When, therefore, each of these Aeons, he says, had received a principle of generation, as has been said, it little by little increased and grew great and became perfect. Now they think that the perfect number [is] ten.[11] Then the Aeons having come into being equal in number and perfection, as they think, they were thirty Aeons in all,[12] each of them being complete in a decad. But they are divided and the three having equal honour among themselves, differ in position only, because one of them is first, p. 400. another second, and another third. But this position produced a difference of power. For he who is nearest to the First God—to the seed as it were—chances to have a power more fruitful than the others, he who is the Immeasureable One having measured himself ten times in magnitude. And the Incomprehensible One, who has become second in position to the first, comprehended himself six times. And the third in position, becoming removed to an infinite distance by reason of his brethren’s dilatation, conceived[13] himself three times and, as it were, bound himself by a certain eternal bond of unity.[14]
9. And this they think is the Saviour’s saying:—“The sower went forth to sow and that which fell upon good and fair ground made some 100, some 60, and some 30.”[15] And hence, says he, He said, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” because this is not what all understand.[16] All these Aeons [to wit] the Three and all the boundlessly boundless ones [who come] from them, are masculo-feminine ones.[17] Therefore having increased and become great, and all of them being from that one first seed of their concord p. 401. and unity, and all becoming together one Aeon, they all begat from the one Virgin Mary, the begettal common to them all, a Saviour in the midst of them all,[18] of equal power in everything with the seed of the fig, save that He was begotten. But that first seed whence is born the fig is unbegotten. Then those three Aeons having been adorned[19] with all virtue and holiness, as these teachers think, all the conceivable, lacking-nothing, nature of that Only-Begotten[20] Son—for He alone was born to the boundless Aeons by a triple generation; for three immeasureable Aeons with one mind begot Him—was adorned also. But all these conceivable and eternal things were Light; but the Light was not formless and idle, nor did it lack anything superadded to it: but it contained within itself the boundless forms of the various animals here below corresponding in number to the boundlessly boundless after the pattern of the fig-tree. And it shone from on high into p. 402. the underlying chaos. And this [chaos], being at once illuminated and given form from the various forms on high, received consistence[21] and took all the supernal forms from the Third Aeon who had tripled himself.[22] But this Third Aeon, seeing all the types[23] that were his at once intercepted in the underlying darkness beneath, and not being ignorant of the power of the darkness and the simplicity and generosity[24] of the light, would not allow the shining types from on high to be drawn far down by the darkness beneath. But he subjected [the Firmament] to the Aeons. Then, having fixed it below, he divided in twain the darkness and the light.[25] “And he called the light which is above the firmament, Day, and the darkness he called Night.”[26] Therefore, as I have said, when all the boundless forms of the Third Aeon were intercepted in this lowest darkness, and the impress[27] of that same Aeon was stamped upon it along with the rest, a living fire came from the light whence the Great Ruler came into being p. 403. of whom Moses says: “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth.”[28] Moses says that this fiery God[29] spoke from the bush, that is from the darksome air, for batos [bush] is the whole air which underlies the darkness. But it is batos, says Moses according to him, because all the forms of light go from on high downwards, having the air as a passage.[30] And the word from the bush is no less recognized by us. For a sound significant of speech is reverberating air, without which human speech could not be recognized. And not only does our word from the bush, that is from the air, make laws for and be a fellow-citizen with us, but also odours and colours manifest their powers to us through the air.
10. Then this fiery God—the fire born from the light—made the cosmos, as Moses says, in this manner, he being substanceless,[31] [and] darkness having the substance and being ever silent towards the eternal types of the light which are intercepted below.[32] Therefore, until the Saviour’s manifestation, there was a certain great wandering of souls by reason of the God of the Light, the fiery Demiurge. For the forms are called souls, having been cooled down[33] from the things above and they continue in darkness to change about from body to body under the supervision of p. 404. the Demiurge. And that this is so, we may know from the words of Job: “And I also am a wanderer from place to place and from house to house.”[34] The Saviour also says: “And if you will receive it, this is the Elias who shall come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”[35] But by the Saviour, change of bodies has been made to cease; and faith is preached for the putting-away of transgressions.[36] In some such way that Only-Begotten Son beholding from on high the forms of the Aeons changing about in the darksome bodies willed to come down for their deliverance. When He saw that the multitude of Aeons could not bear to behold without ceasing the Pleroma of all the Aeons, but remained as mortals dreading corruption,[37] being held by the greatness and glory of power, He drew Himself together as a very great flash in a very small body, or rather, like the light of the eye drawn together under the eyelids, and goes forth to the p. 405. heaven and the shining stars. And there He again withdraws Himself under the eyelids at His pleasure. Thus does the light of the eye, and although it is everywhere present and is all things to us, it is invisible; but we see only the lids of the eye, the white corners, a broad membrane of many folds and fibres, a horn-like coat, and under this a berry-like pupil, both net-like and disk-like, and if there are any other coats to the light of the eye, it is enwrapped and lies hidden within them.
Thus, he says, the Only-Begotten Son, eternal on high, did on Himself (a form) corresponding to each Aeon of the Three Aeons, and being in the triacontad of Aeons, came into the world of the Decad[38] being of such age and as little as we have said, invisible, unknown, without glory and not believed upon. in order then, say the Docetae,[39] that he might do on also the Outer Darkness which is the flesh, an angel came down with Him from p. 406. on high and made announcement[40] to Mary as it is written, and He was born from her as it is written. And He who came from on high put on that which was born, and did all things as it is written in the Gospels; and was baptized in Jordan. And he was baptized, receiving the type and seal in the water of the body born from the Virgin, in order that when the Ruler should condemn the form which was his to death, to the Cross, that soul which had grown up within the body should strip off that body and affix it to the Tree. And thus (the soul) having triumphed by its means over the Principles and Authorities would not be found naked, but would put on that body reflected in the likeness of that flesh in the water when He was baptized. This he says, is the Saviour’s saying: “Unless a man be born of water and of [the] Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of the heavens; because that which is born of the flesh is flesh.”[41]
From the thirty Aeons, then, He did on thirty forms. Wherefore that Eternal One was thirty years on the earth, every Aeon being manifested in his own year. And souls are all the forms which have been intercepted from each of p. 407. the thirty Aeons, and each of them possesses a nature capable of understanding the Jesus who exists according to nature which that Only-Begotten One from the eternal places puts on. But these places are different. Therefore so many heresies contending [with each other] about it, seek Jesus. And He is claimed[42] by them all, but is seen differently by each from the different places. Towards whom, he says, each [soul] is borne and hurries, thinking that she is alone. Who is indeed her kinsman and fellow-citizen. Whom she beholding for the first time recognizes as her own brother and all the rest as bastards. Those then who have their nature from the lower places cannot see the forms of the Saviour above them. But those on high, he say, from the middle Decad and the most excellent Ogdoad[43]—whence, say they, we are—know Jesus the Saviour not in part but wholly, and are alone the Perfect from above, while the others are only partly so.
p. 408. 11. I think then that this is for right-thinking persons sufficient for the knowledge of the complicated and inconsistent heresy of the Docetae—those who attempt to make arguments about inaccessible and incomprehensible matter calling themselves thus. Certain of whom do not only seem[44] to be mad; and we have proved that the beam from such matter has entered their own eye, if they are anyhow able to see clearly; and, if not, they will be unable to blind others. Whose dogma the early sophists of Greece anticipated in many points of sophistry, as our readers will understand. These then are the teachings of the Docetae.[45] It seems right also that we should not keep silence as to the [teachings] of Monoimus.
2. Monoimus.
12. Monoimus the Arab[46] was a long way off[47] the glory of the great-voiced poet; for he thinks that some such man as Oceanus existed, of whom the poet speaks somehow like this:—
p. 409.Oceanus, the birth of gods and birth of man.[48]
Turning this into other words, he says that a Man is the All which is the source of the universals, [being] unbegotten, incorruptible, and eternal; and that there is a Son of the aforesaid Man, who is begotten, and capable of suffering, being born in a timeless, unwilled, and previously undefined way. For such, says he, is the Power of that Man. And when it was so, the son of the Power came into being more quickly than reasoning or counsel. And this is, he says, the saying in the Scriptures: “He was and came into being,”[49] which is: Man was and his son came into being, as if one were to say: Fire was and Light came into being in a timeless, unwilled, and previously undefined way, while being at the same time fire. But this Man is a single monad, uncompounded [and] undifferentiated, [and yet] compounded [and] differentiated, loving and at peace with all things, [and yet] fighting with and at war with all things before him,[50] unlike and like, as it were a certain musical p. 410. harmony which contains whatever one may say or leave unsaid, showing all things and giving birth to all things. “This is Father, this is Mother, Two Immortal names.”[51] But for the sake of an instance, conceive, he says, as the greatest image of the Perfect Man, the one tittle which is one tittle uncompounded, simple, a pure monad having no composition whatever from anything, [yet] compounded of many forms, of many parts. That undivided One, he says, is the many-faced and myriad-eyed and myriad-named one tittle of the Iota,[52] which is an image of that Perfect and Invisible Man.