13. The one tittle, he says, is then the monad and a decad. For by this power of the one tittle of the Iota [are produced] also [the] dyad and triad and tetrad and pentad and hexad and heptad and ogdoad and ennead up to the ten. For these are the diversified numbers dwelling within that simple and uncompounded tittle of the p. 411. Iota. And this is the saying:—“Because it pleased the whole Pleroma to dwell within the Son of Man bodily.”[53] For such compounds of numbers from the simple and uncompounded one tittle of the Iota become he says bodily hypostases. Therefore, he says, the Son of Man was born from the Perfect Man, whom none know. But, he says, every creature who is ignorant of the Son, represents Him as the offspring of a woman. Of which Son some shadowy rays come very close to this world and secure and control change [of bodies and] birth. And the beauty of that Son of Man is till now unrevealed to all men who are misled as to the offspring of a woman. Nothing then of the things here come into being, he says, from that Man, nor will they ever do so; but all things that have come into being have done so not from the whole, but from some part of the Son of Man. For, says he, the Son of Man is one Iota, one tittle flowing from on high, full, and filling full all things, and containing within itself whatever the Man, Father of the Son of Man possesses.[54]
p. 412. 14. Now the cosmos, as Moses says, came into being in six days, that is, in six powers which are in the one tittle of the Iota.[55] [But] the seventh, a rest and a Sabbath, came into being from the Hebdomad which is over Earth and Water and Fire and Air, out of which the cosmos came into being by the one tittle. For the cubes and the octahedrons, and [the] pyramids and all the figures like these of which Fire, Air, Water, [and earth] consist, came into being from the numbers which are comprised in that single tittle of the Iota, which is a Perfect Son of a Perfect Man. When then, says he, Moses says that (the) rod was turned about in different ways for the plagues on Egypt,[56] these [plagues], he says, are symbols allegorizing the Creation. [For] he does not use the rod which is one tittle of the Iota, duplex and varied, as a figure[57] for more plagues than ten. This Creation of the world, he says, is the ten plagues.[58] For p. 413. everything struck produces and bears fruit as, for instance, vine-shoots. Man, he says, has burst forth from Man, and was severed from him by a certain blow,[59] so that he might be born and might declare the Law which Moses laid down after having received it from God. The Law is according to that one tittle, the Decalogue which allegorizes the divine mysteries of the words. For, says he, the Ten Plagues and the Decalogue[60] are the whole knowledge of the universals which none has known who has been misled concerning the offspring of the woman. And if you say that the whole Law is a Pentateuch, it is [still] from the pentad which is comprised in the one tittle. But the whole Law is for those who have not thoroughly crippled their understanding [a] mystery, a new feast not yet grown old, legal and eternal, a Passover of the Lord God kept unto our generations by those who can see [and] beginning on the 14th [day] which is the beginning, he says, of the decad from which they reckon.[61] For the monad up to 14 is the sum total of the one tittle of the perfect number. And p. 414. one + two + three + four become ten, wherefore it is the one tittle. But from fourteen up to twenty-one, a hebdomad subsists in the one tittle, the unleavened creature of the world in all these.[62] For what, says he, should the one tittle want of any substance like leaven for the Passover of the Lord, the eternal feast which is given for generations. For the whole cosmos and all the causes of creation are the Passover Feast of the Lord. For God rejoices in the transmutation of creation which is wrought under the strokes of the one tittle. The which is the rod of Moses given by God, which strikes the Egyptians and changes the bodies, as did the hand of Moses, from water into blood. And the other [plagues] are in nearly the same way [such as that of the] locusts, wherefore change of the elements he calls flesh into grass: “for all flesh is grass,”[63] he says. p. 415. But none the less do these men in some such way receive the whole Law. Following, perhaps, as it seems to me, the Greeks who say that there are Substance and Quality and Quantity and Relation and Position and Action and Possession and Passion.[64]
15. So for example Monoimus himself says distinctly in his letter to Theophrastus:[65] “Leave aside enquiry concerning God and Creation and the like, and enquire about Him from thyself, and learn who it is who simply makes His own all that is within thee, saying ‘My God, my mind, my understanding, my soul, my body.’ Learn also what are grief and rejoicing, and love and hate, and undesired watching and sleep, and undesired anger and love. And if,” says he, “thou dost carefully seek out this, thou wilt find Him in thyself [as both] one and many things after the likeness of that one tittle, he finding the outlet for Himself.”[66] This then is what these [men] say, which we are under no necessity to compare with what has been before excogitated by the Greeks. Since it is plain from p. 416. their statements that they have their origin from the geometrical and arithmetical art, which the disciples of Pythagoras set forth more excellently. As the reader may learn in the passages where we have before explained all the wisdom of the Greeks.
But since we have sufficiently refuted Monoimus,[67] let us see what others have elaborated who wish thereby to raise for themselves an idle name.
3. Tatian.
16. But Tatian, although himself a disciple of Justin Martyr, was not of like mind with his master, but attempted something new. He says that there were certain Aeons [about whom] he fables in the like way with the Valentinians. But in the same way as Marcion he says that marriage is destruction. And he asserts that Adam will not be saved, through his becoming a leader of rebellion. And thus Tatian.[68]
4. Hermogenes.
p. 417. 17. A certain Hermogenes[69] thinking also to devise something new, says that God created all things from co-existent and ungenerated matter. For he held it impossible that God should create the things that are from those that are not. And that God is ever Lord and Maker, but Matter ever a slave and [in process of] becoming. But yet not all [matter], for, as it was being borne about violently and disorderly, He set it in order in this manner. Beholding it boiling like a pot on the fire, He divided it into parts; and that part which he took from the All He reclaimed, and the other He allowed to be borne about disorderly. And the reclaimed part, he says, is the cosmos; and that the other remains waste and is called acosmic[70] matter. He says that this is the essence[71] of all things, as if he were introducing p. 418. a new doctrine to his disciples; but he does not consider that this fable happens to be Socratic, and is better worked out by Plato than by Hermogenes. But he confesses that Christ is the Son of the God who created all things, and that He was begotten of the Virgin and of Spirit according to the [common] voice of the Gospels. Who after He had suffered rose again in a body and appeared to His disciples, and ascending to the heavens, left His body in the Sun, but Himself went on into the presence of the Father. And in witness of this,[72] he thinks he is corroborated by the word which David the Psalmist spake: “In the Sun he set up his tent, and like a bridegroom coming forth from his bridal chamber, he will rejoice like a giant to run his course.”[73] This then is what Hermogenes attempts.[74]
5. About the Quartodecimans.[75]
18. But certain others, lovers of strife by nature, unskilled p. 419. in knowledge, very quarrelsome by habit, maintain that the Passover ought to be kept on the 14th day of the First Month, according to the ordinance of the Law, on whatever day [of the week] it may fall. They have regard [merely] to that which has been written in the Law: [that is] that he will be accursed who does not keep it as it is laid down. They pay no attention to the fact that it was enacted for the Jews, who were to kill the True Passover. Which [Law] has spread to the Gentiles and is understood by faith, not kept strictly in the letter. They pay attention to this one commandment, but do not regard the saying of the Apostle: “For I bear witness to every man who is circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole Law.”[76] In other matters they agree concerning all things handed down to the Church by the Apostles.