[49] Plato, Phaedrus, cc. 55, 56.
[50] ὁμοούσιον.
[51] χαρακτηρισθῆναι.
[52] Ps. cxxxiii. 2.
[53] ἀμορφίας καὶ τοῦ διαστήματος τοῦ καθ’ ἡμᾶς. The ἀμορφία corresponds exactly to the Chaos of the other Gnostics, as contrasted with the Cosmos or ordered world which in this case is above it. In it, as we see later (p. 356 Cr.) there is neither “leader nor guardian nor demiurge,” and everything happens by predestination. The διάστημα we have already met with in the teaching of Simon Magus (p. 261 Cr.). Although in classical Greek it means an “interval,” it is here evidently intended to signify something uncultivated, or, as we should say, a “waste.”
[54] It gives benefit by passing into the souls of certain chosen men and thus enabling them to obtain the highest beatitude. It receives it by thus purifying itself and so working out in turn its own salvation.
[55] He evidently regards the three persons of the Sonhood as one being.
[56] “Cosmos.”
[57] Τὸ Μεθόριον Πνεῦμα.
[58] The likeness of this to the Egyptian Horus who was at once the sky-god and the ruler of the sublunary world, whose earthly representative was the Pharaoh, is manifest. So, too, is its connection with Horos, the Limit, of the Pleroma in Book VI.