Book 7

1.1. It is now time to demonstrate to the Greeks that the gnostic alone is truly devout, so that the philosophers, learning what kind of person the true Christian is, may condemn their own ignorance—since they persecute the name at random and without cause, and idly call atheists those who have come to know the God who truly is. With the philosophers it is fitting, I think, to use clearer arguments, drawn from their own learning, so that, already trained, they may be able to follow, even if they have not yet shown themselves worthy of partaking in the power to believe. For the present we shall not appeal to the words of the prophets; later, at the appropriate places, we shall make use of the Scriptures, but for now we shall indicate summarily what they reveal, sketching Christianity in outline, so that we may not break the continuity of the argument by introducing the Scriptures—and that to those who do not yet understand their language. But once we have shown what is meant, then the testimonies too will be made plain to them, when they believe out of abundance. (And even if what we say should appear to some of the multitude to differ from the Scriptures of the Lord, let it be known that it draws its breath and life from there, and that, taking its starting points from them, it professes to set forth their sense alone, not their wording.) For elaboration carried too far, if it is not made at the right moment, would reasonably seem superfluous; and to have given no thought at all to what is pressing is utterly slothful and deficient. But "blessed indeed are those who search out the testimonies of the Lord; with the whole heart will they seek him"; and the Law and the prophets bear witness concerning the Lord.

1.2. Our task, then, is to demonstrate that the gnostic alone is holy and devout, worshipping the true God in a manner worthy of God; and upon what is worthy of God there follow the being beloved of God and the love of God. He holds everything that excels to be honourable according to its worth: among objects of sense, rulers and parents and every elder are to be honoured; among objects of instruction, the most ancient philosophy and the most venerable prophecy; among objects of thought, that which is eldest in origin—the timeless and unoriginate Beginning and First-fruit of all that is, the Son. From him we may learn the cause beyond, the Father of all things, the most venerable and most beneficent of all, no longer handed down by speech, but to be revered by veneration and silence with holy awe—reverend and to be worshipped in the highest degree; spoken of, indeed, by the Lord as far as those who were learning could grasp, but apprehended only by those chosen out for knowledge by the Lord—"by those," as the Apostle says, "whose senses have been trained by exercise."

1.3. The service of God, then, for the gnostic is the unbroken care of his soul and his occupation with the divine through love that never ceases. For of the service rendered to men, one kind is that which improves, the other that which ministers. Medicine improves the body, philosophy the soul. From children to parents, and from subjects to rulers, there comes a ministering benefit. Likewise in the Church the presbyters preserve the image of that which improves, and the deacons that which ministers. Both these forms of service are rendered to God by the angels in the administration of earthly things, and by the gnostic himself, who ministers to God and displays to men the contemplation that improves, so that he may be appointed to teach for the correction of mankind. For he alone is devout who serves God well and irreproachably in human affairs. For just as the best tending of plants is that by which the fruits are produced and gathered through skill and agricultural experience, furnishing men with the benefit derived from them, so the devotion of the gnostic, taking up into itself the fruits of the men who through him have come to believe—as more and more are brought to recognition and so are saved—accomplishes through experience the best of harvests. And if godliness is a settled disposition preserving what is fitting toward God, then he alone who is godly is beloved of God; and this would be the man who knows what is fitting both in knowledge and in life, knowing how he ought to live who is to become, and is already being made, like to God.

1.4. In this way, then, he is first a lover of God. For as he who honours his father is a lover of his father, so he who honours God is a lover of God. And it appears to me that there are three results of the gnostic faculty: first, to know things; second, to perform whatever reason dictates; and third, to be able to hand on, in a manner worthy of God, the things hidden in the truth. He, then, who is persuaded that God is almighty and has learned the divine mysteries from his only-begotten Son—how is this man an atheist? For the atheist is he who does not believe that God exists; the superstitious man is he who fears the daemonic powers, who deifies everything—wood and stone and spirit—and enslaves the man who does not live according to reason.

2.5. Faith, then, in the knowledge of God is the first thing, together with the Saviour's teaching the conviction that to do wrong in no way whatever—this is what one must hold to be fitting to the knowledge of God. By this the most devout man is the most powerful being on earth, and the angel the most powerful in heaven, as being nearer in place and already partaking more purely of the eternal and blessed life. But most perfect and most holy and most sovereign and most ruling and most kingly and most beneficent is the nature of the Son, which is nearest to the one Almighty. This is the greatest pre-eminence, which orders all things according to the will of the Father and steers the whole most excellently, working all things with untiring and unwearied power, looking through the things by which it acts upon the hidden thoughts. For the Son of God never departs from his watch-tower, not being divided, not severed, not passing from place to place, but being everywhere always and contained nowhere—wholly mind, wholly the Father's light, wholly eye, seeing all things, hearing all things, knowing all things, searching the powers with power. To him is subject the whole host of angels and of gods—to the paternal Word who has taken up the holy administration "because of him who subjected" all to him, on whose account also are all his men: but some "by recognition," others not yet; and some as friends, others as faithful household servants, others simply as servants. This is the Teacher who trains the gnostic by mysteries.

2.6. He trains the believer by good hopes, and the hard of heart by corrective discipline through the action upon the senses. From this comes providence, in private and in public and everywhere. That there is a Son of God, and that he is the Saviour and Lord whom we proclaim, the divine prophecies plainly set forth. In this way the Lord of all, both Greeks and barbarians, persuades those who are willing; for he does not compel one who is able to receive salvation from him by choosing and by fulfilling all that comes from him toward laying hold of the hope. This is he who gives philosophy also to the Greeks through the inferior angels; for by ancient and divine command angels are distributed among the nations. But "the Lord's portion" is the glory of those who believe. For either the Lord does not care for all men—and this would come about either through inability, which is not permissible, for it is a sign of weakness, or through unwillingness while able, but the suffering is not the mark of a good being; nor is he slothful through luxury, who for our sakes took on suffering flesh—or else he cares for all alike, which indeed befits him who has become the Lord of all. For he is a Saviour, not of some and not of others; but to each in proportion to his fitness he distributes his benefit—to Greeks and barbarians, and to those among them who are foreordained and, in their own due season, called as faithful and elect.

2.7. He, then, who has called all alike, but has assigned special honours to those who have believed in a special way, would never envy any; nor would the Lord of all ever be hindered by another, especially since he ministers to the will of the good and almighty Father. But neither does envy touch the Lord, who came into being without beginning and is free from passion. Nor indeed are the affairs of men such as to be objects of the Lord's envy. The one who envies is another, one whom passion has touched. And it cannot be said that through ignorance the Lord is unwilling to save mankind, on the ground that he does not know how each is to be cared for. For ignorance does not touch the Son, who before the foundation of the world was the Father's counsellor. For this was the Wisdom "in which" the Almighty God "rejoiced"; for the Son is the "power of God," being the most sovereign Word of the Father before all things that have come to be, and rightly would he be called his "Wisdom" and the Teacher of those who were fashioned through him. Nor again, drawn aside by any pleasure, would he ever abandon the care of mankind, who indeed took up the flesh, which is by nature subject to passion, and trained it into the disposition of freedom from passion. And how could he be Saviour and Lord, if he were not Saviour and Lord of all? Rather, he is Saviour of those who have believed, because they have willed to know, and Lord of the disobedient, until, being able to confess, they obtain through him a benefit suited and proportioned to them. And every activity of the Lord has its reference to the Almighty, and the Son is, so to speak, a kind of paternal energy.

2.8. The Saviour, then, could never be a hater of men, who through his surpassing love of mankind did not disdain the weakness of human flesh, but put it on and came for the common salvation of men; for the faith of those who choose it is common. Nor would he ever neglect his own work, since to man alone of all living creatures the conception of God was instilled at his creation. Nor could there be for God any better or more harmonious ordering of mankind than the one appointed. For it is always fitting that the better should by nature rule the worse, and that to the one able to administer something well should be assigned the management of that other. And the true ruler and governor is the divine Word and his providence, which surveys all things and overlooks the care of none of its own. These would be those who have chosen to be his own—those who through faith are being perfected. Thus the Son is established, by the will of the almighty Father, as the cause of all good things, the first author of motion, a power not to be grasped by sense. For he was not seen as what he was by those unable to receive him because of the weakness of the flesh; rather, taking on flesh perceptible to sense, he came to show what is possible for men through obedience to the commandments. Being therefore the paternal power, he easily prevails over whatever he wills.

2.9. He leaves not the least part of his administration uncared for; otherwise the whole would no longer have been well wrought by him. But it is, I think, the mark of the greatest power that the examination of all the parts, even to the smallest, should proceed with exactness—all things looking toward the first Governor of the universe, who by the Father's will steers the salvation of all, while others are appointed under others as rulers, until one comes at last to the great High Priest. For from one Beginning above, which works according to the will, depend the first and second and third orders; then at the summit of the visible world is the blessed company of angels; and so on down even to us, some set under others, out of one and through one being saved and saving, are they ordered in their ranks. As, then, even a far-distant piece of iron is moved together by the breath of the Heraclean stone, drawn out through many iron rings, so too those drawn by the Holy Spirit—the virtuous are made akin to the first abode, and the rest in turn down to the last—while those who are evil through weakness, having fallen into a bad condition through unjust greed, neither holding nor being held, are swept away, entangled by the passions, and fall to the ground. For this is the law from above: that whoever wills should choose virtue.

2.10. Therefore the commandments, both those under the Law and those before the Law—not laid down for the lawful (for "the law is not laid down for the just")—appointed that the one who chooses life should receive eternal life and a blessed reward; and that the one, again, who delights in evil should be granted to dwell with those he has chosen; and again, that the soul which is at every point being improved into the recognition of virtue and the increase of righteousness should receive a better rank in the universe, "stretching forward" at each advance toward the disposition of freedom from passion, until it "arrives at the perfect man," the pre-eminence of knowledge and of inheritance together. These saving revolutions are apportioned according to the order of the change, by times and places and honours and kinds of knowledge and inheritances and ministries—each according to each—up to the higher and immediate contemplation of the Lord in eternity. For what is lovely draws toward the contemplation of itself everyone who has wholly set himself, by the love of knowledge, upon contemplation.

2.11. Therefore the Lord too, drawing from one fountain the commandments which he gave, both the earlier and the later, neither overlooked those before the Law as lawless, nor again permitted those who did not heed the barbarian philosophy to break free unbridled. For giving commandments to the one and philosophy to the other, he "shut up" unbelief until the coming; whence everyone who has not believed is without excuse. For from either kind of advance, the Greek and the barbarian, he leads on to the perfection that is through faith. And if any of the Greeks, passing over the preliminary stage of Greek philosophy, has set out at once for the true teaching, this man, even though unschooled, has outrun the rest, having chosen the short road to salvation through faith unto perfection.

2.12. Everything, then, that did not hinder a man's choice from being voluntary, God both made and showed to be helpful toward virtue, so that in some way, even to those who can discern but dimly, the one truly almighty God might be shown to be good, saving from age to age through the Son, but in no way and by no means the cause of evil. For toward the salvation of the whole all things have been ordered by the Lord of the universe, both in general and in particular. It is therefore the work of saving righteousness ever to lead each forward to the better, as far as may be. For with a view to the salvation and continuance of the higher, even the lesser things are administered in proportion to their characters. Thus all that is virtuous passes over into better dwellings, having for the cause of its change the choice of knowledge, which the soul held as its own sovereign possession. But the necessary chastisements, through the goodness of the great Judge who watches over all, both through the angels who are near and through varied prior judgements and through the final judgement, compel to repentance those who have grown more "callous."

3.13. "But concerning the rest I am silent," glorifying the Lord. Yet of those gnostic souls I do speak—souls which by the magnificence of their contemplation surpass the polity of each holy order, in accordance with which the blessed dwellings of the gods are distinguished and allotted; souls counted holy among the holy, transferred whole out of whole, arriving at better places out of better, no longer embracing the divine contemplation in mirrors or through mirrors, but feasting, as much as may be, on the vision clear and most exactly pure—a vision insatiable to souls that love it with a more than natural love—reaping eternally an eternal gladness, all honoured to remain in the sameness of pre-eminence. This is the comprehending contemplation of "the pure in heart." This, then, is the activity of the perfected gnostic: to hold communion with God through the great High Priest, being made like to the Lord, so far as may be, through all his service toward God—a service that reaches out to the salvation of men by care for the benefit done to us, and again by ministry, by teaching, and by well-doing in deeds. Yes, the gnostic both founds and fashions himself, and besides adorns those who give heed to him, being made like to God, by likening to freedom from passion—so far as may be—the freedom from passion gathered through discipline to that which possesses it by nature; and this while holding communion and dwelling with the Lord "without distraction." Gentleness, I think, and love of mankind and magnificent godliness are the standards of gnostic assimilation.

3.14. These virtues, I say, are "an acceptable sacrifice" with God—the unproud heart with right knowledge, which Scripture calls "a whole burnt offering to God," when the whole man who has been taken up into holiness is enlightened into undivided union. For both the Gospel and the Apostle command us to take ourselves captive and to slay our own selves—putting to death "the old man, corrupted according to its desires," and raising up "the new man" from the death of the old perversion—laying aside the passions and becoming free from sin. This, then, was what the Law too hinted at when it commanded the sinner to be put to death: the passing over from death to life, the freedom from passion that comes of faith. Not understanding this, the teachers of the Law, taking it as a thing for contention, have furnished occasions to those who try in vain to slander it. For this reason we reasonably do not sacrifice to God, who is in need of nothing, who has furnished all things to all; but the one who was offered up for us we glorify by offering up ourselves—from that which is needless of nothing into needing nothing, and from that which is free of passion into freedom from passion. For God rejoices in our salvation alone. Reasonably, then, to him who is not conquered by pleasures we offer no sacrifice down here—not even as high as the densest clouds, but far short even of these, while the steam of smoke reaches only as far as it reaches.

3.15. The Divine, then, is neither in need, nor a lover of pleasure, nor a lover of gain or of money; being full, and furnishing all things to every created and needy thing, it is not charmed by sacrifices nor by votive offerings nor by glory and honour, nor is it led aside by any such things. Rather it shows itself like good and noble men, who would never betray the just—whether through fear of a threatened danger or by the promise of greater gifts. But as many as have not perceived the self-determined and unenslaved character of the human soul as regards its choice of life, being vexed at the things done through the injustice that comes of want of education, do not believe that God exists. Of the same opinion are those who, falling into the incontinence of pleasures and into excessive griefs and unwilled misfortunes, and giving way under their calamities, say that there is no God, or that, if he exists, he does not oversee all things. Others again are persuaded that those reckoned as gods can be won over by sacrifices and gifts, lending their aid, so to speak, to the men's own excesses; and these are not even willing to believe that the only true God exists—he who abides in the sameness of just goodness.

3.16. The gnostic, then, is devout—he who cares first for himself, and then for his neighbours, that we may become as good as possible. For the son too gives delight to a good father by showing himself diligent and like his father, and the subject to the ruler; for to believe and to obey lies in our power. The cause of evils one might take to be the weakness of matter and the unwilled impulses of ignorance and the irrational necessities that come of want of learning. The gnostic, having through learning risen above these as above wild beasts, and imitating the divine purpose, does good to those of mankind who are willing, so far as he can. And if ever he comes into a position of rule, like Moses, he will govern for the salvation of the governed, and will tame what is wild and unpersuaded, honouring the best and chastising the wicked—chastisement being inscribed, in accordance with reason, for instruction. For above all things the soul of a just man is a divine image and like to God, in which, through obedience to the precepts, there is enshrined and set up the Ruler of all things mortal and immortal, the King and Begetter of all that is noble—who is in truth law and ordinance and eternal Reason, being one Saviour both to each privately and to all in common. This is he who is truly only-begotten, the express character of the glory of the all-ruling and almighty Father, who stamps upon the gnostic the perfect contemplation according to his own image—so that there is now a third divine image, made like, as far as may be, to the second cause, to the true Life, through which we live the true life—copying out, as it were, the gnostic stamp that has become ours, conversant with things firm and wholly unchanging.

3.17. Ruling, then, over himself and his own, possessing a firm grasp of the divine knowledge, he comes near to the truth in genuine fashion. For the knowledge and firm grasp of things intelligible may rightly be called science; its work concerning things divine is to consider what the first cause is, and what it is "through which all things were made and without which nothing has come to be"; and again, what things are, as it were, pervading, and what containing; what are conjoined, and what disjoined; and what rank each of these holds, and what power and what office each contributes. And again, among human things, to consider what man himself is, and what is for him according to nature or contrary to nature; how he ought to act or to be acted upon; what his virtues are, and what his vices; and the questions of goods and evils and things intermediate, and all that concerns courage and prudence and temperance, and that perfect virtue which crowns them all, righteousness. But prudence and righteousness he uses toward the acquisition of wisdom; and courage not only in enduring adverse circumstances, but in mastering pleasure and desire, grief and anger as well, and, in general, in setting himself against everything that allures us, whether by violence or by some deceit. For one must not endure vices and evils, but thrust them away; and one must endure things fearful. Useful, therefore, even pain is found to be, in medicine and in teaching and in chastisement; and through it characters are set right for the benefit of mankind.

3.18. The forms of courage are steadfastness, greatness of mind, magnanimity, liberality, and magnificence. For this reason the gnostic is touched neither by the blame nor by the ill repute that comes from the many, nor is he subject to opinions or to flatteries; and in enduring toils, while at the same time accomplishing something of what befits him, and rising courageously above all circumstances, he shows himself a true man among the rest of men. And again, preserving prudence, he is temperate in the quietness of his soul, receptive of the noble things that are promised as his own, in the turning away from base things as alien—becoming orderly and above the world, doing all things in order and arrangement and erring in nothing anywhere; rich, indeed, in the highest degree, by desiring nothing, since he has few needs and is in the abundance of every good through the knowledge of the Good. For the first work of his righteousness is to pass his life in love with his own kind, and to dwell with them both on earth and in heaven.

3.19. In this way he is also liberal in giving, when he has the means, and a lover of mankind, being the bitterest hater of wickedness through his perfect turning away from all evil-doing. He must learn, then, to be faithful both to himself and to his neighbours and obedient to the commandments. For this is "the servant of God"—he who is willingly led by the commandments. But he who now, not for the commandments' sake but for the sake of knowledge itself, is "pure in heart"—this man is "the friend of God." For neither are we born possessing virtue by nature, nor does it come to us by nature afterwards, once we are born, as do certain other parts of the body (since then it would no longer be voluntary or praiseworthy); nor again is virtue perfected, as language is, out of the things that befall us and the habit thereby formed (for it is in nearly this way that vice arises). Nor does knowledge come about from any art, whether of those that provide a livelihood or of those that tend the body; nor yet from the ordinary cycle of education—it is enough if these can but prepare and serve the soul. For the political laws can perhaps restrain wicked acts;

3.20. but neither they themselves, nor persuasive arguments, being superficial, could provide a scientific and abiding hold upon the truth. Greek philosophy, as it were, purifies the soul beforehand and prepares it for the reception of faith, upon which the truth builds up knowledge. This is he—this is the true athlete in the great stadium, the fair world, who is crowned with the true victory over all the passions. For the president of the games is the almighty God, the umpire is the only-begotten Son of God, and the spectators are angels and gods; and the all-contending struggle is "not against blood and flesh," but against the "spiritual powers" of inordinate passions that work through fleshly things. Prevailing over these great adversaries, and having contended as in certain contests against the tempter who hangs over him, he wins the prize of immortality. For the verdict of God toward the most just judgement cannot be deceived. The theatre, then, is summoned to the contest, and the athletes contend in the stadium; and out of these he prevails who has become obedient to his trainer. For all things lie equally before all from God, and he himself is blameless; but the one who is able will choose, and the one who has willed will prevail. For this reason too we have received mind, that we may know what we do; and the "Know thyself" means, here, to know to what end we have come to be. And we have come to be in order to be obedient to the commandments, if we choose to will our own salvation. This, perhaps, is Adrasteia—the inevitable—by which there is no escaping God.

3.21. The human work, then, is ready obedience to God, who has proclaimed a manifold salvation through commandments; and well-pleasing is acknowledgement. For the benefactor takes the first step in well-doing, and he who receives it readily, with the due reflections, and keeps the commandments, this man is faithful; and he who, as far as he is able, requites the well-doing with the well-doing of love, is now a friend. There is one chief requital on the part of men: to do those things that are pleasing to God. And just as the Teacher and Saviour receives the benefits done to men, and their correction, as though they were his own offspring and a kind of kindred result, reckoning them to his own favour and honour—just as he reckons the injuries done to those who have believed in him as his own ungratefulness and dishonour (for what other dishonour could touch God?)—so it is that there is no other requital worthy of so great a salvation that one could render in return for the benefit from the Lord. But as those who do harm to property insult the masters, and as those who harm soldiers harm their commander, so the maltreatment of those consecrated to the Lord is disregard of the Lord himself. For just as the sun illuminates not only heaven and the whole world, lighting up earth and sea, but also through windows and a small chink sends its ray into the innermost chambers, so the Word, poured out everywhere, looks upon even the smallest acts of life.

4.22. But the Greeks suppose their gods to be, like men, both in form and in passion; and as each people paint their forms like to themselves—as Xenophanes says, "the Ethiopians black and snub-nosed, the Thracians red-haired and grey-eyed"—so too they fashion the souls of their gods like to their own. The barbarians, accordingly, make them beastlike and savage in character, and the Greeks gentler, yet still subject to passion. For this reason it is reasonable that the wicked should have base conceptions about God, and the good the best; and on this account he who is truly "kingly in soul," and is gnostic and devout and free from superstition, is persuaded that the only God is honourable, august, magnificent, well-doing, beneficent, the author of all good things, but in no way the cause of evils. And concerning Greek superstition we have, I think, set things forth sufficiently in our treatise entitled the Exhortation, making free use of the relevant history as need pressed. There is no call, then, "to tell over again as a tale what has been clearly said."

4.23. Yet, as far as to take note of it while we are upon the subject, a few points out of many will suffice—and these alone serve to show that those who liken the Divine to the worst of men are atheists. For either the gods are harmed by men, and are shown by us to be worse than men in being harmed by them; or, if not this, then how is it that, in cases where they are not harmed, they grow bitter—like some irascible old woman provoked to anger—as men say that Artemis was wroth with the Aetolians on account of Oeneus? For how did she not reason, being a goddess, that Oeneus had not despised her, but had either forgotten, or had neglected the matter as though he had already sacrificed? Well too does Auge plead her cause against Athena for being angry with her because she had given birth in the temple, saying: "You rejoice to look on the spoils that destroy mortals, and the wreckage of the dead, and these are not defilement to you; but if I have given birth, you count this a dreadful thing." And yet the other animals too, giving birth in the temples, do no wrong.

4.24. Reasonably, then, the superstitious, becoming credulous about those easily moved to anger, take all that befalls them to be signs and causes of evils. If a mouse should dig through an altar that is made of clay, or, having nothing else, should gnaw through a bag; if a fowl that is being reared should crow at evening—they set this down as a sign of something. Menander mocks just such a man in his Superstitious Man: "May some good thing befall me, O most honoured gods! For as I was putting on my shoe I broke the strap of my right sandal." "Reasonably, you babbler; for it was rotten, and you, being mean, would not buy a new pair." Charming is the saying of Antiphon. When a man took it for an omen that a sow had eaten her piglets, Antiphon, seeing that she had been wasted by hunger through the meanness of the one who fed her, said: "Rejoice at the omen, that, being so hungry, she did not eat your children." "And what is there to wonder at," says Bion, "if the mouse gnawed through the bag, finding nothing to eat? For it would have been a wonder if—as Arcesilaus jestingly suggested—the bag had eaten the mouse."

4.25. Well too did Diogenes say to the man who marvelled that he had found the serpent coiled about the pestle: "Do not marvel; for that would have been the stranger thing, had you seen the pestle coiled about the upright serpent." For the irrational animals too must run and dart, fight, bring forth, and die—things which, being according to nature for them, could never be contrary to nature for us. "And many birds beneath the sun's rays go to and fro." The comic poet Philemon too mocks such things: "Whenever I see," he says, "a man watching closely who sneezed or who spoke, or who it is that goes before him, scanning it all—I sell that man at once in the market-place. Each of us walks for himself, and speaks and sneezes; things come to pass for us in the city according to their nature." Then, sober, men ask for health; but, gorging themselves and rolling in drunkenness at the festivals, they draw diseases upon themselves.

4.26. Many fear also the inscriptions that are set up. Very neatly did Diogenes, finding written over the house of a worthless man, "The glorious victor Heracles dwells here; let no evil enter in," say: "And how then shall the master of the house come in?" These same men, worshipping every piece of wood and every stone, as the saying goes—anointing them—stand in dread of red wool and lumps of salt and torches, of squill and brimstone, being bewitched by the sorcerers with their unclean purifications. But God—the God who truly is—knows only the character of the just as holy, just as that of the unjust and wicked is accursed. One may indeed see that the eggs of birds that have undergone such purifications, if warmed, are still quickened into life; and this would not happen if they had taken up the evils of the one purified. Charmingly too the comic poet Diphilus mocks the sorcerers in these lines: "Purifying the daughters of Proetus, and their father Proetus son of Abas, and a fifth, an old crone besides—with one torch and one squill, for so many bodies of men—with brimstone and bitumen and the loud-roaring sea, from gently-flowing, deep-flowing Ocean. But, blessed Air, send through the clouds for hellebore, that I may make this bug into a drone."

4.27. Well too says Menander: "If you had some real evil, Phidias, you would need to seek a real remedy for it; but as it is, you have none. Find then an empty remedy for the empty trouble, and think that something does you good. Let the women wipe you all round in a circle and burn incense about you; sprinkle yourself with water from three springs, having thrown in salt and lentils." Pure is everyone who is conscious of no evil in himself. Tragedy, accordingly, says: "Orestes, what disease destroys you?" "The consciousness—that I know I have done dreadful things." For in truth purity is nothing else than abstinence from sins. Well, then, does Epicharmus say: "If you keep your mind pure, you are pure in your whole body." So too we say that one must first purify the souls from base and wicked doctrines through right reason, and then, in that way, turn to the recollection of the chief points set forth before. For even before the delivery of the mysteries they think it right to bring certain purifications to those who are about to be initiated, since one must lay aside the godless opinion and turn to the true tradition.

5.28. For is it not nobly and truly that we neither circumscribe in a place the Uncontainable, nor shut up in shrines "made with hands" that which contains all things? What holy work could belong to builders and stone-cutters and the mechanic's craft? Are not those better than these who have judged the air and the encompassing—nay rather the whole world and the universe—worthy of the pre-eminence of God? It would indeed be ridiculous, as the philosophers themselves say, that man, being "the plaything of God," should fashion God, and that God should become a game of art. For the thing produced is the same as, and like to, that out of which it is produced: the ivory thing is of ivory, and the golden of gold. But the statues and shrines wrought by mechanic men come into being out of inert matter, so that they too would be inert and material and profane; and even if you perfect the art, it has shared in the mechanic's labour. No longer, then, are the works of the art holy and divine. And what could be set up at all, when nothing is unestablished, since all things are in a place? But the thing established by another is established as having previously been unestablished. If, then, God is established by men, he was once unestablished, and so did not exist at all.

5.29. For that would be unestablished which is not—since everything that is not is established; but that which is could not be established by that which is not, nor indeed by another that is, for it too is. It remains, then, that it should be established by itself. But how shall a thing beget itself? Or how shall Being itself establish itself in being? Did it, being previously unestablished, then establish itself? But it would not even have existed, since that which is not is unestablished; and how should that which is reckoned to have been established—having already possessed being—afterwards make itself? And that of which all beings are—how should this stand in need of anything? But if the Divine were of human form, it would need the same things as man: food and shelter, a house and all that follows. For those of like shape and like passions will need a like manner of life. And if the sacred is understood in two ways—both God himself and the structure raised for his honour—how shall we not most properly call the Church, which has become holy unto the honour of God by recognition of him, a temple of God, the thing of great worth and not built by the mechanic's craft, nor decked out by a charlatan's hand, but made into a shrine by the will of God? For it is not the place but the assembly of the elect that I call the Church. This is the better temple for the reception of the greatness of God's worth. For the living being of great worth is consecrated, through surpassing holiness, to him who is worth the whole, or rather worth more than all things. And this man would be the gnostic, of great worth and precious to God, in whom God is established—that is, the knowledge of God is consecrated. Here too we should find the image, the divine and holy statue, in the just soul, when it is itself blessed, as having been purified beforehand, and blessed in performing blessed deeds. Here too is both that which is established and that which is being established: the one in those already gnostic, the other in those capable of becoming so, even if they are not yet worthy to receive the knowledge of God. For everyone who is going to believe is already faithful to God, and is consecrated, a virtuous statue set up unto honour, dedicated to God.

6.30. As, then, God is not circumscribed in a place, nor ever imaged in the shape of a living creature, so neither is he subject to passion nor in need, as created things are—as to desire sacrifices, in the manner of food, through hunger. Things that passion touches are all corruptible; and to offer food to one who needs no nourishment is vain. And that comic poet Pherecrates, in his Deserters, has charmingly represented the gods themselves blaming men over their sacrifices: "When you sacrifice to the gods, first of all you set apart for the priests their customary portion, and then for yourselves; and then—shame to tell it—having stripped the two thighs clean to the groin, you devour all the flesh and the loin clean bare, and the rest—the very vertebra—you scour as with a file, and then portion it out to us as if to dogs; and then, ashamed before one another, you hide it under heaps of barley-cakes." And Eubulus, himself also a comic poet, writes thus somewhere about sacrifices: "To the gods themselves you sacrifice only the tail and the thigh, as though to pederasts." And bringing on Dionysus in his Semele, he has made him expostulate: "First of all, whenever any sacrifice to me, they sacrifice blood, the bladder, the liver, the heart, and the surface membrane; for I myself eat neither sweetmeats nor thigh-pieces."

6.31. Menander too has represented the loins' end and the gall: "Laying upon the gods the inedible bones," he says, "they themselves consume the rest." Or is not the steam of whole burnt offerings to be shunned even by wild beasts? And if the steam is in truth a privilege of the gods of the Greeks, they would do well to deify their cooks as well, who are reckoned worthy of the same happiness, and to worship the very oven, which comes nearer to the much-prized steam. And Hesiod somewhere, regarding a division of meats by which Zeus was deceived by Prometheus, says that Zeus took "the white bones of an ox, by a cunning art" covered "with white fat"; and that thereafter "the tribes of men upon earth burn white bones to the immortals upon the fragrant altars." But they say that in no way is God nourished by being harmed through a desire arising from want. So then they will make him like a plant, nourished without appetite, and like beasts that lie hidden in their lairs. For they say these creatures grow harmlessly, fed either by the thickness of the surrounding air or by the very exhalation of their own bodies. And yet, if the Divine is nourished by them without need, what further need has the needless of nourishment? But if, being by nature in need of nothing, he rejoices in being honoured, then not unreasonably do we honour God through prayer, and send up this best and holiest sacrifice with righteousness, doing homage by the most righteous Word, through whom we receive knowledge, and through him glorifying the one we have learned. There is, then, among us this altar here below, the earthly one—the assembly of those who are dedicated to prayers, having, as it were, one common voice and one mind. And nourishments through the sense of smell, even if they are more divine than those through the mouth, are still signs of breathing. What, then, do they say about God?

6.32. Does he breathe out and in, like the race of daemons? Or does he only breathe in, like creatures of the water by the opening of their gills? Or does he breathe round about, like insects by the contraction of the body through the pressure of the wings? But they would liken God to none of these, if they were of sound mind. For all things that breathe draw in the air by the contraction of the lungs against the chest. Then, if they were to assign to God entrails and arteries and veins and nerves and members, they will be introducing him as in no way differing from these. But the breathing-together is rightly spoken of in regard to the Church. For the sacrifice of the Church is the word sent up as a fragrant offering from holy souls, while at the same time, together with the sacrifice, the whole mind is laid open to God. But they say that the most ancient altar in Delos was held to be pure, and that to it alone Pythagoras drew near, not defiled by slaughter and death—and will they disbelieve us when we call the just soul the truly holy altar, and the holy prayer that rises from it the incense? But sacrifices, I think, were devised by men under pretext of eating flesh; for it was possible, even otherwise, without such idolatry, for whoever wished to partake of meats. For the sacrifices according to the Law allegorize our piety, just as the turtle-dove and the pigeon offered for sins indicate to God the acceptable purification of the irrational part of the soul. But if any of the just does not burden his soul with the eating of meats, he uses a reasonable principle—not the one with which Pythagoras and his followers dream of the transmigration of the soul. Xenocrates, treating the subject specially in his work On Nourishment from Animals, and Polemon in his treatises On Life according to Nature, seem clearly to say that nourishment through flesh is unprofitable, since, being already worked over, it assimilates to the souls of the irrational creatures.

6.33. For this reason, indeed, the Jews especially abstain from swine's flesh, as though this beast were unclean, since beyond the rest it roots up and destroys the crops. But if they say that the animals are given to men, we too agree—only not by all means for food, nor indeed all of them, but those that are useless for work. Therefore not amiss does the comic poet Plato say in his play The Feasts: "Of four-footed beasts we ought henceforth to kill none but swine; for their flesh is most pleasant, and nothing comes from the pig but bristles and mud and squealing for us." Whence too Aesop said, not amiss, that swine squeal loudest when they are dragged off, knowing in themselves that they are good for nothing else but sacrifice. For which reason Cleanthes too says that they have soul instead of salt, that their flesh may not rot. Some, then, eat them as useless; others abstain as from a thing destructive of the crops; and others do not eat them because the creature is prone to coupling. In this way too the Law does not sacrifice the goat, except in the single rite of the sending-away of evils, since pleasure is the metropolis of vice. And indeed they say that the eating of goat's flesh contributes to epilepsy. They say also that the greatest distribution arises from swine's flesh, and therefore it is useful to those who train the body, but no longer to those who labour to increase the soul itself, on account of the sluggishness that comes from flesh-eating.

6.34. And now: land animals and birds, breathing the same air as our souls, are nourished by it, having a soul akin to the air; but they say that fishes do not breathe this air, but that other one which was mingled with the water straightway at the first creation, as it was with the rest of the elements—which is also a token of their material permanence. One must, then, "offer to God sacrifices that are not costly, but dear to God." And that compound incense in the Law, made up of many tongues and voices in prayer—or rather that which is prepared out of diverse nations and natures by the gift of the covenants "into the unity of faith," and gathered together in praises, with a pure mind, with a just and upright polity, out of holy works and righteous prayer. For who is so foolish, in the words of the poet's grace, and so utterly slack and credulous of men, as to hope that the gods take delight in bones without flesh and in burning gall—things not even edible to hungry dogs—and that all of them obtain this as a privilege, and pay back a return of thanks to those who do it, even if they happen to be pirates or robbers or tyrants? But we say that the fire sanctifies not the flesh, but sinful souls—meaning by fire not that which devours all and is mechanic, but the prudent fire, that which "pierces through the soul" that passes through the fire.

7.35. We are commanded to reverence and honour the Word, being persuaded that he is Saviour and Ruler, and through him the Father—not on chosen days, as some others do, but doing this continually through the whole of life and in every way. Indeed "the elect race," it is said, "Seven times in the day have I praised you," being justified according to the commandment. Whence the gnostic honours God neither in a fixed place, nor in a chosen shrine, nor on certain festivals and appointed days, but through his whole life, in every place—whether he happens to be alone by himself, or has with him some who have believed as he has: that is, he gives thanks for his knowledge and for his manner of life. And if the presence of one good man, through the shame and reverence it inspires, ever shapes the one who meets him toward the better, how shall not the man who is ever present, through knowledge and life and thanksgiving, with God unceasingly, with good reason be at every point better than himself in all things—in his deeds, his words, and his disposition? Such is he who is persuaded that God is present everywhere, and does not suppose him shut up in certain fixed places, so that, thinking himself sometimes apart from God, he might indulge in licence by night and by day. Keeping festival, then, through the whole of life, persuaded that God is present everywhere and on every side, we till the ground praising him, we sail singing hymns, and in the rest of our conduct we move skilfully. The gnostic comes nearer to being made the household of God, being grave and at the same time cheerful in all things—grave on account of his turning toward the Divine, cheerful on account of his reckoning up of the human goods which God has given us. The prophet sets forth the excellence of knowledge in this way:

7.36. "Goodness and discipline and knowledge teach me"—exalting the leading faculty of perfection by a gradual ascent. This man, then, is in truth the kingly man; this is the holy priest of God. Which thing even now is preserved among the most learned of the barbarians, who advance the priestly race to kingship. This man, then, in no way gives himself over to the rabble-rout that lords it in the theatres; the things said and done and seen there for the sake of dissolute pleasure he does not admit even in a dream—neither these pleasures of the spectacle nor the varied delights of the rest of the enjoyments: the costliness of incense that bewitches the sense of smell, the contrivings of dishes, the relishings of various wines that entice the taste, nor the many-flowered and fragrant garlands that effeminate the soul through the senses. But referring the august enjoyment of all things ever to God, of his food and his drink and his anointing he offers first-fruits to the Giver of all, acknowledging the favour both of the gift and of its use, through the Word given to him. He rarely comes to banquets and drinking-parties, except when the prospect of friendship and concord that the gathering holds out should urge him to go. For he is persuaded that God knows and hears all things—not only the voice, but the very thought; since hearing in us, though it works through bodily passages, receives its apprehension not through bodily power, but through a certain perception of the soul, and through the understanding that discriminates the voices which signify anything.

7.37. God, then, is not of human form, for this end—that he may hear; nor does he need senses, as the Stoics held, especially hearing and sight, on the ground that he could not otherwise apprehend. Rather, both the responsiveness of the air and the keenest joint-perception of the angels, and the power of the conscience that touches the soul, by a certain unspeakable power and apart from hearing through the senses, knows all things together with the thought. And even if one should say that the voice does not reach to God, but rolls below about the air, yet the thoughts of the saints cut through not only the air, but the whole world. And the divine power, like light, reaches through to discern the whole soul. What then? Do not the purposes also reach to God, sending forth their own voice? And are they not borne onward by the conscience? And for what voice would he wait who knows beforehand, according to his purpose, the elect one even before his birth, and what will be as though it already were? Or does not the light of his power shine everywhere into the depth of the whole soul, "searching the storehouses," as Scripture says, "with the lamp" of his power? For God is wholly hearing and wholly eye—if one may use these names.

7.38. In general, then, the conception of God that is unfitting, whether in hymns or in words, or even in writings or in doctrines—but which turns aside into low and unseemly notions and suppositions—preserves no godliness at all. Whence the praise of the many differs in no way from blasphemy, through ignorance of the truth. The prayers of men are of the same things as their appetites and desires and, in a word, their impulses. For this reason no one desires drink, but the drinking of the draught; nor an inheritance, but to inherit; and just so, not knowledge, but to know; nor even right citizenship, but to live as a citizen. The prayers, then, are of those things of which there are also requests, and the requests of those things of which there are also desires; and to pray and to reach out is done correspondingly toward having the goods and the benefits that accompany the possession. Always, then, the gnostic makes his prayer and request for the truly good things, those that concern the soul, and prays, working at the same time himself as well, to come into a settled disposition of goodness—so as no longer to have the good things laid up beside him, like certain lessons learned, but to be good.

7.39. Therefore it befits especially these men to pray—those who both know the Divine as they ought and have the virtue suited to him, who know what the truly good things are, and what one ought to ask, and when, and how, in each case. But it is the height of ignorance to ask things of those who are not gods as though they were gods, or to ask things that do not profit, asking evils for oneself under an appearance of goods. Whence, reasonably, since the good God is one, we pray—both we and the angels—that from him alone some of the good things may be given and others may abide. Yet not in like manner. For it is not the same thing to ask that a gift may abide, and to be eager to receive the beginning of it. And the turning away of evils is a kind of prayer. But this kind of prayer must never be used toward the harm of men—unless the gnostic, contriving the turning of the unjust toward righteousness, should so frame his request for those who have grown "callous." Prayer, then, is, to speak somewhat boldly, converse with God. And even if, whispering, not so much as opening our lips, we speak in silence, yet within we cry aloud; for God unceasingly hears all the inward converse.

7.40. For this reason too we lift up the head and raise the hands to heaven, and rise upon the feet at the closing utterance of the prayer, following the eagerness of the spirit toward the intelligible essence; and, striving to lift the body from the earth together with the word, we make "the soul winged" by longing for the better things, and force our way toward "the holy places," counting as nothing the bond of the flesh. For we know well that the gnostic makes voluntarily his going-out from the whole world—just as the Jews did from Egypt—showing plainly, more than by anything else, that he will be as near as possible to God. And if some assign also fixed hours to prayer—as the third, say, and the sixth and the ninth—yet the gnostic prays throughout his whole life, striving through prayer to be with God, and to leave behind, to speak briefly, all that is of no use to him once he has come to be there: as one who has already received here below the perfection of the conduct that springs from love. And the divisions of the hours into three, honoured with equal prayers, are known also to those who recognize the blessed Triad of the holy abodes.

7.41. Having come to this point, I was reminded of the doctrines introduced by certain heterodox men concerning the supposed needlessness of prayer—that is, by those of the school of Prodicus. Lest, then, they should be puffed up over this godless cleverness of theirs as though it were a strange new sect, let them learn that it was anticipated by the philosophers called Cyrenaics. Nevertheless this unholy knowledge of theirs, falsely so named, shall meet with refutation at the proper time, so that it may not now, slipping into these notes—being no small thing, this onslaught of theirs—break the continuity of the argument in hand, while we are showing that he alone is truly holy and devout who is in truth gnostic according to the rule of the Church, to whom alone the request is assigned according to the will of God, both when he asks and when he merely thinks it. For as God is able to do all that he wills, so the gnostic "receives all that he asks." For God knows in general both those who are worthy of good things and those who are not; whence he gives to each what befits them. Therefore he would often not give to the unworthy who ask, but would give to those who are plainly worthy. Yet the request is not idle, even if the good things are given apart from the asking. So then both thanksgiving and the request for the conversion of one's neighbours is the work of the gnostic. In this way the Lord too prayed, giving thanks for the things in which he completed his ministry, and praying that as many as possible might come to recognition, that among those being saved, through the salvation that comes of recognition, God might be glorified, and that the only Good and only Saviour might be recognized through the Son from age to age. And yet faith too, that one will receive, is a kind of prayer laid up gnostically within.

7.42. But if prayer becomes an occasion of converse with God, then no occasion of approach to God must be let slip. Indeed, when the holiness of the gnostic is interwoven with the blessed providence, through the voluntary confession it displays the perfect benefaction of God. For the holiness of the gnostic is, as it were, a kind of return upon providence, and a reciprocal goodwill on the part of the friend of God. For God is not good unwillingly, in the way that fire is hot; rather, the imparting of good things is voluntary with him, even if he anticipates the request. Nor again is the one who is saved saved unwillingly; for he is not without a soul, but, more than anything, will hasten toward salvation willingly and by deliberate choice. Therefore man received the commandments as having of himself an impulse toward whichever he might will of the things to be chosen and the things to be shunned. So then God does not do good by necessity, but does good by choice to those who turn of themselves. For the providence that comes to us from God is not a thing of servile ministry—as though proceeding from worse beings to better; but it is out of mercy toward our weakness that the nearer dispensations of providence are worked, just as is the case with the shepherds' care toward the sheep, and the king's toward his subjects, while we ourselves are obediently disposed toward our governors, those who orderly administer affairs according to the rank with which they were entrusted by God. They, then, are servants and ministers of the Divine who render the most free and most kingly service, that which is through devout judgement and knowledge.

7.43. Every place, then, is truly sacred in which we receive the conception of God, and every time. And when the man of good purpose, and grateful as well, asks through prayer, he in some way co-operates toward the receiving, gladly receiving what he longs for through the very things for which he prays. For when the Giver of good things receives our readiness, all the good things follow at once upon the very act of receiving. Indeed, through prayer the character is tested, how it is disposed toward what is fitting. And if voice and speech have been given us for the sake of understanding, how shall not God hear the soul itself and the mind—seeing that already soul perceives soul, and mind perceives mind? Whence God does not wait for the many-voiced tongues, as the interpreters among men do, but simply knows the thoughts of all; and what voice signifies to us, that our thought speaks to God, which thought, even before the creation, he knew would come into being. It is possible, then, not even to send forth one's prayer by voice, but only to strain all the spiritual part within toward the intelligible voice, in undistracted turning toward God. And since the dawn is an image of the day of birth, and from there the light increases, having first "shone forth out of darkness"—but also a day of the knowledge of the truth has risen, like the sun, upon those rolling about in ignorance—our prayers are toward the morning dawn. Whence too the most ancient of the shrines looked toward the west, that those standing face to face with the images might be taught to turn toward the east. "Let my prayer be set before you as incense," say the Psalms, "the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice."

7.44. For the wicked among men, then, prayer is most hurtful, not only to others, but to themselves as well. If, indeed, they should ask and obtain even the things they call good fortune, the obtaining harms them, since they are ignorant of how to use them. For they pray to acquire what they do not have, and ask for the seeming goods, not the real ones. But the gnostic asks for the continuance of the things he has acquired, for fitness for the things he is to pass over to, and for the eternity of the things he will not receive; and he prays that the truly good things, those concerning the soul, may both be his and abide. In this way he does not even reach out for anything that is absent, being content with what is present. For he is not wanting in his own proper goods, being already sufficient to himself out of the divine grace and knowledge. Rather, having become self-sufficient and in need of nothing besides, knowing the almighty will, and at once possessing and praying, having drawn near to the all-powerful Power, and having striven to be spiritual, through love without bound he has been united to the Spirit. This is the high-minded man, the one who possesses, in his knowledge, the most precious of all and the best of all things—keen in the application to contemplation, and possessing in his soul an abiding power over the things contemplated, that is, the penetrating sharpness of knowledge. And this power he strives as far as possible to acquire, having become master "of the things that war against the mind," and unceasingly attending upon contemplation, having trained himself by discipline both in the holding back from pleasures and in the right doing of things to be done. Besides these, having made use of much experience in learning and in life, he has frankness of speech—not that power of an unbarred tongue, simply so called, but a power that uses plain speech, hiding none of the things that may be said at the fitting season, where it is most needful, neither for favour nor for fear.

7.45. Having, then, grasped in a manner worthy of the subject the things concerning God, taught by the very truth in the mystic choir, he uses the word that exhorts toward the greatness of virtue—a word that displays virtue and what springs from it according to its worth—being made gnostically akin, with God-inspired uplifting of prayer, as far as may be, to things intelligible and spiritual. Whence he is ever gentle and mild, easy of access, easy to meet, patient of evil, fair-minded, of a good conscience, austere. This austerity of ours is directed not only toward incorruptibility, but toward freedom from temptation; for in no way does he show his soul yielding or capturable by pleasure and pain. He is a judge, if reason should call him to it, having become unbending, granting nothing whatever to the passions, walking unswervingly in the path where the just by nature proceeds—being well persuaded that all things are most nobly administered, and that the advance ever goes on toward the better for souls that have chosen virtue, until they come to the Good itself, having become, as it were, near to the great High Priest "at the doors" of the Father. This is, for us, the faithful gnostic, persuaded that the affairs of the world are administered in the best way. Indeed, he is well pleased with all that befalls.

7.46. With good reason, then, he seeks none of the things in life that are convenient for necessary use, persuaded that God, who knows all things, furnishes good things even to those who do not ask, whatever may be profitable. For just as, I think, to the artisan things are rendered after the manner of the artisan, and to the heathen after the heathen manner, so to the gnostic each thing is rendered after the gnostic manner. And the one converting from among the heathen will ask for faith; the one ascending into knowledge, for "the perfection of love." But the gnostic, already at the summit, prays that contemplation may increase and abide, just as the common man prays for continuous health. Yes, and he will ask never to fall away from virtue, co-operating especially that he may remain unfallen. For he knows that some even of the angels, having slipped through sloth, fell again to the ground, not yet having wrung themselves wholly out of their fitness for double-mindedness into that one settled disposition. But for the one who has been trained from here below into the height of knowledge and the lofty pre-eminence of the complete man, all things in time and place go before him on the road—for the one who has chosen and practises to live unwaveringly, through the everywhere-monotonous steadfastness of his judgement. But for those in whom there is still left over some heavy corner inclining downward, the part raised up by faith is dragged down. For the man who has, by gnostic discipline, made virtue a thing that cannot be cast away, the settled disposition becomes a second nature; and just as weight belongs to the stone, so to him knowledge becomes a thing that cannot be cast off—not unwillingly, but willingly, established by a rational and gnostic and provident power.

7.47. And since that which is not cast away through caution becomes, through good reasoning, a thing that cannot be cast away, he will hold fast to caution toward not sinning, and to good reasoning toward the irremovability of virtue. And knowledge seems to furnish good reasoning, teaching one to discern the things that can help toward the continuance of virtue. Greatest of all, then, is the knowledge of God. Therefore by it the irremovability of virtue is preserved. And he who has known God is holy and devout. The gnostic alone, then, has been shown by us to be devout. This man rejoices over the present goods, and exults over those promised, as already present. For they have not escaped him as though still absent, since through knowledge he has anticipated of what kind they are. Persuaded, then, by knowledge that each of the things to come is as it is, he possesses it. For that which is deficient and lacking is measured against what is fitting. If, then, he has acquired wisdom, and wisdom is divine, the one who partakes of that which needs nothing would himself be in need of nothing. For the imparting of wisdom does not come about by the activity and the partaker moving and holding back one another, nor by anything being taken away, nor by the giver becoming needy; rather, the activity is shown to be undiminished through the very imparting. So, then, the gnostic has all good things in respect of power, though not yet in respect of number—for otherwise he would be unchanging according to the God-inspired advances and dispensations that are due. With this man God too co-operates, having honoured him with a nearer oversight.

7.48. For have not all things come to be for the sake of good men, and for their use and benefit—nay rather, for their salvation? He would not, then, take away from these the things that are theirs for the sake of virtue—they on whose account the things that are have come to be. For it is plain that he would honour their good nature and their holy purpose, since he breathes strength even into those who have undertaken to live well, for the rest of their salvation—exhorting some only, but to those who have become worthy of themselves giving his aid as well. For everything is an added gift to the gnostic, if indeed his end is to know and to do each thing knowingly. And as the physician furnishes health to those who co-operate toward health, so too God furnishes eternal salvation to those who co-operate toward knowledge and right action; and, together with our doing—since the things that the commandments enjoin are in our power—the promise too is fulfilled. And this, it seems to me, is also nobly said among the Greeks: a certain athlete, no mean man, in the days of old, having for a long time trained his poor body well toward manliness, went up to Olympia, and, looking toward the statue of Pisaean Zeus, said: "If, O Zeus, all things have been duly prepared by me for the contest, come, give me the victory in justice." For so it is with the gnostic too: when he has irreproachably and with a good conscience fulfilled all that lies in his own power, toward learning and toward training and toward well-doing and toward being well-pleasing to God, then the whole is brought together for his most perfect salvation. These things, then, are required of us: of the things in our power and of the things that pertain to us, both present and absent—choice and longing and acquisition and use and continuance.

7.49. Therefore he who holds converse with God must have his soul undefiled and sincerely unstained—most of all, having wrought himself wholly good; or, if not, at least making progress toward knowledge and reaching out for it, but utterly drawn away from the works of vice. And it is fitting, too, that all prayers be made fairly, and in company with the fair; for it is perilous to be set down as a sharer in the sins of others. Concerning these things, then, the gnostic will pray together with those who have believed in the more common way, and concerning whom it befits him also to act together with them. And his whole life is a holy festival. His sacrifices, accordingly, are prayers and praises, and the readings from the Scriptures before the meal, and psalms and hymns during the meal and before sleep, and again prayers by night. Through these he unites himself to "the divine choir," set, out of the continual remembrance, into ever-mindful contemplation. What then? Does he not know also that other sacrifice—the giving, according to those in need, both of doctrines and of money? Yes indeed. But the prayer through the mouth he does not make with many words, having learned from the Lord what one ought to ask. In every place, then—yet not openly or visibly before the many—he will pray; while walking, in converse, in quietness, in reading, and in his works that are according to reason, he prays in every way. And even if in the very "storehouse" of the soul he is but thinking, and "with unspeakable groanings calls upon the Father," he who is near is present even while the man still speaks. And since there are three ends of every action, he works all things for the noble and the profitable; but the doing of a thing for the sake of pleasure he leaves to those who pursue the common life.

8.50. Far indeed should it be that the one examined in such piety should be ready either to lie or to swear an oath. For an oath is a determining acknowledgement with the additional taking-on of the divine. But the one who is once faithful—how could he show himself faithless, so as even to need an oath, and not rather make his very life a firm and fixed oath? He lives and conducts himself, and shows the trustworthiness of his confession in a life and a word that do not waver and are steadfast. And if doing wrong lies in the judgement of the one who acts and speaks, and not in the suffering of the one wronged, he will neither lie nor swear falsely, as one wronging the Divine, knowing that it is by nature unharmable; but neither, for his neighbour's sake, will he lie or transgress anything—him whom he has learned to love, even if he happen to be no acquaintance; and for his own sake, all the more, he will neither lie nor swear falsely, since he would never willingly be found unjust toward himself. But neither will he swear, having chosen to set, in assent, only the "yes," and in denial the "no," as his adverb. For to swear is to bring forward an oath, or to bring something forward, as it were, by way of an oath, affirmatively from the intention.

8.51. It suffices him, then, to add to his assent or his denial the words "I speak truly," for the setting-forth of his answer's firmness to those who do not discern it. For one ought, I think, to have toward outsiders a life worthy of trust, so that one is not even asked for an oath; and toward oneself and toward those who understand, fair-mindedness, which is voluntary righteousness. Accordingly, the gnostic keeps his oath well, yet is not prone to swearing, coming to swear but rarely, and even then in the manner we have described. And yet the speaking of truth under oath comes about with the accord of what is according to truth; the keeping of an oath, then, results according to the right doing of one's duties. Where, then, is there any further need of an oath for the man who lives at the height of truth? For the one who does not even swear is far indeed from swearing falsely; and the one who transgresses none of the things agreed upon would never even swear at all, seeing that the ratification both of transgression and of fulfilment lies in deeds—just as, indeed, lying and false swearing lie in speaking and in swearing contrary to duty. But the one who lives justly, transgressing none of his duties, where the judgement of truth is examined, keeps his oath in his deeds; superfluous, then, for him is the witness of the tongue. Persuaded, then, that God is everywhere always, and ashamed not to speak the truth, and knowing that lying is unworthy of himself, he is content with the divine conscience and his own alone; and in this way he neither lies nor does anything contrary to the agreements, and in this way too he neither swears an oath when required, nor ever denies—lest he lie—even though he should die under torture.

9.52. But the gnostic dignity is heightened still further and more in the one who has taken up the presidency of teaching others, undertaking in word and deed the dispensation of the greatest good upon earth, through which he mediates conjunction and fellowship toward the Divine. And as those who do service to earthly things pray to the images as though they heard, making their firm agreements upon them, so, in the case of the living images—men—the true magnificence of the Word is received from the trustworthy teacher, and the benefit done to these is referred to the Lord himself, after whose image the man who is truly a man, in teaching, fashions and transforms anew unto salvation the man being catechized. For as the Greeks call iron "Ares" and wine "Dionysus," by a certain reference, so the gnostic, reckoning the benefit of his neighbours to be his own salvation, would reasonably be called a living image of the Lord—not in respect of the property of form, but in respect of the symbol of power and the likeness of his preaching.

9.53. Whatever, then, he has in mind, this he also carries upon the tongue toward those worthy to hear, out of assent, speaking from judgement and at the same time living it. For he both thinks true things and speaks the truth—except when, perchance, by way of treatment, like a physician toward the sick for the salvation of the suffering, he will lie, or speak a falsehood, as the sophists put it. Thus the noble Apostle circumcised Timothy, though he cried aloud and wrote that circumcision made with hands profits nothing; but lest, by tearing them all at once away from the Law toward the circumcision of the heart that is of faith, he should compel the Hebrew hearers, who were still unbridled, to break away from the synagogue—accommodating himself to the Jews, he "became a Jew, that he might gain all." He, then, who descends only as far as accommodation, for the sake of his neighbours' salvation—the bare accommodation for the salvation of those for whose sake he accommodates himself—partaking of no hypocrisy, because of the danger that hangs over the just from the jealous, this man is in no way compelled; but only for the benefit of his neighbours will he do certain things which he would not otherwise have done for their own sake, were he not doing them on their account. This man gives himself for the Church, for the friends whom he himself "begot" in faith, as an example to those able to take up the supreme dispensation of the man-loving and God-loving teacher—for the establishment of the truth of his words, for the operation of his love toward the Lord. He is unenslaved by fear, true in word, patient in toil, unwilling ever to lie even in the spoken word, and in this too always achieving sinlessness. For the lie itself, being spoken with a certain deceit, is no idle word, but works toward evil.

9.54. On every side, then, the gnostic alone bears witness to the truth, both in deed and in word; for he always does rightly in all things absolutely—in word and in act and in the very thought. This, then, to speak as in a running survey, is the godliness of the Christian. If indeed he does these things fittingly and according to right reason, he does them devoutly and justly. And if these things are so, the gnostic alone would be in truth devout and just and godly. The Christian, then, is not an atheist—for this was what was proposed to be shown to the philosophers—so that he will in no way ever do anything evil or shameful, which is unjust. Accordingly, neither is he impious, but he alone is in truth godly, holily and fittingly approaching, according to the true godliness, the God who truly is—the all-ruling and all-kingly and almighty—holily turning toward him.

10.55. For knowledge is, so to speak, a kind of perfecting of man as man, completed through the science of things divine, in character and in life and in word—in accord and agreement with itself and with the divine Word. For through it faith is perfected, the believer becoming perfect in this way alone. Faith, then, is a kind of inward good, which, even without seeking God, confesses that he is and glorifies him as existing. Whence one must, being led up from this faith and increased in it by the grace of God, attain the knowledge concerning him, as far as may be. And we say that knowledge differs from the wisdom which comes into being through teaching: for wherever there is any knowledge, there is also, by all means, wisdom; but wherever there is any wisdom, there is not by all means knowledge—for it is only in the matter of the spoken word that the name of wisdom appears. Nevertheless, not to doubt concerning God, but to believe, is the foundation of knowledge; and both are Christ—both the foundation and the building upon it, through whom are both the beginning and the ends. And the extremes are not taught—the beginning and the end, I mean faith and love; but knowledge, handed down by tradition according to the grace of God to those who show themselves worthy of the teaching, is entrusted like a deposit, from which the worth of love shines forth, from light to light. For it is said, "to him who has it shall be added"—to faith, knowledge; to knowledge, love; and to love, the inheritance.

10.56. And this comes about whenever a man is hung upon the Lord through faith and through knowledge and through love, and ascends together with him to where the God and Guardian of our faith and love is. Whence at the end knowledge is handed down to those fit for it and approved—because there is need of more preparation and previous training, both toward the hearing of the things spoken, and toward the composure of life, and toward having advanced, by intensity, beyond the righteousness that is according to the Law. This knowledge leads us to the endless and perfect end, teaching us beforehand the manner of life we shall have, according to God, with gods, once we have been freed from all chastisement and punishment—which we endure, because of our sins, for our saving instruction. After this redemption the reward and the honours are rendered to those made perfect, when they have ceased from purification and ceased from all other ministry, even if it be holy and among holy ones. Then, having become pure in heart, in nearness to the Lord there awaits them, by the eternal contemplation, the restoration; and they are called by the name of "gods," being destined to be enthroned together with the other gods who are ranked first under the Saviour. Swift, then, unto purification is knowledge, and well suited to the welcome change toward the better.

10.57. Whence it easily transfers a man into that which is kindred to the soul—the divine and holy—and through a certain proper light leads him across, by his mystic advances, until it restores him to the highest place of rest, having taught the pure in heart to behold God face to face, with science and with comprehension. For here, in a manner, is the perfection of the gnostic soul: to come to be with the Lord, having passed beyond all purification and ministry, where it is in immediate subjection to him. Faith, then, is, so to speak, a compendious knowledge of the things that press upon us; but knowledge is a strong and firm demonstration of the things received through faith, built up upon faith through the Lord's teaching, conveying us on toward that which is unwavering and grasped with science. And there seems to me to be a first saving change—that from the heathen into faith, as I said before—and a second, that from faith into knowledge; and this last, passing on into love, thereupon presents the knower as a friend to the friend, the knowing to the known.

10.58. The first mode of the Lord's working is a token of the requital that I spoke of, which is according to godliness. Of many testimonies that there are, I shall set forth one summarily, spoken thus by the prophet David: "Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord, or who shall stand in his holy place? He that is innocent in hands and pure in heart, who has not taken his soul in vain nor sworn deceitfully to his neighbour: this man shall receive a blessing from the Lord, and mercy from God his Saviour. This is the generation of those who seek the Lord, who seek the face of the God of Jacob." Concisely, I think, the prophet has indicated the gnostic; and, in passing, David has shown us, as it seems, that the Saviour is God, calling him "the face of the God of Jacob"—he who brought the good news and taught concerning the Father. Therefore the Apostle too named the Son "the express character of the Father's glory"—him who taught the truth concerning God, and stamped it that "God and Father is one" and alone the Almighty, "whom no one has known except the Son, and he to whom the Son reveals him." And that God is one is signified by the words "of those who seek the face of the God of Jacob," whom our Saviour and God characterizes as the "only" God, the Father, the "good." And the generation of those who seek him is "the elect race," that which seeks toward knowledge.

10.59. For this reason too the Apostle says: "I shall profit you nothing, unless I speak to you either in revelation, or in knowledge, or in prophecy, or in teaching." And yet certain things are done rightly even by those who are not gnostic, but not according to reason—as in the case of courage. For some, being by nature high-spirited, and then having nourished this without reason, rush irrationally upon most things and do deeds like those of the courageous, so that sometimes they achieve the same things—such as enduring tortures easily; yet neither from the same cause as the gnostic, nor with the same purpose, not even "if they give up the whole body"; for "they have not love," in the Apostle's phrase, the love begotten through knowledge. Every action, then, done through the man of knowledge is a doing well, but that done through the man without knowledge is a doing ill, even if he keeps to his resolve—since he does not play the man out of reasoning, nor direct the action toward anything useful, toward virtue and away from virtue. And the same account holds of the other virtues, so that it holds proportionally of godliness too. Not only, then, is the gnostic such for us in respect of holiness, but consequent upon scientific godliness are also the professions concerning the rest of his conduct. For our purpose now is to describe the life of the gnostic, not to set forth the contemplation of doctrines, which we shall expound later at the fitting season, preserving at the same time the proper sequence.

11.60. Concerning the universe, then, he has formed a true and magnificent conception, as one who has made room for divine teaching. Beginning, accordingly, from wonder at the creation, bringing from his own resources a token that he is able to receive knowledge, he becomes an eager disciple of the Lord; and straightway, on hearing of God and providence, he believed, out of the things at which he wondered. Setting out, then, from this point, in every way he co-operates toward learning, doing all those things through which he will be able to receive the knowledge of the things he longs for (and the longing is established when, in the advance of faith, it is mingled with inquiry)—and this is to become worthy of so great and so high a contemplation. In this way the gnostic will taste the will of God; for he presents not his ears, but his soul, to the things signified by what is spoken. Receiving, then, through the words the very substances and the things themselves, he reasonably leads his soul also to what is fitting, taking the "You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill" in the special sense in which it is spoken to the gnostic, not as it is understood by the rest.

11.61. He proceeds, then, training himself in scientific contemplation, to contend with the things said more universally and more magnificently—knowing well that "he who teaches man knowledge," according to the prophet, "is the Lord," the Lord working through a human mouth; for which cause too he took on flesh. Reasonably, then, he never chooses the pleasant before the profitable—not even if a fair woman, having got him beforehand into some circumstance, should challenge him, forcing him after the manner of a courtesan—since not even did the master's wife avail to lead Joseph aside from his resolve; but he stripped off his tunic to her as she held him by force, becoming naked of sin, but clothing himself with the orderliness of character. For even if the master's eyes did not see Joseph—the Egyptian's, I mean—yet those of the Almighty were watching. For we hear the voice and behold the bodies; but God examines the thing from which the speaking and the seeing proceed. Consequently, then, even if disease comes upon the gnostic, or some adverse circumstance, and indeed most of all the most fearful thing, death, he remains unchanged in his soul, knowing that all such things are a necessity of creation, and that even so, by the power of God, they become a "medicine of salvation," benefiting through chastisement those who are being refashioned more harshly—being apportioned according to worth by the providence that is truly good.

11.62. Using created things, then, whenever reason chooses, and so far as it chooses, he is made master also of his enjoyment of them, in giving thanks to the Creator. He never remembers a wrong, he is harsh toward no one, even though that one happens to be worthy of hatred for what he does; for he reveres the Maker, and loves the partner of his life, pitying him and praying for him because of his ignorance. And indeed he suffers along with the body, being bound to it, which is by nature subject to passion; yet he does not suffer first in respect of the passion. According to the involuntary circumstances, lifting himself up from the toils to the things that are his own, he is not carried away together with the things alien to him, but accommodates himself to his necessary needs only so far as the soul is kept unharmed. For he does not wish to be faithful in mere supposition, nor even in seeming, but in knowledge and truth—that is, in firm deed and active word. Accordingly he not only praises noble things, but forces himself to be noble, passing from "the good and faithful servant" through love into "a friend," on account of the perfection of his settled disposition, which he acquired purely out of true learning and much joint discipline.

11.63. As one, then, who forces his way to the height of knowledge—adorned in character, restrained in bearing, having all those advantages that belong to the gnostic according to the truth, looking toward the noble images: the many patriarchs who set things right before him, the very many prophets, the angels beyond all our reckoning by number, and the Lord over all, who taught and showed that it is possible to acquire that supreme life—for this reason he does not love all the ready things of the world that are called noble, lest he remain on the ground, but rather the things hoped for—or rather the things already known, but hoped for in respect of attainment. For this reason he endures toils and tortures and afflictions—not, as the courageous among the philosophers do, in hope that present pains will cease and that he will again partake of pleasures, but because knowledge has begotten in him a most firm conviction of the attainment of the things to come. Therefore he despises not only the chastisements here, but also all the pleasures. They say, indeed, that the blessed Peter, when he beheld his own wife led off to death, rejoiced because of her calling and her conveyance home, and called to her, very encouragingly and consolingly, addressing her by name: "Remember, you there, the Lord."

11.64. Such was the marriage of the blessed, and their perfect disposition toward those most dear. In this way too the Apostle: "he who marries" should be "as though not marrying," judging that marriage should be free from passion and "undistracted" from the love toward the Lord—which love the true husband exhorted his wife to hold to, as she departed from life toward the Lord. Was not their faith in the hope after death plainly manifest, in those who gave thanks to God in the very heights of the chastisements? For firm, I think, was the faith they had acquired, upon which the faithful works too followed. The soul of the gnostic, then, is in every circumstance vigorous, like the body of an athlete established in the height of good condition and strength. For it is of good counsel concerning the affairs of men, deliberating what must be done by the just, taking its starting points from God above, and, toward the divine assimilation, having gained for itself mildness toward bodily pleasures and pains; and it rises up against fears with good courage and trust in God. Simply, then, the gnostic soul is an earthly image of divine power, adorned with perfect virtue, having grown together out of all these at once—nature, discipline, reason. This beauty of soul becomes "a temple of the Holy Spirit," when it acquires a disposition agreeing with the Gospel throughout the whole of life.

11.65. Such a man, then, rises up against every fear and every terror—not only death, but also poverty and disease and ill repute, and all that is akin to these—becoming unconquered by pleasure and master of the irrational desires. For he knows well what must and must not be done, having known with full strength both the things that are truly fearful and the things that are not. Whence he undergoes, with knowledge, the things that reason dictates as needful and befitting to him, discerning with knowledge the things that are truly to be confidently embraced (that is, the goods) from the things that merely seem so, and the things that are fearful from the things that merely appear so—such as death and disease and poverty, which cling to opinion rather than to truth. This is the truly good man, the one outside the passions, who, by the settled disposition of his virtuous soul, has passed beyond the whole life subject to passion. To this man "all things are bound up in himself" toward the acquisition of the end. For the things called fortuitous evils are not fearful to the diligent man, because they are not evils; but the things that are truly fearful are alien to the Christian gnostic, going diametrically opposite to the goods, since they are evils—and it is impossible that contraries should meet in the same person at the same point and at the same time. Blamelessly, then, "playing his part in the drama of life," whatever God grants him to contend in, he recognizes both the things to be done and the things to be endured.

11.66. Surely, then, if cowardice is constituted by ignorance of the things fearful and not fearful, the gnostic alone is confident, knowing the present goods and the goods to come, and knowing together with these, as I said, the things that are not truly fearful—since, knowing vice alone to be hostile and destructive of those who advance toward knowledge, fenced about with the weapons of the Lord, he wars it down. For if anything is constituted through folly and through the working—or rather the co-working—of the devil, this is not on that account at once devil or folly (since no activity is prudence, for prudence is a settled disposition, and no activity is a disposition); so neither is the action constituted through ignorance already ignorance, but vice through ignorance, yet not ignorance; for neither are the passions, nor sins, vices, even though they are carried along from vice. No one, then, who is irrationally courageous is gnostic; otherwise let a man call even children courageous, who undertake fearful things through ignorance of the dangers (they take hold even of fire); and let them call the beasts that go straight against the spears virtuous, being irrationally courageous. And perhaps they will likewise call the conjurers courageous, who tumble onto the swords, working their evil craft out of a certain experience, for a sorry wage. But the truly courageous man, having the danger plain before him because of the jealousy of the many, with good courage takes up all that comes. In this he is distinguished from the rest called martyrs: that some, providing occasions for themselves, throw themselves into dangers—I know not how (for it is right to speak well of them)—while others, hedging themselves about according to right reason, then, when God truly calls, give themselves up eagerly, and "confirm their calling" out of being conscious of nothing rash in themselves, and offer their courage to be examined in the truly rational courage.

11.67. Neither, then, enduring the lesser evils through fear of the greater, as the rest do, nor again, suspicious of the blame that comes from their equals and like-minded, do they remain in the confession of their calling; but through love toward God they willingly obey the calling, having chosen no other aim than the being well-pleasing to God, and not on account of the prizes of their toils. For some, through love of glory, others through dread of another and sharper chastisement, and others through certain pleasures and gladnesses that come after death, endure—children in the faith: blessed indeed, yet not yet become men in love toward God, as the gnostic has. For there are, there truly are—just as in the gymnastic contests, so also in the Church—crowns of men and of children. But love itself is to be chosen for its own sake, not for the sake of anything else. Nearly, then, in the gnostic, with knowledge the perfection of courage grows out of the joint discipline of life, since he has practised always to master the passions. Love, then, anointing and training, makes ready its own athlete to be fearless and undismayed and trusting in the Lord, just as righteousness furnishes him with the speaking of truth through the whole of his life. For it was an epitome of righteousness to say: "Let your yes be yes and your no, no." And the same account holds also of temperance. For neither through love of honour (as the athletes, for the sake of crowns and good repute), nor through love of money (as some pretend to be temperate, pursuing the good with a grievous passion), nor again through love of the body for the sake of health—nor, indeed, through boorishness, is anyone, abstaining and untasted of pleasures, truly temperate (for indeed, having tasted of pleasures, those who lead the laborious working life very quickly break the unbending of their continence into pleasures). And such too are those held back by law and fear; for, getting an occasion, they steal aside, they steal from the law, running away from the noble things. But temperance, chosen for its own sake, ever perfected and abiding according to knowledge, makes the man lord and self-ruler, so that the gnostic is temperate and free from passion, untouched by pleasures and pains, as they say the adamant is by fire.

11.68. The cause of these things, then, is the most holy and most sovereign of all knowledge—love. For through the service of the best and most excellent—which is characterized by the One—it makes the gnostic at once friend and son, having grown into "a perfect man, to the measure of stature" in truth. But also concord is an agreement about the same thing, and the same thing is one; and friendship is brought to completion through likeness, the community lying in the One. The gnostic, then, being a lover of the one true God, is truly a perfect man and a friend of God, enrolled in the rank of a son. For these are names of nobility and knowledge and perfection, according to the vision of God, which the gnostic soul receives as its supreme advance, having become utterly pure—counted worthy, it is said, to behold eternally "face to face" the almighty God. For, having become wholly spiritual, and having made its way to that which is akin to it, it abides in the spiritual Church, unto the rest of God.

12.69. These things, then, are thus. And being so disposed toward body and soul, and toward his neighbours—whether one be a household servant, or made an enemy by law, or whosoever he may be—the gnostic is found equal and alike toward all. For he does not look down upon his brother, who by the divine law is of one father and one mother. Indeed, when his brother is afflicted he lightens his burden with consolations, with encouragements, helping him in the necessities of life, giving to all who are in need—yet not alike, but justly and according to worth; and besides, even to the one who persecutes and hates him, if he have need of this, caring little for those who say that the man gave to him through fear—if it be not through fear, but that he does this for the sake of helping. For if men are free from love of money and forgetful of wrongs toward their enemies, how much more loving toward their own household? Such a man proceeds from this to know exactly to whom one should especially give, and how much, and when, and how. And who would reasonably be an enemy to a man who in no way furnishes any cause of enmity? And just as, in the case of God, we say that God is set against no one and is the enemy of no one (for he is the Creator of all, and there is none of the things that exist which he does not will), but we say that the disobedient, and those who do not walk according to his commandments, are his enemies—as being at enmity with his covenant—in the same way we would find it also in the case of the gnostic. For he himself would never in any way become an enemy to anyone; but those who turn to the opposite road would be conceived of as enemies to him—especially since the disposition of giving is called among us righteousness; but the disposition that discerns according to worth, toward the more and the less, in the cases where it befits one to act according to knowledge, is a form of the highest righteousness. There are, indeed, some things that are set right even out of mere ordinary habit by certain men—such as continence in pleasures. For just as among the heathen, both from not being able "to obtain the things one loves" and from fear of men, and there are some who, for the sake of greater pleasures, abstain from the pleasures at their feet—so too in the faith some practise continence either through a promise or through fear of God.

12.70. But such continence is a foundation of knowledge, and a kind of approach toward the better, and an impulse toward the perfect. For "the beginning of wisdom," it is said, "is the fear of the Lord." But the perfect man, through love, "bears all things, endures all things, as pleasing not man, but God." And yet praise too follows him as a consequence—not toward his own benefit, but toward the imitation and use of those who praise him. And continent is said also in another sense—not only the one who masters the passions, but the one who has become master of the goods and has firmly acquired the great things of knowledge, from which he bears the fruit of activities according to virtue. In this way the gnostic, when a circumstance arises, never departs from his own settled disposition. For firm and unchangeable is the scientific acquisition of the good, being a science of things divine and human. Knowledge, then, never becomes ignorance, nor does the good change into evil. Therefore he eats and drinks and marries—not as a primary aim, but of necessity; and "to marry" I say of the one whom reason chooses, and as it befits. For, having become perfect, he has the apostles for images. And a man is shown to be truly a man not by choosing the solitary life, but he "surpasses men" who has trained himself, without pleasure-seeking and without grief, in marriage and the begetting of children and the care of his household—having become, with the care of the household, inseparable from the love of God, and rising up against every trial brought through children and wife and household servants and possessions. But to the man without a household it has happened, for the most part, to be without trial. Caring, then, only for himself, he is surpassed by the one who falls short of him as regards his own salvation, but excels in the management of life—who simply preserves a small image of the providence that is according to truth. But we, at least, must exercise the soul in every way, as variously as possible.

12.71. that he may become a good worker toward the reception of knowledge. Do you not see how wax is softened and bronze cleansed, that they may receive the impress that comes upon them? Indeed, as death is "a separation of the soul from the body," so knowledge is, as it were, a rational death, leading and separating the soul away from the passions and bringing it forward into the life of well-doing, so that it may then say with frankness to God: "As you will, I live." For he who chooses "to please men cannot please God," since the many choose not what profits, but what delights; but he who pleases God becomes well-pleasing, as a consequence, also to the diligent among men. How then could the things concerning food and drink and sexual pleasure still be delightful to such a man, when he looks with suspicion even upon a word that brings a certain pleasure, and upon a movement of thought and a pleasing act? For "no one can serve two masters, God and mammon." He does not say this simply of money, but of the supplying, out of money, toward the various pleasures. For in truth it is not possible for one who has known God greatly and truly to be a slave to the opposing pleasures.

12.72. One alone, then—the Lord, the lover of mankind, who for our sakes also became man—is from the beginning free from desire; but as many as strive to be made like to the stamp given by him force themselves, through discipline, to become free from desire. For he who has desired and then mastered himself is, like the widow who through self-control becomes again a virgin... This is the reward of knowledge to the Saviour and Teacher, which he himself asked for: abstinence from evils and the working of well-doing, through which salvation is won. As, then, those who have learned the arts provide their food through the things in which they were trained, so the gnostic, providing his life through the things he knows, is saved. For he who would not cut out the passion of the soul has killed himself. But, as it seems, ignorance is the soul's starvation, and knowledge its nourishment. These are the gnostic souls, which the Gospel likened to the sanctified virgins who awaited the Lord. For they are virgins as having abstained from evils, and they await the Lord through love, and they kindle their own proper light unto the contemplation of things—prudent souls, saying, "We long for you, O Lord, to receive you at last. We have lived according to what you commanded, transgressing none of your charges; therefore we ask for the promises, and we pray for the things that profit, not the things that please, since it befits us to ask the most beautiful things from you. And all things we shall receive as for our profit, even if the trials that come upon us should seem grievous—the exercises which your dispensation brings upon us for the training of our steadfastness."

12.73. The gnostic, then, through excess of holiness, is more ready to fail in obtaining when he asks, than to obtain without asking. For his whole life is a prayer and a converse with God; and if he be pure of sins, by all means he will obtain what he wills. For God says to the just man, "Ask, and I will give to you; think it, and I will do it." If, then, the things be profitable, he will receive them at once; but things unprofitable he will never ask, and therefore will not receive. So shall it be as he wills. And if anyone should say to us that some even of sinners obtain things according to their requests, we reply that this happens rarely, by reason of the just goodness of God, and is given to those able to benefit others as well. Whence the gift comes about not for the sake of the one who asked; but the dispensation, foreseeing the one who is to be saved through him, makes the bestowal just on its own account. And to as many as are worthy, the truly good things are given even when they do not ask. Whenever, then, a man is just not by necessity or fear or hope, but by deliberate choice, this is called the kingly road, which the kingly race travels; but the other branchings-off are slippery and precipitous. If, then, one were to take away fear and honour, I do not know whether even the noble among the philosophers who boast of their frankness would still hold out under their afflictions.

12.74. Desires and the other sins are called "thorns and prickles." The gnostic, then, works in the vineyard of the Lord, planting, pruning, watering, being a truly divine husbandman of those planted unto faith. They, then, who have not done evil think it right to receive a reward for their idleness; but he who has done good out of bare deliberate choice claims his reward as a good worker. Indeed, he will receive double—both for the things he did not do, and in return for the benefits he did. This gnostic is tempted by no one, except where God should permit it, and this for the benefit of those with him. For they are strengthened toward faith, being encouraged by his manly endurance. Indeed, for this reason too the blessed Apostles were brought to the fixing and confirming of the Churches, for the trial and witness of perfection. Having, then, ever ringing in his ears the voice that says, "Whom I shall strike, do you have mercy," the gnostic asks even of those who hate him that they may repent. For the punishment of evildoers carried out in the arenas is a thing for even children not to look upon. For there is no way the gnostic could ever be instructed or delighted by such men, having trained himself by deliberate choice to be noble and good, and in this way become impervious to pleasures; never falling under sins, he is not instructed by the examples of the evils of others. Far indeed is such a man from being well pleased with earthly pleasures and spectacles—he who has set even the worldly promises, divine though they are, at nothing. "Not everyone, then, who says 'Lord, Lord' shall enter into the kingdom of God, but he who does the will of God." This would be the gnostic worker—he who masters "the worldly desires" while still in the very flesh, but is exactly persuaded concerning the things he has known, the things to come and still unseen, so as to count these more present than the things at his feet.

12.75. This is the worker well-suited—rejoicing over the things he has known, but drawing himself in over the things in which he is rolled about by the necessity of life, not yet counted worthy of the active partaking of what he has known. In this way he uses this present life as a thing alien, only so far as the portion of necessity requires. He knows also the riddles of the fast of these days—of the fourth day and of the day of preparation, I mean. For the one is named after Hermes and the other after Aphrodite. Accordingly, he fasts in his life from love of money and from love of pleasure together—out of which all the vices spring up. For we have often before set forth, after the Apostle, the three highest distinctions of fornication: love of pleasure, love of money, idolatry.

12.76. He fasts, then, both according to the Law, from base deeds, and according to the perfection of the Gospel, from wicked thoughts. To him the trials too are brought—not for his purification, but, as we said, for the benefit of his neighbours: if, having made trial of toils and pains, he has despised them and let them pass. And the same account holds of pleasure. For it is the greatest thing, having come into the experience of a thing, then to abstain from it. For what is great if a man controls himself in things he does not know? This man, having carried out the commandment that is according to the Gospel, makes that day a Lord's day, when he casts off a base notion and takes on a gnostic one, glorifying the resurrection of the Lord within himself. And further, when he receives the grasp of a scientific principle, he thinks that he sees the Lord, directing his eyes toward the unseen things; and even if he seems to see what he does not wish to see, he chastises the faculty of sight, when he becomes aware of himself taking pleasure in the application of the eyes—since he wishes to see and to hear only that which befits him. Indeed, contemplating the souls of the brethren, he beholds the beauty of the flesh too by the soul itself, that soul accustomed to look only on the noble apart from fleshly pleasure.

12.77. And they are truly brothers, according to the chosen creation, and according to likeness of character, and according to the substance of their works—doing and thinking and speaking the same things, holy and noble works, which the Lord willed them, being elect, to hold in mind. For faith is in choosing the same things; knowledge, in having learned and thought the same; and hope, in longing for the same. And even if, for the necessity of life, he be occupied for a little while of the hour about his food, he thinks himself defrauded, distracted by the business. In this way he never even in a dream sees what does not befit the elect. Simply, "a stranger and a sojourner" in all this life is every such man—who, dwelling in a city, has despised the things of the city that are admired by others, and lives in the city as in a desert, that the place may not compel him, but that his deliberate choice may show him just. This gnostic, to speak briefly, fills up the absence of the apostle by living rightly, knowing exactly, benefiting the fit, "removing the mountains" of his neighbours and casting away the unevennesses of their souls. And yet each of us is his own vineyard and his own worker. And the man who, even while doing the best things, wishes to escape the notice of men—persuading the Lord and himself at once that he lives according to the commandments, choosing these things out of those by which he has come to believe (for "where a man's mind is," it is said, "there is his treasure too")—this man impoverishes himself, so as never to overlook a brother who has come into affliction, on account of his perfection in love, knowing especially that he himself will more easily bear his own want than his brother's.

12.78. Indeed, he reckons that man's pain his own pain; and if, out of his own want, providing through well-doing, he suffers something hard, he is not vexed at it, but increases his benefaction yet more. For he has unmixed faith concerning these matters, praising the Gospel by works and contemplation. And so it is "not the praise from men, but from God" that he reaps, doing the very things the Lord taught. This man, distracted by his own hope, does not taste the noble things in the world, despising all things here—pitying those who after death are instructed through chastisement, confessing unwillingly; with a good conscience toward the departure, and ever ready, as "a sojourner and a stranger" to the things here, mindful only of his own inheritances, and counting all things here as alien. Not only does he marvel at the commandments of the Lord, but, so to speak, through knowledge itself he is a partaker of the divine will, being truly the household of the Lord and of the commandments, chosen out as just. And he is governing and kingly, as gnostic—looking down upon all the gold on the earth and beneath the earth, and upon a kingdom reaching from one end of the ocean to the other, so as to cling to the service of the Lord alone. Therefore, even eating and drinking and marrying—if reason should choose it—and even seeing dreams, he does and thinks the holy things; and in this way he is ever pure for prayer. And he prays in company with angels, as being already "equal to the angels," and is never outside the holy guard; and even if he prays alone, he has the choir of the saints standing with him. He knows a twofold faith: the one, the activity of the believer; the other, the worthy pre-eminence of the one believed in—since righteousness too is twofold.

12.79. The one is through love, the other through fear. It is said, accordingly: "The fear of the Lord, pure, abiding for ever and ever." For those who turn from fear toward faith and righteousness abide for ever. Fear, indeed, works abstinence from evils; but love, building up toward the voluntary, urges toward well-doing, that a man may hear from the Lord: "No longer do I call you servants, but friends," and may now approach the prayers with confidence. And the very form of the prayer is thanksgiving—both for the things gone before, and for things present, and for things to come, as already present through faith. And before this comes the having received knowledge. And further, he asks so to live the appointed life in the flesh as a gnostic, as though without flesh, and to obtain the best things, but to flee the worse. He asks also for relief concerning the things in which we have sinned, and for conversion unto recognition; so swiftly following the one who calls him at the departure, as the other calls, going forward, so to speak, by reason of his good conscience, hastening to give thanks even there, having come to be with Christ. Having shown himself worthy through purity, he holds, by a kind of fusion, the power of God which is supplied through Christ. For he does not wish to be warm by participation in warmth, nor luminous by participation in fire, but to be wholly light. This man knows exactly the saying: "Unless you hate father and mother, and besides also your own life, and unless you bear the sign..." For he has hated the fleshly attachments that hold so much of the charm of pleasure, and he despises all things that are proper to the begetting and nourishment of the flesh; and he rises up against the bodily soul as well, putting a bit upon the irrational spirit when it grows unbridled, because "the flesh lusts against the spirit." But "to bear the sign" is "to carry death about," renouncing "all things" while still living, since the love of the one who sowed the flesh is not equal to that of the one who created the soul unto knowledge.

12.80. This man, having come into a disposition of well-doing, benefits others more swiftly than he speaks nobly—praying that the sins of the brethren may be shared by him, unto the confession and conversion of his kinsmen, and eager to share his own goods with those dearest to him; and they in turn are thus his friends. Increasing, then, the seeds laid up within him according to the husbandry the Lord commanded, he remains free from sin, and becomes self-controlled, and passes his life with those like him in spirit, among the choirs of the saints, even while still held upon earth. This man, through the whole day and night, speaking and doing the charges of the Lord, rejoices exceedingly—not only when he has risen in the morning and at midday, but also when walking and lying down, when putting on his clothes and putting them off. And he teaches his son, if he have a son by birth, being inseparable from the commandment and the hope, giving thanks ever to God, like those creatures of praise allegorized by Isaiah, patient toward every trial. "The Lord," he says, "gave; the Lord has taken away." For such was Job too, who, even when his outward goods were taken away together with the health of his body, laid all aside beforehand through his love toward the Lord. "For he was," it is said, "just, holy, abstaining from all wickedness." And "holy" signifies the things just toward God according to the whole dispensation, which, knowing them, he was a gnostic. For one must neither, if the things be good, cling fast to them, being human things, nor again, if evil, be set against them; but be above both—treading the one underfoot, and passing the other on to those in need. And the gnostic is safe in accommodation, lest the accommodation should escape him and become a settled disposition.

13.81. He never remembers those who have sinned against him, but forgives. Therefore too he justly prays, saying, "Forgive us; for we too forgive." For this also is one of the things God wills: to desire nothing, to hate no one. For all men are the work of one will. And does not our Saviour, willing the gnostic to be "perfect as the heavenly Father"—that is, as himself—who says, "Come, children, hear from me the fear of the Lord," will that this man should no longer be in need of help through angels, but should receive, having become worthy of himself, and should have the guard from himself through obedience? Such a man demands from the Lord, and does not merely ask. And in the matter of needy brethren, the gnostic will not ask for an abundance of money for himself for distribution, but will pray that the supply of what they need may come to them. For thus the gnostic both gives his prayer to those in need, and provides what comes through prayer, at once without their knowing and without ostentation.

13.82. They say in the traditions that Matthias the apostle said at each point: "If the neighbour of an elect man sins, the elect man has sinned; for if he had borne himself as the Word dictates, the neighbour too would have stood in such awe of his life as not to sin." What, then, should we say concerning the gnostic himself? "Or do you not know," says the Apostle, "that you are a temple of God?" The gnostic, then, is divine and already holy, God-bearing and borne by God. Indeed, Scripture, showing that to sin is alien, sells off those who fall away to men of another race; and saying, "Do not look with desire upon another's wife," it plainly calls sin alien and contrary to the nature of the temple of God. And a temple there is, the great one, like the Church, and the small, like the man who preserves the seed of Abraham. Therefore he who has God resting in him will not desire anything else. Indeed, leaving behind all that is in the way and despising all the matter that distracts him, he cuts through heaven by knowledge, and, passing through the spiritual substances and every principality and authority, he lays hold of the highest thrones, pressing on toward that alone which alone he has known. Having mingled, then, the serpent with the dove, he lives at once perfectly and with a good conscience, having tempered faith with hope toward the awaiting of the future. For he is aware of the gift he has received, having become worthy to attain it, and, transferred from slavery into adoption, he performs the things that follow upon knowledge ("having known God—or rather having been known by him"), displaying his activities in a manner worthy of the grace. For the works follow upon knowledge as the shadow upon the body.

13.83. On no account, then, is he reasonably disturbed by anything that happens, nor does he suspect anything of the things that come about in the dispensation for our profit, nor is he ashamed to die, having a good conscience to be seen by the authorities, since he has cleansed away, so to speak, all the stains of his soul—he who knows very well that things will be better for him after his departure. Whence he never prefers the pleasant and the profitable to the dispensation, training himself through the commandments, that he may become both well-pleasing to the Lord in all things and praiseworthy toward the world, since all things rest upon the one almighty God. "To his own," it is said, "the Son of God came, and his own received him not." Therefore, in the use of worldly things, he not only gives thanks and marvels at the creation, but, using them as is fitting, he is praised—since his end is brought, through gnostic activity according to the commandments, into contemplation. From here already, reaping through knowledge the provisions for the journey of contemplation, and having received with high-mindedness the greatness of the knowledge, he advances to the holy requital of the translation. For he has heard the psalm that says: "Go round about Zion and encompass her; recount in her towers." For it hints, I think, that those who have received the Word loftily will be lofty as towers, and will stand firm both in faith and in knowledge.

14.84. And let these things, by way of seed, be said as briefly as may be concerning the gnostic, to the Greeks. But it must be understood that, even if the believer should set right one of these things, or even a second, yet not all together, nor indeed with the highest knowledge, as the gnostic does. And concerning that freedom from passion, so to speak, which belongs to the gnostic—according to which the perfecting of the believer, advancing through love "to a perfect man, to the measure of stature," arrives at being made like to God, having become truly "equal to the angels"—many other testimonies from Scripture come to mind to be set forth; but I think it better to defer such ambition on account of the length of the discourse, leaving it to those who are willing to toil and to work further at the doctrines by selection from the Scriptures. But of one I shall make mention as briefly as may be, so as not to leave the place without note. For the divine Apostle says in the former Epistle to the Corinthians: "Dares any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? Or do you not know that the saints shall judge the world?"—and what follows. The passage being very large, using the relevant apostolic phrases, very briefly and in a cursory way, as it were paraphrasing the saying, we shall set forth the meaning of the Apostle's words, according to which he sketches the perfection of the gnostic. For he sets the gnostic alone not merely in the position of being wronged rather than wronging, but teaches him also to bear no malice, not permitting him even to pray against the one who wronged him; for he knows that the Lord too plainly charged us to "pray for our enemies." For "to go to law before the unjust," he says of the one who has been wronged, means nothing but to seem to wish to render back, and to be willing to wrong in return as a second thing, which is alike to wrong oneself as well.

14.85. And the willing of certain men "to go to law before the saints" shows those who ask, by prayer, that their wronging may be requited upon those who wronged them—and that the latter are better than the former, but not yet free from passion, unless, having become wholly without malice according to the teaching of the Lord, they pray even for their enemies. It is good, then, that they should partake also of a good mind out of repentance unto faith. For even if the truth seems to gain enemies in those who provoke it, yet it is not itself at enmity with anyone. For "God makes his sun to shine upon the just and the unjust," and indeed sent the Lord himself upon just and unjust; and the man who forces himself toward being made like to God, through much absence of malice "forgiving seventy times seven" (signifying, as it were, through the whole of life and through the whole worldly circuit, reckoned in sevens), deals kindly with everyone, even if someone wrongs the gnostic throughout all this time he lives in the flesh. For the diligent man does not think fit to commit merely the judgement of those who have wronged him to others, but wishes the just man to ask of those judges the remission of sins for those who have offended against him—and reasonably; if indeed it is only the outward thing and that which concerns the body, even if it goes as far as death, in which those who set out to wrong him have the advantage—none of which is proper to the gnostic. And how could a man judge the apostate angels, having himself become an apostate from that absence of malice which is according to the Gospel? "Why," he says, "are you not rather wronged? Why are you not rather defrauded? But you wrong and defraud"—praying, that is, against those who offend through ignorance—"and you defraud," as far as in you lies, those against whom you pray, of the love and goodness of God. "And this, your brethren"—not those according to faith only, but the proselytes too, he means. For even if the one now at enmity will afterwards believe...

14.86. ...we do not yet know. From which it is plainly gathered that, even if they are not all our brethren, yet they ought, in our judgement, to be our brethren—and indeed that all men, being the work of one God and clothed with one image upon one substance, even if some happen to be more fouled than others, the man of knowledge alone recognizes; and he worships also the activity of the creatures, through which, again, he worships the will of God. "Or do you not know that the unjust shall not inherit the kingdom of God?" He wrongs, then, who wrongs in return, whether in deed or in word or in the very thought of willing it—which thought the Gospel circumscribes after the tutelage of the Law. "And such were some of you"—of such a kind, that is, as those still happen to be whom you yourselves do not pardon. "But you were washed"—not simply as the rest, but with knowledge you scoured off the passions of the soul, toward being made like, as far as may be, to the goodness of the providence of God, both through patience of evil and through absence of malice, shining, like the sun, "upon just and unjust" with the kindliness of word and deed. Whether, then, the gnostic shall gain this through greatness of mind, or through imitation of the better; and the third cause is the "Forgive, and it shall be forgiven you," the commandment, as it were, forcing toward salvation through excess of goodness. "But you were sanctified." For to the one who has come to this settled disposition it belongs to be holy, falling in no way whatever into any of the passions.

14.87. But as to one already without flesh and become holy above this earth. Therefore, "you were justified," he says, "by the name of the Lord"; you were made, so to speak, by him to be just, as he is; and "by the Holy Spirit" you were, as far as may be in your power, fused into one. For surely it is not the case that "all things are lawful for me, but I shall not be brought under the power" of anything—he says—so as to do or think or speak anything contrary to the Gospel? "But meats for the belly, and the belly for meats"—which "God will bring to nothing"—that is, those who reckon and live in this way, as though they had come into being for the sake of eating, and not rather eating in order that they may live, as a consequence, but as their primary aim attending upon knowledge. And does he not say that such men are, as it were, the flesh of the holy body? And the Church of the Lord is allegorized as a body, the spiritual and holy choir; and of these, those who have only called upon the name, but do not live according to reason, are flesh. "But this body" is spiritual—that is, the holy Church—which "must in no way and by no means be made akin to fornication," nor to the apostasy from the Gospel toward the heathen life.

14.88. For he plays the fornicator against the Church and against "his own body" who conducts himself in the Church after the heathen manner—whether in deed, or in word, or in the very thought. "He who is joined to this harlot"—the activity contrary to the covenant—becomes another body, not holy, "into one flesh" and a heathen life and another hope. "But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit"—a spiritual body, the race distinct from that union. This man is wholly a son, a holy man, free from passion, gnostic, perfect, formed by the teaching of the Lord, that he may, in deed and word and in the very spirit, drawing near to the Lord, receive that abode which is owed to the man thus brought to manhood. The hint is enough for those who have ears. For one must not roll out the mystery, but indicate only so much as serves for recollection to those who have partaken of knowledge—who will also understand how it has been said by the Lord: "Become perfect as your Father," perfectly forgiving sins, bearing no malice, and passing their lives in the settled disposition of freedom from passion. For as we speak of a perfect physician and a perfect philosopher, so too, I think, of a perfect gnostic; yet none of these things, great though it be, is taken up into likeness to God. For we do not, like the Stoics, most impiously say that the virtue of man and of God is the same. Surely, then, ought we to become perfect as the Father wills? For it is impossible and out of all reach for anyone to become perfect as God is; but the Father wills us, living according to the obedience of the Gospel, to become perfect blamelessly. If, then, the saying being spoken by way of ellipsis, we supply the missing part toward the filling-out of the passage—left to be grasped by those able to understand—we shall both recognize the will of God, and shall conduct ourselves, in a manner worthy of the commandment, at once devoutly and high-mindedly.

15.89. And since it is fitting to make a defence against the charges brought against us by Greeks and Jews, and since in some of the perplexities the heresies concerning the true teaching join in, like those mentioned before, it would be well, first to clear away the obstacles, and then, well prepared for the solutions of the perplexities, to proceed to the next Book of the Miscellanies. First, then, they bring against us this very thing, saying that one ought not to believe, because of the discord of the heresies—for with whom is the truth, when different men hold different doctrines? To these we say that both among you Jews and among the most approved of the philosophers of the Greeks there have arisen very many sects, and yet you surely do not say that, on account of the discord of your sects with one another, one ought to shrink from philosophizing or from Judaizing. And further, that heresies would be sown beside the truth—just as "the tares" beside the wheat—was foretold prophetically by the Lord, and it is impossible that what was foretold should not come to pass; and the cause of this is that blame follows upon every noble thing.

15.90. Surely, then, even if a man should transgress agreements and pass over the confession made to us, are we, on account of the one who has belied his confession, to keep away from the truth ourselves? Rather, just as the fair-minded man must speak truth and annul nothing of what he has promised, even if some others transgress agreements, so too it befits us in no way to transgress the rule of the Church—and especially the confession concerning the greatest things, which we keep, while they transgress it. We must therefore believe those who hold firmly to the truth. And it is possible already, using this defence broadly, to say to them that physicians too, holding contrary opinions according to their own schools, treat their patients equally in practice. Surely, then, a man sick in body and needing treatment does not refuse to admit a physician on account of the schools in medicine; nor, then, would the one diseased in soul and full of idols, for the sake of being healed and turned to God, ever plead the heresies as a pretext. Indeed it is said, "the heresies are for the sake of the approved." By "the approved" it means either those who come to faith with more discernment, approaching the Lord's teaching after the manner of approved money-changers, distinguishing the genuine coin of the Lord from the counterfeit; or those who have already become approved in the very faith, both in life and in knowledge.

15.91. For this very reason, then, we need more care and forethought in the examination of how one ought exactly to live, and what the truly existing godliness is. For it is plain that, the truth being difficult and hard to work out, the inquiries arose on this account—from which spring the self-loving and glory-loving heresies, of men who have not truly learned or received, but have taken to themselves a mere opinion of knowledge. With greater care, then, must the truth that truly is be searched out—which alone is concerned with the God who truly is. And upon toil there follows sweet discovery and remembrance. We must, then, strip for the toil of discovery on account of the heresies, but must not utterly stand off. For if fruit lies before us, one part true and ripe, the other made of wax as like as possible, we must not abstain from both on account of the resemblance, but discern the true from the apparent both by the comprehending contemplation and by the most sovereign reasoning. And just as, of roads, one being the kingly highway, and many others—some leading to a precipice, some to a rushing river or a sea sheer-deep—a man would not shrink from travelling on account of the discord, but would use the safe and kingly and public way; so, when different men say different things about truth, we must not stand off, but must hunt more carefully for the most exact knowledge concerning it. Since even in cultivated vegetables weeds spring up together—do the husbandmen then abstain from the care of the garden? Having, then, many starting-points by nature toward examining the things said and discovering the consistency of the truth, we ought to do so. Therefore too we are reasonably judged, when we do not assent to those we ought to obey, when we do not distinguish the contentious and unseemly and unnatural and false from the true and consistent and seemly and natural—these being the starting-points which we ought to use toward the recognition of the truth that truly is.

15.92. Vain, then, is this pretext of the Greeks. For to those who will, it shall be possible even to find the truth; but for those who put forward irrational excuses, the judgement is without excuse. For do they do away with demonstration, or do they grant that there is such a thing? I think all would agree, except those who do away with the senses. And demonstration existing, it is necessary to descend into the inquiries, and through the very Scriptures to learn demonstratively how the heresies went astray, and how in the truth alone and in the ancient Church there is both the most exact knowledge and the truly best school of thought. But of those who turn aside from the truth, some try to deceive only themselves, others their neighbours as well. Those, then, who are called wise in their own conceit—who think they have found the truth, having no true demonstration whatever—deceive themselves, thinking they have come to rest; and of these there is no small multitude, who turn aside from the inquiries on account of the refutations, and flee even from the teachings on account of the condemnation. But the others, those who deceive those that approach, are exceedingly crafty: who, even while themselves aware that they know nothing, nevertheless darken the truth with plausible arguments. And the nature of plausible arguments is, I think, one thing, and that of true ones another. And we know that the name of "heresies" must be spoken by way of contrast to the truth; from which the sophists, tearing off certain parts to the ruin of men, and burying them in the human arts they have devised for themselves, boast that they preside over a school rather than over a Church.

16.93. But those ready to toil over the noblest things will not stop seeking the truth before they take the demonstration from the Scriptures themselves. Now there are certain criteria common to all men, like the sense-organs; but the others belong to those who have willed and trained themselves in the truth—the criteria, wrought through mind and reasoning, of words true and false. And the greatest thing is to lay aside opinion, taking one's stand midway between exact knowledge and rash conceit of wisdom, and to know that he who hopes for the eternal rest knows also that the entrance to it is toilsome and "narrow." And he who has once been told the good news and "has seen the salvation," at whatever hour he recognizes it, let him not "turn back, like Lot's wife," nor turn to the former life that clings to the things of sense, nor run back to the heresies; for they contend in a manner, not knowing the God who is. For "he who loves father or mother more than me"—the true Father and Teacher of the truth, who regenerates and refashions and nurses the chosen soul—"is not worthy of me," he says, worthy of being a son of God and a disciple of God, and at once a friend and a kinsman. "For no one who looks back, and lays his hand upon the plough, is fit for the kingdom of God." But, as it seems, to the many it still appears even now that Mary is a woman in childbed by reason of the birth of the child, though she is not in childbed; for some say that, after giving birth, when examined by the midwife, she was found a virgin.

16.94. And such, for us, are the scriptures of the Lord—bringing forth the truth and remaining virgins, with the hiding of the mysteries of the truth. "She has brought forth, and has not brought forth," says the Scripture, as having conceived of herself, not from union. Therefore the Scriptures have conceived for the gnostics; but the heresies, not having learned them, are dismissed as not having conceived. And though all men have the same judgement, some, following the reason that chooses, make their acts of faith; but others, having given themselves over to pleasures, force the Scripture toward their desires. And there is need, I think, for the lover of truth of a certain vigour of soul; for those who set their hands to the greatest matters must of necessity err most greatly, unless they have received from the truth itself the rule of the truth. Such men, accordingly, as having fallen from the right road, in most particulars also go astray, reasonably—through not having a criterion of true and false, exactly trained to choose what is needful. For if they had acquired it, they would obey the divine Scriptures.

16.95. As, then, if a man should become a beast out of a man, like those drugged by Circe, so the one who has kicked against the tradition of the Church and leaped away into the opinions of human heresies has destroyed his being a man of God and his remaining faithful to the Lord. But he who has run back from this deceit, having heard the Scriptures and committed his own life to the truth, is made, as it were, a god out of a man. For we have the beginning of the teaching—the Lord, leading the way of knowledge from the beginning to the end through the prophets and through the Gospel and through the blessed apostles, "in many ways and many parts." And if anyone should suppose that the beginning needs something else, then it would no longer be truly preserved as a beginning. He, then, who of himself is faithful to the Lord's Scripture and voice is reasonably trustworthy, as being worked through the Lord toward the benefit of men. Indeed, we use it as a criterion toward the discovery of things; but everything judged is still untrustworthy until it has been judged—so that what needs judgement is not a beginning. Reasonably, then, having grasped by faith the indemonstrable beginning, and having received in abundance the demonstrations concerning the beginning from the beginning itself, we are trained by the voice of the Lord toward the recognition of the truth. For we would not give heed to men who simply make pronouncements, against whom it is equally open to pronounce in turn. And if it is not enough simply to state one's opinion, but the thing said must be confirmed, we do not wait for the testimony from men, but confirm the matter in question by the voice of the Lord, which is more to be trusted than all demonstrations—or rather, which alone is demonstration. According to this knowledge, those who have only tasted the Scriptures are faithful; but those who have advanced further are exact judges of the truth—the gnostics. Since even in the affairs of life the craftsmen have something more than the laymen, and shape the better thing beyond the common conceptions.

16.96. So, then, we too, demonstrating perfectly concerning the Scriptures from the Scriptures themselves, are persuaded out of faith demonstratively. And even if those who pursue the heresies dare to make use of the prophetic Scriptures—first, they do not use all; then, they use them imperfectly, nor as the body and texture of the prophecy dictate, but choosing out the things said ambiguously and transferring them to their own opinions, culling a few phrases here and there, not considering what is signified by them, but using the bare wording. For in nearly all the texts they bring forward you would find them clinging to the names only, altering the things signified, neither knowing them as they are spoken, nor using them as they are by nature, in the very selections they adduce. But the truth is not found in transposing the things signified (for so they will overturn all true teaching), but in considering what is wholly proper and fitting to the Lord and the almighty God, and in confirming each of the things demonstrated according to the Scriptures, again from the like Scriptures themselves. Neither, then, are they willing to turn back toward the truth, being ashamed to lay down the advantage of their self-love; nor have they any way to arrange their own opinions, forcing the Scriptures. Having anticipated us by bringing forth false doctrines to men, they fight openly with nearly all the Scriptures, and being always refuted by us who contradict them, even now they continue—partly not admitting some of the prophetic Scriptures, and partly slandering us, as though we, being of another nature, were unable to understand the things proper to those Scriptures—and sometimes, when their own doctrines are refuted, they deny them, ashamed to confess openly the things they boast of teaching in private.

16.97. For thus one may see throughout all the heresies, going over the wickedness of their doctrines. For whenever they are overturned by us, who show them plainly opposing the Scriptures, one or other of two things may be seen happening among the leaders of the doctrine: for they despise either the consistency of their own doctrines, or the prophecy itself—or rather, their own hope—and choose in each case what seems to them more evident than what was spoken by the Lord through the prophets, and witnessed and confirmed by the Gospel, and besides by the apostles. Seeing, then, that the danger for them is not about a single doctrine, but about preserving the heresies—not about finding the truth (for they despised, as cheap, the things that lie open and ready among us); and being eager to overstep the common ground of the faith, they have stepped outside the truth. For not having learned the mysteries of the knowledge that is of the Church, nor made room for the greatness of the truth, having shrunk through sloth from going down to the depth of things, reading superficially they dismissed the Scriptures.

16.98. Lifted up, then, by conceit of wisdom, they pass their lives in contention, having shown themselves to be more concerned for seeming than for philosophizing. Accordingly, laying down for themselves no necessary principles of things, and being moved by human opinions, then necessarily working out for themselves a conclusion that follows upon them, they brawl, on account of the refutations, against those who handle the true philosophy; and they endure all things, and, as they say, "move every cable," even though they are about to be impious through their unbelief toward the Scriptures, rather than change—out of love of glory for their heresy, and for the much-talked-of first seat in their assemblies, for the sake of which they embrace also that banqueting first couch of the love that is falsely named. But among us the recognition of the truth furnishes faith to those not yet faithful out of those already faithful—faith which is established, so to speak, as the very substance of demonstration. But, as it seems, every heresy has ears that do not hear the things profitable, but are open only to the things toward pleasure. Since indeed even one of them might be healed, if only he would consent to be persuaded by the truth. There is a threefold treatment of conceit, as of every passion: the learning of the cause, and of how it may be removed, and, third, the training of the soul and the habituation toward being able to follow the things rightly judged.

16.99. For just as an eye troubled, so too the soul, fouled by doctrines contrary to nature, is unable to discern exactly the light of the truth, but overlooks even the things at its feet. They say that in turbid water even eels are caught, being blinded. And just as wicked children shut out the tutor, so these men keep the prophecies out of their own Church, suspicious of them on account of refutation and admonition. Indeed, they patch together very many falsehoods and fabrications, that they may seem with good reason not to admit the Scriptures. In this way, then, they are not devout, being displeased with the divine commandments—that is, with the Holy Spirit. And just as almonds are called empty, not those in which there is nothing, but those in which what is within is useless, so we say that the heretics are empty of the counsels of God and of the traditions of Christ—being bitter in truth, like the wild almond, as the begetters of doctrines, except for so much as, through the evidence of the truths, they have been unable to lay aside and hide.

16.100. As, then, in war the soldier must not leave the post which the general appointed to him, so too one must not leave the post which the Word gave—the Word whom we have received as ruler of knowledge and of life. But the many have not even examined this: whether one ought to follow anyone, and whom this is, and how. For of what kind the Word is, of such kind it befits the believer's life also to be, so as to be able "to follow God," who from the beginning brings all things "to a straight end." But whenever a man transgresses the Word, and through this God, if indeed through some impression suddenly falling upon him he has grown weak, he must make the rational impressions ready to hand; but if, overcome by the habit that has previously held him, he has become (as Scripture says) "common," the habit must be made to cease utterly, and the soul must be trained to contradict it. And if doctrines at war with one another seem to draw certain men, these must be taken out of the way, and one must go to the "peacemakers" among doctrines, who lull with chants of the divine Scriptures the timid among the inexperienced, making the truth plain through the consistency of the covenants. But, as it seems, we incline rather toward the things of reputation, even if they happen to be contrary, than toward the truth; for it is austere and grave. And there being three dispositions of the soul—ignorance, conceit, and knowledge—those in ignorance are the heathen, those in knowledge the true Church, and those in conceit those who follow the heresies.

16.101. Nothing, indeed, is clearer to see than that those who know affirm with confidence about the things they know, while those who merely opine do so about the things they opine—at least so far as concerns affirming without demonstration. They despise one another, then, and laugh at one another; and it comes about that the same intelligence is among some most honoured, and among others convicted of madness. And yet we have learned that pleasure is one thing, which must be assigned to the heathen; that contention is another, which must be allotted to the heresies; that joy is another, which must be made proper to the Church; and that gladness is another, which must be rendered to the gnostic according to the truth. And just as, if a man attend to Ischomachus, he will make him a husbandman, and Lampis a shipmaster, and Charidemus a general, and Simon a horseman, and Perdix a huckster, and Crobylus a cook, and Archelaus a dancer, and Homer a poet, and Pyrrho a wrangler, and Demosthenes an orator, and Chrysippus a logician, and Aristotle a natural philosopher, and Plato a philosopher; so the man who is obedient to the Lord, and has followed the prophecy given through him, is perfectly perfected after the image of his Teacher, a god walking about in the flesh. They fall away, then, from this height who do not follow God wherever he leads; and he leads according to "the God-inspired Scriptures." For though the things men do be ten thousand in number, there are nearly two starting-points of all sin: ignorance and weakness—both of which are in our power, since we neither wish to learn nor again to master desire. And of these, through the one men judge not nobly, and through the other they have not the strength to follow the things rightly judged. For neither would a man, deceived in his judgement, be able to do well, even if he be wholly able to do the things known; nor would one with strength to judge what is fitting show himself blameless in his deeds, being weak in action.

16.102. Accordingly, two kinds of training are handed down, suited to each of the two sins: to the one, knowledge and the clear demonstration of the testimony from the Scriptures; to the other, the discipline that is according to reason, trained up by faith and fear. And both increase together unto perfect love. For the end of the gnostic, here at least, is, I think, twofold: in some cases the scientific contemplation, in others the action. May it be, then, that these heretics too, having learned from these notes, may be brought to soberness and turn to the almighty God. But if, like "the deaf serpents," they "give no ear to the new-spoken but most ancient song," then at least let them be instructed by God, enduring the fatherly admonitions before the judgement, until, put to shame, they repent—and not, bearing themselves by harsh disobedience into the final judgement, cast themselves there. For there are also certain partial chastisements, which they call punishments, into which many of us, of those of the Lord's people who have come into transgression, slip and fall; but, as children by the teacher or the father, so we are chastised by providence. For God does not take vengeance—since vengeance is a returning of evil for evil—but he chastises for the profit, both in common and in private, of those chastised.

16.103. These things, then, I have set forth, wishing to turn the lovers of learning away from the readiness to fall into the heresies; and longing to make those of the prevailing—whether one must call it ignorance, or stupidity, or ill condition, or whatever it should be named—cease, and trying to win over and to bring to the truth those at least who are not altogether incurable, I have used these arguments. For there are some who do not even endure at the first to hear those who exhort them toward the truth; and indeed they attempt to talk nonsense, pouring out blasphemous words against the truth, conceding to themselves that they know the greatest of beings, though they have not learned, not inquired, not toiled, not found the consistency. These a man might pity, or hate, for such perversity. But if anyone happens to be curable, able to bear, like fire or iron, the frankness of the truth that cuts away and burns out their false opinions, let him hold out the ears of his soul. And this will be, if they do not, hastening to be slothful, thrust away the truth, or, grasping after reputation, force themselves to innovate. For they are slothful who, when it is possible to provide from the Scriptures themselves the demonstrations proper to the divine Scriptures, choose instead what comes to hand and joins with their pleasures; and they desire reputation, as many as willingly play the sophist, with other tamperings, against the things akin to the God-inspired words handed down by the blessed apostles and teachers, setting human teachings against the divine tradition for the sake of establishing their heresy. For what argument, in truth, was left over for Marcion, say, or Prodicus and the like, who did not walk the right road, among men so great—I mean according to the knowledge that is of the Church? For they did not surpass in wisdom the men before them, so as to find out something besides the things truly said by those men; rather, it would have been enough for them, if they could but learn the things handed down before.

16.104. The gnostic alone, then, for us, having grown old in the very Scriptures, preserving the apostolic and ecclesiastical right division of the doctrines, lives most rightly according to the Gospel, finding out, sent back by the Lord to the Law and the prophets, whatever demonstrations he may seek. For the gnostic's life, I think, is nothing else but deeds and words that follow the tradition of the Lord. But "knowledge is not in all." "For I would not have you ignorant, brethren," says the Apostle, "that all were under the cloud, and all partook of spiritual food and drink"—plainly establishing that not all who heard the Word had received the greatness of the knowledge in deed and word. Therefore he added: "But not in all of them was he well pleased." Who is this? The one who said: "Why do you call me Lord, and do not the will of my Father?"—that is, the teaching of the Saviour, which is our spiritual food and a drink that knows no thirst, "the water" of gnostic "life." "Yes," they say, "knowledge is said to puff up." To these we reply: perhaps the knowledge that seems such is said to puff up, if one should take the phrase to mean to be inflated. But if—what is more—the Apostle's voice signifies thinking greatly and truly, then the difficulty is solved; and, following the Scriptures, let us confirm what was said.

16.105. "Wisdom," says Solomon, "has puffed up her children." For surely the Lord did not produce conceit in the youths by his teaching, but the being confident upon the truth; and he prepares one to be high-minded in the knowledge handed down through the Scriptures, and to be contemptuous of the things that drag down into sin—which is what the word "puffed up" signifies, namely, that wisdom has implanted greatness of mind in the children who learn, through the things she teaches. Indeed the Apostle says: "And I shall know, not the word of those who are puffed up, but the power"—that is, if you understand the Scriptures high-mindedly (which is to understand them truly, and nothing is greater than truth). For here is the power of the children of wisdom who have been puffed up. As though to say: I shall know whether you justly think greatly of your knowledge. For "known," according to David, "is God in Judaea"—that is, among the Israelites according to recognition. For "Judaea" is interpreted "confession." Reasonably, then, it has been said by the Apostle: "The 'You shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,' and any other commandment, is summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbour as yourself." For one must never, as those who pursue the heresies do, commit adultery against the truth, nor steal the rule of the Church, gratifying one's own desires and loves of glory unto the deceit of one's neighbours—whom, more than anything, while they love us, it befits us to teach to cling to the truth itself. For it has been said plainly: "Declare among the nations his doings," that they may not be judged, but may be converted—those who have heard beforehand. But as many as "deal deceitfully with their tongues," they have their penalties written.

17.106. Those, then, who touch upon impious words, and who lead others on as well, not using the divine words well but with error, neither enter themselves into the kingdom of heaven, nor allow those whom they have deceived to attain the truth. But, not having the key of the entrance themselves, but a false one, and, as the common phrase is, a counterfeit key—through which they do not throw open the outer court, as we enter through the tradition of the Lord, but, having cut a side-door and dug secretly through the little wall of the Church, overstepping the truth—they set themselves up as initiators of the soul of the impious. For that they made these human gatherings later than the Catholic Church there is no need of many words. For the teaching of the Lord at his coming, beginning from Augustus and Tiberius Caesar, is completed in the middle of the times of Augustus; and that of his apostles, down to the ministry of Paul, is completed under Nero; while it was lower down, about the times of Hadrian the king, that those who devised the heresies arose, and they continued down to the age of Antoninus the elder—such as Basilides, even though he inscribes Glaucias as his teacher, the interpreter of Peter (as they themselves boast). Likewise they say that Valentinus heard Theudas; and this man had been an acquaintance of Paul.

17.107. For Marcion, being of the same age as these, associated with younger men as an old man with juniors; and after him Simon, for a little while, gave ear to Peter when he was preaching. These things being so, it is plain that, in comparison with the most ancient and most true Church, these later heresies, and those still later in time, were newly coined and adulterated. From what has been said, then, it is, I think, manifest that the true Church is one—the one that is truly ancient—into which are enrolled those who are just according to purpose. For there being one God and one Lord, on this account too that which is supremely honourable is praised in respect of its being alone, as being an imitation of the one Beginning. The one Church, then, is allotted to the nature of the One—the Church which they force to cut up into many heresies. Both in substance, then, and in conception, and in beginning, and in pre-eminence, we say that the ancient and Catholic Church is alone—gathering, "into the unity of one faith," that which is according to the proper covenants, or rather according to the one covenant in different times, by the will of one God through one Lord, those already ordained—whom God foreordained, having known before the foundation of the world that they would be just. But also the pre-eminence of the Church, just as the beginning of its constitution, is according to the Monad, surpassing all other things and having nothing like or equal to itself.

17.108. These things, then, also for later. But of the heresies, some are named from a name, like that from Valentinus and Marcion and Basilides—even though they boast of bringing forward the opinion of Matthias; for the teaching of all the apostles was one, just as the tradition was also one. Others are named from a place, like the Peratici; others from a nation, like that of the Phrygians; others from an activity, like that of the Encratites; others from peculiar doctrines, like that of the Docetae and that of the Haematites; others from suppositions and from the men they have honoured, like the Cainists and those called Ophites; and others from the lawless things they practised and dared, like those of the Simonians who are called Entychites.

18.109. Having, then, pointed out a small opening "to those who love the contemplation of the truth," from the law concerning sacrifices, regarding both the common Jews and the heresies—as unclean, being mystically distinguished from the divine Church, by the law of clean and unclean animals—let us bring the discourse to a close. For the Scripture hands down as clean and acceptable to God those of the sacrificial animals that part the hoof and chew the cud, as figuring that the just make their journey toward the Father and toward the Son through faith (for this is the steadfastness of the cleft-footed)—those who "meditate on the oracles of God night and day," and ruminate them in the receptacle of the soul that holds learning. Which gnostic exercise the law allegorizes as the cud-chewing of the clean animal. But those that have neither of these, or one without the other, it sets apart as unclean. Accordingly, the things that chew the cud but do not part the hoof hint at the many Jews, who have the oracles of God upon their lips, but do not have faith, and the foundation that conveys, through the Son, to the Father, leaning upon the truth. Whence the race of such cattle is also slippery, as not being cloven-footed nor leaning upon the double support of faith. "For no one," it is said, "knows the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal him." And, again, unclean in like manner are those that part the hoof but do not chew the cud. For these signify the heretics, who have set foot upon the name of Father and Son, but are too weak to work fine and to grind smooth the exact clearness of the oracles, and besides who pursue the works of righteousness more grossly, not more exactly—if indeed they pursue them at all.

18.110. To certain such the Lord says: "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not the things I say?" And altogether unclean are those that neither part the hoof nor chew the cud. "But you, O Megarians," says Theognis, "are neither third nor fourth nor twelfth, neither in account nor in number," but rather "like the chaff which the wind drives away from the face of the earth," and "like a drop from a bucket." Now that these things have been brought to an end for us, and the ethical division has been sketched as in summary, having sown in here and there—scattered and dispersed, as we promised—the live coals of the doctrines of true knowledge, so that it may not be easy for the chance uninitiated reader to find out the holy traditions, let us pass on to our promise.

18.111. The Miscellanies are somewhat like, not those parks set in order with trees planted in rows for the pleasure of the eye, but rather like some shady and thick-grown hill planted with cypresses and plane-trees, with laurel and ivy, and at the same time with apple-trees and olives and figs—the planting deliberately mingled of fruit-bearing and unfruitful trees together, on account of those who dare to filch and steal the ripe fruit; the writing willing to lie hid. From which the husbandman, transplanting and re-grafting, will set in order a fair park and a delightful grove. The Miscellanies, then, aim neither at arrangement nor at style, since indeed on purpose both the diction is not such as the Greeks would have it, and the sowing-in of the doctrines has been made secretly and not according to the plain truth—preparing the readers, if any chance to be such, to be lovers of toil and discoverers. For many and various are the baits, by reason of the differences among the fish. And now, after this seventh Book of our Miscellanies, we shall make the discourse of what follows from another beginning.