40. Pure, then, in all his heart, having ordered his whole conduct most excellently to the highest, having grown beyond the priest to something greater, downright purified both in word and in life, having put over himself the brightness of glory, having received the unspeakable inheritance of that spiritual and perfect man — which eye has not seen and ear has not heard and which has not entered into the heart of man — having become a son and a friend, he is now filled, face to face, with the insatiable contemplation. There is nothing like hearkening to the Word himself, who gives the mind more by means of the Scripture. For it says thus: "And he shall put off the linen robe, which he had put on when he entered into the holy place, and shall leave it there. And he shall bathe his body with water in a holy place, and shall put on his robe." In another way, I think, the Lord puts off and puts on, coming down into sense; in another way he who has believed through him puts off and puts on over himself, as the apostle also showed, the consecrated robe. Hence, after the image of the Lord, the most approved of the consecrated tribe were chosen as high priests, and those elected to kingship and to prophecy were anointed.

7.41. Hence the Egyptians too did not commit their mysteries to the chance comer, nor carry out the knowledge of divine things to the profane, but only to those who were about to advance to the throne, and to those of the priests judged to be most approved, by reason of their nurture and education and birth. Like the Hebrew riddles, then, in their concealment are those of the Egyptians too. Some of the Egyptians show the sun upon a ship, others upon a crocodile. And they signify that the sun, making its course through the sweet and moist air, begets time, which is hinted at by the crocodile by reason of some other priestly story. Indeed, in Diospolis of Egypt, upon what is called the sacred portal, there is figured a child, a symbol of coming into being, and an old man, of decay, and a hawk, of God, and a fish, of hatred, and again, by another signification, a crocodile, of shamelessness.

7.42. The whole symbol, then, when put together, appears to declare this: "O you who are born and pass away, God hates shamelessness." And the makers, fashioning ears and eyes out of costly material, consecrate them to the gods, dedicating them in the temples — hinting, surely, that God sees and hears all things. Besides this, the lion is to them a symbol of strength and might; just as the ox, surely, of earth itself and of husbandry and of food, and the horse of courage and boldness, and again the sphinx of might together with understanding, having the whole body of a lion, but the face of a man. In like manner to these, hinting at understanding and memory and power and skill, man is engraved by them upon the sacred things.

7.43. And further, in what are called among them the processions of the gods, they carry round golden figures — two dogs, one hawk, and one ibis — and the four figures of the statues they call four letters. The dogs, then, are symbols of the two hemispheres, as it were going round and keeping watch; the hawk, of the sun, for it is fiery and destructive — thus they ascribe pestilential diseases to the sun; the ibis, of the moon, the dark parts likened to the black, the bright to the white, of its feathers. And there are some who hold that the tropics are signified by the dogs, which guard and keep the door of the sun's passage to the south and to the north; while the hawk shows forth the equator, which is high and scorched, just as the ibis the ecliptic. For the ibis seems above the other creatures to have furnished the Egyptians with the beginning of the conception of number and measure, as the oblique circle did of the circles.

8.44. But indeed not only the most reasoning of the Egyptians, but also, besides, those of the other barbarians who reached after philosophy, were zealous for the symbolic kind. They say, for instance, that Idanthura, the king of the Scythians, as Pherecydes of Syros records, when Darius had crossed the Ister and was threatening war, sent him, instead of a letter, a symbol — a mouse, a frog, a bird, an arrow, a plough. And when there was, as was likely, perplexity over these things, Orontopagas the captain of a thousand said they would surrender the rule, conjecturing from the mouse the dwellings, from the frog the waters, from the bird the air, from the arrow the arms, and from the plough the land. But Xiphodres interpreted it the opposite way; for he said: "Unless we fly up like birds, or burrow into the earth like mice, or dive under water like frogs, we shall not escape their arrows; for we are not masters of the country." And they say that Anacharsis the Scythian, while asleep, used to hold his private parts with his left hand and his mouth with his right, hinting that one ought to master both, but that it is a greater thing to master the tongue than pleasure.

8.45. And why should I linger over the barbarians, when I may set forth the Greeks themselves as having very much used concealment? Androcydes the Pythagorean, then, says that what are called the Ephesian letters — much-talked-of among many — have the rank of symbols, and that Askion signifies darkness, since this has no shadow; Kataskion light, since it lights up the shadow; Lix is earth, by an ancient appellation, and Tetrax the year, by reason of the seasons; and Damnameneus the sun, the subduer; and Aisia the true voice. The symbol, then, signifies that divine things are set in order — as darkness to light, and the sun to the year, and the earth to the begetting of every kind of nature. And Dionysius the Thracian, the grammarian, in his work On Indication, speaks thus, word for word, concerning the symbol of the wheels: "Some signified their acts not by speech alone, but also by symbols — by speech as in the Delphic precepts, 'Nothing too much' and 'Know yourself' and the like; by symbols as the wheel that is turned in the precincts of the gods, drawn from the Egyptians, and the giving of branches to those who worship." For Orpheus the Thracian says: "Of branches, as many works as men upon earth have a care for, none has one single lot in mind, but all wheel round about; and to stand still in one part is not lawful, but each one keeps, as he began, an equal share of the course." The branches, then, are a symbol either of the first food, or that the many may come to know that the fruits flower and grow throughout, abiding very long, while they themselves have obtained but a short span of life; for this reason they will have the branches given; and perhaps also that they may come to know that, as these are burned, so they too must quickly leave this life and become the work of fire.

8.46. Most useful, then, is the kind of symbolic interpretation, helping toward many things, and toward right theology, and toward piety, and toward the showing of understanding, and toward the practice of brevity, and toward the display of wisdom; "for it is the part of a wise man," says Didymus the grammarian, "to use the symbolic mode of speech with dexterity, and to recognize what is shown forth by it." Indeed the elementary teaching of children embraces the interpretation of the four elements. For the Phrygians call water bedy, as Orpheus too: "and bedy, the bright water of the nymphs, is poured down." But the priest Dion likewise appears to write: "And taking bedy, pour it over your hands and turn to the inspection of the sacrifice." On the other hand, Philyllius the comic poet knows bedy as the air, the giver of life, by these words: "I pray to draw in the saving bedy" — which is the greatest part of health, to draw in the air pure, not befouled.

8.47. In agreement with this opinion is Neanthes of Cyzicus also, when he writes that the priests of the Macedonians, in their prayers, call upon bedy to be gracious to them and to their children — which they interpret as air. And as for zaps, "fire," some have taken it, in their ignorance, from zesis, "boiling"; but the sea is called by this name, as Euphorion in his replies to Theodoridas: "And zaps, the destroyer of ships, works mischief upon the reefs." And Dionysius the Iambic likewise: "the briny zaps groans around the raging sea." So too Cratinus the younger, the comic poet: "the zaps casts forth shrimps and little fishes." And Simmias of Rhodes: "the briny zaps was mother of the Ignetes and the Telchines." And chthon is the earth, poured out into magnitude. And plēktron, "the striker," some take as the pole, others as the air that strikes and moves all things into nature and growth, or that which fills all things.

8.48. But these men had not read Cleanthes the philosopher, who downright calls the sun the striker; for in its risings, driving home its rays as it were striking the world, it leads the light into its harmonious course; and from the sun it gives sign also to the other stars. And the sphinx is not the binding-together of all things and the revolution of the world according to the poet Aratus, but perhaps it might be the pervading spiritual tension that holds the world together; though it is better to take it as the aether that holds and binds all things, as Empedocles too says: "But come, I will tell you first the sun, the beginning, from which were made plain all the things now beheld — earth, and the much-billowing sea, and the moist air, the Titan, and the aether that binds tight all things round in a circle." And Apollodorus of Cercyra says that these verses were uttered aloud by Branchus the seer, when he was cleansing the Milesians from a plague. For sprinkling the multitude with branches of laurel, he led off the hymn somewhat thus: "Sing, O children, of the Far-worker and the Far-worker's maid"; and the people, so to speak, struck up in answer: "bedy, zaps, chthōm, plēktron, sphinx; knaxzbich, thyptes, phlegmo, drōps." Callimachus too mentions the story in his Iambics. And knaxzbich is, by derivation, the disease, from knaiein, "to grate," and "to destroy," and thypsai, "to burn with lightning." Thespis, however, the tragedian, says that something else is signified by these, writing somewhat thus: "Lo, I pour you a libation of knaxzbich, white, pressed from the dugs of yellow goats; lo, for you thyptēs, cheese mingled with red honey, I set upon your holy altars, O horned Pan; lo, for you I pour Bromius' phlegmo." He hints, I think, at the first milky food of the soul that comes from the four-and-twenty elements; after which is the food now curdled into cheese, and last the blood of the vine of the Word, the fiery wine, which teaches the gladness that perfects the discipline. And drōps is the active Word, which from the first catechizing brings the man to growth, to the measure of his stature, kindling and enlightening the man.

8.49. But there is borne about also a third copy-line for boys: "Grasp, sphinx, thief, gratingly." It signifies, I think, by the management of the elements and of the world, that the way must lie for us toward the knowledge of the more perfect, since eternal salvation is won by force and toil. For "to grasp" is to apprehend; the sphinx is the harmony of the world; "gratingly" shows forth the difficulty; and "thief" shows at once the knowledge of the Lord that escapes notice, and the day. And again — does not Epigenes, in his work On the Poetry of Orpheus, setting forth the peculiar usages in Orpheus, say that "crook-fashioned shuttles" signify ploughs, and "warp-threads" the furrows; that the "thread" is allegorized as the seed, and "the tears of Zeus" show the rain; that the Fates, again, are the phases of the moon, the thirtieth, the fifteenth, and the new moon — wherefore Orpheus calls them "white-robed," being parts of the light? And again, "the flowery one" is the spring by reason of nature, "the shining one" is the night by reason of its rest, and "the Gorgon" is the moon by reason of the face in it; and "Aphrodite" is the season in which one ought to sow — these are said in the theologian.

8.50. Such things the Pythagoreans too hinted at, allegorizing the dogs of Persephone as the planets, and the sea as the tear of Cronos. And we should find ten thousand things upon ten thousand spoken in riddles by both philosophers and poets, seeing that whole books too show forth the hidden purpose of the writer — such as the book of Heraclitus On Nature, who for this very reason was surnamed "the Obscure." Like this book is the theology of Pherecydes of Syros. For the poet Euphorion, and the Causes of Callimachus, and the Alexandra of Lycophron, and such-like works, are set as an exercise in exegesis for the boys of the grammarians.

8.51. It is not unlikely, then, that the barbarian philosophy too, of which it is our purpose to speak, should in some places prophesy in a hidden way and through symbols, as has been shown. Such, for instance, are the things Moses enjoins — these common ones: "You shall not eat the swine, nor the eagle, nor the hawk, nor the raven." For the swine signifies the pleasure-loving and unclean desire for foods, and the lickerish craving for venery, and a defiled wantonness, ever itching, material and lying in the mire, fattened for slaughter and destruction. On the contrary, he permits the eating of what parts the hoof and chews the cud, signifying, says Barnabas, that one ought to cleave to those who fear the Lord, and to those who meditate in their heart on the distinction of the word which they have received, to those who speak the ordinances of the Lord and keep them, to those who know that meditation is a work of gladness, and who chew the cud upon the word of the Lord. And what is the parting of the hoof? That the just man both walks in this world and awaits the holy age. Then he goes on: "See how well Moses laid down the law. But how could they understand or grasp these things? But we, understanding the commandments rightly, speak as the Lord willed. For this reason he circumcised our ears and our hearts, that we might understand these things."

8.52. Indeed, when he says, "You shall not eat the eagle, the hawk, the kite, and the raven," he means: "You shall not cleave to, nor be made like, those men who do not know how to provide themselves food by toil and sweat, but live by plunder and lawlessness." For the eagle signifies plunder, the hawk injustice, and the raven greed. And it is written: "With the innocent man you shall be innocent, and with the elect you shall be elect, and with the perverse you shall be perverse." It is fitting, then, to cleave to the holy, because those who cleave to them shall be sanctified. Hence Theognis writes: "From the good you shall learn good things; but if you mingle with the evil, you shall lose even the mind you have." And again, when it says in the song, "He has been gloriously glorified; horse and rider he has cast into the sea," the many-limbed, brutish, impulsive passion — desire — together with the rider mounted upon it, the charioteer who has given the reins to pleasures, he has cast into the sea, hurling them into the disorders of the world.

8.53. So too Plato, in his treatise On the Soul, says that the charioteer and the horse that has revolted — the irrational part, which is cleft in two, into spirit and desire — fall down. By which the myth too hints that Phaethon fell through the unruliness of the colts. Indeed in the case of Joseph also: his brothers, in envy of him as a youth who saw further in the matter of knowledge, stripped off his many-coloured tunic, and taking him, cast him into a pit; and the pit was empty, it had no water. Spurning the varied knowledge of the earnest man that comes of love of learning, or using only the bare faith that is according to the law, they cast it into the pit empty of water, to sell it off into Egypt, the desert of the divine Word. And the pit is empty of knowledge, into which the man cast and stripped of his knowledge — the wise man who had escaped notice — seemed to his brothers like to themselves, naked of knowledge. By another signification the many-coloured garment might be desire, leading away into a yawning pit. "And if anyone open a pit, or hew one out," it says, "and do not cover it, and a calf or an ass fall in there, the owner of the pit shall pay money and give it to his neighbour; but the dead beast shall be his."

8.54. Here bring to my aid that prophecy: "The ox knew its owner, and the ass the manger of its master; but Israel did not know me." That none of these, then, falling into the knowledge taught by you, having become a hearer of the truth, may misunderstand and stumble, "Be safe," it says, "concerning the use of the word"; and toward those who come to it irrationally, shut up the living spring that lies in the deep, but hold out drink to those who thirst for the truth. Concealing yourself, then, from those who are not able to receive the depth of knowledge, cover the pit. The owner of the pit, then — the gnostic himself — will be punished, it says, undergoing the charge of him who is offended or swallowed up by the greatness of the word, while still small-minded, or of having moved the labourer over to contemplation and set him aside, by reason of his ill-prepared faith. And he shall give money, rendering account and answer to the all-sovereign will.

8.55. This, then, is the type of the law and the prophets up to John. But he — although he spoke more plainly, as no longer prophesying but already pointing to him who was symbolically announced from the beginning as now present — nevertheless says, "I am not worthy to loose the strap of the Lord's sandal." For he confesses that he is not worthy to baptize so great a power; for those who purify must loose the soul from the body and from its sins, as one looses the foot from the bond. And perhaps too he means the last operation of the Saviour toward us, the nearest one, that which comes through his presence, hidden under the riddle of prophecy; for he who by his own showing pointed out him who was prophesied of, who announced the presence as having come, that had journeyed from afar into manifestation, truly loosed the end of the oracles of the dispensation, uncovering the meaning of the symbols. And among the Romans the things done over wills have their order — those scales and asses and acts of redemption and the touchings of the ears that are done for justice' sake — some that they may be done justly, some for the apportioning of the honour, and one that the bystander, as though some weight were laid upon him, may stand and hear and take the rank of a witness.

9.56. But, as it seems, in my zeal for demonstration I have unawares digressed beyond what is needful. For life will fail me as I set forth the multitude of those who philosophized in symbols. For the sake, then, of memory, and of brevity, and of being stretched out toward the truth, such are the writings of the barbarian philosophy. For they will have the truly true philosophy and the true theology belong only to those who have often drawn near to these writings and have given proof in faith and in their whole life. Indeed, they will have us in need of some interpreter and guide; for thus, they reckoned, the worthy would the more give themselves to study and be benefited, and would not be deceived, receiving the teaching from those who well know. And besides, all things that show through some veil display the truth as greater and more august — as fruits gleaming through water, and forms through veils which lend them certain added showings. For things in full glare both prove deceptive and let only what is plain be perceived in a single way.

9.57. It is possible, then, to take many connected meanings, as indeed we do take them, from things said with concealment. And, this being so, the inexperienced and unlearned man goes astray, but the gnostic apprehends. For this very reason they did not wish all things to be set forth nakedly to the chance comer, nor the goods of wisdom to be made common to those who have not even in a dream had their soul cleansed; for it is not lawful to hold out to all comers the things won with so great toils, nor to declare the mysteries of the Word to the profane. They say, for instance, that Hipparchus the Pythagorean, being charged with having written down the doctrines of Pythagoras plainly, was cast out of the school, and a pillar was set up over him as over one dead. Hence in the barbarian philosophy too they call dead those who have fallen away from the doctrines and have subjected the mind to the passions of the soul. "For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness," according to the divine apostle, "or what communion has light with darkness? And what concord has Christ with Belial, or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?" For apart are the honours of the Olympians and of the dead. "Therefore come out from among them and be separate," says the Lord, "and touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you, and I will be a Father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters."

9.58. It was not the Pythagoreans, then, and Plato alone who hid most of their teaching; the Epicureans too say that there are certain secret things even of his, and that they do not permit all to come upon these writings. And the Stoics too say that certain things were written by Zeno the first, which they do not readily permit the disciples to read, unless they have first given proof whether they philosophize genuinely. And the Aristotelians say that of his writings some are esoteric, and some common and exoteric. And those who established the mysteries, being philosophers, buried their own doctrines in myths, so that they should not be plain to all. If, then, these men, hiding away human opinions, kept the unlearned from coming upon them, was it not the more fitting that the truly holy and blessed contemplation of the things that really are should be concealed from everyone? Yet neither the things of the barbarian philosophy, nor the Pythagorean myths, nor even those in Plato — of Er the son of Armenius in the Republic, of Aeacus and Rhadamanthus in the Gorgias, of Tartarus in the Phaedo, of Prometheus and Epimetheus in the Protagoras, and besides these the myth of the war of the men of Atlantis and the Athenians in the Atlanticus — are to be allegorized outright in every name, but only so much of them as is significant of the general thought; and these things, indeed, we should find indicated through symbols under the veil of allegory.

9.59. Indeed the assembly of Pythagoras too, and his twofold fellowship with his hearers — calling the many "auditors," and certain others, who genuinely laid hold of philosophy, "mathematicians" — hinted that some things are to be spoken and some kept hidden from the many. And perhaps that twofold division of the Peripatetics too, called in their discourses the "probable" and the "scientific," is not free of a distinguishing of opinion from good repute and truth: "Let not the flower of glorious honour from mortals force you to take it up, on condition of speaking beyond what is holy." The Ionian Muses, at any rate, plainly say that the many and the seeming-wise "follow the singers of the people, and use the customs, knowing that many are bad, but few good; while the best pursue glory." For "the best choose one thing in place of all," it says, "everlasting glory among mortals; but the many are glutted like cattle," measuring happiness by the belly and the privy parts and the basest of the things within us. And the Eleatic Parmenides the great brings in a teaching of two ways, writing somewhat thus: "Both the unshaken heart of well-persuasive Truth, and the opinions of mortals, in which is no true faith."

10.60. With reason, then, the inspired apostle says: "By revelation was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in few words, by which, when you read, you may understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets." For there is a certain learning of the perfect, concerning which, writing to the Colossians, he says: "We do not cease to pray for you and to ask, that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, to walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to the might of his glory." And again: "according to the dispensation of God given to me," he says, "toward you, to fulfil the word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from the ages and from the generations, but now has been made manifest to his saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles."

10.61. So that there are, on the one hand, the mysteries hidden until the apostles, and delivered by them as they received them from the Lord — hidden in the old covenant — which have now been made manifest to the saints; and, on the other hand, "the riches of the glory of the mystery among the Gentiles," which is faith and hope toward Christ, whom elsewhere he has called a foundation. And again, as it were ambitious to make knowledge plain, he writes somewhat thus: "Admonishing every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ." Not every man simply, since then there would be no unbeliever; nor again every believer perfect in Christ, but he says "every man," meaning, so to speak, the whole man, purified in body and in soul. For, that knowledge is not for all, he plainly adds: "knit together in love, and unto all the riches of the full assurance of understanding, unto the knowledge of the mystery of God in Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Continue steadfastly in prayer, watching in it with thanksgiving." And the thanksgiving is made not for the soul only and for spiritual goods, but also for the body and for the goods of the body.

10.62. And still more plainly he uncovers that knowledge is not for all, adding: "Praying at the same time for us also, that God may open to us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which also I am bound, that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak." For there were certain things delivered without writing. To the Hebrews, for instance, he says: "And though you ought to be teachers by reason of the time" — that is, as having grown old in the old covenant — "you have need again that someone teach you what are the elements of the beginning of the oracles of God, and you have become such as have need of milk and not of solid food. For everyone who partakes of milk is unacquainted with the word of righteousness, for he is a babe, entrusted with the first lessons; but solid food is for the perfect, for those who through habit have their senses exercised to discern good and evil. Therefore, leaving the word of the beginning of Christ, let us press on toward perfection."

10.63. But Barnabas too, who himself co-proclaimed the word with the apostle in the ministry to the Gentiles, says: "I write to you more simply, that you may understand." Then, a little later, already setting down a trace of the gnostic tradition more plainly, he says: "What says the other prophet, Moses, to them? 'Behold, thus says the Lord God: Enter into the good land which the Lord swore to give — the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob — and inherit it, a land flowing with milk and honey.' What does knowledge say? Learn. Hope, it says, upon him who is about to be made manifest to you in the flesh, Jesus; for a man is earth that suffers, since out of the face of the earth was the moulding of Adam. What then does it mean, 'into the good land, a land flowing with milk and honey'? Blessed be our Lord, brethren, who has set wisdom and understanding of his hidden things in us. For the prophet says, 'Who shall understand a parable of the Lord, except the wise and understanding man, and he who loves his Lord?'" — since it is given to few to contain these things. For "not out of envy," he says, "did the Lord proclaim, in a certain Gospel, 'My mystery is for me and for the sons of my house'" — making his election in safety and without anxiety, that the household of those he has chosen, having received what is proper to them, may become superior to envy. For he who has no knowledge of good is evil, since there is one good, the Father; and to be ignorant of the Father is death, as to know him is eternal life, by participation in the power of the incorruptible. And not to be corrupted is to partake of divinity, while corruption is brought on by the falling away from the knowledge of God.

10.64. Again the prophet: "And I will give you treasures hidden, dark, unseen, that they may know that I am the Lord God." The like to these David too sings: "Behold, you have loved truth; the obscure and hidden things of your wisdom you have made plain to me." "For day to day utters speech" — that which is plainly written — "and night to night declares knowledge" — that which is hidden mystically; "and there are no words nor speeches whose voices are not heard" by God, who said, "Shall a man do anything in secret, and I shall not see him?" For this reason discipleship has been called enlightenment, as making plain the hidden things, when the teacher alone uncovers the lid of the ark — contrary to what the poets say of Zeus, that he laid hold of the jar of goods but opened the jar of ills. "I know that, coming to you," the apostle says, "I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ" — calling the spiritual gift and the gnostic tradition, which, present, he longs to impart to them present (for these things could not be made plain by letter), the "fullness of Christ," "according to the revelation of a mystery kept silent through eternal times, but now made manifest through the prophetic Scriptures, and, by the command of the eternal God, made known to all the Gentiles unto the obedience of faith" — that is, to those of the Gentiles who believe, that he is; but to few of these is it shown what these mysteries are.

10.65. With reason, then, Plato too, in the Letters, treating of God, says: "It must be told you in riddles, so that, if the tablet should suffer anything in the recesses of sea or land, he who reads it may not understand." For the God of all, who is above all voice and all conception and all thought, could never be handed down in writing, being unspeakable by his own power. And this very thing Plato has shown, saying: "Looking, then, to these things, take heed lest you ever repent of what now falls out unworthily. The greatest safeguard is not to write, but to learn by heart; for it is not possible — it is not — that what is written should not fall out." Brother to these things are the words of the holy apostle Paul, who keeps the prophetic and truly ancient concealment, from which the noble doctrines flowed to the Greeks: "We speak wisdom among the perfect, yet a wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age that come to nothing; but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom."

10.66. Then, a little further on, he teaches the caution to be used in the going-out of words to the many, in some such fashion as this: "And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to fleshly, as to babes in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able; but neither even now are you able, for you are still fleshly." If, then, the milk is said by the apostle to be the food of babes, and the solid food the nourishment of the perfect, milk will be understood as the catechizing, the first food, as it were, of the soul, and the solid food as the contemplation that beholds — these are flesh and blood of the Word, that is, the apprehension of the divine power and substance. "Taste and see that the Lord is good," it says; for thus he imparts himself to those who partake more spiritually of such food, when the soul now nourishes itself, according to Plato the lover of truth. For the eating and drinking of the divine Word is knowledge of the divine substance. Therefore Plato too says, in the second book of the Republic: "Having sacrificed, not a swine, but some great and hard-to-find offering, we must thus inquire about God." And the apostle writes: "For our Passover has been sacrificed, even Christ" — a hard-to-find offering in truth, the Son of God being consecrated for us.

11.67. The sacrifice acceptable to God is the unrepenting separation from the body and from its passions. This is the true godliness indeed. And is it not perhaps with reason that philosophy was for this cause called by Socrates a study of death? For he who in his thinking neither brings the sight to his aid nor draws in any other of the senses, but meets the realities with the pure mind itself, pursues the true philosophy. This, then, is what the silence of five years means to Pythagoras too, which he enjoins upon his disciples, that, turning away from things of sense, they might behold the divine with the bare mind. . . . The chief men of the Greeks philosophized such things from Moses. For he enjoins that the whole burnt-offerings be flayed and divided into limbs, since the gnostic soul, become bare of its material hide, without the bodily babble and all the passions which empty and false suppositions bring about, having stripped off the fleshly desires, must be consecrated to the light.

11.68. But most men, putting on the mortal like snails, and rolling themselves up into a ball about their own intemperances like hedgehogs, hold such opinions about the blessed and incorruptible God as they hold about themselves. It has escaped them — even though they chance to be near us — that God has bestowed on us ten thousand things of which he himself has no share: birth, being himself unbegotten; nourishment, being himself without need; growth, being himself in equality; a good old age and a good death, being himself immortal and ageless. Hence let no one suppose that hands and feet and mouth and eyes and goings-in and goings-out and wraths and threatenings are said by the Hebrews to be passions of God — by no means; but rather that certain of these names are allegorized in a more holy way, which indeed, as the discourse goes forward, we shall make plain in their own season. "Wisdom is the all-healing remedy of all things," Callimachus writes in his epigrams. "And one man is wise from another, both of old and now," says Bacchylides in his Paeans; "for not even is it the easiest of things to find the gates of words unspoken."

11.69. Well, then, does Isocrates in the Panathenaicus, having put the question "Whom, then, do I call educated?", go on: "First, those who use well the matters that befall them day by day, and have a judgement that hits the occasions and is able, for the most part, to aim at the expedient; next, those who associate becomingly and justly with all who draw near, who bear easily and lightly the unpleasantnesses and grievousnesses of others, and present themselves to their companions as inoffensive and moderate as may be; further, those who master their pleasures, and are not too much overcome by their misfortunes, but bear themselves manfully in them and worthily of the nature we share; fourth — and this is greatest — those who are not corrupted by good fortune, nor stand outside themselves, nor become proud, but abide in the rank of the right-minded." Then he adds the coping-stone of the discourse: "Those who have the disposition of their soul well-attuned, not toward one of these only, but toward all of them — these I call both prudent and perfect men, and possessed of all the virtues." Do you see how the Greeks too deify the gnostic life, although they know not how one ought to know? But what knowledge is, they do not know even in a dream.

11.70. If, then, it is agreed among us that knowledge is rational food, blessed truly, according to the Scripture, are those who hunger and thirst after the truth, since they shall be filled with everlasting food. Very wonderfully Euripides, the philosopher of the stage, is found to be in tune with what we have said before, hinting, I know not how, at Father and Son together: "To you, the ruler of all, I bring libation and cake — Zeus or Hades, by whatever name you would be called — receive from me an offering without fire, full of all manner of fruits, an outpouring." For Christ is a whole-burnt-offering for us, an offering without fire. And that he speaks of the Saviour himself without knowing it, he makes plain by adding: "For you, among the gods of heaven, wield the sceptre of Zeus, and you share with Hades the rule of the world below." Then he says outright: "Send up to the light the souls of the dead, for those who wish to learn beforehand whence their toils sprang, what is the root of evils, and which of the blessed ones one must propitiate to find a respite from troubles." Not unfittingly, then, the rites among the Greeks too begin with purifications, just as among the barbarians with the washing.

11.71. After these come the lesser mysteries, which have some groundwork of teaching and of preparation for what is to come; and the greater concern the whole, where there is no longer anything left to learn, but only to behold and to view in the mind both nature and the realities. We may take the purifying mode as confession, and the contemplative as analysis, advancing toward the first conception, making our beginning, by way of analysis, from the things that underlie it — taking away from the body its natural qualities, stripping off the dimension into depth, then that into breadth, and after these that into length. For what is left is a point, a unit, so to speak, having position; and if we take away its position, the unit is conceived. If, then, taking away all that belongs to bodies and to what are called incorporeals, we cast ourselves into the greatness of Christ, and thence advance by holiness into the boundless, we should come, in some way or other, to the conception of the Almighty — knowing not what he is, but what he is not. Shape and motion, or standing-still, or a throne, or place, or right hand, or left hand of the Father of all things, are not at all to be conceived, even though these too are written; but what each of them is meant to show forth shall be set out in its own place. The first cause, then, is not in place, but above place and time and name and conception. Therefore Moses too says, "Show yourself to me," hinting most clearly that God is not teachable by men, nor speakable, but knowable only by the power that comes from himself. For the inquiry is formless and invisible, but the grace of the knowledge comes from him through the Son.

11.72. Most plainly does Solomon witness to us, saying somewhat thus: "Prudence of man is not in me, but God gives me wisdom; and holy things I know." Take, for instance, how Moses, allegorizing the divine prudence, named it a tree of life planted in paradise — which paradise may also be the world, in which all things from creation grow. In this the Word too flowered and bore fruit, becoming flesh, and made alive those who tasted of his kindness; since not even apart from the tree did he come to our knowledge, for our life was hung upon our faith. And Solomon again says: "It is a tree of immortality to those who lay hold of it." For this cause it says: "Behold, I set before your face life and death, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in his ways, and to hear his voice, and to believe in the life; but if you transgress the ordinances and the judgements I have given you, you shall surely perish. For this is your life and the length of your days, to love the Lord your God."

11.73. Again: "Abraham, having come to the place which God told him, on the third day, lifting up his eyes, sees the place from afar." For the first stage is the longing for noble things through sight; the second is the soul's desire for the best; and on the third the mind discerns spiritual things, when the eyes of the understanding are opened by the teacher who rose on the third day. And the three days might be the mystery of the seal, by which the truly existent God is believed. With reason, then, he sees the place from afar; for hard to seize is the country of God — which Plato called "the country of ideas," having taken from Moses that it is a place, as being that which contains all things and the whole. But it is fittingly seen from afar by Abraham, because he was still in the world of becoming, and at hand he is initiated through an angel.

11.74. Hence the apostle says, "We see now as through a mirror, but then face to face" — by those pure and incorporeal applications of the understanding alone. And it is possible, even in discourse, to divine concerning God, if one attempts, apart from all the senses, by means of reason to rush toward what each thing is, and not to stand off from the realities, until, ascending to the things that lie above, he should grasp, by intelligence itself, the very Good — coming to be at the very end of the intelligible, according to Plato. Again, Moses, not permitting altars and precincts to be built in many places, but founding one temple of God, proclaimed a world only-begotten, as Basilides says, and the one God — as Basilides no longer thinks. And since the gnostic Moses does not enclose the unenclosable in place, he set up no image in the temple, showing that God is to be reverenced as invisible and uncircumscribed, yet bringing the Hebrews, in some measure, to the conception of God through the honour of the name attached to the temple. But indeed the Word, forbidding the building of temples and all sacrifices, hints that the Almighty is not in any place, by these words: "What house will you build me? says the Lord. Heaven is my throne," and the rest. And concerning sacrifices likewise: "Blood of bulls and fat of lambs I do not want," and all that the Holy Spirit forbids besides these things through the prophet.

11.75. Most beautifully, then, does Euripides too sing in tune with these things, writing: "What house, fashioned by the hands of builders, could enclose the divine frame within the folds of walls?" And concerning sacrifices he likewise says: "For God, if he is truly God, has need of nothing; these are the wretched tales of bards." For God did not make the world out of need, that he might reap honours from men and from the other gods and the spirits, says Plato, gathering, as it were, some revenue from the world of becoming — from us, smoke, and from gods and spirits their proper ministries. Most instructively, then, does Paul say in the Acts of the Apostles: "The God who made the world and all things in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, himself giving to all breath and life and all things."

11.76. And Zeno too, the founder of the Stoic school, says, in his book On the Republic, that one ought neither to make temples nor images; for no work is worthy of the gods. And he does not shrink from writing in these very words: "There will be no need to build temples; for a temple is not to be thought worth much, nor holy; and no work of builders and artisans is worth much or holy." With reason, then, Plato too, knowing the world to be a temple of God, marked off for the citizens a place of the city in which the images were to be set up, but privately forbade anyone to possess statues of the gods. "Let no one," he says, "consecrate sacred things to the gods in any other way; for gold and silver, in other cities, both privately and in temples, is an invidious possession; ivory, from a body that has left its soul, is no holy offering; iron and bronze are instruments of wars; but of wood let a man set up what he will, of one piece, and likewise of stone, for the common shrines."

11.77. With reason, then, in the great letter he says: "There is no way to speak of it, as of other lessons; but out of much fellowship with the matter itself, and out of living together with it, suddenly, as a light kindled from a leaping fire, it comes to be in the soul and thenceforth nourishes itself." Are not these things like to those spoken by Zephaniah the prophet? "And the Spirit took me up and carried me to a fifth heaven, and I beheld angels called lords, with their diadem set upon them in the Holy Spirit; and the throne of each of them was sevenfold the light of the rising sun; and they dwelt in temples of salvation and hymned the unspeakable Most High God."

12.78. "For to find the Father and Maker of this whole is a task, and having found him, to declare him to all is impossible. For there is no way to speak of it, as of other lessons," says the truth-loving Plato. For he had heard very well how the all-wise Moses, going up into the mountain — through the holy contemplation to the summit of the things of mind — by necessity charges that not all the people go up with him; and when the Scripture says, "And Moses entered into the thick darkness where God was," this makes plain, to those able to understand, that God is invisible and unspeakable, and that the darkness is, in truth, the unbelief and ignorance of the many, set before the gleam of the truth. And Orpheus the theologian, again, profited from this source, when he said: "He is one, self-complete, and from one are all things sprung (or 'grown,' for so it is also written)," and adds: "Nor does any of mortals behold him, but he himself sees all." And still more plainly he goes on: "But him I do not behold, for round about him a cloud is fixed; for in all mortals are mortal pupils in their eyes, small, since flesh and bones are grown into them."

12.79. The apostle will bear witness to what has been said, saying, "I know a man in Christ caught up to the third heaven, and thence into paradise, who heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter" — thus hinting at the unspeakableness of God; not adding the "it is not lawful" by reason of any law or fear of some charge, but showing that the divine is unutterable by human power, since beyond the third heaven it begins to be spoken, as is right, by those who there initiate the chosen souls into the mysteries. For I know that even in Plato (for the examples from the barbarian philosophy, being many, the discourse now postpones, awaiting their occasion according to its first promises) many heavens are conceived. At any rate, being in doubt in the Timaeus whether one ought to think there are more worlds than this one, he is indifferent about the names, calling world and heaven synonymously; and the words run thus: "Have we, then, rightly spoken of one heaven, or would it be more correct to say many and infinite? One, if indeed it is to have been fashioned according to the pattern."

12.80. But in the Epistle of the Romans to the Corinthians it is written of "an ocean boundless to men, and the worlds beyond it." Consistently, then, the noble apostle cries out again: "O depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!" And was not this perhaps what the prophet hinted at, bidding men make unleavened cakes baked in ashes — showing that the truly sacred Word, initiate concerning the Unbegotten and his powers, ought to be kept hidden? Confirming these things, the apostle has openly said, in the Epistle to the Corinthians: "We speak wisdom among the perfect, yet a wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age that come to nothing; but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom." And again elsewhere he says: "unto the knowledge of the mystery of God in Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." Our Saviour himself sets his seal to these things, saying somewhat thus: "To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven." And again the Gospel says that our Saviour spoke the word to the apostles in a mystery; for the prophecy too says of him: "He will open his mouth in parables, and will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world." And by the parable of the leaven too the Lord shows the concealment; for he says, "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, until the whole was leavened." For either the threefold soul is saved by obedience, through the spiritual power hidden in it by faith; or because the strength of the Word given to us, being intense and powerful, draws to itself, secretly and unseen, everyone who has received it and gotten it within himself, and gathers his whole frame into unity.

12.81. Most wisely, then, was this written by Solon concerning God: "Hardest of all is it to perceive the unseen measure of judgement, which alone holds the bounds of all things." For "the divine," says the poet of Acragas, "cannot be approached so as to be reached by our eyes, nor laid hold of with the hands, by which the greatest highway of persuasion falls into the minds of men." And John the apostle: "No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him" — calling the invisible and unspeakable the "bosom" of God. And from this some have called him "the Depth," as having embraced and taken to his bosom all things, unreachable and boundless. Indeed this is the most unmanageable discourse about God. For since the beginning of every matter is hard to find, surely the first and most ancient beginning, which is the cause to all the rest of their coming-to-be and of being once come to be, is hardest to point out. For how could that be spoken of which is neither genus nor difference nor species nor individual nor number, nor yet an accident, nor that to which anything accrues? Nor could one rightly call him "whole"; for "whole" is ranked under magnitude, and he is the Father of wholes. Nor are any parts of him to be spoken of; for the One is indivisible, and for this reason also infinite — conceived not in respect of being unable to be gone through, but in respect of being without dimension and having no boundary; and therefore shapeless and nameless.

12.82. And if at any time we name it, calling it, not properly, either One or the Good, or Mind, or the Existent itself, or Father, or God, or Creator, or Lord — we do not speak as uttering his name, but, out of perplexity, we make use of noble names, that the understanding may have these to lean upon, and not wander among other things. For no one of these things by itself is significant of God, but all together are indicative of the power of the Almighty. For things spoken are spoken either out of what belongs to them, or out of their relation to one another; and none of these can be taken concerning God. Nor again is he grasped by demonstrative knowledge; for this is established out of things prior and more knowable, and nothing exists before the Unbegotten. It remains, then, by divine grace and by the Word alone that comes from him, to conceive the unknown — even as Luke too, in the Acts of the Apostles, records Paul saying: "Men of Athens, in all things I behold you as more than ordinarily religious; for as I went about and surveyed the objects of your worship, I found even an altar on which was inscribed, 'To an unknown God.' Whom, then, you worship in ignorance, this one I proclaim to you."

13.83. Everything, then, that falls under a name is begotten, whether they will it or no. Whether, then, the Father himself draws to himself everyone who has lived purely and has passed into the conception of the blessed and incorruptible nature; or whether the freedom of will in us, having come to the knowledge of the Good, leaps and bounds beyond the bars, as the trainers say — yet not without the special grace does the soul take wings and rise and is lifted up above the things that lie above, casting off all that weighs it down and rendering it to its kindred. And Plato too, in the Meno, says that virtue is God-given, as these words show: "From this reasoning, then, Meno, virtue appears to come to those to whom it comes by a divine portion." Does it not seem to you that the gnostic habit, which does not come to all, is hinted at as a divine portion? And more plainly he adds: "If now we, in all this discourse, have inquired well, virtue would be neither by nature nor taught, but coming by a divine portion, without intelligence, to those to whom it comes." God-given, then, is wisdom, being a power of the Father, which rouses our free will, and welcomes faith, and rewards with the highest fellowship the attentiveness of the elect choice.

13.84. And indeed I will set Plato before you, downright requiring men to believe in the children of God. For, having made his discourse concerning gods visible and begotten, in the Timaeus, he says: "But to speak of the other spirits, and to know their generation, is beyond us; but we must trust those who spoke before, being, as they said, offspring of gods, and clearly somehow knowing their own forefathers. It is impossible, then, to disbelieve children of gods, even though they speak without probable and necessary proofs." I do not think the Saviour and those anointed unto prophecy could be more plainly attested to by Greeks — the former proclaimed children of God, but the Lord his genuine Son — that they are true witnesses concerning divine things; wherefore he added that one must believe them, since they are divinely inspired. And though one should say, in more tragic vein, that he disbelieves — "for it was not Zeus who proclaimed these things to me" — yet let him know that it was God himself, through the Son, who proclaimed the Scriptures. And he is trustworthy who announces what is his own, since "no one," says the Lord, "knew the Father, except the Son, and he to whom the Son reveals him."

13.85. Belief, then, must be given to this one, even according to Plato, even if without probable and necessary proofs he is proclaimed and spoken of, through both the old and the new covenant. "For unless you believe," says the Lord, "you shall die in your sins"; and on the contrary, "He who believes has eternal life." Blessed, then, are all who have trusted in him. To have trusted is more than to believe; for when one knows that the Son of God is our teacher, he has trusted that his teaching is true. And as learning, according to Empedocles, increases the mind, so trust in the Lord increases faith. We say, then, that it belongs to the same men to blame philosophy and to run down faith, to praise injustice and to count the life of desire happy.

13.86. Now faith, even if it is a voluntary assent of the soul, is yet a worker of good things and a foundation of righteous action. And though Aristotle reason technically — teaching that "making" is ranked among the irrational creatures and among lifeless things too, but "acting" belongs to men only — let him set right those who say that God is the maker of all things. But the thing to be done, he says, is either as good or as necessary. To act unjustly, then, is not good (for no one acts unjustly except for the sake of something else), and of necessary things none is voluntary; to act unjustly, then, is voluntary, so that it is not necessary. And the earnest men differ above all from the base both in their choices and in their seemly desires. For every depravity of soul is accompanied by intemperance, and he who acts through passion acts through intemperance and depravity. It comes to me, then, to marvel at every turn at that divine voice: "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up another way, that man is a thief and a robber; but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep; to him the doorkeeper opens." Then, explaining himself, the Lord says: "I am the door of the sheep."

13.87. It is necessary, then, having learned the truth through Christ, to be saved, even if one chance to have philosophized in the Greek philosophy; for now it has been plainly shown — what in other generations was not made known to the sons of men — now it has been revealed. For there was always, in all who were right-minded, a natural conception of one God, the Almighty; and most men, even those who had not utterly lost their shame before the truth, laid hold of the everlasting benefaction according to the divine providence. Generally, at any rate, Xenocrates of Chalcedon does not despair of the conception of the divine even in the irrational creatures; and Democritus, though he wish it not, will confess it, by the consequence of his own doctrines; for he made the same images fall upon men and upon the irrational creatures from the divine substance. Far indeed is man from being without a share in the divine conception, who has been recorded as partaking too of the inbreathing at his creation, having received a purer substance than the other creatures.

13.88. Hence the school of Pythagoras say that the mind comes to men by a divine portion, as Plato and Aristotle too confess. But we say that the Holy Spirit is breathed upon him who has believed; whereas the school of Plato place the mind in the soul as an effluence of a divine portion, and the soul in the body. For plainly, through Joel, one of the twelve prophets, it is said: "And it shall come to pass after these things, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy." But the Spirit is not in each of us as a part of God. And how this distribution comes about, and what in the world the Holy Spirit is, will be shown by us in the books On Prophecy and On the Soul. But "to hide the depths of knowledge is good unbelief," according to Heraclitus; "for by unbelief it escapes being known."

13.89. XIV. We must add what comes next, and now set forth more plainly the Greek theft from the barbarian philosophy. For the Stoics say that God is a body and spirit in substance, just as, indeed, the soul also is. All these things you will find downright in the Scriptures. For do not think now of their allegories as the gnostic truth delivers them, since these, while showing one thing, signify another, like skilful wrestlers. But while they say that God pervades all substance, we call him Maker only, and Maker by the Word. And they were led astray by what is said in Wisdom, "It pervades and passes through all things by reason of its pureness," since they did not understand that these things are said of the Wisdom that was first-created by God. "Yes," they say, "but the philosophers lay down matter among the first principles — both the Stoics and Plato and Pythagoras, and Aristotle the Peripatetic too — and not one principle." Let them know, then, that what is called matter is said by themselves to be without quality and without shape, and, more daringly still, has been called by Plato "not-being." And does not Plato, knowing most mystically that the one truly existing principle is one, say in the Timaeus, in these very words: "Now, then, let our position be thus: concerning the beginning, or beginnings, of all things, or however we are minded about these matters, it must not now be spoken of, for no other reason than this, that it is hard, in the present manner of the exposition, to make plain what seems good."

13.90. And besides, that prophetic saying, "And the earth was invisible and unfurnished," supplied them with starting-points for a material substance. Indeed, to Epicurus the smuggling-in of chance came from not following the meaning; whence "vanity of vanities, all is vanity." And Aristotle was able to bring providence down only as far as the moon, from this Psalm: "O Lord, your mercy is in the heaven, and your truth reaches to the clouds." For the showing-forth of the prophetic mysteries was not yet uncovered before the coming of the Lord. And again, the punishments after death, and the chastisement by fire, the whole poetic muse, and the Greek philosophy too, filched from the barbarian philosophy. Plato, at any rate, in the last book of the Republic, says in these very words: "There, then, savage men, fiery to look upon, standing by and marking the utterance, took some apart and led them away; but Aridaeus and the others they bound, hands and feet and head, and threw down and flayed, and dragged them along the way outside, carding them upon thorns." For the fiery men he means to be angels, who take the unjust and chastise them; "he makes," it says, "his angels winds, and his ministers a flaming fire."

13.91. And it follows upon these that the soul is immortal. For that which is chastised or instructed, being in sensation, lives, even though it be said to suffer. And again — does not Plato know of rivers of fire and the depth of the earth, calling, in poetic fashion, what is named by the barbarians Gehenna "Tartarus," and bringing in Cocytus and Acheron and Pyriphlegethon and certain such places of chastisement for the bringing of men to soberness through instruction? And of the little ones, according to the Scripture, and the least, the angels who behold God, and moreover the oversight that comes to us through the appointed angels — showing these things, he does not shrink from writing: "When all the souls had chosen their lives, as they had drawn lots, they went up in order to Lachesis; and she sent with each, as a guard of his life and a fulfiller of what he had chosen, that spirit which he had chosen." And perhaps the divine sign hinted some such thing to Socrates too.

13.92. Indeed, that the world is begotten, the philosophers laid down as a doctrine taking it from Moses. And Plato downright says: "Was it always, having no beginning of generation, or has it come to be, beginning from some beginning? It has come to be; for it is visible and tangible, and being tangible has a body." And again, when he says, "Now the Maker and Father of this whole it is a task to find," he not only showed the world to be begotten, but signifies that it came to be from him as a son, and that he is called its Father, as having come from him alone and subsisted out of what was not. And the Stoics too lay it down that the world is begotten. And the devil so noised abroad by the barbarian philosophy, the ruler of the spirits, Plato in the tenth book of the Laws calls an evil-working soul, in these words: "Must we not say that a soul ordering and dwelling in all things that move every way orders the heaven too? Surely. One soul, or more? More — I will answer for you both. Let us lay down not fewer than two, the one beneficent, and the other able to work the contrary."

13.93. And likewise in the Phaedrus he writes thus: "There are indeed other evils too; but some spirit has mingled with most of them, in the immediate present, a pleasure." But in the tenth book of the Laws, too, he downright shows forth that apostolic saying, "Our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the spiritual hosts in the heavens," writing somewhat thus: "Since, then, we have granted among ourselves that the heaven is full of many goods, and of their opposites too, but of the latter the more, there is, we say, such a battle undying, and needing wondrous watchfulness." And the barbarian philosophy, again, knows the world to be intelligible on the one hand, and sensible on the other; the one an archetype, the other the image of what is called the pattern; and it dedicates the one to the monad, as being intelligible, and the sensible to the hexad. For among the Pythagoreans the hexad, as being a generative number, is called marriage. And in the monad it sets up an invisible heaven and an unseen earth and intelligible light; "for in the beginning," it says, "God made the heaven and the earth; and the earth was invisible."

13.94. Then it goes on: "And God said, Let there be light; and there was light." And in the sensible cosmogony he fashions a solid heaven (and the solid is sensible) and a visible earth and a light that is seen. Does it not seem to you that hence Plato leaves the ideas of living creatures in the intelligible world, and fashions the sensible kinds according to the intelligible genera? With reason, then, Moses says that the body was moulded out of earth — which Plato calls an "earthy tabernacle" — and that the rational soul was breathed in from above by God into the face. For here, they say, the ruling part is seated, interpreting the entrance of the soul through the senses in the case of the first-moulded man; wherefore man came to be after the image and likeness. For the image of God is the divine and royal Word, the man free from passion; and the image of the image is the human mind. And if you wish to take the assimilation by another name, you would find it called, in Moses, a divine "following"; for he says, "After the Lord your God you shall walk, and his commandments you shall keep." And followers, I think, and worshippers of God are all the virtuous.

13.95. Hence the Stoics have said that the end of philosophy is to live in agreement with nature, and Plato, to be made like God (as we set forth in the second book of the Stromateis). And Zeno the Stoic, taking from Plato, and Plato from the barbarian philosophy, says that all good men are friends of one another. For Socrates says, in the Phaedrus, that it is not fated for evil to be friend to evil, nor good not friend to good — which he showed sufficiently in the Lysis too, that in injustice and wickedness friendship could never be preserved. And the Athenian stranger likewise says that there is an act dear to and in accordance with God, holding one ancient principle, when the like is friend to the like, it being measured, but the unmeasured is friend neither to the unmeasured nor to the measured.

13.96. And God would be for us the measure of all things. Then, a little after, he adds again: "For every good man is like to every good man, and in this is like also to God, and is friend both to every good man and to God." Coming to this point, I called to mind that other saying; for at the end of the Timaeus he says that one ought to liken the thinking part to the thing thought, according to the ancient nature, and, having made it like, to attain the end of the best life set before man by the gods, both for the present and for the time to come. For these have the same force as those words: "He who seeks will not cease until he finds; and having found, he will be amazed; and being amazed, he will reign; and having reigned, he will rest." And again — do not those sayings of Thales hang upon these? For the "being glorified unto the ages of ages" and the being called among us "the knower of hearts" he plainly interprets. Thales, at any rate, being asked what the divine is, said, "That which has neither beginning nor end." And when another inquired whether the divine escapes a man's notice when he does anything, "How," he said, "when it does not escape him even when he thinks?" Indeed the barbarian philosophy knows only the noble to be good, and virtue to be sufficient for happiness, when it says: "Behold, I have set before your eyes the good and the evil, life and death; choose life." For the good it calls life, and the choice of it noble, but the choosing of the contrary it calls evil. And of good and of life there is one end, to become a lover of God; "for this is your life and your length of days, to love what is toward the truth."

13.97. And those words have it still more plainly. For the Saviour, having charged us to love God and our neighbour, says that on these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets. These doctrines the Stoics noise abroad, and before them Socrates, in the Phaedrus, praying: "O Pan and you other gods, grant that I may be beautiful within." And in the Theaetetus he says outright: "For he who speaks beautifully is beautiful and good." And in the Protagoras he confesses to his comrades that he met one fairer than Alcibiades, if indeed the wisest is the fairest; for he said virtue is the beauty of the soul, and, on the contrary, vice the ugliness of the soul. And Antipater the Stoic, having written three books on the point that, according to Plato, the noble alone is good, shows that, according to him too, virtue is sufficient for happiness, and sets down many other doctrines in accord with the Stoics. And to Aristobulus, who lived under Ptolemy Philometor, whom the writer of the epitome of the books of the Maccabees mentions, there belong sufficient books, in which he shows that the Peripatetic philosophy depends upon the law according to Moses and upon the other prophets.

13.98. And let these things be so. But that we are brethren, as being of one God and one teacher, Plato too somewhere appears to declare, somewhat thus: "For you are all brethren in the city, as we shall say to them, telling our tale; but God, in moulding you, mingled gold in the begetting of those of you who are fit to rule, wherefore they are most honoured; and silver in the auxiliaries; and iron and bronze in the husbandmen and the other craftsmen." Hence, he says, there is need to welcome and to love these things, in which knowledge is, but those others, in which opinion is. Perhaps he divines this elect nature that reaches after knowledge — unless, supposing three natures, he is sketching three polities, as some have taken it, of the Jews the silver, of the Greeks the third, and of the Christians, in whom the royal gold, the Holy Spirit, has been mingled. And, setting forth the Christian life, he writes in these very words in the Theaetetus: "Let us speak of the chief men. For why should one speak of those who pass their time meanly in philosophy? These men know neither the way to the market-place, nor where the court is, nor the council-chamber, nor any other common gathering of the city; laws and decrees written they neither see nor hear. The eagernesses of partisans, and assemblies, and revels with flute-girls — to do such things does not occur to them even in a dream. And whether anyone in the city has been born well or ill, or what evil has befallen anyone from his forefathers, escapes them more than the proverbial pints of the sea. And he does not even know that he does not know all this; but in truth his body alone lies and sojourns in the city, while he himself, according to Pindar, flies about, measuring out the heavens above and the earth beneath, doing astronomy, and searching out all nature on every side."

13.99. Again, to the Lord's saying, "Let your yes be yes, and your no, no," that other is to be likened: "But to me it is in no way lawful either to grant a falsehood or to do away with the truth." And with the prohibition of swearing this saying in the tenth book of the Laws agrees: "Let praise and oath be far from everything." And, in sum, Pythagoras and Socrates and Plato, when they say they hear the voice of God, beholding the framework of the whole accurately made by God and held together unceasingly, have heard Moses saying, "He said, and it came to be" — describing the word of God as a work. And standing upon the moulding of man out of dust, the philosophers at every turn proclaim the body earthy; and Homer does not shrink from setting, by way of curse, the words: "But may you all become water and earth," just as Isaiah says, "And tread them down as clay."

13.100. And Callimachus plainly writes: "That was the year in which both the winged thing, and that in the sea, and the four-footed, so spoke, as the Promethean clay." And again the same: "If Prometheus moulded you, and you are come of clay and of no other thing." And Hesiod says concerning Pandora: "And he bade the renowned Hephaestus, as quickly as might be, to mix earth with water, and to set in it a man's voice and mind." The Stoics define nature as a craftsmanlike fire, going by a way toward generation; but God and his Word are allegorized by the Scripture as fire and light. And again — does not Homer too, paraphrasing the separation of the water from the earth, and the plain uncovering of the dry land, say of Tethys and Oceanus: "For already a long time they have held apart from one another the bed of love"? Again, the most learned among the Greeks ascribe to God omnipotence in all things — Epicharmus (and he was a Pythagorean) saying, "Nothing escapes the divine; this you must know: he himself is our watcher, and nothing is impossible to God."

13.101. And the lyric poet: "And it is possible for God, out of black night, to raise an unstained light, and with dark cloudy gloom to cover the pure brightness of the day" (for the one who alone, while day is present, can make night, this, he says, is God); and in the work entitled Phaenomena, Aratus, having said, "Let us begin from Zeus," whom, O men, we never leave unspoken, adds: "and full of Zeus are all the streets, and all the gatherings of men, full too the sea and the harbours; everywhere we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring" — that is, his creation; "and gentle to men he gives favourable signs, and stirs the peoples to work; and these signs he fixed in the heaven, distinguishing the stars; and he looked out, against the year, for stars that should most surely signify to men the things of the seasons, that all might grow firm; and him men ever propitiate first and last: hail, Father, great wonder, great help to men." And before him Homer too, fashioning the world after Moses upon the shield wrought by Hephaestus, says: "On it he made the earth, and on it the heaven, and on it the sea, and on it all the constellations with which heaven is crowned." For the Zeus sung of in the poems and in the prose writings carries the conception up to God.

13.102. And already, as one might say, in the light of day, Democritus writes that there are a few of mankind who, lifting up their hands toward what we Greeks now call the air, say, "Zeus debates all things, and this one knows all things and gives all things and takes them away, and this is king of all." And more mystically the Boeotian Pindar, being a Pythagorean, hands down: "One is the race of men, one of gods, and from one mother do we both draw breath" — that is, of matter — and one Maker of these, whom he calls "the most excellent craftsman, the Father," who has furnished even the advances, according to desert, toward divinity. For I pass over Plato; he downright, in the letter to Erastus and Coriscus, appears, I know not how, to show forth Father and Son out of the Hebrew Scriptures, charging in these words: "Calling to witness, in earnest and not without the grace of the Muses, and with discipline, the sister of earnestness, the God who is the cause of all, and the Lord, the Father of the leader and cause, whom, if you philosophize rightly, you shall know." And the address in the Timaeus calls the Creator Father, saying somewhat thus: "Gods of gods, of whom I am Father and Maker of works."

13.103. So that even when he says, "About the king of all are all things, and he is the cause of all noble things; and the second is about the second things, and the third about the third things," I for my part understand it in no other way than that the holy Trinity is signified: for the third is the Holy Spirit, and the Son the second, through whom all things came to be according to the will of the Father. And the same Plato, in the tenth book of the Republic, mentions Er the son of Armenius, by race a Pamphylian, who is Zoroaster. Zoroaster himself, at any rate, writes: "These things I, Zoroaster son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by race, having died in war, learned from the gods while I was in Hades." This Zoroaster Plato says came to life again, lying twelve days upon the pyre. Perhaps, then, he hints at the resurrection; or perhaps at this, that the way is made for souls, through the twelve signs of the zodiac, to the ascent; and he says the same descent is made even to birth. And in this way one must understand that the labours of Heracles too came to be twelve, after which the soul obtains its release from this whole world. Nor do I pass over Empedocles, who in his physical way speaks of the taking-up of all things, as if a change were to come at some time into the substance of fire.

13.104. And most plainly Heraclitus of Ephesus is of this opinion, approving the view that one world is everlasting, and another is perishing — knowing that the world taken in respect of its arrangement is not other than the former, considered in a certain state. But that he knew the world, peculiarly qualified out of all substance, to be everlasting, he makes plain by speaking thus: "This world, the same for all, neither any of the gods nor of men made; but it ever was and is and shall be, an ever-living fire, kindled in measures and quenched in measures." And that he held it also to be begotten and perishable, the words that follow show: "The turnings of fire: first the sea; and of the sea, the half is earth, and the half the fiery storm-cloud." For in effect he says that fire, by the Word and God who orders the whole, is turned through air into the moisture which is as the seed of the world's ordering, which he calls "sea"; and out of this in turn come earth and heaven and all that they contain. And how it is again taken up and burned, he plainly shows by these words: "The sea is poured out and measured into the same proportion as it was before it became earth." And concerning the other elements the same things hold likewise.

13.105. The most reputed of the Stoics dogmatize in a like manner, treating both of the conflagration, and of the world's ordering, and of the peculiarly-qualified world and man, and of the further continuance of our souls. And again Plato, in the seventh book of the Republic, has called the day here "nocturnal" (on account, I think, of the world-rulers of this darkness), and the soul's descent into the body "sleep" and "death," in agreement with Heraclitus. And perhaps the Spirit foretold this, concerning the Saviour, through David, saying: "I lay down and slept; I awoke, because the Lord will sustain me." For it allegorizes not the resurrection of Christ alone as a rousing from sleep, but the Lord's descent into the flesh too as a sleep.

13.106. The same Saviour, for instance, charges: "Watch" — that is, "Practise living, and try to separate the soul from the body." And the Lord's day Plato divines in the tenth book of the Republic, by these words: "And when seven days had passed for each in the meadow, on the eighth they must arise and depart thence, and arrive on the fourth day after." The meadow, then, is to be understood as the fixed sphere, as a gentle place and a kindly, and the region of the holy; and the seven days as each motion of the seven, and all the workful craft hastening to the end of rest. But the journey after the wandering stars leads to heaven — that is, to the eighth motion and day. And he says the souls go away "on the fourth day," showing the journey through the four elements.

13.107. But the seventh day, too, is held sacred not only by the Hebrews but by the Greeks, according to which the whole world of all things that are quickened and grow goes round. Hesiod, then, speaks of it thus: "First the new moon and the fourth, and the seventh, a holy day." And again: "On the seventh again the bright light of the sun." And Homer: "On the seventh thereupon came the holy day." And: "The seventh was holy." And again: "It was the seventh day, and on it all was accomplished." And again: "On the seventh dawn we left the stream from Acheron." Indeed Callimachus the poet too writes: "On the seventh dawn, and on it all things were fashioned." And again: "Among good things is the seventh, and the seventh is the birthday." And: "The seventh is among the first, and the seventh is perfect." And: "Seven were all the things made in the starry heaven, appearing in their circles as the years come round."

13.108. But the elegies of Solon too greatly deify the hebdomad. And again — is it not like the Scripture that says, "Let us take away the just man, because he is troublesome to us," when Plato, all but prophesying the saving dispensation, says in the second book of the Republic, somewhat thus: "Thus disposed, the just man shall be scourged, racked, bound, have both his eyes burned out, and at last, having suffered all evils, shall be impaled"? And Antisthenes the Socratic, paraphrasing that prophetic voice, "To whom have you likened me? says the Lord," says that God is like to no one; wherefore no one can learn him thoroughly from an image. And Xenophon the Athenian says the like, in these words: "He, at any rate, who shakes all things and brings them to rest, that he is some great and powerful one is plain; but of what form he is, is unseen; nor does the sun, who seems all-radiant, even he, seem to allow himself to be looked upon, but if anyone gazes at him shamelessly, he takes away the sight." For "what flesh can with its eyes behold the heavenly and true immortal God, who dwells in the sky? Nay, men, mortal-born, cannot stand even over against the rays of the sun," the Sibyl foretold.

13.109. Well, then, does Xenophanes of Colophon, teaching that God is one and incorporeal, add: "One God, greatest among gods and men, in no way like to mortals, neither in body nor in mind." And again: "But mortals think that the gods are born, and have their own raiment and voice and shape." And again: "But if oxen or lions had hands, so as to draw with their hands and accomplish such works as men, then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and would make their bodies such as each itself had."

13.110. Let us hear again Bacchylides the lyric poet speaking of the divine: "They are untamed of unseemly diseases, and unharmed, in no way like to men." And Cleanthes the Stoic, having written these things about God in a certain poem: "You ask me what the Good is like? Hear, then: ordered, just, holy, pious, master of itself, useful, beautiful, fitting, austere, downright, ever profitable, fearless, painless, advantageous, free of grief, beneficial, well-pleasing, secure, friendly, honoured, consistent, . . . of good repute, free of conceit, careful, gentle, strong, lasting, blameless, ever-abiding."

13.111. And the same poet, in what he leaves unsaid, censuring the idolatry of the many, adds: "Unfree is everyone who looks to opinion, as though he should obtain from it some good." We must, then, no longer suppose things concerning the divine according to the opinion of the many. For neither do I think it secret — "putting on the shape of a malefactor of light, to come to your bed, like a man, to Zeus's chamber" — Amphion says to Antiope. And Sophocles plainly writes: "For Zeus wedded the mother of this man, not gold-shaped nor wrapped in the feather of a swan, as he made pregnant the Pleuronian maid, but as a man through and through." Then, coming on, he adds: "And swift the adulterer set foot upon the nuptial steps." Upon which, still more plainly, he describes the incontinence of the fabled Zeus, somewhat thus: "And he, touching neither feast nor lustral water, went to the bed, his heart stung; and all that night he raged with lust." Let such things, then, be left to the follies of the theatres. But Heraclitus says outright: "Though this Word is true forever, men prove uncomprehending, both before they hear it and when first they have heard it."

13.112. And the lyric poet Melanippides, singing, says: "Hear me, O Father, wonder of mortals, ruler of the ever-living soul." And the great Parmenides, as Plato says in the Sophist, writes of the divine somewhat thus: "very many things, as that it is unbegotten and imperishable, whole and only-begotten and unshaken and unbegotten." And Hesiod too: "For he himself is king and lord of all the immortals; and against your might no other has matched himself." Indeed tragedy too, drawing men away from the idols, teaches them to look up to heaven.

13.113. Sophocles, as Hecataeus, who composed the histories, says in his work On Abraham and the Egyptians, cries out plainly upon the stage: "One in very truth, one is God, who made the heaven and the broad earth, and the grey-green swell of the sea, and the strength of the winds. But we mortals, many, wandering in heart, set up for ourselves a comfort in our pains — images of the gods made of stones, or of bronze, or of figures wrought of gold or ivory; and decking these with sacrifices and vain festivals, we think thus we are pious."

13.114. And Euripides, playing the tragedian upon the same stage, says: "Do you behold this boundless aether on high, and the earth held round in its moist embraces? This deem to be Zeus; this hold to be God." And in the play Pirithous the same poet also sings these things in tragic vein: "You, the self-grown, who have woven the nature of all things in the aetherial whirl, around whom light, and round whom dusky night of changing hue, and the countless throng of stars unceasingly dance." For here by "the self-grown" he means the creative Mind, and what follows is ranked of the world, in which are the oppositions of light and darkness. And Aeschylus, the son of Euphorion, says of God most solemnly: "Zeus is the aether, Zeus is the earth, Zeus is the heaven; Zeus, indeed, is all things, and whatever is higher than these."

13.115. I know that Plato too bears witness to Heraclitus, who writes: "The one wise alone is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus." And again: "It is law also to obey the counsel of one." And if you should wish to refer that saying, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear," you would find it indicated somewhat thus by the Ephesian: "The uncomprehending, when they have heard, are like the deaf; the saying bears them witness that, being present, they are absent." But do you long to hear of one beginning even from the Greeks? Timaeus the Locrian, in his work on nature, will witness to me thus, word for word: "There is one beginning of all things, unbegotten; for if it had come to be, it would no longer be a beginning, but that from which the beginning came to be." For from that source flowed the true opinion: "Hear, O Israel; the Lord your God is one, and him alone you shall serve." "This one, behold, is plain to all, unwandering," as the Sibyl says.

13.116. And already Homer too appears to speak of Father and Son, by these words, having hit upon a happy divining: "If, then, no one forces you, being alone, it is in no way possible to escape the malady of great Zeus; for the Cyclopes care nothing for Zeus the aegis-bearer." And before him Orpheus, bearing upon the matter before us, has said: "Son of great Zeus, Father of Zeus the aegis-bearer." And Xenocrates of Chalcedon, calling the one Zeus highest and the other lowest, leaves a showing of Father and Son. And, most marvellous of all, Homer appears to know the divine, though he brings in the gods as subject to human passion — which not even Epicurus reverences thus.

13.117. He says, at any rate: "Why, son of Peleus, do you pursue me with swift feet, yourself being mortal, a god immortal? Have you not yet known that I am a god?" For he has made plain that the divine is not to be caught nor grasped by a mortal, neither with feet nor with hands nor with eyes, nor at all with the body. "To whom have you likened the Lord? Or with what likeness have you likened him?" says the Scripture. "Has a workman made an image, or a goldsmith, having melted gold, gilded it over?" — and the things that follow.

13.118. And the comic poet Epicharmus speaks plainly of the Word in his Republic, somewhat thus: "Life has very great need for man of reckoning and number; we live by number and reckoning, for these save mortals." Then he downright adds: "Reason governs men, and saves them in their measure." Then: "If there is reckoning in man, there is also a divine reason. The one in man is born for the conduct of life; but the divine reason attends upon all the arts, itself teaching men what they must do for their advantage. For man did not find out an art, but God brings it; and the reason in man is sprung from the divine reason."

13.119. Indeed, when the Spirit cries out through Isaiah, "What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I am full of whole-burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls I do not want"; and a little after adds, "Wash yourselves, become clean, take away the wickednesses from your souls," and the things that follow — Menander the comic poet writes in these very words: "If anyone, O Pamphilus, bringing a sacrifice — a multitude of bulls or of kids, or, by Zeus, of other such things, or fashionings, having made golden cloaks or purple ones, or figures of ivory or emerald — thinks to make God well-disposed, he is deceived and has a feather-light mind. For a man must be of use, not corrupting maidens nor committing adultery, not stealing and slaughtering for the sake of money. Nor covet even the thread of a needle, friend; for God sees you, being present near at hand." "I am a God who draws near, and not a God afar off; or shall a man do anything in secret, and I shall not see him?" he says through Jeremiah.

13.120. And again Menander, paraphrasing that Scripture, "Sacrifice a sacrifice of righteousness, and hope upon the Lord," writes somewhat thus: "Never covet, dearest, even a needle that belongs to another; for God delights in righteous deeds, and not in unjust ones, and suffers the man who toils to lift up his own life, ploughing the earth night and day. To God sacrifice continually, being righteous, not splendid in your cloaks so much as in your heart. If you hear thunder, do not flee, conscious of no evil within yourself, O master; for God sees you, being present near at hand." "While you are still speaking," says the Scripture, "I will say, Behold, I am here."

13.121. Again Diphilus the comic poet discourses thus concerning the judgement: "Do you think, Niceratus, that the dead, who have partaken of all luxury in life, have escaped the divine as though unobserved? There is an eye of Justice that sees all things. For we believe there are two paths in Hades — one of the just, the other of the impious. And if the earth shall cover both for all time, then go off and plunder, steal, despoil, throw all into confusion; but be deceived in nothing — there is a judgement even in Hades, which God will hold, the master of all, whose name is fearful, and which I would not even name. He gives to those who sin a long span of life. And if any mortal thinks that, doing some evil by day, he has escaped the gods, he is convicted of thinking wickedly, and of being so, whenever Justice chances to have leisure. Look, all you who think there is no God: there is, there is. And if any man, being evil by nature, does well, let him gain the time; for in time, afterward, he will pay the penalty." And tragedy sings in tune with these things by these words: "For there shall be, there shall be, that time of the age, when the golden-faced aether shall let loose its treasury full of fire, and the nursed flame, raging, shall burn up all things upon earth and on high."

13.122. And a little after he goes on again: "But when the whole shall fail, all the deep of the waves shall be gone, and the earth bereft of its seats, and the air, set on fire, shall no longer bear up the winged tribes; and then it shall save all that it formerly destroyed." The like to these we shall find in the Orphic writings too, written somewhat thus: "For having hidden all, again into the gladdening light he brought them up from his holy heart, doing dreadful deeds." But if we live our lives in holiness and righteousness, we are blessed here, and more blessed after our departure hence, having our happiness not for some time only, but able to rest in eternity, "fellow-hearth with other immortals, and at their tables, free from the woes of men, unworn," as the philosophic poetry of Empedocles says. Not even among the Greeks, then, shall anyone be so great as to overstep Justice, nor so small as to escape her.

13.123. The same Orpheus says these things too: "Looking to the divine Word, attend upon it, guiding straight the intelligent vessel of your heart; and walk well in the path, and gaze upon the immortal Ruler of the world alone." And again concerning God, calling him invisible, he says he was made known to one only, a Chaldean by race — whether he means Abraham, or his Son — by these words: "Except one only, a scion sprung from the stock of the Chaldeans from above; for he knew the path of the star, and the movement of the sphere round the earth, how it revolves in a circle, evenly upon its own axle, and he guides the winds about the air and about the stream."

13.124. Then, paraphrasing, as it were, "The heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet," he goes on: "But he himself, again, is fixed upon the great heaven on a golden throne, and the earth has gone beneath his feet; and his right hand he has stretched out to the bounds of Ocean; and the base of the mountains trembles within at his wrath, nor can it bear his mighty force. And he is everywhere heavenly, and on earth he accomplishes all things, himself holding beginning and middle and end. In no other way is it lawful for you to speak; and my limbs tremble in my mind. From on high he sways," and the rest. For by these things he has shown forth all those prophetic words: "If you open the heaven, trembling shall seize the mountains from before you, and they shall melt, as wax melts before the face of fire."

13.125. And the words through Isaiah: "Who measured the heaven with a span, and the whole earth with a handful?" Again, when he says: "Lord of aether and Hades, of sea and earth, who with your thunders shakes the strong dwelling of Olympus; before whom the spirits shudder, and the throng of gods is afraid; whom the Fates obey, inexorable though they are; imperishable one, mother-and-father, by whose passion all things are stirred; you who move the winds, and cover all with clouds, cleaving the broad aether with your lightnings; yours is the order among the stars, running upon unchangeable behests; and beside your fiery throne stand the much-toiling angels, whose care it is that all things be accomplished for mortals; yours is the spring that shines new with purple flowers; yours the winter that comes on with chill clouds; your fruits the reveller Bromius once distributed."

13.126. Then he adds, downright naming God Almighty: "Imperishable, immortal, utterable only to the immortals. Come, greatest of all gods, with strong necessity, dread, unconquerable, great, imperishable, whom aether crowns." By the "mother-and-father" he has not only shown forth the coming-to-be out of what is not, but has also given handles to those who bring in the emanations — perhaps even to conceive a consort of God. And he paraphrases those prophetic Scriptures: that through Hosea, "I am he that fixes fast the thunder and creates the wind, whose hands founded the host of heaven"; and that through Moses, "See, see, that I am, and there is no other God beside me. I will kill and make alive; I will smite, and I will heal; and there is none who shall deliver out of my hands." "But he himself plants evil for mortals out of good, and chilling war and tearful pains," according to Orpheus.

13.127. Such things Archilochus of Paros too says: "O Zeus, Father Zeus, yours is the rule of heaven, and you behold the works of men, both lawless and unrighteous." Again let Orpheus the Thracian sing for us: "And his right hand he has stretched out to the bound of Ocean, and the earth has gone beneath his feet." These things are plainly taken thence: "The Lord shall save inhabited cities, and shall lay hold of the whole world with his hand like a nest; the Lord who made the earth in his strength," as Jeremiah says, "and set up the world in his wisdom." And besides these, Phocylides, calling the angels spirits, presents some of them as good and some as base, by these words — since we too have received that some are apostates: "But indeed there are spirits upon men, now these, now those; some, when evil comes on, to deliver men from it."

13.128. Well, then, does Philemon the comic poet also cut down idolatry, by these words: "There is for us no Fortune that is a god, there is none; but the chance thing that comes to pass for each as it happens is called fortune." And Sophocles the tragedian: "Not even for the gods," he says, "are all things self-willed, save for Zeus; for he holds the end and the beginning." And Orpheus: "One power, one spirit there came to be, a great one, kindling heaven; and one are all things made, in which all these things wheel round — fire and water and earth."

13.129. And the things that follow. And Pindar the lyric poet is, as it were, carried away as in a bacchic frenzy, saying outright: "What is God? That which is the whole." And again: "God who fashions all things for mortals." And when he says: "What do you hope of wisdom? Little it is that a man has over a man. To search out the counsels of the gods with a mortal mind is hard; and one is born of a mortal mother" — thence he drew the thought: "Who knew the mind of the Lord? Or who became his counsellor?" But Hesiod too, by what he writes, sings in tune with the foregoing: "There is no seer among earth-dwelling men who could know the mind of Zeus the aegis-bearer." With reason, then, Solon the Athenian, in his elegies, following Hesiod too, writes: "Wholly hidden to men is the mind of the immortals."

13.130. Again, when Moses prophesied that the woman, on account of the transgression, should bring forth into toils and pains, a poet of no mean note writes: "Never by day shall they cease from toil and grief, nor by night, hard pressed; and grievous cares the gods will give." Further, Homer, having said, "And the Father himself stretched out the golden scales," shows forth God as just. And Menander the comic poet, interpreting God as good, says: "For every man at his very birth a spirit stands beside, a good guide of his life; for one must not think there is an evil spirit harming a good life." Then he adds: "And every god is good" — either saying that every god is good, or, what is rather the meaning, that in all things God is good.

13.131. Again, Aeschylus the tragedian, setting forth the power of God, does not shrink from calling him Most High too, by these words: "Set God apart from mortals, and do not think him to be fleshly, like to yourself. You do not know him: now he appears as fire, an unapproachable rush; now as water; now as gloom. And he becomes like to beasts, to wind and cloud and lightning, thunder and rain. And sea and rocks serve him, and every spring and gatherings of water. And the mountains and the earth tremble, and the monstrous deep of the sea, and the great height of the mountains, when he casts upon them the dread eye of the Master. For all-powerful is the glory of the Most High God." Does it not seem to you that he is paraphrasing the saying, "From before the face of the Lord the earth trembles"?

13.132. Besides these, Apollo, the most oracular, witnessing to the glory of God, is constrained to speak concerning Athena, at the time when the Medes were marching against Hellas, how she besought and supplicated Zeus on behalf of Attica. The oracle runs thus: "Pallas cannot propitiate Olympian Zeus, though she entreat with many words and shrewd counsel; but many temples of the immortals he will give over to the devouring fire — temples that even now, perhaps, stand streaming with sweat, quaking with terror," and the rest.

13.133. And Thearidas, in his work On Nature, writes: "The beginning of the things that are — the beginning truly and indeed true — is one; for that, in the beginning, is one and only." "Nor is there any other apart from the great King," says Orpheus. Persuaded by him, the comic poet Diphilus most sententiously says: "Him who is the Father of all, this one alone honour continually, the finder and founder of so many goods." With reason, then, Plato too trains the best natures to come to the lesson which we said before is the greatest — to behold the Good and to mount that ascent. "And this, as it seems, is no mere turning round of a shell, but a turning-about of the soul, from a kind of nocturnal day to the true ascent into being, which we shall say is true philosophy." And those who have shared in this he judges to be of the golden race, saying, "You are all brethren," but those of the golden race the most exactly and in every way. Of the Father, then, and Maker of all things, all creatures lay hold, by nature and untaught, on every side: lifeless things sympathizing with the living; of living things, some already immortal, working day by day; of those still mortal, some in fear, even while borne in the womb of their mother; others by free will — and of men, all, both Greeks and barbarians. And there is no race anywhere, whether of husbandmen or of nomads, nor even of city-dwellers, that can live without being first possessed by faith in a higher being. Therefore every nation that touches the eastern shores, and every one that touches the western, the northern and all that lie toward the south, holds one and the same preconception concerning him who appointed the rule, if indeed the most universal of his works have passed alike upon all things.

13.134. And much more did the busy inquirers among the Greeks, setting out from the barbarian philosophy, give the prerogative to him who is invisible and alone and most powerful and most skilful and most causative of the noblest things — not knowing the consequences of these things, unless they had been instructed by us, nor knowing even how God himself is naturally to be conceived, but only, as we have often said, by a true periphrasis. With reason, then, the apostle says, "Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Greeks?" — not only saying prophetically that those of the Greeks who believe shall come to know God, but also signifying this, that in power the Lord and God of all might be, and is in truth Almighty; but in respect of knowledge he is not the God of all. For they know neither what he is, nor how he is Lord and Father and Maker, nor the rest of the dispensation of the truth, not having been taught by it.

13.135. In the same way the prophetic words too have the same force as the apostolic word. For Isaiah says: "But if you say, 'Upon the Lord our God we have trusted,' now mingle with the Lord, my king of the Assyrians." And he adds: "And now, have we come up against this country to war against it without the Lord?" And Jonah, himself also a prophet, hints at the same thing by these words: "And the captain came to him and said to him, 'Why do you snore? Arise, call upon your God, that he may save us, and we perish not.'" For the "your God" he said to him who knew by recognition; but by the "that he may save us" God showed the common consciousness of those of the Gentiles who had set their minds upon the Almighty, but had not yet believed. And again the same: "And he said to them, 'I am a servant of the Lord, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven.'"

13.136. And again the same: "And they said, 'By no means, Lord; let us not perish for the soul of this man.'" And Malachi the prophet downright shows God saying: "I will not accept a sacrifice from your hands, because from the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among the Gentiles, and in every place sacrifice is offered to me." And again: "Because I am a great king, says the Lord Almighty, and my name is glorious among the Gentiles." What name? Among those who have believed, the Son revealing the Father; but among the Greeks, "God the Maker." And Plato shows forth free will by these words: "Virtue is without a master; and as each man honours or dishonours it, so he shall partake more or less of it. The fault is the chooser's; God is faultless." For God is never the cause of evils. "O war-loving Trojans," says the lyric poet, "Zeus who rules on high, who sees all things, is not to the cause of great woes for mortals; but it lies in the midst, for all men to attain, holy Justice, the companion of pure Order and of prudent Right; happy are the children of those who find her for their housemate."

13.137. And Pindar downright brings in Zeus the Saviour too, dwelling with Themis, the king, the saviour, the just, interpreting somewhat thus: "First the well-counselling heavenly Themis, with golden horses, beside the streams of Ocean, the Fates led up to the august stairway of Olympus, along the shining way, to be the ancient consort of Zeus the Saviour; and she bore the gold-crowned, bright-fruited, true Hours." He, then, who is not persuaded by the truth, but puffed up with human teaching, is ill-fated and wretched, and, according to Euripides, "he who, beholding these things, perceives not God, and has cast far off the crooked deceits of those who babble of things on high, whose ruinous tongue casts at random concerning the unseen, having no share of judgement."

13.138. He, then, who is come to the true learning, if he will, let him hear Parmenides the Eleatic promising: "You shall know the aetherial nature, and all the signs in the aether, and the unseen works of the pure torch of the bright sun, and whence they came to be; and you shall learn the wandering works of the round-eyed moon and its nature; and you shall know also the heaven that holds all round, whence it grew, and how Necessity, leading it, bound it to hold the bounds of the stars." And Metrodorus, though he was an Epicurean, has said these things divinely inspired: "Remember, Menestratus, that, born mortal and having received a fixed span of life, you ascended in your soul up to the age and the infinity of things, and beheld both 'the things that are to be and that have been before.'" Then, "in company with the blessed choir," according to Plato, "we shall view the blessed sight and vision, following — we with Zeus, and others with other gods — being initiated, as it is lawful to say, into the most blessed of mysteries, which we celebrate, ourselves whole and untouched by the evils that awaited us in a later time; and beholding, as initiates and viewers, whole and unshaken visions in pure light, being ourselves pure and unmarked by this which now, carrying it about, we call body, bound to it after the manner of an oyster."

13.139. The Pythagoreans call the heaven the counter-earth, the earth concerning which it is said through Jeremiah: "I will set you among the children, and will give you a chosen land, the inheritance of God Almighty," which those who inherit it shall be kings of the earth. And ten thousand things upon ten thousand more flow in upon me to set down; but for the sake of due proportion the discourse must now be brought to a stop, lest we ourselves suffer the fate the tragedian Agathon speaks of: "treating what is by the way as the main work, and labouring at the main work as though it were by the way."

13.140. Now that it has been plainly shown, as I think, how it is to be understood that the Greeks were called thieves by the Lord, I willingly leave aside the doctrines of the philosophers. For if we should go through their very words, we should not have done — gathering together what a multitude of notes — in showing that all the wisdom among the Greeks is borne from the barbarian philosophy. Upon which contemplation we shall lay hold again none the less, as it becomes necessary, when we collect the opinions concerning first principles that are current among the Greeks. But this too comes quietly before us to consider, from what we have said — in what way one who is able to swim through the waves in them must meet the Greek books. "Blessed," as it seems, then, is he, according to Empedocles, "who has won the wealth of divine thoughts, but wretched he whose care is a dim opinion concerning the gods." Divinely he showed forth knowledge and ignorance as the bounds of happiness and of misery. "For philosophic men must be inquirers into very many things," according to Heraclitus; and in truth one who seeks to be good must of necessity wander much.

13.141. It is, then, plain to us from what has been said before, that the beneficence of God is everlasting, and that the natural righteousness, equal downright to all from a beginning that has no beginning, comes to each according to the desert of its kind, never having begun. For God took no beginning of being Lord and good, being always what he is; nor shall he ever cease from doing good, even though he bring each thing to its end. And each of us partakes of his beneficence according as he will, since the difference of election is wrought by the soul's choice and joint exercise, become worthy. Thus, then, let our fifth book of the gnostic notes, according to the true philosophy, the Stromateis, be brought to a close.