To Sabaoth:
“Ruler of the Fifth realm, King Sabaoth, advocate of the law of thy creation. I am freed by grace of a mightier Pentad. Admit me, when thou beholdest the blameless symbol of thy art preserved by the likeness of a type, a body set free by a pentad. Let grace be with me, O Father, yea let it be with me[[250]]!”
To Astaphaios:
“Ὁ Astaphaios, Ruler of the third gate, overseer of the first principle of water, behold me an initiate, admit me who have been purified by the spirit of a virgin, thou who seest the substance of the Cosmos. Let grace be with me, O Father, yea let it be with me[[251]]!”
To Ailoaios:
“O Ailoaios, ruler of the second gate, admit me who brings to thee the symbol of thy mother, a grace hidden from the powers of the authorities. Let grace be with me, O Father, yea let it be with me[[252]]!”
and to Horaios:
“O Horaios, who didst fearlessly overleap the fence of fire receiving the rulership of the first gate, admit me when thou beholdest the symbol of thy power, engraved on the type of the Tree of Life, and formed by resemblance in the likeness of the Guiltless One. Let grace be with me, O Father, yea let it be with me[[253]]!”
These defences have evidently got out of their proper order, and have probably been a good deal corrupted as well[[254]]. But their form and general purport are mostly intelligible and show undoubted signs of Egyptian origin. They were therefore probably not the work of the earlier Ophites or Naassenes, but were most likely introduced when the Ophite doctrines began to leave their primitive seat in Phrygia and to spread westward into North Africa and the south-east of Europe. The diagram itself seems to be fairly expressive of the more ancient teaching and in particular the division of all things below the Godhead into three parts. Thus we find in it the “middle space” or heaven of Sophia, itself perhaps the Paradise whence the protoplasts and Ophiomorphus were hurled, then the world of seven planets, and finally this earth under the government of Ophiomorphus’ seven angels. To judge from Origen’s remark that “they say there is a sympathy (συμπάθεια) between the Star Phaenon (i.e. Saturn) and the lion-like power (Michael)[[255]],” it is probable that the Ophites, like the Babylonian astrologers, looked upon the system of “correspondences,” as it was afterwards called, as running through all nature in such a way that every world and every power inhabiting it was a reflection of the one above it[[256]]. That each world according to the Naassenes contained a “Church” or assembly of souls[[257]] is stated in the text quoted above, the “Captive” Church there mentioned being evidently composed of the souls still held in the grip of matter, the “Called” of those who had passed into the planetary worlds, and the “Chosen” of those who were purified enough to be admitted into the middle space or Paradise of Sophia[[258]]. That these last were thought to be eventually united with the Deity appears in some later developments of the Ophite faith, but the doctrine seems also to have been known to the Naassenes, since the author quoted by Hippolytus speaks of “the perfect gnostics” becoming “kingless” (that is, subject to no other being) and as appointed to “share in the Pleroma[[259]].”
Of the amount of success which the speculations of the Ophites enjoyed we know very little. Origen, as we have seen, speaks of them as being in his day “an insignificant sect”; and we have no proof that their numbers were ever very large[[260]]. Father Giraud asserts on the faith of some of the smaller heresiologists and Conciliar Acts that they spread over the whole of Asia Minor, through Syria and Palestine into Egypt on the one hand, and, on the other, to Mesopotamia, Armenia, and even to India, and this is probably more or less correct[[261]]. But those who had actually read their writings, as Irenaeus and Hippolytus evidently had done, seem to have looked upon them more as the source of many later heresies than as formidable by their own numbers. Whether the Sethians with whom Irenaeus would identify them were really a subdivision of the Ophite sect may be doubted, because in Hippolytus’ account of the Sethian doctrines, the existence of Jesus is never mentioned or referred to, and there is some reason for thinking them a non-Christian sect[[262]]. But the heresies of the Peratae and of Justinus, which Hippolytus describes as not differing much from the Ophites, certainly resemble that which has been summarized above too closely for the resemblance to be accidental; while the same remark applies to those of the Barbeliotae and Cainites described by Irenaeus, and to the Gnostics, Archontics, and others of whom we read in Epiphanius’ Panarion. Most of these sects seem to have flourished on the Eastern or Asiatic outskirts of the Roman Empire, although some of them probably had settlements also in Egypt, Greece, Crete, and Cyrene. As the first Ophites had contrived to make an amalgam of the fervent and hysterical worship of nature in Anatolia with the Jewish and Christian tenets, so no doubt these daughter sects contrived to fit in with them the legends of the local cults among which they found themselves. But such compromises were not likely to last long when the Catholic Church began to define and enforce the orthodox faith, and the Ophites seem to have been one of the first to succumb. In the Vth century A.D., there were still Ophite “colleges” to be found in the province of Bithynia; for Theocritus and Evander, the bishops of Chalcedon and Nicomedia, “refuted” their leaders publicly with such effect, says Praedestinatus, that they afterwards broke into their “secret places” at the head of a furious mob, drove away their priests, killed the sacred serpents, and “delivered the people from that danger[[263]].” This is the last that we hear of them as an organized sect, and although Justinian in A.D. 530 thought right to include them by name in his law against heretics, it is probable that by then their opinions had long since passed into other forms[[264]].