Book 6

1.1. The sixth, and along with it the seventh, of our gnostic notes according to the true philosophy, the Stromateis — having traced out, so far as may be, the ethical discourse here brought to its close, and having set forth what manner of man, in his life, the gnostic is — proceeds to show the philosophers that this man is in no way godless, as they have supposed, but is the only one truly god-fearing; setting forth, by way of summary, the manner of the gnostic's worship of God, so far as it is safe to commit to memoranda in writing. For the Lord enjoined us to work for the food that abides unto eternity, and somewhere the prophet says, "Blessed is he who sows beside every water, where the ox and the ass tread" — the people gathered out of the law and out of the Gentiles into the one faith. And "he who is weak eats herbs," according to the noble apostle. The Paedagogus, divided into three books, has already set forth our nurture and rearing from childhood — that is, the manner of life that grows up together with faith out of catechizing, and prepares the soul, virtuous, of those enrolled among men, for the reception of gnostic science. When, then, the Greeks shall have learned plainly from what is to be said by us in what follows, that they themselves act impiously in persecuting the man who loves God, then at last, as the notes go forward according to the character of the Stromateis, we must resolve the difficulties further raised against us, both by Greeks and by barbarians, concerning the Lord's coming.

1.2. As in a meadow the flowers blooming in variety, and in a garden the planting of fruit-trees, are not separated according to their several kinds from those of another kind — and accordingly some men, studious of learning, gathered together Meadows and Heliconian collections and Honeycombs and Robes, variously flowered — so too, since the things that come to memory are taken as they chance, and are neither cleared up in their order nor in their phrasing, but are scattered on purpose, mixed together, the sketch of our Stromateis is variegated after the manner of a meadow. And, being of this sort, they would be to me memoranda for kindling embers; and to him who is fit for knowledge, if he should chance to light upon them, inquiry will come about, with sweat, toward what is profitable and useful. For it is just to reckon the toil, not only of food, but much more of knowledge, the lot of those who are conveyed through the truly narrow and straitened way of the Lord to the everlasting and blessed salvation. And our knowledge, and the spiritual garden, is our Saviour himself, into whom we are planted, transferred and transplanted into the good land out of the old life; and the change of planting contributes to good fruitfulness. The Lord, then, into whom we have been transplanted, is light and the true knowledge.

1.3. And in another way too knowledge is said to be twofold: the one common, the understanding and apprehension that is in all men alike, shown forth publicly in the recognizing of each of the things that lie before us — in which not only the rational powers but perhaps the irrational also will share, and which I for my part would never call knowledge, since it is by nature apprehended even through the senses; the other, named knowledge in the special sense, is characterized from the resolve and the reason, in respect of which the rational powers alone become knowledges, applying themselves purely to the things of mind by the bare activity of the soul. "A good man," says David, "is he who pities those who are perishing in error, and lends, of the imparting of the word of truth" — not haphazardly, but "he will order his words in judgement," with deep reckoning; "this man scattered, he gave to the poor."

2.4. But before setting hand to what lies before us, we must, by way of preface, render in addition what is wanting to the end of the fifth book of the Stromateis. For since we have set forth that the symbolic kind is ancient, and that not only the prophets among us used it, but also the more part of the ancient Greeks, and not a few of the other barbarians among the nations; and since we ought to have gone over the mysteries of those initiated — these things I postpone to make clear when we come, in going over the doctrines about first principles current among the Greeks, to refute them; for we shall show that the mysteries too hold to this contemplation; but having set forth that the showing-forth of the Greek mind was irradiated by the truth given to us through the Scriptures, and having shown, by the way the borrowing of the truth passed over to them — if it is not harsh to say it — come, let us set the Greeks forth as witnesses of the theft against themselves. For those who thus downright steal their own things from one another make sure of being thieves, and yet, even against their will, plainly show that they appropriate our truth in secret among their fellows. For those who will not keep their hands off their own will hardly keep them off ours.

2.5. And I will pass over the doctrines of philosophy in silence, since those who divided up the heresies confess in writing — that they may not be convicted of ingratitude — that they took the most authoritative of their doctrines from Socrates. But using the testimonies of a few of the much-talked-of and reputable men among the Greeks, and having convicted their thievish kind, taking the periods indifferently, I will turn to what follows. When Orpheus, then, had written, "Thus nothing was more cursed nor more chilling than woman," Homer says outright, "Thus there is nothing more dread nor more cursed than woman." And when Musaeus had written, "As ever skill is far better than strength," Homer says, "Surely the woodcutter is better by skill than by force." Again, when Musaeus had written, "And in the same way too the grain-giving field puts forth leaves: some die away among the ash-trees, others it puts forth; so too it whirls round the generation and tribe of men," Homer transcribes, "As of leaves, some the wind sheds upon the ground, but the wood, flourishing, puts forth others, and the season of spring comes on; so of the generation of men, one springs up and another passes away." Again, when Homer had said, "It is not holy to exult over slain men," Archilochus and Cratinus write — the one, "For it is not noble to mock at men once dead"; and Cratinus in the Spartans, "A fearful thing is this for men, to boast greatly over slain warriors."

2.6. And again, Archilochus, transferring that Homeric line, "I was blinded, nor do I myself deny it; in exchange for many," writes somewhat thus: "I went astray, and this ruin has overtaken some other too"; just as, indeed, that verse too, "Common is the War-god, and he slays the slayer," he himself, altering it, brought out somewhat thus: "I will do it; for in truth the War-god is common to men." And again, paraphrasing this, "Of victory for men the bounds lie with the gods," he is plainly its author by this iambic line: "And take heart, young men; the bounds of victory lie with the gods."

2.7. Again, when Homer had said, "with unwashed feet, sleeping on the ground," Euripides in the Erechtheus writes, "On an unspread floor they sleep, nor wet their feet in springs." And when Archilochus had likewise said, "But one man's heart is gladdened by one thing, another's by another," after the Homeric, "For one man delights in one kind of works, another in another," Euripides in the Oeneus says, "But one man delights more in one way of life, another in another." And I have heard Aeschylus saying, "He who is rightly happy must stay at home — and he who fares ill, let him too stay at home"; and Euripides crying the like upon the stage, "Blessed is he who, faring well, stays at home"; and Menander too playing the comedian somewhat thus: "One ought to stay at home, and to stay free, or else be no longer rightly happy."

2.8. Again, when Theognis had said, "There is for the fugitive no friend and faithful comrade," Euripides has made, "Every friend flees the poor man out of his way." And when Epicharmus had said, "O daughter — alas for your fortune! — you who, being older, dwell with one who is young," and added, "For the one takes another young woman, and she in turn seeks out some other man for herself," Euripides writes, "An evil thing it is to yoke a young woman to a young man; for the one longs to take another's bed, and she, being in want of this, plots evil." Again, when Euripides in the Medea had said, "For the gifts of an evil man bring no benefit," Sophocles in the Ajax the scourge-bearer says that iambic line, "Gifts of foes are no gifts, and bring no profit." And when Solon had written, "For satiety breeds insolence, when much wealth follows," Theognis writes outright, "Satiety breeds insolence, when wealth follows an evil man." Whence Thucydides too in the Histories says, "Most men are wont, when unlooked-for prosperity comes to them suddenly and at the least cost, to turn to insolence." And Philistus likewise imitates the same, saying thus: "For those who, beyond expectation and unlooked-for, fare well, are wont above all to turn to insolence."

2.9. Again, when Euripides had written, "From a father and mother who toil out a hard manner of living, the offspring are better," Critias writes: "I begin with a man from his very birth: how would he become best in body and strongest? If he who begets him should exercise and eat with vigour and harden his body, and if the mother of the child that is to be should make her body strong and exercise it." And again, when Homer upon the shield wrought by Hephaestus had said, "On it he made the earth, and on it the heaven, and on it the sea; and on it he set the great strength of the river Ocean," Pherecydes of Syros says, "Zas makes a robe, great and beautiful, and on it he embroiders earth and Ogenos and the halls of Ogenos." And when Homer had said, "Shame, which greatly harms men and greatly helps them," Euripides in the Erechtheus writes, "And I myself am hard put to judge concerning shame; for one has need of it, and yet again it is a great evil."

2.10. And you might take the passages of the theft side by side, even from those who flourished at the same time and contended with one another in such things — from Euripides, out of the Orestes, "O dear charm of sleep, helper against sickness," and from Sophocles out of the Eriphyle, "Go away; you stir sleep, the healer of sickness"; and from Euripides out of the Antigone, "In name the bastard is to be blamed, but his nature is equal," and from Sophocles out of the Aleadae, "All that is good has an equal nature"; again from Euripides out of the Temenus, "For God too lends a hand to him who toils," and from Sophocles in the Minos, "Fortune is no ally to those who do not act"; yes, and from Euripides out of the Alexander, "And time will show you; by which token, learning, I shall know you to be either good or bad," and from Sophocles out of the Hipponous, "Therefore hide nothing, for all-seeing and all-hearing time unfolds all things."

2.11. But let us run over those passages too in like manner. For when Eumelus had made, "Nine maidens of Mnemosyne and Olympian Zeus," Solon begins his elegy thus: "Splendid children of Mnemosyne and Olympian Zeus." Again, paraphrasing the Homeric line, "Who are you, of what men? Where is your city and your parents?", Euripides uses these iambics in the Aegeus: "What land shall we say you have left, to be a guest in this city? What is the boundary of your fatherland? Who is he that begot you? Of what father are you declared?" And again — when Theognis had said, "Wine drunk in plenty is bad; but if one use it with knowledge, it is no evil but a good," Panyassis writes, "Wine to mortals is the best gift of the gods, drunk in measure, but overmuch it is worse."

2.12. And again, when Hesiod had said, "And to you, in place of fire, I will give an evil thing, in which all may delight," Euripides makes, "For in place of fire another fire, greater and harder to fight, sprang up — women." Besides this, when Homer had said, "But there is no way to glut the greedy belly, the accursed, which gives men many ills," Euripides makes, "The wretchedly perishing belly conquers me, from which all evils come." Again, when Callias the comic poet had written, "They say all must alike go mad among the mad," Menander in the Husbandmen runs even with him, saying, "Not everywhere does the presence of prudence fit; and in some things one must go mad along with the rest." And when Antimachus of Teos had said, "For out of gifts come many ills to men," Agias made, "Gifts beguile the mind of men, and their deeds too."

2.13. And when Hesiod had said, "For a man wins no better prize than a woman — a good one; but than an evil there is nothing more chilling," Simonides said, "A man wins no possession better than a good woman, nor more chilling than an evil." Again, when Epicharmus had said, "Think as one who will live both a long time and a short," Euripides writes, "Why, having set our foot on an unsure prosperity, do we not live most sweetly, free of grief?" Likewise, when the comic poet Diphilus had said, "Changeable is the life of men," Posidippus says, "No man has passed his life unpained, being a man; nor, being unfortunate, has remained so to the end." And in keeping with these, Plato says, writing of man as a creature given to change. Again, when Euripides had said, "O much-toiling life of mortals, how slippery you lie in all things, and now you increase, now you waste away; and there is no fixed bound for mortals to attain, except when the chill end of death, sent from Zeus, shall come," Diphilus writes, "There is no life that has not possessed evils — griefs, cares, plunderings, rackings, diseases. Of these, death, appearing like a physician, has given respite, laying those who have them to rest in sleep."

2.14. And again, when Euripides had said, "Many are the forms of things divine, and the gods accomplish many things unhoped-for," the tragedian Theodectes likewise writes, "that the fortunes of mortals are not secure." And when Bacchylides had said, "To few of mortals has the spirit granted, faring well at the right moment through all their time, to come to grey-templed old age before they meet with calamity," Moschion the comic poet writes, "But he is most blessed of all who, living to the end, has practised an even life." And you may find too, when Theognis had said, "A young wife is no use to an old man; for she obeys not the rudder like a boat," Aristophanes the comic poet writing, "A shameful thing — an aged man with a young wife." For when Anacreon had made, "I am minded to sing of delicate Love, blossoming with garlands of many flowers; he is the lord even of the gods, he tames mortals too," Euripides writes, "For Love comes not upon men alone, nor again upon women, but troubles the souls of the gods above and goes over the sea."

2.15. But that the discourse may not go on too long, while we are ambitious to display the proneness of the Greeks to theft in their words and doctrines, come, let us set before us Hippias the sophist of Elis, downright bearing witness to us, who comes to the same argument upon the matter I have set before me, speaking somewhat thus: "Of these things, perhaps, some were said by Orpheus, some by Musaeus, briefly, one in one place and another in another; some by Hesiod, some by Homer, some by the rest of the poets; and of those in prose, some by Greeks, some by barbarians. But I, from all these, putting together the things most akin, will make this discourse, new and of many kinds."

2.16. And that we may not let philosophy, history, and rhetoric too go without the like refutation, it is reasonable to set down a few of these as well. For when Alcmaeon of Croton had said that it is easier to guard against an enemy than a friend, Sophocles made, in the Antigone, "For what wound could be greater than an evil friend?" and Xenophon has said, "No one could harm his enemies in any other way than by seeming to be a friend." And in the Telephus, when Euripides had said, "Being Greeks, shall we be slaves to barbarians?", Thrasymachus in the speech on behalf of the Larisaeans says, "Shall we, being Greeks, be slaves to Archelaus, a barbarian?"

2.17. And when Orpheus had made, "There is water for the soul, and death is the change to waters; and out of water comes earth, and out of earth again water; and from this the whole soul, changing, passes into the aether," Heraclitus, putting together his words out of these, writes somewhat thus: "For souls it is death to become water, and for water death to become earth; and out of earth comes water, and out of water soul." Indeed, when Athamas the Pythagorean had said thus, "The unbegotten beginning of all things, and the four roots there are — fire, water, air, earth; for out of these are the comings-into-being of the things that come to be," Empedocles of Acragas made, "First hear the four roots of all things: fire and water and earth, and the boundless height of aether; for out of these is all that was and shall be and is." And when Plato had said, "For this reason too the gods, who know the things of men, the more quickly release from life those whom they hold most precious," Menander made, "Whom the gods love dies young."

2.18. And when Euripides in the Oenomaus writes, "We conjecture the unseen from things present," and in the Phoenix, "The unseen is fairly caught by tokens," Hypereides says, "But the things that are unseen, those who teach them must of necessity inquire into by tokens and probabilities." And again, when Isocrates had said, "We must conjecture the things to come from those that have come before," Andocides does not shrink from saying, "For one must use the things that have happened before as tokens concerning the things that shall be." Again, when Theognis had made, "The ruin of counterfeit gold and silver is bearable, Cyrnus, and easy for a wise man to detect; but if the mind of a friendly man lies hidden in his breast, being false, and he has a treacherous heart in his breast, this God has made the most counterfeit thing for mortals, and to know it the most grievous of all," Euripides writes, "O Zeus, why have you given to men sure tokens of the gold that is counterfeit, but on the body of men, by which one should discern the bad, no mark is set?" And Hypereides himself too says, "There is no mark of the mind set upon the face of men."

2.19. Again, when Stasinus had made, "Foolish is he who, slaying the father, leaves the sons," Xenophon says, "For I seem now to have done the like as if one, having slain a father, should spare his children." And when Sophocles in the Antigone had made, "Now that mother and father are in Hades, there is no brother who could ever spring up," Herodotus says, "Mother and father being no longer alive, I shall have no other brother." Besides this, when Theopompus had made, "Old men are children twice, by a right account," and before him Sophocles in the Peleus, "Peleus son of Aeacus, alone as housekeeper I tend in his old age and rear like a child again; for the man who grows old becomes a child once more," Antiphon the orator says, "For the rearing of the old is like the rearing of children"; and the philosopher Plato too: "So, as it seems, the old man would become a child twice over."

2.20. Yes, and when Thucydides had said, "to have alone faced the danger at Marathon," Demosthenes said, "By those who faced the danger at Marathon." Nor will I pass over these: when Cratinus in the Pytine had said, "The preparation, perhaps, you know," Andocides the orator says, "The preparation, men of the jury, and the eagerness of my enemies, almost all of you will know." Likewise too Nicias, in the speech against Lysias concerning a deposit, says, "You see, men of the jury, the preparation and the eagerness of my adversaries"; and after him Aeschines says, "You see the preparation, men of Athens, and the array." Again, when Demosthenes had said, "How great, men of Athens, is the zeal and canvassing that has arisen about this trial, almost all of you, I think, have perceived," Philinus likewise: "How great, men of the jury, the zeal and array that has come about over this trial, not one of you, I think, is ignorant."

2.21. Again, when Isocrates had said, "as being kin to his money, but not to him," Lysias in the Orphans' speeches says, "And it has become plain that he was kin not to their persons, but to their money." Since, too, when Homer had made, "Friend, if, having fled this war, we were going to be ageless and immortal for ever, I would neither fight myself among the foremost nor send you into the battle that brings men glory; but now, since the fates of death stand over us in their thousands, which no mortal can flee or escape, let us go, whether we shall give glory to some man, or some to us," Theopompus writes, "For if it were possible, having fled the present danger, to live the rest of one's time without fear, it would be no wonder to be a lover of life; but as it is, so many fates beset our life that death in battle seems the more to be chosen." And again — when Chilon the wise had spoken his apophthegm, "Give a pledge, and ruin is at hand," Epicharmus brought forth the same thought under another name, saying, "Ruin is the daughter of a pledge, and a pledge the daughter of loss."

2.22. But also, when the physician Hippocrates had written, "One must look, then, to season and country and age and diseases," Euripides in a certain hexameter saying says, "Whoever knows how to heal well must look to the diets of those who dwell in a city, having seen the land, in considering the diseases." Again, when Homer had made, "I say that no man of mortals has escaped his fate," Archinus says, "To all men it is owed to die, either earlier or later"; and Demosthenes, "For to all men the end of life is death, even if one shut himself up and keep watch in a little house."

2.23. And again, when Herodotus in the account of Glaucus the Spartan had said that the Pythia declared that to make trial of the god and to do the deed came to the same thing, Aristophanes said, "For thinking has equal power with doing"; and before him Parmenides the Eleatic: "For to think is the same thing as to be." And — when Plato had said, "We might perhaps say, not absurdly, that the beginning of love is sight, that hope lessens the passion, that memory nourishes it, and that habit preserves it," Philemon the comic poet writes, "All first see, then marvel, then gaze further, then fall into hope; thus from these comes love." But also, when Demosthenes had said, "To all of us death is owed," and the rest, Phanocles in his Loves, or Beautiful Ones, writes, "But the thread of the Fates is not to be undone, nor can any of us who feed upon the earth ever flee it."

2.24. And you might find too, when Plato had said, "For the first sprouting of every plant, well started toward excellence, is most authoritative in setting upon its own nature its fitting end," Ephorus the historian writing, "But none even of the wild plants is by nature to be tamed once they have passed their younger age." And that saying of Empedocles, "For ere now I have been a boy and a girl, a bush and a bird, and a mute fish in the sea," Euripides in the Chrysippus transcribes, "Nothing of the things that come to be dies, but being parted, one from another, it shows forth another form." And when Plato in the Republic had said that women should be common, Euripides in the Protesilaus writes, "For the bed of women should be common." But when Euripides had written, "Since what suffices is enough for the temperate," Epicurus says outright, "Self-sufficiency is the richest of all things." Again, when Aristophanes had written, "You shall have a secure life, being just; and apart from tumult and fear you shall live well," Epicurus says, "The greatest fruit of righteousness is freedom from disturbance."

2.25. The kinds, then, of the Greek theft in thought, set forth as a clear example for one able to discern, let these suffice. And by now they have been caught, not only filching the thoughts and the phrases and paraphrasing them, as has been shown, but they shall also be convicted of having the stolen things downright whole; for they have brought out the things of others, taken outright, as their own — as Eugammon of Cyrene took the book on the Thesprotians, whole, from Musaeus; and Peisander of Cameirus the Heracleia of Peisinus of Lindus; and Panyassis of Halicarnassus the Capture of Oechalia from Creophylus of Samos.

2.26. And you might find too the great poet Homer transferring word for word those verses, "Like a shoot that a man rears, a flourishing shoot of olive," and the rest, from Orpheus, out of the destruction of Dionysus. And in the Theogony it is made by Orpheus, concerning Cronos, "He lay, bending aside his thick neck, and sleep, the all-subduer, seized him" — and these things Homer transferred to the Cyclops. And Hesiod makes, concerning Melampus, "Sweet too it is to learn how much the immortals have appointed for mortals, a clear token of base men and noble," and the rest, taking it word for word from Musaeus the poet. And Aristophanes the comic poet in the first Thesmophoriazusae transferred the verses out of Cratinus' Men on Fire. And Plato the comic poet and Aristophanes in the Daedalus filch from one another. And the Cocalus, written by Araros the son of Aristophanes, Philemon the comic poet, altering it, brought on the stage as comedy in the Hypobolimaeus. And the things of Hesiod, Eumelus and Acusilaus the historiographers turned into prose and brought out as their own. For Gorgias of Leontini and Eudemus of Naxos, the historians, stole from Melesagoras; and besides these, Bion of Proconnesus, who also transcribed, abridging them, the things of the ancient Cadmus; and Amphilochus and Aristocles and Leandrius and Anaximenes and Hellanicus and Hecataeus and Androtion and Philochorus; and Dieuchidas of Megara took the beginning of his discourse from the Deucalioneia of Hellanicus.

2.27. And I say nothing of Heraclitus of Ephesus, who took the most part from Orpheus. And from Pythagoras Plato derived that the soul is immortal — and Pythagoras from the Egyptians. And many of Plato's school have composed writings in which they show that the Stoics, as we said at the beginning, and Aristotle too, took the most and most authoritative of their doctrines from Plato. And Epicurus too has contrived his leading doctrines out of Democritus. So much, then, for these things; for life will fail me, if I should choose to go through each one, convicting the self-loving Greek theft, and how they appropriate the discovery of the noblest doctrines among them, which they have taken from us.

3.28. And by now they are convicted, not only of filching their doctrines from the barbarians, but also, besides, of mimicking the things wrought among us, from above by the divine power through those who have lived in holiness for our turning toward God, marvellously — telling wonders by Greek mythology. And indeed we shall ask them whether these things they record are true or false. But false they would not say (for they would not willingly cast against themselves a vote of the greatest silliness, that of writing falsehoods); and true they must of necessity confess them to be. And how, then, do the things wonderfully shown forth through Moses and the other prophets still appear unbelievable to them? For God the Almighty, caring for all men, turns some toward salvation by commandments, some by threats, some by wondrous signs, and some by gentle promises. But indeed the Greeks — when a drought once was for a long time wasting Hellas and a barrenness of crops held it fast, the survivors, they say, coming as suppliants by reason of the famine to Delphi, asked the Pythia how they might be rid of the evil. And she gave them one help for their calamity, if they should use the prayer of Aeacus. Persuaded by them, then, Aeacus went up onto the Greek mountain, and stretching out his clean hands to heaven, calling on God as the common Father, prayed him to take pity on Hellas, worn down. And as he prayed, an extraordinary thunder pealed, and all the air round about was overcast, and violent and unceasing rains, breaking out, filled the whole land; whence a plentiful and rich fruitfulness was brought to perfection, husbanded by the prayers of Aeacus.

3.29. "And Samuel," it says, "called upon the Lord, and the Lord gave voices and rain in the day of harvest." Do you see that he who rains upon just and unjust, through the powers set beneath him, is one God? And our whole Scripture is full of God's hearing the prayers of the just, and accomplishing each of their requests. Again, the Greeks record that, when the Etesian winds once failed, Aristaeus in Ceos sacrificed to Zeus Icmaeus; for there was great destruction, since all things were being burned up with the heat, and especially since the winds that were wont to cool the crops were not blowing; and he easily called them back. And the Delphians, when Xerxes was marching against Hellas, the Pythia having proclaimed, "O Delphians, pray to the winds, and it shall be the better," having made an altar and a sacrifice to the winds, had them as helpers; for blowing strongly about the headland of Sepias they shattered the whole equipment of the Persian fleet.

3.30. And Empedocles of Acragas was surnamed "Wind-stayer." It is said, then, that from the mountain of Acragas, a wind once blowing heavy and sickly upon the inhabitants — and the cause too of barrenness in their women — he stopped the wind; wherefore he himself writes in his verses, "And you shall stay the might of the unwearied winds, which, rushing upon the earth, waste with their blasts the fields of mortals; and again, when you will, you shall bring back the winds in requital." And he said that there followed him "some who craved divinations, and some, long pierced by grievous diseases." So plainly they have believed, from our Scriptures, that the just accomplish healings and signs and wonders. For even if certain powers move the winds and dispense the rains, yet let them hear the psalmist: "How lovely are your tabernacles, O Lord of hosts." This is the Lord of the hosts and the principalities and the powers, concerning whom Moses says, that we may understand him: "And you shall circumcise the hardness of your heart, and you shall no longer harden your neck; for the Lord your God, he is Lord of lords and God of gods, the great God, and strong," and the rest. And Isaiah says, "Lift up your eyes on high and see: who has shown forth all these things?"

3.31. Some say, then, that plagues and hail and storms and the like are wont to come about not from material disorder alone, but also according to some wrath of spirits or of angels who are not good. For instance, they say that the Magi at Cleonae, watching the heavens, turn aside, by songs and sacrifices, the threat of the wrath of the clouds that are about to hurl hail. Indeed, if at any time a want of a victim should overtake them, they make their own finger bleed, and are content with that sacrifice. And Diotima the Mantinean, the Athenians having sacrificed before the plague, made a ten-year postponement of the disease for them; just as the sacrifices of Epimenides the Cretan put off for them the Persian war for the same length of time. And they think it makes no difference whether we call these souls gods or angels. For instance, those experienced in the matter, in their consecrations, in many of the temples and almost all, set up the graves of the departed, calling their souls spirits, and teaching that they are to be worshipped by men, as having received power, through the purity of their life, by the divine providence, to go about the region of the earth in the ministry to men; for they knew that some souls are by nature held fast by the body.

3.32. But about these things we shall treat in due season, in the discourse about angels, as the writing goes forward. And Democritus, foretelling many things from the observation of things on high, was surnamed "Wisdom." For instance, when his brother Damasus had welcomed him kindly, conjecturing from certain stars that there would be a great rain, he foretold it. So those who were persuaded by him gathered in their crops (for it was the season of summer, and they were still on the threshing-floors); but the rest lost everything, when an unexpected and heavy rain broke out. And how will the Greeks any longer disbelieve the divine manifestation about Mount Sinai, when fire was burning, consuming nothing of the things that grew about the mountain, and a sound of trumpets was borne, breathed forth without instruments? For that which is called the descent of God upon the mountain is an appearing of the divine power, pervading the whole world and proclaiming the unapproachable light. For such is the allegory according to the Scripture. But indeed the fire was seen, as Aristobulus says, by all that multitude — not fewer than a hundred myriads, besides those under age — assembling round the mountain, the circuit about the mountain being not less than five days' journey.

3.33. In every place, then, of vision, the fire was seen by all of them, burning round about, as by men encamped, so that the descent was not local; for everywhere is God. And those too who composed the histories say that about the British island there is a cave lying beneath a mountain, and on the summit a chasm; when, then, the wind falls into the cave and dashes against the recesses of the hollow, a sound is heard as of cymbals beaten in rhythm. And often too, as the leaves are moved through the woods by a sudden onset of wind, a sound falls upon the ear like the song of birds. But those who composed the Persian histories record that in the highlands, in the country of the Magi, three mountains lie in a row in a long plain; and those who pass through the place, coming to the first mountain, hear a sound as of a confused crowd, like that of not a few myriads shouting, as in array of battle; coming to the middle, they catch a tumult at once greater and more distinct; and at the end they hear, as of men singing the paean, like men who have conquered. And the cause, I think, of every such sound is the smoothness of the places and their cavernous nature; for the wind that has entered, being thrown back and going again into the same place, resounds the more violently.

3.34. And let these things be so. But for God the Almighty it is possible, even with nothing lying beneath, to engender a voice and an impression in the hearing, showing forth his own majesty by what has a natural sequence beyond the wonted course, unto the turning of the soul that does not yet believe, and the reception of the commandment given. And a cloud being present, and a high mountain, how is it not possible for a varied sound to be heard, as the wind is moved by the working cause? Wherefore the prophet too says, "You heard the voice of words, and a likeness you did not see." Do you see how the Lord's voice is the Word without shape? For the power of the Word, a luminous word of the Lord, the truth come down from heaven above upon the gathering of the church, wrought through a luminous and immediate ministry.

4.35. And we might find yet another testimony to the confirmation of the point, that the best of the philosophers, having appropriated the noblest doctrines from us, boast of them as their own — namely, that they have culled some things even from the other barbarians, things bearing upon each school, and most of all from the Egyptians: among other things, the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul. For the Egyptians pursue a certain philosophy of their own; and this their august worship makes most plain above all. First there goes before the singer, carrying one of the symbols of music. They say that he must take up two books out of those of Hermes, of which one contains hymns of the gods, the second a reckoning of the kingly life. And after the singer comes the horoscopist, having in his hand a horologe and a palm, the symbols of astrology. He must always have on his lips the astrological books of Hermes, four in number: of which one is about the ordering of the apparently fixed stars, another about the position of the sun and moon and the five planets, another about the conjunctions and illuminations of sun and moon, and the rest about their risings.

4.36. Next comes the sacred scribe, having feathers on his head and a book in his hands and a rule, in which are the writing-ink and the reed with which they write. He must know what are called the hieroglyphics, concerning cosmography and geography, the position of the sun and moon and the five planets, the description of Egypt and the drawing of the Nile, the appointing of the temples and the regions consecrated to them, and the measures and the things useful in the sacred rites. Then the keeper of the robes follows those before mentioned, having the cubit of justice and the libation-vessel. This man knows all the things called educative and the "calf-sealing"; and there are ten which pertain to the honour of their gods and contain the Egyptian piety — about sacrifices, first-fruits, hymns, prayers, processions, festivals, and the like.

4.37. And after all comes the prophet, bearing in his bosom in open view the water-vessel, whom follow those who carry the loaves to be sent forth. This man, as president of the temple, learns the ten books called hieratic (and they contain things about laws and the gods and the whole training of the priests); for the prophet, among the Egyptians, is also the overseer of the distribution of the revenues. There are, then, two-and-forty books altogether necessary to Hermes; of which the thirty-six, containing the whole philosophy of the Egyptians, those before mentioned learn; the remaining six the bearers of the sacred robes learn, being medical, about the constitution of the body, and diseases, and instruments, and drugs, and about the eyes, and lastly about the things of women.

4.38. And the things of the Egyptians, to speak briefly, are such. But the philosophy of the Indians too is noised abroad. For Alexander the Macedonian, having taken ten of the Indian gymnosophists who were thought the best and most concise in speech, set them problems, threatening to put to death the one who did not answer to the point, and bidding one, the eldest of them, to be the judge. The first, then, being examined whether he thought the living or the dead more numerous, said, "The living; for the dead are not." The second, whether the land or the sea nourishes greater beasts, said, "The land; for the sea is a part of it." The third, what creature is the most cunning, said, "That which up to now has not been known — man." The fourth, being questioned by what reasoning they had stirred up Sabbas, who was their ruler, to revolt, answered, "Wishing him either to live well or to die well." The fifth, asked whether he thought day or night had come into being first, said, "Night, by one day; for of insoluble questions the answers too must of necessity be insoluble." The sixth, asked how one might be loved most, said, "If, being most powerful, he is not fearsome." The seventh, asked how one might become a god out of a man, said, "If he should do what it is not possible for a man to do." The eighth, asked what is stronger, life or death, said, "Life, which bears so many ills." The ninth, examined how long it is good for a man to live, said, "As long as he does not think dying better than living." And when Alexander bade the tenth too say something (for he was the judge), he said, "One spoke worse than another." And when Alexander said, "Then shall you too die first, judging so?", he said, "And how, O king, would you be truthful, having said you would kill first the one who answered worst?"

5.39. And that the Greeks are caught as thieves of every Scripture, has, I think, been shown sufficiently through many proofs. But that they do not know God by recognition, but by periphrasis — the most reputable of the Greeks, that is — Peter says in the Preaching: "Know, then, that there is one God, who made the beginning of all things, and has power over their end"; and: "the invisible, who sees all things; the uncontainable, who contains all things; the unneedy, of whom all things have need and through whom they are; the incomprehensible, the everlasting, the incorruptible, the uncreated, who made all things by the word of his power" — that is, of the Son. Then he adds: "Worship this God, not after the manner of the Greeks" — clearly, then, the reputable men among the Greeks worship the same God as we, but not by perfect recognition, not having learned the tradition that comes through the Son. "Do not, then," he says, "worship" — he did not say "the God whom the Greeks worship," but "not after the manner of the Greeks" — changing the manner of the worship of God, not proclaiming another God.

5.40. What, then, is "not after the manner of the Greeks," Peter himself will make plain by adding: "Because, being carried about by ignorance, and not knowing God as we do by the perfect knowledge, having shaped things over which he gave them power for their use — wood and stones, bronze and iron, gold and silver — forgetful of their matter and use, they set up the things that are slaves to their being, and worship them; and the things which God gave them for food — the birds of the air and the swimming things of the sea and the creeping beasts of the land, with the four-footed cattle of the field, and weasels and mice and cats and dogs and apes — and their own foods they sacrifice as victims to things eatable, and offering dead things to the dead as to gods, they are ungrateful to God, by these things denying that he is."

5.41. And that they have known the same God, both we ourselves and they, though not in the same way, he will go on to show again, somewhat thus: "Nor after the manner of the Jews, though not in the same way: for they, thinking that they alone know God, do not know him, serving angels and archangels, the month and the moon. And if the moon does not appear, they do not keep the sabbath called the first, nor keep the new moon, nor the feast of unleavened bread, nor the feast, nor the great day." Then he adds the coping-stone of the matter sought: "So that you too, holily and justly learning the things which we deliver to you, keep them, worshipping God newly through Christ. For we have found in the Scriptures, as the Lord says, 'Behold, I make with you a new covenant, not as I made with your fathers in Mount Horeb.' A new one he made with us; for the things of the Greeks and the Jews are old, but we who worship him newly, in a third manner, are Christians." For he has plainly, I think, shown forth the one and only God, known by the Greeks in a Gentile manner, by the Jews in a Jewish manner, but newly and spiritually by us.

5.42. And besides, that the same God is the supplier of both covenants, the giver too of Greek philosophy to the Greeks, through which the Almighty is glorified among the Greeks, he has set forth. And it is plain from this too. For out of Greek learning, and out of the learning of the law, are gathered into the one race of the people that is saved those who accept the faith — the three peoples not being divided by time, that one might suppose three natures, but trained by different covenants of the one Lord, . . . being of one Lord by his word. For just as God willed to save the Jews, giving them prophets, so too, raising up the most reputable of the Greeks as prophets of their own in their own tongue, in so far as they were able to receive the benefaction from God, he distinguished them from the common run of men — as Paul the apostle will show, beside the Preaching of Peter, saying:

5.43. "Take the Greek books too, recognize the Sibyl, how she shows forth one God and the things that shall be; and taking Hystaspes, read, and you shall find the Son of God written of far more luminously and plainly, and how many kings shall set their array against Christ, hating him and those who bear his name and his faithful ones, and his patience, and his coming." Then in one word he asks of us: "And the whole world, and the things in the world — whose are they? Are they not God's?" For this reason Peter says that the Lord said to the apostles: "If, then, anyone of Israel, having repented, should be willing to believe in God through my name, his sins shall be forgiven him. And after twelve years go out into the world, lest anyone say, 'We did not hear.'"

6.44. But as the preaching has come now in season, so in season the law and the prophets were given to the barbarians, and philosophy to the Greeks, accustoming their ears to the preaching. The Lord, then, who redeemed Israel, says: "In an acceptable time I heard you, and in a day of salvation I helped you, and I gave you for a covenant of the nations, to settle the earth and to inherit the inheritance of the wilderness, saying to those in bonds, 'Come out,' and to those in darkness, 'Be uncovered.'" For if the Jews were in bonds — to whom too the Lord said, "Come out from your bonds," those who willed — meaning those willingly bound, who had laid upon themselves burdens hard to bear by human meddling, plainly those in darkness would be those who, in idolatry, had their ruling part buried. For to the just according to the law there was lacking faith, wherefore the Lord, healing these too, said, "Your faith has saved you"; but to the just according to philosophy there was lacking not only faith in the Lord, but also the standing apart from idolatry. For instance, when the truth was revealed, these too repent of their former deeds; wherefore the Lord preached the good news even to those in Hades.

6.45. The Scripture, at any rate, says: "Hades says to Destruction, 'His form indeed we did not see, but his voice we heard.'" It was not, surely, the place that, taking a voice, spoke the foregoing, but those ranked in Hades, who had given themselves over to destruction, as men who from some ship had willingly cast themselves into the sea; these, then, are they who heard the divine power and voice. For who, being right-minded, would suppose that in one condemnation are both the souls of the just and those of sinners, pouring out injustice upon providence? And do not these things make plain that the Lord preached the good news both to those who perished in the flood — or rather were fettered — and to those held in prison and ward? And it has been shown, in the second book of the Stromateis, that the apostles, following the Lord, preached the good news even to those in Hades. For it was fitting, I think, as here, so there too, that the best of the disciples should be imitators of the teacher, that the one might bring to conversion those of the Hebrews, and the others the Gentiles — that is, those who had lived in righteousness according to the law and according to philosophy, but not perfectly, having ended their life sinfully. For this befitted the divine dispensation, that those who had held more worthily in righteousness and lived chiefly so, and had repented of their stumblings, even if they chanced to be making confession in another place, being among those of God the Almighty, should be saved, each according to his own knowledge.

6.46. And the Saviour too works, I think, since to save is his work; which indeed he has done, drawing to salvation those who were minded to believe in him through the preaching, wherever they chanced to have been. If, then, the Lord went down to Hades for nothing else than to preach the good news, as he went down, he preached it either to all, or to the Hebrews only. If, then, to all, all who believed shall be saved, even if they chance to be of the Gentiles, having made confession already there; since the chastisements of God are saving and instructive, leading to conversion and choosing the repentance rather than the death of the sinner — and this the more, since souls released from bodies are able to see more purely, even though darkened by passions, because no longer hindered by the flesh. But if he preached the good news to the Jews only, who lacked the recognition and faith that come through the Saviour, plainly, since God is no respecter of persons, the apostles too, as here, so there preached the good news to those of the Gentiles fit for conversion. And it is well said in the Shepherd: "They went down with them into the water, but these went down living and came up living, while those, the previously fallen asleep, went down dead, but came up living."

6.47. Yes, and the Gospel says too that many bodies of those fallen asleep arose, plainly transferred into a better order. There came about, then, a certain universal movement and transference according to the dispensation of the Saviour. The just man, then, in so far as he is just, does not differ from the just man, whether he be one under the law or a Greek; for God is Lord not of the Jews only, but of all men, and more nearly the Father of those who have known him. For if to live well is to live lawfully, and to live reasonably is to live according to law, and those who lived rightly before the law were reckoned to faith and judged to be just, plainly those too who lived outside the law, by the peculiar quality of their soul, having lived rightly — even if they chanced to be in Hades and in ward — having heard the Lord's voice, whether his own or that working through the apostles, would quickly turn and believe. For we remember that the Lord is the power of God; and power could never be weak. Thus, I think, it is shown that God is good, and the Lord able to save with righteousness and equality toward those who turn, whether here or elsewhere. For not here only does his working power reach; it is everywhere and ever works.

6.48. For instance, in the Preaching of Peter the Lord says to the disciples after the resurrection: "I chose you twelve, having judged you disciples worthy of me, whom the Lord willed; and reckoning you faithful apostles, I send you out into the world to preach the good news to the men throughout the inhabited earth, that they may know that there is one God, declaring, through faith in me, Christ's faith, the things that shall be; that those who hear and believe may be saved, and those who do not believe, having heard, may bear witness, having no defence to say, 'We did not hear.'" What then? Has not the same dispensation come about even in Hades? — so that there too all the souls, having heard the preaching, might either show forth repentance, or confess the chastisement to be just, by which they did not believe. It would have been a piece of no common covetousness for those who had gone out before the Lord's coming, not having had the good news preached to them, nor having furnished of themselves the ground for believing or not, to partake either of salvation or of chastisement. For it is surely not lawful that some should be condemned uncondemned, and that only those after the coming should have enjoyed the divine righteousness. And to all souls from above, the rational ones, it was said: "Whatever anyone of you did in ignorance, not knowing God clearly, if, having recognized him, he repent, all his sins shall be forgiven him." "Behold," it says, "I have set before your face death and life; choose life" — God saying that he has set them for the comparison of choice, not that he made both.

6.49. And in another Scripture he says: "If you hear me and are willing, you shall eat the good things of the earth; but if you do not hear me, nor are willing, a sword shall devour you; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things." And again David says outright — or rather the Lord, in the person of the holy one (and this one, from the foundation of the world, is everyone who at different times has been saved or shall be saved through faith): "My heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; and moreover my flesh shall dwell in hope," he says, "for you will not leave my soul in Hades, nor will you give your holy one to see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life; you will fill me with gladness with your countenance."

6.50. As, then, the people is precious to the Lord, so the whole holy people is, together with the Jew, also he of the Gentiles who turns, who was prophesied as the proselyte. With reason, then, the Scripture says that the ox and the bear shall be in the same place; for the Jew is called the ox, from the animal judged clean under the law and under the yoke, since the ox both parts the hoof and chews the cud; but the Gentile is shown forth by the bear, an unclean and savage beast; and this animal brings forth flesh unshapen, which it shapes into the likeness of the beast by its tongue alone. For by the Word the Gentile who turns is shaped into being tamed from his beastlike life, and being now domesticated, he too is purified like the ox. The prophet says, for instance: "The Sirens shall bless me, and the daughters of the sparrows, and all the beasts of the field." Of the unclean animals are the beasts of the field — that is, of the world — known; since he calls those who come to faith savage and filthy in their life, not yet cleansed by the righteousness of the law, "beasts." But having changed from being beasts through the Lord's faith, they become men of God, advancing from the first willing to change, into the becoming so. For the Lord exhorts some, but to those who have already set their hands he stretches out a hand and draws them up; for the Master of all does not withdraw before any face, nor will he reverence greatness, since he himself made small and great alike, and provides for all in like manner.

6.51. And David says: "If the Gentiles were fixed in the destruction which they made, in this snare which they hid their foot was caught; but the Lord became a refuge to the poor man, a helper in good season and in affliction." Fittingly, then, the good news was preached to those who were in affliction. And for this reason it says: "Declare among the nations his doings, that they be not judged unjustly." If, then, for this reason he preached the good news to those in the flesh, that they should not be condemned unjustly, how should he not also, for the same cause, have preached it to those who went out before his coming? For "the Lord is just, and loved righteousness; his countenance saw uprightness." But "he who loves injustice hates his own soul."

6.52. If, then, in the flood all sinful flesh perished, the chastisement having come to them for their instruction, first we must believe that the will of God, being instructive and active, saves those who turn; and next that the finer part too, the soul, could never suffer anything dread from the coarser-grained water, not being held by it, by reason of its fineness and simplicity, in respect of which it is also called incorporeal. But whatever is coarse-grained, having been thickened by sin, this is cast away together with the fleshly spirit that lusts against the soul. And already even Valentinus, the chief of those who profess community, in his homily On Friends, writes word for word: "Many of the things written in the public books are found written in the church of God; for these common things are the words that come from the heart, the law written in the heart; this is the people of the Beloved, that is loved and that loves him."

6.53. For whether he means the Jewish Scriptures or those of the philosophers by "public books," he makes the truth common. And Isidore too, son and at the same time disciple of Basilides, in the first book of his Expositions of the Prophet Parchor, himself also writes word for word: "The Attics say that something was signified to Socrates by a spirit that attended him, and Aristotle says that all men have spirits which accompany them through the time of their being in the body." This prophetic teaching he took and laid down in his own books, not confessing whence he filched this saying. And again, in the second book of the same work, he writes somewhat thus: "And let no one think that what we say is proper to the elect was said beforehand by certain philosophers; for it is not their discovery, but appropriating it from the prophets they ascribed it to the man accounted wise among them." And again, in the same: "For it seems to me that those who pretend to philosophize, in order to learn what is the winged oak and the embroidered robe upon it — all that Pherecydes theologized by allegory — took the theme from the prophecy of Ham . . ."

7.54. . . . as we noted long ago, we do not mean the discipline of each several school, but, what philosophy truly is — rightly, a skilled wisdom that furnishes the experience of the things of life; and the wisdom, a firm knowledge of things divine and human, being a certain sure and unshakeable apprehension, embracing the things that are and that have been and that shall be, which the Lord taught us both through his coming and through the prophets. And it is unshakeable by reason, being delivered to that very will by which also it is wholly true, as known through the Son. And the one is everlasting, the other useful in time; the one is one and the same, the others many and various; the one is without any passible movement, the other with a passible craving; the one is perfect, the other defective.

7.55. This wisdom, then, philosophy craves — . . . of the soul, and of the rightness of reason, and of the purity of life, being disposed lovingly and affectionately toward wisdom, and doing all things for the sake of attaining it. And philosophers are called among us those who love the wisdom of the Maker and Teacher of all, that is, the knowledge of the Son of God; but among the Greeks, those who lay hold of the discourses about virtue. Philosophy would be the irreproachable doctrines of each of the schools (I mean those of philosophy), together with a manner of life in agreement, gathered into one chosen system. And these very things, stolen from the barbarian, God-given grace, have been adorned with Greek discourse; for of some they are thieves, and of some they heard amiss; and in the rest, some things they said as men moved, but did not work out perfectly, and some by human conjecture and reasoning, in which they also fall short. And they think they apply themselves to the truth perfectly; but as we apprehend them, only partially.

7.56. For of this world they know nothing more. And indeed, as geometry, dealing with measures and magnitudes and figures by the drawing of them on flat surfaces, and painting, which seems to take up the whole field of optics in scene-painting, deceives the sight in this way, using the points of the meeting of the optical lines according to its art (whence appearances and recessions and projections are preserved, and some things seem to stand out, others to sink in, others to be otherwise represented on the level and smooth surface) — so too do the philosophers, after the manner of painting, imitate the truth. And self-love is the cause of all sins for each man on every occasion. Wherefore one must not, choosing glory among men, be self-loving, but, loving God, become truly holy with prudence.

7.57. If, then, one chance to use the particular things as if they were universal, and honour the slave as lord and ruler, he falls away from the truth, not understanding what was said by David in confession: "Earth and ashes I ate as bread." And self-love and conceit are to him earth and error. But if this be so, knowledge and science come of learning. And learning being, one must seek the teacher. Cleanthes inscribes Zeno as his teacher, and Theophrastus Aristotle, and Metrodorus Epicurus, and Plato Socrates; but even if I come to Pythagoras and Pherecydes and Thales and the first wise men, I stand still seeking their teacher; and if you say Egyptians or Indians or Babylonians or the Magi themselves, I shall not cease asking for their teacher. And I lead you up to the first generation of men, and from there I begin to seek, who is the teacher? Of men, none; for they had not yet learned; nor any of the angels; for neither, as the angels make known in so far as they are angels, do men hear; nor, as we have ears, so have they a tongue. Nor could one assign to angels organs of voice — I mean lips and the parts near them, and throat and windpipe and inward parts and breath and stricken air. Far indeed is God from shouting aloud, separated by an unapproachable holiness even from the archangels themselves. And we have received that the angels too learned the truth, and the rulers over them; for they are begotten.

7.58. It remains, then, that, ascending above, we crave the teacher of these. And since one is the unbegotten, God the Almighty, and one too is that which was begotten before, through whom all things came to be and without whom not one thing came to be (for "one is God in truth, who made the beginning of all things" — showing the first-born Son, Peter writes, having exactly understood the word, "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth"); and since this one is called Wisdom by all the prophets, this is the teacher of all begotten things, the counsellor of God who foreknew all things. And he, from above, from the first foundation of the world, in many ways and in many parts both has instructed and brings to perfection. Whence with reason it was said, "Call no man teacher upon the earth." You see whence the true philosophy has its handles. And though the law be an image and shadow of the truth — yes, the law is a shadow of the truth — yet the self-love of the Greeks proclaims certain men teachers.

7.59. As, then, every fatherhood runs up to God the Maker, so too the teaching of noble things, which justifies and leads by the hand to this and lays hold of it, runs up to the Lord. And if from some . . . some have, in whatever way, taken seeds of the truth and not nourished them, but, handing them over to a barren and rainless land, choked them with wild weeds — as the Pharisees turned aside from the law, bringing in human teachings — of these not the teacher is the cause, but those who chose to hear amiss. And those of them who are persuaded both by the Lord's coming and by the plainness of the Scriptures come into recognition of the law; as those too from philosophy, through the Lord's teaching, are established in the recognition of the true philosophy. "For the oracles of the Lord are pure oracles, silver tried by fire, purified for the earth sevenfold."

7.60. Either, as silver often purified comes into a tested state, the just man becomes a coin of the Lord and receives the royal stamp; or, since Solomon too says, "The tongue of the just is silver tried by fire," he shows that the tested and wise teaching is praiseworthy and to be accepted, when it is richly purified "for the earth" — that is, when the gnostic soul is in many ways sanctified by the abstention from earthly fiery passions. And the body too, in which it dwells, is sanctified, made its own unto the sincerity of a holy temple. But the first purification of the soul in the body is this — the abstention from evils, which some hold to be perfection, and is simply the perfection of the common believer, both Jew and Greek; but of the gnostic, after the perfection reckoned by others, his righteousness goes forward into the working of good deeds. And to him in whom the intensity of righteousness has increased toward beneficence, to him perfection abides in an unchangeable habit of doing good, after the likeness of God. For some are the seed of Abraham, still slaves of God — these are the called; but sons of Jacob are his elect, those who have tripped up the working of evil.

7.61. If, then, we call Christ himself Wisdom, and his working through the prophets, by which it is possible to learn the gnostic tradition — as he himself, at his coming, taught the holy apostles — knowledge would be wisdom, being science and apprehension of the things that are and that shall be and that have been, sure and unfailing, as delivered and revealed by the Son of God. And indeed, if the end of the wise man is contemplation, the one still philosophizing craves the divine science, but does not yet attain it, unless he take up by learning the prophetic voice made plain to him, through which he receives the things that are and that shall be and that have been before, how they are and were and shall be. And this knowledge, delivered without writing by succession to a few from the apostles, has come down. Hence, then, one must train knowledge, or wisdom, into a habit of contemplation everlasting and unchangeable.

8.62. For Paul too in the Epistles does not appear to disparage philosophy, but holds that one who partakes of the gnostic height should no longer run back to Greek philosophy, allegorizing it as the elements of the world, being a kind of elementary and preparatory teaching of the truth. Wherefore, writing to the Hebrews, those turning back to the law from faith, he says again, "You have need 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 solid food." Likewise too to the Colossians turning from among the Greeks: "See that no one shall lead you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements of this world and not after Christ" — luring them back to run up again to philosophy, the elementary teaching. And if one say that philosophy was discovered by the Greeks by human understanding, yet I find the Scriptures saying that understanding is sent from God.

8.63. The psalmist, at any rate, holds understanding the greatest gift, and asks for it, saying, "I am your servant; give me understanding." And does not David, asking for the manifold experience of knowledge, write, "Goodness and discipline and knowledge teach me, for I have believed in your commandments"? And the covenants have been confessed to be of supreme authority, and to be given to those held in greater honour. The psalm, at any rate, says again of God, "He has not done so to any nation, and his judgements he has not made plain to them." And the "he has not done so" shows that he did it, but not so. By comparison, then, the "so" is set against the surpassing measure that comes to us; for the prophet might surely have said simply "he has not done it," without the addition of "so." Yes, and Peter too in the Acts says, "In truth I apprehend that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he who fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him."

8.64. Not in time, then, is the impartiality of God, but from eternity; nor did his benefaction ever begin, nor is it bounded by places or by certain men; for his beneficence is not partial. "Open to me," it says, "the gates of righteousness; entering in by them I will confess to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord; the just shall enter in by it." And Barnabas, expounding the prophet's saying, adds: "Of many gates that are opened, this in righteousness is the one in Christ, in which all are blessed who have entered." And of the same thought is that prophetic saying too: "The Lord is upon many waters" — not of the different covenants only, but also of the modes of teaching, both those among the Greeks and those among the barbarians, leading to righteousness. And plainly already David too, witnessing to the truth, sings: "Let the sinners be turned into Hades, all the nations that forget God." They forget, plainly, him whom they formerly remembered, and whom, before they forgot him, they knew; this one they cast aside. There was, then, some dim knowledge of God even among the Gentiles.

8.65. And let these things be so. But the gnostic must be of much learning; and since the Greeks say that, Protagoras having led the way, to every argument an argument is opposed, it is fitting that he be prepared even against such arguments. For the Scripture says, "He who says much shall also hear in turn." And "who shall understand a parable of the Lord, except the wise and understanding man, and he who loves his Lord?" Let such a man, then, be faithful; let him be able to declare knowledge; let him be wise in the discernment of words; let him be vehement in deeds; let him be pure. "For so much the more ought he to be humble-minded, the greater he seems to be," says Clement in the Epistle to the Corinthians. Such a one is able to obey that precept: "And some snatch out of the fire, but on the doubting have mercy." For instance, the pruning-hook is made chiefly for pruning, but with it we also separate the entwined shoots and cut away the thorns grown up with the vines, which it is not easy to approach. And all these have their reference to the pruning. Again, man was made chiefly for the recognition of God; but he also tills the soil, and does geometry, and philosophizes — of which the one is unto living, the other unto living well, and the other unto the practice of demonstrative reasoning.

8.66. Yes, and those who say that philosophy sets out from the devil, let them attend to this too: that the Scripture says the devil transforms himself into an angel of light. To do what? Plainly, to prophesy. And if he prophesies as an angel of light, then he will say true things. And if he prophesies angelic and luminous and profitable things, then it is when he transforms himself by a likeness of working, even though he be other in respect of the substratum of apostasy. For how could he deceive anyone, unless by drawing the lover of learning, through true things, into familiarity, and so afterward dragging him down into falsehood? And besides, he will be found knowing the truth, and even if not apprehensively, at any rate not inexperienced of it. Not false, then, is philosophy, even if the thief and the liar, by a transformation of working, says true things; nor must one, on account of the speaker, ignorantly condemn beforehand the things spoken — which is to be observed too in the case of those now said to prophesy — but one must look at the things said, whether they hold to the truth.

8.67. And by now, saying with a universal word that all things necessary and useful to life come to us from God, we should not err; and that philosophy was given more especially to the Greeks, as a covenant of their own, being a substructure for the philosophy according to Christ — even though those who philosophize after the manner of the Greeks willingly turn deaf to the truth, despising the voice of the barbarians, or fearing the danger of death hanging over the believer by the civil laws. And as in the barbarian philosophy, so too in the Greek the tares were sown by the proper husbandman of tares. Whence the heresies too sprang up among us, together with the fruitful wheat; and those who proclaim the godlessness and pleasure of Epicurus, and whatever else has been sown contrary to right reason in Greek philosophy, are spurious fruits of the husbandry God-given to the Greeks.

8.68. This the apostle calls the wisdom of this age, the pleasure-loving and self-loving, as teaching only the things of this world and about it, and consequently subject, by way of presidency, to the rulers here. Wherefore this partial philosophy is a kind of elementary thing, while the truly perfect science deals with the things beyond the world, the things of mind, and yet more, the things more spiritual than these — "which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man," before the teacher made plain to us the discourse about them, having revealed the holy of holies, and, by an ascent, the holier things still, to the genuine and not spurious heirs of the Lord's adoption. For we dare to say (for here is the gnostic faith) that the truly gnostic man is knowing of all things and embracing of all things, using a sure apprehension even in the things insoluble to us — such as were James, Peter, John, Paul, and the rest of the apostles. For prophecy is full of knowledge, as given by the Lord and again made plain by the Lord to the apostles. And knowledge is the peculiar property of a rational soul trained for this, that through knowledge it may be enrolled unto immortality. For both are powers of the soul, knowledge and impulse.

8.69. And impulse is found to be a movement following upon a certain assent; for he who has the impulse toward some action first takes the knowledge of the action, and second the impulse. And further, let us consider this: since the learning is older than the doing (for he who is to do a thing by nature first learns the thing he wishes to do), and knowledge comes of learning, but the doing of impulse; and impulse follows upon science, and after it the action; knowledge would be the beginning and maker of every rational action; so that with reason by this alone would the peculiar quality of the rational soul be characterized. For in truth impulse, like knowledge, is moved upon the things that are; but knowledge, this very thing, is a certain beholding of the soul, of the things that are, of some of them, or, when perfected, of all together.

8.70. And yet some say that the wise man is persuaded that there are certain incomprehensible things, so as to have some comprehension even about these, comprehending that the incomprehensible will be incomprehensible. Which is common even to those able to foresee a little; for such a one makes sure that there are certain incomprehensible things. But that gnostic of whom I speak comprehends the very things that seem incomprehensible to others, having believed that nothing is incomprehensible to the Son of God, and so nothing unteachable. For he who suffered out of love toward us would withhold nothing for the teaching of knowledge. This faith, then, becomes a sure demonstration, since truth follows upon the things delivered by God. And if one craves much experience, the disciple of wisdom knows the things of old and conjectures the things to come, understands the turnings of words and the solutions of riddles, foreknows signs and wonders, and the issues of seasons and times.

9.71. For such is the gnostic, that he meets only with those passions that come about for the maintenance of the body — such as hunger, thirst, and the like. But in the case of the Saviour, to say that the body demanded, as a body, the necessary ministrations for its maintenance, would be ridiculous; for he ate, not for the body's sake, held together by a holy power, but lest those with him should think otherwise about him — as indeed afterward some supposed that he had appeared in mere semblance; but he himself was downright impassible, into whom no passible movement entered, neither pleasure nor pain. And the apostles, having mastered, more gnostically, through the Lord's teaching, anger and fear and desire, did not so much as take on even the seeming goods among the passible movements — such as boldness, zeal, joy, cheerfulness — abiding in a fixed condition of mind, in no way changed at all, but ever remaining, after the Lord's resurrection, unaltered in the habit of discipline. For even if one should accept the aforesaid as goods when they come about with reason, yet in the case of the perfect man they are not to be admitted, who has neither boldness (for neither does he come to be in dread things, holding nothing in life dread, nor can anything draw him, even without this, from the love toward God), nor has need of cheerfulness (for neither does he fall into grief, persuaded that all things happen well), nor again is angered (for there is nothing to stir him to anger, ever loving God and being turned wholly toward him alone, and for this reason hating none of God's creatures); nor again is he jealous (for nothing is lacking to him for likeness to the noble and good); nor does he love anyone with this common love, but loves the Creator through the creatures.

9.72. Neither, then, does he fall into any desire or craving, nor is he in want, as touching his soul, of any of the rest, dwelling already through love with the Beloved, to whom he is made akin by his choice, and by the habit that comes of discipline drawing nearer to him; being blessed by reason of the abundance of good things, so that for these things' sake he forces himself to be made like to the teacher unto impassibility. For the Word of God is intellectual, in respect of which the image of mind is seen in man alone, by which the good man is godlike and godlike in soul as to his soul, and again God is man-shaped; for the form of each is the mind, by which we are characterized. Wherefore those who sin against a man are both unholy and impious. For it is foolery too to say that the gnostic and perfect man ought not to be stripped of anger and boldness, as though without these he would neither rise up against difficulties nor endure dreadful things.

9.73. But if we should take cheerfulness too from him, he would surely be confounded by grievous things, and so make a most wretched end of living. And if desire did not belong to him, as some have thought, he could not, they say, take a craving for the things like to the noble and good. If, then, all familiarity with the noble comes about with craving, how does he who craves the noble remain impassible? But these men, as it seems, do not know the divineness of love; for love is no longer a craving on the part of the lover, but an affectionate familiarity, which has restored the gnostic into the unity of the faith, having no further need of time or place. For he who has come to be, through love, already in the things in which he shall be, having grasped hope beforehand through knowledge, craves nothing, holding, so far as may be, the very thing craved. With reason, then, he abides in the one unchangeable habit, loving gnostically; nor will he be jealous to be made like to the noble, having beauty through love. And what further need has such a one of boldness and desire, who has received, through love, familiarity with the impassible God, and through love has enrolled himself among the friends?

9.74. We must, then, set apart for ourselves the gnostic and perfect man from every passion of the soul. For knowledge works training, and the training a habit or disposition, and such a state works impassibility, not moderation of passion; for the complete cutting out of desire reaps impassibility as its fruit. But neither does the gnostic partake of those much-talked-of goods — that is, the passible goods that lie beside the passions; I mean such as gladness (which lies beside pleasure) and dejection (for this is yoked to grief) and caution (for this has subsided from fear), nor yet of spirited anger (for this is ranked beside wrath).

9.75. Even though some say that these are no longer evils, but already goods. For it is impossible that one once perfected through love, and feasting everlastingly and insatiably on the unfilled gladness of contemplation, should still take delight in small and groundling things. For what reasonable cause is left to such a one to run back to worldly goods, who has received the unapproachable light — even if not yet according to time and place, yet by that gnostic love, by which the inheritance and the complete restoration follow, the rewarder confirming by deeds what the gnostic, by gnostic choice through love, has grasped beforehand? For does he not, sojourning toward the Lord through love toward him — even though his tabernacle be beheld upon earth — not lead himself out of life (for that is not permitted him), but lead his soul out of the passions (for that is granted him), and live again, having mortified the desires, and no longer use the body, but only permit it to use the necessary things, lest he furnish the cause of its dissolution?

9.76. How, then, has such a one further need of courage, who does not come to be in dread things, being not present in them, but already wholly dwelling with the Beloved? And what need of temperance to one who has no need of it? For to have such desires as to need temperance for the restraining of them belongs not yet to the pure, but to the passible man; and courage is taken on by reason of fear and cowardice. For it is no longer fitting that the friend of God, whom God foreordained before the foundation of the world to be enrolled in the highest adoption, should fall into pleasures or fears and busy himself about the restraining of the passions. For I would dare to say: as he lies foreordained, by what he shall do, to attain what he shall attain, so too he himself holds foreordained, by what he has known, the one whom he loved, not having the future hard to conjecture, as the many live conjecturing, but having received, through gnostic faith, what to others is unseen.

9.77. And to him, through love, the future is already present; for he has believed, both through the prophecy and through the coming, in the God who does not lie; and what he has believed, he has and holds fast — the promise (and Truth is he who promised) — and the end of the promise, through the trustworthiness of him who promised, he has received surely, by science. And he who knows the sure apprehension of things to come, in the state in which he is, through love runs forward to meet the future. For instance, he who is persuaded that he shall attain the truly good things will not even pray to attain the things here, but rather to cling ever to the faith that hits the mark and sets things right. And besides these, he will pray that as many as may be become like to himself, unto the glory of God, which is perfected by recognition; for a saving thing is he who is made like to the Saviour, in so far as it is lawful for human nature to contain the image, setting straight, inviolably, the things according to the commandments. And he whose part it is to worship the divine through true righteousness, both of deeds and of knowledge —

9.78. of such a one the Lord does not wait for the voice in prayer, saying, "Ask, and I will do; think, and I will give." For, taken generally, in that which changes the unchangeable cannot take firm setting and standing; and in continual change, and therefore in an unstable ruling part, the steadying power is not preserved. For that which is ever altered by the things that creep in from without and fall upon it — how could it ever come to be in a habit and disposition, and, in a word, in the possession of science? And yet the philosophers too hold the virtues to be habits and dispositions and sciences. And that knowledge is not born together with men, but is an acquired thing, and the learning of it has need of attention in the beginning, and of nourishment and increase, and then, from unceasing study, comes into a habit — so, perfected into the mystic habit, it abides unfailing through love. For not only has he apprehended the first cause and the cause begotten by it, and holds firmly concerning these, having gotten abiding reasons abidingly, unfailing and unmoved; but also, concerning goods and evils, and concerning all becoming, and, in a word, concerning the things of which the Lord spoke, he holds the most exact truth, from the foundation of the world to the end, having learned it from the truth itself — not, if anywhere something appear plausible or compelling by Greek reasoning, choosing this before the truth itself, but having taken the things spoken by the Lord plain and manifest. And even if to others they are still hidden, he has already taken the knowledge of all things. And our oracles give their utterance concerning the things that are, that they are; concerning the things to come, that they shall be; and concerning the things that have come about, that they came about.

9.79. And in scientific matters, being alone the man of science, he will hold the first place and represent the doctrine of the Good, ever clinging to the things of mind, and from those archetypes above transcribing the ordering of his affairs among men — as those who sail and steer the ship toward the star — being prepared to hold himself ready for every fitting action, accustomed to look down on all things troublesome and dread, whenever he must endure, doing nothing rash nor out of tune, either with himself or with the common good, ever; being foreseeing, and unbending to pleasures both waking and in dreams. For accustomed to a frugal diet and to self-sufficiency temperately, he is well-girt with dignity, needing few of the necessary things for living, busying himself with nothing superfluous; nor admitting even these as chief things, but as necessary, by reason of fellowship in life, to the sojourn of the flesh, so far as is needful; for knowledge is his chief concern.

10.80. As a consequence, then, he gives himself also to the studies that train him toward knowledge, taking from each subject what is suited to the truth: from music, pursuing the proportion in things harmonized; in arithmetic, marking the increases and decreases of numbers, and their relations to one another, and how the most things fall under a certain proportion of numbers; in geometry, contemplating substance itself by itself, and accustoming himself to conceive a continuous extension and an unchangeable substance, other than these bodies; and from astronomy too, lifted from the earth by the mind, he will be raised on high with the heaven, and will go round in company with the revolution, ever observing the divine things and their harmony with one another — from which, setting out, Abraham mounted up to the knowledge of the Maker. And the gnostic will use dialectic too, choosing the division of the genera into species, and will take the discernment of the things that are, until he lays hold of the first and simple things. But the many, like children fearing the bugbears, so fear the Greek philosophy, fearing lest it lead them away.

10.81. But if their faith (for I would not call it knowledge) is such as to be dissolved by plausible speech, let it be dissolved; for thereby above all they confess that they have not the truth, since "the truth is unconquerable," it says, "but false opinion is dissolved." For instance, we choose out purple by setting it against other purple. So that if one confesses that he has not the heart well-jointed, he has not the table of the money-changers, nor the criterion of words. And how is this man still a money-changer, not being able to test and to discern the genuine coin from the counterfeit? And David cries out, "Because for ever the just man shall not be shaken" — neither by deceitful speech nor by misleading pleasure, whence neither shall he be shaken from his own inheritance. "From an evil report, then, he shall not be afraid" — neither, then, of empty slander, nor of false opinion concerning himself; nor will he fear the crafty words, being one able to discern these, both to ask rightly and to answer. For dialectic is, as it were, a coping that the truth be not trodden down by the sophists. For we who praise in the holy name of the Lord, according to the prophet, must make glad the heart, seeking the Lord. "Seek him, then, and be strengthened; seek his face continually in every way." For having spoken in many parts and in many ways, he is not known simply.

10.82. Not, then, as if using these as virtues will the gnostic be of much learning, but as certain helpers, and in distinguishing the common and the proper he will draw near the truth; for the cause of all error and false opinion is the not being able to discern in what the things that are share with one another and in what they differ. And if one should not go along the path of the argument according to the distinctions, he will, unawares, confound the common and the proper; and this coming about, he must of necessity fall into a trackless way and error. And the distinction of names and of things, even in the Scriptures themselves, engenders a great light in souls; for it is necessary to attend both to the words that signify several things, and to the several words, when they signify one and the same thing; whence comes the power of answering rightly. But the great uselessness must be declined, that busies itself about things of no concern; and the gnostic uses the studies as, so to speak, contributory preliminary exercises, both toward the exact delivery of the truth, so far as may be, and undistractedly, and toward the warding off of the ill-contrived arguments that aim at the cutting out of the truth.

10.83. He will not, then, be left behind those who advance in the encyclical studies and in the Greek philosophy; yet not according to the chief account, but according to the necessary and second and circumstantial; for those things which they who labour according to the heresies use cunningly, these the gnostic will use to good. Since, then, the truth that appears in the Greek philosophy is partial, the truly real truth, as the sun, shining upon the colours, both the white and the black, shows of what kind each of them is — so too does it refute every sophistical plausibility. With reason, then, was it proclaimed beforehand even to the Greeks: "Beginning of great virtue, queen, Truth."

11.84. As, then, in astronomy we have for an example Abraham, so in arithmetic the same Abraham. For when he heard that Lot had been taken captive, having numbered his own household, three hundred and eighteen, and gone out, he overcame a very great number of the enemy. They say, then, that the three-hundredth letter, in respect of its shape, is a type of the Lord's sign, and the iota and the eta signify the Saviour's name; so that it is shown that Abraham's household, who took refuge in the sign and the name, became masters of those who took captive, and of the very many unbelieving nations that followed them. Now the number three hundred is a triad in the hundreds, and the decad is confessed to be all-perfect; and the eight, the first cube, the equality in all the dimensions — length, breadth, depth. "The days of men," it says, "shall be a hundred and twenty years." And the number is, from the monad by composition, the fifteenth; and the moon on the fifteenth day becomes full of light.

11.85. And in another way the hundred and twenty is a triangular number, and is made up of the equality of the sixty-four, of which the composition by parts begets squares — 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 — and out of the inequality of the fifty-six, seven of the even numbers from the dyad, which beget the oblongs — 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14. And by another signification again the hundred and twenty is made up of four: of one triangle, the fifteenth; of another, a square, the twenty-fifth; of a third, a pentagon, the thirty-fifth; of a fourth, a hexagon, the forty-fifth. For according to the same proportion the five is taken in each kind: of the triangles, from the monad, the five gives the fifteenth; of the squares, the twenty-fifth; and of the rest proportionately. Yes, and the number twenty-five, being five from the monad, is said to be a symbol of the Levitical tribe; and the thirty-five itself holds of the arithmetical and geometrical and harmonical diagram of the doubles — 6, 8, 9, 12 — of which the composition begets the thirty-five; in which days the Jews say the seven-months' children are formed. And the forty-five holds of the diagram of the triples — 6, 9, 12, 18 — of which the composition begets the forty-five; and in these days likewise they say the nine-months' children are formed.

11.86. This, then, is the form of the arithmetical example. And let there be for a witness of geometry the tabernacle that was set up, and the ark that was framed, by certain most rational proportions, fashioned by divine devices, by a gift of understanding, leading us from the things of sense to the things of mind — or rather, from these to the holy things, and from the holy things to the holy of holies. For the four-square pieces of wood, by the four-square figure standing firm on every side, completing right angles, show forth security. And the length of the structure was three hundred cubits, the breadth fifty, the depth thirty; and it is brought up to a cubit at the top, the ark being tapered from its broad base after the manner of a pyramid, a symbol of those purified and tested through fire. And this geometrical proportion is furnished for the conveyance of those holy abodes, whose differences the differences of the numbers set down make plain.

11.87. And the proportions borne in are sixfold, as the three hundred to the fifty; and tenfold, as the three hundred is tenfold the thirty; and the proportion two-and-a-third, for the fifty is two-and-a-third the thirty. And there are some who say that the three hundred cubits are a symbol of the Lord's sign; the fifty, of hope and of the remission at the Pentecost; and the thirty — or, as in some, twelve — they record to show forth the preaching, because in his thirtieth year the Lord preached, and twelve were the apostles; and that the structure is brought up to a cubit, the advance of the just ending in unity and in the oneness of the faith. And the table in the temple was made of six cubits, and the four feet each a cubit and a half. So they gather the whole to twelve cubits, in agreement with the winding of the twelve months in the yearly circle, according to which all things grow and bear fruit, the earth being made familiar with the four seasons. And the table, I think, shows an image of the earth, resting on four feet — summer, autumn, spring, winter — through which the year travels. Wherefore it says too that the table has twisted wave-mouldings, either because all things are wheeled round by the periods of the seasons, or perhaps it showed forth the earth surrounded by ocean.

11.88. Further, let David, singing at once and prophesying, hymning God tunefully, be set forth as an example of music. And it well suits the enharmonic genus to the Dorian harmony, and the diatonic to the Phrygian, as Aristoxenus says. The harmony, then, of the barbarian psaltery, showing forth the dignity of the melody, being most ancient, becomes an example above all to Terpander, who hymns Zeus to the Dorian harmony somewhat thus: "Zeus, beginning of all, leader of all, Zeus, to you I send this beginning of hymns." And the psalmist's lyre might be allegorized: by the first signification the Lord; by the second, those who closely strike the souls under the Lord as leader of the muses. And if the people that is saved be called a lyre, it is heard, by the inspiration of the Word and by the recognition of God, glorifying musically, being struck unto faith by the Word. And you might take in another way too the ecclesiastical musical concord, of law and prophets together with apostles and the Gospel, and the under-running concord, that according to each prophet, in the leaps from person to person.

11.89. But, as it seems, the most of those who inscribe themselves with the name, like the comrades of Odysseus, go after the discourse boorishly, passing by, not the Sirens, but the rhythm and the melody, stopping their ears with want of learning, since they know they will not be able, having once submitted their hearing to the Greek studies, thereafter to attain the return home. But for him who culls the useful for the benefit of the catechumens, and especially when they are Greeks ("for the Lord's is the earth and the fulness thereof"), the love of learning is not to be abstained from, after the manner of irrational animals; but as many helps as may be must be gathered for those who hear. Yet one must in no way linger over these, except only for the useful thing from them, so that, having taken this and acquired it, one may be able to go away home to the true philosophy, having procured for the soul a sure pledge of security from all sides. One must, then, take hold of music for the adorning and ordering of character.

11.90. For instance, even over the cup we pledge one another in singing, charming our desiring part, and glorifying God for the ungrudging gift of human enjoyments, of the foods supplied everlastingly both for the increase of the body and for that of the soul. But excessive music must be spat out, that breaks down souls and casts them into variety, now dirge-like, now wanton and luxurious, now bacchic and frenzied. The same account holds also of astronomy; for this, after the history of things on high, concerning the shape of the whole and the motion of the heaven and the movement of the stars, bringing the soul nearer to the creating power, teaches it to be quick-sensed concerning the seasons of the year, the change of the airs, the risings of the stars; since both navigation and husbandry are full of the use of it, as architecture and building of geometry. And this study makes the soul, as far as may be, attentive, discerning of the true and refuting of the false, finding out agreements and proportions, so as to track down the like in the unlike; and it leads us up to find a breadthless length and a depthless surface and a partless point, and transfers us from the things of sense to the things of mind.

11.91. The studies, then, are helpers of philosophy, and philosophy itself toward the apprehension of truth. For instance, the cloak was at first a fleece, then it was carded and became woof and warp, and then it was woven. The soul, then, must be prepared and variously worked, if it is to be made best; since of the truth one part is gnostic, the other practical, and this has flowed from the contemplative, and has need of training and much joint exercise and experience. But of the contemplative too one part is toward one's neighbours, the other as toward oneself. Wherefore education too must be so prepared as to be fitted to both. It is possible, then, for one who has sufficiently learned the things that hold together what leads to knowledge to remain thenceforth in quiet, at rest, directing his actions toward contemplation; but on account of the benefit of his neighbours — some pressing on to write, some setting out to deliver the word — both the other education is useful, and the reading of the Lord's Scriptures is necessary for the proof of what is said, and most of all if those who hear are led up from the Greek education.

11.92. Such a church does David describe: "The queen stood at your right hand, in a garment of woven gold, clad in things of many colours" — that is, with the Greek and superfluous studies — "in golden fringes, clad in things of many colours." But the truth is through the Lord. "For who has known your counsel," it says, "unless you have given wisdom and sent your Holy Spirit from on high? And so were the paths of those upon the earth set straight, and men were taught the things pleasing to you, and were saved by wisdom." For the gnostic, according to the Scripture, knows the things of old and conjectures the things to come, understands the turnings of words and the solutions of riddles, foreknows signs and wonders and the issues of seasons and times, as we said before.

11.93. Do you see the spring of the studies setting out from wisdom? But to those who object, "What profit is it to know the causes of how the sun moves, for instance, and the rest of the stars, or to have studied the geometrical theorems or the dialectical, and each of the other studies, for these are of no profit toward the rendering of what is fitting; and that the Greek philosophy is human understanding, for it does not teach the truth" — to these those things are to be said: first, that they stumble even about the greatest of the things that are — that is, the free choice of the mind. "For those who guard holily the holy things," it says, "shall be sanctified, and those who have been taught them shall find a defence." For the gnostic alone will do, with reason and holily, all the things to be done, as he has learned, having received it through men by the Lord's teaching. And again one may hear: "For in his hand" — that is, in his power and wisdom — "are both we and our words, and all prudence and the science of crafts. For God loves nothing but the man who dwells with wisdom." And next — have they not read what was said by Solomon? For, treating of the construction of the temple, he downright says, "And wisdom, the craftswoman, built it; and your providence, O Father, steers it."

11.94. And how is it not unreasonable to think philosophy worse than carpentry and shipbuilding? Perhaps too the Lord fed that multitude reclining on the grass over against Tiberias with the two fishes and the five barley loaves, hinting at the preliminary education of Greeks and Jews before the divine wheat of the food husbanded according to the law; for the barley is riper toward the summer season than the wheat. And the Greek philosophy, born and borne about upon the Gentile wave, the fishes show forth, given for stretched-out nourishment to those still lying on the ground; not increasing, as did the fragments of the loaves, but, having partaken of the Lord's blessing, breathing in the resurrection of divinity through the power of the Word. But if you are also curious, take the one of the fishes to be the encyclical learning, and the other to show forth that very philosophy which has mounted higher, both being akin to the Lord's Word; and "a chorus of voiceless fishes plashed about," the tragic muse has said somewhere. "And I too must be lessened, but the Lord's Word alone increase," into which the law is brought to its end, the prophet John has said.

11.95. Understand now for me the mystery of the truth, granting pardon if I shrink from going further in the working-out, proclaiming only this: "All things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be." Indeed, he is called a corner-stone, "in whom every building, fitly framed together, grows into a holy temple of God," according to the divine apostle. I am silent now of the parable in the Gospel that says, "The kingdom of heaven is like to a man who cast a net into the sea, and out of the multitude of the fishes taken makes a choice of the better ones." And now too our wisdom plainly proclaims the four virtues somewhat thus, so that the springs of these too were given to the Greeks from the Hebrews. This one may learn from these words: "And if anyone love righteousness, the labours of this are virtues; for she teaches temperance and prudence, righteousness and courage, than which nothing is more useful in the life of men." But above all they ought to have known this too: that by nature we have come to be fit for virtue, yet not so as to have it from birth, but suited to the acquiring of it.

12.96. By which account is solved the difficulty raised against us by the heretics, whether Adam was moulded perfect or imperfect. But if imperfect, how is the work of the perfect God imperfect — and most of all, man? But if perfect, how does he transgress the commandments? For they shall hear from us too that he did not come to be perfect in his constitution, but fit for the receiving of virtue; for it makes a difference, surely, to have been made fit for virtue with a view to the acquiring of it. And he wills us to be saved out of ourselves. This, then, is the nature of the soul, to be moved out of itself; next, being rational, philosophy being rational, we have a certain kinship with it; and the fitness is a bearing toward virtue, but not virtue. All men, then, as I said, are by nature fit for the acquiring of virtue; but one goes forward more, another less, both in learning and in training; wherefore some have held out to perfect virtue, others have reached only to a certain point, and some, again, being neglected, even though otherwise of good natural parts, have turned aside to the contrary. And much more is the knowledge that differs in greatness from all studies and in truth most grievous to acquire, and is won with much labour.

12.97. But, as it seems, they have not known the mysteries of God: that God created man unto incorruption, and made him an image of his own peculiar being, according to which peculiar being of him who knows all things the gnostic, being just and holy with prudence, hastens to come to the measure of perfect manhood. And that not the deeds and the thoughts only, but the words too, are pure in the gnostic — "You have tried my heart, you have visited it by night," it says; "you have proved me by fire, and no injustice was found in me, so that my mouth shall not speak the works of men." And what does it mean by "the works of men"? It makes known sin itself, not as drawn back to repentance (for this is common to the rest of believers too), but what sin is. For neither does it condemn this or that sin, but simply all sin; nor what someone has done amiss, but it shows forth what is not to be done. Whence repentance too is twofold: the one common, over the having stumbled; the other, having learned the nature of sin, persuades to stand apart from the very sinning, by a chief account, upon which follows the not sinning.

12.98. Let them not, then, say that he who acts unjustly and sins sins by the working of spirits; since then he would be guiltless. But choosing, in sinning, the same things as the spirits, being unstable and light and changeable in his desires, like a spirit, the man becomes spirit-driven. For instance, the evil man by nature, having become given to sin through evil, is base, holding what he willingly chose; and being given to sin, he also errs in his deeds; but, on the contrary, the earnest man sets things right. Wherefore we call not only the virtues, but also the noble actions, goods; and of goods we know that some are to be chosen for their own sake, as knowledge (for we hunt nothing else from it, when it is present, than its very presence, and our being in unceasing contemplation, and our struggling toward it and through it), but others for the sake of other things, as faith, for the sake of the escape from chastisement that comes of it and the benefit that comes from the recompense. For fear is the cause of not sinning to the many, and the promise the occasion of pursuing obedience, through which is salvation.

12.99. Most perfect, then, is knowledge as a good, being chosen for its own sake; and consequently the things following through it are noble. And chastisement, to the one chastised, is the cause of correction; and to those able to foresee from afar it becomes an example, by which they cut off the falling together with those like them. Let us, then, receive knowledge, not craving the results, but embracing it for the sake of knowing itself. For the first benefit is the gnostic habit, furnishing harmless pleasures and gladness both now and hereafter. And the gladness they say is cheerfulness, being a reasoning upon the virtue that is according to truth, through a certain feasting and outpouring of the soul. And the works that partake of knowledge are the good and noble deeds. For true wealth is the abundance in the deeds according to virtue, and poverty is the want according to worldly desires. For the possessions and uses of necessary things have not their quality harmful, but their quantity beyond measure.

12.100. Wherefore the gnostic circumscribes his desires, both in possession and in use, not overstepping the bound of necessities. Holding, then, the living here to be necessary for the joint increase of science and the procuring of knowledge, he will set, not the living, but the living well above all things; preferring neither children, nor again marriage, nor parents, to the love toward God and the righteousness in life. And the wife, after the bearing of children, is judged by him a sister, as being of the same Father, then only being reminded of her husband whenever she looks upon her children, as one who shall truly be a sister even after the putting off of the flesh, which separates and divides the knowledge of spiritual things by the peculiarity of the forms. For the souls, by themselves, are equal; the souls are neither, neither male nor female, when they neither marry nor are given in marriage. And is not the woman thus translated into the man, becoming unwomanish and manly and perfect alike?

12.101. This, then, was the laughter of Sarah, when the birth of a son was announced to her, not disbelieving the angel, I think, but ashamed of that intercourse, through which she was about to become the mother of a son. And was it not from then that Abraham, when he was in danger before the king of Egypt on account of Sarah's beauty, properly called her sister and of the same father, but not yet of the same mother? To those, then, who have repented of sins, and have not firmly believed, God grants their requests through their prayers; but to those who live sinlessly and gnostically, he gives upon their merely thinking. For instance, to Anna, upon her merely thinking of the child, was granted the conception of Samuel. "Ask," says the Scripture, "and I will do; think, and I will give." For we have received that God is the knower of hearts, not conjecturing, as we men do, from the movement of the soul, nor again from the result (for it is ridiculous so to think); nor, as the architect, when the work was made, praised it, so did God, having so made the light, then, having seen it, say it was good; but he, even before making it, knowing what it would be, praised this; and "it came to be" by the power of him who makes it good from above, through the beginningless purpose, the thing that should be good in actuality. For instance, he said beforehand that the thing to come should already be good, the phrase, by the inversion of order, hiding the truth.

12.102. The gnostic, then, prays even in thought every hour, being made familiar with God through love. And first he will ask remission of sins; and after the no longer sinning, the being able yet to do good and to understand the whole creation and dispensation of the Lord, that so, being pure in heart, he may be initiated, through the recognition that is through the Son of God, into the blessed vision face to face — having hearkened to the Scripture that says, "Fasting with prayer is good." And fastings show forth abstentions from all evils whatsoever, both in deed and in word and in the very thought. As it seems, then, righteousness is four-square, equal and like on every side — in word, in deed, in abstention from evils, in beneficence, in gnostic perfection, in no way at all limping, lest it appear unjust and unequal. As, then, one is just, this man is altogether faithful too; but as faithful, he is not yet also just — I mean the righteousness that is by advance and perfection, according to which the gnostic is called just.

12.103. For instance, to Abraham, having become faithful, it was reckoned for righteousness, when he had advanced to the greater and more perfect thing than faith. For not he who only abstains from the evil deed is just, unless he work besides both the doing good and the knowing on what account some things are to be abstained from and others done. "Through the weapons of righteousness on the right hand and on the left," says the apostle, the just man is conveyed to the highest inheritance, hedged about by the one and working by the other. For the mere shelter of the whole armour and the abstention from sins is not sufficient for perfection, unless it take besides the work of righteousness, the working unto beneficence. Then the ambidextrous and gnostic among us is revealed in righteousness, glorified already even here, as Moses was in his face — which, in what went before, we said is the characteristic property of the just soul. For as the styptic of the dye, abiding in the wool, gives it its peculiarity and its difference from the rest of the wool, so too in the case of the soul the labour has passed by, but the noble remains; and the sweet is left behind, but the shameful is wiped off. For these are the characteristic qualities of either soul, by which the one is known as glorified, the other as condemned.

12.104. Yes, and as upon Moses, from his righteous doing and his continual converse with the God who spoke to him, a certain glorified tint settled upon his face, so too upon the just soul a certain divine power of goodness, in respect of oversight and of prophecy and of governing energy, drawing near, as it were the radiance of an intellectual light, like the warmth of the sun, leaves its mark — a manifest seal of righteousness, a light united to the soul through undivided love, the soul being borne of God. Here the likeness to the saving God springs up to the gnostic, in so far as is lawful for human nature, he becoming perfect "as the Father," it says, "in the heavens." It is he who said, "Little children, yet a little while I am with you"; since God too, not in respect of his being good by nature, in this remains blessed and incorruptible, neither having troubles nor giving them to another; but working good in his own way, being God truly and the good Father, being and becoming in unceasing beneficences, he abides inviolably in the sameness of goodness. For what profit is there of a good thing that does not work nor do good?

13.105. He, then, who has first moderated his passions and trained himself toward impassibility, and grown into the beneficence of gnostic perfection, is equal to the angels here; and being already luminous, and shining as the sun by reason of his good-doing, he hastens, through just knowledge, by love of God, to the holy abode, like the apostles — who became apostles not because they were elect by any peculiar excellence of nature (since Judas too was chosen with them), but because they were such as could become apostles, being chosen by him who foresees even the ends. For instance, Matthias, who was not chosen with them, having shown himself worthy to become an apostle, is set in the room of Judas.

13.106. It is possible, then, even now for those who have trained themselves in the Lord's commandments, having lived perfectly and gnostically according to the Gospel, to be enrolled in the election of the apostles. Such a one is truly an elder of the church and a true deacon of the will of God, if he do and teach the things of the Lord — not ordained by men, nor counted just because he is an elder, but enrolled in the presbytery because he is just; and even if here on earth he be not honoured with the first seat, he shall sit on the four-and-twenty thrones, judging the people, as John says in the Revelation. For one in truth is the saving covenant, reaching from the foundation of the world to us, supposed to be different in the giving according to different generations and times. For it follows that there is one unchangeable gift of salvation, from one God through one Lord, benefiting in many ways; for which cause the middle wall is taken away that divides the Greek from the Jew, into a peculiar people.

13.107. And so both come into the unity of the faith, and the election out of both is one. And of the elect, it says, the more elect are those who, by the perfect knowledge, are culled out of the church itself and honoured with the most magnificent glory, judges and governors alike, of Jews and of Greeks, the four-and-twenty, the grace being doubled. Since the advances here in the church, of bishops, elders, deacons, are imitations, I think, of angelic glory, and of that dispensation which the Scriptures say awaits those who, following in the footsteps of the apostles, have lived in perfection of righteousness according to the Gospel. These, caught up in clouds, the apostle writes, shall first minister, then be enrolled in the presbytery by advance of glory (for glory differs from glory), until they grow into perfect manhood.

14.108. Such men, according to David, shall rest in the holy mountain of God, the highest church, in which are gathered the philosophers of God, the true Israelites, the pure in heart, in whom is no guile — who have not remained in the hebdomad of rest, but have looked over, by the good-doing of divine likeness, into the inheritance of the beneficence of the ogdoad, giving themselves to the pure beholding of insatiable contemplation. "There are also other sheep," says the Lord, "which are not of this fold" — held worthy of another fold and abode, in proportion to the faith. "But my sheep hear my voice," understanding gnostically the commandments; and this is to receive them high-mindedly and worthily, together with the recompense and the joint sequence of the works. So that, when we hear "Your faith has saved you," we do not take him to say that those who have in any way believed shall be saved, unless the works too follow. For instance, he spoke this voice to Jews only, who had lived lawfully and blamelessly, to whom faith in the Lord alone was lacking.

14.109. Such a one, then, could not be faithful with intemperance; but even if he should not go out from the flesh, he must put off his passions, that he may be able to come into his own abode. And it is more to know than to believe, as indeed it is more, after being saved, to be held worthy of the highest honour. The believer, then, through much instruction having put off the passions, passes over to the abode better than the former, bearing as his greatest chastisement the peculiar mark of repentance for what he sinned after the baptism. For he is grieved yet the more, either at not yet, or at not at all, attaining what he sees others have partaken of. And besides, he is ashamed of his stumblings, which indeed are the greatest chastisements to the believer. For good is the righteousness of God, and just is his goodness. And even if the punishments cease somewhere, upon the paying out of the requital and the cleansing of each, those found worthy of the other fold have a great abiding grief — the grief at not being together with those glorified for righteousness.

14.110. For instance, Solomon, calling the gnostic wise, says this concerning those who marvel at the dignity of the abode: "For they shall see the end of the wise, and shall not understand what the Lord purposed concerning him, and for what he secured him; and over his glory they shall say, 'This was he whom we once had for a laughing-stock and for a byword of reproach, we the foolish; we reckoned his life madness and his end dishonourable. How was he counted among the sons of God, and is his lot among the saints?'" Not only the believer, then, but the Gentile too is judged most justly. For since God knew, being foreknower, that this man would not believe, none the less, that he might receive the perfection that lay within his own reach, he gave him philosophy, but before faith; and he gave the sun and the moon and the stars for worship, which God made for the Gentiles, says the law, that they might not, becoming utterly godless, be utterly destroyed. But those who, even in this commandment, became thankless, giving heed to carved images, are judged, unless they repent — some because, being able, they were not willing to believe in God, others because, willing, they did not work it out to become faithful;

14.111. yes, and those too who, from the worship of the stars, did not run back up to the maker of them. For this was the way given to the Gentiles, to look up to God through the worship of the stars. But those who would not abide upon these stars given to them, but fell away even from these to stones and wood, "were reckoned as chaff," it says, "and as a drop from a bucket" — superfluous unto salvation, those cast off from the body. As, then, the merely saving is of the middle things, but the rightly and fittingly is a setting-right, so too every act of the gnostic is a setting-right, but of the merely faithful a middle act, not yet performed according to reason, nor yet set right according to attention; but every act of the Gentile, on the contrary, is sinful. For not the merely faring well, but the making one's acts toward a certain aim and the working with reason, the Scriptures set forth as fitting.

14.112. As, then, lyres are not to be handled by those inexperienced in lyre-playing, nor flutes by those inexperienced in flute-playing, so neither are affairs to be handled by those who have not received knowledge and do not know how to use them throughout their whole life. The contest for freedom, then, is contended not only in wars by the athletes of war, but also in symposia and on the bed and in the law-courts by those anointed with the Word, ashamed to become captives of pleasure: "Never will I exchange virtue for unjust gain." And unjust gain outright is pleasure and grief, longing and fear, and, in a word, the passions of the soul, whose present delight is grievous for the time to come. "For what profit, if you gain the world," it says, "but lose your soul?" It is plain, then, that those who do not accomplish the noble deeds do not even know what is profitable to themselves. And if this be so, neither are they able rightly to pray and to receive from God the good things, being ignorant of the truly good things; nor, if they received them, would they perceive the gift, nor would they enjoy worthily that which they did not know, both from inexperience of the using well of what is given, and from the great unlearning, not yet having known how the divine gifts are to be used. And unlearning is the cause of ignorance.

14.113. And it seems to me to be the boast of a boastful soul, yet a soul of good conscience, to declare to the things that befall by circumstance: "Against these let them contrive what they will; for the good is with me, and the just shall be my ally, and I shall never be caught doing noble deeds." And this good conscience preserves both holiness toward God and righteousness toward men, keeping the soul pure with august thoughts and pure words and just deeds. Thus, having received the Lord's power, the soul practises to be God, holding that nothing else is evil except ignorance and the working that is not according to right reason, and ever giving thanks for all things to God, through just hearing and divine reading, through true inquiry, through holy offering, through blessed prayer; praising, hymning, blessing, singing. Such a soul is never at any season separated from God. With reason, then, it was said, "And those who trust in him shall understand truth, and the faithful in love shall abide with him." You see what things wisdom discourses concerning the gnostics.

14.114. Proportionately, then, the abodes too are various according to the worth of those who have believed. For instance, Solomon: "For there shall be given him the choice grace of faith, and a lot in the temple of the Lord, more pleasing." For the comparative shows the things that lie beneath in the temple of God, which is the whole church; and leaves us to conceive also the superlative, where the Lord is. And these three elect abodes the numbers in the Gospel hint at — the thirty and the sixty and the hundred. And the perfect inheritance belongs to those who come to perfect manhood, according to the image of the Lord; but the likeness is not, as some hold, that according to the human shape (for godless is this notion), nor again that according to virtue, which is toward the first cause (for impious too is this rendering, of those who expect the same virtue to belong to man and to God the Almighty); "you supposed," it says, "lawlessness, that I shall be like you." But "it is enough for the disciple to become as the teacher," says the teacher. According to the likeness of God, then, he who has been ranked into adoption and friendship of God comes to be, by the joint inheritance, of the lords and gods, if, as the Lord himself taught, he be perfected according to the Gospel.

15.115. The gnostic, then, takes the closer likeness — the mind of the teacher; which the teacher, conceiving, both enjoined and counselled upon the prudent and temperate, understanding it as the teacher willed, and having taken up privately the magnificent conception — having taught worthily upon the housetops those able to be built up loftily, and having begun the working of the things said according to the example of his manner of life. For he enjoined things possible; and the kingly and Christian man must in truth be ruling and leading, since we have been appointed to be lords not over the wild beasts without only, but also over the savage passions within ourselves. By attention, then, as it seems, to the evil and the good life the gnostic is saved, understanding and working more than the scribes and Pharisees. "Bend the bow, and prosper, and reign," David writes, "for the sake of truth and meekness and righteousness, and your right hand shall guide you wonderfully" — that is, the Lord. "Who, then, is wise and shall understand these things? Prudent, and shall know them? For straight are the ways of the Lord," says the prophet, showing that the gnostic alone is able to understand and make plain the things said hiddenly by the Spirit. "And he that is prudent shall keep silence at that season," says the Scripture — plainly, from declaring them to the unworthy; for the Lord says, "He that has ears to hear, let him hear," saying that the hearing and understanding belong not to all.

15.116. For instance, David writes, "Dark water in the clouds of the airs"; "from the brightness before him the clouds passed through, hail and coals of fire" — teaching that the holy words are hidden. And he shows that to the gnostics they are sent down from God transparent and far-shining, like harmless hail; but dark to the many, like coals quenched out of fire, which, unless one kindle and rekindle them, will not flame nor give light. "The Lord, then," it says, "gives me a tongue of discipline, to know in season when it is needful to speak a word" — not in martyrdom only, but also that by question and answer; "and the discipline of the Lord opens my mouth." It belongs to the gnostic, then, both to know how to use the word, and when, and how, and to whom.

15.117. And already the apostle too, saying "after the elements of the world and not after Christ," delivers the Greek teaching to be elementary, but that according to Christ perfect, as we showed before. For instance, the wild olive is grafted into the fatness of the olive, and indeed grows of the same kind with the cultivated olives; for the thing implanted uses the tree in which it is planted instead of earth; and all the plants together have sprung up from a divine command. Wherefore, even if the wild olive be a wild thing, yet it crowns the Olympic victors; and the elm, leading the vine up to a height, teaches it to bear good fruit. And we see now the wild trees drawing more nourishment to themselves through their not being able to digest. The wild, then, are less digestive than the cultivated, and the cause of their being wild is the lack of digestive power.

15.118. The grafted olive, then, takes more nourishment, by reason of the wild thing being implanted; but, being of this kind, it is accustomed to digest the nourishment, being made like to the fatness of the cultivated. So too the philosopher, likened to the wild olive, having much that is undigested, by reason of being inquisitive and easy to follow up and craving the fatness of the truth — if he take besides the divine power through faith, planted in the kindly and cultivated knowledge, like the wild olive grafted into the truly noble and merciful Word, both digests the nourishment delivered and becomes a good olive. For the grafting makes the worthless noble, and forces the unfruitful to become fruitful, by the husbandman's art and the gnostic science.

15.119. They say, then, that the grafting comes about in four ways: one, by which the thing grafted must be fitted between the wood and the bark, as the unlearned of the Gentiles are catechized, receiving the word on the surface; another, when, having split the wood, they thrust into it the noble shoot, which happens in the case of those who have philosophized — for, their doctrines being cleft, the recognition of truth comes about in them; thus too, the old Scripture being opened to the Jews, the new and noble shoot of the olive is grafted in. The third grafting touches the wild and the heretics, who are brought over to the truth by force; for, having shaved off each side with a sharp knife to a wedge, until they bare the pith, but do not wound it, they bind them to one another. And a fourth manner of grafting is that called inoculation; for from a noble stem an eye is taken off, with the bark around it cut round about, about a hand's-breadth in length; then the stem is shaved off, at an eye equal to the cut round about, and so the eye is set in, bound about with cords and smeared with clay, the eye being kept unhurt and undefiled. This is a kind of gnostic teaching, able to look through into things; and indeed this kind is most useful even in the case of cultivated trees.

15.120. And the grafting spoken of by the apostle, into the good olive, may be into Christ himself, the savage and unbelieving nature being planted into Christ — that is, into those who believe in Christ; but it is better that the faith of each be grafted into the very soul. For the Holy Spirit too is somehow thus transplanted, distributed according to the circumscription of each without circumscription. And concerning knowledge Solomon, discoursing, says this: "Bright and unfading is wisdom, and easily beheld by those who love her; she anticipates those who desire her, to be known beforehand. He who rises early to her shall not labour; for to have thought about her is the perfection of prudence, and he who has watched for her sake shall quickly be free of care; for she goes about seeking those worthy of her" (for knowledge is not for all), "and in their paths she shows herself to them graciously." And the paths are the conduct of life and the manifold variety according to the covenants. For instance, he adds:

15.121. "and in every thought she meets them," being beheld variously — through every kind of education, plainly. Then he adds, setting forth the perfecting love, by a syllogistic argument and true premises, most demonstrative and true, bringing on somewhat thus the conclusion: "For her most true beginning is the craving of education" (that is, of knowledge), "and the care of education is love, and love is the keeping of her laws, and the giving heed to her laws is the confirmation of incorruption, and incorruption makes one near to God. The craving of wisdom, then, leads up to a kingdom." For he teaches, I think, that true education is a craving of knowledge, and the practice of education is established through love of knowledge. And love is the keeping of the commandments that lead up to knowledge, and the keeping of them is the confirmation of the commandments, through which incorruption comes about; and incorruption makes one near to God. If, then, love of knowledge makes incorruptible and leads up the kingly man near to God the King, one must seek knowledge unto discovery. And inquiry is an impulse toward apprehension, finding out, by certain signs, the thing that lies before it; and discovery is the end and rest of inquiry, having come to be in apprehension — which is knowledge. And this is properly discovery, being the apprehension of inquiry. And a sign they say is the leading or accompanying or following.

15.122. Of the inquiry, then, concerning God, the discovery is the teaching that comes through the Son; and a sign that our Saviour himself is that very Son of God are the prophecies that went before his coming, proclaiming him, and the testimonies concerning him that accompanied his sensible birth, and besides these the powers proclaimed and openly shown after his ascension. A proof, then, that the truth is among us, is the very fact that the Son of God himself taught. For if in every inquiry these universals are found, person and thing, the truly real truth is shown to be among us alone, since the person of the truth that is shown is the Son of God, and the thing is the power of faith, which abounds over everyone whatsoever that opposes, even over the whole world standing in array. But since this has been confessed to be confirmed by everlasting deeds and words, and is already manifest, everyone worthy of chastisement, not of contradiction, who thinks there is no providence and is truly godless — but it lies before us, by doing what and living in what manner we may come to the recognition of God the Almighty, and how, honouring the divine, we may become causes of salvation to ourselves; having learned and known, not from the sophists, but from God himself, the thing well-pleasing to him, we set our hand to do the just and holy thing. And our being saved is well-pleasing to him; and salvation comes about through good-doing and through knowledge, of both of which the Lord is teacher.

15.123. If, then, even according to Plato it is only possible to learn the true thing either from God or from the offspring of God, with reason, culling our testimonies from the divine oracles, we boast to be taught the truth through the Son of God, prophesied first and afterward made plain; and the things that help toward the discovery of the truth are not themselves to be rejected. Philosophy, at any rate, proclaiming providence, and the recompense of the happy life and the chastisement of the unhappy, theologizes in a comprehensive way, but no longer keeps the things to exactness and in particular. For neither concerning the Son of God nor concerning the dispensation according to providence does it treat as we do; for it did not know the worship that is according to God. Wherefore the heresies of the barbarian philosophy, even if they speak of one God and hymn Christ, speak comprehensively, not to the truth; for they both invent another God and receive Christ not as the prophecies deliver him. But their false doctrines are nothing against us, so long as they oppose the conduct according to the truth.

15.124. For instance, Paul circumcised Timothy on account of those who believed from among the Jews, that the catechumens from the law should not fall away from the faith while he was dissolving the things assumed too fleshly out of the law, knowing exactly that circumcision does not justify; for he confessed to become all things to all men, by accommodation preserving the authoritative doctrines, that he might gain all. And Daniel bore the collar before the king of the Persians, not overlooking the affliction of the people. Liars, then, in truth are not those who accommodate themselves through the dispensation of salvation, nor those who err about some particular matter, but those who fall away in the most authoritative things and reject the Lord as far as in them lies, robbing the Lord of his true teaching, those who do not speak and deliver the Scriptures worthily of God and the Lord. For a deposit rendered to God is the understanding and joint training, according to the Lord's teaching through his apostles, of the godly tradition; "and what you hear in the ear" (hiddenly, that is, and in a mystery; for such things are allegorized as being spoken into the ear), "preach upon the housetops," it says — receiving them high-mindedly and delivering them loftily, and making the Scriptures plain according to the rule of truth. For neither the prophecy nor the Saviour himself uttered the divine mysteries simply so, as to be easily caught by the chance comer, but discoursed in parables.

15.125. The apostles, at any rate, say of the Lord that he spoke all things in parables, and without a parable spoke he nothing to them. And if all things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be, then prophecy and the law too came to be through him, and were spoken in parables through him. "But all things are right before those who understand," says the Scripture — that is, before all those who, receiving the interpretation of the Scriptures made plain by him according to the ecclesiastical rule, preserve it. And the ecclesiastical rule is the concord and the symphony of the law and the prophets with the covenant delivered at the Lord's coming. Knowledge, then, is followed by prudence, and temperance by prudence. For let it be said that prudence is a divine knowledge, and exists in those made gods; but temperance is mortal, and exists in men who philosophize, but are not yet wise. For instance, if virtue is divine, the knowledge of it is divine too; but temperance is, as it were, an imperfect prudence, craving prudence, and working laboriously and not contemplatively — as righteousness too, being human, is a common thing, and has subsided below holiness, which is the divine righteousness. For to the perfect man righteousness is not in civil contracts nor in the prohibition of the law, but from his own proper doing and from the love toward God.

15.126. For many causes, then, the Scriptures hide the sense: first, that we may be inquirers and ever wakeful to the discovery of the saving words; next, because it was not fitting for all to understand, lest they be harmed by taking otherwise the things spoken savingly by the Holy Spirit. Wherefore the holy mysteries of the prophecies, kept for the elect of men and for those approved from faith unto knowledge, are veiled in the parables. For the character of the Scriptures is parabolic, since the Lord too, not being of the world, came among men as one of the world. For he wore all virtue, and was about to lead up the man bred together with the world, through knowledge, to the things of mind and authoritative, from world to world. Wherefore too he used the metaphorical Scripture; for such is the parable, a discourse, from something not the chief thing, but like to the chief thing, leading the understanding one to the true and chief thing — or, as some say, a phrasing that sets forth, through other things, with energy, the things properly said.

15.127. And by now too the whole dispensation prophesied concerning the Lord seems, in truth, a parable to those who have not known the truth, when one says, and others hear, that the Son of God, of him who made all things, having taken flesh and been carried in a virgin's womb (in respect of which his sensible little body has come to be), and consequently, in respect of his having become this, having suffered and risen — to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness, as the apostle says. But the Scriptures, opened, and showing to those who have ears the very truth, namely what the flesh suffered which the Lord took up, proclaim the power and wisdom of God. And above all, the parabolic kind of Scripture, being most ancient, as we set forth, with reason abounded especially among the prophets, that so the Holy Spirit might show that the philosophers among the Greeks and the wise men among the other barbarians had been ignorant of the coming of the Lord that should be, and of the mystic teaching that should be delivered by him. With reason, then, the prophecy, proclaiming the Lord — that it might not seem, by speaking against the suppositions of the many, to blaspheme to some — shaped the things signified by voices able to lead also to other thoughts. For instance, all the prophets who foretold the coming of the Lord, and with it the holy mysteries, were persecuted and slain, as the Lord himself too, making plain their Scriptures, and his acquaintance who proclaimed the word, likewise after him hazarded their life.

15.128. Whence Peter too, in the Preaching, speaking of the apostles, says: "But we, having unrolled the books of the prophets which we had, some through parables, some through riddles, and some authoritatively and in so many words naming Christ Jesus, found both his coming and his death and the cross and all the other chastisements which the Jews wrought against him, and his rising and his ascension into the heavens before Jerusalem was founded — even as all these things were written, what he must suffer, and what shall be after him. Having recognized these things, then, we believed in God through the things written concerning him." And a little after he adds again, setting forth that the prophecies came about by divine providence, thus: "For we knew that God truly ordained them, and we say nothing apart from Scripture."

15.129. And the dialect of the Hebrews has, then, some other peculiarities too, as each of the rest, containing a certain principle that shows forth a national character. For they define a dialect as a speech wrought out by a national character. But it is not by those dialects that the prophecy is made known. For among the Greeks the so-called changes of figure make their concealments on purpose, after the image of the prophecies among us — being referred . . . except that it is shown to be a voluntary turning-aside from the straight, made in metrical or extemporaneous phrasing. For a figure is a phrasing transferred from its proper to its improper sense, for the sake of construction and for the usefulness of the phrasing in the discourse. But the prophecy does not at all pursue the figures of speech for the beauty of the phrasing; rather, because the truth is not for all, it is concealed in many ways, raising the light only upon those initiated unto knowledge, those who seek the truth through love.

15.130. There is said, then, to be a kind of prophecy, the proverb, according to the barbarian philosophy; and the parable too is so called, and the riddle besides these. But also it is called wisdom, and, as something different from it, education; and again "words of prudence" and "turnings of words" and "true righteousness"; and again "teaching of how to set straight a judgement," and "cunning" coming to the guileless by education, and "perception" and "thought" coming to the newly catechized. "He who has heard these prophets," it says, "being wise, shall be the wiser, and the intelligent shall acquire governance, and shall understand a parable and a dark saying, and the sayings of the wise, and riddles." And if it came about that the Greek dialects were named from Hellen the son of Zeus, surnamed of Deucalion, it is easy to see, from the times which we set forth above, by how many generations the dialects current among the Greeks are later than the Hebrew tongue.

15.131. And as the Scripture goes forward, marking the aforesaid figures used by the prophet at each section, we shall set them forth, showing, with art, the gnostic conduct according to the rule of truth. For did not, in the vision, the power, appearing to Hermas in the figure of the church, give the book to be transcribed, which she willed to be announced to the elect? And this he transcribed letter by letter, he says, not finding how to complete the syllables. And it showed, then, that the Scripture is plain to all, taken according to the bare reading, and that this is the faith, holding the order of the elements; wherefore too the reading "to the letter" is allegorized. But the gnostic unfolding of the Scriptures, when the faith has already advanced, we take to be likened to the reading according to the syllables. But Isaiah the prophet too is bidden to take a new book and write certain things, the Spirit prophesying that the holy knowledge, through the interpretation of the Scriptures, would later be — being, up to that season, unwritten, because not yet known; for it had been spoken from the beginning only to those who understand. For instance, when the Saviour had taught the apostles, the tradition, unwritten of the written, is now delivered even to us, written on new hearts according to the renewing of the book, by the power of God.

15.132. So the most learned of the Greeks consecrate to Hermes, whom indeed they say is the Word, on account of the interpretation, the fruit of the pomegranate; for the Word holds much within. With reason, then, Joshua the son of Nun saw Moses, when he was taken up, double — the one with angels, the other deemed worthy of burial upon the mountains, about the ravines. And Joshua saw this sight below, lifted up in spirit, together with Caleb. But both did not behold alike; for the one came down the more quickly, drawing much weight with him; but the other, having come down after, recounted the glory he had beheld, being able to look through more than the other, as being also purer — the history showing, I think, that knowledge is not for all, since some look upon the body of the Scriptures, the words and the names, as the body of Moses; while others look through to the meanings and the things shown forth by the names, inquiring after the Moses who was with angels. For instance, of those who called upon the Lord himself, the most said, "Son of David, have mercy on me," but few knew him as Son of God, like Peter, whom he blessed, because flesh and blood revealed not the truth to him, but his Father in heaven — showing that the gnostic recognizes the Son of the Almighty, not through his flesh that was conceived, but through the very power of the Father. Not only, then, to those who chance simply upon it is the acquiring of the truth difficult, but even to those whose own the science is — to these too the contemplation is not given all at once, the history about Moses teaches, until, accustomed to look back, as the Hebrews looked at the glory of Moses, and the saints of Israel at the visions of angels, so too we may be able to look at the flashings of the truth.

16.133. And let the Decalogue, by the way, be set forth for us as an example for gnostic clearness. And that the decad is holy, it is superfluous now to say. And if the tables that were written are a work of God, they will be found showing forth the natural creation; for "the finger of God" is understood as the power of God, by which the creation of heaven and earth is perfected, of both of which the tables are to be understood as symbols. For the writing and shaping of God, laid up in the table, is the creation of the world. And the Decalogue, after a heavenly image, contains sun and moon, stars, clouds, light, wind, water, air, darkness, fire. This is the natural decalogue of heaven. And the image of earth contains men, cattle, creeping things, beasts, and of the things in the water, fishes and sea-monsters; and again, of the winged things likewise, both the flesh-eating and those that use mild food; and of plants likewise the fruit-bearing and the unfruitful. This is the natural decalogue of earth. And the ark that contained these would be the knowledge of things divine and human, and wisdom. And perhaps these two tables might be the prophecy of two covenants.

16.134. They were renewed, then, mystically, ignorance and sin at the same time abounding. Twice over, as it seems, the commandments are written for two spirits — the ruling and the subject — since the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And there is also a certain decad about the man himself: the five senses, and the faculty of speech, and the faculty of generation, and this eighth, the spiritual one in respect of the moulding; the ninth, the ruling part of the soul; and the tenth, the characteristic property of the Holy Spirit that comes through faith. And besides these, the legislation appears to enjoin upon ten parts of man: the sight and the hearing and the smell, the touch and the taste, and the organs that minister to these, being twofold — hands and feet. For this is the moulding of man.

16.135. And the soul is brought in besides, and the ruling part is brought in besides, by which we reason, not begotten by the casting down of the seed; so that even without this the number ten is made up, through which the whole working of man is accomplished. For in order man, immediately upon coming to be, takes the beginning of life from the passible parts. The reasoning, then, and ruling part we say is the cause of the constitution of the living creature, and also of the irrational part being ensouled and being a portion of it. For instance, the vital power, in which is contained the nutritive and the growth-giving and, in general, the moving — this the fleshly spirit has obtained, being quick-moving, and going everywhere through the senses and the rest of the body, and feeling first through the body; but the ruling part has the deliberative power, about which are inquiry and learning and knowledge. But the reference of all is ranked into one — the ruling part; and through that man lives and lives in a certain manner.

16.136. Through the bodily spirit, then, man perceives, desires, takes pleasure, is angered, is nourished, grows; and indeed too through this he goes to the actions according to thought and reasoning; and when the ruling part masters the desires, it reigns. The "you shall not desire," then, says, "You shall not be a slave to the fleshly spirit, but shall rule over it"; since the flesh lusts against the spirit and rises up to act disorderly, against nature, and the spirit prevails against the flesh, unto the conduct of man according to nature. And was not man, then, with reason said to have come to be after the image of God — not as to the shape of the constitution, but since God by the Word creates all things, and the man who has become gnostic accomplishes the noble deeds by the rational part? With reason, then, the two tables are said to show forth the commandments given to the two spirits — that delivered to the moulded part, and that to the ruling part, before the law — said elsewhere; and the movements of the senses are both stamped in respect of thought and made manifest in respect of the working from the body; for from both is the apprehension.

16.137. And again, as sense is to the sensible, so is intellection to the intelligible. And the actions too are twofold — some according to thought, some according to working. And the first commandment of the Decalogue sets forth that there is one only God Almighty, who led the people out of Egypt through the wilderness to the fatherland, that they might apprehend his power, as they were able, through the divine workings, and stand apart from the idolatry of begotten things, having all their hope upon the God who truly is. And the second word showed that one must not take, nor bring, the great might of God (which is the name; for this alone they had room to learn, as still now the many do) — that one must not bring the calling upon it to begotten and vain things, which the craftsmen among men have made, among which the Existent is not ranked; for in unbegotten sameness the Existent is alone, himself only. And the third word is that which shows that the world came to be by God, and that he gave us rest, a seventh day, on account of the suffering in life; for God is unwearied and impassible and unneedy, but we who bear flesh have need of rest.

16.138. The seventh day, then, is proclaimed a rest, by abstention from evils preparing the primal day, our true rest — which indeed is the first true birth of light, in which all things are beheld together and all things inherited. From this day the first wisdom and knowledge is shed upon us; for the light of truth is true light, shadowless, the Spirit of the Lord partitioned without partition unto those sanctified through faith, holding the rank of a lamp unto the recognition of the things that are. Following it, then, throughout our whole life, we are made impassible; and this is to be at rest. Wherefore Solomon too says that wisdom came to be before heaven and earth and all the things that are, with the Almighty, the participation in which (the participation according to power, I mean, not according to substance) teaches one to be apprehensively a knower of things divine and human. And being come to this point, these things too must be recalled, by the way, since the discourse came in about the hebdomad and the ogdoad. For the ogdoad runs the risk of being properly the hebdomad, and the hebdomad a hexad, as touching the apparent; and the one is properly the sabbath, but the hebdomad a worker. For the cosmogony is completed in six days, and the movement of the sun from turning to turning is accomplished in six months, in which now the plants shed their leaves, now bud forth, and the seeds come to their perfection.

16.139. And they say too that the embryo is completed to exactness in the sixth month — that is, in a hundred and eighty days and two and a half over — as Polybus the physician records in his work On Eight-months' Children, and Aristotle the philosopher in his work On Nature. And the Pythagoreans, hence, I think, from the becoming of the world according to the prophet, hold the number six perfect, and call it "midway-straight," and "marriage," because it is in the middle of the straight number — that is, of the ten and the two; for it appears equidistant from both. And as marriage begets from male and female, so the six is begotten from the odd, three, said to be a male number, and the even, two, held to be female; for twice three is six. So many, again, are the most generic movements, by which all becoming is borne — up, down, to the right, to the left, forward, backward.

16.140. With reason, then, they reckon the number seven motherless and childless, interpreting the sabbath and allegorizing the kind of rest, according to which men neither marry nor are given in marriage any longer; for neither, taken from any number to any other, does seven come about, nor, taken to any other, does it produce another of those within the decad. And the ogdoad they call a cube, counting in, with the seven planets, the fixed sphere, through which the great year comes about, as it were a certain period of the recompense of the things promised. For instance, the Lord, having ascended the mountain fourth, becomes sixth, and is surrounded with spiritual light, having laid bare the power from himself, so far as it was possible for those chosen to see to behold it, proclaimed by a seventh, the voice, to be the Son of God — that some might be at rest, persuaded concerning him, and he, through the birth which the hexad showed forth, being the notable letter, might appear an ogdoad, God in a little body showing forth the power, numbered as a man, but hidden as to who he was. For in the order of the numbers the six too is counted in, but the sequence of the letters knows the notable letter that is not written.

16.141. Here, according to the numbers themselves, each unit is preserved in its order into the hebdomad and ogdoad; but according to the number of the letters, the zeta becomes sixth, and the eta seventh. But, the notable letter having crept in, I know not how, into the writing, if we follow thus, the hebdomad becomes sixth and the ogdoad seventh. Wherefore too on the sixth man is said to have been made, who, having become faithful to the notable letter, straightway receives the rest of the Lord's inheritance. Such a thing too does the sixth hour of the saving dispensation show forth, in which man was perfected. Yes, and of the eight the middle terms become seven, and of the seven the intervals appear to be six. For that is another account, when the hebdomad glorifies the ogdoad, and "the heavens declare to the heavens the glory of God." The sensible types of these are the vowel letters among us. So too the Lord himself is called Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, "through whom all things came to be, and without whom not one thing came to be." Not, then, as some suppose, has God, by his rest, ceased from making; for, being good, if he should ever cease from doing good, he would cease too from being God — which it is not lawful even to say.

16.142. But to have ceased is to have ordered that the order of the things made be preserved inviolably for all time, and that each of the creatures has ceased from the old disorder; for the creations according to the different days had received, by a greatest sequence, as it were the honour from the earlier, all the things made being to have order, created together with the thought, but not being of equal honour. Nor would the becoming of each have been shown by a voice, the creation having been said to be made all at once; for it was needful to name something first too. Wherefore the first things were prophesied, out of which the second, all things together coming to be from one substance by one power; for one, I think, is the will of God in one sameness. And how could the creation come to be in time, when time too came to be along with the things that are? And by now too in hebdomads the whole world is wheeled round, of all the things quickened and that grow.

16.143. For seven are the first-born rulers of the angels, who have the greatest power; and seven too the wandering stars, the men of the sciences say, that accomplish the management of the earth, by whom the Chaldeans think, by sympathy, all the things of mortal life come to be — wherefore they promise too to say certain things about the future. And of the fixed stars, seven are the Pleiades, and seven-starred the Bears, by which husbandry and navigation are brought to their end; and the moon takes its changes of figure through seven days. In the first hebdomad, then, it becomes half; in the second, full; in the third, from the waning, again half; and in the fourth it vanishes. But it too, as Seleucus the mathematician records, changes its figure seven times. For out of lightless it becomes crescent, then half, then gibbous and full, and at the waning again gibbous, and likewise half, and crescent.

16.144. "With seven-toned lyre we shall sing new hymns," a poet of no mean note writes, teaching too that the old lyre was seven-noted. And seven too are the organs of the senses set about our face — two of the eyes, two of the channels of hearing, two of the nostrils, and the seventh that of the mouth. And that the changes of the ages come about by hebdomads, the elegies of Solon make plain, somewhat thus: "A boy, while still a child, ungrown, having grown the hedge of his teeth, casts the first within seven years; and when God has completed the second seven years, he shows forth the tokens of coming youth; in the third, while his limbs are growing, his chin is downed, his skin changing its bloom; and in the fourth, every man is greatest in strength, which men hold for the tokens of manhood; in the fifth, it is time for a man to be mindful of marriage, and to seek a generation of children thereafter; in the sixth, the mind of a man is fitted in all things, and he no longer wishes to do vain deeds; and in the seventh, he is greatest in mind and tongue, and in the eighth — fourteen years in both; in the ninth, he is still able, but his body and strength are more moderate toward great virtue; and in the tenth, when God has completed seven years, he would not be untimely in having his portion of death."

16.145. Again, in diseases the seventh and the fourteenth day are critical, in which nature contends against the causes of disease. And ten thousand such things, hallowing the number, Hermippus of Berytus sets down in his work On the Hebdomad. And plainly the blessed David delivers the mystic discourse about hebdomad and ogdoad to those who know, singing somewhat thus: "Our years were studied as a spider. The days of our years among them are seventy years; but if in strength, eighty years." . . . And that we may be taught the world to be begotten, and not suppose that God makes in time, the prophecy adds: "This is the book of the becoming, and of the things in them, when it came to be; in the day in which God made the heaven and the earth." For the "when it came to be" shows an indefinite and timeless bringing-forth; and the "in the day in which God made" — that is, in and through which he made all things, and without which not one thing came to be — shows the working through the Son, of whom David says, "This is the day which the Lord made; let us be glad and rejoice in it" — that is, let us feast on the divine banquet delivered through the knowledge that is through him. For "day" is called the Word that lights the hidden things, and through whom each of the creatures passed into light and becoming. And in sum the Decalogue, through the letter iota, shows forth the blessed name, setting forth Jesus, who is the Word.

16.146. And the fifth word in order is about the honour of father and mother. And it plainly calls God Father and Lord. Wherefore too it proclaims those who have recognized him sons, and gods. The Lord, then, and Father is the Creator of all; and the mother is not, as some hold, the substance out of which we came to be, nor, as others have rendered it, the church, but the divine knowledge and wisdom — as Solomon says, calling wisdom the "mother of the just." And it is to be chosen for its own sake. And all that is noble and august is known from God through the Son. Upon this follows the word about adultery. And it is adultery if one, leaving the ecclesiastical and true knowledge and the grasp concerning God, comes over to a false opinion that is not fitting — either making a god of some begotten thing, or making an idol of some non-existent thing, into a transgression, or rather a going-out of knowledge. And the false opinion is foreign to the gnostic, as the true is his own and his consort.

16.147. Wherefore too the noble apostle calls idolatry one of the kinds of fornication, following the prophet who says: "It committed adultery with the wood and the stone; to the wood it said, 'You are my father,' and to the stone, 'You begot me.'" Then the word about murder follows. And murder is a violent taking-away. He, then, who wishes to take away the true word about God and his everlastingness, that he may rank in the falsehood — saying either that the whole is without providence, or that the world is unbegotten, or anything against the sure things of the true teaching . . . is most pernicious. And after this is the word about theft. As, then, he who steals the things of others, greatly doing wrong, with reason falls into the evils he deserves, so he who appropriates to himself the divine works, by the art either of moulding or of painting, and says that he is the maker of the animals and plants — likewise too those who counterfeit the true philosophy — are thieves. And whether one be a husbandman or a father of a child, he is a minister of the casting down of seeds; but God, furnishing the increase and perfecting of all things, brings the things that come to be into the state according to nature.

16.148. But the most, together with the philosophers, attribute the increases and turnings to the stars, by the chief account, robbing, as far as in them lies, the Father of all of his unwearied power. And the elements and the stars — that is, the governing powers — were appointed to accomplish the things suited to the dispensation, and they themselves obey and are led by the things set over them, wherever the word of the Lord leads, since the divine power is by nature wont to work all things hiddenly. He, then, who says that he has devised or made something of the things that tend to the creation, shall undergo correction for his impious daring. And the tenth is the word about all desires. As, then, he who desires the things that are not fitting is corrected, in the same way it is not permitted to desire false things, nor to suppose that of the things in becoming the ensouled are able of themselves, while the soulless absolutely are not able, to save or to harm; and if one say that the antidote is not able to heal nor the hemlock to destroy, he is unawares quibbling. For none of these things works without him who uses the herb and the drug, as neither does the axe work without him who cuts, nor the saw without him who saws. As, then, they do not work of themselves, but have certain natural qualities that contribute, by the working of the craftsman, to the proper work, so too by the universal providence of God the effective working is distributed, through the things more immediately moved, by descent, into the particular things.

17.149. But, as it seems, the philosophers of the Greeks, naming God, do not know him, since they do not worship God as God. And the things they philosophize among themselves, according to Empedocles, "having passed through the tongue of many mouths in vain, are poured out, since they saw little of the whole." For as the light from the sun is by art conducted, through a glass vessel full of water, into fire, so too philosophy, having taken the spark from the divine Scripture, is faintly seen among a few. Yes, and as all living creatures breathe the same air, but some in one way, some in another, and to a different end, so too the more part pursue the truth — or rather the discourse about the truth. For they say nothing about God, but, referring their own passions to God, expound them. For their life has become a seeking of the plausible, not of the true; and truth is not taught from imitation, but from learning. For it is not that we may seem to be good that we believe in Christ — just as neither do we pass into the sun for the sake of merely appearing, being in the sun, but here for the sake of being warmed; but there, for the sake of being noble and good, we force our way to be Christians, since most of all the kingdom is of those who force their way, who, out of inquiry and learning and perfect joint training, reap the becoming a king.

17.150. He, then, who imitates the seeming, beguiles the preconception too. But when one, having taken a kindling of a matter, kindles this within in the soul by longing and learning, he sets all things in motion thereupon, to come to the recognition of it. For what one does not lay hold of, neither does he long for, nor embrace the benefit from it. The gnostic, then, afterward, at the end of his right-doings, imitates the Lord, so far as is attainable by men, having taken a certain Lordly quality unto the likeness of God. But those who do not know knowledge are not able even to canon out the truth. To partake, then, of the gnostic theorems is not possible, unless we empty ourselves of the former thoughts. For simply thus truth is said commonly of everything of mind and of sense. For instance, it is possible to behold the truth of painting too, as against the vulgar, and the dignity of music as against the wanton. And of philosophy too, then, there is a certain truth as against the other philosophers, and a true beauty as against the adulterated. We must not, then, busy ourselves about the partial truths, of which the truth is predicated, but about the truth itself, not seeking to learn names; for the matter of God is not one, but ten thousand; and it makes a difference to seek God or the things about God. And, to speak generally, about each thing one must distinguish the substance from the accidents.

17.151. And it is enough for me to say that the Lord is God of all. And I say "of all" downright, with nothing left over by way of exception. Since, then, there are two kinds of truth — the names and the things — some speak of the names, those who busy themselves about the beauties of words, the philosophers among the Greeks; but the things are with us, the barbarians. For instance, the Lord did not without cause will to use a lowly form of body, that no one, praising the comeliness and marvelling at the beauty, should stand apart from the things said, and, cleaving to the things left behind, be cut off from the things of mind. We must not, then, dwell upon the phrasing, but upon the things signified. To those, then, who lay hold of the phrasing, and are not moved toward knowledge, the word is not believed; since the crows too imitate human voices, having no conception of the thing they say; but intellectual apprehension holds of faith. So too Homer said "father of men and of gods," not knowing who the Father is and how the Father.

17.152. And as to him who has hands belongs by nature the taking, and to him who has sound eyes the seeing of light, so to him who has received faith it is proper by nature to partake of knowledge, if he would work in besides and build up besides gold, silver, precious stones upon the foundation laid down. He does not, then, promise to be willing to partake, but begins; nor to be about to, but it is fitting for him to be kingly and luminous and gnostic, and not in name, but in deed, to be willing to lay hold of the things. For God, being good through the ruling part of all creation, willing this to be saved, turned to making the rest too, furnishing them from the beginning this first benefaction — the coming to be; for that being is much better than not being, everyone would confess. Then, as it was possible for each to have of nature, it came to be, and comes to be, advancing toward its own better.

17.153. So that it is not absurd that philosophy too was given by the divine providence, preparatory to the perfecting that is through Christ — unless philosophy be ashamed, being disciple to the barbarian knowledge, to advance toward truth. But "the hairs are numbered," and the small movements; and how is philosophy not in the account? And yet to Samson too the power was given in his hairs, that he might understand that the rejected arts of life — those that lie and remain on the ground after the soul's departure — were not given without the divine power. For instance, it says, "providence from above, from the leading things as from a head, pervades all, as the ointment," it says, "that comes down upon the beard of Aaron and upon the hem of his garment" (that is, of the great high priest, "through whom all things came to be, and without him not one thing came to be") — not into the adorning of the body, but, outside the people, philosophy, like a garment.

17.154. The philosophers, then, who have trained themselves toward their own perceiving by a perceptive spirit, when they busy themselves, not with a part of philosophy, but with philosophy itself absolutely, truth-lovingly and without conceit bearing witness to the truth, even among the heterodox in the things well said, advance toward understanding, according to the divine governance, the unspeakable goodness that on every occasion leads the nature of the things that are toward the better, as far as may be; and then, having associated not only with Greeks but also with barbarians, they are led, from common joint training, to a private understanding, unto the faith; and having received the foundation of the truth, they take besides power to go forward to inquiry, and thence, having become disciples, they love, and craving knowledge, they hasten toward salvation. So the Scripture says that "a spirit of perception was given to the craftsmen by God"; and this is nothing but prudence, a contemplative power of the soul concerning the things that are, discerning the consequent, the like and the unlike, and again composing and commanding and forbidding, and conjecturing the things to come. And it stretches not only to the arts, but to philosophy itself.

17.155. Why, then, is the serpent too called prudent? Because even in evil-doings one may find a certain sequence and discernment and composition and conjecture of the things to come. And the most of wrongs escape notice for this reason, that the wicked make their dispositions beforehand for themselves, to escape the punishments wholly and in every way. And prudence, being of many parts, stretched through the whole world and through all human affairs, changes its name in each of them: and when it applies to the first causes, it is called intellection; when it confirms this by demonstrative reasoning, it is named knowledge and wisdom and science; and when it comes to be in the things that tend to godliness, and, without contemplation, receives the ruling word, in respect of the keeping of the working in it, it is called faith; and in the things of sense, having made sure of what seems, as among these, most true, it is right opinion; and again in the actions with handiwork, it is art; and where, without contemplation of the first causes, by keeping of the like and by transition it makes a certain impulse and constitution, it is called experience. And that is the proper and truly authoritative and ruling thing, which over and above all the believer takes, after the sure faith, the holy Spirit, by oversight.

17.156. Philosophy, then, having partaken of a more excellent perception, as has been shown from the foregoing, partakes of prudence. For instance, the rational going-through of the things thought, with choice and assent, is called dialectic, confirmatory of the things said about truth by demonstration, and beating off the difficulties brought against it. Those, then, run a risk who say that philosophy did not come here from God, of saying that it is impossible for God to know all the particular things, nor to be the cause of all noble things, even though each of the particulars chance to be one of them. For nothing of the things that are could have stood from the beginning, God being unwilling; but if of his will, then philosophy is from God, he having willed it to be such as it is, on account of those who will not abstain from evils except thus. For God knows all things, not only the things that are, but also the things that shall be, and how each shall be; and foreseeing the particular movements, he beholds all things and hears all things, seeing the soul bare within, and holds the thought of each of the particulars through eternity; and that which happens in the theatres, and in the parts of each man, by inlooking and surveying and joint-looking, this happens in the case of God. For he beholds all things at once, and each in part, by one application — yet not all in respect of the leading attention.

17.157. By now, then, many of the things in life take their becoming through some human reasoning too, having received the spark from God. For instance, health through medicine, and good condition through the trainer's art, and wealth through money-getting, take becoming and presence according to the divine providence, but with human co-working. And understanding too is from God. For instance, the free choice of good men chiefly obeys the will of God; wherefore many of the advantages are common to good and to evil men, but become profitable only to the good and earnest, for whose sake God made them; for to the use of good men the power of the God-given things is by nature. But the thoughts too of virtuous men come about by divine inbreathing, the soul being somehow disposed, and the divine will being distributed into the human souls, the particular divine ministers contributing to such services. For the protectorships of the angels are distributed by nations and cities, and perhaps too certain are assigned to some of the particular men.

17.158. The shepherd, at any rate, cares too for each of the sheep; and his oversight is most immediate to those who are eminent in their natures and able to help the multitudes. And these are the leading and educative men, through whom the working of providence is most plainly shown, whenever, either through education or through some rule and management, God wills to do good to men. And he wills it always; wherefore he stirs the fit to the profitable working-out of the things that tend toward virtue and peace and beneficence. And every virtuous thing is both from virtue and is referred to virtue, and either is given toward the becoming earnest, or, in those who are so, toward the using of the advantages according to nature; for it co-works both in the things universal and in the particular.

17.159. How, then, is it not absurd, attributing disorder and injustice to the devil, to make him the giver of a virtuous thing, philosophy? For he runs the risk of having become more kindly to the Greeks, toward the becoming of good men, than the divine providence and purpose. But, on the contrary, I think, it is proper to law and to all right reason to render to each what is fitting and proper and what falls to him. For as the lyre belongs to the lyre-player alone, and the flute to the flute-player, so the advantages are possessions of good men; and as it is the nature of the good-doer to do good, as of fire to warm and of light to give light, an evil thing the good man would not do, as neither would light darken nor fire chill. So, on the contrary, evil would not do anything virtuous; for its working is to do evil, as it is of darkness to confound the sight. Not, then, is philosophy a work of evil, since it makes men virtuous. It remains, then, that it is of God, whose work alone is to do good; and all things that are given by God are nobly both given and received. Yes, and the use of philosophy is not of evil men; but if it has been given to the best of the Greeks, plainly whence it has been bestowed — from the providence that renders to each what is fitting according to worth. With reason, then, to the Jews the law, to the Greeks philosophy, until the coming; and from then the universal calling, gathering into a peculiar people of righteousness, according to the teaching that is by faith, through the one Lord, the only one God of both, of Greeks and of barbarians, or rather of the whole race of men.

17.160. We have often said that we call philosophy the attaining, according to philosophy, of the truth, even though it chance to be partial; and now the goods in the arts too, as in arts, have their beginning from God. For as the doing of anything by art is comprehended in the theorems of the art, so the doing of anything prudently is ranked under prudence; and prudence is a virtue; and it is proper to it to know the other things, and much more, first, the things concerning itself. And wisdom, being a power, is nothing else than the science of things divine and human good things. And "the Lord's is the earth and the fulness thereof." The Scripture, teaching that good things come to men from God, has said it by a divine power and might, the distribution coming down unto human help. For instance, there are three modes of all benefit and imparting to another from another: the one according to accompaniment, as the trainer shapes the boy; another according to likeness, as he who exhorts another to advance by advancing first, and the one co-works with the learner, the other co-benefits the receiver. And a third mode is that according to command, when the trainer, no longer moulding the learner nor showing through himself the wrestling-feat for imitation by the boy, as one now more practised, commands him the wrestling-feat by name.

17.161. The gnostic, then, having received from God the being able to help, profits some by shaping them by accompaniment, some by exhorting them by likeness, some by educating and teaching them by command. And indeed he himself too is benefited by the like things from the Lord. So, then, the benefit reaching to men from God becomes known, the angels co-exhorting; for through angels too the divine power furnishes good things, whether seen or unseen. Such too is the mode according to the manifestation of the Lord. And at times too, according to the thoughts of men and their reasonings, the power inbreathes something and sets in their hearts strength and a more exact perception, furnishing might and the boldness of eagerness toward the inquiries and toward the works. And there lie set out for us, for imitation and likeness, truly marvellous and holy examples of virtue, through the recorded deeds. And indeed too the mode of command is most manifest, both through the Lord's covenants and through the laws among the Greeks, and through the things enjoined according to philosophy. And, in a word, all benefit unto life, according to the highest account, is accomplished by God the Almighty, the Father who guides all, through the Son — who for this reason too is "the Saviour of all men," says the apostle, "but most of all of the faithful" — and according to the immediate, by those immediate to each, according to the command and enjoining of the one immediate to the first cause, the Lord.

18.162. And our gnostic ever spends his time in the most authoritative things; and if anywhere there be leisure and a season of relaxation from the chief things, instead of other idleness, he lays hold of the Greek philosophy too, as a kind of sweetmeat eaten as a relish after dinner, not neglecting the better things, but taking these too, so far as is fitting, and for the reasons I said before. But those who craved the unnecessary and superfluous things of philosophy, and gave themselves to the contentious sophisms alone, were left behind the necessary and most authoritative things, downright pursuing the shadows of words. It is good, then, to know all things; but for him whose soul is too weak to stretch itself toward the much-learned experience, he will choose only the leading and better things. For the truly real science, which we say the gnostic alone has, is a sure apprehension, leading up, through true and sure reasonings, to the knowledge of the cause; and he who is scientific of the true about anything whatsoever is forthwith scientific too of the false about the same. And indeed that argument seems to me well enough: "If one must philosophize, one must philosophize; for the thing follows upon itself. But even if one must not philosophize — for no one could condemn anything not having first known this. One must philosophize, then."

18.163. These things being so, the Greeks must learn, through law and prophets, to worship one only God, who is the truly existent Almighty; and then must be taught this through the apostle: "To us there is no idol in the world," since no likeness of God can be among begotten things; and must be taught besides that not even of the things which they worship would the images be the likenesses; for not at all is the kind of souls such, in respect of shape, as the Greeks mould the carved figures. For souls are invisible, not only the rational, but also those of the irrational animals; and their bodies never become parts of the souls, but instruments, of some seats, of some chariots, and of others, in another way, possessions.

18.164. But not even the images of the instruments is it possible to imitate clearly; since let one mould the sun, as it is seen, and liken the rainbow by its colours. But when they leave the idols, then they shall hear the Scripture: "Unless your righteousness exceed more than that of the scribes and Pharisees" — who are justified by abstention from evils — "by the being able, together with the perfection in these things, to love the neighbour too and to do good, you shall not be kingly." For the intensity of the righteousness according to the law shows the gnostic. Thus one, ranked according to the ruling part of his own body, the head, having advanced to the height of faith, knowledge itself, about which all the senses are, shall likewise attain the highest inheritance. And the ruling part of knowledge the apostle plainly shows to those able to look through, writing thus to those Greekish Corinthians: "But having hope, as your faith increases, to be magnified among you according to our rule unto abundance, to preach the good news to the parts beyond you" — not meaning the extension of the preaching according to place (since he himself says that the faith abounded even in Achaia,

18.165. and it is recorded too in the Acts of the Apostles that he preached the word in Athens too), but he teaches knowledge, which is the perfecting of faith, to abound beyond the catechizing, according to the magnificence of the Lord's teaching and the ecclesiastical rule. Wherefore too, a little after, he adds: "And though rude in speech, yet not in knowledge." But let those of the Greeks who boast at having apprehended the truth tell us from whom, having learned, they make their vaunt. From God, indeed, they would not say; from men they confess. And if this be so, then either, having learned it from themselves late — as indeed some of them, puffed up, boast — or from others like themselves. But men, speaking about God, are not trustworthy teachers, in so far as they are men; for one who is a man is not of weight to speak even the true things about God — the weak and perishable about the unbegotten and incorruptible, the work about him who made it.

18.166. Then, he who is not able to speak the true things about himself — is he not the less to be believed about the things of God? For as much as a man falls short of the power of God, by so much also his word fails, even if he speak not God, but the things about God and the divine word. For the human word is by nature weak and unable to declare God — I do not mean the name (for to name it is common, not to philosophers only, but to poets too), nor the substance (for that is impossible), but the power and the works of God. And yet those who inscribe God as their teacher hardly come to a conception of God, the grace co-helping them unto a certain recognition — accustomed, as it were, to behold the will by the will and the Holy Spirit by the Holy Spirit; for "the Spirit searches the deep things of God, but the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit." Only, then, the wisdom among us is God-taught, from which all the springs of wisdom hang, as many as aim at the truth. For instance, as the Lord was to come to men, the one who should teach us, there were ten thousand signallers, heralds, preparers, forerunners, from above, from the foundation of the world, by deeds, by words, foretelling, prophesying that he should come, and where and how, and what the signs.

18.167. For instance, from afar the law and the prophecy practise beforehand, and then the forerunner shows him present, and after him the heralds, teaching the power of the manifestation, declare it. . . . to a few only, and not even to all of these, did the philosophers please; but to Plato Socrates was pleasing, and Plato to Xenocrates, and Aristotle to Theophrastus, and Zeno to Cleanthes, who persuaded their own sectaries only. But the word of our teacher remained not in Judaea alone, as philosophy in Hellas, but was poured out over the whole inhabited earth, persuading Greeks and barbarians together, by nation and village and every city, whole houses and each privately of those who hearkened — yes, and not a few of the philosophers themselves — bringing them over already to the truth. And if any chance ruler hinder the Greek philosophy, it perishes forthwith; but our teaching, from then, together with the first proclamation, kings and tyrants and the particular rulers and governors, with all their hirelings, and besides the countless men, hinder, warring against us and trying as far as may be to root it out; but it flourishes the more. For it does not die as a human teaching, nor wither as a weak gift (for no gift of God is weak), but abides unhindered, prophesied to be persecuted to the end.

18.168. Then, concerning poetry, Plato writes, "A poet is a light thing and holy, and not able to make until he becomes inspired and out of his senses." And Democritus likewise: "Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a holy breath is very noble." And we know what kind of things poets say. But the prophets of God the Almighty — would not one be struck with awe at them, having become instruments of the divine voice? As, then, having moulded a statue of the gnostic, we have already shown what manner of man he is, having made plain, as in a sketch, the greatness and the beauty of his character; but what manner of man he is in respect of contemplation in things natural will be shown after these things, when we begin to treat of the becoming of the world.