Clement of Alexandria: Exhortation, Instructor & Miscellanies
The Plainspoken Classics - Scriptorium Press (First Edition, 2026)
An original AI translation made directly from the source language.
https://openscriptorium.com


======== Protrepticus — Chapter 1 ========

Amphion the Theban and Arion of Methymna were both singers -- and both are legend, and this song of theirs is still sung by a chorus of Greeks -- who by the art of music, the one enticed a fish, the other walled Thebes. And another sophist, a Thracian (this too is a Greek legend), tamed the wild beasts by song alone, unaided, and even transplanted the trees, the oaks, by his music. I could also relate to you another legend and singer, a brother to these: Eunomus the Locrian and the Pythian cicada. A Greek festival was being held at Pytho over a dead serpent, Eunomus singing the funeral dirge of the reptile -- whether the song was a hymn or a lament for the snake I cannot say -- and it was a contest, and Eunomus was playing the cithara in the heat of summer, at the time when the cicadas were singing beneath the leaves on the mountains, warmed by the sun. And they were singing, it seems, not to the dead serpent, the Pythian one, but to the all-wise god, a self-taught song, better than the laws (nomoi) of Eunomus. A string breaks for the Locrian; the cicada flies onto the crossbar; it chirped as if perched on a branch, upon the instrument; and the singer, matching himself to the cicada's song, filled out the missing string. So it is not by the song of Eunomus that the cicada is led, as the legend would have it, in setting up a bronze statue at Pytho of Eunomus himself with his cithara, and of the Locrian's fellow contestant, the cicada; rather the cicada flies onto it of its own will and sings of its own will, and to the Greeks it seemed to have become an actor in the contest of music.
Why then have you believed empty legends, supposing that animals are charmed by music? But truth's bright face alone, it seems, appears to you to be counterfeit, and has fallen under the eyes of unbelief. And so Cithaeron and Helicon and the mountains of the Odrysians and of the Thracians, the initiation-grounds of error, have been deified and celebrated in hymns for the sake of the mysteries. For my part, even though these are only legends, I am indignant at so many calamities dramatized in tragedy; but for you the records of these evils have become dramas, and the actors of the dramas spectacles for your delight. But come -- the dramas, and the poets who rave like Bacchic revelers, already thoroughly drunk, let us crown them with ivy somewhere, madmen in their outlandish Bacchic rite, together with the satyrs themselves and the frenzied company, and with the rest of the chorus of demons besides -- let us shut them up on Helicon and Cithaeron, now grown old, and let us instead bring down from heaven above Truth, together with most radiant wisdom, to the holy mountain of God and to the holy prophetic choir. And let her, shining forth with the most far-reaching light possible, illumine on every side those rolling in darkness, and deliver mankind from error, reaching out her supreme right hand, understanding, unto salvation. But let those who lift up their heads and look upward abandon Helicon and Cithaeron, and dwell instead in Zion: "for from Zion the ordinance will issue, and from Jerusalem the utterance of the Lord" -- a heavenly word, the true contestant crowned upon the theater of the whole world. And my Eunomus sings not the strain of Terpander, nor that of Capion, nor indeed the Phrygian or Lydian or Dorian mode, but the eternal strain of the new harmony, the strain that bears the name of God, the new song, the Levitical song, "banishing grief and bile, and causing forgetfulness of all ills" -- a sweet and true medicine of sorrow is mixed into that song.
To me, then, that Thracian [Orpheus], and the Theban, and the man of Methymna, seem to have been -- men who were no men -- deceivers, who under the pretense of music ruined human life, possessed by some artful sorcery unto corruption, celebrating outrages as sacred rites, deifying griefs; the first to lead men by the hand to idols, yes, and indeed with stones and wood, that is, with statues and shadow-paintings, to build up the crookedness of custom, enslaving in the utmost bondage, by songs and incantations, that truly noble freedom of those who dwell beneath heaven.
But my singer is not of that sort, nor has he come to put an end, after a long delay, to the bitter slavery of the tyrant demons; rather, by leading us over into the gentle and kindly yoke of the fear of God, he calls back again to the heavens those who had been cast down to earth. He alone, indeed, of all who have ever lived, has tamed the most intractable of wild beasts -- human beings: the light-minded among them as birds, the deceitful as reptiles, the wrathful as lions, the pleasure-loving as swine, the rapacious as wolves. And the senseless are stones and wood; indeed, a man sunk in ignorance is more insensate than stones. Let the prophetic voice come forward as our witness, in harmony with truth, taking pity on those worn down by ignorance and folly: "For God has power, even from these very rocks, to bring forth offspring for Abraham." He who, having compassion on the great ignorance and hardness of heart of those who were petrified against the truth, raised up from those very stones -- the nations who had put their faith in stones -- a seed of piety, one that could perceive virtue. Again, then, he has somewhere called certain venomous and treacherous hypocrites, who go about wrapped in righteousness, "offspring of vipers"; but even of these serpents, if any should willingly repent, following indeed the Word, he turns into "a person belonging to God." And other men he allegorically calls "wolves" clothed in sheep's fleece, hinting at those who under human form are rapacious. And so all these most savage beasts, and such stones as these, the heavenly song itself has transformed into gentle men. "For we too were once foolish, disobedient, going astray, enslaved to pleasures and to various desires, passing our days in spite and jealousy, detestable and detesting each other," as the apostolic writing says; "but when the kindness and love for mankind of God our Savior appeared, not by works done in righteousness which we ourselves had done, but according to his own mercy he saved us." See how great is the power of this fresh song: from stones it has fashioned human beings, and from wild beasts likewise, human beings. And those who were otherwise dead, who had no share in the life that truly is, merely by becoming hearers of the song came back to life. Indeed it is this same song that has ordered the whole universe harmoniously, and has stretched the discord of the elements into an order of concord, so that the whole cosmos might become for it a harmony: the sea it let loose but forbade to encroach upon the land, while the land, conversely, which had been drifting, it made firm, and fixed it as a boundary for the sea; yes, and it tempered the impulse of fire with air, blending, as it were, the Dorian harmony with the Lydian; and it tamed the harsh coldness of air by interweaving it with fire, mingling harmoniously these lowest notes of the universe. And indeed the pure and undefiled song, the foundation of the universe and the harmony of all things, stretched from the middle to the extremities and from the outermost points to the middle, has attuned this whole universe -- not according to the Thracian music, the sort resembling Jubal's, but according to the ancestral will of God, which David emulated. And he who came from David, and existed before him, the Word of God, disdaining lyre and cithara, lifeless instruments, has tuned by the Holy Spirit this cosmos, and indeed also the small cosmos, man -- his soul and body together -- and makes music to God upon this instrument of many voices, and sings in accompaniment to the instrument, man. "For you are to me a cithara and a flute and a temple": a cithara for its harmony, a flute for its breath, a temple for the Word, that the one may resound, the other breathe, and the third contain the Lord. Indeed David the king, the harpist, whom we mentioned a little before, urged men on toward truth and turned them away from idols; far indeed was he from hymning the demons, since they were driven off by him with true music -- by which, when Saul was worked upon by them, merely by singing he healed him. The Lord fashioned man, a beautiful instrument, full of breath, after his own image; and indeed he himself is an all-harmonious instrument of God, melodious and holy, wisdom above the world, the heavenly Word.
So what is it that this instrument -- God's Word, our Lord -- together with the new song, is aiming to accomplish? Its purpose is that the eyes of blind persons be opened, that deaf ears be unstopped, and that those who stumble on their feet, or who have gone astray, be guided by the hand into righteousness; to display God to foolish men; to put an end to corruption; to conquer death; to reconcile disobedient sons to their father. The instrument of God is a lover of mankind. The Lord shows mercy, disciplines, exhorts, admonishes, saves, guards, and promises us, out of his abundance, as the wage of our learning, the kingdom of heaven -- enjoying from us this alone, that we are saved. For wickedness feeds upon the corruption of men, but truth, like the bee, doing harm to nothing that exists, delights only in the salvation of mankind. You have, then, the promise; you have his love for mankind: partake of the grace. And do not suppose that this song of salvation I bring is new the way a jar or a dwelling might be freshly made; for it "existed before the daystar," and "at the origin the Logos already was, and the Logos was present with God, and the Logos was divine"; deception is ancient, whereas truth shows itself as new. Whether, then, the legendary goats teach that the Phrygians are the oldest of peoples, or whether in turn the poets who record the Arcadians as older than the moon teach that they are, or whether again the Egyptians, who dream that this land of theirs was the first to bring forth both gods and men -- yet not one of these is older than this world; but we, before the foundation of the world, we who were destined to be in it, were born beforehand for God -- we are the rational creatures of God the Word, on whose account we are archaic, because "in the beginning was the Word." But whereas the Word was from above, a divine beginning of all things, both was and is; yet because he has now received the name which of old was consecrated and worthy of his power, Christ, he is called by me a new song. The Word, then, Christ, is the cause both of our existing long ago (since he dwelt in God) and of our existing well; and now this very Word has appeared to men, he alone being both, God and man, the cause to us of all good things; from whom, being taught to live well, we are sent forward into everlasting life. For as that God-inspired envoy of the Lord puts it, "the redeeming favor of God has been shown to every person, schooling us so that, rejecting impiety and the cravings of this world, we might live with self-control, justice, and devotion in the present era, looking ahead to that blessed expectation, the manifestation of the splendor belonging to our great God and Savior Jesus Christ." Here is the new song: the manifestation that has now shone forth among us of that Word who was in the beginning and who pre-existed; the pre-existing Savior has newly appeared; he who is has appeared, being he who truly is, because "the Logos was present alongside God," acting as teacher; he by whom all things have been made has appeared as Word, and having granted life in the beginning, together with forming us, as creator, he has taught us to live well by appearing as teacher, so that afterward, as God, he might supply us with living forever. And it was not now for the first time that he pitied us for our error, but from of old, from the beginning; yet now, when we were already perishing, he has appeared and saved us completely. For that wicked and serpentine beast, working by sorcery, still even now enslaves and torments men, taking vengeance on them, as it seems to me, after the barbarous fashion of those who are said to bind their captives to dead bodies until they rot away together with them. This wicked tyrant and dragon, then -- whomever he is able to appropriate from birth -- having bound them fast to stones and wood and statues and idols of that sort, by the wretched bond of superstition, has, as the saying goes, buried them alive by bringing this upon them, until they too are corrupted together with these things. For this reason (for it is one and the same deceiver who from of old brought Eve, and now also brings the rest of mankind, down to death) it is one and the same helper and ally to us, the Lord, foretelling from the beginning by the prophets, and now already openly calling us to salvation. Let us flee, then, obedient to the apostolic command, "the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience," and let us run to the Savior, the Lord, who both now and always has urged us toward salvation -- through wonders and signs in Egypt, and in the desert through the bush and through the loving-kindness that followed by grace, serving the Hebrews after the fashion of a handmaid, as a cloud. By dread of such things he spurred on those hardened in heart; and now already, through all-wise Moses and truth-loving Isaiah and the entire chorus of prophets, he redirects, on a more rational course, toward the Word all who have ears to hear; and in some places he reproaches, in others he threatens; some men he even laments, but to others he sings, just as a good physician, in dealing with sick bodies, in some cases applies a poultice, in others smooths, in others pours on liniment, and in others cuts with the knife, and cauterizes others, and in some cases even amputates, if by any means, even piecemeal or limb by limb, he might heal the man. The Savior is indeed many-voiced and many-mannered for the salvation of men: threatening, he admonishes; reproaching, he converts; lamenting, he pities; singing, he exhorts; speaking through the bush (for they needed signs and wonders), he even frightens men with fire, kindling the flame from a pillar, a sign at once of grace and of fear: if you obey, the light; if you disobey, the fire. But since flesh is more precious even than pillar and bush, after these the prophets speak, the Lord himself speaking in Isaiah, himself in Elijah, himself in the mouth of the prophets; but if you do not believe the prophets, and suppose both the men and the fire to be a legend, the Lord himself will speak to you, "who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself" -- the God who loves mercy, yearning to save man; and now the Word himself already speaks to you openly, putting your unbelief to shame -- yes, I say, the Word of God, having become man, in order that you too might learn from a man how it is that a man may become god. Is it not absurd, then, my friends, that God should be ever urging us on to virtue, while we shrink back from what benefits us and put off our salvation? For does not John also call us to salvation, and does not the whole of him become an exhorting voice? Let us then ask him: "who are you, and from where among men?" He will not say Elijah; he will deny being Christ; but he will confess himself to be a voice crying in the wilderness. Who then is John? To take it in figure, let it be said: a voice of the Word, exhorting, crying in the wilderness. What do you proclaim, O voice? "Tell us as well." "Level out the paths of the Lord." John is a forerunner, and the voice is the forerunner of the Word, a voice that calls and comforts, preparing beforehand for salvation, a voice exhorting to the inheritance of the heavens, on whose account the barren and desolate woman is no longer childless. This childbearing an angel's voice foretold to me; that voice too was a forerunner of the Lord, announcing good news to a childless woman, just as John proclaimed it to the desert waste. Because of this voice of the Word, then, the barren woman bears good children, and the desert bears fruit; the two forerunning voices of the Lord, the angel's and John's, hint to me at the salvation laid up for us -- that, once this Word has appeared, we should carry off, as the fruit of good childbearing, life eternal. Bringing both voices together into one, the Scripture makes the whole matter plain: "Let her who does not bear listen; let her who is not in labor break forth into a voice, because the children of the desolate woman are more than the children of her who has a husband." To us an angel brought good news; us John exhorted to understand the husbandman, to seek the husband. For he is one and the same, the husband of the barren woman, the husbandman of the desert, who filled both the barren woman and the desert with divine power. For since the children of the noble woman were many, yet the Hebrew woman, of old so fruitful, was childless on account of disobedience, the barren woman receives her husband, and the desert its husbandman; then the one becomes mother of fruits, the other of the faithful, and both are mothers because of the Word; but to the unbelieving even now barren woman and desert alike remain. John, then, the herald of the Word, in this way was exhorting men to be ready for the coming of God, of Christ; and this was what the silence of Zechariah hinted at, awaiting the forerunning fruit of Christ, so that the light of truth, the Word, might release the mystical silence of the prophetic riddles, becoming good news. But you, if you desire truly to see God, partake of purifications befitting God -- not of laurel leaves and certain fillets woven of wool and purple, but binding on righteousness and wrapping about you the leaves of self-control; seek earnestly after Christ. "For I am the door," he says somewhere; which those who wish to understand God must learn thoroughly, so that he may throw open for us all at once the gates of the heavens; for the gates belonging to the Word are rational ones, unlocked by faith's own key. "No one has come to know God except the Son, and whoever the Son chooses to disclose him to." And I am well aware that it is a door which, being closed until now, he who opens it later reveals the things within, and shows what it was not even possible to know before, except to those who have journeyed through Christ, through whom alone God is beheld.

======== Protrepticus — Chapter 2 ========

So do not busy yourselves over godless inner shrines, nor over the mouths of pits filled with monstrous portents, nor the Thesprotian cauldron, nor the Cirrhaean tripod, nor the Dodonaean bronze bowl. Leave behind the ancient oak honored amid the lonely sands, and the oracle there, withered along with the very oak, together with its aged myths. Silenced now is the spring of Castalia, and that other spring at Colophon, and likewise the other prophetic streams have died, empty of imposture — late though it be, yet they have nonetheless been refuted, having run dry along with their own myths. List for us as well the futile prophecies coming from the rest of the mantic art — or rather the maniac art — the Clarian, the Pythian, the Didymean, that of Amphiaraus, that of Apollo, that of Amphilochus; and if you wish, deconsecrate along with them the readers of portents, the augurs, and the interpreters of dreams. Set up together beside the Pythian oracle the flour-diviners and barley-diviners you bring, and the belly-talkers still honored among the many. Yes indeed, let the Egyptian sanctuaries fall silent, and let the Tyrrhenian necromantic rites likewise be consigned to darkness. These are truly the maniac impostures of faithless men, and the gambling-dens of unmixed error; the fellow-traffickers in this sorcery are goats trained to divination, and ravens taught by men to prophesy to men.
But what if I were to recount the mysteries to you in detail? I will not dance them out, as they say Alcibiades did, but I will strip bare, very thoroughly, according to the account of truth, the sorcery hidden within them, and the very gods of yours so called, whose rites are the mystic initiations — I will wheel them out onto the stage of life, as it were, for the spectators of truth to see. The Bacchants hold their orgies for raving Dionysus, conducting their sacred madness through the eating of raw flesh, and they perform the dividing-up of the flesh of their slaughtered victims, crowned with snakes, shrieking out 'Euai, Euai' — that name because of which error has followed after them. And the sign of the Bacchic orgies is a consecrated serpent. Indeed, according to the precise Hebrew pronunciation, the name Hevia, aspirated, is interpreted as 'the female serpent.' And Deo and Kore have by now become a mystic drama, and Eleusis torches forth their wandering and their rape and their mourning.
And it seems to me that one ought to derive the etymology of the 'orgia' and 'mysteria' — the one from the 'orge' (wrath) of Deo that arose against Zeus, the other from the 'mysos' (pollution) that befell Dionysus. But if it is also from a certain Attic Myus, whom Apollodorus says perished while hunting, I bear no grudge — your mysteries have been glorified with the honor due a tomb. It is also possible to think of them otherwise as 'mytheria,' the letters being interchanged for 'mysteria'; for indeed such myths as these hunt down — as do certain other things too — even the crudest of the Thracian tribes, the silliest among the Phrygian peoples, and those Greeks given to superstition. May he perish, then, whoever it was who began this deception for mankind — whether Dardanus, who was first to bring forward the rites belonging to the Mother of the gods, or Eetion, founder of the frenzied observances and cult of the Samothracian people, or that Phrygian Midas, who learned them from Odrysus and then handed on the crafty deceit to his subjects. For never could the Cyprian islander Cinyras persuade me — he who dared to transfer the lascivious orgies of Aphrodite from night into day, being ambitious to deify a fellow-citizen harlot. Others say that Melampus son of Amythaon brought over from Egypt to Greece the festivals of Deo, a mourning that is hymned. These men, I would say, are the first authors of evil, fathers of godless myths and of ruinous superstition, who planted into human life, as its mysteries, the seed of wickedness and corruption.
Now — for it is indeed the time — I will expose your very orgies as full of deceit and monstrous imposture. And should you already stand among the initiated, all the more will laughter overtake you at these cherished tales of yours. I will proclaim openly the things that are hidden, not ashamed to say what you are not ashamed to worship. The 'foam-born' and 'Cyprus-born' one, dear to Cinyras — I mean Aphrodite, the 'lover of the genitals, because she was made manifest from genitals,' those genitals of Uranus that were cut off, lustful members, from which, after the mutilation, the wave was made to labor — she becomes for you a fruit worthy of shameless members; in the rites of this pleasure of the sea, as a token of that begetting, a lump of salt and a phallus are handed to the initiates, imparting to them the art of adultery; and the initiates bring in a coin to her, as lovers to a courtesan. As for the mysteries of Deo, there is intercourse of Zeus with his mother Demeter of an amorous kind, and wrath (I no longer know what to call her henceforth, mother or wife) belonging to Deo, on whose account she is said to have been named Brimo, and supplications to Zeus, and a draught of gall, and heart-plucking, and unspeakable deeds; the Phrygians perform the same rites for Attis and Cybele and the Corybantes. They have made it common knowledge that Zeus, having torn the testicles from a ram, carried and threw them into the very lap of Deo, discharging a false penalty for his violent union, as though he had thereby castrated himself. The symbols of this initiation, set forth in full, I know will provoke laughter, even in those of you disinclined to laugh, because of the exposures involved: 'I ate from the drum; I drank from the cymbal; I carried the sacred vessel; I crept under the bridal canopy.' Are these symbols not an outrage? Are the mysteries not a mockery? And what if I should add what remains? Demeter conceives, Kore is reared, and this same Zeus who begot her mates again with Persephone, his own daughter, after her mother Deo, forgetting his former pollution — Zeus, father and violator of his own daughter — and he mates with her having become a serpent, betrayed for what he was. Indeed the symbol of the Sabazian mysteries for the initiates is the god passed through the lap; and this is a serpent, drawn through the lap of those being initiated, a proof of the incontinence of Zeus. Persephone too conceives a child in the form of a bull; hence, as some idolatrous poet says, 'bull the father of a serpent, and serpent the father of a bull, on the mountain the hidden thing, the herdsman' — the goad, the herdsman's goad, I think he means, calling the thyrsus-wand by that name, which indeed the Bacchants crown with wreaths. Would you have me relate to you also Persephone's flower-gathering, and the basket, and the rape by Aidoneus, and the chasm of the earth, and the pigs of Eubouleus that were swallowed down together with the two goddesses, on account of which, at the Thesmophoria, they observe the custom of throwing pigs into the pits? This mythology the women celebrate in various ways throughout the cities — Thesmophoria, Skirophoria, Arretophoria — dramatizing in many fashions the rape of Persephone. As for the mysteries of Dionysus, they are utterly inhuman: while he was still a child, the Curetes danced around him with an armed movement, and the Titans slipped in by stealth and, luring him with toys fit for a child, those same Titans rent him apart limb from limb while he yet remained an infant, as Orpheus the Thracian, poet of the Rite, says: 'the cone and the whirling top and limb-bending playthings, and the fair golden apples from the clear-voiced Hesperides.' And it is not useless, for the sake of condemnation, to set before you the worthless symbols of this rite as well: the knucklebone, the ball, the spinning top, apples, the whirling toy, the mirror, the fleece. Athena, having stolen away the heart of Dionysus, was surnamed Pallas from the throbbing (pallein) of the heart; and the Titans, they too having dismembered him, set a certain cauldron upon a tripod and, having cast in the limbs of Dionysus, boiled them first; then, spitting them on skewers, 'held them over the fire of Hephaestus.' And Zeus, appearing afterward — if indeed he was a god, having perhaps caught the savor of the roasting meat, that 'prerogative' which your gods, as they themselves admit, obtain as their honored share — tortures the Titans with his thunderbolt, and entrusts the limbs of Dionysus to his son Apollo for burial. And Apollo, since he would not disobey Zeus, carries the dismembered corpse to Parnassus and lays it to rest there.
And if you wish also to behold the secret rites of the Corybantes: having killed their third brother, these two covered the head of the corpse with a purple cloth, and having crowned it, buried it, carrying it upon a bronze shield to beneath the foothills of Olympus. And these are the mysteries, to put it briefly: murders and burials. And the priests of these rites, whom those concerned to name them call the Anaktoteleastai, add further monstrous embellishment to the calamity, forbidding celery to be placed on the table with its root intact; for they suppose that celery sprang up from the blood that flowed forth from the Corybantic slaying — just as, indeed, the women who celebrate the Thesmophoria are careful to eat the seeds of the pomegranate that have fallen to the ground, believing that pomegranates grew from the drops of Dionysus's blood. And calling the Corybantes Cabiri, they proclaim a Cabiric rite; for these two fratricides, having taken up the chest in which the private parts of Dionysus lay stored, carried it down into Tyrrhenia — noble merchants of their cargo! — and there they lingered, being fugitives, having handed over to the Tyrrhenians for worship that most precious teaching of piety: the private parts and the chest. For this reason some are not unreasonably willing to call Dionysus by the name Attis, since he has been deprived of his private parts.
And what wonder is it if the barbarian Tyrrhenians are initiated by such shameful experiences, when among the Athenians and the rest of Greece — I am ashamed even to say it — the mythology concerning Deo is full of shame? For Deo, wandering in search of her daughter Kore around Eleusis (this district belongs to Attica), grows weary and sits down upon a well, grieving. This is forbidden to the initiates even now, lest those who have been consecrated seem to imitate the mourning goddess. At that time the earth-born inhabitants dwelt in Eleusis; their names were Baubo and Dysaules and Triptolemus, and also Eumolpus and Eubouleus. Triptolemus tended cattle, Eumolpus tended sheep, and Eubouleus tended swine, and from this trio descended the families of the Eumolpidae and the Kerykes, that hierophantic clan that flourished at Athens. And indeed — for I will not refrain from telling it — Baubo, having entertained Deo as a guest, offers her a kykeon to drink; but Deo, refusing, unwilling to take it and drink (for she was in mourning), Baubo, being deeply pained, as though she had been slighted, uncovers her private parts and displays them to the goddess; and Deo is delighted at the sight, and at last accepts the drink, pleased by the spectacle. These are the hidden mysteries of the Athenians. This too Orpheus records. I will set before you Orpheus's own verses, so that you may have as witness of the shamelessness the very mystagogue himself: 'So speaking, she drew up her robes, and showed the whole shape of her body, unseemly as it was; and the child Iacchus was there, and laughingly he tossed his hand beneath Baubo's lap; then, when the goddess smiled, she smiled within her heart, and accepted the gleaming vessel in which the kykeon lay.' And this is the password of the Eleusinian mysteries: 'I fasted; I drank the kykeon; I took from the chest; having done my work, I put it back into the basket, and from the basket into the chest.' Fine spectacles indeed, and fitting for a goddess! Worthy of night, then, are these rites, and of fire, and of the 'great-hearted' — or rather, empty-minded — people of the Erechtheidae, and of the rest of the Greeks besides, for whom 'there awaits after death what they do not even hope for.' To whom does Heraclitus of Ephesus prophesy? 'To night-wanderers, magicians, bacchants, maenads, initiates' — to these he threatens what comes after death, to these he prophesies the fire; 'for the mysteries customary among men are celebrated in an unholy manner.' Custom, then, and empty supposition are what the mysteries are, and a certain deception of the serpent, being religiously observed, as men turn with counterfeit piety toward initiations that are truly uninitiated and rites that are truly without sanctity. And what sort of things are the mystic chests! For one must strip bare their sacred things and speak out their unspeakable contents. Are not these very objects sesame cakes, pyramid-shaped cakes, balls of wool, cakes bearing many navels, chunks of salt, and a snake — that emblem of frenzy belonging to Dionysus Bassareus? And besides these, are there not pomegranates, and fig-branches, and wands, and ivy-leaves, and also round cakes and poppies? These are their sacred things. And further, the unspeakable symbols of Ge Themis are marjoram, a lamp, a sword, and a woman's comb, which is — to speak in a decent and mystic way — a woman's private part. Oh, the sheer shamelessness on open display! In old times, for people of sound mind, night, kept silent, was a covering for pleasure; but now, for the initiates, night that is talked about is a trial of their incontinence, and the fire, held aloft in torches, exposes their passions. Quench the fire, O hierophant! Be ashamed, torch-bearer, of your torches! The light exposes your Iacchus! Allow the night to hide the mysteries away; let the orgies be honored in darkness; the fire does not play a hypocrite's part — it is bidden to expose and to punish.
These are the mysteries of the godless. And I rightly call these people godless, who have failed to know the God who truly exists, and who worship, truly shamelessly out of shame, a child torn apart by Titans, and a grieving little woman, and unspeakable private parts — caught in a double atheism: the first, by which they are ignorant of God, not recognizing the God who truly exists; the other, a second error, by which they suppose things that do not exist to exist, and call by the name of gods things that are not truly existent — or rather, do not exist at all, having attained only the name. For this reason the apostle also reproves us, saying, 'and you were strangers to the covenants of the promise, having no hope, and godless in the world.'
Many good things be granted to the king of the Scythians, whoever he was [Anacharsis]. This man shot down with arrows his own fellow-countryman, who was imitating among the Scythians the rite of the Mother of the gods practiced by the Cyzicenes — beating a drum, clashing a cymbal, and having some begging-priest's image hung around his neck — because the man had, among the Greeks, become unmanned, and was teaching the other Scythians the womanish disease. On account of these things (for it must in no way be concealed) it occurs to me to wonder in what manner they have called Euhemerus of Acragas, and Nicanor of Cyprus, and Diagoras, and Hippo of Melos, and along with these that Cyrenaic (Theodorus was his name), and a good many others besides — men who lived soberly and had perceived, more sharply perhaps than the rest of mankind, the error surrounding these gods — godless, even though they had not grasped the truth itself, but had at least suspected the error, which is no small spark of understanding germinating toward the truth. Of these, one gives the Egyptians this advice: 'If you consider them gods, do not lament them or beat your breasts for them; but if you mourn them, no longer regard these as gods.' And another, having taken a Heracles made of wood — he happened to be boiling something at home, as one might — said, 'Come now, O Heracles! Now is the time for you, as it was for Eurystheus, and indeed for us too, to perform this thirteenth labor, and to prepare the dish for Diagoras' — 'and then he threw him into the fire, like a piece of wood.'
Godlessness and superstition, then, are the two extremes of ignorance, and one must strive to remain clear of both. Do you not see that Moses, the hierophant of truth, commands that the man with crushed testicles, and the one who has been mutilated, not enter the assembly, and moreover the son of a harlot? By the first two he hints darkly at the godless manner of life, deprived of the divine and generative power; and by the remaining third he hints at the man who ascribes to himself many falsely-named gods in place of the one who alone truly is God — just as the son of a harlot ascribes to himself many fathers, in ignorance of his true father. There was once, in men, a certain innate and ancient fellowship with heaven, darkened indeed by ignorance, yet now and then leaping suddenly out of the darkness and flashing forth again — as, indeed, has been said by someone: 'Do you see this boundless ether on high, and the earth held round about in its moist embrace?' and, 'O vehicle of the earth, and having your seat upon the earth, whoever you are, hard to guess at and see,' and all the other such things that the children of the poets sing. But false notions, drawn away from the straight path, truly ruinous, have turned the heavenly plant, man, from his heavenly way of life, and stretched him out flat upon the earth, persuading him to cling to earthly figments. For some, straightway deceived in their view of heaven, and trusting sight alone, gazing upon the motions of the stars, marveled at them and deified them, naming the stars 'gods' from their 'running' (thein), and worshipped the sun, as do the Indians, and the moon, as do the Phrygians; others, gathering the cultivated fruits of the things that grow from the earth, called the grain Deo, as the Athenians do, and the vine Dionysus, as the Thebans do. Others, observing the requitals of wickedness, deify these acts of retribution, worshipping even misfortunes themselves. From this the poets around the tragic stage have fashioned the Erinyes and the Eumenides, and the Palamnaioi and Prostropaioi, and further the Alastores. And some among the philosophers too, following after the poets, fashion into idol-forms the passions found among you — Fear and Love and Joy and Hope — just as, indeed, old Epimenides set up at Athens altars to Hybris and Anaideia. Others, starting from the very facts themselves, deify these for men and mold them into bodily shapes: a certain Justice, and Clotho and Lachesis and Atropos and Fate, and Auxo and Thallo, the Attic goddesses. There is a sixth introductory mode of the deception concerning the gods, by which they invent and multiply them, in accordance with which they number twelve gods, of whom Hesiod sings his own theogony, and concerning whom Homer theologizes as much as he does. And there remains a final mode (for these are seven modes in all) which proceeds from the divine beneficence bestowed upon mankind. For, not understanding the God who does good, they have fashioned certain saviors — the Dioscuri, and Heracles, who wards off evil, and Asclepius, who heals the sick. These, then, are the slippery and harmful deviations from the truth, dragging man down from heaven and overturning him into a pit. But I wish to show you these gods themselves, up close, of what sort they are, and whether they are anything at all, so that you may at last cease from your error, and run back again to heaven. 'For we too were once children of wrath, as were the rest; but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ, even when we were dead in our trespasses.' For the Word lives, and he who was buried together with Christ is exalted together with God. Those still lacking faith bear the name 'sons of wrath,' fed upon that very wrath; but we are no longer creatures of wrath, we who have been torn away from error and now hasten toward the truth. Thus we, the sons of lawlessness once, have now, through the loving-kindness of the Word, become sons of God. But to you your own poet, Empedocles of Acragas, also gives voice: 'Therefore, raving in your grievous evils, you shall never be relieved in your heart of your wretched sorrows.' Most of what is said about the gods among you has been made into myth and fabricated; but whatever is supposed to have actually happened has been recorded concerning shameful men who lived licentiously. In delusion and madness you walk, and having abandoned the straight and level path, you have gone off along the way through thorns and briars. Why do you wander, mortals? Cease, foolish ones; leave behind the darkness of night, and lay hold of the light. This the prophetic and poetic Sibyl enjoins upon us; and truth too enjoins it, stripping bare, from these astonishing and awe-inspiring masks, the whole crowd of gods, refuting their claims to glory by certain telltale identities of name.
Take, for instance, those who record that three separate Zeuses existed: one, born of Aether, dwelling in Arcadia, and then a pair of sons of Cronus, one settled in Crete, the other likewise in Arcadia. And there are those who count up five Athenas: the daughter of Hephaestus, the Athenian one; the daughter of Nilus, the Egyptian one; a third, the daughter of Cronus, credited with inventing war; a fourth, born to Zeus, given by the Messenians the surname Coryphasia after her mother; and beyond all these, the daughter of Pallas and the Titaness, daughter of Oceanus, who impiously slaughtered her own father and now is adorned with her father's hide as though it were a fleece. And indeed as for Apollo, Aristotle names first the son of Hephaestus and Athena (here, then, Athena is no longer a virgin), second the Cretan son of Corybas, third the son of Zeus, and fourth the Arcadian son of Silenus, called Nomius among the Arcadians; to these he adds the Libyan son of Ammon; and Didymus the grammarian adds to these a sixth, the son of Magnes. And how many Apollos are there even now — countless mortal and perishable men who have been called by names resembling those just mentioned? What if I should tell you of the many Asclepiuses, or the Hermeses that are counted up, or the Hephaestuses told of in myth? Shall I seem excessive, flooding your ears with all these many names? Well, their native countries, their crafts, their manner of life, and further their tombs, convict them of having been men. Ares, for instance, honored among the poets as much as may be — 'Ares, Ares, bane of mortals, blood-stained, stormer of walls' — this fickle and hostile one was, as Epicharmus says, a Spartan; Sophocles knows him as a Thracian; others as an Arcadian. Homer says he was bound for thirteen months: 'Ares endured it, when Otus and mighty Ephialtes, sons of Aloeus, bound him in a mighty bond; in a brazen jar he lay bound thirteen months.' Much good may it do the Carians, who offer dogs to him in sacrifice. Let the Scythians, too, not cease slaughtering donkeys, as Apollodorus and Callimachus say: 'Phoebus enjoins donkeys upon the Hyperboreans for their sacred rites.' The same poet says elsewhere, 'rich donkey-slaughters delight Phoebus.' As for Hephaestus, whom Zeus flung 'from the divine threshold' out of Olympus, he fell in Lemnos and there worked at his forge, his two feet crippled, 'and beneath him his thin shanks wobbled.' You have too, among the gods, a physician and not only a smith — but this physician was fond of money; his name was Asclepius. And I will set beside him your own poet, Pindar the Boeotian: 'gold appearing in his hands turned even him aside for a princely fee; and with his hands the son of Cronus, hurling his bolt, swiftly took the breath from both their breasts, and the flashing thunderbolt struck down his doom.' And Euripides too: 'for Zeus, having slain my son Asclepius, is to blame, hurling flame into his breast.' So he lies there, thunderstruck, within the borders of Cynosuris. And Philochorus says that in Tenos Poseidon is honored as a physician, and that Sicily is set over Cronus and that he is buried there. And Patrocles of Thurii and Sophocles the Younger, in certain tragedies, tell the story of the Dioscuri: these two Dioscuri were mortal men who came to a perishable end, if Homer is sufficient to confirm what has been said: 'but the life-giving earth already held them fast, there in Lacedaemon, in the dear land of their fathers.' Let there come forward too the author of the Cypria poems, Castor: 'Castor was mortal, and the lot of death was fated for him; but Polydeuces, scion of Ares, was immortal.' This he falsified poetically; but Homer, more trustworthy than he, speaking of both the Dioscuri together, and further exposing Heracles too as a phantom — for he speaks of 'the shade of Heracles, knower of great deeds.' Homer himself, then, knows Heracles too as a mortal man; and Hieronymus the philosopher even describes his bodily build — short, bristly-haired, sturdy; while Dicaearchus describes him as spare, sinewy, dark, hook-nosed, with somewhat gleaming eyes, and straight hair. This Heracles, then, having lived fifty-two years, ended his life, given funeral rites through the pyre on Oeta.
As for the Muses, whom Alcman traces in genealogy to Zeus and Mnemosyne, and whom the rest of the poets and prose-writers deify and revere — indeed whole cities now consecrate shrines to them — these were in fact Mysian servant-girls, bought by Megaclo, the daughter of Macar. Now Macar ruled the Lesbians, but was forever quarreling with his wife, and Megaclo was indignant on her mother's behalf — and how could she not be? So she bought these Mysian servant-girls, so many in number, and called them Moisai in the Aeolic dialect. She trained them to sing and play the lyre, tunefully, of the deeds of old. And they, continually playing the lyre and singing their charms so beautifully, would soothe Macar and check his anger. For this reason Megaclo, in gratitude, dedicated bronze statues of them on her mother's behalf, and commanded that they be honored in all the temples. Such, then, is the story of the Muses; the account comes from Myrsilus of Lesbos.
Hear, then, the love affairs of your gods, the extraordinary myths of their incontinence, their wounds and bonds and bouts of laughter, their battles, their spells of slavery too, their banquets, their embraces again and their tears, their sufferings and their lustful pleasures. Summon before me Poseidon and the chorus of women he corrupted — Amphitrite, Amymone, Alope, Melanippe, Alcyone, Hippothoe, Chione, and countless others besides; and even with so many of them, your Poseidon's passions were still cramped for room. Summon me also Apollo — this is Phoebus, the pure prophet and good counselor; but Sterope does not say this, nor Aethusa, nor Arsinoe, nor Zeuxippe, nor Prothoe, nor Marpessa, nor Hypsipyle; for Daphne alone escaped both the prophet and her own ruin. Let Zeus himself, above all, come forward, the one you call 'father of men and gods'; he was so given over to sexual indulgence that he desired every woman and fulfilled his desire upon every one. He filled himself up with women no less than the he-goat of Thmuis fills himself with she-goats. And you, Homer — I have marveled at your poems: 'He spoke, and nodded with his dark brows; and the ambrosial locks of the lord waved down from his immortal head; and he made great Olympus shake.' You fashion Zeus as august, Homer, and you attach to him a nod held in honor. But if you would only show, man, the girdle, Zeus stands exposed, and his hair is put to shame. To what a pitch of licentiousness that Zeus went, who with Alcmene spent so many nights of pleasure that not even the nine nights were long enough for the incontinent one (though his whole life, on the contrary, was short through his intemperance), so that he might sow for us the averter of evil, that god! Heracles, son of Zeus, truly son of Zeus, begotten from that long night, after his long labor at the twelve labors, corrupted the fifty daughters of Thestius in a single night, becoming at once adulterer and bridegroom to so many virgins. Not unreasonably, then, do the poets call him 'reckless' and 'a worker of ruin.' It would take long to recount his manifold adulteries and his violations of boys. Nor did your gods themselves stay clear of such boys — one loving Hylas, another Hyacinthus, another Pelops, another Chrysippus, another Ganymede. Let your women worship these as gods, and pray that their own husbands be like them, so temperate that they might resemble the gods, having emulated the very same things! Let your sons be accustomed to revere these, so that they too may grow into men, taking the gods as a manifest image of fornication. But perhaps only the male gods among them rush headlong into these erotic affairs; the female gods, Homer says, 'each remained modestly at home,' ashamed for their dignity's sake to see Aphrodite caught in adultery. But those goddesses who do misbehave are bound the more passionately in adultery: Eos with Tithonus, Selene with Endymion, the Nereid with Aeacus and Thetis with Peleus, Demeter with Iasion, and Persephone with Adonis. And Aphrodite, disgraced over Ares, went after Cinyras, married Anchises, conceived by Phaethon, and loved Adonis; and she vied with the ox-eyed goddess, and the goddesses stripped bare over an apple and presented themselves naked to the shepherd, to see which would seem beautiful to him.
Come now, let us make a brief circuit of the games as well, and put an end to these funeral festivals — the Isthmian, the Nemean, the Pythian, and, along with these, the Olympian. At Pytho, then, the Pythian serpent is worshipped, and the festival of the snake is proclaimed as the Pythian games; at the Isthmus, the sea spat out a pitiable piece of refuse, and the Isthmian games mourn Melicertes; at Nemea another child, Archemorus, has been given funeral rites, and the child's funeral games are called the Nemean games; and Pisa, O Panhellenes, is the tomb of a Phrygian charioteer, and it is the Olympic games — the libations for Pelops — that the Zeus of Phidias appropriates for himself. It seems, then, that these games contested over the dead were mysteries, just like your sacred oracles, and both have been made common property. But the mysteries at Agra and at Halimus in Attica are confined to Athens; whereas the games and the phalluses celebrated for Dionysus are already a disgrace shared by the whole world, badly spread abroad throughout life. For Dionysus, wishing to descend into Hades, did not know the way, and someone promised to tell him — Prosymnus by name — not without a fee; and the fee was not a decent one, but it was decent to Dionysus: the favor he asked for was an erotic one — that was the fee. The god, willing, granted the request, and swore an oath that he would grant it upon his return. Once shown the route, off he went; back he came; but Prosymnus was nowhere to be found, having already died; so, to settle what he owed his lover, Dionysus hurries to the grave and indulges his craving there. Cutting, as chance had it, a branch from a fig tree, he shapes it into the likeness of a male organ and sits himself down upon it, thereby paying in full what he had vowed to the departed man. In commemoration of this ordeal, as a sacred token, phalluses are erected for Dionysus throughout the cities. 'For if it were not for Dionysus that they held the procession and sang the hymn to the shameful parts, it would be the most shameless act,' says Heraclitus; 'but Hades and Dionysus are the same, in whose honor they rave and celebrate the Lenaea' — not, as I think, on account of bodily drunkenness so much as on account of the disgraceful hierophancy of their licentiousness.
It stands to reason, then, that gods such as these are slaves — having become slaves of their passions. But even before the so-called Helots among the Lacedaemonians, the yoke of slavery came upon Apollo, in the service of Admetus at Pherae, and upon Heracles, in the service of Omphale at Sardis; and Poseidon and Apollo served as hired laborers for Laomedon, like a worthless household servant, unable, it seems, to obtain even his freedom from his former master; it was then that the two of them built up the walls of Ilium for the Phrygian. Homer is not ashamed to show Athena holding a 'golden lamp' in her hands for Odysseus; and we have read that Aphrodite, like some wanton little servant-girl, carried and set the seducer's chair opposite Helen, so as to lead her into intercourse with him. For Panyassis relates that, besides these, a great many other gods too served men as hired laborers, writing something like this: 'Demeter endured it, and the glorious god of the two crooked legs endured it, and Poseidon endured it, and silver-bowed Apollo endured it, to serve a mortal man as hired laborer for a year; and mighty-hearted Ares too endured it, under compulsion from his father' — and so on.
It follows reasonably, then, from all this, that these erotic and passion-ridden gods of yours should be represented throughout as subject to human suffering. 'For indeed their flesh too is mortal.' Homer bears this out, quite precisely bringing in Aphrodite at the moment of her wound, crying out sharply and loudly, and describing how the most warlike Ares himself was struck in the flank by Diomedes. Polemon says that Athena too was wounded by Ornytus; and indeed Homer says that Hades was shot with an arrow by Heracles, and Panyassis relates that Helios [Augeas] was too. And this same Panyassis further relates that Hera, goddess of marriage, was wounded by this same Heracles 'in sandy Pylos.' And Sosibius says that Heracles, likewise, took a hand wound at the hands of the sons of Hippocoon. But if there are wounds, there is also blood; for the poetic 'ichor' is even more repellent than blood, since ichor is understood to be the corruption of blood. It follows, then, of necessity, that they must be represented as requiring care and nourishment, of which they stand in need. Hence their tables, their drunkenness, their laughter, their sexual unions — for they would not indulge in human intercourse, nor beget children, nor indeed sleep, if they were immortal, free from need, and ageless. Zeus even partook of a human meal among the Ethiopians, and of an inhuman and lawless one at the table of Lycaon the Arcadian; for he unwittingly gorged himself on human flesh. Unbeknownst to the god, his host Lycaon of Arcadia had butchered his own son — Nyctimus by name — and set him before Zeus as a course to eat. What a fine Zeus this is — the god of prophecy, of hospitality, of suppliants, the gracious one, the giver of all oracles, the averter of wrath! Or rather, the unjust, the lawless, the criminal, the impious, the inhuman, the violent, the corrupter, the adulterer, the lustful one. But that was then, when he was such as that, when he was a man; now, however, even the myths about him seem to me to have grown old. Zeus is no longer a serpent, he is not a swan, not an eagle, not an amorous man; the god does not fly, does not lust after boys, does not love, does not ravish — and yet there are still today many beautiful women, more comely than Leda and more full-blossomed than Semele, and youths more graceful and more civilized than the Phrygian herdsman. Where now is that eagle? Where the swan? Where is Zeus himself? He has grown old along with his wing; for surely he does not repent of his love affairs, nor is he being schooled into temperance. The myth lies stripped bare before you now: dead is Leda, gone is the swan, perished is the eagle. Seek out your Zeus; do not go inquiring in heaven, but busy yourself with the earth. The Cretan will tell you the story, among whom he is even buried — Callimachus, in his hymns: 'for a tomb too, O lord, the Cretans built for you.' For Zeus is dead (do not take it hard) — dead as Leda, as swan, as eagle, as amorous man, as serpent.
Even now, moreover, the superstitious themselves are seen — unwillingly, but seen nonetheless — to grasp the error concerning their gods; for 'they are not born of ancient oak or of rock,' but are a race of men, though a little later on they will be found to be oaks and rocks after all. Staphylus, for instance, relates that a certain 'Zeus Agamemnon' is honored in Sparta; and Phanocles, in his Loves, or Fair Youths, relates that Agamemnon, king of the Greeks, set up a temple of Aphrodite of Argynnus, in honor of his beloved Argynnus. The Arcadians pay their devotions to an Artemis called 'the Strangled One,' as Callimachus says in his Aetia. And another Artemis, called Condylitis, is honored at Methymna. There is also, in Laconia, a shrine of yet another Artemis, 'the Gouty One,' as Sosibius says. Polemon knows of a statue of Apollo 'the Gaper,' and again of another Apollo, 'the Glutton,' honored at Elis. There the Eleans sacrifice to Zeus 'Averter of Flies'; the Romans sacrifice to Heracles as 'Averter of Flies,' and likewise to Fever, and to Fear, both of which they even count among Heracles's attendants. I pass over the Argives and Laconians: the Argives worship Aphrodite 'the Grave-Robber,' and the Spartans revere an Artemis 'Chelytis' — since they call coughing 'chelyttein.' Do you suppose these things I am citing to you are being fetched from some marginal, spurious source? You do not even seem to know your own authors, and it is on them that I rely to testify against your unbelief — you wretched people, godless mockers, who have filled the whole of your life with things truly unlivable. Is it not true that a bald Zeus is honored in Argos, and, in Cyprus, another called 'Avenger'? Is it not the Argives who offer sacrifice to Aphrodite 'the Straddler,' the Athenians to her as 'the Courtesan,' and the Syracusans to her as 'the Fair-Rumped,' whom the poet Nicander somewhere called 'the Fair-Buttocked'? Of Dionysus 'the Pig-Fondler' I say nothing further; the Sicyonians worship him, having assigned Dionysus a place over the female parts, revering as guardian of shame the very author of outrage. Such, then, are their gods, and such are they themselves — sporting among the gods, or rather mocking and insulting themselves. And how much better are the Egyptians, who by villages and by cities have honored the irrational animals, than are the Greeks, who bow down to gods of this sort? For those creatures, even if they are beasts, are not adulterous, not lustful; not one of them hunts after unnatural pleasure. But as for these gods — what more need be said, when they stand sufficiently convicted already? The Egyptians, whom I have just mentioned, are divided according to their forms of worship: the people of Syene worship the fish called the phagrus; the inhabitants of Elephantine, the maeotes (another fish); the Oxyrhynchites, likewise, the fish that shares the name of their district; the people of Heracleopolis, the ichneumon; the Saites and Thebans, the sheep; the Lycopolites, the wolf; the Cynopolites, the dog; the Memphites, the Apis bull; the Mendesians, the goat. But you, who are in every way better than the Egyptians (I hesitate to say worse), you who never cease day after day laughing at the Egyptians — what sort of people are you yourselves concerning irrational animals? Some of you, the Thessalians, have honored storks because of their familiar habits; the Thebans, weasels, because of the birth of Heracles. And again, what of the Thessalians? They are reported to venerate ants, on the grounds that Zeus once took an ant's shape and coupled with Eurymedusa, Cletor's daughter, fathering Myrmidon by her. And Polemon relates that the inhabitants around the Troad worship the local mice, which they call 'sminthoi,' because they gnawed through the bowstrings of their enemies; and from those mice they surnamed Apollo 'Smintheus.' And Heraclides, in his Foundations of Temples, says that in the Acarnanian region, near the Actium headland and its shrine to Apollo Actius, an ox is offered beforehand as a sacrifice to the flies. Nor will I forget the Samians (the Samians worship a sheep, as Euphorion says), nor the Syrians who inhabit Phoenicia, some of whom worship doves, others fish, quite as extravagantly as the Eleans worship Zeus.
Very well then; since it seems to me that these are not gods whom you worship, I must again consider whether they are truly daemons, being enrolled, as you yourselves say, in this second rank. For if indeed they are daemons, they are greedy and polluted ones. It is possible even to discover, openly, that in various cities local daemons are reaping honor: the Cythnians hold Menedemus in honor; the Tenians, Callistagoras; the Delians revere Anius; and the Laconians, Astrabacus. A certain hero, too, receives honor at Phalerum beside a ship's stern; and the Pythia decreed that the Plataeans offer sacrifice to Androcrates, Democrates, Cyclaeus, and Leucon, during the season when the wars against the Persians raged fiercest. One can perceive countless other daemons too, if one is able to look even a little closely; for there are thrice ten thousand immortal daemons upon the bounteous earth, guardians of mortal men. Who are these guardians, O Boeotian? Do not begrudge telling. Or is it plain that these are the same as, or lesser than, those more honored ones, the great daemons — Apollo, Artemis, Leto, Demeter, Kore, Pluto, Heracles, Zeus himself? But surely they do not guard us so that we may not run away, O Ascraean, but perhaps so that we may not sin — they who themselves have surely had no experience of sins! Here indeed it is fitting to utter the proverbial saying: "a father who has never been admonished admonishes his child." But if indeed these are guardians, they are not so passionately devoted to us out of goodwill, but rather, clinging to your ruin, they press close upon your life after the fashion of flatterers, lured by smoke. The daemons themselves, it seems, confess their own gluttony, of libation and of the savor of fat; for they say, "this is the prize we have obtained." And what other cry would they utter, if the gods of the Egyptians — such as cats and weasels — should receive a voice, than the Homeric and poetic one, dear to the savor of roasting meat and to the art of the cook? Such, then, are your daemons and your gods among you, and whatever demigods, like mules, are so called; for you are not lacking even in a poverty of names for your compositions of impiety.

======== Protrepticus — Chapter 3 ========

Come, then, let us add this too: that your gods are inhuman and man-hating demons, who not only rejoice in men's derangement of mind but also delight in the slaughter of human beings — now furnishing themselves occasions of pleasure through the armed rivalries in the stadiums, now through the countless ambitions of war, so that they might have as much license as possible to glut themselves without restraint on human blood. Already, indeed, falling upon cities and nations like plagues, they have demanded savage libations. Aristomenes the Messenian, for instance, slaughtered three hundred men to Ithomean Zeus, thinking that by so many and such victims he would offer an auspicious hecatomb; among them was Theopompus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, a noble victim. And the Taurians, the nation dwelling about the Tauric Chersonese, sacrifice to the Tauric Artemis whatever strangers they capture among those shipwrecked on their coasts; these sacrifices of yours Euripides makes tragedy of upon the stage. Monimus, in his work gathering wonders, records that a native of Achaea was offered up to Peleus and Chiron at Pella, in the land of Thessaly; and Anticleides declares in his Returns that the Lyctians (these are a people of Crete) slaughter men to Zeus, and Dosidas says that the Lesbians offer a similar sacrifice to Dionysus. The Phocaeans too — for I will not pass them over either — Pythocles, in the third book of his On Concord, relates that they burn a man whole to Artemis Tauropolos. Erechtheus the Athenian and Marius the Roman each sacrificed his own daughter; the one to Persephone, as Demaratus says in the first book of his Tragic Themes, the other, Marius, to the Averting Deities, as Dorotheus relates in the fourth book of his Italian History. Truly humane do the demons show themselves from these deeds! And how are their god-fearing worshippers not correspondingly unholy? Some are hailed as saviors, while others beg for salvation from the very plotters against their salvation. Supposing that they are offering an auspicious sacrifice, they fail to notice that they are in fact slaughtering human beings. For murder does not become a sacrificial offering because of the place, nor if someone slaughters a man to Artemis and Zeus in a sacred precinct rather than out of wrath and love of money — the same demons under other names — whether upon altars or on the roads, calling it by the sacred name of victim; such a sacrifice is nonetheless murder and manslaughter. Why then, O men, wisest of the other living creatures, do we flee wild beasts, and if we chance upon a bear or a lion, turn aside — as when someone, catching sight of a serpent, starts back in the mountain glens, and trembling seizes his limbs, and he withdraws again — yet when we perceive and understand that these are destructive and baneful demons, plotters and man-haters and destroyers, do we not turn aside or avert ourselves from them? What truth could the wicked ever speak, or whom could they ever benefit? At once, indeed, I can show you a man better than these gods of yours, these demons — better than Apollo the prophet — namely Cyrus, and Solon. Your Phoebus is fond of gifts, but not fond of mankind. He betrayed his friend Croesus, and forgetting his fee (so fond of glory was he) led Croesus across the Halys to the pyre. Such is the love with which the demons lead men to the fire. But you, O man, more humane and more truthful than Apollo, pity him who lies bound upon the pyre; and you, Solon, prophesy the truth, and you, Cyrus, command that the fire be quenched. Come to your senses at last, Croesus, taught by your suffering; ungrateful is the one you worship — he takes his fee, and after the gold, lies again. So, in the final reckoning, truthfulness toward you belongs to the mortal, not the spirit. Solon does not prophesy crookedly; you will find this the only true oracle, O barbarian — you will test it upon the pyre.
From this it comes upon me to wonder by what sort of fancies the first men, having wandered astray, were led off to proclaim superstition to mankind, establishing by law the worship of baneful demons — whether it was that Phoroneus, or Merops, or someone else, who are storied to have first set up temples and altars for them, and moreover to have first instituted sacrifices to them. And indeed in later times as well men kept fashioning gods for themselves to worship. Take, for instance, this Eros, said to be among the eldest of the gods — no one honored him at all before Charmus won a certain boy and set up an altar in the Academy as a thank-offering for a desire fulfilled; and they have called the wantonness of that disease Eros, deifying an unbridled lust. The Athenians did not even know who Pan was, until Philippides told them. Fittingly, then, superstition, having taken its beginning from somewhere, has become a fountain of senseless evil; then, not being checked but going on to increase and flowing forth abundantly, it has become the maker of many demons, sacrificing hecatombs and celebrating festivals and setting up statues and building temples — those temples which (for I will not keep silent about these either, but shall expose them too) are called by the fair name of temples, but have in fact become tombs. But you — even now, forget your superstition, being ashamed to honor tombs. In the temple of Athena in Larissa, on the acropolis, there is the tomb of Acrisius; and at Athens, atop the citadel, lies that of Cecrops — so Antiochus reports, in book nine of his historical work. And what of Erichthonius? Is he not buried in the temple of the Polias? And is not Immaradus, son of Eumolpus and Daeira, buried within the precinct of the Eleusinion beneath the acropolis? And are not the daughters of Celeus buried at Eleusis? Why should I list for you the women from the Hyperboreans? Hyperoche and Laodice are their names; they are buried in the Artemisium at Delos, which is within the temple of Delian Apollo. And Leandrius says that Cleochus is buried at Miletus, in the Didymaeum. Here too the monument of Leucophryne is not to be passed over, following Zeno of Myndus, who is buried in the temple of Artemis at Magnesia; nor indeed the altar of Apollo at Telmessus — this too, they relate, is the tomb of Telmessus the seer. And Ptolemy, son of Agesarchus, in the first book of his history concerning Philopator, says that at Paphos, in the temple of Aphrodite, Cinyras and the descendants of Cinyras are buried. But truly, were I to go through all the tombs you worship, not even the whole of time would suffice me; and as for you — if no shame steals over you at these audacities — being utterly dead yourselves, you go about having put your faith, in truth, in the dead. Ah, wretched ones, what evil is this you suffer? By night your heads are shrouded.

======== Protrepticus — Chapter 4 ========

But if I should further set before you the images themselves to examine, you will find on approaching them that custom is truly nonsense, since you turn in worship to insensate "works of men's hands." Long ago the Scythians worshipped the scimitar, the Arabs a stone, the Persians a river, and other men still more ancient set up conspicuous pieces of wood and raised pillars of stone, which indeed were called xoana ("carved images") because they were hewn out of the material. At any rate, at Icarus the image of Artemis was an unworked piece of wood, and that of the Cithaeronian Hera at Thespiae was a felled tree-trunk; and the image of the Samian Hera, as Aethlius says, was formerly a plank, but later, in the archonship of Procles, took the form of a statue. Once xoana began to be fashioned in the likeness of men, they earned the name bretas from brotoi ("mortals"). In Rome, the writer Varro says, the ancient image of Ares was a spear, the craftsmen not yet having set out upon this attractive-faced mischief-craft. But once the art flourished, error increased along with it. That men made stones and pieces of wood and, to put it comprehensively, matter itself, into man-shaped images, which you flatter with the pretense of piety while defrauding the truth, is already plain of itself; still, since the topic requires some proof, it must not be shirked. That Phidias fashioned the Zeus at Olympia and the Athena Polias at Athens out of gold and ivory is clear to everyone; that the xoanon of Hera in Samos was made by Smilis son of Eucleides, Olympichus records in his Samian History. Do not doubt, then, that of the goddesses called the Venerable Ones at Athens, Scopas made two of them out of the stone called lychneus, while Calos made the middle one; I can show you Polemon relating this in the fourth book of his work against Timaeus. Nor should you doubt that the statues honoring Zeus and Apollo standing at Patara, in Lycia, were likewise crafted by that same Phidias, just like the accompanying lions dedicated beside them; yet if, as some claim, the craftsmanship instead belongs to Bryaxis, I will not argue against it — either way you have identified an image-maker; attribute it to whichever of the pair you prefer. And indeed, as Philochorus says, the nine-cubit images of Poseidon and Amphitrite worshipped in Tenos are the work of Telesias the Athenian. For Demetrius, in the second book of his Argolica, records that the xoanon of Hera in Tiryns was made of pear-wood, and that its maker was Argus. Many, perhaps, would be astonished to learn that the Palladium, called the one fallen from heaven, which Diomedes and Odysseus are said to have stolen from Troy and deposited with Demophon, was actually constructed from the bones of Pelops, just as the Olympian Zeus was made from other bones, those of an Indian beast. I cite as witness Dionysius, who records this in the fifth part of his Cycle. Apellas, writing in his Delphica, states that two Palladia existed, and that both had been crafted by mortal hands. But so that no one may suppose I have passed over this out of ignorance, I will cite the image of Dionysus Morychus at Athens: it was made, they say, of the stone called phellates, and was the work of Sicon son of Eupalamus, as Polemon states in a certain letter. There were also two other men, Cretan sculptors I believe, named Scyllis and Dipoenus; these made the images of the Dioscuri at Argos, the statue of Heracles at Tiryns, and the xoanon of Artemis Munychia at Sicyon.
And why do I linger over these things, when I may show you outright who that great deity truly was whom, above all others, we hear men have deemed worthy of reverence — the one they have dared to call "not made by hands," the Egyptian Sarapis? According to some accounts, he arrived as a gift of gratitude, sent by the people of Sinope to Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of the Egyptians — for they had been worn down by famine, had sent to him for grain, and were thereby saved from want in Egypt; and this xoanon, they say, was an image of Pluto. Ptolemy, receiving the statue, set it up on the promontory now called Rhacotis, where the temple of Sarapis is honored, and the place lies near those very quarters. Ptolemy also transferred the body of his concubine Blistiche, who had died at Canopus, and buried her beneath that same shrine. Others say that Sarapis was a Pontic image, brought to Alexandria with festal honor. Isidorus alone says that the image was brought from the Seleucians near Antioch, they too having suffered a famine and having been fed by Ptolemy. But Athenodorus, son of Sandon, wishing to make Sarapis out to be ancient, stumbled — I know not how — into proving the very opposite, that the image was a made thing: he says that Sesostris, the Egyptian king, who had subdued most of the peoples among the Greeks, on his return to Egypt brought back skilled craftsmen, and ordered them to fashion with great expense an image of his ancestor Osiris; and the maker was Bryaxis the craftsman — not the Athenian Bryaxis, but another man of the same name — who employed a mixed and varied material for the work. There went into it filings of gold and silver, of bronze and iron and lead, and also of tin, and no Egyptian stone was lacking — fragments of sapphire, hematite, emerald, and even topaz. Having ground all these together and mixed them, he tinted it with dark blue, on account of which the color of the image is rather black; and kneading it all together with the residue of the embalming ointment left over from the funerals of Osiris and Apis, he shaped Sarapis. And indeed the very name hints at the shared funeral rite and the origin from that burial, being a compound formed from Osiris and Apis: Osirapis.
But a new god besides — one little short of being worshipped even among the Greeks — the emperor of the Romans has reverently set up in Egypt: his beloved, a youth of surpassing beauty. He consecrated Antinous just as Zeus did Ganymede; for desire, when it has no fear to restrain it, is not easily checked. And men now worship the sacred "nights of Antinous," which the lover who kept vigil with him knew well to be shameful. Why do you reckon among the gods one honored by prostitution? Why did you order him to be mourned as a son? Why do you dwell on his beauty? Beauty withered by outrage is shameful. Do not tyrannize over beauty, man, nor commit outrage against the young man in his bloom; keep it pure, that it may remain beautiful. Become a king over beauty, not a tyrant; let it remain free; then I will acknowledge your beauty, when you have kept the image undefiled; then I will bow before beauty, when it is the true archetype of beautiful things. But already there is a tomb of the beloved, a temple of Antinous, and even a city; and just as, I suppose, temples are marveled at, so too are tombs — pyramids, mausoleums, and labyrinths, other temples for the dead, just as those are tombs of the gods. As a teacher for you I will set forth the prophetess Sibyl, no false oracle-speaker of Phoebus, whom foolish men have called a god, though they falsely name her a seer; rather she speaks of the great God, whom no human hands have shaped in the likeness of speechless, stone-hewn idols. She indeed calls the temples ruins, foretelling that the temple of the Ephesian Artemis will be swallowed "by chasms and earthquakes" thus: 'And Ephesus, flung on her back, shall wail, weeping by her banks and seeking the temple that no longer dwells there.' And of the temple of Isis and Sarapis in Egypt she says it will be brought down and burned: 'Isis, thrice-wretched goddess, you remain by the streams of the Nile, alone, a voiceless maenad upon the sands of Acheron' — and then, lowering her voice further: 'and you too, Sarapis, buried beneath heaps of useless stone, shall lie there as the greatest wreck within an Egypt thrice cursed.' Should you refuse to heed a prophetess, then at least give ear to a philosopher of your own, Heraclitus of Ephesus, who reproaches these very images for their insensibility: "And they pray to these images, as if one were to converse with houses." Are not those men monstrous who turn in worship to stones, and then set them up before their gates as though they were active beings, worshipping Hermes as a god and setting up the Guardian of the Street as a doorkeeper? For if they abuse them as insensate things, why do they worship them as gods? And if they suppose them to share in sensation, why do they station them as doorkeepers? The Romans, who ascribe their greatest successes to Fortune and consider her the greatest goddess of all, carried her image into the sewer and dedicated it there, assigning the latrine as a fitting shrine for the goddess.
But indeed, a rich stone or piece of wood or gold, being insensate, cares for nothing at all — not for the savor of roasting flesh, not for blood, not for the smoke by which, while being honored, they are blackened with soot; and indeed they care neither for honor nor for insult; these images are, in fact, more dishonored than any living creature whatsoever. And when I consider how these insensate things have come to be deified, I am at a loss, and I pity those who wander in such folly as wretched men; for even if some living creatures do not possess all the senses — such as worms and caterpillars, and whatever appears crippled from birth, like moles and the shrew-mouse, which Nicander calls "blind and dreadful" — still these are better than these xoana and images, which are altogether deaf and dumb; for they possess at least one sense, say hearing or touch, or the analogue of smell or taste; but the images share in not even a single sense. And there are many living creatures which have neither sight nor hearing nor even voice, such as the class of oysters, yet they live and grow, and moreover are affected in sympathy with the moon; but the images are inert, inactive, insensate — they are bound and nailed down and fastened in place, melted, filed, sawn, scraped all round, and carved. The image-makers do violence to the mute earth, driving it out of its own proper nature, persuading men by their craft to worship it; and those who make gods worship, in my judgment, not gods and spirits at all, but earth and craft — which is exactly what these images are. For an image is in truth dead matter shaped by the hand of a craftsman; but for us, the image is not something perceived by sense out of sensible matter, but something apprehended by the mind. God is an object of thought, not of sense — he alone who is truly God.
And, conversely, in the very circumstances of life, the superstitious themselves, the worshippers of stones, learn by experience not to revere insensate matter, and, overcome by mere necessity, perish through their own superstition; yet even while they hold the images in contempt, unwilling though they be to appear altogether to despise them, they are refuted by the very gods to whom, indeed, these images are dedicated. For Dionysius the younger, the tyrant, stripped the golden cloak from the Zeus in Sicily and ordered a woolen one put on it instead, remarking cleverly that wool suited the god better than gold had, since it kept him cooler through the summer months and warmer through the winter ones. Antiochus of Cyzicus, too, finding himself short of funds, commanded that the golden image of Zeus, fifteen cubits tall, be melted down, then had a comparable statue erected in its place, made from cheaper stuff overlaid with a thin gold leaf. And swallows and most other birds befoul the very images by flying into them, taking no thought at all for Olympian Zeus, nor for Asclepius of Epidaurus, nor even for Athena Polias or the Egyptian Sarapis — from which very birds you may learn the insensibility of the images. There are also, of course, malefactors or enemies who attack them, who out of sordid greed have ravaged the temples and plundered the votive offerings, or even melted down the images themselves. And if some Cambyses or Darius or other madman attempted such things, and if someone killed the Egyptian Apis, I find it laughable that he killed their god, though it angers me that his crime was driven by profit. Accordingly I am glad to set this misdeed aside, counting it merely a symptom of avarice rather than proof that the idols are powerless. But fire and earthquakes are not moved by gain, nor do they fear or stand in awe — not of the spirits, not of the images, any more than the waves fear the pebbles heaped along the shores. I know a fire that convicts and cures superstition; if you wish to cease from your folly, this fire will light your way. This same fire burned down the temple at Argos together with its priestess Chrysis, and the temple of Artemis at Ephesus for the second time after the Amazons, and it has often ravaged the Capitol at Rome; nor did it spare the temple of Sarapis in the city of Alexandria. At Athens it razed the temple of Dionysus Eleuthereus, and the temple of Apollo at Delphi was first plundered by a storm, then obliterated by a sober-minded fire. This is shown you as a preview of what fire promises to do.
And do not the makers of these images themselves put to shame those of you who have any sense, and lead you to despise the matter of which they are made? Phidias the Athenian inscribed on the finger of the Olympian Zeus, "Pantarces is beautiful" — for it was not Zeus who was beautiful to him, but his beloved. And Praxiteles, as Poseidippus makes clear in his work On Cnidus, when fashioning the image of Aphrodite of Cnidus, made it in the likeness of his beloved Cratine, so that the wretched worshippers might have Praxiteles's beloved to bow down to. And when Phryne the courtesan of Thespiae was in her prime, all the painters modeled their images of Aphrodite on Phryne's beauty; just as, again, the sculptors of stone modeled the Hermae at Athens on Alcibiades. It remains for your own judgment to draw the conclusion, if you are willing also to worship courtesans.
Moved by this, I suppose, the kings of old, holding these myths in contempt, boldly proclaimed themselves gods, safe from any human check, and by this very device taught that those other gods too had been made immortal on account of their fame. Ceyx, son of Aeolus, was Zeus to his wife Alcyone, and Alcyone in turn was called Hera by her husband. The fourth Ptolemy took for himself the title Dionysus, and Mithridates of Pontus likewise styled himself after Dionysus. Alexander also wished to be thought a son of Ammon, and had himself represented by the image-makers as horned, eager to disfigure the fair face of a man with a horn. And it was not kings alone, but private individuals too, who dignified themselves with divine titles, as Menecrates the physician, who was styled Zeus. Need I list Alexarchus — a man learned by profession as a grammarian, as Aristus of Salamis relates, who fashioned himself into the likeness of the Sun? Need I mention Nicagoras — a native of Zeleia, who lived in the time of Alexander, who was called Hermes and wore the garb of Hermes, as he himself attests? And this when whole nations and cities, en masse, stooping to flattery, cheapen the myths told of the gods, fashioning men into the equals of gods, puffed up with vainglory, voting themselves extravagant honors — now decreeing that Philip the Macedonian, son of Amyntas, from Pella, be worshipped in the Cynosarges, "the man with the broken collarbone and the crippled leg," who had his eye gouged out; and again, proclaiming Demetrius a god in his own right — and where he dismounted from his horse on entering Athens, there stands a shrine of Demetrius the Descender, and altars everywhere; and the Athenians prepared for him a marriage with Athena herself. But he scorned the goddess, being unable to marry a mere image; instead he took the courtesan Lamia up to the Acropolis and defiled the bridal chamber of Athena, displaying to the ancient virgin the manners of his new courtesan. There is, then, no cause for indignation even at Hippo for immortalizing his own death; this Hippo ordered the following elegiac couplet inscribed on his tomb: 'This is the tomb of Hippo, whom Fate made equal to the deathless gods when he perished.' Well done, Hippo — you show us well the wandering folly of mankind! For if men did not believe you while you spoke, let them at least become disciples of a corpse. This is an oracle of Hippo's; let us take note of it. Those whom you worship, having once been men, are now, in fact, dead; but myth and time have honored them. For it is somehow the way of things that present matters are despised through familiarity, while things long past, removed from immediate scrutiny, are honored through the fiction bred by the obscurity of time — some things disbelieved, others marveled at. Thus the ancient dead, made venerable by the great span of time devoted to error, come to be reckoned gods by those who follow after. Your proof of this lies in your own mysteries, your festivals, the bonds and wounds and weeping gods: 'Ah, woe is me, that it is fated that Sarpedon, dearest of men to me, be slain beneath Patroclus son of Menoetius.' The will of Zeus is overpowered, and your Zeus wails, defeated, on account of Sarpedon. You yourselves, then, have rightly called these beings idols and spirits, since Homer himself, having honored Athena and the other gods with such disreputable conduct, called them spirits: 'And she had gone to Olympus, to the halls of aegis-bearing Zeus, to join the other spirits.' How, then, can idols and spirits still be gods — truly loathsome and unclean spirits, acknowledged by all to be earthbound and befouled, weighed down below, "wandering about tombs and monuments," around which indeed there faintly appear "shadowy phantoms"? These are your gods — the idols, the shadows, and besides these, those "lame" and "wrinkled, squinting-eyed" ones, the Prayers — offspring of Thersites, not of Zeus — so that, as I recall, Bion made the witty remark: how could men reasonably beg Zeus for fine children, when he himself could not manage to produce any? Alas for such godlessness! You bury the incorrupt substance, so far as it depends on you, and you have heaped tombs upon that which is unstained and holy, plundering the divine of its truly real substance. Why, then, have you assigned the honors due to God to those who are not gods? Why have you abandoned heaven and honored the earth instead? For what else are gold or silver or adamant or iron or bronze or ivory or precious stones, but earth, and out of earth? Are not all these things you see the offspring of one mother, the earth? Why then, O vain and empty-minded men (for I shall return to this again), having blasphemed the region above the heavens, have you dragged piety down to the ground, fashioning for yourselves earthbound gods, and, pursuing these created things ahead of the uncreated God, fallen into a deeper darkness? Parian marble has beauty, yet it is not Poseidon; ivory has beauty, yet it is not the god of Olympus; matter always stands in need of craftsmanship, whereas God stands in need of nothing at all. Art has advanced, matter has been clothed in form, and the richness of the substance, though marketable for profit, becomes an object of reverence only by virtue of its shape. Your image is gold, is wood, is stone, is earth, if you consider it from the higher vantage, having received its shape from the craftsman. But I have trained myself to tread the earth underfoot, not to worship it; for it is not right for me ever to entrust the hopes of the soul to lifeless things.
So we must go as close as possible to the statues, so that their kinship to error may be exposed even by their appearance; for the disposition of the daimons has been stamped quite clearly onto the forms of the statues. If someone, wandering about, were to look at the paintings and the statues, he would recognize your gods at once from their disgraceful attributes: Dionysus from his dress, Hephaestus from his craft, Deo from her calamity, Ino from her veil, Poseidon from his trident, Zeus from his swan; the pyre points to Heracles, and if one sees a naked woman depicted, he thinks of the "golden" Aphrodite. So the Cyprian Pygmalion fell in love with a statue of ivory; the statue was of Aphrodite and was naked; the Cyprian is overcome by its form and unites with the statue, and Philostephanus records this. Another Aphrodite in Cnidus was a stone, and beautiful, and another man fell in love with her and had intercourse with the stone; Posidippus records it, the first in his work On Cyprus, the second in his On Cnidus. So powerful was the deceit that art, having become a procurer for men in love, brought them to the pit. The craftsman's skill is effective, but it is not able to deceive a rational being, nor those who have lived according to reason; for through likeness in painting, doves have flown to shadow-painted doves, and horses have neighed at well-painted horses. They say a girl fell in love with a picture, and a handsome youth with the statue at Cnidus, but the eyes of the spectators had been deceived by the art. For no self-controlled man would have embraced a goddess, or been buried with a corpse, or fallen in love with a daimon and a stone. But you are deceived by another kind of sorcery of art, even if it does not lead you to love, but to honor and worship both the statues and the paintings. The painting is of the same kind; let the craft be praised, but let it not deceive a man into taking it for truth. The horse stands quietly, the dove is motionless, its wing idle, but the wooden cow made by Daedalus captured a wild bull, and art, deceiving it, compelled the beast to mount a woman in heat. So great a frenzy have the arts, practicing their evil craft, produced in the senseless. Yet those who raise and tend apes marvel at them, because nothing made of wax or clay likenesses and dolls deceives them; but you will prove yourselves worse than apes, clinging to little statues of stone and wood and gold and ivory, and to paintings. Such destructive playthings you owe to their makers: the stone-carvers and sculptors, and painters too, and builders, and poets, who bring in besides a great crowd of this sort — amid the meadows the Satyrs and Pan-spirits, amid the timberlands the mountain Nymphs and the tree-Nymphs, and by the waters and rivers and springs the Naiads, and about the sea the Nereids. Magicians, too, already boast of daimons as servants of their own impiety, having registered them as their own household slaves, having made them slaves compelled by their spells. Marriages still, and begettings of children and childbirths of gods remembered, and adulteries sung, and feasts made into comedy, and laughter brought in over the wine — these things drive me to cry out, even when I wish to be silent. Alas for such godlessness! You have made the heavens into a stage, and the divine has become your drama, and you have turned the holy into comedy with the masks of daimons, mocking true reverence for God with superstition. "But he, striking the lyre, began a beautiful song" — sing to us, Homer, that lovely voice, of the love of Ares and fair-crowned Aphrodite, how they first lay together in the house of Hephaestus, in secret; and he gave many gifts, and shamed the bed and marriage-couch of lord Hephaestus. Stop the song, Homer; it is not beautiful, it teaches adultery; but we have refused even to let our ears hear of fornication. For we, we are the ones who carry about the image of God in this living and moving statue, the human being — a co-dwelling image, a counselor, a companion, a hearth-fellow, one who shares our feeling, who feels for us beyond measure; we have become an offering dedicated to God on behalf of Christ: "we are a chosen lineage, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people claimed as his own, once not a people at all, yet now are God's own people"; men who, as John states it, belong not "to what lies below," but instead have been taught the whole of it by the one descending from on high, grasping thereby the design of God, and practicing what it means to "walk in newness of life."
But most people do not think this way; casting off shame and fear, they inscribe on the walls of their own homes the lewd acts of the daimons. Fixing their attention on certain painted tablets set up on high, they have decorated their bedchambers with licentiousness, counting indecency as piety; and reclining on their couches, in the very midst of their embraces, they gaze at that naked Aphrodite, bound fast in her adultery, and at the amorous bird hovering over Leda, welcoming the depiction of her femininity — they stamp these images onto their signet-rings, using as their seal one fitting for the licentiousness of Zeus. These are the archetypes of your voluptuousness, these are the theologies of your outrage, these are the teachings of the gods who join you in your fornication; for "each man supposes to be true whatever he wishes," as the Athenian orator says. And what other images do you have besides — small satyr-figures and unclothed maidens and wine-sodden Pans with members erect, stripped bare in the paintings, condemned by their own intemperance. Already, openly, viewing the forms of utter licentiousness displayed before the whole populace, you feel no shame, but rather guard them the more carefully as dedicated objects, just as you do the images of your gods — consecrating at home monuments to shamelessness, recording the postures of Philaenis on equal terms with the labors of Heracles. Of these we declare an amnesty not only from use but even from sight and from hearing itself. Your ears have played the harlot, your eyes have fornicated, and — strangest of all — before any embrace your very glances have already committed adultery on your behalf. O you who have done violence to man and knocked away the divine mark of proof stamped on his making, you disbelieve everything so that you may be thrown into passion; you put your faith in idols, emulating their intemperance, yet you disbelieve God, refusing to bear self-control; you have hated the better things and honored the worse, becoming spectators of virtue but contestants in vice.
"Blessed," then, one might almost say, are all those who, with one accord, according to the Sibyl, will renounce all the temples once they see them, and the altars — vain foundations of stone, deaf things — and stone-carved images and hand-made statues, defiled with living blood and with sacrifices, the slaughter of four-footed beasts, of two-footed beasts, and of wild birds. And indeed it has been forbidden us to practice openly this deceiving art. "For you shall not make," says the prophet, "a likeness of anything, of what is in heaven above or what is on the earth below." Could we then still suppose Praxiteles' Demeter and Kore and the mystic Iacchus to be gods, or the works of Lysippus, or the hands of Apelles, which have clothed matter with the outward form of divine glory? But you, whatever it takes, persist in seeing that the statue is carved as beautifully as possible, while you take no care that you yourselves, through lack of perception, do not end up resembling the statues. Quite plainly and briefly the word of the prophets refutes this custom, saying that "all the gods of the nations are idols of daimons, yet it was God who fashioned the heavens" -- and everything heaven holds. Some, wandering astray from this point, I know not how, give worship to sun and moon alike, and the remaining company of stars — a divine craft, yet not God — mistakenly supposing these, the instruments of time, to be gods. "By his utterance were they set in place, and every force they hold comes from the breath of his mouth." But human craft fashions houses and ships and cities and paintings; God — how could I say all that he makes? Look at the whole cosmos: it is his work; heaven itself, the sun, angels, and mankind alike are "the handiwork of his fingers" -- how vast is God's might! His will alone is the making of the world; for God alone made it, since he alone is truly God; by the mere act of willing he creates, and upon his simply wishing it, being follows. Here the chorus of philosophers goes astray, agreeing that man was made most beautifully for the contemplation of heaven, yet worshiping the things that appear in heaven and are perceived by sight. For even if the works in heaven are not made by human hands, still they have been made for the sake of human beings. None among you should give the sun worship, but should yearn instead for whoever made the sun; let none deify the cosmos, but seek out the maker of the cosmos. The only refuge left, it seems, for the one who intends to reach the saving doors is divine wisdom; from there, as from some inviolable sanctuary, a man striving toward salvation becomes no longer subject to seizure by any of the daimons.

======== Protrepticus — Chapter 5 ========

Let us also run over, if you wish, the opinions of the philosophers, however proudly they boast of them concerning the gods, to see whether we can somehow discover philosophy itself, for vainglory's sake, fashioning matter into idols, or whether, in passing, we may be able to show that even in deifying certain daemonic things it is only dreaming of the truth. Some, then, left the elements as first principles, extolling them: Thales the Milesian, water; and Anaximenes, likewise a Milesian, air, whom Diogenes of Apollonia later followed. Parmenides the Eleatean introduced fire and earth as gods; and one of these two alone, fire, was supposed to be god by Hippasus of Metapontum and Heraclitus of Ephesus. Empedocles of Acragas, falling into plurality, in addition to these four elements reckons strife and love as well.
These men too, then, are atheists, having worshipped matter by a wisdom that is no wisdom, and though they did not honor stones or wood, they deified earth, the mother of these, and while not fashioning an image of Poseidon, they turned in worship to water itself. For what after all is Poseidon but some liquid substance, named from drinking (posis)? Just as, no doubt, warlike Ares is named from raising up (arsis) and destruction (anairesis) — wherefore many seem to me to plant a bare blade in the earth and offer it sacrifice as though it were Ares; this is a custom of the Scythians, as Eudoxus says in the second book of his Circuit of the Earth, and among the Scythians the Sauromatae, as Hicesius says in his work On Mysteries, worship a short sword. This too is what befell the followers of Heraclitus, who worship fire as the first-begotten; for this fire others have named Hephaestus. The Magi of the Persians have honored fire, and many of those who dwell in Asia, and moreover the Macedonians, as Diogenes says in the first book of his Persian History. Why should I list the Sauromatae, whom Nymphodorus in his Barbarian Customs records as worshipping fire, or the Persians and the Medes and the Magi? These sacrifice in the open air, Dinon says, holding fire and water alone to be images of the gods. I have not concealed their ignorance either. For even if they suppose that they are escaping error to the greatest degree, still they slip into another deceit; they have not supposed the images of the gods to be wood and stone, as the Greeks do, nor indeed ibises and ichneumons, as the Egyptians do, but fire and water, as philosophers. Yet after many later cycles of years, Berossus, in the third book of his Chaldean History, shows that they came to worship man-shaped images, this having been introduced by Artaxerxes the son of Darius Ochus, who was the first to set up the image of the Aphrodite Anaitis and to show the Persians, Bactrians, and the people of Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, Damascus, and Sardis how to worship it. Since, then, the philosophers themselves acknowledge that it was from the Magi, or the Sauromatae, or the Persians that their teachers derived it, learning from them the godlessness underlying their venerated first principles, being ignorant of the Ruler who is the Maker of all things and the Craftsman of these very first principles, the God without beginning, and instead turning in worship to these 'poor' and 'weak,' as the apostle says, 'elements' made for the service of men.
As for the rest of the philosophers, all who went beyond the elements and busied themselves with something loftier and more elaborate — some of them sang the praises of the infinite, as did Anaximander (he was a Milesian) and Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and Archelaus the Athenian. These latter two both set mind (nous) in charge over infinity, while Leucippus the Milesian and Metrodorus of Chios, it seems, likewise left two first principles, the full and the void; and Democritus of Abdera, taking these two, added to them the images (idols). For Alcmaeon of Croton supposed the stars to be gods, since they are ensouled. I will not pass over in silence the shamelessness of these men: Xenocrates (this one was of Chalcedon) darkly hints at seven gods, the planets, and an eighth, the universe composed of all the fixed stars. Nor indeed shall I pass by those of the Stoa, who say that the divine pervades all matter, even the most dishonorable, and who thereby simply bring shame upon philosophy. And I think it no hard thing, now that I have come to this point, to mention also those of the Peripatos; and indeed the father of that sect, not having understood the Father of all things, supposes that the so-called 'uppermost' realm amounts to the world's animating soul; in other words, holding the cosmic soul to be divine, he impales himself on his own reasoning. For he who marks off providence as extending only as far as the moon, and then holds the cosmos to be god, is overturned, laying down as a doctrine a god who has no share in God. And that Theophrastus of Eresus, the disciple of Aristotle, at one point conjectures the heaven to be god, at another the breath (pneuma). As for Epicurus alone, I will willingly pass over him in silence, who thinks that god cares for nothing at all, being impious through and through. And what of Heraclides of Pontus? Is he not too in some respects dragged down to the same 'images' as Democritus?

======== Protrepticus — Chapter 6 ========

And a great crowd of this sort streams in upon me, like some hobgoblin, dragging in an absurd shadow-painting of foreign demons, telling myths with an old wives' babble. It is far indeed from right to permit men to listen to such tales — we who do not even accustom our own children, when they are whimpering (as the saying goes), to be comforted by being told myths, fearing to rear up together with them the godlessness proclaimed by these self-styled wise men, who know the truth no better than infants do. For what, in the name of truth, do you mean by showing those who have trusted you to be subject to flux and drift and disorderly eddies? Why do you fill my life with idols, fashioning as gods this world here — wind, or fire, or air, or earth, or rock, or timber, or iron — and calling gods the wandering stars too, prattling and star-gazing through this much-vaunted astrology (not astronomy) for the benefit of men who are truly the ones who have wandered? I yearn for him who governs every spirit, who commands the fire, who fashioned the world, and who set ablaze the very light of the sun; I seek God, not the works of God. Whom then shall I take from you as a fellow-worker in the search? For we have not altogether despaired of you. If you wish, Plato. Where then must God be tracked down, O Plato? "Locating the Begetter and Craftsman of this whole is hard labor, and once one has located him, making him known to everyone is not achievable." Why is that, in his very name? "For he is in no way expressible in speech." Well said, Plato — you have grazed the truth; but do not grow weary — join me in the search concerning the Good. For into absolutely all men, and especially into those who spend their time among reasoned discourse, some divine effluence has been instilled. For this reason even against their will they confess that there is one God, this one indestructible and unbegotten, truly existing forever somewhere above, around the back of heaven, in his own proper watchtower. But of what sort must we conceive God to be, tell me? "He beholds every creature yet no creature beholds him," as Euripides puts it. Menander, however, seems to me to have gone astray where he says: "Sun, you must be worshipped first among gods, through whom it is possible to behold the other gods" — for not even the sun could ever show forth the true God; rather it is sound reason, which is the sun of the soul, through which alone, when it has risen within, in the depth of her mind, the eye of the soul is illumined. Hence not unreasonably Democritus says that "few among men of reasoned speech, raising their hands to this place which we Greeks now call air, say that all things are Zeus; for he alone knows all things and gives all things and takes them away, and he is king of all things." In this same vein Plato too, in his thinking, hints darkly at God: "surrounding the ruler of the universe stand all things, and this ruler is responsible for everything beautiful." Who, then, rules over the universe? God, the measure of the truth of things that are. So then, exactly as measured objects are apprehended through the measure, in the same way truth is apprehended and gauged through our conception of God. And Moses, who is truly holy, says: "There shall not be in your bag a weight and a weight, large or small, nor shall there be in your house a measure large or small, but a true and just weight shall be yours" — taking God to be the weight and measure and number of all things. For the unjust, unbalanced idols stay tucked inside the house, inside that pouch — figuratively, within the defiled soul; but the one just measure, the only true God, ever equal and holding always in the same way, measures and weighs all things, embracing and sustaining the nature of the universe without deviation, as it were on the balance-scale of justice. "God indeed, as the ancient account has it, holding the beginning and the end and the middle of all things that exist, proceeds in a straight line, journeying about according to nature; and justice, the avenger of those who fall short of the divine law, ever follows with him." Whence, O Plato, do you hint darkly at truth? Whence does the ungrudging abundance of your reasonings divine the worship of God? "Wiser than these," you say, "are the races of the barbarians." I know your teachers, even should you wish to hide them: you learn geometry from the Egyptians, astronomy from the Babylonians, the healthy incantations you take from the Thracians; the Assyrians too have taught you much; but as for the laws that are true, and the opinion concerning God, you have profited from these very Hebrews, who do not, with empty deceits, honor as gods the golden and bronze works of men's hands, and images of silver and ivory and of wood and stone, the idols of dead mortals, such as mortals in empty-minded counsel honor; but rather they lift up to heaven pure arms, at dawn from their beds, ever purifying their flesh with water, and honor only the immortal who rules forever.
And do not, O Philosophy, present to me only this one Plato, but be eager to bring forward many others besides, men who, by his inspiration, proclaim aloud this one truly sole God — if indeed anywhere they have laid hold of the truth. For Antisthenes conceived this thought not as a Cynic notion at all, but as one who had been an associate of Socrates, when he says that "God resembles no one; for this reason no one can learn of him fully from an image." And Xenophon the Athenian would himself have written something plainly bearing witness to the truth, as Socrates did, had he not feared the poison that killed Socrates; nonetheless he hints at it no less. "He," he says, "who shakes and steadies all things, shows himself as mighty and immense in power, yet his shape cannot be perceived; nor indeed does even the sun, which seems to be all-radiant, seem to permit itself to be looked upon, but should anyone stare at it boldly, it strips away his vision." From where, then, does the son of Gryllus draw this philosophy, if not clearly from the Hebrew prophetess who declares in something like these words: "For what flesh is able to see with its eyes the heavenly and true immortal God, who dwells in the vault of heaven? Nor indeed are men, being mortal, able to stand facing the rays of the sun." And Cleanthes of Pedasa, the philosopher of the Stoa, lays out a genuine theology rather than a poet's account of the gods' origin. He did not hide what he thought concerning God: "You ask me what the Good is like? Listen then: it is ordered, just, holy, pious, master of itself, useful, beautiful, fitting, austere, self-consistent, always advantageous, without fear, without pain, profitable, painless, beneficial, pleasing, secure, dear, honored, in agreement with itself... glorious, without conceit, careful, gentle, intense, enduring through time, blameless, ever abiding. Any man is unfree who looks toward reputation, as though he were to obtain some good thing from it." Here, I think, he clearly teaches what sort of thing God is, and how common opinion and custom enslave those who follow them, rather than those who seek after God. Nor ought we conceal what the Pythagoreans hold, namely: "There is a single God, and rather than existing apart from the ordered cosmos, as certain people imagine, he dwells inside it, whole within the whole circle, overseer of all coming-into-being, the blending of all the ages, and the worker of his own powers and of all works, in heaven the light-giver and father of all, mind and soul-giving power for the whole circle, the motion of all things." This much too suffices for the recognition of God — words written down by them through the inspiration of God, and gathered together by us for the sake of anyone even slightly able to discern the truth.

======== Protrepticus — Chapter 7 ========

Let there come forward to us now — for philosophy alone does not suffice — even poetry itself, that art which has spent its whole labor upon falsehood, that at last, however reluctantly, it may bear witness to truth, or rather confess to God its mythical digression. Let whichever poet wishes come forward first. Aratus, then, conceives the power of God as pervading all things: "that all things might grow firm-set, him do they ever propitiate first and last: hail, Father, great wonder, great blessing to men." In this same way Hesiod of Ascra hints at God: "for he himself is king and lord of all, and of the immortals no other contests his power." Already too upon the stage they lay truth bare. One, gazing up into the ether and the sky, says — this is Euripides — "consider this to be God." And Sophocles, son of Sophillus, says: "There is in truth one, only one God, who made heaven and the far-stretching earth, and the sea's grey-blue swell, and the might of the winds; but we mortals, many of us, erring in heart, have set up as a consolation for our sorrows images of gods carved from stone, or figures of bronze, or of wrought gold, or of ivory; and offering to these sacrifices and empty festal gatherings, we suppose that in this way we act piously." This man, then, already, and at some risk, brought truth before the spectators upon the stage. And the Thracian hierophant, poet as well, Orpheus son of Oeagrus, after his hierophancy of the mysteries and his theology of idols, at last, though late, sings a recantation of truth, that truly sacred discourse: "I will utter what may lawfully be uttered; shut the doors, all you profane alike; but you, Musaeus, child of the moon that gives forth light, give ear, for I will speak things that are true, and do not let whatever once entered your heart steal away your precious life. Look rather upon the divine word, and attend to it, guiding the intellectual chamber of your heart; walk well upon the path, and gaze only upon the immortal king of the universe." Then, going a little further, he adds plainly: "He is one, self-begotten; of the One all things are born; and he himself moves about among them, and no mortal sees him, but he himself sees all." So indeed Orpheus — in time, at any rate, he came to understand, though he had gone astray. But you, O mortal of cunning devices, delay no longer, but turning back from your wandering, propitiate God. For even if the Greeks, having caught some few sparks of the divine word, uttered a small measure of truth, they thereby bear witness that its power is not hidden, while at the same time they convict themselves of weakness, in that they did not attain the goal. For it is, I think, already plain to everyone that those who act or even speak apart from the word of truth are like men forcing themselves to walk without a footing. And to persuade you toward salvation there are also the very refutations of your own gods, which the poets, driven by the constraint of truth, turn into comedy. Menander the comic poet, for instance, in the play Heniochus [in the Hypobolimaeus], says: "No god pleases me who walks about outside with an old woman, nor one who slips into houses on his little board, a begging priest of the Mother" — for such indeed are the begging priests of the Mother. Hence Antisthenes fittingly said to them when they went about begging: "I do not feed the Mother of the gods, whom the gods feed." Again, the same comic poet, in the play The Priestess, angered at the prevailing custom, tries to expose the godless folly of this error, declaring sensibly: "For if a man drags the god about with cymbals wherever he wishes, then the one who does this is greater than the god; but these are instruments of human audacity and violence, devised by men." And Menander is not alone; Homer too, and Euripides, and many other poets besides, convict your gods and are not afraid to abuse them, however much they belong to them. At once they call Athena "dog-fly" and Hephaestus "bent on both sides," and to Aphrodite Helen says: "may you never return again to Olympus on your own feet." And of Dionysus, Homer writes openly: "who once drove the nurses of raving Dionysus headlong down the holy mountain of Nysa; and they all together cast their sacred implements to the ground, struck by man-slaying Lycurgus." Worthy indeed of Socratic discourse is Euripides, who, looking to truth and despising the spectators, at one time exposes Apollo — who "dwells at the center seat, giving to mortals the clearest of oracles" — saying: "trusting in him I killed the mother who bore me; count him unholy, and put him to death; the fault was his, not mine — he was more ignorant than I of what is right and just"; and at another time brings on stage a Heracles raving mad, and elsewhere drunken and insatiable — and how could he not be, he who, while feasting on meat, ate raw green figs besides, barking without art, fit only for a barbarian to learn from. And already in the play Ion, with head uncovered, he wheels the gods out before the theater on the stage-machine: "how then is it just that you, who wrote the laws for mortals, should yourselves be found guilty of injustice? And if — though it will not happen, but I will use the argument — you were to pay mortals the penalty for forced marriages, you, and Poseidon, and Zeus who rules heaven, in paying the penalty for injustice you would empty your temples."

======== Protrepticus — Chapter 8 ========

It is time, then, since the other matters have already been dispatched in their order, to proceed to the prophetic scriptures; for the oracles, by holding out to us most clearly the starting-points toward reverence for God, lay the foundation of the truth. The divine scriptures, though they are, in a manner, sober constitutions and short roads to salvation, are bare of adornment, of external beauty of voice, of glibness, and of flattery, and yet they raise up mankind when he is being choked by vice, looking beyond the slippery slope of ordinary life, and with a single unified voice they render many benefits: they turn us away from ruinous deceit and openly urge us on toward manifest salvation. At once, then, let the prophetess sing to us first — the Sibyl — her song of salvation: 'Behold, this one is clear and unerring to all; come, and do not pursue darkness and gloom forever. Behold, the sweetly-gazing light of the sun shines forth exceedingly. Learn, laying wisdom up in your hearts. There is a single deity, dispatcher of rain, of winds and quaking ground, of thunderbolts, of famine, of plague and bitter griefs, of snow and hoarfrost — why should I recount them one by one? He rules over heaven, he holds sway over the earth, he himself exists.' Most divinely she likens deceit to darkness, and knowledge to the sun and the light of God, and, setting the two side by side in comparison, she teaches the choice; for falsehood is not dispelled by the bare juxtaposition of truth, but is put to flight, forced out, by the actual use of truth. And Jeremiah the all-wise prophet — or rather, the Holy Spirit in Jeremiah — displays God: 'I am a God who draws near,' he says, 'and not a God from afar. If someone hides an act in secret, will I fail to notice him? Do not I myself fill up both sky and ground? — thus speaks the Lord.' Again, through Isaiah: 'Who,' he says, 'shall measure heaven with a span, and all the earth with the hollow of the hand?' Behold the greatness of God, and be struck with awe. Let us worship this one, of whom the prophet says: 'At your presence the mountains shall melt, as wax melts before the presence of fire.' This, he says, is God, 'whose throne is heaven, and whose footstool is the earth,' 'who, if he opens the heaven, trembling shall seize you.' Do you wish also to hear what this prophet says about idols? 'They shall be made a public example before the sun, and their bodies shall be devoured by birds that fly above and creatures that roam below, and they shall waste away beneath sun and moon alike, the very things which they themselves loved and served as slaves, and their city shall be set on fire.' And he says that the elements themselves and the world, together with them, shall be destroyed: 'the ground,' he states, 'will wear out with age, and the sky itself will vanish away,' yet 'the utterance of the Lord endures without end.' And what does he say when God again wishes to show himself through Moses? 'Look now, look — I alone am he; no other deity stands beside me. It is I who put to death and I who restore to life; I who wound and I who mend, and no one can snatch anyone free from my grip.' But do you wish also to listen to another oracle-speaker? You have the whole prophetic chorus, the fellow-initiates of Moses. What does the Holy Spirit say to them through Hosea? I will not hesitate to say it: 'Take note, I am the one steadying the thunderclap and fashioning the breeze' — the very hands that laid the foundation of heaven's army. And again through Isaiah (and this saying too I shall call to your remembrance for you): 'I am he, I am he,' he says, 'the Lord who speaks righteousness and proclaims truth; assemble now and draw near; deliberate jointly, you who are rescued out from among the peoples. Those hauling around a chunk of timber, their graven likeness, lack any comprehension, petitioning powers incapable of rescuing them.' Then further on: 'I myself,' he declares, 'am God, and no just one exists apart from me, nor any deliverer outside of me; return to me and rescue will follow, you dwellers at earth's furthest edges. I am God, and none else remains; by my own self I take this oath.' And he expresses displeasure at the idol-worshippers, saying: 'To whom have you likened the Lord? Or with what likeness have you likened him? Has a carpenter made an image, or has a goldsmith melted down gold and overlaid it with gold?' — and so on with what follows. Are you, then, still idol-worshippers? But even now, take heed of the threats; for the carved things and the things made by hand shall wail — or rather, those who trust in them shall wail, for matter itself has no perception. Further he says: 'The Lord shall shake inhabited cities, and shall take hold of the whole inhabited world in his hand as a nest.' Why should I announce to you the mysteries of wisdom and the sayings of a wise Hebrew child? 'The Lord brought me into being as the first of his undertakings, at the outset of his works,' and 'the Lord gives wisdom, and from his presence come knowledge and understanding.' 'How long, O sluggard, will you lie there? When will you rise from sleep? But if you are not slothful, your harvest shall come to you like a spring' — that is, the paternal Word, the good lamp, the Lord who brings in the light, faith and salvation for all. For 'the Lord,' as Jeremiah says, 'who made the earth by his strength,' 'set the inhabited world upright by his wisdom.' For when we had fallen away to idols, wisdom, which is his Word, sets us upright again toward the truth. And this is the first resurrection from our fall; wherefore, turning us away from all idolatry, the godlike Moses cries out most beautifully: 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God, the Lord is one,' and 'you shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone you shall serve.' Now, then, grasp this, you men, following the words of David, that fortunate composer of psalms: 'Seize hold of correction, so the Lord does not grow angry, and you perish from the righteous way, when his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who trust in him.' And already, taking pity on us beyond measure, the Lord grants us the saving melody, a kind of marching rhythm: 'Sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart? Why do you cherish emptiness and chase after lies?' What, then, is this vanity, and what is this falsehood? The holy apostle of the Lord, in accusing the Greeks, will explain it to you: 'because, though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and exchanged the glory of God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and worshipped the creation rather than the Creator.' And indeed this God is the one who 'in the beginning made heaven and earth'; but you do not conceive of God, and yet you worship heaven — and how are you not impious? Hear again a prophet saying: 'The sun shall fail and the heaven shall be darkened, but the Almighty shall shine forever, and the forces of the heavens shall be convulsed, and the sky shall be furled together like a tent-cloth, spread wide and then gathered in' (for these are the prophetic utterances) — 'and the earth shall flee from the face of the Lord.'

======== Protrepticus — Chapter 9 ========

And I could bring before you countless Scriptures, of which not even “one small stroke of a letter shall vanish unaccomplished”; for it was the Holy Spirit, speaking through the Lord's own mouth, who uttered these things. “Do not, then,” it says, “my son, despise the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are rebuked by him.” O the surpassing love of humankind! Not as a teacher to pupils, nor as a master to servants, nor treating men as though he were a god, but “gently, as a father would,” he admonishes his sons. And then, while Moses confesses that he was “afraid and trembling” on hearing about the Word, do you, who listen to the divine Word itself, feel no fear? No dread? Do you not at once revere and hasten to learn it thoroughly — that is, hasten toward salvation, fearing the wrath, loving the grace, emulating the hope, so that you may escape the judgment? Come, come, O my young ones; for “unless you become again as little children and are born anew,” as the Scripture says, you will not receive back the Father who truly is, “nor will you ever enter the kingdom of heaven.” For how is a stranger permitted to enter? But when, I think, he becomes a registered citizen and gets back the Father, then he will be “among those of the Father's household,” then he will be deemed worthy to inherit, then he will share the paternal kingdom with the true-born son, the “beloved”; for this is the firstborn church, made up of a host of good children; these are those “firstborn whose names stand written in the heavens,” who keep festival together with so many “myriads of angels”; and we are the firstborn children, the nurslings of God, the true friends of the “Firstborn,” the first of all people to have come to know God, the first to be torn away from sins, the first to be separated from the devil. But now some are so much the more godless as God is the more loving of humankind; for he wishes us to become sons instead of slaves, while some have disdained even to become sons. O the great madness — you are ashamed of the Lord! He promises freedom, and you flee into slavery. He grants salvation, and you are borne down toward death. He bestows eternal life, and you wait upon punishment; and you look ahead to “the flame the Lord has readied for the devil and his messengers.” On this account the blessed apostle affirms, “I bear witness in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the nations walk, in the emptiness of their reasoning, darkened as they are in understanding and cut off from the life of God, on account of the unknowing that dwells in them, on account of their hardened hearts; who, having become callous, have given themselves over to licentiousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” When such a witness convicts the folly of humankind and calls upon God, what else remains for the unbelieving but judgment and condemnation? Yet the Lord does not grow weary of exhorting, of striking fear, of urging forward, of rousing, of admonishing; indeed he wakens from sleep and raises up out of their darkness those who have gone astray: “Awake,” he says, “you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ the Lord will shine upon you” — the sun of the resurrection, who is begotten “before the morning star,” who has granted life by his own rays. So let no one belittle the Word, or he will, without realizing it, belittle himself. For Scripture says somewhere: “Today, should you hear his voice, do not steel your hearts, as happened in the rebellion, on the day of trial in the desert, where your ancestors put me to the test and tried me.” And should you wish to grasp what that trial was, the Holy Spirit will lay it out for you: “And they saw my works,” it says, “for forty years; therefore I was displeased with that generation, and said, They always go astray in heart; and they did not know my ways; so, in my anger, I vowed that never would they come into my rest.” See the threat; see the exhortation; see the honor. Why, then, do we still turn grace into wrath, and, instead of receiving the Word with open ears, entertain God as a guest within pure souls? For vast is the favor of what he has promised, if this day we listen to his voice; and this “today” keeps expanding day after day, for as long as it is still named “today.” Until the consummation, both the “today” and the learning continue; and then the truly real “today,” God's unfailing day, is extended coextensive with the ages. So let us, without end, heed the voice of the Word of God; for this “today” stands as a picture of the age that never ends, and the day is a symbol of the light, and the Word is light for humankind, through whom we are illumined to see God. Reasonably, then, for those who believe and obey, grace will overflow all the more; but toward those who resist, whose hearts stray off course, and who have failed to recognize the ways of the Lord — the very ways John was ordered to straighten and make ready — God feels displeasure and directs his warning; and truly the ancient, wandering Hebrews saw that warning fulfilled in a veiled fashion; for it is said that they never came into that rest, on account of disbelief, until finally, under the guidance of Moses's successor, they discovered through bitter experience that rescue could come no way but through trusting as Jesus trusted. But the Lord, being a lover of humankind, calls all people “to the full knowledge of the truth,” he who sends the Paraclete. What, then, is this full knowledge? Reverence toward God; for “reverence toward God is profitable for all things,” as Paul says, “holding the promise both of the present life and of the one still to arrive.” At what price, O men, would you have agreed to buy everlasting salvation, if it were for sale? Not even if one measured out the whole Pactolus, that legendary stream of gold, would he count a wage equal to the worth of salvation. Do not, then, grow weary; it is possible for you, if you will, to purchase the priceless salvation with a treasure of your own, with love and faith in life, which is a reward worth reckoning. This price God gladly accepts. “For we have set our hope on the living God, who is the savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” But others, rooted fast to the world, like a kind of seaweed clinging to rocks in the sea, have no regard for immortality — like the old man of Ithaca, who longed not for the truth and the fatherland in heaven, nor indeed for the light that truly is, but for the smoke of his own hearth. But reverence toward God, which makes a man like to God so far as is possible, inscribes as its fitting teacher God himself, the only one able to fashion, in a manner worthy of it, a man in the likeness of God. Knowing this teaching to be truly divine, the apostle says, “But you, O Timothy, have known from infancy the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith in Christ.” Truly sacred are the writings that make sacred and make divine, and it is these very same writings — the compositions made up of sacred letters and syllables — that the same apostle, consistently, calls “God-breathed,” “useful for teaching, for rebuke, for setting right, for schooling in what is just, so that the one who belongs to God may stand fully formed, fitted out for every good deed.” No one could be so struck with wonder at the exhortations of the other holy men as at those of the Lord himself, the lover of humankind; for he has no other work than this alone — that man be saved. At any rate he cries aloud, hastening us to salvation: “The kingdom of heaven has drawn near”; he turns men who come near to him toward fear. Likewise the Lord's apostle also, urging on the Macedonians, turns into the mouthpiece of the divine voice, saying, “The Lord is near; take care that we be not found empty.” But you are so fearless — or rather, so faithless — that you obey neither the Lord himself nor Paul, and that though he was bound for the sake of Christ. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Faith will usher you in, practice will instruct you, and Scripture will bring you up as a child, saying, “Come, children, listen to me; I will show you what it means to fear the Lord.” Then, addressing those who believe already, it adds briefly, “Who is the man who desires life, who loves to see good days?” We are they, we shall say, the worshippers of the Good, the emulators of good things. Listen, then, “you who stand far off”; listen, “you who stand close by”; the Word has never been concealed from a single soul; it is a light held in common, shining out over every person; no one is a Cimmerian where the Word is concerned. Let us hasten to salvation, to the new birth; let us, many though we are, press on to be drawn together into a single love, matching the oneness of that unique being; let us, doing good in due measure, pursue unity, seeking out the good Monad. And this union that comes from the many, having received a divine harmony out of a multitude of voices and out of scattering, becomes a single symphony, following the one leader of the choir and teacher, the Word, and resting upon the truth itself, saying “Abba, Father”; this true voice God welcomes from his children, and reaps it as the first of their fruits.

======== Protrepticus — Chapter 10 ========

But you say it is not reasonable to overturn a custom handed down from our fathers. Then why do we not still use our first nourishment, the milk that our childhood nurses trained us to take? Why do we increase or diminish our paternal estate, instead of keeping it just as we received it? Why do we no longer dribble at our fathers' laps, or go on doing the other things which, as infants reared by our mothers, we used to get laughed at for, but instead correct ourselves, even if we did not have good tutors? Then again, in voyages, digressions from the course, though costly and dangerous, nevertheless strike us as somehow sweet — yet in life shall we not abandon the wicked, passion-ridden, godless custom, even if our fathers are angered, and turn aside toward the truth and seek out the Father who truly is, thrusting away habit as one thrusts away a deadly poison? For this very thing is the finest of the undertakings before us — to show you how, out of madness and this thrice-wretched custom, reverence for God came to be hated; for so great a good, than which nothing greater has ever been granted by God to the race of men, would never have been hated or renounced, had you not been swept away by custom, and then, stopping up your ears like stiff-necked horses that refuse the rein, biting the bit, you fled from reason — longing to throw off us, the charioteers of your life, and being carried by folly toward the cliffs of destruction, you took the holy word of God for something accursed. So there follows for you, as Sophocles says, the wages of your choice: mind gone, ears useless, thoughts empty; and you do not know that this above all is true — that the good and God-fearing will meet with a good reward, having honored the good, while the wicked, from the opposite course, will meet a punishment to match, and over the ruler of wickedness himself a chastisement hangs. The prophet Zechariah threatens him thus: 'May he who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you; is this not a brand plucked from the fire?' What longing, then, still lies in men for a self-chosen death? Why have they fled for refuge to this death-bearing brand, with which they will be burned up, when it is possible to live well according to God, not according to custom? For God grants life, but wicked custom, after our departure from here, brings upon us an empty repentance together with punishment — 'and the fool learned only by suffering,' how superstition destroys and reverence for God saves. Let one of you look at those who serve among the idols: filthy-haired, disgraced by squalid and torn clothing, utter strangers to baths, their nails grown wild and beastlike, many of them even deprived of their manhood, showing by their very deeds that the precincts of the idols are tombs, or prisons. These men seem to me to be mourning, not worshiping, the gods, having suffered things that call for pity rather than for reverence. And seeing these things, are you still blind, and will you not look up toward the Master of all and Lord of the universe? Will you not flee, escaping from the prisons here, to the mercy that comes from the heavens? For God, out of great love for mankind, clings to man, just as, when a nestling falls from its nest, the mother bird flies to it; and if some crawling beast should gape to seize the nestling, the mother flutters about it, mourning her dear young; so God the Father both seeks out his handiwork and heals its fall and drives off the beast and takes up the nestling again, urging it to fly back up to the nest. Even dogs, once astray, have tracked down their master by scent, following the trail with their noses, and horses, throwing off their rider, have obeyed their master at a single whistle; 'the ox,' it says, 'knew its owner, and the ass its master's manger, but Israel has not known me.' What then does the Lord do? He bears no grudge; he still shows mercy; he still demands repentance. I want to ask you whether it does not seem monstrous to you that you men, who exist as the handiwork of God and whose soul is a gift received from him, entirely his own, should be enslaved to some other lord, and should worship, instead of the King, the tyrant, and instead of the Good, the Evil One. For who, I ask by the truth, being of sound mind, forsakes the good to consort with wickedness? Who, fleeing God, lives together with demons? What man, able to be a son of God, delights to be a slave? Or who, able to be a citizen of heaven, pursues after darkness, when it is possible instead to cultivate paradise and range over heaven and partake of the life-giving and undefiled spring, walking the air in the track of that luminous cloud, as Elijah did, beholding the saving rain? But others, in the manner of worms, wallowing about marshes and mud — the streams of pleasure — feed on useless and senseless delights, being certain swinish men. For pigs, it is said, 'delight in mud' rather than in clean water, and 'go wild over rubbish,' as Democritus says. Let us not, then, let us not be enslaved, nor become swinish, but as true 'children of light,' let us look up and gaze into the light, lest the Lord expose us as bastards, as the sun exposes the eagles. Let us repent, then, and pass over from ignorance to knowledge, from folly to prudence, from incontinence to self-control, from injustice to righteousness, from godlessness to God. Fair is the risk of deserting to God. And there are many other goods for the lovers of righteousness to enjoy, we who pursue eternal salvation — and indeed the goods which God himself hints at, speaking through Isaiah: 'There is an inheritance for those who serve the Lord' — a fair and lovely inheritance indeed, not gold, not silver, not clothing, where moth and the plunderer of the earth creep in around wealth that grovels on the ground and covets with its eyes, but that treasure of salvation, toward which those who have become lovers of the word must hasten; and our good deeds set out together with us from here, and fly up together with the wing of truth. This inheritance is put into our hands by the eternal covenant of God, bestowing the eternal gift; and this loving Father of ours, our true Father, never ceases exhorting, admonishing, teaching, loving; for he never ceases saving, and he counsels what is best: 'Become righteous, says the Lord; you who thirst, go to the water, and as many as have no money, go, buy, and drink without money.' He calls us to the washing, to salvation, to illumination, all but crying aloud and saying: I give you earth and sea, my child, and heaven, and I grant you all the living creatures in them; only, O child, thirst for your father, and God will be shown to you without price; truth is not peddled for gain; he gives you both the birds and the swimming creatures and those upon the earth; these your Father has fashioned for your grateful delight. The bastard child, who is a child of destruction, and has chosen 'to serve mammon,' will buy things with money; but to you, the true son, who loves the Father — for whom he still labors — he entrusts what is your own, to you alone he also makes the promise, saying: 'The soil must never pass into permanent sale' — since it cannot be handed over to ruin — 'for the whole earth belongs to me'; and it is yours too, if you receive God back. Whence Scripture rightly announces good news to all who have come to trust: 'Those set apart for the Lord will possess as their inheritance God's splendor and his might.' What glory, blessed one, tell me? 'What no eye has beheld, what no ear has caught, what has never risen within a human mind — such things await them, and they will exult in their Lord's kingdom without end, so be it.' You have now received, fellow men, God's gracious pledge; and you have likewise heard the opposing warning, that of punishment, by which the Lord saves, disciplining man with fear and grace. What are we waiting for? Why do we not turn aside from punishment? Why do we not accept the gift? Why do we not select what is superior — God rather than the Wicked One — and set wisdom above the worship of images, and exchange life for death? 'Behold, I have set before your face,' he says, 'death and life.' The Lord is putting you to the test so that you will pick life; like a parent he urges you to heed God. 'For if you listen to me,' he says, 'and are willing, you shall eat the good things of the earth' — that is the grace of obedience; 'but if you do not listen to me nor are willing, the sword and fire shall devour you' — that is the sentence passed on defiance. 'For it is the Lord's own mouth that has uttered these words': the word of the Lord is the law of truth. Do you wish me to become a good counselor for you? Then listen; and I, if I can, will show you. You ought, O men, in reflecting on the Good itself, to bring to it an innate faith, a witness sufficient in itself, from your own household, manifestly choosing the best, and not to inquire whether it should be pursued, but to labor at the good. For even if one must get drunk, so to speak, one ought to hesitate; but you get drunk before even considering it; and if one must act insolently, you do not stop to think it over, but commit the insolence as quickly as possible. Only, it seems, when it comes to whether one ought to reverence God, and whether one ought to follow this wise God and Christ, do you think this matter worthy of deliberation and consideration, though you have not even conceived what is fitting for God, whatever that may be. Believe us, if only as you would believe about drunkenness, so that you may become sober; believe, if only as about insolence, so that you may live. But if you also wish to be persuaded, having beheld the manifest proof of the virtues, come, I will lay before you, out of abundance, persuasion concerning the Word. And you — for the ancestral customs no longer keep you from the truth, since you have already been instructed beforehand — may now hear how the matter stands next; and let no shame over this name seize you beforehand, the shame that 'does great harm to men,' turning them aside from salvation. Let us, then, stripping off our garments openly in the stadium of truth, contend nobly as true athletes, with the holy Word as our umpire and the Master of the universe as president of the games. For no small prize lies before us: immortality. So do not be concerned any longer, not even a little, with what some marketplace rabble say about you — godless dancers in the train of superstition, driven by folly and madness straight into the pit itself, makers of idols and worshipers of stones; for these men have dared to deify men, recording as a god the thirteenth, Alexander the Macedonian, 'whom Babylon proved dead.' I admire, then, the sophist of Chios, Theocritus by name, who, after the death of Alexander, poking fun at the hollow notions people held concerning the gods, told his fellow townsmen: 'Cheer up, friends — for now the gods keep dying off before we do.' As for the visible gods and that mongrel crowd of created things, whoever worships and consorts with them is far more wretched than those very demons themselves. For God is in no way at all unjust, as the demons are, but is as righteous as can be, and nothing is more like him than whoever among us becomes most righteous. Off with you to your road, then, all you handicraftsmen, who turn to the grim-eyed Athena Ergane as a goddess with your fixed winnowing-baskets — foolish makers and worshipers of stones. Let your Phidias come, and your Polyclitus, and Praxiteles too, and Apelles, and all who practice the vulgar crafts, earthborn workers of earth. For a certain prophecy says that the affairs of this world will fare badly whenever men put their trust in statues. Let these petty craftsmen come again — for I will not cease from summoning them. Not one of them has ever fashioned a breathing image, nor has any of them molded soft flesh out of earth. Who melted marrow, or who fixed bones in place? Who stretched out sinews, or who blew veins into shape? Who poured blood into them, or who stretched skin around them? Where would any of them make eyes that could see? Who breathed in a soul? Who granted righteousness? Who has promised immortality? Only the Craftsman of the universe, 'the Father, best of all artisans,' has fashioned such a living statue as us, mankind; but that Olympian statue of yours, a copy of a copy far removed from what is real, is merely a silent product shaped by Athenian craftsmen. For God's 'likeness' is nothing other than his Word — the genuine Offspring of Mind, that divine Word, is light sprung from the original light — and what images the Word in turn is the real human being, namely the mind within a person, who is said for this reason to have come to be 'according to the image' of God and 'according to his likeness,' being likened, in the wisdom of his heart, to the divine Word, and thereby rational; but of the man who is seen, the earthborn man, the earthy image is those man-shaped statues, appearing far from the truth as a transient impression. Life, then, seemed to me to have become nothing but full of madness, being so busy about matter with such earnestness. Custom has been ruined by empty opinion, having given you a taste of slavery and irrational fussing; and ignorance is the cause of lawless observances and deceitful pretenses — ignorance which, having contrived many forms of demons out of deadly wax figures and hateful idols, has stamped upon its followers the mark of a long death. Take, then, the water of reason; wash yourselves, you who are defiled; sprinkle yourselves free of custom with the true drops; one must ascend into the heavens pure. You are a man — the most common thing; seek out him who fashioned you. You are a son — the most particular thing; recognize your father. But do you still remain in your sins, melted away with pleasures? To which of you will the Lord announce, 'Heaven's kingdom belongs to you'? It is yours, if you are willing — you who have set your resolve toward God; it is yours, if only you are willing to believe and to follow the brevity of the proclamation, which, when the Ninevites obeyed it, they exchanged their expected destruction, through genuine repentance, for glorious salvation. How, then, shall I go up to heaven, one may ask? The Lord is 'the way,' narrow indeed, but 'from heaven,' narrow indeed, but sending us up into heaven — narrow, looked down upon on earth, but broad, worshiped in the heavens. Then he who has never heard the word has ignorance as his excuse for going astray, but he into whose ears it is cast bears, from his own judgment, the blame of disobedience before his soul, and the wiser he seems to be, the more his intelligence works against him, since he has used his prudence as his own accuser by not choosing the best; for it is natural for man to be akin to God. Just as, then, we do not force the horse to plow nor the bull to hunt, but draw each animal toward that for which it is by nature suited, so likewise we call man too — brought into being for the contemplation of heaven, a truly heavenly plant — toward the knowledge of God, having grasped that which is his own peculiar and distinctive property beyond the other animals, counseling him to lay up piety as sufficient provision for eternity. Farm, we say, if you are a farmer — but know God as you farm; and sail, you who love seafaring, but call upon the heavenly pilot; knowledge has taken hold of you as a soldier — then listen to the general who signals what is just. So then, as if heavy with drowsiness and drunkenness, sober up, and looking about a little, consider what the worshiped stones want with you, and what you spend so vainly and foolishly on matter; into ignorance you consume both your money and your life, spending your very living toward death, having found this alone as the end of your vain hope, unable even to pity yourselves, and yet unwilling to be persuaded by those who pity you your error, enslaved by an evil custom, from which, having hung yourselves off by your own choice, you are carried down to destruction until your last breath — 'because the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light,' though it is possible to wipe away what stands in the way of salvation — the delusion, the wealth, and the fear — crying out that line of the poet: whither indeed do I carry all these many goods? And whither do I myself wander? Are you not willing, then, casting away these empty fantasies, to renounce this very custom, adding, out of vainglory: 'False dreams, farewell, you were nothing after all'? For what, O men, do you take the Hermes of Tychon, and the Hermes of Andocides, and the Hermes of Amyetus to be? Surely it is plain to everyone that they are stones, just as that Hermes himself is. In the same way a halo around the moon is no deity, nor is a rainbow one, but affections of air and clouds, and just as day is not a god, nor even the year nor time made up of these, so too neither is the sun a god nor the moon, by which each of the aforementioned things is marked out. Who, then, in his right mind, would suppose that correction and chastisement and justice and retribution are gods? Neither are the Furies gods, nor the Fates, nor Destiny, since neither citizenship nor reputation nor wealth are gods either — wealth, whom painters even portray as blind; and if you deify shame and love and Aphrodite, then disgrace and impulse and beauty and intercourse must follow along with them as gods too. It would then no longer be reasonable for you to consider Sleep and Death twin gods, since these are affections that happen naturally to living creatures; nor indeed will you rightly call Fate or Destiny or the Moirai goddesses. And if strife and battle are not gods, then neither are Ares nor Enyo. Again, if bolts of lightning, thunderclaps, and downpours are no gods, how then could fire or water qualify as gods? And how can shooting stars and comets, which come to be through an affection of the air? And let him who calls Fortune a god call Action a god too. If, then, not one of these is thought to be a god, nor indeed those handmade and senseless images, but a certain providence of a divine power is manifestly at work around us, nothing remains but to confess this — that there really is and truly subsists the one God who alone truly exists. But you, unhappy people, resemble those dosed on mandrake root or some similar narcotic; may God at long last allow you to rouse yourselves from such stupor and to understand that God is not to be imagined as gold or stone or tree or an act or a passion or a disease or a fear. For truly there are 'thrice ten thousand demons upon the bounteous earth,' not 'immortal,' nor indeed mortal either (for they have no share in sensation, and hence none in death), but stone and wooden masters of men, insulting and betraying human life through custom. As it is written, 'The world and everything filling it belong to the Lord'; then why do you dare, luxuriating in what belongs to the Lord, to remain ignorant of the Master? Leave my land, the Lord will say to you; do not touch the water which I give forth; do not partake of the fruits which I cultivate; give back, O man, your nourishment to God; recognize your Master; you are God's own handiwork; how could what is his own rightly become alien to him? For what has been alienated, deprived of its proper belonging, is deprived of the truth. Are you not, in some sense — or rather, to speak to you more mysteriously — turning, like Niobe, or rather in the manner of that Hebrew woman (the ancients called her Lot's wife), into insensibility? We have received the tradition that this woman was turned to stone because of her love for Sodom; and the Sodomites are the godless, those turned toward impiety, hard-hearted and foolish. Suppose that these words are addressed to you from God: do not suppose that stones and wood and birds and snakes are sacred, but men are not; quite the contrary — hold that men are truly sacred, and that beasts and stones are exactly what they are. For the wretched and miserable among men suppose that God cries out through raven and jackdaw, but is silent through man, and they have honored the raven as God's messenger, while they persecute the man of God, who does not caw or clatter, but speaks — alas — and while he instructs them rationally and lovingly, they attempt inhumanly to slaughter him, though he calls them to righteousness, neither awaiting the grace from above nor turning away from the punishment. For they do not trust God, nor do they learn his power. But he whose love for mankind is unspeakable has an equally unspeakable hatred of evil. Wrath nurses punishment for sin, but love for mankind does good in response to repentance. Most pitiable of all is to be deprived of the help that comes from God. The loss of the eyes and the deafness of hearing are more painful than the rest of the wicked one's advantages; for the one is deprived of the sight of heaven, the other is deprived of divine learning. But you, crippled and blind in mind toward the truth, and deaf in understanding, feel no pain, show no indignation; you have felt no desire to behold the sky and the one who made it, nor have you cared to hear and be taught about the fashioner and father of everything, uniting your resolve with salvation; for nothing stands in the way of one who hastens toward the knowledge of God — not lack of education, not poverty, not disrepute, not lack of possessions; nor does anyone pray to exchange true wisdom itself 'by ravaging it with bronze' or with iron; for it has been well said, more truly than anything: the good man is everywhere a savior; for the zealot of righteousness, as a lover of that which needs nothing, needing little himself, having laid up his blessedness in nothing else but in God himself, where there is no moth, no plunderer, no pirate, but only the eternal giver of good things. So then you have rightly been likened to those serpents whose ears are closed against those who charm them. 'For their fury,' says Scripture, 'is like the likeness of the serpent, like a deaf asp that stops up its ears, which will not listen to the voice of enchanters.' But be charmed out of your savagery, and accept the tame and kindred word that is ours, and spit out the deadly venom, so that it may be granted you, as much as possible, to strip off corruption, just as those serpents strip off their old age. Listen to me, and do not stop up your ears nor block your hearing, but take to heart what is said. Fair is the medicine of immortality; halt at last your crawling, serpentine coils. 'For the enemies of the Lord shall lick the dust,' it says; lift your heads from the earth toward the upper air, look up to heaven, marvel, cease lying in wait for the heel of the righteous and obstructing 'the way of truth'; become prudent and harmless; perhaps the Lord will grant you the wing of simplicity — for he has chosen to give wings to those born of earth — so that, leaving your burrows, you may come to dwell in the heavens. Only let us repent with our whole heart, that with our whole heart we may be able to contain God. 'Hope in him,' it says, 'all you assembly of the people; pour out all your hearts before him' — this is said to those emptied of wickedness; he has mercy and fills them with righteousness; believe, O man, in a man who is also God; trust, mortal, in the one who suffered and is now adored; you who serve a lifeless deity, put your trust instead in the God who lives; every one of you, put trust in the single God over all humanity; trust him, and take up salvation as your recompense; 'search for God, and your very soul will live on.' Whoever searches for God is earnestly chasing after his own deliverance; once God is found, life is yours. So let us search, that we too may go on living. The prize of that search is a life shared with God. 'Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you, and let them say continually, let God be magnified.' A fair hymn to God is an immortal man, built up in righteousness, on whom the sayings of truth have been carved. For where else, if not in a sound soul, should righteousness be inscribed? Where love? Where reverence? Where gentleness? These divine writings, I think, once sealed upon the soul, one must consider a fine starting-point of wisdom for those setting out toward any part of life whatsoever, and must regard the same wisdom as an unruffled harbor of salvation; through which good fathers of children are those who have run to the Father, good sons to their parents are those who have come to know the Son, good husbands to their wives are those who remember the Bridegroom, and good masters of servants are those who have been ransomed from the ultimate slavery. Oh, the beasts are more blessed than the delusion found among men — they pasture in ignorance, as you do, but they do not play-act at truth; among them there is no race of flatterers, fish are not superstitious, birds do not practice idolatry; they marvel at only heaven, since they cannot conceive of God, having been judged unworthy of reason. And are you not ashamed, having made yourselves more irrational than the irrational creatures, you who through so many stages of life have worn yourselves out in godlessness? You were children, then youths, then adolescents, then men — but good, never. Even if you feel shame before your old age, come to your senses now that you stand at the sunset of your life; even if only at the end of your life you come to know God, may that very end of your life recover for you the beginning of salvation. Though you grew old toward superstition, come as new men toward reverence for God; God will approve harmless children. Let the man of Athens keep to Solon's statutes, then, the Argive to those of Phoroneus, and the man of Sparta to those set by Lycurgus; but if you enroll yourself among the people of God, heaven is your homeland, and God your lawgiver. And what are these laws? 'You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not corrupt boys, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness; you shall love the Lord your God.' And there are supplements to these as well — rational laws and holy words inscribed on the very hearts: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,' and 'to him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also,' and 'you shall not desire, for by desire alone you have already committed adultery.' How much better it is for men, instead of obtaining their desires, not even to wish to desire what they ought not! But you cannot endure the austerity of salvation; and just as, among foods, we delight in sweet things, preferring them for the smoothness of their pleasure, while bitter things, which roughen the sense, heal and restore us to health, and the harshness of medicines strengthens the weak stomach, so custom pleases and tickles, but the one — custom — pushes us toward the pit, while the other — truth — leads us up to heaven: 'harsh' in its first taste, 'yet a sound rearer of the young'; and this women's chamber is stately, and this senate is chaste; nor is it hard of access, nor impossible to attain, but is very near, dwelling within us, as the all-wise Moses hints, dwelling among us in three parts: 'in hands and mouth and heart.' This is a true symbol, of truth being fulfilled through all three: in counsel and in deed and in word. Do not fear this either: that the many delightful appearances of things might rob you of wisdom; you yourself will willingly step over the nonsense of custom, just as children, once grown into men, throw away their toys. And with matchless speed and gracious accessibility, the divine power, shining upon the earth, has filled the whole world with the seed of salvation. For the Lord could never have accomplished so great a work in so short a time without divine attendance — he who is despised in appearance, worshiped in deed, the purifying and saving and gentle one, the divine Word, the truly most manifest God, set on equal footing with the Ruler of all, seeing he was God's own Son and 'the Word existed alongside God' — never doubted once he was first announced, nor left unknown when, putting on the guise of a human and molding himself into flesh, he performed humanity's rescuing drama; for he was a genuine contestant and a fellow-contestant with his own creature, and, spreading with the greatest speed to all men, rising quicker than the sun straight out of the Father's very will, he shone the light of God upon us most easily — whence he himself was, and who he was — showing us this through what he taught and demonstrated, he our herald of peace and reconciler and savior, the Word, a life-giving spring, a peaceful one, poured out over the whole face of the earth, through whom, so to speak, the whole world has already become a sea of good things.

======== Protrepticus — Chapter 11 ========

Consider for a little while, if you will, the divine beneficence from the beginning. The first man once played freely in paradise, since he was still a child of God; but when he fell prey to pleasure (the serpent is an allegory for pleasure, creeping upon its belly, an earthly wickedness turned toward matter), and was led astray by his desires, the child, playing the man in disobedience and disregarding his Father's word, brought shame upon God. How strong pleasure proved to be: the man who, through simplicity, had been free, was found bound by sins. The Lord willed once more to loose him from these bonds, and, having girded himself with flesh (a divine mystery, this), he overpowered the snake and put death, that tyrant, into bondage, and — strangest of all — showed that very man who had been led astray by pleasure, who had been bound to corruption, loosed, with hands outstretched. O mystical wonder: the Lord lay low, and man arose, and he who fell from paradise receives, as a greater prize than obedience, the heavens themselves. Therefore it seems to me that, now that the Word in person has descended to us out of the sky, we need no longer go seeking human instruction, busying ourselves with Athens and the rest of Greece, and Ionia besides. For if our teacher is he who has filled the universe with holy powers — with creation, salvation, beneficence, lawgiving, prophecy, teaching — then the teacher now instructs us in everything, and the whole world has already, through the Word, become Athens and Greece. For surely you did not believe the poetic myth that records Minos the Cretan as the intimate companion of Zeus, only to disbelieve that we have become disciples of God, having laid hold of the truly true wisdom, which the very summits of philosophy only hinted at, but which the disciples of Christ have both grasped and proclaimed. And indeed, so to speak, every… Christ is not divided: in him there is no barbarian, no Jew, no Greek, no male or female category at all; he is a new humanity, remolded by the Holy Spirit of God. Then again, other counsels and precepts are meager and concern only particular matters — whether one should marry, whether one should engage in public life, whether one should have children — but the one universal exhortation, clearly directed toward the whole of life, in every season, in every circumstance, straining toward the most sovereign end, namely life, is piety toward God; and by this alone is it necessary to live, that we may live forever. Philosophy, as the elders say, is a lifelong counsel, wooing an eternal love of wisdom; but "the commandment of the Lord is radiant, enlightening the eyes" — receive Christ, receive the power of sight, receive your light, "so that you may come to a full knowledge of God and of humankind alike." How sweet is the Word who has given us light, "more delightful than gold and than a costly gem, more to be longed for than honey and the dripping comb." For how could he not be desirable, who has made vivid the mind buried in darkness, and sharpened the "light-bearing eyes" of the soul? For just as, "were the sun not to exist, night would be all things because of the other stars," so too, if we had not come to know the Word and been illumined by him, we would be no better than birds being fattened, plumping up in the dark while being readied for slaughter. Let us make room for the light, that we may make room for God; let us make room for the light and become disciples of the Lord. This indeed he has promised to the Father: "I will declare your name to my brothers; in the midst of the assembly I will sing your praise." Sing praise, and declare to me your Father, God; your declarations will save, the song will instruct me. How until now I wandered, seeking God; but since you guide me to the light, Lord, Lord, I find God through you, and I receive the Father from you; I become your fellow heir, since you were not ashamed of your brother.
Let us cast off, then, let us cast off forgetfulness of the truth; having driven away, like a mist from our sight, the ignorance and darkness that stand in our way, let us behold the God who truly is, first raising to him this hymn: "Hail, light!" Light from heaven has shone upon us who lay buried in darkness and shut up in the shadow of death, more radiant than the sun, more welcome than this present life. That light is everlasting life, and anything that shares in it, lives; but night is in awe of the light, and setting, yields, through fear, to the day of the Lord. All things have become unsleeping light, and the setting has turned into a rising. This is what the new creation has willed; for he who drives all things before him, the "sun of righteousness," travels equally around all humanity, imitating the Father, who "makes his sun rise upon all men," and sprinkles down the dew of truth. He has changed the setting into a rising and crucified death into life; and having snatched man from destruction, he has hung him aloft in the ether, transplanting corruption into incorruption and changing earth into heaven — he, the husbandman of God, "showing favorable signs, and rousing the people to good work, reminding them of" the true "life," and granting us the great and truly divine and inalienable inheritance of the Father, deifying man by heavenly teaching, "giving laws into their understanding and writing them upon their heart." What laws does he thus inscribe? "That all shall know God, from the least to the greatest, and I will be merciful," says God, "to them, and their sins I will remember no more." Let us take up these laws of life, let us heed God's exhortation, let us come to know him, that he may be merciful; let us render, though he needs it not, a thankful recompense, obedience, as a kind of rent to God for our dwelling here. "Gold for bronze, a hundred oxen's worth for nine" — for so little faith he grants you so much land to cultivate, water to drink and to sail upon besides, air to breathe, fire to serve you, a world to dwell in; and from here he has permitted you to send forth a colony to the heavens. These great and so numerous works of creation and gifts he has let out to you for so small a rent of faith. And yet, while those who have put their trust in sorcerers accept amulets and incantations as though they were truly saving, will you refuse to bind about yourselves the heavenly one himself, the saving Word, and, trusting the enchantment of God, refuse to be delivered from the passions, which are indeed diseases of the soul, and to be torn away from sin? For sin is eternal death. Are you utterly toothless and blind, like moles, living on nothing but what you eat in the dark, wasting away in corruption all the while? But there is, there is the truth that cries out: "Out of darkness light shall shine." So let the light shine within a person's hidden depths, in the heart, and let the rays of knowledge rise up, revealing and making radiant the man hidden within — the disciple of the light, the intimate and fellow heir of Christ — above all when the most precious and venerable name comes to the knowledge of the pious and good child of a good Father, who gives gentle commands and enjoins upon the child what brings salvation. He who obeys him gains the advantage in every respect: he follows God, he obeys the Father, he who had wandered has come to know him, he has loved God, he has loved his neighbor, he has fulfilled the commandment, he seeks the prize, he claims the promise.
It is God's constant purpose to save the human flock. To this end the good God sent forth the good shepherd; and the Word, laying bare the truth, showed men the height of salvation, so that people would either turn back and be rescued, or refuse and face condemnation. Such is the announcement of what is right: good news for those who listen, a courtroom for those who will not. But if the "great-clanging" trumpet, sounding, gathered soldiers together and announced war, will Christ, who has breathed out a note of peace reaching every corner of the world, not muster his own peaceable troops? He has indeed gathered together, O man, that bloodless army with blood and with the Word, and has entrusted to them the kingdom of heaven. The gospel is the trumpet of Christ; he has sounded it, and we have heard. Let us arm ourselves peaceably, "putting on the breastplate of righteousness" and taking up the shield of faith and donning the helmet of salvation, and let us hone "the Spirit's blade, that is, the utterance of God." So the apostle equips us for a bloodless fight; such is our unbreakable armory; wearing it, let us take our stand in formation against the evil one; let us quench the fiery darts of the evil one with the watery edges dipped by the Word, repaying his good deeds with thankful blessings and honoring God with the divine Word. "For while you are still speaking," he says, "he will say, Here I am."
O this holy and blessed power, through which God shares citizenship with men! It is therefore better and nobler to become at once an imitator and a worshipper of the noblest of beings; for no one can imitate God except through the ways by which he piously worships him, nor again can he worship and revere him except by imitating him. That truly heavenly and divine love comes to men in this way, whenever, somewhere within the soul itself, the true beauty, rekindled by the divine Word, is able to shine forth; and, greatest of all, together with the sincere wish for salvation there runs a corresponding readiness, choice and life, so to speak, yoked as one. For this reason, this exhortation to the truth alone is likened to the most faithful of friends, remaining beside us to our last breath, and serving as a good guide for the soul's complete and undivided spirit as it journeys onward to heaven. Why then do I exhort you? I am eager for your salvation. This is what Christ wills; in a single word, he grants you life. And who is this? Learn briefly: the Word of truth, the Word of incorruption, who regenerates man, bringing him up into truth, the goad of salvation, who drives out corruption, who banishes death, who has built a temple among men, that he might establish God among men. Purify the temple, and abandon pleasures and idleness, like an ephemeral flower, to the wind and the fire, but cultivate wisely the fruits of self-control, and raise yourself up as a firstfruit offering to God, so that you may be not merely a work of God, but also his grace; for it befits the intimate of Christ to be both, to appear worthy of the kingdom, and to have been deemed worthy of the kingdom.

======== Protrepticus — Chapter 12 ========

Let us flee, then, from habit; let us flee it as a dangerous headland, or the threat of Charybdis, or the mythical Sirens. It chokes a man, turns him from the truth, leads him away from life; it is a snare, it is a pit, it is a chasm — habit is a ravenous evil: "Keep the ship outside that smoke and surge." Let us flee, O shipmates, let us flee this wave; it belches fire, it is a wicked island heaped up with bones and corpses, and on it sings a lovely little harlot, Pleasure, delighting in music for the common crowd. "Come hither, come, renowned Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans; bring your ship to rest, that you may hear a diviner voice." She praises you, O sailor, and calls you much-sung of, and the harlot claims for herself the glory of the Greeks. Let her feed upon the dead; from heaven a spirit arrives to assist you. Pass by Pleasure; she deceives. And let not a woman with trailing robes beguile your mind, cooing her wheedling talk, seeking out your nest. Sail past the song; it works death. If you will only wish it, you have conquered destruction, and bound to the wood you shall be freed from all corruption; the Word of God will pilot you, and the Holy Spirit will bring you to anchor in the harbors of the heavens. Then you shall behold my God, and shall be initiated into those holy mysteries, and shall enjoy the hidden things in the heavens, kept in store for me — "things which ear has not heard, nor have they come up upon the heart" of anyone. Indeed, someone raving in Bacchic frenzy over idols, drunk with sheer ignorance, once said, "I seem to see two suns and a twofold Thebes." I would rather pity such a man in his drunken madness, and call him, thus deranged, to the sober salvation, since the Lord, too, desires that a sinner turn back rather than perish. Come, you madman — lean not upon your thyrsus, nor wrap yourself in ivy; throw away the headband, throw away the fawnskin, come to your senses. I will reveal to you the Word, and the Word's own mysteries, setting them forth to match your own likeness. This is a mountain beloved of God, not one lying under tragedies like Cithaeron, but one consecrated to dramas of truth, a sober mountain, shaded with holy woods. On it hold Bacchic revel not the sisters of the thunder-born Semele, the maenads, initiated into an unholy division of raw flesh, but the daughters of God, those unblemished lambs, proclaiming the Word's solemn rites and forming a sober chorus. The chorus is the righteous; the song is a hymn of the King of all. The maidens sing to the harp, the angels give glory, the prophets speak, the sound of music goes forth; they pursue the sacred band at a run, those who are called hasten, longing to receive back their Father. Come to me also, O old man, leaving Thebes behind, and casting off divination and Bacchic rite, let yourself be led by the hand to the truth. Look, I give you the wood to lean upon; hasten, Teiresias, believe: you shall see. Christ shines forth brighter than the sun, through whom the eyes of the blind see again. Night will flee from you, fire will be afraid, death will depart; you shall see the heavens, O old man, you who could not see Thebes.
O truly holy mysteries! O pure light! I am torch-borne to behold the heavens and God; I become holy by being initiated. The Lord is the hierophant, and he seals the initiate while leading him to the light, and presents to the Father the one who has believed, kept safe for the ages. These are the Bacchic revels of my mysteries. If you wish, be initiated yourself as well, and you shall join the dance with angels around the Unbegotten and Imperishable and only true God, while the Word of God joins with us in the hymn. This eternal Jesus, sole and great high priest of the sole God who is likewise Father, intercedes for humanity and charges humanity, saying, "Listen, you tribes without number" — or rather, all among men endowed with reason, both foreigners and Greeks; I summon the entire race of men, whose creator I am, through the Father's will. Draw near to me, to be clothed under a single God and his one Word, and do not be satisfied simply with outranking the unreasoning animals in reason, but strive so that among all mortal creatures you alone might harvest immortality. For I wish, I wish to give you a share also of this grace, bestowing the whole benefit entire — incorruption; and I grant you the Word, the knowledge of God; I grant you my perfect self. This is who I am; this is God's desire; this is unity; this is the Father's accord; here is the Son, here is Christ, here is God's own Word — the Lord's right arm, the strength that sustains the cosmos, the Father's purpose. O images of old, not all alike — I wish to set you right after the archetype, that you may become like me also. I will anoint you with the ointment of faith, by which you cast off corruption, and I will lay bare the unclothed shape of righteousness, through which you rise up toward God. "Come to me, all you who toil and are weighed down, and I will grant you rest; place my yoke upon your shoulders and learn from me, for I am mild and humble at heart, and rest will come to your souls; for my yoke is kindly and what I lay on you is light." Let us hasten, let us run, O images beloved of God and formed after the likeness of the Word; let us hasten, let us run, let us take up his yoke, let us set ourselves upon incorruption; let us love Christ, the good charioteer of men. He led the colt, unbroken, harnessed together with the old one; and having yoked the pair of mankind together, he directs the chariot toward immortality, hastening toward God to fulfill openly what he had before signified in a riddle — formerly by riding into Jerusalem, but now by riding up into the heavens — the Son everlasting and triumphant, the fairest spectacle to the Father. Let us then become men eager for what is good and beloved of God, and let us acquire the greatest of goods, God and life. And the Word is our helper; let us trust in him, and let there never come upon us so great a longing for silver and gold, nor for glory, as for the Word of truth itself. For it is not pleasing even to God himself if we count the things of greatest worth as of least account, while we choose above them the plain outrages of ignorance and unlearning and sloth and idol-worship, and the utmost impiety. For it is not out of keeping with the children of philosophers to say that all the things the foolish do, they consider unholy and impious, and describing even ignorance itself as a kind of madness, they confess in effect that the many are simply insane. The Word, then, allows no room to doubt which of the two is better, to be sane or to be mad; but holding fast to the truth with a firm grip, one must with all one's strength, in soundness of mind, follow God and consider all things his, as indeed they are — and further, since we ourselves have learned that we are his fairest possession, we must commit ourselves to God, loving the Lord God, and regarding this as our task for the whole of life. And if "the goods of friends are held in common," and man is beloved of God (for indeed he is a friend of God, the Word acting as mediator), then everything belongs to man, since everything belongs to God, and what the two friends possess remains shared, God's and man's alike. Now is the moment for us to declare that only the man who fears God is truly rich, wise, and nobly born, and thereby an image of God in his likeness, and to say and believe that, having become "righteous and holy with wisdom" through Christ Jesus, he is to that degree already like God as well. The prophet, at any rate, does not conceal the grace when he says, "I said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High." For us, us he has adopted as sons, and it is us alone he wishes to be called Father, not those who disobey. And indeed this, more or less, is how it stands with us who are followers of Christ: as are the counsels, so are the words; and as are the words, so also are the deeds; and as are the works, such is the life. Good is the whole life of men who have come to know Christ.
Enough words, I think, even if I have gone on rather at length out of love for mankind, pouring forth whatever I had received from God, as one exhorting toward the greatest of goods, salvation. For concerning life that has no end at all, no cessation, my words too are unwilling ever to cease their sacred proclamation. There remains for you still this one profitable choice to make, either judgment or grace; for my part, I do not think it even worth debating which of the two is better, nor indeed is it right to set life and destruction side by side for comparison.

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter argument ========

A. What the Instructor professes to do.
B. That the Instructor takes charge of us because of our sins.
C. That the Instructor is a lover of humanity.
D. That the Word is the Instructor of men and women equally.
E. That all who occupy themselves with the truth are children in the sight of God.
F. Against those who suppose that the name "children" and "infants" hints at instruction in elementary lessons.
Z. Who the Instructor is, and concerning his method of instruction.
H. Against those who suppose that the just is not good.
Th. That it belongs to the same power both to do good and to punish justly, in which is shown the manner of the Word's instruction.
I. That the same God, through the same Word, both restrains men from sins by threats and saves humanity by exhortation.
IA. That the Word gave instruction through the Law and the Prophets.
IB. That the Instructor employs severity and kindness in due proportion, after the manner of a father's disposition.
IG. That just as right conduct comes about according to right reason, so likewise sin comes about contrary to reason.

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter 1 ========

A foundation of truth has been laid down, you children, for us ourselves — an unbreakable base of knowledge for the great holy temple of God, a noble exhortation, through reasonable obedience a reaching after life everlasting, cast down in a spiritual place. For since there are three things concerning man — character, actions, and passions — the Exhorting Word (the Protreptic) has been allotted his character, being the leader unto godliness, the Word laid beneath like a ship's keel for the building up of faith; over which greatly rejoicing, and renouncing our old opinions, we grow young again unto salvation, singing in harmony with the psalm that chants, "How good is God to Israel, to those upright in heart"; while over all our actions presides the Word of Precept, and our passions the Word of Consolation heals — one and the same Word throughout — snatching man out of his familiar and worldly habit, and training him, as a pedagogue leads a child, toward the one salvation that is faith in God. So then the heavenly Guide, the Word, whenever he was calling unto salvation, was named the Exhorter (this same urging Word being called, by this part of his work, after the whole; for all godliness is exhortation, begetting in the reason that is akin to it a longing for the present life and the life to come); but now, being at once the Healer and the Adviser, following his own course, he counsels the man already turned toward the goal, promising healing for the passions within us. Let him, then, be called by us fittingly by one name, Paedagogue — the Instructor who leads onward, not one who follows a method, in that his end is to make the soul better, not to teach it, and to guide it into a life of self-control, not one of mere knowledge. And yet this same Word is also a Teacher, but not now; for the Teacher, in matters of doctrine, is one who makes plain and reveals, whereas the Paedagogue, being practical, first exhorted the soul to a disposition of good character, and now further urges it on to the doing of what is needful, enjoining the pure counsels and displaying to those who come after the images of those who formerly went astray. Both ways are most beneficial: the one, the hortatory kind, leading to obedience; the other, taken in the manner of an image, is itself twofold, resembling the former pairing in like fashion — the one part that we may imitate, choosing the good, the other that we may turn away, refusing its opposite.
The healing of the passions, then, follows from this, the Paedagogue strengthening our souls by the consolations found in these images, and, as with gentle medicines, tending with humane counsels those who are ailing, until they come to the complete knowledge of truth. Health and knowledge are not equal things; the one is gained by learning, the other by healing. No one who is still sick could first learn any part of the teachings before being made wholly well; for not every one of the precepts is spoken in the same way to those who are learning and to those who are ailing, but to some it is spoken with a view to knowledge, to others with a view to healing. Just as those whose bodies are sick need a physician, so those whose souls are weak need a Paedagogue, that he may heal our passions; and after this he will lead us on to the Teacher, making the soul clean and fit to receive knowledge, able to take in the revelation of the Word. Hastening then to bring us to perfection by the saving stages, the wholly loving Word makes use of a good and orderly arrangement suited to our instruction: first exhorting from above, then acting as Paedagogue, and finally, over and above all, teaching.

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter 2 ========

Our Instructor, O you children, resembles his own Father, God, whose Son he is, sinless, blameless, and passionless in soul, God unstained in the form of man, servant executing what the Father wills, that Word who exists as God, dwelling within the Father, seated at the Father's right hand, divine likewise in his very shape. He is for us the unspotted image; it is to him with all our strength that we must try to make our soul resemble. But he is set free altogether from human passions—precisely for this cause he alone holds the office of judge, since he alone is without sin—while we, so far as lies within our power, endeavor to keep wrongdoing to a bare minimum. For nothing presses so urgently as, first, deliverance from the passions and sicknesses, and then, the prevention of an easy slide into the habit of sinning. The best thing, then, is never to commit sin whatsoever, under any circumstance, which we say belongs to God alone; second is never to lay hold of any wrongdoing done deliberately, which is proper to the wise man; third is not to fall into very many involuntary faults, which is characteristic of those nobly trained by the Instructor; and let it be set down last of all not to linger long in one's sins—though even this, for those who are called back to repentance, is a saving recovery of ground. And it seems to me that the Instructor speaks most beautifully through Moses when he says, 'If someone should die suddenly beside him, at once the head of his vow shall be defiled, and it shall be shaved'—calling involuntary sin 'sudden death,' and saying that it defiles by staining the soul; wherefore he prescribes the remedy with all speed, counseling that the head be shaved at once, urging that the hair overshadowing the reasoning faculty with ignorance be wiped away, so that the reasoning faculty—stripped bare of the thick undergrowth of vice (it is enthroned in the brain)—may run back to repentance. Then, after saying a little more, he adds, 'but the former days are without reason [irrational],' by which it is plain that the sins are indicated which did not happen according to reason. And so he called the involuntary act 'sudden,' and the act of sinning 'irrational.' For this very reason the Word, the Instructor, has been allotted the oversight for the prevention of irrational sin. Consider this too from Scripture: 'Therefore thus says the Lord'—the sin that had gone before is shown reprovingly by the utterance that follows, in accordance with which the just judgment ensues, and this is made plain openly through the prophets, as when they say, in effect, 'had you not sinned, he would not have threatened you with this,' and 'therefore thus says the Lord,' and 'because you did not listen to these words, therefore thus says the Lord,' and 'therefore behold, says the Lord.' For this is why prophecy exists, for the sake of obedience and disobedience—the one, that we might be saved; the other, that we might be disciplined.
Our Instructor, then, is the Word, who through exhortations heals the soul's passions that are contrary to nature. For properly speaking, the treatment of the body's diseases is called medicine, an art taught by human wisdom; but the Word of the Father alone is the healer of human ailments, a physician bringing relief, and a holy charmer of the sick soul. 'Save your servant,' he says, 'O my God, who hopes in you; have mercy on me, O Lord, for to you I will cry all the day long.' 'Medicine,' according to Democritus, 'cures the diseases of the body, but wisdom takes away the passions of the soul'; but the good Instructor, Wisdom, the Word of the Father, who fashioned man, cares for the whole of his creation, and heals both body and soul—he, the all-healing physician of humanity. The Savior says to the paralyzed man, 'Rise, take up the pallet on which you lie and go home'; and at once the sick man was made whole. And to the dead man he said, 'Lazarus, come forth'; and he came out of the tomb, the dead man, such as he had been before he suffered, having rehearsed the resurrection. Indeed, he heals the soul itself, in its own right, by commandments and by gifts of grace—though by his precepts, perhaps, he is still about to heal it; but rich in gifts of grace he says to us sinners, 'Your sins are forgiven you.' As for us, in the very moment of thought we became infants, receiving the best and most secure order from his good ordering—an order which first busies itself, for man's sake, about the universe and the heaven and the sun's circlings and the courses of the other stars, and then concerns itself with man himself, about whom all its zeal is occupied; and counting this its greatest work, it has guided his soul aright with prudence and self-control, and has blended his body together with beauty and good proportion, and has breathed into his actions, as a human being, both success in them and the good order that is its own.

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter 3 ========

The Lord benefits all and helps all, in his human role and in his divine one alike: in his divine role remitting our offenses, and in his human role disciplining us like a father so that we do not sin. Man is therefore fittingly a friend to God, since he is also His creation. In the case of the rest of things He merely commanded and they came to be, but man He fashioned with His own hands and breathed into him something of His own. That which has been imaged by Him and toward Him, then, has either been made by God because it is desirable for its own sake, or has been formed as desirable for the sake of something else. If man is desirable for his own sake, then God, being good, loved a good thing, and the love-charm is within man himself, that very thing which is called God's inbreathing. But if man came to be desirable for the sake of other things, God had no other reason for making him than this: that without man it was not possible for one to become a good craftsman, and another to arrive at the knowledge of God (for God would not have made that for the sake of which man came to be, unless man had come to be), and the power that man had hidden within him — the power of willing — God completed by an added power from outside, that of having made him, taking from man what He had made man to be, and seeing what man had, and man became what He willed; and there is nothing that God cannot do. Man, then, whom God has made, is desirable for his own sake, and what is desirable for its own sake is proper to whatever it is desirable for its own sake to, and to that thing it is also welcome and beloved. But can a thing be lovable to someone and not also be loved by him? Man has been shown to be lovable; therefore man is loved by God. For how could he not be loved, he for whose sake the only-begotten Word of faith is sent down from the bosom of the Father? Faith proceeding from His abundance the Lord Himself plainly confesses, saying, "For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me," and again the same one says, "And you have loved them, just as you have loved me." What, then, the Tutor intends and what He promises, being disposed both in deed and in word, prescribing what is to be done and forbidding the opposite, is by now surely clear. And it is plain that the other kind of discourse, the teaching kind, is spare and spiritual, given to exactness, namely the contemplative kind, which for now let it be set aside. It is fitting for us to love in return, with the love due to the best of lives, Him who leads us, and to live according to the ordinances of His purpose, not only carrying out what is commanded or carefully avoiding what is forbidden, but also, of the images set before us, turning away from some and imitating others as far as possible, so as to fulfill the works of the Tutor in the way of a likeness, so that indeed "according to image and according to likeness" may be fulfilled. For as we wander in deep darkness through life, we need an unstumbling and exact guide. And the best guide is not blind, as Scripture says of those who lead the blind, hand in hand, into the pit, but the Word who sees keenly and discerns what is in the heart. For just as there is no light that does not illuminate, nor anything that moves that does not cause motion, nor anything loving that does not love, so too there is nothing good that does not benefit and lead toward salvation. Let us, then, cherish the precepts through what the Master accomplishes (for that same Word, openly taking on flesh, exhibits this identical virtue as both active and contemplative together), and, taking the Word to be law, let us recognize His commandments and counsels as short roads and taut paths toward eternity; for His injunctions are full of persuasion, not of fear.

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter 4 ========

Embracing, then, all the more this good obedience, let us give ourselves over to the Lord, having made fast to the surest cable of his faith, grasping that excellence in a man and excellence in a woman come to one and the same thing. For if God is one for both, one too is the tutor of both. One church, one temperance, one modesty; their nourishment is common, marriage is a yoking-together; breathing, seeing, hearing, knowing, hoping, obeying, loving — every one of these shared alike. And for those whose life is common, whose grace is common, whose salvation too is common, common also is their virtue and their training. "In the present age," he states, "people take husbands and take wives" — since only in the present age is the female set apart from the male — "but no longer once that age arrives," where the rewards belonging to this shared and consecrated way of living born of marriage are stored up not on account of being male or being female, but for the human being, once freed from the craving that splits him in two. Common, then, is the very name for men and women: human being. It is for this reason, I think, that the Attic writers called "paidarion" (child) in common use not the male only but the female as well, if the comic poet Menander is to be trusted by anyone here, speaking somewhat thus in the Rhapizomene: "my little daughter . . . for the child is by nature altogether humane." So too "lambs" is a name applied in common, out of plainness, to both the male and the female of that creature. And the Lord himself "shepherds us" unto the ages, amen. "Without a shepherd neither sheep nor anything else at all can yet be lived, nor indeed children without their tutor, nor servants without their master."

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter 5 ========

That the word "pedagogy" means the leading of children is clear from the name itself; what remains is to examine the children whom Scripture hints at, and then to set the Pedagogue over them. We ourselves are those children. Under many guises and through varied devices Scripture, transforming the unadorned simplicity of the faith into differing titles, celebrates us allegorically. In the Gospel, for instance, it says: "the Lord, standing on the shore before the disciples" — who happened to be fishing — "called out, 'Children, do you have any fish?'" addressing as children those already established among his acquaintances. "And they brought to him," it says, "little children," for the laying on of hands in blessing, and when the disciples tried to stop them, Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." What this saying means the Lord himself will make clear when he says, "Unless you turn and become like these little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven" — not allegorizing regeneration here, but commending to us the simplicity found in children as a pattern for imitation. The prophetic spirit too chooses us out as "children": "Plucking branches of olive or of palm," it says, "the children went out to meet the Lord and shouted, crying, Hosanna, son of David — blessed the one arriving in the Lord's own name" — radiance and glory and acclaim joined with entreaty rendered to the Lord, since that is the sense carried by "Hosanna" once rendered into Greek. And it seems to me that Scripture, hinting at this very prophecy already spoken, rebukes the indifferent as a kind of reproach: "Have you never read that out of the mouth of babes and sucklings you have perfected praise?" This too the Lord goads his acquaintances with in the Gospel, urging them to pay attention to him as one already hastening to the Father, making his hearers more eager by forewarning that he would soon be gone, showing that they ought to gather the fruit of the truth the more ungrudgingly, since the Word was on the very point of departing into heaven. So again he calls them children: "Little children," he says, "yet a little while I am with you." And again he likens the kingdom of heaven to children "sitting in the marketplaces and saying, We piped to you and you did not dance, we mourned and you did not lament," and whatever else he added in keeping with this. And it is not the Gospel alone that thinks this way — prophecy agrees with it too. David says, at any rate, "Praise the Lord, you children, praise the name of the Lord." And he says too, through Isaiah, "Behold, I and the children whom God has given me."
Do you wonder to hear that among the nations too there are men called children before the Lord? You seem to me not to be acquainted with Attic speech, from which one may learn that beautiful and blooming, indeed even freeborn, young women are called little maidens (paidiskai), while female slaves — themselves also young — are called paidiskaria, honored with a diminutive on account of the blooming freshness of childlike age. And where he says, "Let my lambs take their place on the right," he is pointing to the simple, naming them children under the figure of lambs — not men, as being sheep by race — but the lambs he judged worthy of special favor, preferring the tenderness and simplicity of mind found among men, that innocence. And again when he says, "like sucking calves," he again allegorizes us; and "like a harmless and gall-less dove," again us. And he commands that two young pigeons or a pair of turtledoves be offered through Moses for sin, saying that the sinlessness of the tender, and the harmlessness and freedom from resentment of the nestlings, is acceptable to God, thereby suggesting that like is purified by like; but also the timidity of the turtledoves figures caution against sins. That he calls us the nestlings, Scripture is witness: "As a hen gathers her chicks under her wings," so are we the nestlings of the Lord — the Word wonderfully and mystically sketching the simplicity of the soul under the figure of a childlike age. For in one place he calls us children, in another nestlings, sometimes infants, elsewhere sons, and often children (offspring), and a new people and a fresh people. "To my servants," he says, "shall be given a new name" (calling the new and eternal name "new" — undefiled and simple and infant-like and true) "which shall be blessed upon the earth." And again, allegorizing, he calls us colts — the unyoked to vice, the untamed by wickedness, but simple and given to leaping only before the Father himself — not "the horses that neigh after the wives of their neighbors, subject and given over to lust," but the free and newborn, exultant through their faith, swift runners toward the truth, quick toward salvation, trampling and pawing down the things of the world. "Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; proclaim it, daughter of Jerusalem; behold, your king comes to you, righteous and saving, and he himself, meek, rides upon a pack animal and a foal still young." Saying "foal" by itself would not suffice, so he added "young" besides, thereby displaying the youthfulness of humanity found in Christ, together with its timelessness and its simplicity. Such young colts, as infants, does our divine colt-tamer rear up. And even if the young one in Scripture should be a donkey, still it is a colt, the foal of a donkey, even so. "And he tied the colt," it says, "to the vine" — binding this simple and infant people to the Word, whom he allegorizes as the vine; for the vine bears wine, as the Word bears blood, and both are a drink for men unto salvation — the wine for the body, the blood for the spirit. And that he calls us lambs too, the spirit through Isaiah is a trustworthy witness: "as a shepherd will shepherd his flock and will gather the lambs with his arm" — allegorizing as lambs, for their simplicity, those even more tender than the sheep.
Naturally, then, we too have honored with the name of "child" the finest and most perfect of the possessions of life, and have called them paideia (education) and paidagogia (child-rearing). And we acknowledge that paidagogia is a good leading from childhood toward virtue. The Lord, then, reveals the meaning conveyed in the appellation "little child" still more vividly for us: "when a dispute arose among the apostles as to which of them was greater, Jesus set a little child in their midst and said: whoever humbles himself as this little child, this one is greater in the kingdom of heaven." He has not, therefore, used the appellation of little children as referring to an age of the unreasoning, as it has seemed to some, nor should it be taken ignorantly when he says, "Unless you become as these little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of God." No longer, then, do we infants roll on the ground, nor do we crawl upon the earth as before in the manner of serpents, coiled with our whole body about senseless desires, but we stretch upward in our understanding, having renounced the world and sins, "touching the earth with but a slight foot," only so much as to seem to be in the world, and we pursue holy wisdom — which to those sharpened for cunning seems folly.
Children, then, fittingly, are those who have known God alone as Father — simple and infant-like and unmixed, lovers of the horns of the unicorn. To those, at any rate, who had advanced in the word he proclaimed this saying, bidding them not to be anxious about the affairs of this life and exhorting them to attend to the Father alone, imitating little children. Hence in what follows he says, "Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for sufficient unto the day is its own trouble." Thus, having laid aside the cares of life, he commands us to cling to the Father alone. And whoever keeps this precept is genuinely both infant and child alike, with respect to God on one side and the world on the other: toward the world as a wanderer gone astray, toward God as one held dear. And if "there is one teacher in the heavens," as Scripture says — as is agreed — then all on earth would fittingly be called disciples. For the truth stands thus: perfection belongs to the Lord who ever teaches, while what is childlike and infant belongs to us who are ever learning. It is for this reason that prophecy has honored perfection with the appellation of "man," and through David, speaking of the devil, says, "The Lord abhors a man of blood" — calling him a man as being perfect in wickedness; and the Lord too is called a man because he is perfect in righteousness. Thus the apostle, writing to the Corinthians, says: "For I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ" — whether as infants and holy ones, yet still to the one Lord alone. Most clearly of all, writing to the Ephesians, he unveiled what is sought here, speaking to this effect: "Until, every one of us, we arrive together at oneness in belief and in knowing God, at full manhood, at the measure belonging to the fullness proper to Christ's stature — so that we should no longer remain infants, driven and swept along by each fresh gust of teaching, through the cunning of men and their craft in devising error, but holding to truth in love, might grow up in every respect into him" — and this, he adds, "unto the building of Christ's body," "he being the head," the sole man made perfect in righteousness. But we the infants, guarding ourselves against the blustering winds of the heresies that puff up toward inflation, and not trusting those who would lay down other fathers for us, are made perfect then, when we, being the church, have received back Christ as our head.
Here it is right to pause over the appellation "infant," because "infant" is not applied to the foolish. For the nēpytios is one thing, and the nēpios is another — the newly-born (neēpios), just as ēpios (gentle) means tender in mind, that is, one who has become gentle and mild in manner but newly so. This blessed Paul most clearly indicated when he said, "Though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ, we became gentle among you, as a nurse cherishes her own children." The infant, then, is gentle, and in this way rather tender, soft and simple and guileless and unpretending, straightforward in judgment and upright — and this is the very substance of simplicity and truth. "For upon whom shall I look," it says, "except upon the meek and quiet one?" For such is the virgin word, tender and unfeigned; hence too it is customary for the virgin to be called a tender bride, and the child to be called tender-minded. And we are tender — pliant toward persuasion and well-worked toward goodness, free of bitterness and unmixed with malice and crookedness; for the old generation is crooked and hard-hearted, but the chorus of infants — we, the new people — is delicate as a child. And the apostle, writing to the Romans, admits that he takes delight in "the hearts of the guileless," and indeed he gives, so to speak, a certain definition of infants when he says: "I want you to be wise as to what is good, but guileless as to what is evil." For indeed the name of the infant (nēpios) is not understood by us according to a privation, since grammarians' children lay down that "nē" is privative. For if those who run down our infancy call us fools, see how they blaspheme against the Lord, supposing to be fools those who have taken refuge in God; but if — as should rather be understood — they too take "infants" in the sense of the simple, let us rejoice in the appellation; for infant minds are the young minds, newly wise amid an old folly, minds that have but now risen up according to the new covenant. For indeed God has but lately been known, according to the coming of Christ: "No one has come to know God, save the Son, and whoever it is to whom the Son chooses to disclose him." The new people, then, is young, in contrast to the older people, having learned the new good things. And this ageless youth is for us the very cream of our age, in which we are ever at our prime for understanding — ever young, ever gentle, ever new; for those who have partaken of a new word must themselves be new. And that which has partaken of eternity is wont to be made like the incorruptible, so that for us the appellation of the childlike age is the springtime of all our life, because the truth within us, and we within the truth, are ageless, our manner of life poured forth anew. And wisdom is evergreen, always the same and in the same way, and never changing.
"Their children," it says, "shall be carried upon shoulders and shall be comforted upon knees; as one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you." The mother brings her children forward, and we seek the mother, the church. That which is weak and tender in every way, needing help because of its weakness, is a thing gracious and sweet and delightful, God not withholding his help from such a one; for just as fathers and mothers take more pleasure in the foals of horses, in the little calves of cattle, in a lion's cub and a deer's fawn and a man's little child, so too the Father of all welcomes those who have taken refuge in him, and having begotten them anew by the spirit unto adoption, knows them as gentle and loves these alone, and helps and fights on their behalf, and for this reason calls them "little child." I refer even Isaac to the child; his name is interpreted "laughter." This one the meddling king saw playing with his wife and helper, Rebecca. The king, it seems to me (his name was Abimelech), is some wisdom above the world, spying out the mystery of the play; and they interpret Rebecca as "patience." O the prudent play — laughter helped along by patience, and the king its overseer! The spirit of those children in Christ exults who conduct their lives in patience, and this is the divine play. Heraclitus says that his own Zeus plays some such game as this. For what other becoming work is there for the wise and perfect than to play and rejoice together with the patience that attends good things and the ordering of good things, keeping festival together with God? It is also possible otherwise to understand what is signified by the prophecy: that we rejoice and laugh over our salvation, as did Isaac. For he too laughed, being freed from death, playing and exulting together with the bride who is our helper unto salvation, the church — to whom the fixed name of "patience" has been given, either because she alone abides forever, ever rejoicing, or because she is built up from the patience of the faithful, those who form Christ's members; and the witness given by those enduring to the very end, and the thanksgiving offered for these things — this is the mystic play, and the salvation that helps along with solemn gladness. The king, then, Christ, looks down from above upon our laughter, and "peering through the window," as Scripture says, watches over the thanksgiving and the blessing and the exultation and gladness, and further the patience that works together with them, and their interweaving, which is his own church — showing only his own face, which the church lacks — the church being perfected by its royal head. And where, then, was the window through which the Lord was shown? The flesh, through which he has been made manifest. Again, Isaac is (for it is possible to understand it otherwise too) a figure of the Lord — an offspring in the character of son (Abraham's own, just as Christ belongs to God), and likewise a sacrificial victim, in the way the Lord was. But he was not offered up as the Lord was — only that. Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice, as the Lord carried the wood. And in a mystical way he laughed, foreshowing that the Lord would fill us with gladness, we who have been redeemed from corruption by the blood of the Lord. But he did not suffer — not only, then, fittingly does Isaac yield the primacy of suffering to the Word, but he also hints at the divinity of the Lord in not being slain; for Jesus rose after his burial, not having suffered, just as Isaac was released from the sacrifice. I will add one more thing of the greatest weight in support of what lies before us. He names the Lord himself a little child, the spirit proclaiming this through Isaiah: "Behold, a child is born to us, a son is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder, and his name is called the Messenger of Great Counsel." What then is the infant child, in whose image we the infants stand? Through the same prophet he describes his greatness: "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, in multiplying his instruction (paideia); and his peace shall have no boundary." What a great God! What a flawless child! The Son within the Father, the Father within the Son. And how is the instruction of that child not perfect — that instruction which extends to all of us his children, pedagogically leading his infants? He has stretched out his hands to us, hands manifestly to be trusted. To this child John also bears witness, "the greatest among those born of women" among the prophets: "Behold the Lamb of God." For since Scripture names the infant children lambs, it has named God the Word — who took on humanity on our account, desiring to be made like us in all things — the Lamb of God — the Son of God, the infant of the Father.

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter 6 ========

We have abundant resources with which to strip for the contest against those who love to bring accusations; for we are not children and infants addressed with the childish and contemptible name of learners, as those puffed up over their gnosis have slandered us. For as soon as we were regenerated we received at once the perfection for whose sake we were hastening. For we were illuminated; and this is to come to know God. He then who has come to know the perfect is not imperfect. And do not seize upon me for confessing that I have known God. For it was in some such way that the Word saw fit to speak: "He who is free." At once, at any rate, when the Lord was being baptized, a voice sounded from the heavens, witness of the Beloved: "You are my beloved Son; today I have begotten you." Let us then ask the wise: Christ, having been begotten today, is he already perfect, or, which is most absurd, deficient? If the latter, he needs to learn something further. But it is not fitting to suppose that he, being God, needed to learn anything further; for there could not be anyone greater than the Word, nor could anyone instruct the sole Instructor. Must they not, then, however reluctantly, admit that the Word, being perfect and begotten of the perfect Father, was in keeping with the prefigured plan made perfectly whole again? And if perfection was already his, for what reason did the perfect one undergo the washing? Such a step was required, so they claim, to accomplish what had been ordained for humankind. Excellently put. For I say: then, together with his being baptized by John, does he become perfect? Clearly so. Did he then learn nothing further from it? No indeed. Is he then perfected by the washing alone, and sanctified by the descent of the Spirit? So it is.
The very same thing happens also in our case, of whom the Lord has become the pattern: being baptized, we are illuminated; being illuminated, we are made sons; being made sons, we are perfected; being perfected, we are made immortal. "I said," he says, "you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High." Many names apply to this working: it is grace, it is illumination, it is perfection, and it is the bath — a bath because through it our transgressions are washed clean away; grace because through it the debts owed for wrongdoing are cancelled; illumination because through it that sacred saving radiance comes into view, meaning that through it we perceive the divine with clarity; and perfection we call it because nothing further remains to be added. For what is still lacking to one who has come to know God? For indeed it would be truly absurd for that which is not yet fulfilled to be called a gift of God; and being perfect, he will surely grant perfect gifts. And just as all things come to be for him at once when he commands, so it follows that for him merely to will to grant grace is for the grace to be fulfilled. For the future is anticipated by the power of the will in point of time. Moreover, deliverance from evils is the beginning of salvation. Only, then, those who have first grasped the boundaries of life are already perfect, and we who have been separated from death already live. Salvation, then, is to follow Christ. "For what has come to be in him is life." "Truly, truly I say to you," he says, "he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life." So simply trusting and being born anew constitutes completeness of living; since God possesses no feebleness whatsoever. Just as his intention becomes an act, and this act bears the name creation, in the same way his design brings about humanity's rescue, and this design is termed the assembly. He knows, then, those whom he has called; and those whom he has called, he has saved; he has called and saved at the same time. "For you yourselves," says the apostle, "are taught by God." It is therefore improper for us to regard whatever he instructs as incomplete; rather, his instruction is the everlasting rescue granted by the everlasting Rescuer, to whom be grace throughout the ages, amen. And he who is only regenerated, just as indeed his very name implies, having been illuminated, is at once freed from darkness and has immediately received the light. Just as those rousing themselves from slumber become at once alert inwardly — or better, as those attempting to remove a cataract from the eyes do not furnish themselves light from outside, having none to give — but by lowering what obstructed their sight leave the pupil unimpeded, so too the baptized, having through the divine Spirit wiped away like mist the sins that clouded their vision, gain a spiritual eye that is liberated, unobstructed, brimming with brightness, and it is solely through this that we perceive what is divine, as the Holy Spirit pours down upon us from above — a fusion, this, of everlasting brilliance, capable of beholding everlasting radiance; for what resembles is beloved by its like, and holiness is dear to the one from whom holiness proceeds, who is rightly termed light: "for you were once darkness, but now are light in the Lord." From this, I think, humankind was called by the ancients "lights." But not yet, they say, has he received the perfect gift. I too agree, except that he dwells within the light and darkness fails to overcome him; and light and darkness admit nothing whatsoever in between. But in the resurrection of believers the end is reserved; and this is nothing else to share in but to obtain the promise already agreed upon. For we do not claim that the two are settled simultaneously — namely, reaching the goal and looking ahead toward that goal's reaching; because eternity and time differ from one another, and neither are the initial impulse and the endpoint identical — no, they are not; but the one concerns itself with both, and with each in relation to the other. There is, so to speak, a starting-impulse, which is faith generated in time, and a goal, which is the attainment of the promise, confirmed for eternity. The Lord himself disclosed with the greatest clarity that salvation is granted equally, in these words: "My Father's wish is this — that everyone who looks upon the Son and puts trust in him may possess life without end, and I myself will raise that person on the final day." So far, then, as is possible in this world, which he hinted at as the last day, we believe that we become perfect while being kept for that time when it shall cease. For faith is the perfection of learning; for this reason he says, "He who believes in the Son has eternal life." If, then, we who have believed have life, what further remains beyond possessing life eternal? Nothing is lacking to faith, since it is of itself perfect and complete. But if something is lacking to it, it is not entirely whole, nor is it faith, limping as it does about some point; nor after our departure from here do other things await those who have believed — pledged here without distinction — but that which by believing they already anticipated as future, we receive after the resurrection as having come to be, so that that saying may be fulfilled: "Let it be done for you according to your faith." Wherever trust exists, the promise exists as well; and rest is what completes that promise. So that knowledge lies in illumination, and the goal of knowledge is rest, which is indeed understood as the final object of desire. Just as by experience inexperience is dissolved, and by resource resourcelessness, so of necessity by illumination darkness must vanish; and ignorance is the darkness in accordance with which we fall into sins, being dim-sighted about the truth. Illumination, then, is knowledge, which does away with ignorance and implants the power of clear vision. But also the casting off of the worse is the uncovering of the better. For what ignorance bound together wrongly, this is loosed rightly through recognition. And these bonds are released with all speed, by human faith but by divine grace, the offenses being forgiven by one healing remedy, rational baptism. We wash away, then, all our sins, and are no longer immediately evil as before. This is the one grace of illumination, that our character is no longer the same as it was before the washing. And that knowledge rises together with illumination, flashing about the mind, is clear from the fact that we, the untaught, immediately hear ourselves called disciples — that learning having occurred at some earlier point; for you could not name the time. For catechesis leads to faith, and faith, together with holy baptism, is trained by the Spirit. And that the one universal salvation of humanity is faith, and that the equality and fellowship of the just and loving God is the same toward all, the apostle most clearly explained, speaking somewhat as follows: "Before faith came, we were guarded under the law, shut up for the faith that was to be revealed; with the result that the law served as our guardian leading toward Christ, so we could be declared righteous through trust; yet now, trust having arrived, a guardian is no longer over us." Do you not perceive that this law, once bound up with dread, no longer holds sway over us — that instead the guardian is now the message of unforced choosing? Then indeed he added the utterance free from all partiality: "For through trust in God, in Christ Jesus, you are every one of you sons. As many as have been baptized into Christ have clothed themselves with Christ. Neither Jew nor Greek exists, neither bondsman nor freeman exists, neither male nor female exists; for in Christ Jesus you are all a single reality." Not, then, are some gnostics and others merely soulish within the Word itself, but all who have put off fleshly desires are equal and given over to spirit in the Lord's sight. And in another place he again writes: "For it was in a single Spirit that all of us were baptized into a single body, be we Jews or Greeks, bondsmen or freemen; and everyone was given one and the same drink."
It is not out of place, too, to make use of the very words of those men who say that the purification of the spirit is the remembrance of better things. They understand by purification the separation, from the recollection of better things, from worse ones; and repentance for the inferior necessarily follows upon being reminded of the better; indeed they themselves confess that the spirit itself, having repented, runs back up. In the same manner, then, we too, having repented of our sins, having renounced their deficiencies, being purified by baptism, run back up toward the eternal light, as children to their father. "Rejoicing in the spirit, Jesus," it says, "says: I acknowledge you, Father, God of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and have revealed them to infants." The Tutor and Teacher, calling us infants, calls those more suited for salvation than the wise of the world, who, thinking themselves wise, have been puffed up. And he cries out, rejoicing and exulting exceedingly, as it were lisping along with the infants: "Yes, Father, for so it was well-pleasing before you." For this reason the things hidden from the wise and understanding of this present age have been revealed to infants. Rightly, then, are the children of God infants, who, having put off the old man and stripped off the tunic of wickedness, and having put on the incorruption of Christ, that, having become new, a holy people, being regenerated we may keep the man undefiled, and be infants as a babe of God cleansed of fornication and wickedness. Most clearly, at any rate, the blessed Paul freed us from this inquiry in his first letter to the Corinthians, writing somewhat as follows: "Brothers, do not become children in your minds, but in wickedness be infants, and in mind become perfect." And the phrase "when I was an infant, I thought as an infant, I spoke as an infant" hints at the manner of life under the law, according to which, not yet being straightforward but still senseless, he pursued infantile things in thought and blasphemed the Word by speaking infantile things. For "infant" signifies two things. "Since I have become a man," he says again, Paul, "I have put away the things of the infant." It is not the size of one's age that is unfinished, nor indeed a fixed measure of time, nor does he hint at other secret teachings of more manly and complete instruction — the apostle who confesses to be doing away with infancy, banishing it beyond bounds — but he calls infants those under the law, who like children are terrified by fear, as by hobgoblins, and he has called men those persuaded by reason and self-governing — we who have believed and are being saved by voluntary choice, sensibly, not senselessly, being frightened by fear. The apostle himself will bear witness on this point, calling the Jews heirs under the former covenant, but us heirs according to promise. "I say," he says, "that for as long a time as the heir is an infant, he differs in nothing from a slave, though he is lord of all, but is under guardians and stewards until the date set by the father. So we also, when we were infants, were enslaved under the elements of the world; but when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons."
See how he confessed that those under fear and sin are infants, but calling those under faith sons, made them men, so to speak, in contradistinction to the infants under the law. "For you are no longer," he says, "a slave, but a son; and if indeed a son, then also an heir by God's doing." So what remains missing to a son once the inheritance is his? It is fitting, accordingly, to read the phrase "when I was an infant" thus: namely, during the time I lived as a Jew (since from his origin he was in fact a Hebrew), "I thought as an infant," since I followed the law; "but when I became a man," no longer the things of the infant, that is, the things of the law, but I think the things of the man, that is, the things of Christ, whom alone Scripture, as we have said before, calls Man, "I have put away the things of the infant." And infancy in Christ is perfection, as measured against the law.
Having come to this point, we must plead the cause of our infancy. And we must further explain what was said by the apostle: "I gave you milk to drink, as infants in Christ, not solid food; for you were not yet able — nor indeed are you even now able." For it does not seem to me that this saying should be understood in a Jewish manner. For I shall place beside it, too, this passage of Scripture: "I will lead you into a land that is good, streaming with milk and honey." A considerable puzzle then emerges concerning how these two passages relate, what their meaning together might be. For if the milk-fed infancy represents the outset of trust in Christ, and this is disparaged as childish and imperfect, how is it that the rest of the perfect and knowing one, after solid food, is again honored with infant milk? Is it not, then, that the word "as," being indicative of a comparison, shows something of this sort? And indeed the saying should be read somewhat in this way: "I gave you milk to drink in Christ" — and pausing a little, we should add "as infants" — so that, according to this division of the reading, we may accept such a meaning as this: I catechized you in Christ with simple, true, and self-grown food, that is, spiritual food; for such is the life-nourishing substance of milk, welling up from affectionate breasts; so that the whole is understood in this way: just as nurses nourish newborn infants on milk, so I too, in the same way, instill into you spiritual nourishment by the word, as by the milk of Christ.
Thus, then, perfect milk is the perfect food, and it leads to that end which never ceases. For this reason, in the rest that is promised, this same thing is announced as milk and honey. Fittingly the Lord once more holds out the promise of milk to the righteous, so that the Word might clearly be shown to be both, alpha and omega, beginning and end — the Word allegorized as milk. Something of this sort even Homer unwittingly divines when he calls righteous men "milk-drinkers." It is also possible to understand the scripture this way: "And I, brothers, was not able to speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to fleshly ones, as to infants in Christ," so the fleshly ones may be taken as those newly catechized, still infants within Christ. Those who had, by the Holy Spirit, already come to believe he termed "spiritual," but the newly catechized and not yet purified he called "fleshly," whom he fittingly calls "still fleshly" since, on a level with the pagans, they still mind the things of the flesh. "For where there is among you jealousy and strife, are you not fleshly and walking according to man?" For this reason too he says, "I gave you milk to drink," meaning: I poured into you the knowledge that comes from catechesis and nourishes you up into life eternal. But indeed the very word "gave to drink" is a symbol of perfect participation. For the perfect are said to drink, but infants to suck at the breast. "My blood," says the Lord, "is true drink." Is it not, then, that Paul, in saying "I gave you milk to drink," hinted darkly at that perfect gladness which is in the Word, called milk — the knowledge of the truth? And what follows next, "not solid food, for you were not yet able," can hint darkly at the clear revelation, face to face, in the age to come, after the manner of solid food. "For now we see through a mirror," as that same apostle puts it, "but afterward, face meeting face." For this reason he added also this: "But not even now are you able, for you are still fleshly," minding, desiring, loving, envying, being angered, and being jealous of the things of the flesh — not because we are still in the flesh, as some have supposed; for it is together with the flesh, having a face resembling the angels', that we will behold the promised vision, face meeting face. But how, if that promise truly is that which comes after our departure from here, "which eye has not seen, nor has it come up into the heart of man," do some claim to know it — not by having conceived it in the spirit, but having received by instruction "what ear has never heard," or only that thing which was caught up into the third heaven? But even of that he was then bidden to keep silent. And if it is human wisdom that remains to be understood — the great boasting of knowledge — hear the law of scripture: "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor let the strong man boast in his strength, but let him who boasts, boast in the Lord." But we are "taught of God" and boast in the name of Christ. How then should we not suppose that it is in this sense the apostle understands the milk of infants — we who are the sheep, if indeed those who lead the churches serve as shepherds modeled on that good shepherd himself? Is he not, in speaking of the milk of the flock, allegorizing while keeping the Lord's own line of thought? And indeed the saying is again to be fitted to this sense: "I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able" — not supposing solid food to be something distinct from the milk, but identical in substance; for likewise the Word itself is either relaxed and gentle like milk, or condensed and compacted like solid food. Nevertheless it is also possible, taking it this other way, to understand that the preaching, poured out very widely, may be conceived as the milk, while faith — condensed by catechesis into a foundation, and being more solid than mere hearing — is likened to solid food, taking on bodily form in the soul itself. Such nourishment the Lord, in another place, in the Gospel according to John, expressed differently through symbols, saying, "You shall eat my flesh and drink my blood," allegorizing the manifest, edible and drinkable reality of faith and of the promise. Through these the church, like a man composed of many members, is watered and grows, and is knit together and compacted out of both — the body being faith, the soul being hope — just as the Lord too is composed of flesh and blood. For hope is in truth the blood of faith, by which faith is held together as by a soul. But when hope breathes out, as it were like blood drained away, the vital force of faith is loosened and fails.
But if in fact some should wish to contend further, saying that the first lessons are what the milk signifies — as it were the first foods — while solid food signifies the spiritual apprehensions, leading themselves up into "knowledge," let them know that in calling solid food a solid nourishment yet meaning Jesus's own flesh and blood, they are swept off by their own boastful wisdom from the true simplicity. For blood is found to be the first-born thing in a human being, which indeed some have dared to call the very substance of the soul; and this blood, being turned by a natural process of concoction — the mother having conceived — blossoms forth through sympathetic affection and matures toward the child's freedom from fear; and blood is more fluid than flesh, being as it were a kind of liquid flesh, while milk is more pleasant than blood and finer in its parts. For whether it is the blood supplied to the embryo, sent in earlier through the mother's navel, or whether it is the monthly discharge itself, shut off from its own accustomed flow, that is bidden by natural diffusion to move, at the command of the all-nourishing and generative God, toward the breasts now swelling — and being altered by the action of warm breath/pneuma, a longed-for nourishment is prepared for the infant, it being blood undergoing transformation. For of all the members the breasts are most sympathetically bound to the womb. So then, whenever at childbirth the vessel is cut off through which the blood was carried to the embryo, a closing of the passage occurs, and the blood takes its impulse toward the breasts, and with much of this flow occurring they are distended, and the blood changes into milk, in a manner comparable to how blood is turned into pus within a wound; or else, from the veins lying near the breasts, opened up during the distensions of pregnancy, the blood is poured over into the natural cavities of the breasts, and mingled with this, the breath sent down from the neighboring arteries — while the underlying substance of the blood still remains intact — as it surges up it whitens, and by such a beating-up it is changed through a kind of frothing, having undergone something similar to what the sea undergoes, which indeed, driven on by the winds, the poets describe as "casting up the foam of the brine" — yet all the same it retains blood as its substance. In this same way rivers too, borne along with a rushing sound, being combed by the enveloping air that they take in, roar forth foam, and the moisture at our own mouths is whitened by the breath. What conclusion, then, is left but to agree that blood too is turned by the breath into the most luminous and whitest state? It undergoes the change in quality, not in substance. At any rate, you would find nothing else more nourishing, nor indeed sweeter, nor even whiter than milk. And the spiritual food resembles this in every way — sweet because of grace, nourishing as life itself, white as the day of Christ — and the blood of the Word has been made manifest as milk. In this way, then, at the time of childbirth milk is supplied by provision for the little one, and the breasts — upright until then, turned toward the man — now bend down toward the child, being taught by nature to furnish, easy to receive, the nourishment she has labored to prepare, for the rearing unto salvation. For the breasts are not full like springs, with ready-made milk flowing in, but rather, by transforming the nourishment within themselves, they produce milk and exhale it forth. And this appropriate and fitting nourishment is prepared for the newly formed and newly grown child by God, the nourisher and father of those begotten and begotten again, just as manna once flowed down from heaven for the ancient Hebrews, the heavenly food of angels. Indeed, even now, nurses have given the first-flowing drink of milk the very name of that food, "manna." But while women who are pregnant, once they have become mothers, well forth milk, the Lord Christ, offspring of the Virgin, did not call women's breasts blessed, nor did he judge them to be the true nourishers; rather, the loving and humane Father having rained down the Word, he himself has already become spiritual nourishment for those who are wise.
O mystical wonder: one is the Father of all things, and one likewise the Word of all things, and likewise the Holy Spirit is a single, identical presence everywhere, and there comes to be a single mother alone, a virgin — I am pleased to call her the church. This mother alone had no milk, because she alone did not become a woman; but she is virgin and mother together — pure like a virgin, tender like a mother — and gathering her own children to her side she nurses them on holy milk, the infant Word. For this reason she had no milk — because that milk was * * this child, good and her own, the body of Christ, being young nourishment for the Word, which the Lord himself brought forth in travail of the flesh, which the Lord himself swaddled with precious blood. O holy birth-pangs, O holy swaddling clothes! The Word is all things to the infant — both father and mother and tutor and nourisher. "Eat what is my flesh," he tells us, "and drink what is my blood." These familiar foods the Lord provides for us, and he offers flesh and pours out blood, and nothing is lacking for the growth of his children. O the paradoxical mystery! He commands us to strip off the old and fleshly corruption, just as also the old nourishment, and to partake instead of another, new diet, that of Christ, taking him up, if possible, within ourselves, to lay him up in our hearts and to enshrine the Savior in our breast, so that we might do away with the passions of our flesh. But perhaps you do not wish to understand it this way, but more in a common sense. Hear it also in this way: the Holy Spirit allegorically signifies flesh to us, for indeed by it the flesh has been fashioned; and it darkly hints at the Word as blood to us, for indeed the Word, like rich blood, has been poured out over our life; and the blending of these two is the Lord himself, nourishment for infants, the Lord who is at once spirit and Word. This nourishment — namely Jesus the Lord, namely God's own Word — spirit turned flesh, sanctified heavenly flesh — is the milk that flows from the Father, the sole means by which we, as infants, are fed. The Word, then, the "beloved" and our nourisher, himself poured out his own blood for us, saving humanity; and through him, having believed in God, we flee for refuge to the "care-forgetting breast" of the Father, the Word, who alone, as it seems, supplies to us infants the milk of love, and truly blessed are only those who suck at this breast. For this reason Peter too says: "Having therefore put away all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and evil-speaking, as newborn babes long for the rational milk, that in it you may grow up into salvation, if you have tasted that the Lord is good." But if someone should also concede to them that solid food is something other than milk, then how will they not be impaled upon their own argument, not having understood the nature of the thing? For nourishment, when the surrounding air thickens in winter and gives no passage, being shut in and cooked and concocted by the enclosed inner heat, passes out into the veins turned into blood; and the veins, not obtaining any means of transpiration, become especially full and are stretched taut and throb; for this reason the breasts too become especially full of milk at that time. And it has been shown by us a little before that blood passes over into milk in pregnant women by a change of quality, not of substance, just as, indeed, fair hair changes to gray in the aged. In summer, on the other hand, the body being more loosely knit provides more easily dispersible nourishment, and the milk is at its least abundant, since neither is the blood; for not all the nourishment is retained. If, then, the processing of nourishment turns it into blood, and blood is turned into milk, blood becomes the preparation for milk, as seed is for man and the grape-stone for the vine. So by milk — the Lord's own nourishment — we are fed from the moment of our birth, and the moment we are reborn we are granted the hope of that rest, proclaiming as good news the heavenly Jerusalem, where scripture records that milk and honey are said to flow, betrothing us, through the material image, to the holy nourishment itself. For material foods pass away, as the apostle himself says, but the nourishment that comes through milk leads up into the heavens, having reared up citizens of heaven and fellow-dancers with the angels. And since the Word is a fountain of life welling up, and is called a river of oil, Paul fittingly, allegorizing and calling him milk, adds "I gave to drink"; for the Word is drunk, the nourishment of truth. Indeed, drink too is called a liquid nourishment. And it is possible for the same thing to be in a sense both solid food and drink, being conceived as one or the other in different respects, just as cheese is a curdling of milk, or milk that has curdled. For it is not my concern now to hunt after words, except that one and the same substance ministers both kinds of nourishment. But for infants still at the breast, milk alone suffices to be both drink and food. "I," says the Lord, "have food to eat which you do not know; my food is that I do the will of him who sent me." You see another food, allegorized in a manner similar to milk — the will of God. But he has also, by an extended use of the term, called the completion of his own suffering a "cup," because it was necessary only to drink it down and bring it to fulfillment. Thus for Christ the nourishment was the fulfillment of the Father's will, but for us Christ himself is the nourishment, for us who are infants, who draw the milk of the Word from the heavens; whence to seek is called to "seek the breast," because to infants who seek the Word the fatherly breasts of loving-kindness furnish the milk. And further, the Word declares that he is heaven's bread: "It was not Moses," he says, "who gave you bread out of heaven; rather my Father grants you the genuine bread out of heaven — for God's bread is the one who descends from heaven and gives life to the world. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world." Here the mystical meaning of the bread must be noted, in that he calls it flesh, and, as it were, risen up as though through fire, just as wheat rises up out of decay and sowing, and indeed is composed through fire into a loaf baked for the gladness of the church.
But this will be shown to us more clearly again in the treatise On the Resurrection. For as he declared, "And the bread I will give is my flesh," and flesh is watered by blood, and blood is allegorized as wine, we must understand that just as bread crushed into the mixing-bowl absorbs the wine but leaves behind the wateriness, so also the flesh of the Lord, the bread of the heavens, drinks up the blood, nourishing the heavenly part of men unto incorruption, but leaving behind for corruption only those carnal desires. Thus the Word is allegorized in many ways, as food and flesh and nourishment and bread and blood and milk, all of which the Lord provides for our enjoyment, we who have believed in him. Let no one, then, be surprised when we say that the blood of the Lord is allegorized as milk; for is not wine too allegorized? "He who washes," it says, "his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape" — he means that he will adorn the body of the Word with his own blood, just as, of course, he will nourish with his own spirit those who hunger for the Word. That the Word is the blood is attested by the blood of righteous Abel entreating God; for blood would never send forth a voice unless the blood were understood as the Word. For the righteous man of old prefigures the new righteous man, and the pleading blood of that former age surpasses in appeal the blood of the later one. And the blood, that is, the Word, speaks to God, since it signified the Word who was to suffer. But the flesh itself, and the blood within it, is watered and increased by the milk, as by a kind of reciprocal nourishment, like storks feeding their parents in return. And indeed the shaping of what has been conceived comes about when the seed is mingled with the pure residue left over from the monthly purification; for the power in this, curdling the nature of the blood, in the manner that rennet coagulates milk, produces the substance of the form; for the right blending is fruitful, but excess is dangerous, leading to childlessness. For indeed of the earth itself, seed that is flooded by excessive rain is swept away, and through drought it is dried up for lack of moisture, but a sticky humor holds the seed together and makes it grow. And some suppose that the seed of the animal is in substance the foam of blood, which, stirred up by the innate heat of the male during intercourse, is whipped into froth and deposited in the seminal veins; from this, indeed, Diogenes of Apollonia holds that the pleasures of love (aphrodisia) take their name.
It is clear, then, from all this, that blood is the substance of the human body. And indeed what is in the womb is at first a milk-like formation of fluid; then this formation, being converted into blood, becomes flesh, and being solidified within the womb through the natural, warm breath that shapes the embryo, it comes to life. But even after birth the child is nourished once more by this very blood; for milk, by nature, is nothing other than blood in flow, and milk is nourishment's wellspring, the mark by which a woman who has genuinely borne a child is proven a mother, and through which she gains besides an added tenderness of love. For this reason, then, in a hidden sense, the Holy Spirit speaks through the Apostle, taking up the Lord's own words: "Milk have I given you to drink." For since we have been reborn into Christ, the one who brought us to birth feeds us on his own milk, namely the Word; for whatever has produced offspring seems at once bound to supply nourishment to what it produced. And just as the regeneration, so correspondingly has the nourishment become spiritual for man. In every way, then, we are made kin to Christ in all things: into kinship by means of his blood, through which our ransom is won; into fellow-feeling through the upbringing that comes from the Word; and into incorruption through his guidance — for to have nourished among mortals often provides more affection than to have begotten children. The same thing, then, both blood and milk, is a symbol of the Lord's passion and teaching. It is granted, therefore, to each of us who are infants to boast in the Lord, declaring, "I claim to be of a noble father, and of his blood." And that milk comes about from blood by transformation is already clear, but it may also be learned from flocks and herds. For these animals, at that time of year men name spring, when the surrounding air turns moister, and when the grass and pastures grow rich with sap and dampness, their bodies become engorged with blood — evident in the swelling of their veins, their vessels distended; and out of that blood the milk pours forth in greater abundance. But in summer, on the contrary, the blood, being scorched and dried up by the heat, checks the transformation, and so less milk is drawn. Indeed, milk also has a very natural kinship with water, just as, of course, the spiritual bath has with spiritual nourishment; those, at any rate, who sip a little cold water along with the aforesaid milk are immediately benefited, for the fellowship with water does not allow the milk to turn sour — not through any antipathy, but through a sympathetic ripening. And the fellowship which the Word has with baptism, this same relation milk has with water. For of liquids it alone receives water and admits mixture with it for purification, just as baptism is taken for the remission of sins. And this also mixes naturally with honey, again for purification, together with sweet nourishment; for the Word, mingling with love for mankind, both heals the passions and cleanses away sins; and the line "sweeter than honey flowed his speech" seems to me to have been said about the Word, who is honey; and often too prophecy exalts something "above honey and the honeycomb." Indeed, milk is likewise blended with sweet wine, and this blend proves helpful, just as when suffering is tempered toward incorruption; for the wine curdles the milk and separates it, draining off whatever in it is impure. In the same way the spiritual fellowship of faith with the man subject to passion, draining away the carnal desires, gathers the man into eternity, immortalizing him among things divine. Many, moreover, put the fatty part of milk, which they call butter, to use for a lamp, making plain by a clear riddle the abundant oil of the Word, since he alone rightly both nourishes and increases and enlightens infants. For this reason too Scripture declares concerning the Lord, "He nourished them from the yield of the countryside; from the crag they drew honey, and oil out of flinty stone; curds of cattle and milk of the flock, together with the richness of lambs," and gave them the things that follow upon these; and also the one who prophesies the birth of the child says, "he shall eat butter and honey." But I am moved to wonder how some dare to call themselves perfect and gnostic, thinking beyond the Apostle, puffed up and snorting with pride, when Paul himself confesses concerning himself: "Not that I have already reached the goal, or am already brought to completion, but I press on, if indeed I may take hold of that for which I myself was taken hold of by Christ. Brothers, I do not count myself to have laid hold of it; but one thing I do: forgetting the things behind, and reaching forward to the things before, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call in Christ Jesus." And he considers himself perfect in this, that he has been freed from his former life, and holds fast to the better; not as being perfect in knowledge, but as one who longs for the perfect; wherefore he adds also, "As many of us then as are perfect, let us be thus minded," clearly calling perfection this: to have been set apart from sins, and to have been regenerated into faith in him alone who is perfect, having forgotten the sins that lie behind.

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter 7 ========

Since, then, we have shown that we all are called children by Scripture, not only we but those who have followed Christ being allegorically called infants, and that only the Father of all things is perfect (for in him is the Son, and in the Son the Father), it is now time, following the order of our theme, to state whom we mean by our Instructor. His name is Jesus. At times he names himself a shepherd, declaring, "I myself am the good shepherd," drawing a likeness from shepherds who guide sheep — the one who guides little children is thereby understood as an instructor, the attentive shepherd of infants; for infants, pictured as sheep, are simple beings. "And they shall become," he says, "one single flock, and one shepherd." The Word, then, rightly bears the name Instructor, since he guides us, who are children, toward salvation. Most clearly, indeed, the Word has declared this of himself through Hosea: "I am your instructor." Now instruction amounts to the fear of God; it is the process of learning how to serve God, a discipline directed toward knowing truth, and an upright guidance that ascends toward heaven.
Now instruction is spoken of in many senses: there is that of the one being led and learning, and that of the one leading and teaching, and thirdly the process of guidance itself, and fourthly the things taught, such as the commandments. The instruction that comes from God is a straightening unto truth for the vision of God, and a setting forth of holy deeds unto an eternal continuance. As, then, the general straightens the line of battle, providing for the safety of his hired troops, and as the pilot steers the ship, electing to preserve those sailing within it, so too the Instructor guides the children toward the saving manner of life, out of concern for our own welfare; and broadly speaking, whatever things we might justly ask God to grant us, these become ours provided we obey the Instructor. Just as a pilot will not forever give way before the winds, but will at times turn the bow against them and stand firm through entire tempests, so the Instructor refuses to give way before the winds that blow through this world, nor does he ever permit the child, like a ship, to be dashed upon a savage and licentious way of life; but lifted along by a favorable wind, the wind of truth alone, he holds most firmly to the rudders of the child—I mean his ears—until he brings the child safely into harbor in the haven of the heavens. For what is called ancestral custom among men passes away, however slowly, but the divine guidance is a possession remaining forever. They say it was Phoenix who instructed Achilles, Adrastus who instructed the sons of Croesus, Leonidas who instructed Alexander, and Nausithous who instructed Philip. But the one, Phoenix, was mad for women; the other, Adrastus, was a fugitive; Leonidas did not remove the arrogance of the Macedonian, nor did Nausithous cure the drunkenness of the man from Pella; and the Thracian Zopyrus was not able to check the licentiousness of Alcibiades, but Zopyrus was a purchased slave; and the instructor of the children of Themistocles, Sicinnus, was a lazy household servant—they say he invented dancing and the dance called sicinnis. Nor have we overlooked the so-called royal instructors among the Persians, four in number, whom the kings of Persia, choosing them by merit from among all the Persians, set over their own children; but their children learn only to shoot with the bow, and when they come of age they consort with sisters and mothers and wives, both lawful and countless concubines, like boars trained for mating. But he who instructs us is the holy God, namely Jesus — that is, the Word, serving as guide to the whole of humankind; the God who loves humanity is himself this Instructor. Somewhere the Holy Spirit speaks of him in the ode: "He provided for the people in the desert, amid the heat's thirst, in a land without water; he surrounded him, gave him instruction, and guarded him as the pupil of his eye. Just as an eagle shelters its nest and longs over its brood, spreading wide its wings, so it took them and bore them upon its pinions; the Lord by himself guided them, and no strange god stood among them." Plainly enough, I believe, Scripture reveals the Instructor by recounting his guidance. And once more, speaking as himself, he acknowledges that he is Instructor: "I am the Lord your God, who led you out of Egypt." Who else, then, holds the power to lead one in and lead one out? Surely it is the Instructor. It is he "who appeared before Abraham and told him: I am your God; walk well-pleasing before me." And, teaching him most fittingly as a trustworthy child, he says, "and you shall be blameless; and I will establish my covenant between myself and you and your offspring." Here is a fellowship of governing friendship. He appears most plainly to be the Instructor of Jacob. At any rate he says to him: "Behold, I am with you, guarding you in every way you go, and I will bring you back to this land, for I will not forsake you until I have done all that I have spoken to you." And he is said also to have wrestled with him. "Jacob was left alone," it says, "and a man wrestled with him"—the Instructor—"until morning." It was this figure who guided and bore him along, sparring alongside him and anointing Jacob the athlete for his contest against the evil one. And that the Word was the trainer together with Jacob and the Instructor of humanity, "he asked him," it says, "and said to him: Tell me your name. And he said: Why do you ask my name?" For he was reserving that fresh name for a fresh people, the people still in infancy; and the Lord God had not yet taken a name, not having yet become man. Still, "Jacob gave that place the name Vision of God, for," he says, "I beheld God directly, and my soul was preserved." Now it is the Word who is the countenance of God, through whom God is made luminous and known. It was then also that he was named Israel, when he saw God the Lord. This is God, the Word, the Instructor, who later still told him, "Have no fear about journeying down into Egypt." Notice how closely the Instructor accompanies the righteous man, and how he also coaches the wrestler, showing him the throw that fells his rival. This same one, at any rate, teaches Moses also to be an instructor; for the Lord declares: "Whoever has sinned against me, that one I will erase out of my scroll. Yet now depart, and guide this people toward the place I have described to you." Here he is a teacher of instruction; for he was truly, through Moses, the Instructor of the old people as Lord, but through himself he is the guide of the new people, face to face. "Behold," he says to Moses, "my angel goes before you," setting over them the good-news-bringing and leading power of the Word; and guarding his lordly dignity, "on the day I come to reckon with them," he says, "I will lay their sin upon them"—meaning, whichever day I take my seat in judgment, I will give them what their sins deserve; for it is one and the same figure who is both Instructor and Judge, who condemns those disobedient toward him, and the God who loves humanity does not stay silent over their wrongdoing but rebukes it, so that they might turn back; "for the Lord wills that the sinner turn from his ways rather than perish." And we, having received the sins of others by hearsay as infants, let us, through fear of the threat, refrain from the same offenses, so as not to suffer the same things. What then was their sin? "Because in their wrath they killed men, and in their desire they hamstrung a bull; cursed be their wrath."
Who then could instruct us more lovingly than he? In earlier times, then, the older people held an older covenant, and the law schooled that people through fear, with the Word acting as messenger; but to the new, youthful people a fresh, youthful covenant has been granted, the Word has taken on flesh, fear has given way to love, and that mystical messenger, Jesus, has come into being. For this same Instructor formerly said, "You shall fear the Lord your God," but to us he has urged, "You shall love the Lord your God." For this reason he also commands us, "Cease from your works"—the old sins—"learn to do good; turn away from evil and do good; you have loved righteousness, you have hated lawlessness." This is my new covenant, engraved with an old letter. The youthfulness of the Word, then, is not to be reproached. And also in Jeremiah the Lord says: "Do not say, I am too young; before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you came forth from the womb I sanctified you." This prophecy may well be pointing toward us, who were recognized by God for our faith even prior to the world's foundation, yet who count now as infants owing to God's purpose only recently brought to completion, since we have been born anew into a calling of salvation. Hence he continues, "I have appointed you a prophet unto the nations," indicating that prophesying was his task, and that being called younger should carry no shame for those termed infants. Now the law is old grace given through Moses by the Word. So Scripture likewise states: "The law came by means of Moses" (meaning not that Moses was its source but the Word, though it passed through Moses his servant, and for that reason it was also temporary in nature), "whereas the everlasting grace and the truth came into being through Jesus Christ." Note how Scripture words this: concerning the law it says merely that it "came"; but "the truth" — which is the Father's grace — stands as the everlasting achievement of the Word, and it is no longer described as merely given, but as "coming into being through Jesus, without whom nothing has come into being." Thus, at any rate, Moses, yielding prophetically to the perfect Instructor, the Word, both foretells his name and his instruction, and presents the Instructor to the people, having handed over commandments of obedience: "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet," he says, "like me, from among your brothers"—meaning Joshua the son of Nun, but hinting at Jesus the Son of God; for the name Jesus, proclaimed beforehand in the law, was a shadowy sketch of the Lord. He adds, then, counseling what is profitable for the people, saying, "You shall listen to him, and whoever does not listen to this prophet, him he threatens." Such a name of a saving Instructor he prophesies to us. For this reason prophecy also fits him with a rod, an instructive rod, a ruling rod, an authoritative rod, so that whoever the persuasive Word fails to cure, the warning might cure instead, and whoever the warning fails to cure, the rod might cure, and whoever even the rod fails to cure is consumed by fire. "There shall come forth," it says, "a rod from the root of Jesse." Consider too the solicitude, the wisdom, and the might belonging to the Instructor: "He will not render judgment by outward appearance," it says, "nor rebuke merely by what is heard, but he will judge the poor in righteousness and rebuke the earth's sinners." And through David: "The Lord has chastened and instructed me, but has not given me over to death"; for to be chastened and instructed by the Lord is a release from death. And through the same prophet he says: "You shall shepherd them with a rod of iron." Moved by this, the Apostle too, in his letter to the Corinthians, says: "What do you want? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?" And also, "The Lord shall send forth a rod of power out of Zion," he says through another prophet. And this instructive power is that of which another has said, "Your rod and your staff, they have comforted me"—this is the power of the Instructor, the solemn, the comforting, the saving power.

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter 8 ========

At this point certain people spring up who say that the Lord is not good, because of the rod and the threat and the fear, having misheard, it seems, the scripture that says somewhere "and he who fears the Lord turns to his own heart," and forgetting his greatest act of loving-kindness, that for our sake he became man. And indeed the prophet prays to him all the more familiarly through these words, "keep in mind that we are made of dust," that is, have fellow-feeling for us, since you have tested in your own experience the weakness of the flesh. In this way, then, the Lord our tutor is best and beyond reproach, having by nature had fellow-feeling for each of mankind out of an excess of loving-kindness. "For there was nothing that the Lord hates" — for surely he does not hate a thing and yet wish it to exist, that which he hates, nor does he desire a thing's nonexistence while yet being the reason it comes into being, this thing he desires should not be, nor indeed does he desire the nonexistence of something that in fact already exists. If then the Word hates anything, he wishes it not to exist; but nothing exists to which God does not supply the cause of its existing; therefore nothing is hated by God. But neither is it hated by the Word; for the two are one, God, because it is said, "in the beginning was the Word with God, and the Word was God." And if he hates none of the things that came to be through him, it remains that he loves it. Much more, then, will he love man above the rest, reasonably so, being the most beautiful of the things fashioned by him and a God-loving creature. God is therefore loving toward mankind, and the Word is therefore loving toward mankind. And one who loves a thing wishes to benefit it, and what confers benefit is surely, in each and every way, superior to what confers none, and nothing surpasses the good; the good, accordingly, confers benefit; and God is agreed to be good, therefore God benefits. And the good, insofar as it is good, does nothing else than benefit; therefore God benefits all things. And surely it is not the case that he benefits man in one respect but does not also care for him, nor that he cares for him but does not also attend to him. For that which benefits by deliberate purpose is better than that which does not benefit by deliberate purpose, and nothing is better than God. And to benefit by deliberate purpose is nothing other than to attend to man; therefore God cares for and attends to man. And this he shows in deed by acting as tutor to him through the Word, who is the genuine ally of God's loving-kindness. And to be good is not called being good by having virtue, just as justice too is called good not by having virtue (for it is itself a virtue), but by being good in itself and through itself. And in another sense, too, that which is advantageous is called good, not by giving pleasure but by benefiting. And justice is all of these: as a virtue, and as choiceworthy for its own sake it is good, and as not giving pleasure — for it does not judge to gain favor, but is apportioning to each according to worth, and the beneficial follows upon the advantageous. In every respect, then, by which the good is examined, justice too is characterized, since both share equally in the same qualities; and things characterized by the same qualities are equal to and like one another; justice therefore is good. How then, they say, if the Lord is loving toward mankind and good, does he grow angry and punish? It is necessary then to go through this matter too, as briefly as possible, since such a dispensation is somehow profitable for the correct upbringing of children, having the rank of a necessary aid. Many of the passions are cured by chastisement and by the imposition of rather severe injunctions, and indeed also through the teaching of certain doctrines. Rebuke functions, so to speak, as a cutting-therapy applied to the soul's disordered impulses, and these impulses mark a wandering away from truth, which must be exposed by cutting them apart with the scalpel. Reproach is like a medicine, dissolving the calluses of the passions and cleansing the filth of life, the lusts, and moreover leveling the excess flesh of arrogance, restoring the man to health and truth. Admonition, then, is as it were a regimen for a sick soul, of which one must partake through counsel what is advantageous and abstain through prohibition from what is not; and all of it tends toward salvation and everlasting health. But even the general, when he inflicts fines of money and punishments extending to the very bodies of wrongdoers, with chains and utter dishonor, and sometimes even punishes some with death, has the good as his end, for the sake of admonishing the soldiers under his command. In the same way our great general, the Word who governs all things, admonishing those who rebel against his own law, for the sake of releasing them from slavery and error and captivity to the adversary, in order to restrain the passions of the soul, leads them peaceably to the sacred harmony of the commonwealth.
Just as, then, the hortatory and exhortative type stands alongside the deliberative speech, so too the reproachful and reviling type stands alongside the encomiastic. And this type is the art of blame, and blame is a mark of goodwill, not of hatred. For both the friend and the one who is not a friend reproach, but the enemy does so mocking, the friend doing so out of goodwill. It is not, then, out of hatred that the Lord reviles men, whom, though it were in his power to destroy them for their own faults, he instead suffered on their behalf. For being a good tutor, he very skillfully insinuates blame through reviling, as it were rousing the sluggishness of the mind with the whip of harsh speech, and again in turn attempts to exhort the same people. For those whom praise did not exhort, blame provoked, and those whom blame did not call forth to salvation, like the dead, harsh speech rouses to the truth. "For stripes and discipline are wisdom at every season, gluing together a broken shard and teaching a fool," bringing the earthy man to perception, he says, and sharpening the despairing man to understanding. For this reason he added clearly: "rousing one asleep out of deep sleep," which most of all resembles death. And indeed the Lord himself declares most plainly concerning himself, allegorizing his manifold and highly beneficial treatment, when he said, "I myself am the genuine vine, and my father tends the vineyard," and then added again, "every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every one that bears fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit." For the vine runs wild with unchecked growth if it is not pruned, and so too does man; and the Word, the pruning-knife, cuts away his rampant shoots, compelling him to bear fruit rather than to indulge desire. And rebuke of sinners has salvation as its aim, the Word being harmonized musically according to each person's own disposition, at one time intensifying, at another relaxing. Most plainly, then, it is said through Moses: "take courage, for God has come in order to test you, that his fear may be in you, so that you may not sin." From this Plato too learned well and says, "for all who pay the penalty truly suffer good things; for they benefit by their souls becoming better when justly punished." And if, even according to Plato, those who are corrected suffer good things at the hands of what is just, it is agreed that the just is good. Indeed fear itself benefits and has been devised for the good of men, because "the spirit that fears the Lord shall live; for its hope is in him who saves it." And this same Word, in imposing punishment, is a judge, concerning whom Isaiah also says, "the Lord delivered him up to our sins," that is, plainly, as one correcting and setting straight our sins. For this reason he alone is able to forgive transgressions, having been appointed our tutor by the Father of all, alone able to distinguish disobedience from obedience. And one who threatens plainly wishes to do no evil, nor to carry out the very things he threatens; but by instilling fear he has checked the onrush toward sins and shows his loving-kindness, still delaying and making plain what sort of things they will suffer if they remain sinners, rather than striking at once like a snake that has fastened its bite. God is therefore good. And indeed the Lord makes much use of word before deed. "For my arrows," he says, "shall make an end of them; they shall waste away with hunger and be devoured by birds, and incurable convulsion; I will send against them the teeth of wild beasts, with the fury of things that crawl upon the earth; from without the sword shall bereave them of children, and from their chambers, terror." So that the divine does not grow angry, as it has seemed to some, but most things are only threatened, while in all of it he has counseled mankind and shown what course to follow. And it is a worthy skill, this instilling of fear so that we may avoid sin; "for reverence toward the Lord drives sin away, and whoever lacks that reverence cannot be declared upright," as the passage puts it. And God's punishing is never a matter of anger, but has regard for justice, since it is not advantageous for justice to be set aside for our sake. And each of us chooses his own punishments, sinning of his own will; "the cause lies with the one who chooses; God is blameless." "And if our injustice establishes God's righteousness, what shall we say? Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? By no means." He says, then, by way of warning: "I will whet my blade to a keen edge, and my hand shall lay hold on justice; I will pay back my foes and repay those who bear me hatred; my shafts I will drench in blood, and my blade shall consume flesh, along with the gore of the fallen." Here it is plain that whoever bears no hostility toward the truth, and holds no hatred for the Word, would never work against their own deliverance, and so would be spared the penalties that hostility brings. "The wreath granted by wisdom, then," as wisdom herself puts it, "is reverence for the Lord." Most plainly, then, the Word has revealed his own dispensation through the prophet Amos, saying, "I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became as a brand plucked from the fire, and not even so did you return to me, says the Lord." See how God, out of love of the good, seeks repentance, and quietly shows his own loving-kindness even amid the dispensation of the threat. "I will turn my face away from them," he says, "and I will reveal what will come of them." For wherever the Lord's countenance rests, peace and gladness follow, but wherever it withdraws, there wickedness slips in. He does not wish, then, to look upon evils, for he is good; and when he willingly looks away, human nature, through unbelief, comes to possess wickedness. "Behold, then," says Paul, "the kindness and severity of God: upon those who fell, severity, but upon you, kindness, if you continue in his kindness," that is, in faith toward Christ. And hatred of evil follows upon the good, insofar as he is good by nature. Therefore I would agree that he does punish the unbelieving (for punishment is for the good and benefit of the one punished, being a correction of one who resists), but that he does not wish to take vengeance. For vengeance is a repayment of evil directed toward the advantage of the avenger. And he who teaches us to pray for those who mistreat us would not desire to take vengeance.
But that God is good, even unwillingly, all men confess; and that this same God is also just, I need adduce no further arguments, having set down the evangelical voice of the Lord itself; for he declares his own oneness: "that all of them may be one, just as you, Father, dwell in me and I in you, so that they too may exist as one within us, in order that the world may come to believe that you have sent me. And the glory you gave to me I have given to them, so that they may be one, just as we ourselves are one; I within them and you within me, so that they may be brought to completeness as one"; and God is one, and stands beyond that one, and above the monad itself. Therefore the word "you," bearing demonstrative force, points to the one who by himself genuinely exists, who existed, exists now, and shall exist, and shows him to be God, for whom, though there are three tenses, one name is set: "the one who is." And that this same God, who alone is, is also just, the Lord will himself bear witness in that same gospel, saying: "Father, those whom you have given me, I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may behold my glory which you have given me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, and the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these have known that you sent me; and I have made known to them your name, and will make it known." This is he "who renders the sins of the fathers upon the children, to those who hate, and shows mercy to those who love." For he who sets some on the right hand and some on the left, insofar as he is understood as Father, being good, is called by that alone which he is, good; but insofar as he is understood as Son, the Word being in the Father, he is called just, from the mutual relation of love, † a name measured by equality of power. "He shall judge a man," it says, "according to his works," God having made known to us Jesus as the face of a good balance, through whom, as by an evenly weighted scale, we have come to know God also. On this point Wisdom too states plainly, "compassion and anger both belong to him"; for he alone holds mastery over each: "a powerful one who grants pardon, yet pours out fury; matching the vastness of his compassion is likewise his correction"; since both compassion and correction aim at rescuing the ones corrected. And indeed that he, "who is God and Father to our Lord Jesus," is himself good, that very Word will once more attest, "that he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked," and moreover, saying "become compassionate, as your Father is compassionate," and yet also, when he says outright, "no one is good except my Father who is in the heavens"; and again on these matters he says, "my Father causes his sun to rise and shine on everyone."
It should be noted here that he acknowledges his own Father as both good and as maker of the world, and no one questions that the maker is just. And again he says, "my Father makes it rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike." And insofar as he sends rain, he is the maker of waters and clouds, and insofar as he does so upon all alike, he distributes justly and in equal measure † of virtue, but insofar as he is good, he does so upon the just and the unjust alike. Most plainly, then, we reason that there is one and the same God, somewhat as follows: because "I will gaze upon the heavens, that work of your fingers," and "the maker of the skies has his home within them," and "heaven serves as your throne," so sang the Holy Spirit; and the Lord, in the prayer, says "our Father, present in the heavens"; and the skies belong to the one who fashioned the world; it cannot be denied, then, that the Lord is offspring of the Maker. And since everyone acknowledges the Maker to be just, and the Lord is offspring of the Maker, the Lord must therefore be offspring of the just one. For this reason Paul too says, "but now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been manifested," and again, that you may the more take it to mean God, "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, unto all who believe; for there is no distinction," and moreover, bearing witness to the truth, adds a little after, "in the forbearance of God, for the demonstration that he is just and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus." And knowing that the just is good, he plainly states elsewhere, "with the result that the law is sacred, and its commandment sacred, righteous, and good," placing both titles under one and the same power. But also, "no one knows except his Father"; the same, then, is his Father, being one, made known through many powers; and this was the meaning of "no one has known the Father," who was all things, before the Son came; so that it becomes manifest in truth that of all things there is one God alone, who is good, just, creator, Son in Father, to whom be glory forever, amen.
But neither is it foreign to the saving word to rebuke with solicitous care. For indeed this too is a remedy of divine love of humanity, from which the blush of shame flowers forth and a sense of disgrace at sinning steals in. For if one must find fault, and rebuke is necessary, it is then the fitting occasion to wound the soul that has grown callous — not mortally, but savingly — gaining, at the cost of a little pain, an eternal deliverance from death. Great is the wisdom shown in his tutelage, and manifold is the manner of his providential ordering toward salvation. For the Educator bears witness on behalf of the good, and he calls forth those who are called to what is better, and turns aside from their impulse those who hasten to do wrong, and exhorts them to change over to a better life. For neither of these is without its testimony, the one bearing witness to the other; and the grace arising from such testimony is greatest, but also the passionate quality of his anger — if indeed one must call his admonition anger — is a mark of love for humanity, since it is for humanity's sake that God stoops even to such feelings — it is on that same account that the divine Word took on human flesh.

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter 9 ========

With all his strength, then, the educator of humanity, our divine Word, employing every device of wisdom, has undertaken to save the infants, admonishing, censuring, rebuking, refuting, threatening, healing, promising, showing favor, "binding" the irrational impulses of humanity "as it were with many bridles." To sum it up: the Lord acts toward us as we act toward our own children. "Do you have children? Discipline them," wisdom exhorts, "and bend them from their youth. Do you have daughters? Watch over their bodies, and do not brighten your face toward them." And yet we love our children, sons and daughters, exceedingly and beyond all else. But since those who court favor love little what does not grieve them, while those who press hard for benefit, even if painful for the moment, do good for the age to come, the Lord had regard not for present pleasure but for the delight that is to come. Let us now go on to consider the manner of his loving-kindly education, together with prophetic testimony.
Admonition, then, is censure exercised out of care, productive of understanding. Such is the educator when he admonishes, as also in the gospel where he says, "How often I wished to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing." And again scripture admonishes, saying, "they committed adultery with wood and stone, and offered incense to Baal." For it is the greatest proof of his loving-kindness that, although he clearly knew the shamelessness of the people who had kicked and bolted away, he nevertheless calls them to repentance and declares through Ezekiel, "Son of man, you live surrounded by scorpions; even so, speak to them, in case they will listen." And likewise to Moses he says, "Go, tell Pharaoh to let my people depart, even though I already know he will refuse to let them go." For this shows both things at once: the divine foreknowledge of what will happen, and his loving-kindness in granting, to the soul's free will, occasions for repentance. He also admonishes through Isaiah, caring for the people, when he declares, "This people draws near me only with their mouths, while their hearts stay far away from me" (this is reproving censure) — "and their worship of me is empty, teaching human commandments as if they were doctrines." Here his care, having exposed the sin, shows salvation set alongside it.
Rebuke is censure that turns people from shameful things toward the good, by making them feel at home with the good. This he shows through Jeremiah: "They became stallions mad for females, each neighing after his neighbor's wife. Shall I not punish them for these things? says the Lord; or shall my soul not take vengeance on such a people?" And throughout he interweaves dread, since "reverence toward the Lord constitutes the origin of understanding." And again through Hosea he says, "I will not punish them, because they mingled themselves with harlots and sacrificed with the consecrated ones, and the people who understood entangled themselves with a harlot." He shows their sin more plainly by admitting that they understood, as sinning willingly. And understanding is the eye of the soul. Hence Israel is "the one who sees God," that is, the one who understands God.
Blame is censure directed at those who are careless or negligent. He has used this manner of education through Isaiah, saying, "Listen, O heaven, and pay heed, O earth, for the Lord himself has spoken: I have begotten sons and exalted them, but they have rejected me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's manger, but Israel has not known me." For is it not terrible if the one who has known God will not know the Lord, while the ox and the donkey, sluggish and foolish animals, will know the one who feeds them, but Israel will be found more irrational even than these? And through Jeremiah, after blaming the people at length, he adds, "and they abandoned me, says the Lord."
Reprimand is a rebuke that strikes, or censure that wounds; the educator has used this treatment too, through Isaiah, saying, "Woe, rebellious children, thus says the Lord: you have made counsel not through me, and covenants not through my spirit." With this very harsh astringent he continually applies fear, at once opening up and turning the people back through it toward salvation, just as dyed wool likes to be treated with an astringent beforehand, to be made ready for a firm reception of the dye.
Refutation is the bringing forward of sin into full view. He resorts to this most of all, as a necessary manner of education, because of the laxity of the faith of the many. For he says through Isaiah, "You have forsaken the Lord and stirred the Holy One of Israel to wrath." And he says through Jeremiah, "The heavens were amazed at this, and the earth trembled greatly, because this people has committed two evil things: they abandoned me, a fountain of living water, and dug for themselves broken cisterns that cannot hold water." And again through the same: "Jerusalem has sinned a sin; therefore she has become a thing tossed about; all who glorified her have dishonored her, because they have seen her shame." And, softening the severity and sharpness of the refutation through Solomon, he speaks alluding, by what is left unsaid, to the child-loving character of his education: "My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord, nor grow faint when refuted by him; for whom the Lord loves he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives," because "a sinful man turns away from refutation." Accordingly scripture says, "Let the righteous man reprove me, and correct me; but do not let the sinner's oil anoint my head."
Instructing-the-mind is censure that produces understanding. Nor has he abstained from this manner of education, but through Jeremiah he says, "How long shall I cry out and they not listen? Behold, their ears are uncircumcised." O the blessed forbearance! And again through the same: "Every nation remains uncircumcised, yet this people is uncircumcised at heart." "Because it is a disobedient people, sons," he says, "in whom there is no faith."
Visitation is a severe rebuke. He has used this form in the gospel: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her." And the doubling of the name has made the rebuke forceful. For how does the one who knows God persecute the servants of God? For this reason he says, "Your house is left to you desolate; for I tell you, you will not see me from now on, until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the Lord's name." Should you refuse his loving-kindness, you will instead come to experience his authority.
Reviling is intensified censure. He has employed reviling in the manner of a medicine, through Isaiah, saying, "Woe, nation steeped in sin, children of lawlessness, a people laden with wrongdoing, wicked brood," and in the gospel through John he says, "Serpents, offspring of vipers."
Accusation is censure of those who do wrong. This form of education he has used through David, saying, "A people whom I did not know served me, and obeyed me at the hearing of the ear; foreign sons lied to me and went lame from their paths," and through Jeremiah: "and I gave her a bill of divorce, and faithless Judah was not afraid," and again: "and the house of Israel acted treacherously toward me, and the house of Judah deceived the Lord."
Grumbling-complaint is censure delivered covertly, arranging salvation, with skillful help, under a veil. He has used it through Jeremiah: "How the city that was full of peoples sits alone! She has become like a widow; she who ruled over lands has become tributary; weeping she wept in the night."
Mockery is derisive censure. This remedy too the divine educator has used through Jeremiah, saying, "You have become like the face of a harlot; you have grown shameless before everyone. Have you not called me house, and father, and prince of your virginity?" and "a beautiful and charming harlot, a mistress of sorceries." Having very skillfully outraged the virgin with the name of harlotry, he then calls her back again, turning her toward modesty.
Indignant-reproach is lawful censure, or censure of those who exalt the †ways beyond what is fitting. With this he educated through Moses, saying, "Blameworthy children, a crooked and perverse generation, is this how you repay the Lord? This is a foolish people and not wise. Is he not this same father who acquired you?" And through Isaiah he says, "Your rulers are disobedient, companions of thieves, loving gifts, pursuing recompense, not judging for orphans."
In general, the whole art concerning fear of him is a fountain of salvation, and it belongs to goodness to bring salvation: "The Lord's mercy is upon all flesh; refuting and disciplining and teaching as a shepherd his flock. He has mercy on those who accept discipline, and on those who press eagerly to cling to him"; and by this guidance "he preserved six hundred thousand foot-soldiers, gathered together in the hardness of heart they then had, scourging, showing mercy, striking, healing, in compassion and discipline." "For according to his great mercy, so also is his refutation." For it is good not to sin, but it is also good, having sinned, to repent, just as it is best always to be healthy, but it is also good to recover from sickness. For this reason it is enjoined too through Solomon: "Strike your son with the rod, but rescue his soul from death." And again: "Do not hold back from disciplining a child. Discipline him using the rod, and he will not perish."
For refutation and reprimand, as indeed the very name hints, are blows to the soul, bringing sins to their senses and warding off death, and leading toward self-control those being carried away into licentiousness. For this reason Plato too, knowing refutation to be the greatest power of correction and the most sovereign purification, wishes, consistently with reason, that the man who is impure in the greatest matters should be shown to be uneducated and shameful precisely because he is unrefuted — since it was fitting that the one who was truly to become happy should be the purest and most beautiful. For if "those who rule bring no fear to good behavior," how shall God, who is good by nature, be a terror to the one who does not sin? "But if you do evil, be afraid," as the apostle says. For this reason the apostle himself continually applies astringency to the churches, after the image of the Lord, and, aware both of his own frankness and of the weakness of his hearers, says to the Galatians, "Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?" And just as the healthy have no need of a physician, insofar as they are strong, while the sick require his art, so too we, who are sick in life with regard to disgraceful desires, and with regard to blameworthy lack of self-control, and with regard to the other inflammations of the passions, need the Savior; and he applies not only mild medicines, but also astringent ones. At any rate the bitter roots of fear check the spread of sins; hence fear, even if bitter, is salutary. Reasonably, then, we who are sick need a savior, and we who have wandered need one to guide us, and the blind need one to bring the light, and the thirsty need the spring of living water, from which those who partake will thirst no more, and the dead need life, and the sheep need a shepherd, and the children need an educator — indeed all humanity needs Jesus, so that we may not, undisciplined and sinful, fall into final condemnation, but may be separated out from the chaff and gathered into the Father's storehouse; for the winnowing fan is in the hand of the Lord, by which the chaff owed to the fire is sorted apart from the wheat. And it is possible, if you wish, to learn the utmost wisdom of the all-holy shepherd and educator, the almighty and paternal Word, where he allegorizes, calling himself the shepherd of sheep; and he is the educator of infants. He says, then, through Ezekiel, addressing the elders and setting before them a saving pattern of reasonable care: "and I will bind up the lame, and heal the afflicted, and turn back the wandering, and I will pasture them upon my holy mountain." These are the promises of a good shepherd: feed us, the infants, as sheep. Yes, Master, fill us with your pasture, your righteousness; yes, Educator, shepherd us to your holy mountain, to the church that is exalted, that towers above the clouds, that touches the heavens. "And I myself," he declares, "will become their shepherd, and I will stay close beside them," like a garment next to their skin; he desires to preserve my flesh, by clothing it in the garment of incorruption, and he has anointed my skin. "They will call upon me," he declares, "and I will answer: Here I am." You responded before I even hoped for it, Master. "And should they pass over, they will not stumble, says the Lord." For we who pass over into incorruption will not fall into corruption, because he himself will hold us fast; for he himself said it and he himself willed it.
Such is our educator, good by right. "I came," he says, "not to be served, but to serve." For this reason he is introduced in the gospel as growing weary, he who labors on our behalf, and promising "to give his own soul as a ransom for many." For this alone he acknowledges makes one a good shepherd; great, then, is the giver who gives up the greatest thing for us, his own soul, and greatly beneficial and loving of humanity, in that, though it was within his power to be Lord, he wished to be brother to men; and he is so good that he is even willing to die on our behalf. But his righteousness too cries out: "If you come to me uprightly, I too will be upright toward you; if you walk crookedly, I too will be crooked, says the Lord of hosts," hinting that the rebukes of sinners are crooked paths. For the straight path, and the one according to nature, which the iota of Jesus hints at, is his goodness, unmoved and unswerving toward those who have believed out of obedience. "Since I called and you did not obey, says the Lord, but you set at nought my counsels, and did not attend to my reproofs." Thus the Lord's refutation is most beneficial. Concerning these things he also says through David: "A crooked, embittering generation, a generation whose heart was not set rightly, and whose spirit remained unfaithful toward God. They did not keep the covenant of God, and were not willing to walk in his law." These are the causes of the provocation, on account of which the judge comes to bring judgment upon those who were unwilling to choose the good life. For this reason a harsher treatment has been brought to bear on them from this point, in case he might somehow check their impulse toward death. He states, then, through David, the clearest cause of the threat: "They did not believe in his wonders. When he was slaying them, they sought him out, and returned, and rose early to seek God, and recalled that God had been their helper, and that God Most High was their redeemer." Thus he knows that they turn back only through fear, having despised his loving-kindness. For the good, as it is ever kindly disposed, tends for the most part to be disregarded, but it is attended to when it reminds, by the fear proper to righteousness, of loving-kindness. Now fear is of two kinds: the one arises with reverence, which citizens use toward good rulers, and we toward God, just as self-controlled children use it toward their fathers — "for an untamed horse," it says, "turns out stubborn, and a son let loose turns out headstrong"; the other kind of fear arises with hatred, which slaves use toward harsh masters, and which the Hebrews used, having made God a master, not a father. But by far, I think, and altogether, the voluntary and deliberate approach to piety differs from the one done under compulsion. "For he himself," it says, "is compassionate; he will heal their sins and not destroy them; and he will many times turn away his wrath, and will not kindle the whole of his anger." See how the justice of the educator is displayed in his rebukes, and the goodness of God in his acts of compassion. For this reason David, that is, the spirit that speaks through him, embracing both together, sings of the same God: "Righteousness and judgment are the preparation of your throne; mercy and truth shall go before your face." He acknowledges that judging and doing good both belong to one and the same power; for the authority for both belongs at once, the judgment of righteousness that distinguishes opposites. And the same one is both righteous and good, the one who truly is God, who himself is all things and who is himself all things, because he himself is God, the only God. For just as a mirror is no evil to the ugly man, because it shows him what he is, and just as the physician who announces the fever is no evil to the one who is sick (for it is not the physician who causes the fever, but rather he who reveals it), so too the one who refutes is not ill-disposed toward the soul that is ailing; for he does not implant the offenses, but exposes the sins already present, so as to turn one away from like practices. So then God is good on his own account, but righteous already for our sake, and this too because he is good. And his righteousness is shown to us through his own Word, from that source above, from where he became Father. For prior to becoming creator, he already was God; he was good, and it was for this reason he chose to be both craftsman and father; and the disposition of that love became the beginning of righteousness, in causing his own sun to shine and sending down his own Son; and this one first proclaimed the good righteousness from the heavens, saying, "No one has known the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son." This mutually balancing knowledge is, in equal measure, a symbol of ancient righteousness. Thereafter righteousness has descended upon men both in writing and in bodily form, through the Word and through the Law, forcing humanity, for its salvation, toward repentance; for it was good. But you do not obey God; then blame yourself, for it is you who draws the judge upon yourself.

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter 10 ========

If, then, we have shown that the arrangement concerning the checking of humanity, being good and salutary, is necessarily undertaken by the Word both for repentance and for the restraining of sins, and has proved fitting for these ends, it would next be proper to consider the gentle side of the Word. For he has been shown to be just, and he sets forth his own counsels that exhort us toward salvation, through which, following the Father's own purpose, he desires that both what is noble and what is advantageous become known to us. Consider this: the noble belongs to the encomiastic mode, the beneficial to the advisory mode. For indeed the advisory mode has as its province the exhortative and the dissuasive, while the encomiastic has the praising and the blaming. For in what state of mind the advisory faculty becomes exhortative, and in what state dissuasive; likewise also in what state the encomiastic faculty becomes blaming, and in what state praising — these are the very matters with which the just Instructor, aiming at our benefit, is especially occupied. But the blaming and dissuasive kind has already been shown to us before; now, in turn, we must handle the exhortative and the praising, and, as on a balance, let us weigh out the equally-poised scale-pans of justice.
To the exhortation toward what is beneficial, then, the Instructor makes use, through Solomon, of words something like these: "I call upon you, O men, and I send forth my voice to the sons of men; hearken to me, for I will speak solemn things," and so on. And he counsels the things that lead to salvation, since counsel is fit for both choosing and avoiding, just as he does through David, saying, "Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat among the seats of the scornful, but whose delight rests in the Lord's instruction." And counsel has three parts: one that takes its examples from past times, such as what the Hebrews suffered for worshiping the golden calf as an idol, and what they suffered for fornicating, and the like; another that is discerned from present times, grasped as it were by perception, as when it was said to those who questioned the Lord, "Are you the one who comes, or must we watch for someone else?" — "Return and report to John: sight comes to those without it, hearing to the deaf, cleansing to lepers, the dead stand up alive, and fortunate is whoever finds no stumbling-block in me." This, then, was what David spoke prophetically when he said, "As we have heard, so also have we seen." And from the things to come is constituted the third part of counsel, by which he bids us to guard against what will result; whence also that saying: "But those who fall into sins will be thrown into the darkness outside, where there is lamenting and the grinding together of teeth," among other such sayings — making it evident from all this that the Lord, proceeding through every kind of therapy, is calling humanity to salvation. And by consolation he soothes our sins, at once diminishing desire and giving hope of salvation. For he says through Ezekiel: "Should you return with the whole of your heart and cry, Father, I shall listen to you as though to a consecrated nation." And elsewhere he declares: "Come toward me, everyone toiling and weighed down with burdens, and rest shall be given to you," together with what continues after, which the Lord speaks in his own person. Most plainly he calls to goodness through Solomon, saying: "Blessed is the man who has found wisdom, and the mortal who has found understanding." For the good is found by the one who seeks, and loves to be seen by the one who finds it. Indeed, through Jeremiah too he expounds understanding, saying, "We are blessed, O Israel, because the things that are pleasing to God are known to us" — known through the Word, on account of whom we are blessed and understanding. For understanding is knowledge, as is signified through the same prophet, saying, "Hear, O Israel, the commandments of life; give ear to know understanding." And through Moses he further promises a gift, on account of the loving-kindness that belongs to him, to those who hasten toward salvation. For thus he speaks: "And I shall lead you into the fine land the Lord promised by oath to your forebears"; and again, elsewhere, "And I shall lead you onto my sacred mountain and cause you to rejoice," as he declares through Isaiah.
There is also another kind of his instructing, the beatitude. And "fortunate is that man," as he declares through David, "who has committed no sin, for he will resemble a tree set beside flowing streams, which shall yield its fruit in its season, and its leaf shall not fall" (this he darkly hinted also at the resurrection) "and whatsoever he does shall prosper for him." Such does he wish us to become, that we may be blessed. Conversely, showing the opposite pan of the scale of justice, "but not so," he says, "are the ungodly, not so, but rather like husks that a gust scatters off the surface of the ground." Having shown the penalty of sinners and how easily dispersed and windborne they are, the Instructor turned us away from the cause by means of the rebuke, and by holding out the punishment they deserve, he displayed the beneficence of his kindness, most skillfully leading us to the use and possession of noble things through these noble words. Indeed, he also calls us to knowledge, saying through Jeremiah: "If you had walked in the way of God, you would have dwelt in peace forever." For by showing here the reward of knowledge, he summons the wise to love it, and, granting pardon to the one who has strayed, he says, "Turn back, turn back, as the dove to its own dovecote." Do you see the goodness of justice as it counsels repentance? Further, through Jeremiah he sheds light on the truth for those who have gone astray: "So speaks the Lord: Stand at the crossroads and look, and inquire after the age-old tracks belonging to the Lord — that is the worthy road; walk upon it, and you will discover cleansing for your souls." And he leads to repentance for the sake of our salvation. Therefore he says: "If you repent, the Lord will thoroughly cleanse your heart and the heart of your offspring." Now it would have been possible for us to draw upon philosophers as advocates for this inquiry, who say that only the perfect is praiseworthy, and that the base alone is blameworthy. But since some slander the beatitude, as though it were something that troubles no one, neither itself nor anyone to whom it is given, failing to understand its loving-kindness, it is on account of these, and also on account of those who still do not attach the just to the good, that this argument has been declined by us. For it would follow for us to say that the reproving and blaming kind of instruction is fitting for humankind, since they say all men are base; but God alone is wise, from whom wisdom comes, and he alone is perfect, and therefore he alone is praiseworthy. But I do not employ this reasoning; rather I say that praise or blame, or something resembling praise and blame, are of all things the most necessary remedies for human beings. Those, then, who are hard to heal, like iron by fire and hammer and anvil — that is, by threat, refutation, and rebuke — are driven along; but those who hold fast to faith itself, being as it were self-taught and acting by choice, grow through praise; for virtue, when praised, grows like a tree. And it seems to me that Pythagoras of Samos, understanding this, gives the precept: having done cowardly things, be rebuked; but in good things, take delight. Now to rebuke is also called admonishing, and the word is derived etymologically — admonition (nouthesia) being the implanting of mind (nous) — so that the reproving kind is a means of acquiring understanding. But indeed countless precepts besides have been devised for the acquisition of good things and the avoidance of evil: "For there is no peace for the ungodly, says the Lord." On this account he bids the simple, through Solomon, to be on guard: "My son, let not sinners lead you astray, nor go with them in their ways, nor go if they urge you, saying: Come with us, share in innocent blood, let us hide the righteous man in the earth unjustly, let us make him vanish as Hades does the living." This, indeed, is also prophesied concerning the Lord's Passion. And through Ezekiel too the commandments are laid down as life: "The soul that sins shall die. But the man who is righteous, who does justice, shall not eat upon the mountains, and has not raised his gaze toward the idols belonging to Israel's house, and has not violated his neighbor's wife, and has not approached a woman in her separation, and has not oppressed any man, but has restored the pledge of the debtor and has not seized plunder, has given his bread to the hungry and has covered the naked with a garment, has not given his silver at interest and has not taken increase, and has turned back his hand from injustice, and has executed true judgment between a man and his neighbor, has followed my decrees and observed my judgments so as to carry them out — such a man is righteous; he will certainly live, declares the Lord." These things contain a sketch of Christian citizenship, and a notable exhortation to a blessed life, the prize of good living, life eternal.

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter 11 ========

The character of his love for mankind and of his tutelage has now been shown to us as far as was possible. Wherefore, most beautifully explaining himself, he compared himself to "a mustard seed," hinting darkly, through its sharpness, at the fruitfulness in spirit of the seed once cast down, and the vigor joined to the vast expansion of its rational power, and further the biting and cleansing power of rebuke, are all beneficial. From so small a grain, then—understood allegorically—he bestows on the whole of humankind something exceedingly great: salvation. Now honey, though it is the sweetest thing, is productive of bile, just as the good produces contempt, which indeed is the cause of sinning; but mustard both diminishes bile, that is, anger, and cuts through phlegm, that is, conceit; and from this word the soul's true health and its everlasting good temper result. Long ago, then, the Word was tutor through Moses, and afterward also through the prophets; and Moses himself likewise held the prophet's office, since the law amounts to the schooling given unruly children. "When they were filled," it says, "they rose up to play"—calling the irrational fullness of food a mere feeding, not a meal. And since, having been irrationally sated, they played irrationally, for this reason both the law and fear followed upon them, to check their sins and urge them toward right conduct, fitting them for obedience to the true tutor—that is, docility—being one and the same Word adapted to what was urgently needed. For Paul says that "the law was given as a tutor unto Christ," so that from this it becomes plainly evident that there is one alone who is true, good, just, the Son Jesus made after the image and likeness of the Father, the Word of God, who is our tutor, to whom God has handed us over, the way a loving father entrusts his own children to a genuine tutor, plainly declaring to us: "This one is my beloved Son; listen to him." Trustworthy is the divine tutor, adorned with the three fairest qualities: knowledge, goodwill, and frankness of speech. In knowledge, because he is the Father's wisdom—"every kind of wisdom comes from the Lord, remaining beside him for all ages"; in frankness of speech, because he is God and maker of all—"since everything came into being by his agency, and apart from him nothing whatsoever came to be"; in goodwill, because he alone gave himself up as a sacrificial victim on our behalf—"for the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep," and indeed he laid it down. And goodwill is nothing other than the wish for what is good for one's neighbor, for that neighbor's own sake.

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter 12 ========

Now that these things have already been dealt with, it would follow next that we sketch out for ourselves the true life of our Educator, Jesus, and show how he educates the man who is in Christ. His characteristic manner is neither excessively fearsome nor altogether slack through mere kindliness. He gives commandments and at the same time shapes them in such a way that we are able to carry them out. And it seems to me that this same one both shaped man from clay, gave him new birth through water, caused his growth through the Spirit, and instructed him through the word, leading him toward adoption as a son and toward salvation by holy commandments, so that, having reshaped the earth-born man by advancement into a holy and heavenly man, he might most fully accomplish that divine utterance: "Let us make man according to our image and likeness." And indeed Christ has become this in full, which God spoke, while the other man is understood as bearing only the image. But we, O children of a good Father, nurslings of a good Educator, let us fulfill the Father's will, let us listen to the Word, and let us truly copy in ourselves the saving life of our Savior; from here already meditating on the heavenly citizenship by which we are deified, let us anoint ourselves with the ever-blooming and unfading fragrance of gladness, having as our clear model of incorruptibility the Lord's manner of life, and pursuing the footsteps of God—him alone it befits to consider and to care how and in what way the life of men might become healthier. But he also prepares us, for the sufficiency of life and its freedom from excess, and further for a lightly-girded and readily loosed traveler's readiness unto the eternity of well-being, teaching each of us to be his own storehouse. "Do not be anxious," he says, "about tomorrow," meaning that the one enrolled to Christ ought to take up a life that is self-sufficient, self-serving, and moreover lived a day at a time. For we are not being educated for war, but for peace. War indeed requires much preparation, and luxury needs abundance; but peace and love, simple and unbusied sisters, need neither weapons nor extravagant provision—their nourishment is the Word, the Word who has been allotted the office of guiding and instructing, from whom we thoroughly learn frugality and freedom from pride, and altogether love of freedom and love of humanity and love of the beautiful—in a word, being made like to God through kinship of virtue. But labor on and do not grow weary; for you will become such as you do not hope and could not even imagine. And just as there is one training proper to philosophers, another to orators, and another to wrestlers, so too there is a noble disposition, fitted to a purpose that loves the beautiful, arising from the education of Christ; and women trained in its practice are distinguished, in their dignified way of walking and reclining and eating and sleeping and lying down and diet and the rest of their conduct—for such training in the Word is not overstrained, but well-tuned. It is for this reason that the Word has also been called Savior, he who has discovered for men these rational remedies for right perception and salvation, watching for the opportune moment, exposing the harm, explaining the causes of the passions, cutting out the roots of irrational desires, commanding what must be abstained from, and offering to the sick all the antidotes of salvation; for this is the greatest and most kingly work of God, to save mankind. Now the sick are not annoyed with a physician who gives them no advice toward health; but toward the divine Educator, who neither keeps silent nor passes over in negligence the acts of disobedience that lead to destruction, but rather exposes them and checks the impulses that strain toward them and thoroughly teaches the counsels befitting right conduct—how should we not acknowledge the greatest gratitude? The greatest gratitude, then, must be acknowledged to him. For the rational creature—I mean man—do we say he needs anything other than to behold the divine? And I say that human nature must also behold and live as truth guides it, admiring beyond measure both the Educator himself and his commandments, seeing how fitting and harmonious they are to one another; according to which image we too must fit ourselves to the Educator, making our word harmonious with our deeds, and so in reality live.

======== Paedagogus — Book 1, Chapter 13 ========

Everything that goes against right reason is sin. Certainly the philosophers see fit to define the most generic passions somewhat as follows: desire is an appetite disobedient to reason; fear is an aversion disobedient to reason; pleasure is an elevation of soul disobedient to reason; grief is a contraction of soul disobedient to reason. If, then, disobedience to reason is generative of sin, how could it not be, of necessity, that obedience to reason — which we call faith — is productive of what is called "duty"? For virtue itself is a disposition of soul in harmony with reason for the whole of life. Indeed, philosophy's very own crowning feature is that they render it the practice of rightness of reason, so that everything done amiss is of necessity produced through failure of reason, and is fittingly called a sin. Certainly, when the first man sinned and disobeyed God, "man was compared," it says, "to the beasts," having sinned against reason; fittingly, being reckoned irrational, he is likened to beasts. Hence too Wisdom says: "a horse to the mounting is the lover of pleasure and the adulterer," compared to an irrational beast, and so it adds: "he neighs beneath whoever sits upon him." No longer, it says, does the man speak; for he who sins against reason is no longer rational, but indeed an irrational beast, given over to desires, upon which all pleasures sit. Now what is set right in accordance with obedience to reason the children of the Stoics name "the fitting" and "the duty": the duty, then, is the fitting, and obedience is founded upon commandments; and these, being the same as the precepts and having truth as their aim, lead by pedagogy toward that final object of desire which is conceived as the end; and the end of piety is the eternal rest in God, and our end is the beginning of eternity. The right accomplishment of piety, however, fulfills its duty through works; hence duties are fittingly constituted with regard to actions, not to words; and action is the activity of the Christian's rational soul, carried out according to a noble judgment and desire of truth through the body, its congenital co-worker; while duty is the consequent single will toward God and Christ in life, brought to rightness by eternal life. For indeed the life of Christians, in which we are now being trained as children, is a certain system of rational actions, that is, an unfailing activity of the things taught by reason, which we have called faith. And the system is the Lord's commandments, which, being divine opinions, have been inscribed for us as spiritual precepts, suited both toward ourselves and toward our neighbors; and these in turn return back upon us, just as a ball, on account of its resilience, bounds back to the one who threw it; hence duties are necessary for divine pedagogy, as things enjoined by God and provided for salvation. And since, among necessary things, some pertain only to living here, while others from here lift us up toward living well there, so too, proportionally, of duties some are arranged with a view to living, others with a view to living well. Now as many things as are enjoined with a view to the life of the nations, these have also been made common property among the many; but the things that are fitted to living well, from which that eternal life results, these it is permitted to consider, gathered out in summary form from the scriptures themselves.

======== Paedagogus — Book 2, Chapter argument ========

A. How one must conduct oneself with regard to food.
B. How one must partake of drink.
C. That one ought not to be zealous for extravagance in vessels.
D. How one ought to be at ease with regard to banquets.
E. On laughter.
F. On obscene speech.
G. What things those who live in refined company must guard against.
H. Whether perfumes and garlands are to be used.
I. How one must partake of sleep.
J. What must be determined concerning the begetting of children.
K. On the wearing of sandals.
L. That one ought not to be infatuated with stones and golden ornament.

======== Paedagogus — Book 2, Chapter 1 ========

Since we are holding to our purpose, and choosing from Scripture what is useful for life in the work of education, we must sketch in summary form what kind of person the one called a Christian ought to be throughout his whole life. We must begin, then, from ourselves and from the way it is fitting to conduct ourselves. Aiming, then, at the proper measure of our composition, we must say what sort of relation each of us should have to his own body, or rather how it ought to be directed. For whenever someone, led by reason from external things and even from the very regimen of the body up to the understanding, learns accurately the theory of what naturally happens to a human being, he will know not to be zealous about externals, but to purify what is properly the human being's own — the eye of the soul — and also to keep even the flesh itself pure. For the one who is cleanly released from those things by which he is still dust — what more useful possession could he have toward traveling the road to the apprehension of God? Other men, indeed, live in order to eat, just as the irrational animals do, for whom life is nothing but the belly; but for us the Educator commands us to eat in order to live. Eating is not what we are here for, and pleasure is not our goal; rather food is accepted for the sake of staying alive on this earth, and reason trains that continuance toward incorruption. This food is simple and unelaborate, suited to truth, fitting for simple and unelaborate children, serviceable for living, not designed for luxury. And this living, composed of two things, health and strength, is best served by food that is easy — useful for digestion and for lightness of body — from which come proper growth, health, and strength, not the unjust, precarious, and wretched kind that comes to athletes from forced feeding. The many varieties of seasoning, then, are to be spat out, since they breed manifold harms — bodily ill-conditions, upset stomachs — the taste turned to prostitution by some ill-starred art of fancy cookery and the vain craftsmanship of pastries. For they dare to call "nourishment" the pursuit, amid luxuries, that slides into harmful pleasures. Antiphanes the Delian physician even named this — the multiplicity of dishes — as one cause of disease, since those who are discontented with the truth, out of a varied vainglory, forswear the moderation of diet and go hunting after foods brought from across the sea. For my part I feel pity at their sickness, yet they feel no shame at boasting loudly of their own fussy self-indulgences, chasing after moray eels from the Sicilian strait, eels from the Maeander, kid-goats from Melos, mullets from Skiathos, shellfish from Pelorus, oysters from Abydos, and they do not skip the sprats of Lipara or the Mantinean turnip, nor even the beets raised among the Ascraeans; they hunt down scallops out of Methymna, Attic flatfish, thrushes fattened on bay-berries, and Chelidonian figs — the very figs for whose sake the luckless Persian king once threw five million troops against Greece. Besides these they buy up birds from the Phasis, Egyptian francolins, the Median peacock. Varying these with sauces, the gluttons gape after delicacies — whatever the earth, the depths of the sea, and the boundless expanse of air nourish — providing for themselves by their own gluttony. These greedy, meddling men, quite literally, seem to be dragging the whole world into a net for the sake of luxurious living, going about "sizzling in frying-pans," wearing out their whole lives around the mortar and pestle, all-devourers, clinging to fuel like fire itself. But they even effeminize the easy, wholesome food of bread by sifting out the nourishing part of the wheat, so that what is necessary in food becomes a reproach to pleasure. There is no limit among men to this gluttonous craving. For it has run aground even on pastries and honey-cakes, and further on sweetmeats, discovering a multitude of after-dinner treats, hunting after every sort of flavor. And it seems to me that such a person is nothing but a jaw. "Do not desire," says Scripture, "the dishes of the rich, for these belong to a false and shameful life." For they cling to delicacies which after a little while the dung-heap receives, but for us who hunt the heavenly food, it is necessary that it rule over the belly that is under heaven, and even more over the things attached to it, which "God will abolish," says the apostle, rightly cursing gluttonous desires. "For foods are for the belly," from which this truly fleshly and corruption-working life hangs. But if some, using a loose tongue, dare to call certain little suppers reeking of roast-smell and gravies "love," defiling that saving deed of the Word, which is good and holy love, with cooking pots and rivers of gravy, blaspheming the name with drink and luxury and smoke, they are mistaken in their supposition, expecting to purchase God's promise with little dinners. For gatherings held for good cheer we too would reckon among little suppers and breakfasts and receptions, and we would rightly call such a gathering by that name, following common usage; but the Lord did not call such feasts "love-feasts." He says at one point, "When you are invited to a wedding, do not recline in the place of honor, but when invited, take the last place," and elsewhere, "When you give a lunch or dinner," and again, "But when you give a reception, invite the poor," for whom especially a dinner ought to be given; and further, "A certain man gave a great dinner and invited many." But I perceive from where this specious name for dinners has flowed — from the throat and a frenzy that haunts the dinner table, as the comic poet says. For "truly, the many do most things for the sake of dinner." For men have surely not learned that God provided food and drink for his creature, man, for the sake of safety, not for the sake of pleasure — since bodies are not by nature benefited by the costliness of foods. Quite the contrary: those who use the cheapest fare are stronger, healthier, and nobler, as household servants are compared to their masters, and farmers to landowners; and not only more robust, but more sensible too, as philosophers compared to the rich. For they have not clogged the mind with foods, nor deceived it with pleasures. But love is truly heavenly food, a rational feast: "it bears all things, endures all things, hopes all things; love never fails." "Blessed is he who will eat bread in the kingdom of God." And of all falls, the harshest is for love, which never falls, to be cast down from the heavens above onto gravies here on the ground. Do you then suppose I consider this a dinner, this thing that is being abolished? "For if," it says, "I give away all my possessions, but do not have love, I am nothing."
On this love the whole law and the word depend. If you love the Lord your God and your neighbor, this heavenly banquet is in the heavens, while the earthly one is called a dinner, as has been shown from Scripture — a dinner that comes about on account of love, but is not itself love, but a token of a communal and generous goodwill. "Let our good, then, not be blasphemed. For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking," says the apostle, so that it not be thought to be some daily lunch, "but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." Whoever eats of this breakfast will acquire the best of things, the kingdom of God, having practiced from here on a holy assembly of love, a heavenly church. Love, then, is a pure thing, fit for God, and its task is sharing. "Attentiveness to instruction is what love means," says wisdom, "and to love her is to keep her laws." These common feasts have some spark of love in them, kindled from ordinary food and habituated toward the eternal food. Love, then, is not a dinner, but let the feast be made dependent on love. "Let your sons learn," it says, "whom you loved, Lord, that it is not the produce of fruits that nourishes man, but your word, which keeps safe those who put their trust in you" — since a just man will find life not through bread alone.
Let our dinner, then, be plain and unencumbered, fit for wakefulness, unmixed with varied kinds of dishes — and this too is not without instruction. For self-sufficiency is a good nurse for fellowship, love having a rich provision in self-sufficiency, which, presiding over food measured out in just quantity, manages the body toward safety and even bestows something of itself on one's neighbors, whereas a diet that overflows self-sufficiency does harm to a person, making the soul sluggish and rendering the body prone to disease. And truly, the pleasures of elaborate seasonings drag in unbearable reproaches — greed, gluttony, delicacy-eating, insatiability, voraciousness. Flies belong to these names, and weasels, and flatterers, and gladiators, and the "wild tribes of parasites" — men who, for the pleasure of the belly, have sold off, some their reason, some their friendship, some their very life, crawling on their bellies, beasts in human likeness, made in the image of their father, the gluttonous beast. Those who first called such men "prodigals" [asōtoi] seem to me to have rightly hinted at their end, understanding them, by a compression of the letter sigma, as "un-saved" [asōstoi]. For are these not the men busied about their platters and the deranged elaborations of their seasonings, humble-minded, earth-born, pursuing a life for a day as though they were not going to live at all? The Holy Spirit, through Isaiah, calls these men wretched, gently withdrawing the very name of "love" from them, since their feasting was not according to reason: "But they made themselves merry, killing off calves and offering up sheep, and saying, Let us eat, let us drink, since tomorrow we shall be dead"; and to show that he counts such extravagance a sin, he goes on to add, "and this sin of yours shall not be forgiven you until you die" — deciding not that death is an unfeeling release from sin, but that death is a repayment for sin, not a saving death. "Do not rejoice over petty luxury," wisdom says.
Here we must also remind ourselves about what is called food offered to idols, in what sense it is enjoined that we must abstain from it. Those things seem to me foul and abominable, over whose blood hover the souls of the dead, come up out of Erebus. "For it is not my wish that you become partakers with demons," the apostle states, since what feeds the saved differs from what feeds those perishing. We ought to steer clear of such things, not from fright (for they hold no real power), but for the sake of our own conscience — a holy thing — and from revulsion toward the demons, given the abomination bound up with their very name over these offerings, and further because of the wateriness of those who suppose most things slip by too easily, "whose weak conscience is defiled thereby. For food will not commend us to God"; "nor does what goes into a man defile him, but what comes out," it says, "of the mouth." The natural use of food, then, is indifferent: "for neither if we eat do we abound," it says, "nor if we do not eat are we lacking"; but it makes no sense for those judged worthy of heavenly, spiritual nourishment also to share "the table of demons." "Do we not have authority to eat and drink," says the apostle, "and to take about with us wives?" But clearly, mastering our pleasures, we restrain our desires. "Watch, then, lest this authority of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak."
We ought not, therefore, to misuse our Father's gifts like prodigals, as in the gospel image of the rich man's son, but to use them, as rulers do, without partiality. For indeed we were appointed to reign and to have mastery, not to be enslaved to foods. It is admirable, then, looking toward the truth, to cling to the food from above, the divine food, and to be filled with the insatiable vision of what truly is, tasting the pleasure that is firm, abiding, and pure. For it is this love that the eating of Christ signifies we ought to receive; but it is thoroughly irrational, useless, and inhuman to be nourished, like cattle being fattened for slaughter, looking down at the earth and bent over tables — men of the earth ever pursuing the gluttonous life, burying the good somewhere down here in a life that will not be, flattering only the swallowing, on account of which cooks have become more highly prized than farmers. For we are not doing away with social good will, but we suspect the slide of habit as a calamity. So gluttony must be given up, and we should partake only of what is needed and little else; and should an unbeliever invite us and we decide it is proper to accept (since keeping away from disorderly company is a good thing), he instructs us to eat whatever is placed before us, "raising no questions on account of conscience," and in the same way he told us to purchase from the market without hesitation whatever we find there. We must not, then, abstain altogether from various foods, but we must not be zealous about them; it befits a Christian to eat what is placed before him, showing honor to the host through a companionship that is harmless and free of gluttony, but considering the costliness of what is brought in a matter of indifference, and despising the delicacies as things that soon will not exist. "Let the one who eats not despise the one who does not eat, and let the one who does not eat not judge the one who eats." Going on a little further he explains the reason for the instruction, saying, "the one who eats, eats to the Lord and gives thanks to God, and the one who does not eat, does not eat to the Lord and gives thanks to God" — so that righteous food is thanksgiving; and the one who is always giving thanks is not preoccupied with pleasures. And if we should also be urging some of our fellow guests toward virtue, all the more must we abstain from these gluttonous foods, presenting ourselves as a clear example of virtue, since we ourselves have had Christ. "For if any such food scandalizes my brother, I will never eat it," he says, "forever, that I may not scandalize my brother," gaining the man by a little self-control. "Do we not have authority to eat and drink?" And "we have come to know," he says, "that no idol exists in the world at all, and that for us there is one God only, the source of everything, and a single Lord, Jesus." But "the weak brother is destroyed," he says, "by your knowledge, the brother for whom Christ died. And those who wound the conscience of their weak brothers sin against Christ." For this reason the apostle, taking care on our behalf, discriminates about dinners, saying, "do not associate together," "if anyone called a brother is found to be sexually immoral, or an adulterer, or an idolater, do not even eat with him" — neither conversation nor food — suspecting the defilement that comes from this, just as also from the tables of demons.
"It is good, then, not to eat meat nor drink wine," he himself acknowledges, as do the followers of Pythagoras; for this belongs more to beasts, and the vapor rising from them, being murkier, darkens the soul. Yet if a person does eat such things, no wrongdoing results, provided he eats with restraint, without clinging or growing attached to them, nor gluttonously craving the delicacy; for a voice will echo in his ears, saying, "Do not for the sake of food destroy the work of God." For it belongs to a very foolish person to marvel and gape at what is set out at popular banquets after the luxury found in reason itself; and it is far more foolish to have enslaved one's sight to side dishes, the intemperance being carried along with them, so to speak, by the servants. And how is it not useless to rise up over one's couch, all but throwing one's face into the platters, poking out from one's couch as though from a nest — this well-worn habit — in order to catch, through their breathing, the wandering vapor? And how is it not irrational to plunge one's hands into the delicacies, or to keep reaching out toward the dish, not tasting but, as it were, snatching, gorging oneself immoderately and unbecomingly? For one can see such people resembling swine or dogs rather than men, on account of their voracity, hastening to stuff themselves, so that both jaws bulge together as the vessels around the face swell further, and moreover sweat pours out from them, gripped by insatiability and panting from intemperance, the food being pushed down into the belly by an unsociable haste, as though into provisions for a journey, not stored up for proper digestion. Everywhere excess is an evil, but it is most exposed in matters of food. Delicacy-eating, then, is nothing other than excess in the use of relish, and gluttony is a madness about the throat, and belly-madness is intemperance about food — as indeed the very name shows, madness about the belly, since "margos" means one who is raving. So the apostle, checking those who practice wrongdoing at feasts, says: "for each one takes his own dinner beforehand in the eating, and one goes hungry while another gets drunk. Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and put to shame those who have nothing?" And among those who do have, the ones who eat without restraint, the insatiable, put themselves to shame; both act badly — the ones by burdening those who have nothing, the others by exposing their own intemperance before those who do have. Necessarily, then, addressing those without shame who indulge dinners without restraint, the insatiable, for whom nothing is ever enough, the apostle again, a second time, burst out with an indignant cry: "Therefore, my brothers, whenever you gather to take a meal together, wait one for the other; if a man is hungry, let him eat at home, so that your gathering does not bring you under judgment." We must abstain, then, from all servility and intemperance, touching what is set before us in an orderly manner, keeping the hand and the couch-covering and the chin unstained, preserving the decorum of the face undistorted, not behaving unseemly even in swallowing, but extending the hand with order and at intervals. * * One must also guard against uttering anything while eating; for the voice becomes unseemly and indistinct, choked off by cheeks stuffed to the brim, and the tongue, weighed down by the food and blocked from doing its natural job, produces only a garbled sound. Nor is it fitting to eat and drink at the same time; for it belongs to the greatest intemperance to confuse occasions whose uses are not in harmony. And "whether you eat," it says, "or drink, do all things for the glory of God," aiming at true frugality, which it seems to me the Lord himself pointed toward when he blessed the loaves and the grilled fish he served his disciples as a meal, setting forth a fine model of plain, unfussy food. That fish, indeed, which Peter caught at the Lord's command, hints itself at food that is easy, God-given, and moderate; for it also suggests taking away, from those who come up out of the water to the bait of righteousness, prodigality and love of money, symbolized by the coin found in the fish, so that he could set aside empty pride, and by handing over the coin to those who collected the tax, giving to Caesar the things belonging to Caesar, he might reserve what belongs to God for God alone. The stater might have other interpretations too, not unknown, but the present occasion is not suited for working them out. This reminder suffices, as we make use, for our present purpose, of flowers not out of tune with our argument — as we have often already done — drawing off, toward what is urgent in our inquiry, from the wide-benefiting spring planted by reason, for the watering of what has been sown. For even if "all things are lawful for me, not all things are helpful" — for whoever does everything permitted soon slips into doing what is forbidden. And just as righteousness is not achieved through greed, nor self-control through licentiousness, so too the Christian's diet is not acquired through indulgence; for truth's table stands at a great distance from "dishes designed to gratify craving." For even if all things came into being especially for the sake of man, it is not good to use all of them, nor even always. For occasion and time and manner and purpose contribute no small weight toward what is beneficial for the one being trained, and what is fitting has the power to abolish the belly-centered life, whose wealth is what draws one out, wealth that does not see keenly but is blinded in its gluttonous excess. No one is poor with regard to necessities, nor is a man ever overlooked; for the one who nourishes the birds and the swimming creatures, and, in a word, the irrational animals, is one — God; and not one of them lacks anything whatsoever, even though they give no worry to what they will eat. And we are better than these, insofar as we are lords, and closer to God, insofar as we are more self-controlled. Our existence began not so that eating and drinking would be the point, but so that knowing God would be. "For the righteous," it says, "eats and is satisfied in soul, but the bellies of the wicked are in want," reaching after unceasing gluttony. Costliness is fitting not for solitary enjoyment, but for communal sharing. We must therefore stay on guard against foods that seduce the appetite and talk us into eating without any hunger. For is there not, even in a moderate frugality, a healthy variety of foods? Bulbs, olives, some vegetables, milk, cheese, seasonal fruits, and all kinds of boiled dishes without gravies. And if roasted or boiled meat is needed, it should be shared. "Do you have any food on hand?" the Lord asked the disciples after he rose from the dead. "And they" (since they had been taught by him to practice frugality) "handed him a portion of grilled fish, and he ate it in their sight and spoke to them," says Luke, whatever the words were. In addition to these, those dining reasonably should not be overlooked as lacking a share even of dessert fruits and honeycomb. For among foods the most suitable are those one can use just as they are, without fire, since they are also readier at hand; second are the cheaper ones, as we have said before. But over those who fuss about inflamed tables, nursing their own passions, a most gluttonous demon presides, whom I for my part would not be ashamed to call the "belly-demon," the worst and most utterly ruinous of demons. This one is quite similar to the one called the belly-speaking demon (ventriloquist). It is far better to become blessed than to have a demon as a housemate; and blessedness is measured by the practice of virtue.
Now the apostle Matthew partook of seeds and tree-fruits and vegetables, without meat, while John, going beyond even that in self-control, "ate locusts and wild honey." Peter too abstained from swine's flesh; but "a trance fell upon him," as the record of the apostles' deeds sets down, "and he beholds the sky opened, and something like a great sheet lowered by its four corners down to the ground; and on it lay every four-footed beast and creeping thing of the earth and bird of the sky; and a voice spoke to him: Get up, Peter, slaughter and eat. Yet Peter answered: By no means, Master — nothing profane or impure has ever passed my lips. And once more, a second time, the voice returned to him: Do not name common what God has made clean." So then for us too the use of food is a matter of indifference. "For it is not what enters the mouth that defiles a man," but the notion that lack of self-control lies in food is empty. For God, having formed man, said, "Everything shall be for you to eat." But "better a dish of vegetables with love than a fatted calf with hatred" — this rightly recalls the saying just quoted, that it is not the vegetables themselves that constitute love, but that meals are to be taken with love. The middle condition is good in all things, and not least in the arrangements one makes for feasting; for the extremes are treacherous, but the middle courses are good. And the mean is whatever lacks nothing of what is necessary; for the desires that follow nature are bounded by sufficiency. To the Jews, through the Law, frugality was proclaimed in the most well-ordered way; for the Instructor, through Moses, took away from them the use of countless things, attaching reasons to the prohibitions — reasons spiritual, though hidden, and reasons carnal, which were made plain and which they in fact believed: to some, that the animal does not have a cloven hoof; to others, that it does not chew the cud; to others again, that among water creatures it alone lacks scales — so that very few things at all were left suitable for them to eat. And even of those he allowed them to touch, he again forbade the ones that had died of themselves, and those sacrificed to idols, and those that had been strangled; for it is not lawful even to touch these. For since it is impossible for one who indulges in pleasant things to hold back from approving of them, he set the opposite course of training against it, until it should loosen the headlong rush toward self-indulgence that comes from habit. For most people, pleasure has bred harm and grief, while overeating breeds in the soul insensibility and forgetfulness and folly. And they say that children's bodies grow well and increase in height precisely from a spare diet; for the breath that runs up toward growth is not hindered when abundant food does not block the free passage of its course. Hence Plato, who zealously pursued truth among the philosophers, kindling anew the spark of Hebrew philosophy, denounces the life of luxury, saying: "And when I came, that so-called blessed existence there, crowded with Italian and Syracusan spreads, gave me no pleasure whatsoever — stuffing oneself twice each day and never once retiring to bed alone, and all the practices that attend such a life; for from these things no man under heaven could ever become wise, practicing such things from youth, nor will he ever be tempered to so admirable a nature." Plato, then, had some acquaintance with David, who, setting up the holy ark in his own city, in the midst of the tent, and making joy for all the people under him, "before the Lord distributed to all the host of Israel, from man to woman, to each a cake of bread and a portion of meat and a wafer from the pan." This food was sufficient, and it was Israelite; the pagan sort is excessive. "Never could he be temperate" who indulges in such fare, burying his mind in his belly, most resembling the fish called the ass-fish, which Aristotle says is the only one of all animals to have its heart in its stomach. This sort of man Epicharmus the comic poet calls "belly-twisted." Such are those men who have put their faith in the belly, "for their god is their stomach, and their pride lies in their disgrace, their thoughts fixed on things of the earth." Of these the apostle foretold nothing good, saying, "their fate is ruin."

======== Paedagogus — Book 2, Chapter 2 ========

"Use a little wine," he says to Timothy, who drank water, "on account of your stomach" — so speaks the apostle, most excellently prescribing a fitting astringent remedy for a body that is unwell and waterlogged, but allowing it only in a small amount, lest the remedy, taken in excess, itself come to require further treatment. Water, then, is the natural and sober drink that is necessary for those who thirst. This is what the Lord supplied as the single drink of self-control to the ancient Hebrews, flowing from the hewn rock, for it was above all necessary for those still wandering to remain sober. Then afterward the holy vine put forth its prophetic cluster. This is a sign to those who have been trained by their guide to rest from their wandering — the great cluster, the Word who was pressed on our behalf, willing that the blood of the grape be mixed with water, just as his own blood is mixed for salvation. Now the blood of the Lord is twofold: the one is fleshly, by which we have been redeemed from corruption; the other is spiritual, that is, that with which we have been anointed. And this is what it means to drink the blood of Jesus — to partake of the Lord's incorruption; and the strength of the Word is the Spirit, as blood is the strength of flesh. Accordingly, wine is blended in due proportion with water, and the Spirit is joined together with man; and the first — this blend — brings gladness toward faith, while the second — the Spirit — conducts us toward incorruption; and the combination of the two once more, of drink and of the Word, is called Eucharist, a grace praised and beautiful, by partaking of which in faith men are sanctified in both body and soul, the Father's will mystically blending man together with Spirit and Word into this divine mixture. For in truth the Spirit is united to the soul that is borne along by it, and the flesh to the Word, for whose sake "the Word became flesh." I admire, then, those who have chosen an austere life and who long after water, the medicine of self-control, fleeing wine as far as possible, as one flees the threat of fire.
It is fitting, then, that boys and girls should for the most part abstain from this drug; for it is not suitable to pour the hottest of liquids, wine, into an age already boiling, as though conducting fire into fire, from which wild impulses and inflamed desires and a fiery temper are kindled, and the young, warmed within, become impetuous toward their appetites, so that the harm done to them is proven openly through the body, the members of desire ripening sooner than is fitting. At any rate they grow shamelessly excited, as wine seethes within them, and breasts and members swell, already proclaiming an image of fornication and forcing the body to inflame the wound of the soul; and shameless throbbings pursue wanton curiosity, summoning the modest youth into transgression. From this point the new wine of that age already oversteps the bounds of modesty. So far as one is able, one ought to labor at damping down the urges stirring in the young, removing the kindling — the Bacchic fuel of that threat — and pouring in instead the antidote to this ferment, which will restrain the soul already smoldering and hold in check the swelling members and lull to rest the excitement of an appetite already stirring.
Those in the prime of life who partake of a midday meal — for whom a midday meal is suitable — after tasting only bread should abstain entirely from drink, so that dry eating may absorb and wring out their excess moisture. For constant spitting and blowing the nose and hastening to relieve oneself are signs of intemperance, arising from the excessive intake of fluids overflowing the body. And if thirst should still arise, let them treat the condition with water, not much of it; for it is not fitting to indulge freely even in water, lest the food be washed out rather than smoothed down for digestion, with the food itself settling into bulk and only a little passing off in excretion. It is also fitting, for other reasons, not to be weighed down with wine when engaged in thoughts of God; for "unmixed wine," as the comic poet says, "compels little thinking," and perhaps not even self-control. But toward evening, around the hour of dinner, one may make use of wine, since we are then no longer occupied with the more sober kind of reading. At that hour the surrounding air turns colder than it was in daylight, so that the ebbing bodily warmth must be sustained by heat brought in from outside — but here too with only a little wine; for one must not proceed as far as the bowls of drunken excess.
To those already past their prime one may allow a more cheerful share of drink, rekindling harmlessly with the medicine of the vine the chilled portion of their age, which is as it were withering with time; for the appetites of the elderly no longer, for the most part, swell toward the shipwrecks of drunkenness; anchored as they are, so to speak, by reason and by time, they bear more easily the storm of desires that drunkenness stirs up, and to them perhaps some pleasantry is permitted at their feasts. But even for these there should be a limit to drinking, up to the point where they preserve their reasoning unshaken, their memory active, and their body unswayed and unshaken by wine — this state those skilled in such matters call "scarcely touched." It is good, then, to stop short in good time, for fear of slipping.
A certain Artorius, in his work On Long Life — for I remember it — thinks one ought to go no further than moistening one's food, so that our years might thereby be lengthened. It is proper, accordingly, that some make use of wine as a form of therapy for health alone, while others take it for relaxation and cheer. For wine, first of all, makes the drinker more gracious to himself than before, and gentler to his fellow drinkers, milder to his servants, and more agreeable to his friends — though when abused it repays with insolence; for being warm and possessing pleasant humors, when mixed harmoniously it dissolves the sticky residues by its heat, and blends the sharp and bad humors with its fragrances. Well indeed has it been said: "Wine has been created from the beginning to be the exultation of soul and heart, when drunk in due measure." Best of all is to dilute wine with the greatest possible measure of water, neither chasing after it as though it were itself water, nor dulling oneself toward drunkenness, nor pouring it out like water from a craving for drink; for each — water and wine alike — is a work of God, and for this reason the blending of the two is conducive to health, since life is composed of both the necessary and the useful. To the necessary — water — as much as possible should be mixed in, along with the useful. But with unmixed wine the tongue is hindered, the lips grow slack, the eyes wander, as though the sight were swimming under the abundance of moisture, and men, forced into falsehood, imagine that everything is spinning in a circle, and cannot count distant objects as they actually are; indeed, "I seem to see two suns," said the drunken old Theban; for the sight, disturbed by the heat of the wine, imagines the substance repeatedly multiplied beyond the one; and it makes no difference whether it is the sight that is disturbed or the thing seen, for the sight suffers the same either way, unable through its dizziness to grasp accurately the nature of what lies before it. And their steps are swept along as if by a current, and hiccups and vomiting and ravings come crowding in as well.
For every man made drunk, as the tragedy says, is overcome by anger and emptied of mind, and loves to pour out much talk, unwillingly hearing afterward what he willingly said in his folly. And even before that tragedy, wisdom itself cried out: "Wine, drunk in abundance, in irritation and in every kind of fall, multiplies."
For this reason most people say that at drinking parties one should relax and put off serious matters until dawn. But I hold that it is then above all that reason should be brought in as a fellow guest at the feast, to train the excess of wine, lest the good cheer slip unnoticed into drunkenness; for just as no one in his right mind would think fit to close his eyes before going to sleep, so no one in sound mind would truly desire that reason keep away from the table, nor would anyone act well by lulling it to sleep before his deeds are finished. Indeed reason will never be able to withdraw from what is proper to it, not even when we sleep; for even to sleep we must be summoned by it. For wisdom, being perfect knowledge of things divine and human, embracing the whole, becomes, in that respect in which it oversees the human flock, an art concerned with life, and in this way it is present throughout our whole life, always accomplishing its own proper work, the good life. But those wretched people who drive away self-control from their feasting consider a life of blessed happiness to consist in the disorder of their banquets, whose living is nothing but revelry, drunken headache, bathhouses, unmixed wine, chamber pots, idleness, and drinking. One may see some of them half-drunk, stumbling, wearing garlands around their necks like wine jars, pouring unmixed wine into one another in the name of friendship, and others full of the aftereffects of drink, unwashed, pale, their faces livid, and even while still suffering yesterday's drunkenness drawing up another bout of it again at dawn. It is good, friends, it is good to learn, from as far off as possible, to recognize this image — ridiculous and pitiable at once — and to shape ourselves for the better, fearing lest we too somehow become a similar spectacle and a laughingstock to others. Well has it been said: "As the furnace tests the temper of steel in the dipping, so wine tests the heart of the arrogant in drunkenness." Drunkenness, then, is the more violent use of unmixed wine; drunken misbehavior is the disorder that arises from such use; and hangover is the resulting distress and unpleasantness after drunkenness, named from the throbbing of the head. This life — if it deserves to be called life — being idle and stirred up around pleasures and agitated around drunkenness, divine wisdom, watching it with suspicion, warns her own children: "Be not a wine-drinker, nor stretch yourself out for shared feasts, for the buying of meat; for every drunkard and fornicator will come to poverty, and every sleepy man will be clothed in rags." For everyone is "sleepy" who is not awake unto wisdom, but is submerged by drunkenness into sleep. And the drunkard, it says, will be clothed in rags; he will be shamed by his drunkenness before those who observe him. For the holes of the sinner are the torn places of his fleshly garment, bored through by love of pleasure, through which the shame within the soul is seen from outside — the sin on account of which the torn garment cannot easily be saved, being dragged apart on every side and rotting away into many desires, torn off from salvation. To this it most fittingly adds: "To whom is woe? To whom is uproar? To whom is judgment? To whom are unpleasant quarrels? To whom are pointless bruises?" See how the lover of wine is wholly torn apart, one who disregards reason itself and has surrendered himself to drunkenness, subject to all that scripture has threatened him with; and again it adds to the threat: "Whose eyes are livid? Is it not those who linger long over wine? Is it not those who track down where drinking parties are held?" Here it declares the wine-lover already dead, by his very words, through his livid eyes, which is a sign that appears also on the dead, proclaiming to him death in the Lord's reckoning; for forgetfulness of the things that tend toward true life inclines a man toward corruption. Fittingly, then, the Tutor most sternly forbids it, caring for our salvation: "Do not drink wine to drunkenness." Why, you will ask? "Because," it says, "then your mouth will speak crooked things, and you will lie as though in the heart of the sea, and like a helmsman amid a great swell." From here poetry too, having profited from this, says: wine, which has a force equal to fire, whenever it comes upon men, surges like the Libyan sea under the north wind or the south, and reveals all that was hidden, given to error; wine is a slipping-place for the drunk, wine is a deceiver of the soul, and so on. Do you perceive the peril of a wreck at sea? The heart is swamped on every side by drinking to excess, and the abundance of drunkenness is likened to the threat of the sea, in which the body, submerged like a ship, has sunk into the depth of disorder, buried under the great waves of wine, while the helmsman — the human mind — is carried about by the swell as drunkenness overwhelms it, and, tossed at sea, grows dizzy in the darkness of the storm, having missed the harbor of truth, until, falling upon hidden rocks, it runs itself aground and is destroyed among pleasures.
Fittingly, then, the apostle too commands: "Do not be drunk with wine, in which is much dissoluteness," hinting at the ruinousness of drunkenness through the word dissoluteness. For even though he made water into wine at the wedding, he did not permit drunkenness, but gave life to the watered-down state of the mind — [the corrupted] working of the law from Adam — filling the whole world with the blood of the vine, truth's own drink, that blending of the ancient law together with the new Word, granting it for the fulfillment of the time already reconciled beforehand through the worship of God. Scripture, then, has named wine as a mystical symbol of holy blood, and censuring the staleness that comes from wine it says, "wine is licentious, and drunkenness is insolent." It is pleasing, then, to right reason, in winter, on account of the cold, to drink up to the point of not shivering, for those prone to chill, and at other seasons for the sake of caring for the internal organs. For just as food is to be used for the sake of not being hungry, so drink is to be used for the sake of not being thirsty, guarding carefully against the slippery slope; for the intrusion of wine is treacherous. In this way our soul too would remain pure and dry and luminous, for "a dry soul is a most wise and excellent radiance." In this state it is also capable of vision, and it is not made damp and given bodily form, cloud-like, by the vapors rising from wine.
One need not, then, fret over Dean wine in its absence, nor over Ariousian wine when none is close by. For thirst arises from a deficiency of some kind, and it looks for a remedy suited to relieving it, not some ostentatious drink. But when the appetite is waterlogged through intemperance, it produces voyages overseas in search of wine, the soul already deranged in its desires even before the drunkenness itself. For Thasian, the fragrant, and Lesbian, the sweet-scented, and a certain sweet Cretan, and pleasant Syracusan, and a certain Mendesian from Egypt, and Naxian from the island, and still another flower-scented vintage out of Italian soil — such are the numerous titles; but for the self-controlled companion at table there is one wine, the produce of one God. For why should the local wine not suffice to satisfy the desire? Unless indeed men bring along their water too, as the foolish kings did — the Choaspes, a river so called in India, whose water is the finest for drinking — bringing along the water of the Choaspes just as they bring along their friends. The Holy Spirit, too, through Amos, pronounces the rich unhappy here as well, for their luxury, crying out: "Those who drink strained wine, and lie upon ivory couches," and all that follows in the way of reproach that it heaped upon them.
One must take especial care for propriety of bearing (and indeed the myth says that Athena, when she once existed, taking forethought for herself, threw away the flute, delightful though it was, on account of the unseemliness of its appearance), so as to drink with an undistorted face, not gulping to the full nor forcing the eyes into unseemliness for the sake of drinking, dragging it down without a breath through lack of self-control, nor pouring it about the chin or drenching the clothing, the drink being poured in all at once, all but washing and rinsing their own face in the cups. For indeed the gurgling of the drink borne violently along, drawn in together with a great rush of breath, as if it were being decanted into a clay jug, while the throat resounds because of the headlong gulping, makes for a disgraceful sight and an unbecoming show of lack of self-mastery, and besides, the habit of loving drink brings harm to whoever gives himself over to it. Do not hasten toward harm, my friend. Your drink is not being snatched from you; it has been given to you and it waits for you. Do not be eager to burst yourself, drawing it in with wide-open mouth; your thirst will be filled even if you drink more slowly, having taken on orderliness, the drink being portioned out in an orderly manner; for time does not take away what intemperance snatches beforehand. "In wine," it says, "do not play the man, for wine has made many worthless."
"Drunkenness is practiced most of all by the Scythians and the Celts and the Iberians and the Thracians, all of these being warlike races, and they have come to regard it as a fine and blessed practice to pursue." But we, a peaceable race, feasting for enjoyment and not for insolence, let us drink our loving-cups soberly, so that in truth they may be shown, in a manner proper to the name, to be tokens of love. How do you suppose the Lord drank, when for our sake he became man? So shamelessly as we do? Not rather with refinement? Not with orderliness? Not with due reckoning? For understand well: he also shared in wine, since he too had become a man; and he even pronounced a blessing over the wine, saying, "Take, drink — this is my blood," the vine's own blood, picturing in the words "poured out on behalf of many, unto the forgiveness of sins" the mystic stream of gladness. And that whoever drinks ought to be self-controlled, he made plain through what he taught during those meals, for he did not teach as one who was drunk. And that the thing he blessed was in fact wine, he showed once more, telling those who followed him: "From now on I will not taste this vine's fruit until, together with you, I drink it anew in my Father's realm." But that wine was truly what the Lord drank, he himself states again about himself, chiding the stubborn hearts of the Jews: "The Son of Man arrived," he says, "and people claim, Look, a man given to gluttony and fond of wine, a companion of toll-collectors." Let this much be jestingly said by us also against those called Encratites.
But the women, laying claim, forsooth, to propriety, so that they may not, by pouring the drink out over broad-brimmed cups, have their lips torn as the mouth is stretched wide, drink instead unseemly from flasks quite narrow at the mouth, tilting back their heads, baring their necks — not decorously, to my mind — and stretching their throat as they swallow, gulp it down, as though stripping themselves bare before their fellow-drinkers of whatever they are capable of, and drawing forth belches fit for men, or rather fit for slaves, they preen themselves further and grow wanton; for no noise is fitting for a rational man, and still less for a woman, for whom even the mere knowledge in herself of who she is brings shame alone. "A drunken woman," it says, "is a great wrath," as it were the anger of god, a woman maddened with wine. Why? Because "she does not conceal her own unseemliness." For a woman is quickly dragged down into disorder, if only she gives herself over in purpose to pleasures. And we have not forbidden drinking from flasks; but we cut off the practice of drinking only from these as ostentatious, counseling that whatever is at hand be used without attachment, checking beforehand, from far off and from above, the appetites that are sliding downward. As for the breath that rises up toward a belch, it is to be let pass quietly. But under no circumstances is it to be permitted to women to be seen baring any part of the body, lest both parties stumble — the men being incited to gaze intently, and the women drawing the eyes of the men upon themselves. And we must at all times conduct ourselves with order as though the Lord were present, lest perhaps to us also, as to the Corinthians, the apostle in his displeasure should say: "When you come together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat."
It seems to me that the headless figure spoken of by the mathematicians, the one reckoned before the wandering star, with the head sunk down into the breast, hints darkly at gluttons and pleasure-lovers and those ready for drunkenness. For indeed in these men too the reasoning faculty is seated not in the head but in the inward parts, enslaved to the passions of desire and anger. So that in the manner in which Elpenor "broke his neckbones," falling down through drunkenness, in just this way the mind of these men, made dizzy from above by drunkenness, falls down upon the liver and the heart — that is, upon the love of pleasure and upon anger — a fall greater than that which the sons of the poets say Hephaestus suffered, cast down from heaven to earth by Zeus. "The toil of sleeplessness," it says, "and cholera and griping pain go with an insatiable man." For this reason indeed the drunkenness of Noah has been recorded in writing, so that we might guard against drunkenness as much as possible, having before us a plain and written image of the transgression, on account of which those who covered over the unseemliness of the drunkenness are blessed by the Lord. Most concisely, then, having taken in the whole matter, Scripture has said everything in a single saying: "Wine is sufficient for an educated man, and he will find rest upon his bed."

======== Paedagogus — Book 2, Chapter 3 ========

As for drinking-cups made of silver and gold, and others set with gems, their use is worthless — it is a mere deception of the eye; for whether one pours a hot mixture into them, the vessels grow scorching hot and the taking of them is painful, or again one pours in something cold, the material imparts its quality, spoiling the mixed wine, and the rich drink becomes harmful. Away, then, with certain Thericlean cups and Antigonid tankards, and beakers and drinking-horns and limpet-shaped cups, and the countless kinds of vessels besides, and the wine-coolers on top of these and the wine-pitchers; "for gold and silver, taken simply, both privately and publicly, are an invidious possession," a possession exceeding need, rare to acquire, difficult to guard, and unsuited to use. Indeed the elaborate vanity of engravers applied to glass — which through their art is the more readily shattered — teaches one both to fear and to drink at once, and must be restricted by our good order. As for silver couches, basins, vinegar-dishes, little platters, and bowls — and, along with these, still further pieces of silverware and gold plate, some meant for serving food, and others meant for uses I am ashamed even to name; and tripods elaborately worked of easily-split cedar and citron-wood and ebony and ivory; and couches with silver feet, inlaid with ivory, spangled with gold, and dining-couches adorned with the shell of the tortoise; and purple bed-coverings, and others of colors hard to obtain — these are evidences of tasteless luxury, plots hatched by envy and stupidity for their own advantage, all to be dismissed, having no worthy purpose whatsoever. "For the time is short," as the apostle says. * * This alone remains: not to be got up ridiculously, as some are seen in processions, anointed on the outside to a striking show of solemnity, while within they are wretched. Making this yet more precise, he added: "it remains that a man with a wife should live as if he had none, and one who makes purchases as though owning nothing." But if this is said even of marriage, of which God says "be fruitful and multiply," how much more, do you suppose, must tastelessness be banished by the Lord's own authority? For this reason too the Lord says, "sell your possessions, give the proceeds to the destitute, and come along with me"; walk after God with ostentation cast off, empty of perishable display, possessing only what is truly yours, the good that cannot be taken away — faith toward God, confession of him who suffered, and beneficence toward men — a possession most precious of all. For my part I welcome Plato too, legislating outright "that one ought to have wealth neither of silver nor of gold," nor even any useless vessel which is not, along with necessary use, also moderate, so that the same object might serve many purposes, and the accumulation of possessions be abolished. Very finely, indeed, does the divine scripture somewhere say, directed against the self-loving and the boastful: "Where now are the princes of the nations, they who hold mastery over earth's wild beasts, who play games with the sky's birds, who store away silver and gold, the very things men set their confidence in, with no limit to their amassing; who shape silver and gold and are consumed with anxious care for them? Their doings cannot be tracked down; they perished and were brought down into the grave." This is the wage of tastelessness. For if we who farm have need of a mattock and a plow, yet no one would forge a silver hoe or a golden spade, but we make use of well-wrought material, not rich material, for tilling the soil — what, then, prevents those who take the same view regarding household vessels as well from holding the same reasoning? Let necessity, not extravagance, set their standard. So tell me this — will a kitchen-knife, lacking silver rivets or an ivory-fitted grip, somehow fail to cut? Or must Indian steel be forged for a portion of meat, as though we were calling in some ally? And again — if the wash-basin were made of clay, will it not receive the water for washing the hand? Or the foot-basin, the water for the foot? Will the table with feet fashioned of ivory take offense at bearing a loaf of bread worth a single obol? Nor indeed will the lamp fail to give its service of light because it is the work of a potter, not a goldsmith. And I say that the pallet-bed, providing a place to lie down no worse than the ivory couch, and the goat-hair blanket, quite sufficient to be spread beneath one — so that there is no need of purple or crimson coverlets — is nonetheless condemned for its cheapness, on account of the folly of luxury, that beginner of evils.
See what great delusion this is, what a passion for outward show. The Lord ate from a cheap dish, had his disciples lie down upon grass spread over the earth, and washed their feet, wrapping a towel about himself — he, the unproud God and Lord of all, not carrying about a silver foot-basin brought down from heaven. And he asked the Samaritan woman for something to drink, drawn up from the well in an earthen vessel, not seeking royal gold, but teaching that thirst is easily quenched; for he set need as his aim, not lack of goodness in excess. He likewise took food and wine at banquets, without mining ore from the ground, nor making use of little vessels of silver and gold — that is, of rust — reeking, such as the fumes that rise from material puffed up with pride. For, in short, I say that food and clothing and vessels and all the other things in the household, taken together, must be in keeping with the fixed principles of the Christian, being suited fittingly to the person, the age, the pursuit, and the occasion. For being servants of one God, it is fitting that our possessions and the furnishings that go with them show forth the tokens of one good life, and that each person, by an undivided faith, by this single-minded steadfastness, make what follows appear consistent and in harmony with that one disposition. And whatever things we acquire without difficulty, and use readily, and praise and guard easily, and share readily with others — these are better. So the useful things are better, and, of course, the cheaper things are better than the costly ones. In sum, wealth not rightly governed is a citadel of vice, around which the many, their eyes diseased with longing for it, could never make their way into the kingdom of heaven, sick as they are over worldly things, and living arrogantly on account of their luxuries. Those who are eager for salvation must grasp beforehand that all creation exists for our use, but possession is for the sake of self-sufficiency, which one might secure even from a few things. For vain are those who, through insatiable greed, rejoice in their hoarded treasures: "but he who gathers wages," it says, "gathers them into a bag full of holes." This is the one who gathers and shuts up the seed and grows the poorer, who shares with no one. It is a mockery and broad laughter that men should carry about silver chamber-pots and glass urinals, just as they bring along their own counselors, and that these women, senselessly wealthy, should have vessels of gold made to receive their excretions, so that not even the rich women may relieve themselves without ostentation; I could wish that throughout their whole life their gold be judged worth no more than dung. But now the citadel of vice has been found to be love of silver, a thing the apostle calls the source from which every evil springs, "which some, reaching after, have wandered away from the faith and impaled themselves upon many pains." The best wealth is poverty of desires, and true greatness of soul does not consist in being proud of wealth, but in despising it; but to boast greatly over one's vessels is utterly shameful, for it is not right to be so serious about things which anyone who wishes may buy in the marketplace, whereas wisdom is not bought with earthly coin, nor in the marketplace, but is sold in heaven, and sold for a just currency — the incorruptible Word, the royal gold.

======== Paedagogus — Book 2, Chapter 4 ========

Let the revel be banished from our rational feasting, and also those vain all-night vigils that flaunt themselves in drunkenness. For the revel is a maddening flute-song, an improvisation of erotic distress; and love-passion and drunkenness, those irrational affections, are settled far from our chorus. And the all-night vigil kept over drinking is a kind of fellow-reveler to drunkenness, a summoner to intoxication and an inciter to sexual union, a shameless daring. Those who amid flutes and harps and dances and castanets and Egyptian rattles and such frivolities become disorderly, unseemly, and thoroughly uneducated tumults, deafened by cymbals and drums and clattered about by the instruments of deception -- such a banquet becomes, quite simply, as it seems to me, a theater of drunkenness. For the apostle bids us, "having put off the works of darkness, to put on the armor of light," "walking becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness," devoting our leisure to none of these.
Let the syrinx, then, be assigned to shepherds, and the flute to superstitious men rushing toward idolatry. For truly these instruments are to be banished from a sober banquet, being more fitting for beasts than for men, and for the more irrational among men. For we have learned that deer are charmed by the syrinx and are led, when hunted by huntsmen, by the melody right into the snares set for their feet; and for mares in heat a certain tune of flute-piping is played, like a wedding-hymn -- the musicians have called this the "horse-goad." Every illiberal sight and sound, and, to sum it up, every shameful sensation of intemperance -- which is truly insensibility -- must be thoroughly cut away, guarding against the pleasure that tickles and effeminizes both eyes and ears; for by broken melodies and mournful rhythms the varied sorceries of the Carian muse corrupt men's characters, dragging them down into passion through licentious and depraved music. Setting apart from this revel the worship owed to God, the Spirit sings out, "Give him praise with the blast of the ram's-horn" -- since it is by that very blast that he will awaken the dead; "give him praise upon the psaltery," since our tongue serves the Lord as a psaltery; "and give him praise upon the harp" -- take the harp here as meaning the mouth, plucked as though by a plectrum moved by the Spirit; "give him praise with drum and dance" -- by this he points to the assembly of believers pondering the flesh's rising again within its resounding covering of skin; "give him praise with strings and pipes" -- our very body he names the pipe-organ, its sinews the strings, whereby it gained a fitting tautness, and once touched by the Spirit it sounds out with a human voice; "give him praise with the clash of joyful cymbals" -- our tongue he names the cymbal set within the mouth, which rings against the lips whenever they meet. It was for this that he called out to all mankind, "may everything that draws breath give the Lord praise," for he has come near to every living thing he fashioned. Man, then, is in truth an instrument devoted to peace; the rest, examine them closely and you will find them fit for battle, whether they stir up craving, fan the flames of desire, or turn tempers savage. Consider how, when at war, the Etruscans sound the horn, the Arcadians the syrinx, the Sicels the pektis, the Cretans the lyre, the Spartans the flute, the Thracian tribes the horn, the Egyptians the drum, and the Arab peoples the cymbal; we, however, rely on a single instrument, the Word who brings peace alone, through whom we glorify God -- no longer the ancient psaltery, ram's-horn, drum, and flute favored by seasoned warriors and by those who had learned to scorn the fear of God, who used to bring these together at their festivities, so that through such rhythms their flagging resolve could once more be stirred.
Let our friendly companionship at the wine-table be twofold, according to the Law: for since "you shall love the Lord your God," and then "your neighbor," let the first friendliness be toward God, expressed through thanksgiving and psalm-singing, and the second toward our neighbor, expressed through dignified conversation; "may the message of the Lord make its home within you abundantly," as the apostle states. This message shapes and adapts itself to every occasion, person, and setting, and here it suits itself to the banquet-table; for the apostle goes on: "instructing and correcting each other with full wisdom through psalms and hymns and songs of the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts; and everything you undertake, be it speech or action, carry out under the authority of the Lord Jesus, rendering thanks through him to God the Father." Such is our joyful festivity; and should you wish to strike up a tune and play upon the cithara or lyre, nothing there deserves blame -- you will be imitating the righteous Hebrew king who was grateful to God. "Rejoice, you righteous, in the Lord; praise befits the upright," says the prophecy; "give thanks to the Lord upon the harp, sing to him upon the ten-stringed psaltery, sing to him a new song." And may it not be that the ten-stringed psaltery signifies the Word, Jesus, made manifest through the numeral of the decad? And just as it is fitting for us, before partaking of food, to bless the Maker of all things, so also at the wine-table it is proper to sing to him as we partake of his creatures; for the psalm is a melodious and temperate form of blessing -- the apostle has called the psalm a "spiritual song." And above all, before we give ourselves over to sleep, it is a sacred duty to render thanks to God, since we have known his kindness and favor, so that our very sleep may come in a manner pleasing to him. "And confess to him," it says, "in the songs of your lips, because in his command all good pleasure comes to be, and there is no diminishing of his salvation." But even among the ancient Greeks, at their drinking-feasts and their dripping wine-cups, in imitation of the Hebrew psalms a song called the skolion used to be sung, all together raising a single voice in a paean, and sometimes also passing the song around in turns along with the cups; and the more musical among them sang also to the lyre. But let the love-songs go far off and perish, and let hymns to God alone be our songs. "Let them praise," it says, "his name in the dance; let them sing to him with timbrel and psaltery." And who the singing dance is, the Spirit itself will tell you: "his praise is in the assembly of the holy ones; let them exult in their King." And again it adds: "for the Lord takes pleasure in his people." For indeed the temperate harmonies are to be admitted, driving as far as possible from our robust mind those truly dissolute harmonies which, through their artful trickery in the turns and bendings of the notes, train men toward degeneracy and scurrilous buffoonery; but the austere and temperate melodies take their leave of the insolence that comes with drunkenness. The chromatic harmonies, then, must be left to the colorless drunken revels and to that flower-decked, courtesan-like music.

======== Paedagogus — Book 2, Chapter 5 ========

We must banish from our way of life men who mimic laughable things, or rather ridiculous passions. For since all speech flows from the mind and character, it is not possible to put forth laughable words without their proceeding from a laughable character. For the saying, "a good tree does not produce bad fruit, nor does a bad tree produce good fruit," would fit here too; the mind's character bears its own crop in speech. Since jesters, accordingly, are to be exiled from our commonwealth, far be it from us to permit ourselves to play the jester. For it is absurd that we should be found imitating what we have been forbidden even to listen to; and it is far more absurd still to make it one's earnest business to become laughable oneself — that is, to become an object of outrage and mockery. For if we would not endure being made to look ridiculous in outward form, as some are seen to be in processions, how could we reasonably tolerate the inner man being shaped into something more ridiculous still? And if we would never willingly twist our own face into something more laughable, how could we make it our practice, in our speech, both to be and to appear ridiculous, mocking the most honored of all human possessions, reason itself? To practice such things, then, is mere buffoonery, since the very talk of jesters is not worth listening to, accustoming people through the words themselves to shameful deeds; rather we should cultivate wit, not clownishness. But we must also bridle laughter itself. For laughter too, when brought forth in the proper manner, displays orderliness, but when it goes beyond that measure it shows licentiousness. For, simply put, whatever is natural to human beings should not be uprooted from them, but rather fitted with due measure and occasion. For it is not because man is a laughing animal that everything is to be laughed at, just as the horse, though a neighing animal, does not neigh at everything; rather, as rational animals we must temper ourselves with good measure, relaxing the austerity and high pitch of our seriousness harmoniously, not dissolving it discordantly. For the orderly relaxation of the face, in harmony as of an instrument, is called a smile (a diffusion that plays back across the face in this way) — this is the laughter of the temperate; but the discordant slackening of the face, if it occurs in women, is called giggling, and is a harlot's laughter, while if in men, it is called guffawing, and this is a laughter fit for suitors and full of insolence. Scripture puts it this way: "the fool lifts up his voice when he laughs, but a shrewd man will barely, and softly, smile." By "the clever man" it here means the prudent man, one disposed opposite to the fool. But neither, on the other hand, should one be sullen, but rather thoughtful; for I very much approve of that man who was seen smiling with a grim face — "for so his laughter would be less an object of mockery." The smile itself must also be disciplined: if it occurs over shameful things, we ought rather to be seen blushing than smiling, lest we seem to share in the pleasure out of sympathy; and if over painful things, it is fitting to be seen more downcast than to seem to take delight in them — for the one is evidence of human feeling, the other betrays a suspicion of cruelty. For one ought not to laugh always (that would be immoderate), nor when elders or others deserving of respect are present, unless indeed they themselves should jest so as to put us at ease; nor should one laugh before just anyone, nor in every place, nor before everyone, nor on every occasion. For laughter is above all a slippery slope into slander for young men and women. And to appear formidable from a distance is a means of putting suitors to flight; for gravity, even from mere appearance alone, is capable of repelling the assaults of licentiousness. Wine, one might almost say, drives all the foolish both to laugh softly and to dance, turning their effeminate character toward softness. And one must observe how, from this, license increases disorder into shameful speech; and "a word escaped him, which had been better left unsaid." It happens, at any rate, that it is especially in wine that the characters of the corrupt are seen laid bare of their pretense, on account of the unrestrained license of drunken behavior — through which reason, its head grown heavy with intoxication, is lulled to sleep within the soul itself, while the perverse passions are awakened, overpowering the weakness of reasoning.

======== Paedagogus — Book 2, Chapter 6 ========

We ourselves must abstain entirely from foul speech, and we must silence those who indulge in it, whether by a sharper glance, or by turning away the face, or by the so-called snort of contempt, and often too by a rougher word. For "the things that go out of the mouth," it says, "defile a man," showing him to be common and heathenish and uneducated and licentious, rather than a man of his own, decent and self-controlled. Against the hearing of shameful things and the sight of things of like character, the divine Instructor acts just as with boys who wrestle: so that their ears may not be shattered, he wraps sober words around them like ear-guards, so that fornication's blow cannot reach in and shatter the soul; and toward noble sights he turns the eyes, teaching that stumbling on one's feet is preferable to a fall caused by the eyes. Repelling this foul speech, the apostle says, "let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but only what is good"; and again: "as befits saints, let there not even be named among you shamefulness or foolish talk or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather thanksgiving." And if the one who calls his brother a fool is liable to judgment, what shall we pronounce concerning the one who talks foolishness? Concerning this too it is written: "for every idle word spoken, a man must give account before the Lord when judgment comes." And again it says, "by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." What then are the saving ear-guards? And what is the instruction for slippery eyes? Association with the righteous, which forestalls and stops up beforehand the ears against those who wish to lead one away from the truth. "Evil company corrupts good character," says the poet. But more nobly the apostle says, "become those who abhor what is evil, cleaving to what is good"; for the one who keeps company with the holy will be made holy. In every way, then, one must abstain from shameful things heard and spoken and seen, and much more must one keep pure from shameful deeds — this in the showing off and baring of certain parts of the body which ought not to be bared, and that in the gazing upon the more hidden parts. For the self-controlled son could not bear to look upon the nakedness of the righteous man, shameful as it was; rather self-control covered over what drunkenness had bared, the conspicuous fall of ignorance. And one must keep pure no less in the utterances of the voice, sounds that ought never to reach the ears of any who have put their faith in Christ. In this way it seems to me the Instructor does not allow us even to utter anything of unseemliness, warding us off from licentiousness while it is still far away. For he is ever skillful at cutting out the roots of sins, as with "you shall not commit adultery" by means of "you shall not desire"; for adultery is the fruit of desire, the evil root. So likewise here the Instructor has condemned the fearless use of names, cutting out the fearless mingling with licentiousness. For disorder in names creates the practice of disorder in deeds as well, while self-control concerning the voice is training in endurance of lust. We have determined, in a more thorough discussion, that neither in the names nor indeed in the parts used for intercourse, nor in the union that belongs to marriage — concerning which the names not worn smooth by common usage are applied — is the designation of what is truly shameful assigned. For neither are the knee and the shin shameful as bodily parts, nor indeed shameful are the words given to them or the deeds performed by their means (and the private parts of a human being too are members, deemed worthy of modesty, not shame); rather what is shameful is their unlawful activity, worthy for this reason of disgrace and reproach and punishment; for in truth only vice, and the things done in accordance with it, are shameful. In keeping with this, foul speech would rightly be called the making of speeches about the works of vice — such as discoursing about adultery or pederasty and the like. Indeed, one must also silence idle chattering. "For by much talking," it says, "you will not escape sin"; so the wagging tongue will pay a penalty: "for the one who is silent is found to be wise, and one is hated for much talking." Already the chatterer becomes wearisome even to himself: "for the one who multiplies words abhors his own soul."

======== Paedagogus — Book 2, Chapter 7 ========

Let mockery be far, far from us, since it is the beginning of insolence, out of which strifes and battles and enmities swell up. And we said that insolence attends drunkenness as its servant. One is judged, not merely by deeds, but by words too. "At a banquet," it says, "do not reprove your neighbor, and do not speak a word of reproach to him." For even if it is especially enjoined to keep company with the holy, to mock a holy man is a sin; for Scripture says, "out of the mouth of fools comes a rod of insolence," calling the rod a support of insolence, on which insolence leans and rests. Hence I admire the apostle here too exhorting us not to let loose either coarse jesting or words that are unfitting. For if the gatherings at feasts are for the sake of love, and the end of a banquet is kindly feeling toward those present, and eating and drinking are things that accompany love, how are we not to conduct ourselves rationally? Nor should we be at a loss because of love; for if we come together as intensifying our goodwill toward one another, how do we stir up enmities by mockery? Silence serves better than meeting sin with a foolish reply. Truly happy "is he who has not stumbled with his mouth and has not been wounded by the pain of sin," whether he repented for the things he said and sinned in, or having spoken in such a way as to grieve no one. In general, then, let young men and young women for the most part abstain from such feastings, so that they may not stumble in matters unbecoming to them; for unfamiliar things heard and unseemly things seen fan the mind into flame while faith is still surging within them, and the instability of their age works together with them toward the easy overthrow of desire; and sometimes they even become the cause of others' stumbling, by displaying the perilous charm of their youth. For wisdom seems to give good counsel: "Do not sit at all with a married woman, and do not recline together with her on the same couch." This means: do not dine with her too often, nor eat with her. Wherefore it also adds: "Nor make contributions with her over wine, lest your heart incline toward her, and by your blood you slip into destruction"; for the freedom that comes with wine is slippery and can flower into wantonness; and it called her married, since the danger is greater for one who attempts to loosen the bond of a marriage. But if some necessity should arise commanding a woman to be present, let such women be covered very much on the outside with a wrap, and within with modesty; and as for those who are unmarried, nothing brings greater shame upon them than showing up where men are gathered to dine, especially while those men are taking wine. As for the men, let their gaze stay fixed on the couch before them, motionless, leaning on an elbow, contributing nothing but attentive ears; and if they should also be seated, let them not cross their feet one over the other, nor lay one thigh upon the other, nor prop the chin upon the hand; for it is ignoble not to bear oneself properly, and this is a charge against the young. And to keep continually shifting and changing one's posture is a sign of frivolity. It belongs at once to a self-controlled man, in drinking and in eating, to choose the lesser portion and the more leisurely pace, not the more headlong one, both at the outset and in the intervals, and also to stop early and to be free from eager desire. "Eat," it says, "as befits a human being from what lies before you; stop before others do, as good manners require, and if you are seated among a crowd, do not reach out your hand ahead of them." One must not, therefore, leap forward, persuaded by gluttony, nor indeed linger on, reaching out for a long time, thereby confessing one's lack of self-control by lagging behind; nor must one appear, in between, to be fastened upon the food like the beasts upon their prey, nor to partake of too much of the delicacies; for man is by nature not a lover of delicacies but a bread-eater. It belongs to a self-controlled man to rise up before the many and to withdraw from the banquet decently; for it says, "at the hour of rising do not linger behind as the rearguard, but hasten off to your own house." And the Twelve, once they had gathered the whole body of disciples together, declared: "It would not be right for us to set aside God's word in order to wait on tables." If indeed they were on guard against this, much more did they flee gluttony. And those same apostles, in their letter to "the brethren in Antioch and throughout Syria and Cilicia," wrote: "The Holy Spirit and we ourselves have resolved to place on you no additional weight beyond these essentials: keep away from meat offered to idols, from blood, from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality; if you steer clear of these you will fare well." One must guard against drunken excesses just as against hemlock; for both drag one down into death. "One must also be kept from excessive laughter and from tears" beyond measure; for often those who have drunk wine, having burst into laughter for a very long time, are then somehow led on, persuaded by some drunken impulse, into tears; for both to be made effeminate and to run into insolence are out of tune with reason. Let elders, looking upon the young as their own children, only very rarely, and perhaps somewhere, play with them, teasing them in that respect which will train their good bearing. For instance, one can jest pleasantly with the bashful and silent youth in some such way: "But my son — I mean that silent one there — never stops talking." For such teasing intensifies the young man's modesty, showing pleasantly the good qualities that belong to him, through the accusation of faults which do not belong to him; for this too is an instructive device, confirming what is present through what is not present. Similarly, it is such a judgment when someone says of the water-drinker and self-controlled man that he is behaving drunkenly and getting intoxicated. But if there should be some who are fond of mockery, we must keep silent and let pass their superfluous words, as one would pass by cups already filled up; for such play is perilous: "the mouth of the reckless draws near to ruin"; "you shall not accept an idle report, nor shall you agree with the unjust to become an unjust witness," neither in slanders nor in blasphemies, nor indeed in acts of malice. Now it seems to me that a measure should be set upon the voice even of self-controlled men, those, that is, to whom it is permitted to speak in reply. For silence is the virtue of women, but for the young it is a safe distinction, while good speech belongs to an age that has been tested. "Speak, elder, at the banquet; for it is fitting for you; but speak without hindrance and with precise knowledge. Young man," wisdom permits you too, "speak, if there is need of you, only when questioned twice; sum up your speech briefly." Let both of those conversing measure their utterance by due proportion; for loudness of voice is most akin to madness, and to speak inaudibly to those nearby belongs to one lacking sense, for they will not hear. The one is a mark of ignobility, the other of self-will. Let also the love of contention for the sake of an empty victory in words be far from us, since our end is freedom from disturbance, and this indeed is the meaning of "peace to you"; "before you have heard, do not answer a word." But the broken, affected voice belongs to an effeminate man, whereas to a self-controlled man belongs a voice measured in its magnitude and length and speed and volume, restraining his own utterance. For one must never speak at length, nor talk too much, nor babble idly, nor converse in a rushed and hurried manner. For to the voice itself, so to speak, justice must be given a share, and those who shout out of season and the bawlers must be silenced. It was for this reason that self-controlled Odysseus disfigured Thersites with blows, because he alone, immoderate of speech, chattered on, "who knew in his mind many disorderly words, idle ones, and not according to order." "Terrible in his own destruction is the man of much tongue." Of babblers, then, just as of old shoes, the other parts have been worn out by wickedness, and only the tongue remains, to do harm. For this reason wisdom, most usefully for life, exhorts "not to babble in the assembly of elders," cutting off our idle talk from above, beginning from God, laying down moderation as a law in some such way: "do not repeat your word in your prayer." Clickings of the tongue and hisses and finger-snappings that summon the household servants are irrational signals, and must be avoided by rational human beings; one must also refrain from spitting continually and from clearing the throat too violently. Nor must one blow the nose while drinking; for one must in some way take account of one's fellow diners, lest they turn away from nausea at such unseemliness, which is an accusation of intemperance; for it is not the same for men as for oxen and asses, to have the manger and the dung-heap together; and yet many blow their noses and spit at the very same time that they are also dining. But if a sneeze should come upon someone, as indeed also a belch, there will be no need to deafen those nearby with the noise, thereby testifying against their own lack of breeding; rather the belch must be let pass quietly, together with the exhaled breath, the mouth being shaped decorously, and not drawn wide open and gaping like the masks of tragic actors. The disturbing force of a sneeze must be removed by gently holding back one's breathing; for in this way, most decorously, one must extinguish the sudden onset of breath, managing its passage so as to try even to escape notice, if the air, forcing its way out, should also bring something superfluous along with it. It is a mark of arrogance and disorder to wish to add to such noises rather than to suppress them. Those who pick at their teeth till they draw blood from their gums are unpleasant to themselves and hateful to those nearby. Indeed, ticklings of the ears and irritations that provoke sneezing are swinish forms of itching, and are practice-grounds for unrestrained fornication. And unseemly things that meet the eye must be avoided, as must shameful talk about them. Let one's gaze also be composed, and the turning of the neck and its movement steady, and the bearing of the hands in conversation likewise. For in general the Christian is at home with calm and quiet and stillness and peace.

======== Paedagogus — Book 2, Chapter 8 ========

The use of garlands and myrrh-ointments is not necessary for us. For it runs aground on pleasures and self-indulgence, especially with night close at hand. I know that, bringing an "alabaster jar of myrrh" to the holy supper, the woman anointed the Lord's feet and perfumed him. And I also know that in ancient days the kings of the Hebrews wore crowns fashioned of gold set with precious stone.
But the woman, not yet having a share in the Word (for she still numbered among sinners), honored the Master with what she reckoned the finest thing she possessed, the myrrh; indeed she also wiped away the excess of the myrrh with the adornment of her body, her own hair, pouring out to the Lord tears of repentance. For this reason "her sins have been forgiven." Now this may serve as an emblem of what the Lord taught and of what he suffered: for the feet, anointed with fragrant myrrh, hint darkly at the divine teaching that carries its good report across the whole earth: "their voice has gone out over all the earth." And if I do not seem to be forcing the point, the Lord's feet, the ones perfumed, are the apostles, having received a share of the fragrance of the holy anointing by prophecy of the Spirit. At any rate the apostles who traveled around the inhabited world and proclaimed the gospel are allegorized as the feet of the Lord, concerning whom the Spirit also foretells through the psalmist: "let us bow down at the spot his feet once occupied," meaning the place the feet of him, the apostles, reached, through whom he, being proclaimed, was carried out to earth's farthest bounds. Repentance is figured by the tears, and the unbound hair signaled her release from love of adornment, together with the hardship patiently endured that accompanies proclaiming the gospel for the Lord's sake, the old vainglory having given way for the sake of the new faith. But it also shows, mystically, the Master's suffering to those who grasp it thus: the oil represents the Lord himself, the one from whom the mercy shown to us proceeds; but the myrrh, oil that has been adulterated, stands for Judas the traitor, by whose hand the Lord's feet were anointed as he set out from his time spent among us in this world — since the dead, too, are anointed with myrrh; and we sinners who have turned back are the tears, we who have trusted him and whose sins he has released, and the loosened hair signifies Jerusalem in mourning, the cast-off city, on whose account the prophets uttered their laments. The Lord himself will show us that Judas was the adulterated one, when he says, "he who dips his hand with me" — "into the dish, this one will hand me over." Do you see the treacherous fellow-diner? This same Judas betrayed the Teacher with a kiss; he turned hypocrite, his very kiss rendered false, imitating an earlier hypocrite of old, of whom that people stood convicted: "this people draws near me with their mouths, while their hearts stay distant from me." It is not unreasonable, then, that by the oil he should point on one side to a disciple who obtained mercy, and by the poisoned, deceitful oil, on the other, to a traitor. This, then, is what the myrrh-anointed feet foretold, as the Lord moved toward his suffering through Judas's betrayal. And the Savior himself, washing the feet of his disciples and sending them off to good works, hinted darkly at their journey toward the benefits they would bring the nations, making that path fair and clean beforehand by his own power. And in all this the myrrh released its fragrance, and the effect of its sweetness, reaching every people, became renowned; for indeed the Lord's suffering has filled us with sweet fragrance, but left the Hebrews marked with sin. The apostle showed this most plainly when he declared: "Thanks be to God, who continually leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and reveals through us the fragrance of knowing him in every place; because we are Christ's fragrance offered to God, among those being saved and among those perishing: to the latter a scent from death to death, to the former a scent from life to life."
The kings of the Jews, using a crown of gold and precious stones, composite and varied — the anointed ones — carrying Christ symbolically upon their head, had unwittingly been adorned by being crowned with the head that is the Lord. A precious stone, or a pearl, or an emerald, hints darkly at the Word himself; and gold, again, is the incorruptible Word himself, who does not admit the rust of corruption. The Magi brought gold to him at his birth as a symbol of kingship. And this crown remains immortal, after the image of the Lord; for it does not wither like a flower.
I know also the sayings of Aristippus of Cyrene. Aristippus lived luxuriously; he poses a sophistical argument something like this: a horse anointed with myrrh is not harmed with respect to the excellence proper to a horse, nor is a dog perfumed harmed with respect to the excellence proper to a dog; nor, therefore, is a man, he went on, drawing the conclusion. But for the horse and the dog there is no perception at all of the myrrh, whereas for those whose sense-perception is more rational, the enjoyment is more blameworthy, since they carry about girlish scents. Of these myrrh-ointments there are countless varieties: brenthion and metallion and basileion, and plangonion, and Egyptian psagdas. Simonides in his iambics is not ashamed to say: "and I was anointed with myrrh-ointments and incense and bakkaris; for indeed some merchant was present." They also cultivate the ointment made from lilies, and that from henna, and nard is held in high esteem among them, and the unguent from roses, and the others which women still use — the liquid and dry kinds, and the powdered and fumigated perfumes; for day after day new ones are devised for them, to satisfy the insatiability of their desire with the unappeasable craving for fragrance; hence they also give off an odor of considerable vulgarity. And some of them fumigate and sprinkle even their garments and their bedding and their houses, and luxury nearly compels even their chamber-pots to smell of myrrh. Those seem to me right who, protesting against such zeal in this matter, have grown so averse to perfumes that some banish the men's quarters from effeminacy induced by them, so much so that they drive out even the craftsmen who make them, the perfumers, from well-governed cities, and drive out likewise the dyers of bright-colored wools; for it is not right that deceitful garments and unguents should slip into the city of truth. Our men ought by all means to smell not of myrrh but of honorable goodness, and a woman ought to breathe forth the fragrance of Christ, the royal ointment, not of powders and perfumes, but should always be anointed together with the ambrosial unction of self-control, delighting in the holy myrrh that is the Spirit. This is what Christ prepares for those who know him, an ointment of sweet fragrance, compounding the myrrh from heavenly spices. With this myrrh the Lord himself also is anointed, as is shown through David: "therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions; myrrh and aloes and cassia are on your garments."
But let us not fail to notice that we are like vultures loathing perfumes, or like beetles (for they say these die when anointed with rose-perfume), and among these too a few perfumes are to be approved for women, those which do not stupefy the husband; for excessive anointings with perfume give off the smell of a funeral, not of shared life together. And yet oil itself is hostile to bees and to insects, but among men it has benefited some, while it has summoned others to combat, and it turns those who were previously cowardly, once anointed, out onto the racetracks into the all-out contest of the games. But do you not think that myrrh, being a softening oil, can render noble characters effeminate? Most certainly. Just as we have shut out luxury from taste as well, so likewise we banish the voluptuous indulgence of sight and of smell, lest we fail to notice that we are giving back entry, through the senses as through unguarded doors, to the very licentiousness we banished. If, then, they should say that the incense of sweet fragrance is offered up to God by the great high priest, the Lord, let them not think of this as sacrifice and fragrance of incense, but rather let them accept that the Lord offers up the acceptable offering of love, the spiritual fragrance, onto the altar. The oil itself, then, suffices to give a gloss to the surface, and to relax the sinews, and to check a certain heavier odor of the body, if indeed we should need oil even for this; but the cultivation of sweet scent is bait for indolence, drawing greedy desire from far off. For the licentious person is led about from every side — by food, by bedding, by company, and from the eyes, and from the ears, and from the jaws, but also from the nostrils. Just as oxen are led by rings and ropes, so too the licentious person is dragged about by incenses and perfumes and the fragrances arising from garlands. Since, however, no room is granted among us to pleasure that offers life no useful service, come, let us here too draw a distinction, choosing what is useful. For there are certain fragrances that are neither stupefying nor erotic, that do not give off the odor of illicit intercourse and licentious companionship, but are wholesome, together with self-control, and nourish the brain when it is in poor condition, and also strengthen the stomach. For it is not to be utterly rejected in every respect, but myrrh is to be used like a medicine and a remedy, both for rousing failing strength and against catarrhs and against the discomfort of chills, just as the comic poet says somewhere: "he anoints his nostrils with perfumes; it is a very great part of health to make the scents wholesome for the brain." And the rubbing of the feet with the fat of warming or cooling ointments is practiced for benefit, so that a certain drawing and withdrawal may occur, away from the head, for those who are congested, toward the less vital parts of the body. But pleasure to which usefulness does not attach is a slander of a courtesan's character and a drug for provocations. There is an entire difference between anointing oneself with perfume and being anointed with myrrh: the one is effeminate, but being anointed with myrrh is sometimes even beneficial. Aristippus the philosopher, at any rate, having anointed himself with myrrh, said that the wretches who slandered the benefit of myrrh into an object of reproach — meaning the perverts — ought to perish wretchedly. "Honor the physician for his usefulness," says Scripture; "for indeed the Most High created him, and healing comes from the Lord." Then it adds: "and the perfumer will make a compound" — clearly meaning that myrrh-ointments were given for benefit, not for self-indulgence. For one ought not at all to be zealous about the provocative quality of perfumes, but rather choose what is beneficial, seeing that God granted the origin of oil to men as a help for their labors. And foolish women, dyeing their gray hairs but perfuming their locks, become gray more quickly on account of the spices, which are drying. Hence those who are perfumed appear rather more parched; and dryness makes people grayer (whether grayness is a withering of the hair, or a lack of heat), the dryness draining off the hair's own moist nourishment and rendering it gray. How then could they reasonably still love the very perfumes that cause the gray hairs, they who flee gray hairs? Just as dogs tracking by scent hunt down wild animals by their odor, so from the elaborate fragrance of perfumes the self-controlled hunt out the licentious.
Such too is the use of garlands, festive and drunken: 'begone; put no garland round my head.' For in the season of spring it is a fine thing to dwell in dewy meadows soft with grass, green with varied flowers, being nourished, like bees, by some natural and unadulterated fragrance; but for those who fashion a woven garland from an unspoiled meadow to carry it around at home is not the mark of temperate people. For it is not fitting to crown a festive head of hair with rosebuds, or violets, or lilies, or any other such flowers, plucking apart the green growth. For a garland placed around the hair actually chills it, both through moisture and through coldness. For this reason physicians too, holding that the brain is by nature cold, recommend anointing the chest and the tip of the nostrils with myrrh, so that the fiery vapor, passing through quietly, may be able vigorously to warm the coldness. Far from it, then, that one should cool the head further with flowers, when the sinewy part wants to be warmed. Yes, and indeed those who are crowned with garlands lose the very delight of the blossoms. For those who bind the garland above their eyes do not enjoy the sight of it, nor indeed do those who drive the flowers beyond the range of their breathing enjoy the fragrance; for since the fragrance rises upward and evaporates naturally above the head, the breath is left deprived of enjoyment, the fragrance being snatched away. Just as beauty, then, so too the flower delights when it is seen, and one ought, enjoying beautiful things through sight, to glorify the Creator. But the use of garlands is harmful, and it soon passes away, punished by regret. Immediately, indeed, their transience stands convicted; for both wither together, the flower and the beauty. But also, of those who touch them, the one has chilled, the other has inflamed. In a word, the enjoyment of them through sight is arrogance, not luxury; but it is fitting for us to live in luxury, as it were in paradise, in true self-control, truly following after Scripture. One must understand the husband to be the wife's garland, and marriage to be the husband's, and the children of both to be the flowers of marriage, which the divine farmer gathers as harvest from the meadows of the flesh. "Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and children take pride in their fathers," as Scripture puts it; but for us the Father of all is our pride, and Christ is the crown of the whole church.
Just as roots and herbs, so too flowers have their own particular qualities, some beneficial, others harmful, and some even dangerous. Ivy, at any rate, chills, while the walnut gives off a stupefying vapor, as even its name, when traced to its origin, indicates. The narcissus is a heavy-scented flower, and its very name convicts it, producing numbness (narke) in the sinews. The exhalations of roses and violets, being gently cool, draw together and check headaches; but for us it is not permitted to indulge in drunkenness at all in any degree, nor even to take wine. Yes, indeed, the crocus and the flower of the henna induce untroubled sleep. Many of these, though the brain is by nature cold, warm it by their exhalations, refining away the residues of the head. Hence too the rose is said to be named as it is, they say, because it gives off a very great flow of scent; hence too it withers the more quickly.
But not even among the ancient Greeks was the use of garlands yet known. For neither the suitors nor the luxury-loving Phaeacians make use of them. And in the games, first there was the giving of prizes, second the going about to receive congratulations, third the throwing of leaves, and last of all the garland, once Greece had made progress toward luxury after the Persian Wars. Those who are being instructed by the Word, then, are kept from garlands, not because they seem to bind down the Word, seated as it is in the brain, nor because the garland would be a symbol of festive insolence, but rather because it has been named after idols. Sophocles, at any rate, called the narcissus "the ancient garland of the great gods," meaning the gods of the underworld; and Sappho crowns the Muses with roses — for not [textually uncertain] from the beginning were the roses from Pieria; and they say Hera takes pleasure in the lily, Artemis in the myrtle. For even if flowers came into being chiefly for man's sake, and foolish men, taking them, put them to use not for their own grateful enjoyment but for the thankless service of demons, we must abstain from them "for conscience's sake." The garland is a symbol of untroubled freedom from care; for this reason too people crown the dead with garlands, by the same reasoning by which they also crown idols, thereby testifying in deed that they are among the dead. For those who celebrate Bacchic rites do not perform their orgies even without garlands; and when they have put the flowers around themselves, they are inflamed all the more toward the rite. One must, then, have no fellowship whatsoever with demons, nor must one crown the living image of God as though it were among the dead idols. For the beautiful crown of the unfading flower is reserved for the one who has lived well as a citizen; the earth has not room to bear this flower — heaven alone knows how to bring it to fruit. Moreover, it is unreasonable for us, having heard that the Lord was crowned with thorns, to bind ourselves with flowers, luxuriating over the solemn suffering our Lord underwent. This crown worn by the Lord hinted darkly, in prophecy, at us, once fruitless, now joined to him within the church, whose head he stands as; yet it is likewise a figure of faith: of life, given the substance of the wood; of gladness, given the very name "crown"; of danger, given the thorn — since none may draw near the Word without bloodshed. But this woven crown withers, its crooked plaiting comes apart, and the flower dries up; for the honor of those refusing belief in the Lord likewise wastes away. They crowned Jesus when he was exalted, thereby testifying against their own ignorance; for this very thing the hard-hearted do not understand as being a wise prophecy, which they themselves call an outrage against the Lord. The people who went astray did not know the Lord, they were not circumcised in reasoning, they were not illumined out of their darkening, they did not see God, they denied the Lord, they lost the right to be Israel, they persecuted God, they hoped to insult the Word, and him whom they crucified as a criminal, they crowned as a king. For this very reason, then, the man in whom they did not believe — they shall recognize as Lord the God who loves mankind, and as just; because in embittering him they meant to expose the Lord to scorn, they have instead testified to this very thing regarding him when exalted, having fastened around him, through the ever-green thorn, the diadem of righteousness. This diadem proved hostile to those who plotted against him, but built up as a defense those who assemble with him in the church; this crown is the bloom worn by those who put faith in him now glorified, yet it draws blood and inflicts punishment on those refusing belief. Yes, and it is also a symbol of the Master's achievement, since he bore on his head, on the ruling part of his body, all our wicked deeds, by which we were being pierced; for he himself, by his own suffering, having rescued us from stumbling-blocks and sins and thorns of this kind, and having brought the devil to nothing, fittingly said, exulting: "O death, where is your sting?" And we gather grapes from thorns, and figs from brambles; but they are torn into wounds, they over whom he stretched out his hands, against a disobedient and fruitless people.
I could also tell you another mystical point here. For when the almighty Lord of all things was beginning to legislate through the Word, and wished his own power to become manifest to Moses, a divine-formed vision of light shaped itself and was shown to him upon a burning bush; and the thorny plant is the bush. But when the Word ceased from the giving of the law and from his sojourn among men, the Lord is again mystically crowned with thorn, departing from here to that place from which he had come down, recapitulating the beginning of his ancient descent, so that he who was first seen through a bush, the Word, being afterward taken up through the thorn, might show that all things are the work of one power, being one of one, the Father being one, the beginning and end of the age.
But I have digressed from the pattern of the Instructor, introducing the manner of a teacher; so I return again to the matter before us. We have already shown that neither the delight flowers give nor the usefulness that comes from unguents and incense should be shunned, since such things function as a remedy for healing, and in certain instances also for moderate enjoyment. But if some should say, what charm, then, do flowers still hold for those who do not make use of them, let them know that unguents too are prepared from them and are of much benefit: lily-perfume, made from lilies and irises, is warming, opens the pores, draws out, moistens, cleanses, is fine in texture, stirs the bile, and softens; narcissus-perfume, made from the narcissus, benefits equally with lily-perfume; myrtle-perfume, made from myrtle-berries and myrtle, is astringent, checking the exhalations from the body; and rose-perfume is cooling. For in general these things too have been fashioned for our good use. "Hearken to me," it says, "and bud forth as a rose planted by streams of water, breathe out a scent as sweet as frankincense, and give praise to the Lord for what he has made." And much could be said on these matters, as we speak of flowers and spices as existing for necessary benefits, not for the excesses of luxury. But if indeed some concession must be made, it is enough for them to enjoy the scent of the flowers; let them not, however, crown themselves with them. For the Father cares greatly for man, and grants his own art to him alone. The Scripture says, at any rate: "Water, fire, iron, milk, choice flour and honey, wine's blood, oil, and garments, all such things exist for the good of those who fear God."

======== Paedagogus — Book 2, Chapter 9 ========

Now we must say what remains, so that from this point we may proceed to the topic of sleep, still keeping in mind the precepts of self-control. For after the feast, having blessed God for the sharing of the enjoyments and for the day's passing, reason must guide us to sleep, dismissing the extravagance of the bedding spread beneath us — the gold-strewn carpets, the rugs richly embroidered with gold, the purple robes, the costly furs, the poetic coverlets of purple, the thick woolen mantles laid over all, and the couches "softer than sleep" itself. For besides being reprehensible for its self-indulgence, sleeping amid downy feathers is actually harmful, since the body, through the softness of the bedding, sinks as if into a bottomless pit. For [the text is corrupt] it does not hold firm for those who turn over as they lie in it, because of the uneven rising of the bedding on either side of the body; rather it lets the food be digested and even burns it up more, which in fact ruins the nourishment. [Rolling about on level beds, being as it were a natural exercise during sleep, helps toward the proper disposition of one's food —] and those who are able to roll about on level beds, having this as a kind of natural exercise, digest their food more easily and render themselves better prepared for whatever circumstances arise. Further, silver-footed couches are witnesses to a great deal of pretension, and the ivory worked into bedsteads — "it is not sanctified for a soul that has left the body" — is a foolish contrivance of repose for holy people.
One ought not, then, be zealous about such things. Possessing them, one is not barred from making use of them, yet chasing after them eagerly is off-limits; for happiness is not found in such possessions. On the other hand, it is also a kind of Cynic vainglory to make a practice, like Diomedes, of sleeping "with the hide of a field-ox spread beneath him," unless indeed circumstance should compel it. Odysseus, for his part, propped up the wobbling leg of his bridal bed with a stone. Such frugality and self-sufficiency was practiced not only among ordinary people but also among the leaders of the ancient Greeks. But why bring up such examples? Recall instead how Jacob rested his head against bare earth, taking a stone for his pillow; and it was then that he was deemed worthy to see the vision that surpasses man. We, then, ought to use, in keeping with reason, a simple and plain bed, having only what is fitting for comfort — in summer, something to give shade; in cold, something to give warmth. Let the bed be unadorned and have smooth feet; for elaborately carved turnings sometimes become the runs of creeping creatures, which wind themselves about the incised patterns of the craftsman's work without slipping off. Above all, the softness of the couch should be moderated in a manly way. For sleep ought not to be a complete slackening of the body, but a relaxation. Wherefore I say it must be taken up not for the sake of idleness, but as a rest from one's activities. We should therefore drowse off in a manner ready to rouse ourselves. For it says, "Keep your waists bound tight and your lamps kept lit; be like servants awaiting their master's return from the wedding feast, so that when he arrives and knocks they can open the door for him without delay. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes." For a sleeping man is of no more use than a dead one. Wherefore we must often rise from bed even in the night and bless God; for blessed are those who are awake unto him, likening themselves to angels, whom we call "the watchers." "But a man who is asleep is worth nothing at all, no more than one who is not alive"; whereas he who has the light is awake, and darkness does not overtake him, nor indeed does sleep, since it is not darkness. He who has been enlightened is therefore awake toward God, and such a one lives; for "what came to be in him was life." "Blessed is the man," says Wisdom, "who will listen to me, and the man who keeps my ways, watching daily at my gates, guarding the posts of my doorways." "Let us not, then, sleep as the rest do, but let us watch," says Scripture, "and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk are drunk at night" — that is, amid the murk of unknowing — "whereas we, belonging to the day, must stay sober. All of you are children of light and of day; none of us belongs to night or to gloom." "But he who is our foremost guardian of true living and of genuine understanding stays awake for as long a time as possible, guarding only what is useful here for his health; and this is not much, if it becomes a good habit." The practice of discipline, through its labors, produces an enduring wakefulness. Let not our food, then, weigh us down, but rather lighten us, so that we may as far as possible avoid being harmed by sleep — like swimmers who have weights attached to them, except that in the opposite way, sobriety may lift us up, as if from an abyss below, to the surface of wakefulness. For the descent of sleep resembles death, being carried down through thoughtlessness into numbness, as the eyelids fall shut and shut out the light. We, then, as children born of the genuine light, must not banish that light beyond ourselves but redirect it inward, illuminating the eyes of the hidden man, and beholding truth itself, and partaking of its streams, so that we may be shown, clearly and wisely, the true dreams. But the belchings of those heavy with wine, and the wheezings of those stuffed with food, and the snoring wrapped up in the bedclothes, and the rumblings of bellies constricted, bury the discerning eye of the soul, while the mind is filled with countless phantoms. The cause is excessive food, which drags the reasoning faculty down into insensibility. "For much sleep brings benefit neither to our bodies nor to our souls, nor is it suited to actions concerned with truth, even though it is according to nature." As for Lot the righteous man (for I pass over now the exposition of the economy of his regeneration), he would not have been led into that unlawful union had he not been made drunk by his daughters and stupefied with sleep. If, then, we cut away the causes of excessive falling into sleep, we shall sleep more soberly; for "it is not fitting" for those who have reason as an indwelling, wakeful guest "to sleep the whole night through"; rather one must rouse oneself in the night, especially when the days grow short; and the one should occupy himself with study, another should attend to his craft, women should take up their spinning, and all of us, so to speak, must struggle against sleep, gently and by gradual habituation accustoming ourselves to it, so that through wakefulness we may partake of a greater span of life (for sleep, like a toll-collector, divides off from us half our lifetime); far from it that we should allow those who cut off most of the night for wakefulness to sleep by day as well. Restlessness, and drowsy nodding, and stretching, and yawning are the discontents of an unsteady soul.
One must also know this above all: that it is not the soul that has need of sleep, for it is ever in motion, but the body, borne along by its labors, grows weary and slackens, while the soul no longer acts through the body but reflects by itself; and it is for this reason that true dreams, rightly reckoned, are the reasonings of a sober soul that is at that time undistracted by the body's affections and is counseling itself in what is best. But it is the ruin of the soul for it to lie utterly inert; wherefore the soul that is always mindful of God, through its unceasing communion with him, enrolling wakefulness alongside the body, makes man equal to angelic grace, gaining the eternity of life from the practice of staying awake.

======== Paedagogus — Book 2, Chapter 10 ========

The proper time for intercourse is a matter left only for the married to consider, and for the married the aim is child-bearing, and the end is good offspring, just as for the farmer the reason for casting his seed is provision for nourishment, and the end of his farming for him is the ingathering of the fruits. But far better is the farmer who sows a living field; for the one tills seeking timely nourishment, the other providing for the continuance of the whole; and the one plants for himself, the other for God's sake. For He has said, "Be fruitful and multiply," and this must be obeyed; and it is in this respect that man becomes an image of God, in that man cooperates in the begetting of man. Not every soil, then, is suited for receiving seed, and even if it is, not by the same farmer; nor indeed should one sow upon rocks, nor outrage the seed, which is the founding substance of generation and has the reasoning principles of nature sown together within it; and to disgrace, unreasoningly, the reasonings that accord with nature into channels contrary to nature is utterly godless. Observe, then, how the all-wise Moses somehow symbolically rejects unfruitful sowing, saying, "You shall not eat the hare nor the hyena." He does not wish man to partake of their quality, nor indeed to taste of a like wantonness; for these animals are excessively frenzied about mating. And they say the hare gains an anus-opening each year, having as many holes as years it has lived; hence the prohibition of eating the hare signifies an aversion to pederasty. And the hyena, they say, alternates in turn from male to female every other year, hinting that one who abstains from the hyena ought not rush into adultery. Now that Moses the all-wise, by this prohibition set forth, hints that we ought not liken ourselves to these animals, I too agree in common consent; I do not, however, assent to this particular exegesis of the symbolically-spoken matters. For nature could never be compelled into a change, and what has once been shaped is not lawful to be reshaped by passion in opposition to itself; for passion is not nature; passion is accustomed to counterfeit the form, not to remake it. For even if many of the birds are said to change both color and voice according to the seasons (as the blackbird turns tawny from black, and becomes noisy instead of songful; likewise too the nightingale changes both color and song with the turning seasons), yet they do not at all change their nature itself, so that female should become out of male by transformation; rather, the fresh growth of feathers blooms forth, like a new garment, with a certain dye of plumage, but a little later it fades away under the threat of winter, like a flower whose color withers; and the voice too in the same way, worn by the cold, fades; for as the surface is condensed by the surrounding air, the arteries about the neck, being compressed and condensed, press further upon the breath, and this, being excessively straitened, gives forth a strangled sound. Then again, being made like the surrounding air and relaxed with the spring, the breath is freed from its constriction, borne through the now-widened passages that had been narrowed; and the song, no longer faint, blooms forth now clear and pours out more broadly in utterance, and the birds' song already becomes the springtime of their voice.
One should never believe, then, that the hyena changes its nature; nor indeed does this same animal possess both genitalia at once, of male and female, as some have supposed, telling fables of hermaphrodites and inventing this androgynous nature as a third kind between female and male. They are quite deceived, not having understood the ingenious skill of nature, the mother and begetter of all. For since this animal, the hyena, is most lustful, there grows on it beneath the tail, before the passage of excretion, a certain fleshy protrusion resembling in shape a female pudendum; but this fleshy shape has no passage at all leading to anything useful, either to a womb or, I mean, to a rectum; rather it has only a large hollow, by which it receives its empty lust, whenever the passages turn away, being occupied with birth-giving during gestation. This same feature grows on both male and female hyena on account of their excessive passivity; for the male too submits to the other, whence it is exceedingly rare to obtain a female hyena; for continuous conceptions do not occur for this animal, since the unnatural mating multiplies freely and without restraint among them. In this way it seems to me that Plato too, in the Phaedrus, rejecting pederasty, calls it a wild beast, because "having champed the bit," those given over to pleasures, being lustful, "proceed after the manner of four-footed beasts and attempt to sow their seed in boys." And God "gave over" the godless, as the apostle says, "to dishonorable passions; for their females exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature, and likewise also the males, having abandoned the natural use of the female, burned in their desire toward one another, males working shameless deeds with males, and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error." And yet nature has not granted even to the most lustful of animals to leap upon the passage of excretion; for urine is separated off into the bladder, and moistened food into the belly, and tears to the eye, blood to the veins, filth is carried down to the ears, mucus to the nostrils; and the seat is continuous with the end of the rectum, through which the residues are expelled. Only in the case of hyenas, then, has variegated nature devised this extraneous part for their extraneous couplings. Therefore it is hollow only to a certain point, for the service of the itching parts, but the hollow is blind beyond that; for it was not fashioned for generation. From this it is plainly agreed we must reject unions between males, and unfruitful sowings, and unions from behind, and the unnatural fellowship of androgynes, following nature herself, who forbids these through the very construction of the parts, having fashioned the male not for the reception of seed but for its emission. And Jeremiah, whenever he says — that is, through him the Spirit says — "My house has become a den of the hyena," abhorring the food taken from dead bodies, has in a wise allegory censured idolatry; for the house of the living God must in truth be pure of idols.
Again Moses forbids eating the hare also. The hare mates at every season, and the male mounts the female as she crouches, coming upon her from behind; for it is a rear-mounting animal. It conceives monthly and superfetates; it is mated, and it gives birth, and having given birth, it is immediately mated again by whichever hare happens along; for it is not content with one union. And it conceives again while still nursing; for it has a two-chambered womb. And it is not only the emptying of the womb that becomes for it a sufficient occasion for intercourse; for everything that is empty desires filling; and it happens that, when they are pregnant, one part of the womb is held in check by desire and is in heat. For this reason superfetations occur among them. To abstain, then, from violent cravings and from repeated intercourse and from intimacy with pregnant women and from mounting one another and from corruption of children and from adultery and from lust — this is the counsel that the prohibition of this riddle has urged upon us.
So too, openly now and no longer through riddles, this same Moses forbade, with bared face, saying, "You shall not fornicate, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not corrupt children." This ordinance of the Word must be kept with all one's strength, and nothing whatsoever must be transgressed, nor must the commandments be annulled; for the name for evil desire is outrage (hybris), and Plato called the horse of desire "outrageous," having read, "You have become for me female-maddened horses." And the angels who came to Sodom will make known to you the penalty for outrage. These burned up, together with the city itself, those who wished to force their way to them, offering this as a clear proof, that fire is the fruit that lust reaps; for the misfortunes of the ancients, as we said before, have been recorded for our admonition, that we might not be caught in the same snares, but might guard against falling into like disasters. We must regard boys as sons, and look upon the wives of others as our own daughters, and master the pleasures of the belly, and, still more, ruling what is below the belly is most fitting for one who would rule himself. For if reason does not permit the wise man to move even his finger carelessly, as the Stoics agree, how much more must those who pursue wisdom master the organ of intercourse? For this reason, it seems to me, it has also been named aidoion (the modest part), because it is above all else with this part of the body that one must act with modesty (aidos); for nature, just as with foods, so too with lawful marriages, has permitted us as much as is proper and useful and becoming, and has permitted us to desire the begetting of children. But those who pursue excess stumble against what is natural, doing themselves harm through lawless intercourse. It stands rightly, more than anything, never to have intercourse with boys as one would with women for the mingling of Aphrodite. Wherefore also, "do not sow upon rocks and stones," says the philosopher who drew from Moses, "since what is rooted there will never take on generative nature." Very plainly indeed, through Moses, the Word has commanded: "And with a male you shall not lie the lying of a woman, for it is an abomination." And further, "to abstain from every female field" that is not one's own — this the noble Plato, gathering from the divine scriptures, counseled, taking the ordinance from that source: "and to the wife of your neighbor you shall not give your bed of seed, to be defiled with her." "Unhallowed and bastard are the seeds of concubines." Do not sow where you would not wish what is sown to grow up for you; nor indeed "touch anyone at all except your own wedded wife," from whom alone it is just to reap the pleasures of the flesh, for legitimate succession. For these alone are lawful in the eyes of the Word. Having received a share of the divine, creative portion, one must not cast the seed away nor outrage it, nor sow it upon barren ground. This same Moses forbids approaching even one's own wedded wives, should they happen to be caught up in their monthly purifications. For it is not yet reasonable to defile, with the body's discharge, the most generative part of the seed — soon to become a human being — nor indeed to wash away, with the impure flow and discharge of matter, the seed of well-formed generation, depriving it of the furrows of the womb. Nor did he permit any of the ancient Hebrews to come together with his own wife while she was pregnant; for mere pleasure, even if taken within marriage, is lawless and unjust and unreasonable. On the contrary, Moses keeps husbands away from their pregnant wives until they have given birth; for indeed the womb, lying beneath the bladder and resting upon the intestine called the rectum, extends its neck between the hips within the bladder, and the mouth of the neck, by which it receives the seed, closes once filled, and again is emptied, being cleansed by gestation, and having laid down its fruit, then receives the sowing again. It is not shameful for us, for the benefit of our hearers, to name the organs of gestation, whose creation God was not ashamed of. The womb, then, thirsting for child-bearing, receives the sowing, and refuses the blame attached to intercourse, closing off entirely, after the sowing, all further wantonness with its mouth shut. And its cravings, which had until then been stirred up around affectionate embraces, turn away, and being occupied within with child-bearing, cooperate with the Creator. It is not right, then, to trouble nature further while she is already at her work, going to excess into outrage; and outrage — many-named and many-formed — when it turns aside in this direction, the part concerned with Aphrodite out of due order, is called lust, the vulgar, common, and impure kind. The tendency toward matings, as the name itself shows, is that from whose increase the great multitude of diseases arises: love of dainties, love of wine, love of women, and indeed profligacy and every love of pleasure, over which desire holds tyranny. Countless kindred sufferings grow along with these, from which the unrestrained character comes to its height; and Scripture says, "Scourges are prepared for the unrestrained, and punishments for the shoulders of fools," calling the strength of unrestraint and its stubborn endurance "the shoulders of fools." For this reason indeed: "Remove far from your servants vain hopes, and unseemly desires," it says, "turn away from me; let neither craving of the belly nor of intercourse overtake me." We must, then, keep far off the great mischief of those who lie in wait for us; for not into the wallet of Crates alone, but not even into our city, does there sail "a foolish parasite, nor a greedy prostitute glorying in the buttocks, nor a deceitful harlot," nor any other such beast of pleasure. Let much right conduct, then, be sown throughout our whole life.
On the whole question, then, whether one ought to marry, or whether one ought to keep wholly clear of marriage (for this too belongs to the inquiry), we have made clear in our treatise On Continence. But as to this very point, granted that one ought to marry, it required consideration how one might be permitted, without restraint, to make use of intercourse on every occasion, as though it were like food, and as though a necessity. Indeed, one may observe from intercourse itself how, like warp-threads, the sinews are worn away and torn apart in the strain of the act; and indeed it also spreads a mist over the senses, and it also cuts short one's vigor. This is clear both in irrational animals and in bodies under training, of whom those who abstain prevail over their opponents in the contests, while others are dragged down, worn out by mating, all but dragged along, utterly emptied of all strength and impetus. "A little epilepsy," the sophist of Abdera called intercourse, considering it an incurable disease. For indeed do not fainting spells follow, attributed to the magnitude of the loss? "For man is begotten out of man, and torn away from him." See the magnitude of the harm. A whole man is torn away in the loss attending intercourse; for it is said, "This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." So great, then, is the measure by which man is emptied in his seed, as great as is seen in his body; for that which departs is the origin of generation. And moreover the seething of matter throws the body's harmony into confusion and disorder. Very witty, then, was that man who, when asked how he stood with respect to the pleasures of Aphrodite, said, "Hush, man; most gladly indeed have I fled from them, as from a raging and savage master." But let marriage be approved and given its due place; for the Lord wills mankind to "be fruitful and multiply," but he does not say "be wanton," nor did he wish that men, as though born for mating, should give themselves over to pleasures. Let the Instructor make us ashamed, crying out through Ezekiel, "Circumcise your fornication." Even the irrational animals have a fitting season for sowing. But not to come together for the begetting of children is to do outrage to nature, whom we must take as our teacher, observing the wise instructions given by the seasons of life — I mean old age and childhood — which she brings forward as a bar (for to the one she has not yet granted it, and the other she no longer wishes to marry), except that one need not always be marrying. Marriage is the desire for begetting children, not the disordered, unlawful, and unreasoning discharge of seed. Life would proceed for us according to nature, in every respect, if we mastered our desires from the outset and did not, by wicked contrivances, destroy the human race that springs up by divine providence; for such contrivances, under the cloak of fornication, using drugs that drag down to utter destruction, along with the embryo abort also their love for mankind. But for those to whom marriage is permitted, an instructor was needed, so that they should not, in broad daylight, perform the mystic rites of nature, nor, coming home in the early morning from church, say, or from the marketplace, mate after the manner of a rooster, at the very hour set for prayer and reading and the good works done by day; but in the evening it is fitting to rest, after the evening meal and after the thanksgiving offered for one's enjoyments. Nor does nature always afford a fitting occasion for the completion of the marriage act; indeed, the embrace longer delayed is the more longed-for. Nor indeed should one behave licentiously as though in darkness by night, but rather one must shut up within the soul, as it were, the modest light of reason; for we should differ in nothing from Penelope at her weaving, who by day weaves out the doctrines of self-control, but at night unravels them again, whenever we go to bed. For if reverence must be practiced — as indeed it must — far more must reverence be shown toward one's own wife, refraining from unseemly embraces, and let the assured trust one shows toward one's neighbors come from within the home as well. For it is not, it is not possible to be considered reverent by her, in whose eyes reverence shows no witness in those very sharpest of pleasures. And affection that confesses itself given over slippingly to intercourse blooms but briefly, and grows old together with the body, and sometimes grows old even before its time, once desire has withered, whenever meretricious pleasures outrage the self-control proper to marriage; for winged are the hearts of lovers, and the charms are quenched by repentance, and love is often turned to hatred, whenever satiety perceives the grounds for condemnation.
Of licentious words and shameless postures and courtesans' kisses [names of harlotry], and of such lecheries as these, we must not even make mention, obeying the blessed apostle who says outright: "But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as becomes saints." Well indeed does someone seem to have said: "Intercourse has profited no one; it is enough if it has not harmed." For intercourse according to law is precarious except so far as it serves procreation, but concerning the unlawful kind Scripture says: "A hired woman shall be reckoned as spittle, but a married woman is a tower of death to those who resort to her." He likened the harlot's passion to a boar or a sow, and he called adultery, when sought after a guarded harlot, a death being pursued. As for the house and the city in which men behave licentiously, even your own poetry writes reproachfully in some such way: "Adulteries are among you, and lawless mingling of men, unnatural, female-born and unjust, wicked city, altogether unclean." But conversely it admires the temperate, who neither harbor shameful desire for another's bed nor rush toward the hateful and abominable outrage against a male, because it is against nature. The many consider these things luxuries — their own sins — but those more decent than these recognize that they are sins, yet are overcome by the pleasures. And darkness is for them a covering for their passions; for the man who plays the harlot with his own marriage commits adultery against it, and he does not listen to the Instructor crying out: "The man who climbs onto his couch, who asks within himself: who sees me? Gloom surrounds me, and these walls are my hiding place, and no one beholds my wrongdoing; why then should I take care? The Most High will forget." Most wretched is this man, fearing only the eyes of men, but supposing he will escape the notice of God. "For he does not know," says Scripture, "that the eyes of the Lord Most High are ten thousand times brighter than the sun, which look upon all the ways of men and observe even hidden places." And again in this way the Instructor threatens them through Isaiah, saying: "Woe to those who make counsel in secret, and say, Who sees us?" For a man may perhaps escape the notice of perceptible light, but the intelligible light it is impossible to escape; or as Heraclitus says: "How could anyone stay hidden from that which never goes down?" So let none of us wrap ourselves in gloom, since the light lives within us; "and darkness," it says, "cannot overwhelm it," and sober reasoning brightens the night; and Scripture has called the reflections of upright men lamps that never sleep. And yet to attempt to escape notice in what one does is the confession of one who admits he sins; and everyone who sins immediately does wrong, not so much to his neighbor, if he commits adultery, as to himself, because he has committed adultery; but altogether he shows himself worse and more dishonored. For the one who sins, insofar as he sins, is worse and more dishonored than himself; and altogether by now some measure of licentiousness attends the one overcome by shameful pleasure; wherefore also altogether the fornicator has died to God, and has been abandoned by the Word, as by the Spirit, a dead man. For the Holy dislikes being defiled, as indeed is reasonable. It is always right for the pure to touch the pure; let us not, together with the garment we remove, likewise cast off our sense of shame, since it is never fitting for a righteous person to shed self-mastery. For behold, this corruptible thing shall put on incorruption, whenever the insatiable part of desire, that which flows toward licentiousness, being disciplined by self-control and made unloving of corruption, yields the man over to everlasting temperance; "for in this age they marry and are given in marriage," but having brought to nothing the works of the flesh, clothing the flesh itself, now pure, with incorruption, we pursue the measure that belongs to the angels. In this way too Plato, in the Philebus, the disciple of barbarian philosophy, has mystically called those atheists who corrupt and defile, so far as lies in them, the God who dwells within them — the Word — through their intimacy with the passions. We must never, then, live mortally while being sanctified to God; nor indeed, as Paul says, ought we make the members of Christ members of a harlot, nor make the temple of God a shrine of shameful passions. For remember the twenty-four thousand who were cast out because of fornication, and the sufferings of those who committed fornication are, as I have already said, "types" instructing our desires. To us the Instructor most clearly exhorts: "Go not after your desires, and restrain yourself from your appetites"; "for wine and women will lead the discerning astray, and he who cleaves to harlots will grow more reckless; rot and worm will inherit him, and he shall be taken away for a greater warning example," and again (for he never tires of benefiting us): "But he who looks pleasure in the eye crowns his life." It is not right, then, to be overcome by the pleasures of Aphrodite, nor indeed to gape after desires, nor even to be inflamed over irrational appetites, nor to desire to be defiled. Sowing alone has been permitted to the married man, like a farmer, at that time when the season admits the seed. Against the rest of intemperance the best remedy is reason, but the lack of satiety also helps, through which inflamed desires leap wildly around pleasures. Therefore neither should we lay claim to costly clothing, any more than to varied food. The Lord himself, dividing his instructions among soul and body and, third, external things, advises that we procure external things for the sake of the body, but that the body be managed by the soul, while he instructs the soul, saying, "Do not be anxious for your soul what you shall eat, nor for your body what you shall put on; for the soul is more than food, and the body than clothing." And he brings a clear example of the teaching: "Consider the ravens, that they neither sow nor reap, for whom there is neither storeroom nor barn, and God feeds them. Are you not worth more than the birds?" And this concerns food; likewise he also gives instruction about clothing, which belongs to the third class, external things, saying, "Consider the lilies, how they neither spin nor weave; I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these." King Solomon prided himself greatly on his wealth. What then is more beautiful and more flowering than flowers? What is more delightful than lilies [or myrrh] or roses? "But if God dresses so finely the grass standing today in the field, and thrown into the furnace come tomorrow, how much more will he clothe you, you of little trust! So do not go searching after what you will eat or what you will drink." Here the little word "what" has cast out the variety of food, for this is signified from Scripture: do not be anxious about what kind of things you shall eat or what kind you shall drink; for it is covetousness and luxury to be anxious about these things; but eating understood simply and plainly is proof of necessity, the filling, as we said, of a lack; but the "what" comes from excess, and Scripture has revealed that excess comes from the devil. The following text makes the meaning clear. Having said, "Do not seek what you shall eat or what you shall drink," he added: "and be not anxious in suspense"; and it is boastfulness and luxury that make men anxiously suspended away from the truth, and the self-indulgence that occupies itself with superfluous things leads away from truth; wherefore he also says most beautifully: "For it is after all such things that the pagans of this world run." By pagans he means the unruly and the thoughtless. And what does he mean by "these things"? Luxury, self-indulgence, seasoning, gourmandizing, gluttony; these are the "what." But concerning plain food, both dry and moist, as being necessary things, he says, "your Father knows that you need them." And if we have become altogether given to seeking, let us not waste our capacity for seeking upon luxury, but let us kindle it afresh toward the discovery of truth. "For seek," he says, "the kingdom of God, and what you need for food will be supplied besides." Since, then, he removes worry over clothing and food and superfluous things generally, as not being necessary, what must we suppose he would say concerning love of adornment — the dyeing of wool and the variety of colors and the elaborate working of stones and the fashioning of gold, and further, artificially constructed braids and curling ringlets, and besides the painting of eyes and the plucking of brows and the applying of rouge and the whitening with lead and the dyeing of hair and all the base arts connected with these deceptions? Should we not very much suspect that what was said a little before about the grass has been said also about these unadorned lovers of adornment? For the world is the field, and we are the grass moistened by the grace of God, and having been mown down we rise again, a point to be treated more fully elsewhere, in the discourse On the Resurrection; and the common grass is allegorically the crowd, familiar with the pleasure of a single day, blossoming for a short while, fond of adornment and fond of glory and anything rather than fond of truth, fit for nothing but fuel for fire.
"There was a man," the Lord says in the parable, "a wealthy one, dressed in purple garments and fine linen, dining lavishly day after day" — this man was the grass; "and a beggar named Lazarus lay at his gate, his body covered in sores, longing to eat the scraps that dropped from the rich man's dinner table" — this represents the herb. But the one, the rich man, was punished in Hades, sharing in the fire, while the other flourished in the bosoms of the father. I admire the ancient city of the Lacedaemonians: it permitted only courtesans to wear flowered garments and golden ornament, taking away from women of good repute the love of adornment by allowing only those who play the harlot to beautify themselves. But among the Athenians, on the contrary, the archons who emulated the city constitution, forgetting the manly quarter, wore gold and put on ankle-length tunics, and bound up their hair in the crobylus, a kind of braid, adorning themselves with the insertion of golden cicadas, truly displaying, in poor taste, the earth-born character through effeminacy. And the emulation of these archons reached also to the other Ionians, whom Homer, effeminizing them, calls "trailing-robed." We must therefore migrate far from those who pursue an image of the beautiful and not the beautiful itself, who through a fair-sounding name again practice idolatry, dreaming of the nature of the beautiful by opinion, not by knowledge. And for them life here is a deep sleep of ignorance, from which we must rouse ourselves and hasten toward that which is truly beautiful and orderly, and cling to and long for this alone, leaving behind the ornaments of this world, bidding the world itself farewell, before we fall entirely asleep. I say, then, that man had need of woven garments for no other reason than the covering of the body, as a defense against the excess of cold and the intensity of heat, lest the immoderation of the surrounding air trouble us at all.
If then this is the purpose of clothing, see that we not set aside one style of dress for males and a different one for females; for being covered belongs equally to each sex, just as does eating and drinking. Since then the need is common, we approve of similar provision for it. For as the need for covering is common to both, so the coverings ought to be similar as well; and if indeed similar, then this covering too must be adopted, according to which... it is fitting to hide the eyes of women. For even if the female sex has the advantage on account of its weakness, we must blame the habit of bad upbringing, on account of which men, often reared on wretched regimens, have become softer than women; we ought not, then, to relax our discipline. But if some accommodation must be made, a little concession may be granted them to use somewhat softer fabrics only, keeping away from foolish fine handiwork and elaborate weavings in the fabric, letting alone thread of gold and Indian silkworms and the elaborate silk-moths. A worm is born first, then from it a shaggy caterpillar appears, after which it is transformed a third time into a chrysalis (some call it a corpse-grub), out of which a long thread is spun, just as the spider's thread comes from the spider; for these superfluous and transparent garments are proof of a mind not strong, exposing the shame of the body through a thin veil. For such a delicately woven garment is no longer a covering, since it cannot hide the shape of nakedness; for such a garment, falling upon the body, molds itself more moistly to it and is plastered on in a fleshly way, clinging to the shape, and takes the impression of the woman's form, so that to one who looks it makes the whole disposition of the body evident.
We must also reject dyes for clothing; for these are far removed both from usefulness and from truth, and besides tend toward slander of character; for neither is their use beneficial (for it is not suited against the cold), nor does it offer any advantage for covering beyond ordinary clothing except blame, and the delightfulness of the color vexes the greedy-eyed, provoking foolish ogling, while for those who are white within, and not counterfeit, it is most fitting to wear white and unadorned clothing. Clearly and plainly, then, the prophet Daniel says: "thrones were set, and one sat on them as it were the Ancient of Days, and his garment was white as snow." He beholds the Lord in a vision wearing such a robe; and the Apocalypse says: "I saw the souls of those who had borne witness beneath the altar; and to each was given a white robe." But if some other color must indeed be sought, the natural dye of truth suffices; garments resembling flowers must be left to Bacchic revels and mystery-cult foolishness, and moreover "purple and silver plate," as the comic poet says, "are useful for tragic actors, not for life," and our manner of living should resemble anything sooner than a stage procession. Sardian dye, then, and another unripe-grape dye, and yet another pale-green, and rose-blended and scarlet-dyed, and countless other dyes have been devised with great effort for these ruinous indulgences.
This garment is for show, not for covering. Things embroidered with gold, and sea-purple-dyed and animal-figured garments (a somewhat wind-caught luxury, this), and that myrrh-dyed saffron robe, and the costly and varied garments of fine transparent fabrics conspicuous to all, having little figures woven into the purple — all these must be left to their own craft, to enjoy themselves. "For what wise or splendid thing could women accomplish," says the comedy, "who sit here decked out in flowers, wearing saffron robes and beautified?" The Instructor exhorts outright: "Do not boast in the wearing of a garment, nor exalt yourself in glory that is not lasting." Mocking those clad in soft garments, he says in the gospel: "Behold, those who are in splendid clothing and live in luxury are in the houses of kings" — he means the earthly kingdoms, the corruptible ones, where there is vainglory and ambition and flattery and error; but those who serve the heavenly court, around the King of all, sanctify the pure garment of the soul, the flesh, and with this they put on incorruption. Just as, then, the unmarried woman devotes herself to God alone, her attention undivided, whereas the wife who is chaste splits her existence between God and her husband, while the woman swept along otherwise gives herself wholly to marriage — meaning, to desire — so too, I judge, does the chaste wife, devoted to her husband, worship God sincerely, but if she loves adornment she has fallen away both from God and from chaste marriage, exchanging her husband for finery, in the same way as the Argive courtesan — I mean Eriphyle, who received precious gold in exchange for her husband.
For this reason I also admire the Cean sophist who sketched the fitting and corresponding images of virtue and vice: the one of them he made stand simply, in white and clean robes, adorned only with modesty -- such ought faith to be, virtuous together with modesty -- but the other, on the contrary, he introduces as vice, clothed in superfluous garments and gleaming with an alien color; and her movement and her bearing, cultivated toward what is delightful, are set forth as a sketch fit for wanton women. But the one who follows reason will make no shameful pleasure his own at all; therefore the useful character of clothing is to be preferred. And even if reason, through David, sings this concerning the Lord, saying, 'The daughters of kings have made you glad in your honor; the queen stood at your right hand in gold-worked clothing, wrapped about with golden fringes,' it has not indicated luxurious clothing, but has made plain the pure adornment of the church's pitied ones, woven together out of faith, in which guileless Jesus 'shines forth as gold,' and the fringes are the elect, the golden ones. And if it is necessary to relax the standard for the sake of women, the garment should be woven smooth and pleasant to the touch, but it should not be flowered for the delight of the eye, as paintings are; for a painting fades with time, while the scourings and astringents that, with the drug-like juices of the dye, melt away the wool of the garments, make the weaving weak, and this is not even fit for household economy. It is the greatest lack of taste to be so agitated about robes and dress-mantles and cloaks and tunics -- garments which 'cover the parts of shame,' as Homer says. For I am truly ashamed, seeing so much wealth poured out on the covering of the private parts. For the ancient man in paradise measured out the covering of his shame with branches and leaves; but now, since sheep have been fashioned for us, let us not play the fool as the sheep do, but, being instructed by reason, let us reprove the extravagance of clothing, saying: you are hairs of sheep, even if Miletus boasts of you, even if Italy glories in you, even if the hairs are kept safe under leather wraps -- things over which the many rave madly, but we at least need not be zealous for it.
But the blessed John, disdaining even the hairs of sheep that reek of luxury, chose the hairs of camels and wore these, sketching out the frugality and guilelessness of his life. And indeed he ate honey and locusts, sweet and spiritual food, preparing the ways of the Lord in a manner free of vanity and sound of mind. For surely he who had turned away from civic ostentation would never have put on a purple robe, but went into the wilderness ... having lived, in the calm of that solitude, as a citizen for God, apart from all empty ambition, inexperience of good things, and pettiness. And Elijah used a sheepskin as a garment and bound the sheepskin fast with a belt made of hair. And Isaiah, that other prophet, was 'naked and unshod,' and often also wore sackcloth, a garment of humility. And if you name Jeremiah too, he had only a linen loincloth. Just as well-nourished bodies, when stripped bare, display their vigor more plainly, so too the beauty of character, when not wrapped up in tasteless trifles, displays its magnificence.
To trail one's garments, letting them down to the very tips of the feet, is utterly ostentatious, and becomes an obstacle to the activity of walking. When the garment is dragged along like a broom, sweeping up the chaff scattered on the surface of the earth -- not even those broken creatures, the mute catamites who ply their trade as dancers on the stage, let their garment flow into such an extreme of insolence; and for them the elaborate arrangements of dress, the danglings of the fringes, and the fussy rhythms of their postures display only the trailing hem of a petty foolishness. And if someone brings forward the Lord's ankle-length robe, that tunic woven with many blossoms displays wisdom's blooms, the diverse and never-withering writings, oracles belonging to the Lord and gleaming with truth's rays; the spirit clothed the Lord in just such another garment through David, singing something like this: 'You put on confession and comeliness, wrapping yourself in light as in a garment.'
Just as in the making of garments one must keep clear of every impropriety, so too one must guard against excess in their use. For it is not becoming to be dressed above the knee, as they say the Laconian maidens are; for it is not fitting that any part whatsoever of a woman be laid bare. And yet it would be possible, quite decorously, to utter that witty reply to the man who said, 'a beautiful forearm' -- 'but not a public one'; and 'beautiful legs' -- 'but only for my husband,' one might say; and 'a comely face' -- 'but only for the one who took me as his wife.' I, for my part, do not wish to give modest women occasion for such praises, praises by which those who hunt after blameworthy things pursue them through flattery -- and is it only the baring of the ankle that has been forbidden? The head, too, has been commanded to be veiled, and the face to be kept in shadow. For it is not holy that the beauty of the body be a snare for the hunting of men, nor is it reasonable that a woman, wearing a purple veil, should wish to become an object of general gazing. Would that it were possible to strip the purple even from clothing itself, so that it would not turn the eyes of onlookers toward the face of the one who wears it; but women, weaving quite a small remainder of their garment, have made the whole of it purple, kindling their idle self-indulgence, and indeed, as they flit about in a daze over these foolish and delicate purples, in the words of the poet, 'purple death seized them.' Because of this purple dye, Tyre and Sidon, along with the coastal district neighboring Laconia, are most sought after; and those who dye it, along with the men who fish the purple shells, and the shellfish themselves, come to be greatly esteemed, thanks to the blood from which the purple color springs in them. But the deceitful women, and the effeminate among men, mixing in gluttonous fabrics, rage to excess after deceitful dyes, no longer procuring the linens from Egypt, but others obtained from the land of the Hebrews and from the land of the Cilicians. As for the amorgina and byssus fabrics, I pass over them in silence; luxury has outstripped even their very names. The covering, I think, ought to show the thing covered as better than itself, as the statue shows the temple to be, and the soul the body, and the body the clothing. But now it is entirely the opposite: if their body were put up for sale, it would never fetch a thousand Attic drachmas, yet by buying a single garment for ten thousand talents, they prove themselves more worthless and dishonored than the fabrics. Why then do you pursue the rare and costly things ahead of the ordinary and the cheap? Because you are ignorant of what is truly beautiful and truly good; and instead of the things that really are, the things that merely seem are pursued eagerly among the foolish, who, like madmen, imagine white things and black alike.

======== Paedagogus — Book 2, Chapter 11 ========

Similar too, in the matter of footwear, are the pretentious women who display the same great silliness here as well. Truly shameful are those sandals on which golden flowers are set, and moreover they see fit to have the nails hammered into the soles in spiral patterns, and many even engrave love-tokens upon them, so that, as it were, by the pressure of each step they may stamp the earth and imprint the mark of a courtesan's disposition through their very walk. We must therefore bid farewell to the vain artistry of gilded and bejeweled sandals, and to Attic buskins, Sicyonian shoes, and cothurni, and to Persian and Tyrrhenian footwear, and having set before ourselves, as is our custom, the true and upright aim, we must choose what is according to nature. For the use of shoes is twofold: one is for the protection of the feet, the other is for guarding against stumbling and against the roughness of mountain paths, preserving the sole of the foot. To women, then, white footwear may be allowed, except when they are on a journey, in which case oiled leather should be used. Women who travel need soles fitted with nails. But for the most part they ought to use footwear; for it is not fitting for a woman to display her foot bare, and besides, a woman is prone to slip and be hurt. For a man, on the other hand, going unshod is altogether fitting, except when he is on campaign. For somehow being shod is akin to being bound. Indeed it is most conducive to discipline to use the feet bare, and it is suited to health and ease of movement, wherever no necessity prevents it. But if we are not journeying, and yet cannot bear to go unshod, we should use light sandals or slippers; the Attic people called these "dust-treaders," because, I think, the feet in them draw near to the dust. A sufficient witness to simple footwear is John, who confessed himself unworthy to loose the strap of the Lord's sandals. For he who pointed out the pattern of the true philosophy for the Hebrews was not shod in anything elaborate. Whether this too hints at something further will be shown elsewhere.

======== Paedagogus — Book 2, Chapter 12 ========

It is childish to gape in wonder at bluish or greenish stones, at the castaway trash of a foreign sea, and at the scrapings of the earth. To rush after transparent little stones with their peculiar colors, and after variegated glass besides, is nothing but the mark of senseless people, dragged along by the mere impact-value of the impression they make. In just this way children, when they see fire, run toward it, drawn by its brightness, but through folly not perceiving how dangerous it is to touch. Such, for foolish women, are the stones bound into their necklaces and shut up in their neck-chains — amethysts, thunderstones, jaspers, topaz, and the Milesian emerald, a most costly item of commerce. And the highly-prized pearl has come revelling extravagantly into the women's quarters; it is formed in a certain shellfish resembling the pinna, its size that of a large fish's eye. And these ill-starred women are not ashamed to have devoted their whole zeal to a small shellfish, when they might adorn themselves with the holy stone, the Word of God, whom Scripture somewhere calls a pearl — the transparent and pure Jesus, the eye that beholds in the flesh, the Word made manifest, through whom flesh becomes precious, being regenerated by water. For indeed that shellfish, formed in water, encases the flesh, and out of this the pearl is conceived. We have received that the upper Jerusalem is walled with holy stones, and we understand that the twelve gates of the heavenly city, likened to precious stones, hint darkly at the conspicuous splendor of the apostolic voice. For in costly stones the colors are arranged in order — these are the precious part, while the rest is left as mere earthy matter. Fittingly, then, the city of the saints is walled symbolically with these stones, being built up spiritually. Toward the inimitable flower of the stones people have perceived the unsullied and holy flower of the spirit, of its very essence; but women who do not understand the symbolic sense of the scriptures are wholly agape over the stones, bringing forward that marvelous piece of reasoning: whatever God has shown us, why should we not use it? And since it is available to me, why should I not indulge myself? And for whom else has all this come to be, if not for us? Such words belong to those who are utterly ignorant of the will of God. For in the first place, God supplies openly to all what is necessary, like water and air, but he has hidden in earth and water whatever is not necessary. That is precisely why ants dig for gold, and griffins guard gold, and the sea has hidden the pearl-stone away; but you women are meddlesome about what you have no business with. Look, the whole heaven lies open, and you do not seek God; but hidden gold and gemstones are dug up on our behalf by men condemned to death. Yet you sing in discord even against Scripture, though it cries out plainly: 'Seek first the kingdom of the heavens, and all these things will be added to you.' And even if all things have been given to you as a gift, and even if all things have been permitted you, and even if 'all things are lawful for us,' as the apostle says, 'not all things are beneficial.' God himself brought our race into fellowship, first sharing his own possessions, and making his own Word common to all mankind, helping all men, doing all things on behalf of all. All things, then, are common, and the rich are not to claim more than their share. So the claim 'it is available to me, and I have it in abundance, why should I not indulge myself?' is neither human nor social; this rather is the mark of love: 'it is available to me, why should I not share it with those in need?' For such a person is the perfect one, who has fulfilled 'you shall love your neighbor as yourself.' This is true luxury, the extravagance that is stored up as treasure, whereas expenditure on vain desires amounts to ruin, not to true spending. For God has, I know, given us the right to use things, but only up to what is necessary, and he has willed that the use of things be common. It is monstrous for one person to live in luxury while the majority are poor. How much more glorious is it to benefit many than to live extravagantly! How much more sensible to spend on people than on stones and gold! How much more profitable to possess adorned friends than lifeless ornaments! What good could fields do us to match the good of giving generously?
It remains, then, for us to resolve also the point that follows: for whom, then, are the more costly things intended, if everyone should choose the cheaper ones? For human beings, I would say, provided we use them without attachment or ostentation. But if it is not possible for everyone to be self-controlled, still, because of the need for necessities, one ought to pursue only what is easily obtained, bidding these superfluous luxuries a long farewell. In general, then, ornaments, like children's trinkets, ought to be utterly cast aside by women who renounce the world itself as well. For women ought to be adorned from within, and to display the inner woman as beautiful; for it is in the soul alone that both beauty and ugliness are made manifest. That is why only the virtuous person is truly beautiful and good, and only the good is reckoned beautiful, and virtue alone shines forth even through a beautiful body and blossoms upon the flesh, showing the loveliness of self-control to be worthy of love, whenever character, as it were, lights up the form like a radiance. For the beauty of each plant and each animal consists in the virtue proper to it. The virtue of a human being is justice, self-control, courage, and piety. Beautiful, then, is the human being who is just and self-controlled and, in sum, good — not the rich one. Even soldiers nowadays want to be decked out in gold, not having read the poet's line about one who, though he had gold, went to war 'like an infant girl.' But this love of ornament, which cares nothing at all for virtue but lays claim to the body instead — the love of beauty having been turned aside into empty vanity — must be utterly cast out. For by attaching to the body things that do not properly belong to it, as though they did belong, it breeds the practice of falsehood and the habit of deceit, displaying not what is truly dignified, unaffected, and childlike, but what is haughty, affected, and given to soft living. Such women dim their true beauty by overshadowing it with gold, and do not realize what sort of offense this is, having wrapped themselves in countless rich chains — just as, they say, among the barbarians criminals are bound in gold. These women seem to me to have emulated those rich prisoners in chains. For is not a gold necklace really a collar, and are not the twisted ornaments the same? And the so-called pendants, functioning as chains, are called by that very name, 'chains,' among the Athenians. And Philemon, in the Synephebos, called the disorderly foot-ornaments of women 'fetters' — sheer garments and a kind of golden fetter.
What, then, is this envied adornment any longer, women, but your wanting to appear to yourselves as fettered captives? For if the material lessens the disgrace, the underlying condition is still the same. To me, at least, they seem to fall willingly into bonds and to boast of their costly misfortunes. And perhaps the poet's myth, too, says that such bonds were thrown around Aphrodite when caught in adultery, hinting at nothing other than that these ornaments are a symbol of adultery — for Homer said that those bonds too were golden. And by now women are not even ashamed to wear about themselves the most conspicuous symbols of wickedness. For just as the serpent deceived Eve, so too golden ornament, using the serpent's shape as a lure, has driven other women to distraction into wanton excess, molding certain moray-eels and snakes into elegant shapes. At any rate the comic poet Nicostratus speaks of chains, pendants, rings, ear-drops, snakes, anklets, hellebore. And Aristophanes, in the Thesmophoriazusae, quite censoriously catalogues the whole apparatus of women's adornment. I will set down for you the comic poet's very words, which precisely expose the vulgarity of your want of good taste: A. Headbands, hair-ties, soda, pumice, girdles, hair-bands, veils, rouge, necklaces, eye-liner, luxury robes, hellebore, hairnets, sashes, wraps, dainty gowns, purple-bordered garments, fine robes, tunics, low-cut gowns, cloaks, undertunics. And I have not even mentioned the biggest items of all. B. Well, what then? A. Perfume-flasks, jeweled ornaments, plasters, mallow-salve, curls, bracelets, brooches, armlets, necklaces, fetters, seal-rings, chains, rings, poultices, blister-plasters, hair-bands, dildoes, sardonyxes, throat-bands, curling-irons. I myself have grown weary, and I am tired of reciting the multitude of these ornaments; and I find myself wondering how these women are not worn out carrying so great a burden. Oh, the empty officiousness, oh, the vain madness for reputation! They pour out their wealth like courtesans, to their own disgrace, and they debase God's gifts with tastelessness, emulating the craft of the wicked one. The Lord, in the gospel, plainly calls the rich man foolish who stores up treasure in his barns and says to himself: 'You possess plenty of goods, set aside for years to come; take your ease, feast, and enjoy yourself' — 'for this very night your soul will be demanded of you; and the things you have amassed, then, to whom will they belong?' Apelles the painter, on seeing one of his pupils paint a Helen laden with gold, said: young man, since you could not paint her beautiful, you have made her rich. Such, then, are the Helens of today's women — not genuinely beautiful, but richly got up. To such women the Spirit prophesies through Zephaniah: 'Neither their silver nor their gold shall have power to rescue them on the day of the Lord's anger.' For those trained by Christ, it is not fitting to be decked out in gold; rather, it is the Word alone through whom true splendor is revealed. Blessed indeed would the ancient Hebrews have been, if, having stripped the women of their ornament, they had simply thrown it away or melted it down; but instead, having cast it into a golden calf and worshiped it as an idol, they themselves gained nothing either from the craft or from the undertaking, though they taught our women, in the most emblematic way, to abstain from ornaments. For that which has played the harlot out of desire for gold becomes an idol tried by fire, in which alone luxury, like an idol, is preserved — not truth. This is why the Word, through the prophet, reproaches the Hebrews: 'They made silver and gold objects,' he says, 'for Baal' — ornaments, obviously; and, threatening most plainly, he says: 'And I will visit upon her the festival-days of the Baals, when she burned incense to them, and decked herself with her rings and her jewelry,' and he added the reason for this ornamentation, saying: 'and she went after her lovers, and forgot me, says the Lord.'
Having put away such trifling, then, let them not share in this courtesan-like adornment along with its wicked instigator, nor play the idolater behind a pretty veil. Truly wonderfully does the blessed Peter say: 'Women likewise, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but with what befits women professing godliness, adorning themselves through good works.' And it is fitting that he bids their ornamentation be absent; for if they are beautiful, nature is enough — let art not contend with nature, that is, let deception not vie with truth; but if they are ugly by nature, they only expose themselves further by attaching what they do not really have. It is fitting, then, that women who serve Christ embrace simplicity. For in truth simplicity provides for holiness, equalizing excesses, and obtaining through ordinary means what abundance would otherwise supply. For the simple, as the very name shows, does not stand out nor swell with any pretension nor puff itself up, but is altogether even, smooth, equal, and without excess, and in this way is sufficient. Sufficiency is a disposition that reaches its proper limit without deficiency and without excess; its mother is justice, and its nurse is self-sufficiency. This, then, is a disposition content with what is needed, and by its own resources it furnishes everything that goes toward a happy existence. So let the ornament placed on the fruit of your hands consist in this: sacred, open-handed fellowship, and diligent care for the household. 'For the one who gives to the poor lends to God,' and 'the hands of courageous men bring wealth.' He calls courageous those who despise money and are ready in giving. And on the feet let there appear an untiring readiness for good works and a journeying toward righteousness. Let pendants and necklaces be modesty and self-control. Such are the necklaces God fashions of gold. 'Happy is the man who discovers wisdom, and the human being who attains discernment,' says the Spirit through Solomon, 'for her acquisition is a better trade than dealing in silver and gold, and she is worth more than expensive gems.' This is true good order. Let their ears not be pierced contrary to nature to hang earrings and jeweled ornaments; for it is not right to violate nature, contrary to what she intends, nor indeed could there be any better ornament for the ears than that which descends into the natural passages of hearing — true instruction. Eyes anointed with the Word, and ears bored through for perception, prepare a hearer of divine things and a beholder of holy things, the Word truly showing forth the true beauty which 'eye has not seen nor ear heard before.'

======== Paedagogus — Book 3, Chapter argument ========

A. On true beauty.
B. That one must not adorn oneself with cosmetics.
C. Against men who adorn themselves.
D. With whom one ought to pass one's time.
E. How one ought to conduct oneself with regard to baths.
F. That the Christian alone is rich.
G. That frugality is a good provision for the journey for a Christian.
H. That images and examples are the greatest part of correct teaching.
I. For what reason the bath is to be taken.
K. That exercises too are to be approved for those who live according to reason.
L. A summary running-through of the best life.
M. Likewise a summary running-through of the best life, comprising as many of the sacred scriptures as characterize the life of Christians.

======== Paedagogus — Book 3, Chapter 1 ========

So it was, it seems, the greatest of all lessons to know oneself; for if a man knows himself, he thereby comes to know God, and in that knowledge he is conformed to the divine likeness — this not through gilded ornament or flowing robes, but through right conduct and requiring as little as possible; for God alone is without need, and he rejoices most of all to see us pure in the ornament of the mind, and next also in that of the body, clothed in a holy garment, self-control. Since then the soul is of three parts, the intellectual part, which is called the rational, is the inner man, the ruler of this visible man that appears; but that inner man himself is led by another, God. The spirited part, being beast-like, dwells close to madness; and the desiring part is many-shaped and third, more varied than Proteus, the sea-daemon, changing its form now this way, now that, decking itself out for adulteries and lecheries and corruptions: 'First of all he became a bearded lion, still wearing his finery; the mane of the chin shows a man; but then a serpent, or a leopard, or a great boar' — the love of adornment has slid down into wantonness. No longer does the man appear in the strong beast [text uncertain], but he became flowing water and a tall-leaved tree. The passions pour out, the pleasures gush forth, the beauty withers, and it falls to the ground from its leaf-stem sooner still, whenever the lustful storms of insolence blow upon it, and before autumn even comes it withers away in decay; for desire becomes and fashions all things and wishes to deceive, in order to hide the man. But that other man, with whom Reason dwells as housemate, is not variegated, is not fashioned artificially; he has the form of Reason, he is made like God, he is beautiful, he does not adorn himself with beauty; the true beauty is his, for indeed it is God himself; and that man becomes God, because he wills what God wills. Rightly then did Heraclitus say: 'Men are gods, gods are men; for the Word is the same for both' — a mystery laid bare: divinity within humanity, humanity taken up into divinity, and the go-between accomplishes the Father's purpose; for the Word is the mediator common to both, the Son of God and the Savior of men, servant of the one and instructor of us. Since the flesh is a slave, as Paul too testifies, how could one reasonably adorn the servant-girl as a procuress would? For that the flesh is the form of a slave, the apostle says of the Lord: 'he stripped himself of glory and assumed a servant's shape,' calling the outer man a slave before the Lord became a slave and bore flesh. But God, sharing our suffering, himself freed the flesh from corruption and, delivering it from its death-bearing and bitter slavery, clothed it about with incorruption, placing upon the flesh this holy adornment of everlastingness, immortality. And there is also another beauty of men, love: 'love,' according to the apostle, 'is patient, is kind, does not envy, does not boast, is not puffed up.' For boastfulness is an adorning that carries the mark of excess and uselessness. Wherefore he adds also: 'does not behave shamefully.' For shameful is what is foreign and not according to nature; and the artificial is foreign, which he explains plainly, saying 'it does not seek what is not its own'; for truth calls what is proper to it its own, while the love of adornment seeks the foreign, being outside both God and the Word and love. And that the Lord himself was, in appearance, without comeliness, the Spirit testifies through Isaiah: 'so we looked upon him, yet he possessed neither shape nor comeliness, but his appearance was held in no honor, lacking what belongs to men.' And who surpasses the Lord? Yet it was not that showy handsomeness of flesh which he put forward; instead he manifested the genuine loveliness belonging to soul and to body alike, the soul's being its practice of goodness, the body's being its deathlessness.

======== Paedagogus — Book 3, Chapter 2 ========

It is not, then, the outward appearance of the man that must be beautified, but the soul, with the adornment of nobility of character; and one might also say of the flesh, with the adornment of self-control. But those women who beautify the surface while leaving the depths untilled, without realizing it, adorn themselves after the fashion of the Egyptian temples. Among the Egyptians the propylaea and the forecourts of the sacred precincts are elaborately worked, and there are groves and meadows, and the courts are crowned with a great many columns; the walls gleam with foreign stones and with skillful painting that lacks nothing; the shrines shine with gold and silver and electrum, and glitter, adorned with colored stones from India and Ethiopia, and the inner sanctuaries are overshadowed with gold-spangled curtains. But if you go in beyond the enclosure, hastening to the sight of the greater thing, seeking the image that dwells within the shrine, a pastophoros or some other of those who perform the sacred rites, gazing solemnly about the precinct, singing a paean in the Egyptian tongue, draws back a little of the curtain as though about to show the god, and gives us broad occasion for laughter at the object of reverence. For no god will be found within, the one we hastened toward in our search, but instead a cat, a crocodile, or some native snake, or some such creature, unworthy of the shrine but well suited to a hole or a den or a mudbank; the god of the Egyptians appears as a beast wallowing on a purple couch. In just this way, it seems to me, the women who deck themselves in gold, practicing the crimping of their curls and the anointing of their cheeks and the pencilling of their eyes and the dyeing of their hair, and contriving all the rest of their foolishness, adorning the fleshly enclosure, truly playing the Egyptian, draw on their superstitious lovers. But if someone should uncover the curtain of the shrine — I mean the headdress, the dye, the garment, the gold, the rouge, the paint, that is, the fabric woven together out of all these things, the veil — expecting to find within the true beauty, he will be disgusted, of this I am certain. What dwells within is not the worthy image of God he sought, but rather a harlot and adulteress has taken possession of the soul's inner sanctuary, and the true beast will be exposed — an ape smeared with white lead — and that shifting serpent, gnawing away the intelligent part of the man through love of glory, has the soul for its den; having filled everything with deadly drugs and having belched forth upon them the venom of his own deceit, this procuring dragon has turned the women into harlots (for love of adornment belongs not to a wife but to a courtesan). These women give scant thought to managing a household with their husbands; instead, loosing their husband's purse-strings, they divert his resources to their desires, so that they may have many witnesses to their supposed beauty, and sitting the whole day long over their toilette they occupy themselves with hired slaves. Just as they season bad meat with sauce, so they spend the day melting away over their toilette, shut up in their chambers, lest they be caught out dyeing their hair blond; and in the evening, as if creeping out of a den toward the lamp, this counterfeit beauty comes forth; for it is the wine's haze together with the lamp's faint glow that conspires to assist their deceit. And the comic poet Menander bars the woman who dyes her locks blond from the house: 'Now crawl out of this house; for the modest wife must not make her hair yellow, nor paint her cheeks with rouge, nor pencil her eyes.' These wretched women do not realize that they are destroying their own proper beauty by importing what is foreign to them; for at daybreak, pulled about and rubbed and plastered with certain pastes, they scrape their skin and, with drugs and the excessive fussing of their washes, wither away their own natural bloom. For this reason they appear sallow from the plasters, and are easily overcome by illnesses, their flesh already wasted by the drugs, their beauty a mere sketch, dishonoring the Creator of mankind, as though he had not given them beauty as they deserved. Naturally they become idle about their housekeeping, sitting like painted figures on display, made not for keeping house but for being looked at. That is why the calculating woman in the comic poet says: 'What sensible or splendid thing could we women accomplish, we who sit here painted up, ruining the character of free women, bringing about the overthrow of households, the corruption of marriages, and the smuggling in of supposititious children?' This very thing the comic poet Antiphanes, in his Malthake, mocks as the common trade-talk of courtesans, words devised for wearing men down, saying: 'She comes, she goes off again, she comes forward again, she goes off, she arrives, she is present, she washes, comes forward, cleans herself, combs her hair, has stepped in, rubs herself down, bathes, examines herself, dresses, perfumes herself, adorns herself, anoints herself — and if she has anything left over, she hangs herself.' Three times over, not once, they deserve to perish, using crocodile dung and smearing themselves with the froth of putrefaction, daubing their brows with soot and rubbing white lead into their cheeks. How, then, could such women, sickening even to the pagan poets on account of their behavior, fail to be truly repugnant? Another comic poet, Alexis, exposing them, whose words I will likewise cite, words that shame the shamelessness of their affectation by the very elaborateness of the telling — for he was no less thorough — I myself am ashamed at how far the comedy about women's quarters goes, a 'helper' who then goes on to ruin her husband besides. For in the first place, all their other business becomes secondary to gain and to plundering their neighbors. If one happens to be small, cork is stitched into her slippers. If one is tall, she wears a thin sandal and goes about with her head bent down onto her shoulder, which takes away from her height. If one has no hips, she puts on padding sewn in, so that onlookers exclaim at her fine figure. If one has a large belly, she has such breasts as the comic poets speak of, propping them up so that they push the covering of the belly forward like poles. If one has red eyebrows, they paint them with soot. If it happens that one is dark, she plasters herself with white lead. If one is too pale, she rubs in rouge. If some part of her body is fine, she shows it uncovered. If she has good teeth, she must laugh continually, so that those present may admire how charming a mouth she has; and if she does not enjoy laughing, she spends the whole day with a thin, upright sliver of myrtle-wood held between her lips, so that in time she grins fixedly, whether she wishes to or not.
These things I set before you, drawn from worldly wisdom, for the turning aside of the mischievous craft of love of adornment, since the Word wishes by every means to save us; and shortly I will also fasten upon the divine Scriptures. Somehow that which is not hidden tends, out of shame at being exposed, to draw back from its sins. And just as a bandaged hand or an anointed eye betrays by its appearance the suspicion of sickness, so paints and dyes hint at a soul that is sick in its depths. The divine Instructor urges us to pass by 'a strange river' — allegorizing as a strange river the strange woman, the wanton one, who flows over all, poured out for all through licentious harlotry into luxury. 'Abstain from strange water,' he says, 'and drink not from a strange spring,' urging us to guard against the stream of self-indulgence, 'that we may live long, and years of life be added to us' — whether by not hunting after another's pleasure, or by turning aside from heresies as well. Now the appetite for delicacies and the appetite for wine, mighty passions though they be, do not rival the passion for adornment. A full table and cups passed one after another are enough to satisfy gluttony; but for those who love gold and purple and precious stones, not even the gold above and beneath the earth suffices, nor the Tyrian sea, nor the freight from India and Ethiopia, nor even the Pactolus flowing with its wealth. Not even if one of them should become a Midas would they be satisfied, but remain still poor, longing for yet other riches, ready to die together with their gold. And if Wealth himself is blind, as indeed he is, how can those women who flutter about him and share his passion fail to be blind as well? Having no limit to their desire, they run aground on shamelessness; for they need the theater and the procession and crowds of spectators and wandering about in the temples and lingering in the streets, so as to become conspicuous to everyone. For they adorn themselves in order to please others, glorying in their face and not in their heart; for as brand-marks betray the runaway slave, so do their painted colors betray the adulteress. 'And though you clothe yourself in scarlet and adorn yourself with ornaments of gold, and though you paint your eyes with stibium, your beautifying is in vain,' says the Word through Jeremiah.
Is it not, then, absurd that horses and birds and the other animals rise up from the grass and the meadows and fly up rejoicing in their own proper adornment — the horse in its mane, its natural coloring, the bird in its varied plumage — while woman thinks herself so deficient, inferior even to the nature of beasts, as to lack beauty of her own, needing a foreign beauty, bought and merely painted on? Headdresses and varieties of headdresses and elaborate braidings, and the countless stylings of the hair, and costly contrivances of mirrors, by which they arrange themselves to hunt those who, like foolish children, are infatuated with mere outward forms — all this belongs to women who have utterly lost their sense of shame, whom one would not be wrong to call courtesans, since they turn their faces into masks. But the Word exhorts us to fix our gaze 'not on what can be seen, but on what cannot be seen; since what can be seen lasts only for a season, whereas what cannot be seen endures without end.' And what goes even further into absurdity: for their counterfeit appearance, as though it were some noble deed or an improvement of themselves, they have devised mirrors — on which, of all things, a veil ought most to be placed, given the deception involved. For not even, as the Hellenic legend tells it, was it granted to the beautiful Narcissus to become a spectator of his own image with impunity. And if Moses commands that men make no image in rivalry with God, how could these women reasonably do so, imitating by reflection images of themselves for the counterfeiting of their faces? Moreover, when the prophet Samuel was dispatched to consecrate as king a son of Jesse, and beheld the eldest of these sons, tall and comely, and when Samuel, taken with him, reached forward the oil of consecration, 'the Lord said to him,' so the text runs, 'regard neither his looks nor his lofty build, for this one I have refused. Man sees only what meets the eyes, but the Lord sees into the heart' — and it was not the one handsome in body he anointed, but the one handsome in soul. If, then, the Lord accounts the natural beauty of the body as less than that of the soul, what does he think of the counterfeit kind, casting out the whole falsehood root and branch? 'For we walk by faith, not by appearance.' Most clearly, then, the Lord teaches through Abraham that the one who follows God must despise homeland and kindred and possessions and all wealth, making him a sojourner, and for this reason also named him 'friend,' because he despised the abundance he had at home; for he was of noble birth and exceedingly wealthy. At any rate, with three hundred and eighteen of his own household servants he overcame the four kings who had taken Lot captive. We find only Esther justly adorned. This woman beautified herself in secret for her own king, but that beauty of hers is found to have been the ransom of a people threatened with slaughter.
That love of adornment makes women into courtesans, and men into effeminates and adulterers, the tragic poet bears witness for us, relating the matter somewhat as follows: 'He who journeyed from Phrygian lands to judge among the goddesses, as the Argive story tells it, came to Lacedaemon, resplendent in the raiment of his garments and shining with gold, in barbarian luxury, loving and beloved, went off, snatching away Helen to the pastures of Ida, having caught Menelaus away from home.' O adulterous beauty! Barbarian love of adornment and effeminate luxury overturned Greece; Laconian self-control was corrupted by foreign dress and luxury and youthful beauty; barbarian extravagances proved the daughter of Zeus to be no better than a courtesan. They had no instructor to check their desires, no one saying 'you shall not commit adultery,' nor one saying 'you shall not desire,' so that they might not travel the road to adultery through desire, nor kindle their appetites through love of adornment. Such was the end that followed for them, and such the evils they suffered who were unwilling to restrain their self-love; two continents were set in motion by undisciplined pleasures, and all things were thrown into turmoil because of one barbarian youth; the whole of Greece takes to the sea, and the ocean is crowded, bearing continents upon it; a long war is kindled, and fierce battles break out, and the plains are filled with the dead; the barbarian insults the harbor of the ships; injustice prevails, and the eye of that Zeus of the poets looks upon the Thracians; noble blood is drunk down by barbarian soil, and river currents grow clogged with corpses; women strike their breasts in lamentation, and mourning spreads across the land; every foothill and summit of Ida of the many springs trembles, along with the city of Troy, and the fleet belonging to the Achaeans. Where shall we flee, Homer, and stand? Show us a land that has not been shaken. ... 'Do not touch the reins, child, being inexperienced, nor mount the chariot to drive it, untaught; heaven delights in two charioteers only, by whom alone the fire is driven when it is drawn along.' For pleasure leads the understanding astray, and reason's purity, left untaught by the Word, descends into wantonness, reaping that fall as payment for its offense. A proof of this for you are the angels of God, who abandoned beauty for a beauty that fades, and fell so far from the heavens to the earth. And the men of Shechem too are punished, having fallen upon and outraged the holy virgin; their punishment was a grave, and the memorial of their chastisement serves as an instructor unto salvation.

======== Paedagogus — Book 3, Chapter 3 ========

Luxury has advanced to such a pitch that it is not only the female sex that is sick with this empty ambition, but men too vie with the disease. For men who are not clean of adornment are not healthy, but, inclining toward the softer way, make themselves womanish, cropping their hair in ignoble, whorish styles, wrapped about in bright cloaks, chewing mastic gum, and reeking of myrrh-ointment. What would one say on seeing such men? Quite simply, like a physiognomist, one would divine from their very appearance that they are adulterers and men-women, hunters after both kinds of Aphrodite, haters of hair, hairless, loathing the manly bloom, but adorning their locks like women. "Living in unholy audacities," the turncoats "do reckless and evil deeds," says the Sibyl. Because of these men, at any rate, the cities are full of picth-smearers, shavers, and pluckers who tend these effeminates; workshops have been set up and opened everywhere, and craftsmen of this whorish trade openly make a good deal of silver from it. To those who smear themselves with pitch and rip out their hairs, they offer every service, feeling no shame before onlookers or passersby, nor even before themselves as men — for such are the emulators of these more ignoble passions, having their whole body smoothed by the violent pulling of the pitch-plaster. They care not at all about going further in such shamelessness. For if nothing is left undone by them, nothing is unspeakable to me either. When one of these ignoble men was being sold, Diogenes, rebuking him in fatherly fashion, said very manfully, "Come, young man, buy yourself a man" — with a double-edged remark bringing that whorish fellow to his senses. For is it not ignoble for men to shave themselves smooth and be made sleek? As for certain dyeings of hair, and ointments for gray hairs, and blond tints — practices of ruined men-women — and their effeminate hair-combings, these must be given up. For they think that, like a snake, they shed the old age of the head by rewriting and remaking themselves; yet even if they contrive against their hairs, they will not escape their wrinkles, nor will they by contriving against time go unnoticed contriving against death. For it is no terrible thing — no, it is no terrible thing — to seem an old man when one cannot conceal the fact of being one. Indeed, the more a man hastens toward his end, the more honorable he is in truth, having only God as his elder, since God too is the everlasting Elder, older than all things that are. "Ancient of Days" the prophecy has called him, "and the hair of his head like pure wool," says the prophet. And no one else, says the Lord, "is able to make a hair white or black." How then do these godless men counter-create against God, or rather force themselves into opposition, falsifying the hair that he has made gray? "The crown of old men is much experience," says the Scripture, and the grayness of their face is the flower of much experience; but these men disgrace the privilege of their age, the gray hair. It is not possible — no, it is not possible — for one who has a counterfeit head to show forth a genuine soul. "But you did not so learn Christ," it says, "if indeed you heard him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus, that you put off, as regards your former manner of life, the old man" — not the gray-haired man, but "the man being corrupted according to the desires of deceit; and be renewed" — not by dyes and adornments, but "as regards the inner disposition of your understanding, and clothe yourselves with the new man, fashioned after God in righteous and holy truth." But that a man should groom himself and take a blade to his own face merely for elegance's sake, and, standing before a looking-glass, cut away and tweeze out and smooth down the growth on his cheeks — how is this not womanish? And if one did not see them naked, one might well take them for women. For even though the wearing of gold is not permitted to them either, yet still, on account of their effeminate desire, they wind straps and gold chains about themselves in the form of leaves, or, fashioning certain spherical shapes of the same material, they hang such things from their ankles and let them swing about their throats. Such is the contrivance of broken men dragged down into the women's quarters, of amphibious and lascivious beasts; the manner of this ambush is whorish and godless. For God willed the woman to be smooth, glorying, like a horse in its mane, in her hair alone as it grows naturally, but the man he adorned, as he did the lions, with a beard, and rendered him manly with a hairy chest — a token of vigor and command. In this same way he also adorned the cocks that champion the hens, arming them, as it were, with crests for helmets. And so highly does God value these hairs that he commanded them, along with wisdom, to accompany men; indeed, marveling at the dignity of it, he has honored the grim aspect of the sight with venerable gray hair. Wisdom and exact reasonings, gray with understanding, come to their prime together with time, and old age is strengthened by the vigor of much experience, holding forth grayness as a lovable flower of solemn wisdom, for a well-reasoned trust. This, then, is the man's badge, the beard, by which he is revealed as a man — it is older than Eve, and a symbol of the stronger nature. To this God has assigned as fitting the hairiness, and he has scattered hairs over the whole body of the man, but whatever is smooth and soft of it he took away from the side, fashioning Eve, a woman soft to the touch, for the reception of seed, a helper for procreation and household-keeping. But the man — since the smoothness was given up — remained a man, and shows himself to be a man; and to him has been granted the acting, as to her the being acted upon. For by nature the hairy is drier and hotter than the hairless. Hence too the males are hairier and hotter than the females, the intact than the castrated, the mature than the immature. The badge of the manly nature, then, the hairiness, it is impious to transgress against; but the adornment of smoothing — I grow heated as I speak of it — if practiced toward men marks a womanish weakling, if toward women, an adulterer; and both alike must be banished as far as possible from our way of life. "But even the very hairs upon your head have all been counted," declares the Lord; counted likewise are those on the chin, and indeed those over the whole body. In no way at all must one pluck out what has been reckoned into the counsel of God, enrolled in his will; "unless indeed you do not recognize yourselves," says the Apostle, "that Christ Jesus is in you" — whom, if we knew him dwelling within us, I do not know how we could have dared to outrage him. As for smearing oneself with pitch — I hesitate even to speak of the indecency of the practice — turning themselves about and bending over, stripping bare to plain view the secret parts of nature, writhing and arching their backs, in shameless postures without shame for themselves, in the very training-ground, in the midst of the gymnasium, where the virtue of men is put to the test, behaving indecently, pursuing this practice contrary to nature — how is this not the extremity of licentiousness? For those who do such things openly would hardly feel shame before certain people at home. Their shamelessness in public testifies against them to their license in private where none can see; for the man who denies being a man in the light of day is plainly exposed by night as a woman. "There shall not be," said the word through Moses, "a whore among the daughters of Israel, nor shall a male prostitute be found among the men of Israel." "Yet the pitch-plaster is beneficial," someone objects. "No, it is harmful," I say; no one in his right mind, unless he were diseased, would wish to seem a whore, and no one would willingly wish to make it his business to defame the beautiful image. For if "those called according to purpose, whom God foreknew," are, according to the blessed Apostle, marked out "to bear the likeness of his Son's image, so that he should be the firstborn amid a multitude of brothers," how are they not godless who outrage the body conformed to the Lord? But for a man who wishes to be beautiful, it is the mind, the most beautiful thing in man, that must be adorned, and it is this that he must show becoming more comely day by day; and it is not the hairs but the desires that must be plucked out. I even pity the slave-dealers' boy-slaves, adorned for outrage — but they at least have not disgraced themselves; being commanded, the wretched ones adorn themselves for shameful gain. But those who choose of their own accord to do these things, which, if commanded to do them, they would have valued at the price of death, if they were men — how are they not to be spat upon?
And now life has advanced to such a pitch of licentiousness, with injustice running riot, that all lasciviousness has been poured out over the cities and become law. Women stand upon the roof among them, selling their own flesh for the outrage of pleasure, and boys, taught to deny their nature, play the part of women. Luxury has overturned everything; soft, over-elaborate living has shamed mankind; it seeks everything, attempts everything, forces everything, confounds nature — men have suffered the things of women, and women play the man, being married and marrying, women to women, contrary to nature. No path is untrodden by licentiousness; a common Aphrodite is made public property among them, luxury their shared hearth. Oh, the pitiable spectacle, oh, the unspeakable practice! These are the trophies your civic self-indulgence displays, the streetwalkers the proof of your deeds. Alas for such lawlessness! But the wretched do not even understand how the uncertainty of intercourse produces many tragedies. Fathers, unwitting, often lie with a son who has played the whore, or with lustful daughters, forgetting the children they exposed, and license of self-indulgence reveals as men their own begotten children. These things the wise framers of the laws permit; it is lawful for them to sin according to law, and they call the unspeakable act of pleasure a matter of ease. Those who wrong nature think themselves free of adultery, but justice, the avenger, follows upon their audacities; and, drawing down upon themselves an inexorable calamity, they purchase death for a paltry coin. Merchants of these wares, the ill-starred men sail carrying prostitution as freight, as if it were grain, as if it were wine. Others, far more wretched still, buy pleasures as if bread, as if a relish for their meal, taking no thought even of that word of Moses: "You shall not profane your daughter by making her a whore, lest the land play the whore, and the land be filled with lawlessness." These things were prophesied long ago, and the outcome is plain to see; already every land is filled with both fornication and lawlessness.
I admire the ancient lawgivers of the Romans; they hated the effeminate way of life, and judged that a man's carnal union with the female contrary to the law of nature deserved castration, according to the law of justice. For it is not right ever to pluck out the beard — that natural beauty, that noble beauty first appearing on the youth, at the time when he is most graceful. And as he goes further in years, it is anointed and made to shine as a beard, the very place upon which the prophetic ointment came down when Aaron was honored. It befits the man who is rightly trained, in whom peace has taken up its dwelling, to keep peace also with his own hairs. What, then, would the women not undertake — those who rush headlong into wantonness — daring such things as they preen themselves before their mirrors for men? Or rather, these ought not to be called men at all, but batali and gynnides, whose voices are broken and effeminate and whose dress is made soft by touch and by dye. Such men are plainly exposed in their manner by outward things — by their wrap, their footwear, their bearing, their gait, their haircut, their look. "By his look a man is made known," the Scripture states, "and when one meets him, his character is discerned; his clothing, the way he walks, and how he laughs betray what he is." For those who are most at war with hairs elsewhere on the body cultivate only those on the head, all but binding up their locks in hairnets like women. Now lions indeed take pride in their shagginess, but they arm themselves for battle with their mane; boars too glory in their crest, but hunters fear them for the bristling of their hair; woolly sheep are laden down with their fleeces, but even for these the loving Father multiplied their hairs for your service, O man, having taught the shearing of their fleeces. And among the nations, the Celts and the Scythians wear long hair, but they do not adorn it; there is something fearsome in the barbarian's fine head of hair, and its fair color threatens war — the color is somehow akin to blood. Both these barbarian peoples have hated luxury; the German will show clear witnesses in the Rhine, the Scythian in his wagon. Yet the Scythian sometimes even makes light of his wagon (though its size seems wealth to the barbarian), and, abandoning luxury, lives a frugal life; taking the horse, a home sufficient unto itself and lighter-going than the wagon, the Scythian mounts and is carried wherever he wishes; and when he is faint with hunger, he asks the horse for food, and it offers its veins, and the one possession he has, he supplies its blood to its master, and for the nomad the horse becomes both vehicle and food. Of the Arabians too — another nomadic people — the fighting men ride camels; these men sit upon the camels even while they are pregnant; and the camels graze and run at the same time, bearing their masters, and they carry their household along with them. And if drink should fail these barbarians, they milk the camels, and when even this nourishment is exhausted, they do not spare even the blood — in the manner, it is said, of wolves gone rabid. But the camels, gentler than the barbarians, bear no grudge though wronged, but boldly run through the desert, both carrying and nourishing their masters at once. Perish, then, those beasts of prey whose food is blood; for it is not lawful for men even to touch blood, men whose body is nothing but flesh cultivated by blood. Human blood has partaken of reason and shares in grace along with the spirit, and even if someone wrongs it, it will not go unnoticed. It is even permitted to blood, though stripped bare of bodily form, to speak to the Lord. I accept the plainness of the barbarians; loving a frugal way of life, the barbarians have abandoned luxury. Such men the Lord calls us to be — stripped bare of vulgar bad taste, stripped bare of vainglory, torn away from sins, carrying only the tree of life, holding fast only to salvation.

======== Paedagogus — Book 3, Chapter 4 ========

But indeed, carried along by the current of my discourse, I had unwittingly sailed past a sequence to which I must now run back again, and I must censure the multitude of possessions in household servants. For fleeing from working with their own hands and serving themselves, people take refuge in attendants, buying up a great crowd of cooks and table-servers and those who skillfully carve meat into portions. Their servitude is divided into many branches: some labor over their masters' gluttony — carvers, sauce-makers, and the confectioners and honey-cake makers and the preparers and craftsmen of soups and gruels; others busy themselves with superfluous garments; others guard gold like griffins; others keep watch over the silver and scour the drinking-cups and make ready the preparations for banquets; others groom the pack-animals; a whole company of wine-pourers is trained among them, and flocks of comely young men are kept like cattle, from whom their beauty is milked. Hairdressers, male and female, wait upon the women — some holding the mirrors, some the hairnets, others the combs... and eunuchs too, many of them, act as procurers, ministering without suspicion, on the trustworthy pretext that they cannot themselves enjoy pleasure, to those who wish to indulge idly in pleasures. But the true eunuch is not the one who is unable, but the one who is unwilling to love pleasure. At any rate, the word solemnly testifies through the prophet Samuel to the transgressing Jews, when the people asked for a king: it does not promise them a benevolent lord, but threatens them with some self-willed, luxury-loving tyrant, 'he,' it says, 'shall seize your daughters to make ointments, to bake, and to cook' — governing under a soldier's harsh code, not a peaceable rule. Then there are the many Celts who lift the litters of the women on high and carry them borne aloft; but spinning and wool-working and weaving and the work proper to the women's quarters and the keeping of the house are nowhere to be found — instead, the men who corrupt these women with falsehood spend the whole day with them, chattering love-stories, and wearing away both their bodies and their souls with false dealing and false speech. 'You shall not be with the many,' it says, 'unto evil, nor shall you add yourself to the multitude,' because wisdom is found among the few, but disorder shows itself plainly among the many. And those women who hire the litter-bearers do so not out of modesty, not wishing to be spied upon (for that would be welcome, if it were with this disposition that they sought the covering), but rather, given to affectation, they ride upon their servants because they long to make a display. At any rate, when the curtain is drawn back, as they gaze about rather too sharply at those who look upon them, they betray their own character; and often they even peep out from within, disgracing their surface-modesty by their slippery inquisitiveness. 'Do not gaze about,' it says, 'in the streets of the city, nor wander in its deserted places' — for truly it is a desert, even if there be a crowd of the unrestrained there, wherever no self-controlled person is present. These women are carried about to the temples, offering sacrifices and consulting oracles, processing daily together with begging priests and priests of the Mother of the Gods and scurrilous old women who ruin households, tolerating the old-wives' whisperings over their cups, learning from sorcerers certain love-charms and incantations for the ruin of marriages. Some of these they already have as husbands, others they pray for, and still others the diviners promise them. Being deceived, they do not realize that they are handing themselves over like a vessel of pleasure to those who wish to indulge their lust, and that in exchanging their own chastity for the most shameful outrage they are treating their disgraceful corruption as a business transaction. Many are the ministers of this harlot-like licentiousness, slipping in from one place or another; for the unrestrained are easily carried toward wantonness, just as pigs are carried toward the sinking side of a ship. Hence the scripture very forcefully counsels: 'Do not bring every man into your house, for many are the ambushes of the deceitful man'; and elsewhere it says, 'Let righteous men share your table, and let your pride stay fixed on reverence toward the Lord.' Let fornication be thrown to the crows! 'Understand this clearly,' the apostle warns, 'no one given to fornication, nor the covetous, since such a person is an idolater, holds any share in the kingdom of Christ and God.' And there are women who delight in the company of effeminate men; there flow in among them crowds of loose-tongued perverts, foul in body and foul in speech, made bold for wanton services, ministers of adultery, giggling and whispering and sounding through their noses without restraint the harlot-like snorting prelude to lewdness, trying to give pleasure with unrestrained words and postures and provoking to laughter, the forerunner of fornication; and sometimes, inflamed by some chance passion, being themselves either fornicators or eager for the ruin of a crowd of perverts, they click with their noses like frogs, as though they kept bile lodged in their nostrils. But the more refined among these women rear Indian birds and Median peacocks and recline together with dwarfs at play, delighting in grotesque, misshapen monstrosities; and while they laugh to hear of Thersites, they themselves purchase Thersites at great cost and boast not of husbands who are their equals but of these creatures, which are indeed a burden upon the earth. They look past a chaste widow, far superior to a little Maltese lapdog, and they overlook a righteous old man, more comely, I think, than a purchased monstrosity; but these women who rear parrots and plovers will not even take in an orphan child — rather they expose the children conceived at home and take up the fledglings of birds instead, preferring irrational creatures to rational ones, when they ought instead to be supporting elderly men who profess self-control, men more handsome, I think, than apes and able to utter something better than nightingales. 'Whatever,' he says, 'you did for a single one of these lowly ones, you did for me.' Other women, conversely, have preferred ignorance to self-control, turning their own wealth to stone in pearls and Indian emeralds; indeed they squander and scatter their money on fading dyes and on slaves bought with silver, like well-fed birds scratching through the dung-heap of life. 'Poverty,' it says, 'humbles a man'; and by poverty he means stinginess, by which the rich are poor in generosity, as though they had nothing.

======== Paedagogus — Book 3, Chapter 5 ========

What baths these women have! Houses skillfully made, fitted together and carried about, covered over with transparent linen; gilded chairs, silver footstools, and countless vessels of gold and silver — some carried around for toasts, some for food, some for the bath itself; yes, and braziers of coals as well, for they have reached such an extreme of soft living that they eat and grow tipsy while still in the bath. The silver plate with which they parade themselves they set out tastelessly right there in the bathhouses — perhaps partly out of excessive ostentation of wealth, but chiefly out of that self-willed want of discipline by which they stand convicted before unmanly men who are mastered by women, displaying it and in some way proving that they themselves are not able to be at ease and cannot even sweat apart from their many vessels; for the poor women too, who have no share in the procession, share equally in the same baths. So it is that the filth of abundance carries with it a great mantle of blasphemy. With this, as with bait, they hook the wretched men who gape at the glitter of the gold; for by dazzling the tasteless with it they contrive to make their lovers marvel at them — lovers who shortly afterward insult them while naked. And indeed they would not strip before their own husbands, pretending a show of modesty they do not have, yet it is open to any other man who wishes it to behold naked, in the bathhouses, women who are kept shut up at home; for there they are not ashamed to strip before onlookers as before dealers in bodies. But Hesiod counsels that a man should not even brighten his skin at a woman's bath. Yet the baths stand open in common to men and women together, and from this they strip down into self-indulgence: 'for from looking, men come to loving,' as though modesty were washed away from them there in the baths. Those who have not become quite so shameless shut out strangers, but bathe together with their own household servants, and strip naked before slaves and are rubbed down by them, granting to the cowering slave license for the fearless touch of desire; for those brought in beside the baths of their naked mistresses get practice in stripping, toward boldness in desire, erasing fear through a wicked habit. And the ancient athletes, ashamed to display a man naked, performed their contests girded, so guarding their sense of shame; but these women, stripping off their tunic and their shame together, wish to appear beautiful, and yet against their will they are just as much convicted of being base; for the very flesh betrays how unrestrained the craving is, just as in those with dropsy the moisture pent up within shows through on the surface — the sickness of both is known from the sight of them. Men, therefore, who ought to become a noble example of truth to women, should be ashamed to strip with them and should guard against slippery glances — 'for he who has looked,' it says, 'too curiously has already sinned.' At home, then, one must show reverence toward one's parents and household servants; on the roads, toward those one meets; in the baths, toward women; in solitary places, toward oneself; and in every place toward the Word, who fills every place, and 'apart from him nothing came into being.' For only in this way will a person remain unstumbling, if he considers that God is present with him at all times.

======== Paedagogus — Book 3, Chapter 6 ========

Wealth, then, must be acquired in a respectable manner and shared in a generous, humane way, not sordidly nor boastfully, and one's love of what is fine must not be twisted into self-love and vulgar ostentation, lest someone say of us too: his horse is worth fifteen talents, or his estate, or his slave, or his gold plate, while he himself is worth three coppers. At once, indeed, strip the ornament from women and the masters from their household slaves, and you will find them no different from purchased chattel. Strip the masters — not in gait, not in glance, not in speech — and thus they too resemble the bought slaves. But they are distinguished from their household servants only in being feebler and having been reared more delicately. This, then, is the finest of doctrines, and it must be sung out at every turn: that a man who is both self-controlled and upright lays up his riches above; such a one, having disposed of what he owned on earth and handed it over to the destitute, finds the treasure that decay cannot touch, unreachable by moth or robber — that man is genuinely fortunate, even should he count for little, seem feeble, and lack any fame, and his riches, being the greatest there are, make him truly wealthy; whereas a man wealthier still than Cinyras or Midas, if he is dishonest and haughty — like the figure who dressed himself daily in fine purple garments and scorned the beggar Lazarus at his gate — that man is pitiable, passes his days in wretchedness, and will never taste real life. Wealth, it seems to me, resembles a snake: if one does not know how to take hold of it without harm, but rashly grasps the creature by the tip of its tail from a distance, it will coil about the hand and bite; and wealth too is a fearsome thing, writhing about whether one grips it with skill or without, ready to fasten on and bite, unless one handles it with a mastery that looks down upon it, so that by the charm-song of reason the beast may be tamed while the handler himself remains unharmed. But, it seems, the man who has acquired things of greater worth, and is rich in this alone, has gone unnoticed as truly rich; for of great worth is not stone, not silver, not clothing, not bodily beauty, but virtue, which is reason handed down through the tutor for training — this reason that renounces luxury and calls upon labor with one's own hands as a servant, and praises frugality as the offspring of self-control, saying: 'Take hold of discipline rather than money, and choose learning above gold that has been proven; for wisdom outweighs precious stones, and no valuable thing can equal it.' And again: 'That you may enjoy me rather than gold and precious stone and silver; for my fruits are better than choice silver.' And if a distinction must be drawn, let the man of many possessions be called wealthy, stuffed with gold like a filthy money-bag, while the just man be called well-ordered, since good order is a disposition, measured in due proportion, concerning one's management and giving; 'for there are those who sow and gather in more,' concerning whom it is written: 'He has scattered abroad, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.' So it is not the one who has and hoards, but the one who shares, who is rich, and it is the sharing, not the possessing, that shows the blessed man; the fruit of the soul is generosity in giving; therefore wealth lies in the soul. And indeed, let good things be possessable only by the good, and the good are the Christians; but a foolish or dissolute man could neither perceive the good nor come to possess it; therefore good things are possessable only by Christians. And of these good things nothing is richer; therefore these alone are rich. For true wealth is righteousness, and reason, more precious than every treasure, which grows not from flocks and lands but is bestowed by God — riches no one can seize from him (only the soul serves as its storehouse), a possession most excellent for the one who holds it, truly rendering the man blessed. For whoever it belongs to, to desire nothing of what is not in our power, but to obtain the things he does desire, and moreover, whatever he rightly longs for, to ask and receive these from God — how is such a man not one of many possessions, indeed of all possessions, having God as his eternal treasure? 'To him who asks,' it says, 'it shall be given, and to him who knocks it shall be opened.' If God refuses nothing, all things belong to the God-fearing man.

======== Paedagogus — Book 3, Chapter 7 ========

Luxury wandering off into pleasures becomes a grievous shipwreck for men; for this life, sweet as it is and inglorious for the many, is alien to true love of beauty and to seemly pleasures. For man by nature is a lofty creature and proud and a seeker after the beautiful, being the handiwork of the only Beautiful, but the life devoted to the belly is unseemly and reproachable and unsightly and ridiculous. Most alien of all to the divine nature is love of pleasure — to feed just as sparrows do, and to mate just as swine and goats do; for to consider pleasure a good is the mark of complete boorishness, and love of riches drives a man out of right living, persuading him to feel no shame before disgraceful things, "if only he has the power, like a beast, to eat all sorts of things and likewise to drink, and in every way to provide himself with a complete satiety of sexual pleasures." On account of this he very rarely inherits the kingdom of God. To what end, then, are so many dainty dishes prepared, if not merely to fill a single belly? The uncleanness of gluttony is exposed by the privies, into which our bellies spit out the leftovers of the feast. To what end do they gather together so many wine-pourers, when they could be satisfied with a single cup? To what end the chests of clothing? And the gold — to what end? And the ornaments — to what end? These are prepared for cloak-thieves and evildoers and for greedy eyes. "Let not almsgiving and faithfulness fail you," says Scripture. See, then, we have a fine example of frugality also in Elijah the Tishbite, when "he sat under the broom tree" and an angel set food before him: "a cake of barley baked upon coals, and a jug of water." With such fare did the Lord provision his breakfast. It is necessary, then, for us who journey toward the truth to travel light: "Carry not," said the Lord, "a purse, nor a bag, nor sandals" — that is, do not acquire wealth that is treasured up only in a purse, do not fill your own storehouses as though laying up seed in a bag, but rather share with those in need; do not busy yourselves over beasts of burden and servants, who are allegorically spoken of as the sandals carrying the baggage of the rich on their journey. One must, then, cast off the multitude of vessels, along with cups of silver and gold for drinking, and the throng of attendants, taking as one's fair and dignified companions, in place of these, self-sufficiency and frugality from the Instructor; and indeed one must walk in harmony with the Word, even if a wife and children are present to someone — the household is not a burden to one who has learned to accompany a self-controlled traveler. The wife who loves her husband must likewise be equipped just as the husband, bringing frugality along as a fine traveler's provision for the journey to the heavens, together with one sober dignity. And the measure of each person's possessions should be like the foot to the sandal — fitted to the body; but what is excessive, the so-called ornaments and the furnishings of the wealthy, weighs one down instead of adorning the body. It is necessary for one who strives to ascend into the heavens to carry about beneficence as a fine walking staff, and, having shared with the afflicted, to receive in turn a share of true rest; for Scripture acknowledges that "a man's own riches are the ransom of his soul" — meaning, should he possess wealth, sharing it will bring him safety. For just as wells that naturally well up, when drawn from, spring back up again to their original measure, so the sharing of goods, being a good spring of love of humanity, when it shares its drink with the thirsty, grows again and is refilled, in the way that milk is accustomed to flow upon breasts nursed by an infant or drawn by hand. For whoever possesses the all-powerful God as his own Word lacks nothing and is never in need; the Word, held as a possession, knows no want and is the source of every abundance. And if someone should say he has often seen a righteous man in want of bread — this is rare indeed, and there no other is righteous — let him nevertheless take note also of this: "Man, if righteous, subsists not on bread alone, but on the utterance issuing from God's mouth," who is himself the genuine bread, that bread come down from heaven. Never, then, is the good man in want, so long as he keeps safe his confession toward God; for nothing prevents him from asking and obtaining all that his need requires from the Father of the universe, and from enjoying his own possessions, provided he remains a son; and this too lies within his reach — to want for absolutely nothing. This instructive Word of ours gives us wealth, and there is no grudging in being rich with the wealth of freedom from want acquired through him; whoever possesses such riches will come into possession of God's kingdom.

======== Paedagogus — Book 3, Chapter 8 ========

But if one of you will flee luxury to the end, nursing yourself in frugality, you will more easily train yourself to endure involuntary hardships, since by continually making voluntary afflictions into exercises for persecution, whenever you come to necessary toils and fears and griefs, you will not be untrained in enduring them. It is for this reason, indeed, that we have no fatherland on earth, so that we may despise earthly possessions. And frugality, being a settled habit that lacks nothing in the expenditures that are fitting for the things that are needful, and to the extent that is needful, is the richest of all things; for expenditures have their proper ends. Now, as to how a wife ought to live together with her husband, and about her own handiwork and household management and the use of servants, and further about the season of marriage and all that befits women, we shall set that forth in our discourse on marriage; but what is fitting for pedagogy, these things alone must now be set before us here, in the manner of a sketch, as we mark out the life of Christians. And indeed most things have already been said and taught by the Instructor, but what still remains we shall now set forth as a foundation; for examples are no small weight toward salvation. Consider, says the tragedy: Odysseus's wife Telemachus did not slay; since she never wedded a second husband over the first, but kept the marriage bed unbroken in that household. In reproaching shameless adultery, this showed a fine image of chastity and love of one's husband. And the Lacedaemonians, in compelling the Helots (Helots being a name for household servants) to get drunk, displayed to their own sons the deeds of drunkenness, themselves being sober, by way of instruction and correction; and by guarding against that disgraceful behavior of theirs, so that they themselves might not fall into similar condemnations, they were trained by the shamefulness of the drunken, being benefited toward their own freedom from fault. For of men, some were saved by being taught, others self-taught; either they emulated or they sought after virtue. That man is best of all who himself perceives everything for himself; this is Abraham, who sought after God; and noble too is the one who obeys another speaking well; these are the disciples who were persuaded by the Word. For this reason the one was called friend, and the others apostles, of one and the same God, the one busying himself in inquiry, the others proclaiming, and both are noble; and of these two, the hearers benefit likewise, the one being helped through the seeking, the other being saved through the finding. But whoever neither himself perceives, nor lays to heart what he hears from another, he in turn is a useless man. [another people is the gentile people, useless]; this is the people that does not follow Christ. But the loving Instructor, benefiting us in many ways nonetheless, in some things exhorted, in other things also reproached, and in yet another way, by the sins of others, showed us their shame, and made manifest the punishment following upon it, at once guiding the soul and admonishing, contriving a loving turning-away from wickedness by pointing to those who had already suffered; through which images, most plainly, he stopped some who were badly disposed, and prevented others who dared the same things, and grounded others in endurance, and stopped others from wickedness, and healed still others by the sight of like cases, turning them toward the better. For who, following someone along a road, when the one before him has fallen into a pit, would not take care to turn aside from the same danger, having guarded against the same course of error? And who, again, being in training, upon learning the road of love of glory, and seeing the prize that the contestant before him has won, does not himself also rush toward the crown, imitating his elder? Many such are the images of the divine wisdom; but I shall recall one example and set it forth briefly. The suffering of the Sodomites was a judgment for those who did wrong, but an instruction for those who hear of it. The Sodomites, having run aground into wantonness through much luxury, committing adultery without fear, and madly infatuated over boys, the all-seeing Word looked upon them, whom it is not possible to escape while doing unholy deeds, nor did the wakeful guardian of humanity remain still at their wantonness; but turning us away from imitating them, training us toward his own chastity, having laid punishments upon the sinners, so that the going unpunished of licentiousness might not receive an added flow of impunity, he commanded Sodom to be burned up, pouring out a little of that wise fire upon their licentiousness, so that their unchecked lust might not throw open wide gateways for those being carried toward soft living. Thus the just punishment of the Sodomites became an image of the well-reasoned salvation for mankind; for those who have not sinned in the same ways as those who were punished would never undergo the same penalty as the sinners, having been kept from suffering by not sinning. "For I want you to know," says Jude, "that the Lord, having once saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe; and the angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day." And little by little, in the most instructive manner, he sets forth the images of those under judgment: "Woe to them, because they walked in the way of Cain, and abandoned themselves to the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the rebellion of Korah." For fear preserves from insolence those who are not able to bear the authority of adoption as sons. This, indeed, is why there are punishments and threats, so that, fearing the penalties, we may abstain from sinning. I could recount to you the punishments of love of ornament and the penalties of love of glory, not only of self-indulgence, and set beside them also the ill-conceived blasphemies concerning wealth, in which the Word, through instilling fear, restrains us from wrongdoing. But sparing the length of the treatise, I bring forward for you the commandments of the Instructor that follow, so that you may indeed keep watch against the threats.

======== Paedagogus — Book 3, Chapter 9 ========

Of the bath, then (for it was from this point that I turned aside in speaking), there are four reasons for which we resort to it: either for cleanliness, or for warmth, or for health, or, last, for pleasure. Bathing for the sake of pleasure, then, is to be dismissed; for shameless pleasure must be cut off root and branch. Women may properly bathe both for cleanliness and for health, whereas men should bathe for health only. The matter of warmth is superfluous, since it is possible in any case to relieve a body stiffened by cold in other ways. Frequent use of the bath weakens one's powers and relaxes the natural tensions of the body, and often brings on faintness and swooning. For bodies drink, in a manner, like trees — not only through the mouth, but also through the pores that open through the whole body during bathing, as they say. A proof of this: people who are often thirsty, upon stepping into water, have had their thirst relieved. Well then, even if the bath is of benefit for some purpose, one ought not on that account become enslaved to it. The ancients called bathhouses "fullers of men," since faster than is fitting they wear the body threadbare like a cloth, and force it to grow old before its time, stewing it as it were, the flesh being softened by the heat just as iron is softened; hence we need, so to speak, the quenching and tempering of cold water afterward. Nor indeed should one bathe on every occasion, but if a person is either too empty or, again, too full, the bath is to be declined; yes, and a person must reckon with how old the body is and what point in the year it is, since bathing is not advantageous for every person, nor at just any moment, as specialists in such things acknowledge. For us, moderation suffices, which we everywhere invoke as an aid to life; for one ought not to spend so much time at the bath as to need someone to lead one by the hand, nor bathe continually and many times a day as though frequenting the marketplace. Moreover, to be doused by a crowd of household servants is to commit insolence against one's neighbors, since it is people indulging their luxury and unwilling to understand that the bath ought to be held in common, equally, for all who bathe. One ought to wash, above all, the soul with the cleansing word, and the body too, sometimes, because of the grime that gathers upon it — yet sometimes also simply to relieve one's weariness. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," says the Lord, "since you resemble graves coated in whitewash: on the surface a grave looks fair, yet inwardly it holds nothing but a dead man's bones and every kind of impurity." And he says as much again to those same men: "How miserable for you, since you scrub clean the exterior of the cup and the plate, while inside they are crammed with impurity. Scour the interior of the cup first, so that its exterior too may come clean." The best bath of the soul, then, scours away filth and is spiritual, concerning which prophecy expressly says: "The Lord will rinse off the grime covering Israel's sons and her daughters, and will purge the blood out from their midst" — meaning the bloodshed of lawlessness, and the slaying of the prophets. And the word added the manner of this cleansing, saying: "by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning." But merely bodily washing of the flesh gets done through water on its own, as frequently occurs out in rural districts lacking any bathhouse.

======== Paedagogus — Book 3, Chapter 10 ========

For young men a gymnasium suffices, even if a bath is also available; for indeed to prefer such things to the baths, before all else, is perhaps not a bad choice for men either, since they have something useful for the health of the young, instilling in them zeal and ambition to care not only for bodily fitness but also for stoutness of soul; and this, when it takes place without dragging them away from better pursuits, is graceful and not unprofitable. Nor here either should women be exempted from bodily exercise; but they should not be urged on to wrestling and races — rather let them be exercised in wool-working and weaving, and in standing by the woman who is baking bread, if need be. Further, women ought themselves to bring out from the storeroom, with their own hands, whatever we need, and it is no shame to them to go to the mill; nor indeed is it shameful for them to busy themselves about the preparation of food, that it may be pleasing to the husband — this is the proper task and honor of a wife who keeps the house and helps her husband, not a reproach to her. And if with her own hands she should also shake out the bedding, and offer a drink to her husband when he is thirsty, and set food before him, she would thereby be exercised most becomingly, and toward sound and temperate health as well. Such a woman the Instructor approves — she who "stretches out her arms to useful work, and her hands take hold of the spindle; she opens her hands to the poor and stretches out her palm to the needy" — not ashamed to emulate Sarah in this most excellent service, ministering to travelers. For Abraham said to her: "Hurry and knead three measures of fine flour and make cakes baked in the ashes." And scripture says that "Rachel, Laban's own daughter, arrived with her father's flock." And this was not enough, but teaching freedom from vanity, scripture adds: "for she herself used to pasture her father's sheep." And countless are the examples the scriptures offer of frugality together with self-service, and moreover of exercises too. Of men, some go naked and take part in wrestling, others play with the small ball, the game called phaininda, especially in the sun; for others walking is sufficient exercise, whether going out to the country or coming down into the city. And if they should also take up the spade, this is no ignoble additional occupation, one that manages the exercise proper to farming. But indeed I nearly forgot to mention that famous Pittacus, that the king of the Mytilenaeans used to grind grain, making use of vigorous exercise. It is also a fine thing to draw up water for oneself and to chop the wood one will use oneself. "And Jacob shepherded the sheep of Laban that were left," bearing as a royal token "a rod of storax wood," practicing through the use of wood how to turn nature toward the better. For many people, too, reading aloud is sometimes exercise enough. And indeed as for wrestling, which we have approved, let it not be taken up for the sake of useless love of contention, but for the discharge of a manly sweat; and one need not labor at the artful, showy part of it, but at what belongs to upright wrestling — the freeing of oneself from holds on the neck, hands, and sides; for such exertion, pursued with graceful strength, is more orderly and more manly, undertaken for the sake of useful and beneficial health, whereas the other labors of the gymnastic art proclaim the practice of postures unfit for free men. But everywhere due measure must be aimed at. For just as we should regard exertions as the seasoning of food, so exerting oneself beyond measure is both very bad, and wearisome, and productive of disease. One ought therefore neither to be utterly idle nor yet altogether given over to toil. For just as we have gone through the matter concerning food, so likewise in all things and everywhere one must turn neither toward self-indulgence and an unrestrained way of life, nor again toward the opposite extreme of harshness, but toward the mean between these, the well-ordered and temperate way, pure of either vice, of luxury and of stinginess. Now as we have said before, self-service is exercise free of vanity — for one to put on his own sandals, and to wash his own two feet, and moreover to rub himself down when anointed with oil; and to render the same service in return, in turn, to the one who has rubbed him — this too is the exercise of a communal justice, as is lying down beside a sick friend, and helping one who is unable to help himself, and setting food before one in need. "And Abraham set food before the three of them," it says, "a meal beneath the tree, and stood by them as they ate." And so too fishing, as with Peter, if we should have leisure from the necessary studies concerned with reason. But better than this is that catch which the Lord granted to his disciple, teaching him to fish for men through water, just as fish are caught.

======== Paedagogus — Book 3, Chapter 11 ========

For this reason, decking oneself in gold and resorting to somewhat softer garments need not be cut off altogether, but the irrational impulses must be bridled, lest they carry us off and hurl us headlong into luxurious living, snatching us away through much license; for luxury run to satiety is terrible - apt to bolt, to toss its mane, and to shake off its rider, the tutor, who from far off checks the reins and guides and carries toward safety the human horse - the irrational part of the soul which, in pursuit of blameworthy pleasures and appetites and stones and gold and dappled clothing and the rest of extravagance, turns into a wild beast. Let them keep especially in mind that most holy saying: "maintain honorable conduct in the sight of the nations, so that in the very matter where they slander you as wrongdoers, they may, from observing your noble deeds, give glory to God." The tutor, then, allows us to wear plain clothing, and of white color, as we have said before, so that, being made familiar not with what is variegated by art but with what is born by nature, having thrust away everything deceitful and everything that gives the lie to truth, we may embrace the single form and single face of truth. Sophocles, reproaching a young man for soft living, says: "you stand out conspicuous in womanish garments." For just as the soldier and the sailor and the ruler each has his proper dress, so too the temperate person's proper garb is one unfussy, decorous, and clean. For this reason also the law set down through Moses concerning leprosy rejects the mottled and many-spotted as unholy, resembling the varied scales of the serpent. It requires that one no longer flowered with variegated colors, but made wholly white throughout, from the top of the skull down to the underside of the feet, be counted clean, so that, corresponding to the change undergone in the body, having laid aside the variegated and cunning affection of the mind, we may come to love the unvariegated, undoubting, simple color of truth. And Plato too, the best of all men, a zealot in this very matter of Moses, approves that weaving in which there is no more work than belongs to a temperate woman; "white colors," he says, "would be fitting for dignity, both elsewhere and in weaving; dyeing should be reserved solely for the trappings of warfare." White, then, is suited to peaceable and luminous people. Just as signs that stand nearest to their causes indicate their presence, or rather demonstrate the existence of what produced them - as smoke indicates fire, and good complexion and firm pulse indicate health - so too among us such dress indicates the state of one's character. Temperance is clean and simple, since cleanliness is a habit that prepares a clean way of living unmixed with shameful things, and simplicity is a habit that removes what is superfluous. Solid clothing, and especially clothing that has not been fulled, shuts in the warmth of the body - not because the garment itself possesses the warmth, but because it turns back the warmth going forth from the body and gives it no passage out; and if any cold should chance to enter, catching it within itself the garment, warmed by the body's heat, warms the body in turn; for which reason it is especially to be used in winter. This is a serviceable garment; and serviceability is a habit that is not extravagant but is receptive of whatever suffices, without deficiency, for a life lived according to reason - a healthy and blessed life. Let the woman too make use of plain and dignified dress, somewhat softer than would befit a man, yet not altogether shameless, nor flowing with softness. Let clothing be suited to age, appearance, place, nature, and pursuit. For the divine apostle counsels us most excellently "to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and to make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lusts." Reason forbids those who violate nature to bore through the fleshy part of the ears. Why then not the nostril too? That indeed that saying might be fulfilled: "like a golden ring in a swine's snout, so is beauty in a woman without discretion." For, generally speaking, if anyone thinks he is adorned by gold, he is less than gold, and one who is less than gold is not master of it. And is it not utterly absurd to confess oneself inferior even to a lump of Lydian gold dust? Just as gold itself is defiled by the uncleanness of a swine when it stirs up filth with its snout, so the more luxury-loving women, puffed up by their abundance, run riot and outrage true beauty with the stains of sensual indulgence. The tutor, then, gives them a ring of gold - not this either for ornament, but for sealing things at home worth guarding, on account of care for the management of the household. For if all were being trained under the tutor, there would be no need at all of seals, since bondservants and masters would be on equal footing in righteousness; but since lack of discipline gives great impetus toward wrongdoing, we have had need of seals. But there is a time when it is fitting to relax the tension somewhat. For sometimes indulgence must be granted to women who have not been fortunate in a temperate marriage and who adorn themselves to please their husbands. But let this limit be set upon them: that their eagerness to please be directed toward their own husbands alone. I myself would not wish them to cultivate bodily comeliness, but rather to win over their husbands by temperate wifely devotion, a compelling and just remedy. Still, since they are bent on making their souls unhappy, let this be set before them, if indeed they wish to be temperate: to gently soothe the irrational impulses and desires of their husbands, and quietly to lead them by degrees, through habituation, toward simplicity and greater temperance. For dignified bearing is achieved not by adding what is showy but by removing what is superfluous. Just as one clips wing-feathers, so must the luxurious possessions of women be cut away, since they produce unstable vanities and empty pleasures, by which women, puffed up and given wings, often fly away from their marriages. Therefore women must be restrained becomingly and drawn in tight with modest reserve, lest they slip away from truth through vanity. It is good, then, for husbands, trusting their wives, to entrust to them the management of the household, given to them as helpers for this purpose. But if it should happen that we ourselves, engaged in civic affairs or in certain matters administered in the country, and often finding ourselves without our wives, need to seal something for security, the tutor grants to us as well a signet ring for this purpose alone, but the rest of the rings are to be cast away, since, according to Scripture, "a golden ornament to the wise is discipline." Women who wear much gold seem to me to fear that, should someone take their gold from them, they would be thought slaves, being unadorned. But true nobility, examined in the natural beauty of the soul, does not distinguish the slave by purchase and sale, but by an ignoble disposition; and it is fitting for us not merely to appear free but to be free, being disciplined by God and adopted by God. Therefore posture, movement, gait, dress, and, in a word, one's whole manner of life must be raised to the most befitting a free person as possible. Moreover, men should not wear the ring on the joint (for that is womanish), but on the little finger, and even there down toward the tip; for thus the hand will be free for use in whatever we need of it, and the seal will not easily fall off, being secured by the greater bulk of the joint. Let our seals show a dove, or perhaps a fish, or else a vessel scudding along under a favorable breeze, or a musical lyre, such as Polycrates used, or a ship's anchor, such as Seleucus had engraved upon his signet; and if someone should be a fisherman, he will call to mind an apostle and the children drawn up out of the water. For we must not have the faces of idols stamped upon our rings, since we are even forbidden to give them our attention, nor a sword or bow for those who pursue peace, nor drinking cups for those who are temperate. Many of the licentious have their beloved boys or their courtesans engraved upon their rings, so that even if they wished it, they could never let forgetfulness of their amorous passions come upon them, because of the constant reminder furnished by their intemperance.
Concerning hair, this is our judgment: a man's head should be closely shorn, unless he has naturally curly hair; but let his beard be thick, and let the twisted locks from the head not be allowed to descend too far, sliding down into womanish braids; for men, "well-bearded" is enough. And if someone should trim something of the beard, it should nevertheless not be shaved bare entirely; for the sight is shameful, and cutting the beard down to the skin is condemned as bordering on plucking and smoothness. Thus the psalmist, delighting in the luxuriance of the beard, says: "like the ointment that runs down upon the beard, the beard of Aaron" - celebrating in his refrain the comeliness of the beard, he gladdened the face of the Lord with the fragrant oil. But since the cutting of hair is not to be undertaken for the sake of decoration but out of necessity - the hair of the head, since it does not grow, being trimmed lest it hinder the sight as it falls over the eyes, and perhaps also the hairs on the mustache that get soiled during eating should be cut round, not with a razor (for that is ignoble), but with the two blades of the barber's shears - the hairs of the beard, causing no such trouble, should not be interfered with, since they lend to the face dignity and a certain awe-inspiring quality... indeed, its very form serves as a further tutor to many, keeping them from sin because it is so easily detected, while for those who wish to sin openly, the inconspicuousness of a shaved appearance, and the fact that it draws no notice, is most delightful, since, hidden beneath it, those who by ignorance are permitted to err, making themselves like the majority, have reaped the fruit of sinning without fear. So the bareness of the head not only makes a man look austere but also renders the skull less susceptible to harm, accustoming it to endure both cold and heat, and it wards off the injuries arising from these, which the hair, absorbing them into itself like a sponge, lodges as a lasting harm in the brain by way of the resulting dampness.
For women it suffices to soften the hair and to bind up the locks simply with a plain pin at the neck, with unadorned care, thereby increasing the genuine beauty of temperate tresses. For the braided intertwinings of the hair favored by courtesans, and the bindings of cords, besides showing them to be unsightly, also damage the hair, plucking it out through cunning plaiting - for the sake of which they do not even dare touch their own heads, fearing to disturb their hair, and even sleep comes upon them with dread, lest unawares they should ruin the arrangement of their plaiting. Additions of other people's hair are to be utterly rejected; to fit foreign locks upon one's own head is most godless, dressing the skull in dead men's tresses. For upon whom will the elder lay his hand? Whom will he bless? Not the woman who is so adorned, but another's hair, and through it another head. And if "the man stands as head over the woman, and Christ stands as head over the man," how is it not impious for them to fall into a double sin? For they deceive their husbands by this substitution of hair, and they dishonor the Lord, so far as lies in them, by adorning themselves like courtesans for the deception of truth, blaspheming the truly beautiful head. So then, hair must not be dyed, nor must gray hairs be given a different color; for neither is it permitted to make clothing many-colored; and above all, the venerable and trustworthy mark of age should not be concealed, but should be displayed openly in the light of God as an object of reverence to the young. Indeed, sometimes shameless men have been reformed, when the appearance of gray hair, standing over them like a tutor, has turned them toward temperance and, by the very brightness of its aspect, has struck down the youthful vigor of their desire.
But neither should women smear their faces with the tricks of cunning artifice; let us rather point out to them a temperate adornment. For the best beauty is, first, that of the soul, as I have often noted, whenever the soul is adorned with the Holy Spirit and inspired by the graces that come from it - righteousness, prudence, courage, temperance, love of the good, and reverence - than which no color has ever been seen to bloom more brightly. Next, let bodily beauty also be cultivated: "symmetry of limbs and members, together with good complexion." Here the adornment fitting to health finds its proper place, whereby the transition from a merely artificial semblance to the true form is achieved, in accordance with the shape given by God. A well-tempered use of drink and a proper measure of food have wonderful power to beautify in keeping with what is natural. Not merely does the body gain soundness from such measure, but it is likewise brought to shine forth in beauty. For from the fiery element comes the sheen and radiance, from the moist comes brightness and grace, from the dry comes manliness and firmness, and from the airy comes good breath and even balance - out of which this well-proportioned and beautiful statue that is the reasoning being is adorned. Beauty is the noble flower of health; for health works within the body, while beauty, blossoming out to the exterior of the body, shows forth the good complexion openly. Indeed, the finest and healthiest regimens, by exercising the body, produce genuine and lasting beauty, the heat drawing to itself all the moisture and the cold breath; for heat, fanned into motion, is by nature drawing toward itself. And once it has drawn this in, it gently vaporizes, through the flesh itself, the surplus arising from food, in due measure of moisture and excess of heat. Hence the former food is expended; but in a body without motion, the food eaten does not become attached but falls away, just as bread from a cold oven either falls out whole or leaves only its bottom crust behind. Naturally, then, in those who have excess, urine and waste abound at the excretions, and their other superfluities abound as well, and moreover their sweat, since the food is not properly assimilated by the body but is poured out into what is superfluous. From this source lustful desires also arise, the surplus flowing toward the parts devoted to procreation. Therefore, by well-measured exercise this surplus must be dissolved and turned back into digestion, through which beauty takes on its ruddy glow.
It is absurd that those who have come into being "according to the image and likeness of God" should, as if dishonoring the archetype, bring in an imported cosmetic art, choosing human ill-craft before the divine workmanship. The tutor bids them present themselves "in decent dress, ornamenting themselves through reverence and self-mastery," "submitting to their own husbands, so that even should some fail to heed the message, they might be gained, apart from any speech, through the manner of life of their wives, once they have witnessed," so it says, "your pure manner of life joined with awe; and let their ornamentation be, not the external kind consisting in braiding hair, hanging on gold, or dressing in fine clothes, but rather the concealed self of the heart, in the imperishable quality of a gentle and untroubled disposition, which carries great worth before God." And it is above all the labor of their own hands that lends women genuine loveliness, keeping their bodies active and decking themselves through their own exertion, not presenting an adornment toiled over by others - an adornment unbecoming, servile, and fit for courtesans - but the ornament that each temperate woman fashions and weaves with her own hands, whenever the need especially arises. For it is never fitting that women who conduct their lives according to God should appear adorned with things bought from the marketplace, but rather with the works of their own household management. For it is the finest work when a woman who keeps house arrays herself and her husband alike with adornments of her own making, in which all take delight - the children in their mother, the husband in his wife, she in them, and all in God. In sum, then, a courageous woman is a storehouse of virtue, one who "does not consume bread gained through idleness, and compassionate teaching rests upon her tongue," who "has parted her lips with wisdom and with order, and her offspring stand and pronounce her fortunate," as the sacred word declares through Solomon, "and her husband commends her too. For a woman who reveres God shall be counted fortunate; let such a one be commended for revering the Lord." And once more: "A woman of courage is a garland set upon her husband."
Above all we must correct their postures, their glances, their gaits, and their voices. For some women, emulating stage-acting and carefully imitating the broken movements of dancers, strut about in ordinary company as though on the boards, with their affected motions, their languid steps, and their contrived voices, casting soft glances all around, having schooled themselves into a bait of pleasure. "For honey drips from the lips of a harlot woman, who by speaking to please anoints your throat; but afterward you will find her more bitter than gall, and keener than a blade honed on both edges; for foolishness walks a path that carries her companions down into Hades together with death." Samson the noble was conquered by a harlot, and another woman shaved off his manhood. But no other woman deceived Joseph in this way — the Egyptian harlot was defeated, and self-control, though taking on chains, shows itself superior to the woman set loose. That saying too might be aptly quoted here: "I for my part do not know how to whisper, nor to walk about with my neck bent sideways in an affected manner, as I see many other effeminates doing here in the city, their hair plastered with pitch-wax." Womanish movements, affectations, and delicacies must be curbed altogether; for the luxurious swaying of gait in walking and the "mincing step," as Anacreon calls it, are utterly the marks of courtesans, so it seems to me. Comedy says that "the footprints of courtesans leave behind their bloom and their delicacy." "But the footprints of a harlot do not fix themselves upon the truth; for she does not walk the paths of life, and her tracks are unstable and hard to know." Above all the eyes must be spared, since it is better to stumble with the feet than with the eyes. The Lord, at any rate, heals this affliction most concisely, saying, "If your eye offends you, pluck it out," tearing out desire by its roots; languishing looks and the batting of the eyelids, which is winking through the eyes, are nothing other than committing adultery through the eyes, desire shooting its darts by their means. For the eyes are corrupted before the whole body. "The eye that beholds beautiful things gladdens the heart," that is, one who has learned to look properly is gladdened; "but he who winks the eye with deceit brings griefs upon men." Something of this sort, it seems, is how they portray the effeminate Sardanapalus, king of the Assyrians, seated astride his couch, carding purple wool and rolling up the whites of his eyes. The women who practice such things prostitute themselves by their own glances; "for the eye is the lamp of the body," says Scripture, through which the things within are made visible, illumined by the light that appears. "The fornication of a woman is in the lifting up of her eyes." "Put to death, therefore, the members that are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry, on account of which the wrath of God comes," the apostle cries out, but we rekindle our passions and feel no shame. Some of them, chewing mastic gum as they go about, grin at passers-by; others, as though they had no fingers, scratch their heads with pins they carry, and fuss over these pins made of tortoise-shell or ivory or some other dead creature; still others, having what look like blotches for the sake of beauty in the eyes of onlookers, adorn themselves with brightly colored cosmetics and thereby stain their own faces. Solomon calls such a woman "foolish" and "bold," "who does not know shame; she sat at the doors of her own house upon a seat, openly calling to those passing along the road, those who make straight their own paths," saying, evidently through her posture and her whole manner of life, "Whoever among you is most foolish, let him turn aside to me." And to those lacking sense she urges, "take pleasure in secret bread and stolen water that is sweet," meaning by this the thievish Aphrodite. Drawing on this, the Boeotian Pindar says, "something sweet, a stolen delight of Cypris." "But the wretched man does not know that those born of earth perish at her hands, and meet with the plank of Hades. But leap away," says the tutor, "do not linger in that place, nor fix your gaze upon her. For thus you will cross the alien water and pass over Acheron." For this reason the Lord says through Isaiah, "Because the daughters of Zion walked with necks held high and with wanton glances of the eyes, and as they went trailed their tunics and made a game with their feet, therefore God will humble the daughters of Zion and uncover their form" — their unseemly form.
For my own part, I do not think it fitting for the maidservants who walk at a woman's left side, or those who attend her, to speak shamefully or act shamefully, but rather that they should be brought to self-control by their mistresses. The comic poet Philemon speaks very reprovingly on this: "Going out behind a free woman I see only a single pretty maidservant following behind, one from Plataea, and someone tagging along after her, ogling her." For the maidservant's licentiousness reflects back upon her mistress, giving a foothold to those who make attempts upon the lesser so as not to be cautious about the greater, since the mistress, by tolerating the shameful conduct, shows that she does not condemn it. Not becoming indignant at those behaving licentiously becomes a clear proof of a disposition inclining toward the same thing. "For as is the mistress," say those fond of proverbs, "so is the dog."
We must also banish frenzied haste from our walking, and choose instead what is dignified and unhurried — not a lingering, mincing gait, nor swaying along the roads and glancing sideways with head tilted back at those one meets, to see whether they are looking at him, as though performing on a stage and being pointed out with fingers. Nor should one be constantly turning about because of one's servants, pushed toward a snub-nosed affectation, as we see the more luxurious sort doing, appearing to be robust while actually enervated by softness of soul. In a noble man there ought to be no conspicuous sign of softness in his face, nor indeed in any other part of his body. Let unmanly unseemliness never be found, then, either in his movements or in his bearing. Nor indeed should the healthy man treat his servants as though they were beasts of burden. For just as it is enjoined upon servants, "submit yourselves to your masters with complete reverence, not merely to those who are kind and fair, but even to those who are harsh," as Peter says, so also fairness and patience and kindness are fitting toward masters on their part. "For the end of all things," he says, "is that all be of one mind, sympathetic, loving as brothers, tenderhearted, humble-minded," and what follows, "that you may inherit a blessing." Zeno of Citium seems to sketch out a fine and lovable image for a young man, and thus he fashions him like a statue: "Let his face be pure," he says, "his brow not lowered, nor his eye wide-opened or languidly broken, his neck not thrown back, nor the limbs of his body relaxed, but rather held up as though braced, his mind directed straight and keen toward reason, and a firm grasp of what is rightly said, and postures and movements that give no hope to the licentious. Let modesty and manliness be his outward bloom; but let there be no trace of the restless idleness that comes from perfume-shops and goldsmiths' shops and wool-shops, or from other such workplaces, where those adorned like courtesans, as women who sit upon the housetop, spend their whole days."
Nor, then, should men either, spending their time at barbershops and taverns, keep up idle chatter and gossip, and hunt for the women passing by — let them stop that at last; many, too, do not stop making blasphemous remarks for the sake of a laugh. Further still to be forbidden is play with dice, and likewise the practice of covetousness through knucklebones, which they love to handle. Their unchecked appetite for luxury contrives such wretched pastimes for them; the cause is idleness; and one who loves vain things is a lover of things outside the truth; for there is no other way to acquire enjoyment without harm; and the choice a person makes for his life is an imitation of his own thinking. But, as it seems, only companionship with good men is beneficial. Conversely, then, recognizing that living together with base men is swinish, the all-wise tutor through Moses forbade the older people to partake of the flesh of swine, thereby showing that those who call upon God must not mix with unclean men, who, like swine, itch after bodily pleasures and filthy foods and licentious ticklings, taking delight in the malicious pleasure of lust. But he also says one should not eat "kite, or vulture, or eagle," meaning, do not come near those who provide their living through plunder; and the rest is likewise allegorized. To whom, then, should one be attached? To the just, he says, again speaking allegorically. For every animal that "divides the hoof and ruminates" counts as pure, because the divided hoof signifies justice, the equal balance, chewing the cud its own proper nourishment of righteousness — namely, reason entering from outside, in the same way as food, through catechetical instruction, and being sent back up from within, as if from the belly of the mind, into rational remembrance. The just man chews the cud of spiritual nourishment, having the word ever in his mouth, and righteousness fittingly parts the hoof, both sanctifying in this present age and sending him forward into the age to come.
Therefore the tutor will not lead us to spectacles either, nor would one be wrong to call the stadiums and theaters a "seat of pestilence"; for "counsel" there too is wicked, just as it is against the just man, and so the assembly gathered there is accursed. These gatherings, at any rate, are filled with much disorder and lawlessness, and the very pretexts of the assembly are a cause of disgrace, men and women coming together indiscriminately to view one another. There already the whole assembly turns to vainglorious display. For as the eye grows greedy, the appetites grow warm, and the eyes, becoming accustomed to look with increasing boldness upon those nearby, through the license of leisure kindle amorous desires to flame. Let spectacles, then, be forbidden, and likewise entertainments full of much buffoonery and idle scurrility. For what shameful deed is not put on display in theaters? What shameless word do the jesters not bring forth? Those who have partaken of the vice found there carry home vivid impressions of it stamped upon themselves; conversely, those unmoved and unaffected by such things would never stumble into idle pleasures of that sort. For even if it will be said that spectacles are taken up as a kind of play, for the sake of amusement, I would not call those cities temperate who make even their play a serious business. For the love of glory is no longer mere play when it becomes so pitilessly murderous, nor are empty ambitions and irrational rivalries mere play, nor the vain squandering of wealth on these things, nor the factional strife that arises from them. Idleness ought never to be purchased at the price of empty ambition. For no one of sound mind would ever choose the more pleasant thing over the better. But, someone says, not all of us practice philosophy. Then do not all of us pursue life either? What do you mean? How then have you come to believe? And how do you still love God and your neighbor without practicing philosophy? How do you love yourself, if you do not love life? I have not learned letters, someone says. But even if you have not learned to read, hearing admits of no excuse, since it requires no instruction; faith is a possession not of the wise of this world, but of those who belong to God; and faith is taught even without letters, and its writing, at once unlettered and divine, is called love — a spiritual composition. And while it is permitted to listen to divine wisdom, it is also permitted to live as a citizen, and it is not forbidden to conduct one's worldly affairs in an orderly manner, according to God.
And let the one who sells or buys anything never state two prices, one for buying and one for selling, but rather state a single price and practice truthfulness; even if he does not attain the price he wants, in attaining truth he becomes wealthy in the right disposition of soul. Let praise and oath-taking regarding whatever is sold be absent, and let oaths be absent in other matters as well. In this too market-traders and shopkeepers may practice philosophy: "You must not use the name of the Lord carelessly, since the Lord will not leave unpunished the one who uses his name carelessly." Those who act contrary to this — the money-lovers, the liars, the hypocrites, those who peddle the truth — were driven by the Lord from his Father's courtyard, for he would not allow the sacred dwelling of God to turn into a marketplace of dishonest dealing, whether in words or in material possessions.
To church, both woman and man alike should go decently attired, with a natural gait, embracing silence, possessing "love without pretense," clean of body, clean of heart, worthy to offer prayer to God. Let the woman observe this more particularly: let her be veiled entirely, except when she happens to be at home; for the veil is dignified and gives no occasion for prying eyes, and she will never go astray who sets modesty and her wrap before her own eyes, nor will she entice another into the slip of sin by baring her face. For this is what the passage means: that veiling befits her when she offers prayer. They say that Aeneas's wife, out of surpassing modesty, did not uncover herself even when terrified as Troy was being captured, yet even as she fled the blaze she kept her covering on the whole way. Such, throughout their whole lives, ought those consecrated to Christ appear and fashion themselves to be, such as they compose themselves to look in the churches, toward greater dignity — and to be such, not merely to seem such, so gentle, so reverent, so full of love. But now, I do not know how, they change their postures and their manners along with the place, just as they say the octopus takes on the color of whatever rocks it clings to, appearing to match them. So then, having put off the divine character of the assembly once they depart from it, they make themselves like the common crowd, with whom they also spend their time; or rather, they are exposed for what they truly were all along once they lay aside the counterfeit pretense of dignity. And having revered the word concerning God, they leave behind, within the place where they heard it, what they revered, while outside they run wild with the godless, filling themselves up with the music and warbling of erotic songs, with flute-playing and clapping and drunkenness and every kind of refuse; and thus singing and answering one another in song, the very ones who a moment before were hymning immortality, at the end, base men basely twanging out the most ruinous recantation: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." But they, truly, are dead already to God, not merely tomorrow, burying their own dead — that is, burying themselves alive into death. Against them the apostle sets himself very forcefully indeed: "Do not be deceived; neither adulterers, nor the soft, nor those who lie with men, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers," and whatever else he chants along with these, "will inherit the kingdom of God." But if it is we who have been summoned into God's kingdom, then let our manner of life befit citizens of that realm, loving both God and neighbor. Love is judged not by a kiss, but by goodwill. But some accomplish nothing except filling the assemblies with the noise of kissing, while lacking love itself on the inside. For indeed this too — the promiscuous use of the kiss, which ought to be something mystical — has provoked shameful suspicion and blasphemy (the apostle has called it "holy"); rather the soul, tasting the goodwill through a chaste and closed mouth, by which a gentle character is chiefly ministered, ought to let us live worthily of the kingdom. There is also another, unclean kiss, full of poison, feigning holiness. Do you not know that even the venomous spiders, merely by touching with their mouths, afflict men with pains, and kisses too often inject the poison of licentiousness? It has therefore become clear to us that the kiss is not love; "for love comes from God." "And in this consists loving God," John says, "in that we keep his commandments," not that we fawn upon one another with the mouth, "and his commandments are not a burden." Moreover the greetings exchanged along the roads by those who call themselves "beloved," full of senseless ostentation and wishing to be conspicuous to outsiders, share in no grace at all, however slight. For if it is right to pray mystically "in the inner chamber" to God, it would follow that one should likewise show mystical and inward affection toward one's neighbor, whom we are commanded to love second, buying back the season from within; for it is we who are "earth's salt," and, as scripture says, "one who greets his companion at dawn with a booming shout will find it reckoned no different from a curse."
It seems that above all else he has kept himself from gazing upon women. For it is possible to sin not merely by touch but by the very act of looking, and this the one who is truly in training must guard against most of all. "Let your eyes look straight ahead, and let your eyelids incline to what is just." For is it not possible, even having seen, to hold oneself back? Rather it is the inward stumble that one must watch against. For a man who has looked may well trip and stumble, whereas a man who has never looked cannot be seized by longing. It is not enough for the self-controlled merely to be pure inwardly; they must also labor to stand clear of reproach, closing off any ground for suspicion, so that holiness may be complete, and we might not merely hold to the faith ourselves but stand shown as trustworthy in others' eyes. And indeed this too must be carefully watched, as the apostle says: "lest anyone find fault with us; for we take thought for what is good not only before the Lord but also before men." "Turn your eye away from a graceful woman, and do not gaze intently upon another's beauty," says the scripture. And should you inquire the reason, it will further explain to you: "for by the beauty of a woman many have been led astray, and from this desire is kindled like a fire," leading into an unquenchable fire through sin, this desire that springs from fire, which they have called eros.

======== Paedagogus — Book 3, Chapter 12 ========

I myself would counsel married men never to kiss their own wives in front of the household servants. Aristotle would not even allow smiling at slaves, still less would he have a wife appear affectionate toward her husband in their sight. It is better that from the very beginning, starting at home from the marriage itself, one display dignity. For the union of self-control is the greatest thing, breathing out a pure pleasure. Tragedy indeed puts it wonderfully: "Alas, alas, women," it says, "among men, it seems, neither gold, nor tyranny, nor the luxury of wealth held pleasures so distinctive as the just judgment of a noble man and a devout woman, minding what is right." These precepts of justice, uttered even among those who pursue worldly wisdom, are not to be rejected. Knowing then "each one's task, conduct yourselves in fear through the time of your sojourning, knowing that you were redeemed from the futile way of life handed down from your fathers not by perishable things, silver or gold, but by Christ's own precious blood, as of an unblemished, spotless lamb." "Sufficient," says Peter, "is the time already past for having carried out the will of the nations, having walked in licentiousness, lusts, drunkenness, revelings, drinking-bouts, and unlawful idolatries." Let us hold the cross of the Lord as our boundary, by which we are fenced about and hedged in from our former sins. Having been born again, then, let us be nailed fast to the truth, let us return to soberness and be sanctified, "because the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears toward their petition, but the Lord sets his face against those who do wrong. And who shall harm us if we become zealous for what is good?" The best training is good order, being complete propriety and a firm, disciplined power, rendering well in action the things that follow in sequence upon one another, unsurpassable in virtue.
These things, even if I have spoken somewhat harshly, have been said by me while managing the salvation that comes through correction, says the Instructor; since "he who rebukes with frankness makes peace." As for you, if you will listen to me, you will be saved; but if you will not attend to what has been said, it is no concern of mine — and yet it is a concern even so; for "he desires the sinner's turning-back far more than that sinner's death." "But if you listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land," says the Instructor again, naming as the good things of the land the goods that belong to humankind — beauty, wealth, health, strength, nourishment. For the things that are truly good are those "which ear has not heard nor has ever come up into the heart," the truly existing goods that belong to the truly existing King, and that await us; for he is both the giver and the guardian of good things. By participation in those, the things here below share the same name, the Word divinely training the weakness of humankind, leading it from things perceived by sense up to the level of thought.
As for the things one must guard at home, and how one must set one's life in order, the Instructor has discoursed to us at length. But as for what it also pleases him to converse about with the children along the roads, until he brings them to the Teacher, these things he lays before us and sets out, in summary fashion, through the very scriptures themselves, setting forth the precepts unadorned, adapting himself to the season of guidance, and entrusting their exposition to the Teacher; for indeed his law wishes to relax fear, having set the willing choice free unto faith. Listen, he says, O child well trained, to the chief points of salvation, for I will lay bare my own character, and I will set before you these good commandments, through which you will arrive at salvation. I lead you on the saving way. Turn away from the paths of error, "for the Lord watches over the path of the righteous, while the course of the godless comes to ruin." Follow, then, O child, the good way which I shall set forth for you, lending me your listening ears, "and I will give you treasures dark, hidden, invisible" to the nations, but visible to us; "for the treasures of wisdom are unfailing," which the apostle marvels at, saying, "O the depth of the riches and wisdom!" These are treasures supplied by one God, though many, revealed some through the law, some through the prophets, some by the divine mouth itself, and another still singing by the sevenfold gift of the Spirit; yet, being one, the Lord through all these is the same Instructor. There is, then, straightaway a summary counsel and a rule for living that embraces everything: "as you wish that men should do to you, do to them." It is also possible to comprise the commandments under two heads, as the Lord says: "You shall love your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole strength, and your neighbor as yourself." Then he adds, "on these hang the whole law and the prophets." And indeed, to the one who asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" he answered, "you know the commandments"; and when the man affirmed this, he said, "do this and you shall be saved." Nevertheless we must set out the loving-kindness of the Instructor in a more detailed way, through his varied and saving commandments, so that we may have, out of the ungrudging arrangement of the scriptures, a readier discovery also of salvation.
We have the Decalogue given through Moses, hinting at it through a single, unique element, † inscribing a saving title of the sins: "you shall not commit adultery, you shall not practice idolatry," you shall not corrupt children, "you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother," and what follows these. These things we must guard, and whatever else is enjoined in the readings of the books. He also gives commands through Isaiah: "wash yourselves, become clean, remove your wickedness from your souls before my eyes; learn to do good, seek out justice, rescue the one wronged, judge for the orphan, do justice for the widow; and come and let us reason together, says the Lord." We might find many other counsels among the rest as well — for instance, concerning prayer: "good works," it says, "are a prayer acceptable to the Lord," says the scripture. And the manner of the prayer is prescribed: "if you see," it says, "one naked, clothe him, and do not overlook those of your own household and seed. Then your light shall shine forth early, and your garments shall quickly rise, and your righteousness shall go before you, and the glory of God shall enfold you." What then is the fruit of this prayer? "Then you shall cry out, and God will listen to you; while you are still speaking he will say, behold, I am here." Concerning fasting: "why," it says, "do you fast for me? says the Lord. This is not the fast I have chosen, a day for a man to afflict his soul; not even if you bend your neck like a hoop and spread out sackcloth and ashes beneath you, even so shall you call it an acceptable fast." What then does fasting really signify? "Behold, this," it says, "is the fast which I have chosen, says the Lord. Loose every bond of injustice, untie the knots of violent contracts, set free the crushed in release, and tear up every unjust bond. Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; if you see one naked, clothe him." And indeed concerning sacrifices: "what are all your many sacrifices to me? says the Lord. I have had my fill of the whole burnt offerings of rams, and I take no pleasure in the fat of he-lambs, nor in the blood of oxen and goats, not even should you come to stand before me. For who required any of this at your hands? Stop trampling through my court; bringing fine flour is worthless; incense disgusts me; I cannot endure your new-moon feasts and your sabbaths." So how, then, am I to bring the Lord a sacrifice? "A sacrifice," it says, "to the Lord is a broken spirit." So how, then, should I crown my head or rub myself with myrrh? Or what shall I burn as incense to the Lord? "A fragrance," it says, "of sweet savor to God is a heart glorifying him who fashioned it." These are the crowns and sacrifices and spices and flowers of God. Further, concerning forbearance of wrongs: "if your brother sins," it says, "rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times, saying, I repent, forgive him." And to soldiers he commands, through John, to be content with their wages alone, and to tax collectors, to exact nothing more than what has been appointed; and to the judge: "you must not," it says, "favor persons in judgment, for bribes darken the vision of the seeing and twist righteous words"; "rescue those who are wronged." And also to those managing households: "wealth eagerly gained through lawlessness becomes less." And indeed concerning love: "love," it says, "covers a multitude of sins"; and concerning civic life: "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's"; and concerning oaths and the bearing of grudges: "did I command your fathers, when they came out of the land of Egypt, to bring me whole burnt offerings and sacrifices? But this I commanded them: let each of you bear no grudge in his heart against his neighbor, and love no false oath." But he also threatens liars and the puffed-up, the former in this way: "woe to those who call the sweet bitter and the bitter sweet," the latter in this way: "woe to those who count themselves wise and reckon themselves shrewd in their own judgment"; "whoever humbles himself shall be exalted, and whoever exalts himself shall be humbled." And he calls the merciful blessed, "for they shall obtain mercy," while wisdom pronounces wrath wretched, "for it will destroy even the prudent." And already he commands us to love our enemies, and to bless those who curse us, and to pray for those who mistreat us. "To the one who strikes you," he says, "on the cheek, offer the other also, and if anyone takes your coat, do not forbid him your cloak as well." Concerning faith: "whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive," he says; "but nothing that is trustworthy belongs to the untrustworthy," according to Pindar. And servants must be treated as ourselves, for they are human beings just as we are; "since, if you think it through, God treats free and slave alike, showing no difference." And erring servants must not be punished but rebuked; "for the one who spares," it says, "his rod hates his own son." Further, he casts out the desire for glory, declaring, "woe to you, Pharisees, for you cherish the front seats in the synagogues and the flattering greetings in the marketplace." But he embraces the repentance of the sinner, cherishing the repentance that follows upon sins; for the Word himself alone is without sin, since sinning is innate and common to all, but retracing one's steps from sin belongs not to just anyone, but to a person of worth. Concerning the sharing of goods, he said, "come, you who are blessed, and take possession of the realm made ready for you since the world began. For when I hungered you gave me food, when I thirsted you gave me something to drink, I was a foreigner and you welcomed me in, naked and you put clothing on me, sick and you came to see me, in prison and you came to me." And when did we ever do any of these things for the Lord? The Instructor himself will answer again, lovingly turning the good deeds done to the brethren back upon himself, and saying, "insofar as you did it to these little ones, you did it to me. And such as these shall go away into eternal life."
Such then are the rational laws, the exhortatory words, not carved on stone tablets by God's own finger, but written within the hearts of men, the only tablets not susceptible to decay. For this reason the tablets of the hard-hearted were broken, so that the faith of the childlike might be stamped upon soft and yielding minds. Both covenants alike served the Word for the training of humanity, the one through Moses, the other through the apostles. What sort of training, then, is that given through the apostles? It seems necessary to me to discourse also on this form of it — or rather, the Instructor himself, remembering his own character, speaks it, and I shall again set out his precepts in seed form: "having put away falsehood, speak truth each one with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Do not let the sun go down upon your anger, and do not give an opening to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to share with the one in need. Put away from yourselves every trace of bitterness, fury, anger, clamor, and slander, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God forgave you in Christ. Become, then, imitators of God, thoughtful as beloved children, and walk in love, just as Christ loved us too." "Wives are to submit to their husbands, as one would to the Lord, and husbands are to cherish their wives, just as Christ cherished the church." Let those so joined, then, hold each other dear "as one holds one's own body." "Children, obey your parents. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and admonition of the Lord. Slaves, obey your earthly masters with reverence and trembling, in singleness of heart, as though obeying Christ, serving from the soul with goodwill. And masters, do well by your servants, relaxing threats, knowing that the Lord of both them and you is in the heavens, and that there is no partiality with him." "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Make no mistake: God cannot be mocked. Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not give up." "Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, brothers, admonish the disorderly, comfort the fainthearted, hold fast to the weak, be patient toward all. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil. Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophecies; but test everything, hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil." "Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. Walk in wisdom toward those outside, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each one." "Nourish yourselves on the words of the faith; train yourselves for godliness. For bodily training is of some little profit, but godliness is profitable for everything, holding promise for the present life and for the one to come." "Those who have believing masters must not despise them because they are brothers, but must serve them all the more, because they are believers." "Let the one who shares do so with sincerity, the one who leads, with diligence, the one who shows mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil, cling to what is good; be devoted to one another in brotherly love; outdo one another in showing honor; do not be slothful in diligence; be fervent in spirit; serve the Lord; rejoice in hope; be patient in tribulation; be constant in prayer; pursue hospitality; share in the needs of the saints."
Having gone through these few examples, for the sake of illustration, out of many, drawn from the divine scriptures themselves, the Instructor sets them before his own children, through which, so to speak, wickedness is utterly cut away and injustice is bounded and erased. And countless are the counsels directed to select persons that stand written in the holy books, some to elders, some to bishops and deacons, others to widows, concerning which it would be another occasion to speak. And many things too, through riddles, and many through parables, it is possible for those who read to be helped. But it is no longer mine, says the Instructor, to teach these things further; we need a Teacher for the exposition of those holy words, to whom we must now proceed. And truly the hour has come for me to lay aside this task of tutoring, so that your ears may now turn toward the Teacher. Once he has taken you in hand and raised you within a noble upbringing, he will impart the sacred sayings in full. This church is the schoolroom, and the bridegroom alone holds the office of Teacher, the goodwill of a good Father, Wisdom itself, the consecration of knowledge; "he stands as atonement for our offenses," so John writes, the healer of both flesh and spirit, the man everlasting, Jesus, "nor only for our offenses, but for the sake of the entire world besides. Through this we perceive that we have come to know him, provided we hold fast to his commandments. He who says, I have known him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps his word, truly in him the love of God has been perfected. By this we know that we are in him: he who says he abides in him ought himself also to walk just as that one walked."
O nurslings of blessed instruction! Let us fill out the lovely countenance belonging to the church, and let us, like little ones, hasten toward our good mother, and even if we become hearers of the word only, let us glorify the blessed dispensation through which man is instructed, and is sanctified as a child of God, and is enrolled as a citizen of heaven while being instructed upon earth, and there receives that Father whom on earth he is learning to know. All things the Word both does and teaches and instructs. A horse is led by the bit, and a bull is led by the yoke, a wild beast is caught by the snare, but man is remolded by the Word, by which wild beasts are tamed and swimming creatures are lured and winged creatures are brought down. This one truly devises for the horse a bit, for the bull a yoke, for the beast a snare, for the fish a rod, for the bird a trap; this one exercises citizenship and farms the land, rules and serves and fashions the whole of things; "in one part he wrought the earth, in another the heaven, in another the sea, and in another all the constellations with which the heaven is crowned." O divine works of craft! O divine commands! Let this water surge within itself; let this fire restrain its rage; let this air wander into the upper ether; and let earth both be made solid and be borne along, whenever I will it. I wish still to fashion man; I have the elements as material; I dwell together with my creature. If you come to know me, fire will be your slave. So great is this Word, the Instructor of the world and the Maker of man, and, on man's account, already also the Instructor of the world; at whose command both stand fast together, awaiting the judgment. "For he does not carry a stealthy, sounding word for mortals † the word shall be wisdom," as Bacchylides says. But "the innocent, unadulterated, spotless children of God," as Paul puts it, "amid a twisted and depraved generation, appear in the world as luminaries."
As for what remains, then, at such a festival gathering of the Word, let us pray to the Word: be gracious to your own children, Instructor, Father, charioteer of Israel, Son and Father, the two being one, Lord. Grant to us who follow your commands to fulfill the likeness of the image, and to perceive with all our strength the good God who is also a judge not harsh, and grant us all things yourself, as we conduct our citizenship in your peace, as we are transferred into your city, having sailed unshaken through the surge of sin, calm and borne along with the Holy Spirit, with wisdom that cannot be told; by night, by day, unto the perfect day, singing thankful praise to the one Father and Son, Son and Father, Instructor and Teacher in the Son, together also with the Holy Spirit. All things to the One, in whom are all things, through whom all things are one, through whom stands the everlasting, of whom every one of us forms a limb, whose splendor the passing ages constitute; all things to the good, all things to the beautiful, all things to the wise, to the just belong all things. To whom be glory both now and unto the ages. Amen.
Since, then, the Instructor, having established us in the church, has himself entrusted us to himself under the teaching and all-overseeing Word, it would be well for us, now that we have come to this point, to send up to the Lord, as a fitting payment of just thanksgiving, a hymn of praise for his gracious instruction. Bridle of untaught colts, wing of unwandering birds, sure rudder of ships, shepherd of royal lambs: gather your guileless children, to praise in holiness, to hymn without guile with innocent mouths of children, Christ their guide. King of the holy ones, all-subduing Word of the Father most high, steward of wisdom, support that gladdens forever amid toils, savior of the race of mortals, Jesus, shepherd, plowman, rudder, bridle, celestial pinion of the wholly sacred flock, one who fishes for people, drawing out those rescued from wickedness's sea, luring pure fish out of the hostile wave with sweet life. Lead on, holy shepherd of rational sheep; lead on, king of untouched children. The footprints of Christ are the heavenly way. Word everflowing, boundless age, eternal light, fountain of mercy, worker of virtue for those who in reverent life hymn God, Christ Jesus, heavenly milk of the sweet breasts of the bride, of the graces of your wisdom, which infants, nursed with tender mouths, being pressed out and filled from the rational breast with dewy spirit, let us sing together guileless praises, true hymns, to Christ the king, holy wages for the teaching of life; let us send up simply the mighty child. Chorus of peace, the Christ-begotten people; sober people, let us sing together to the God of peace.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 1 ========

...so that you may read them at hand and be able to guard them. But should writings be left behind not at all, or only for some? And if the former, what is the use of letters? And if the latter, for the earnest or for those who are not? It would be ridiculous, surely, for one who rejects the writing of the earnest to accept those who compose for the unearnest. But then shall we permit Theopompus and Timaeus to compose myths and blasphemies, and further Epicurus, the originator of atheism, and still further Hipponax and Archilochus to write so shamefully, while the herald of truth alone should be barred from bequeathing something useful to posterity? It is good, I think, also to leave behind good children for those who come after. Children indeed are of the body, but words are offspring of the soul. At once we call those who have catechized us fathers, and wisdom is communal and loves mankind. Solomon says accordingly: "Son, if you receive the word of my commandment and hide it within yourself, your ear shall listen to wisdom." He signifies that the word, once sown, is hidden as in earth, in the soul of the learner, and this is a spiritual planting.
Wherefore he adds: "And you shall incline your heart to understanding, and you shall incline it to admonition for your son." For soul, I think, joined to soul, and spirit to spirit, in accordance with the sowing of the word, causes what has been cast down to grow and brings it to life; and every son is one who is instructed in obedience to the one instructing him. "Son," he says, "do not forget my ordinances." But if not all have knowledge, writings are, as those fond of proverbs say, "an ass to a lyre" for the many. Swine indeed delight in mud rather than in clean water. This is why the Lord declares, "To them I address parables, for though they look, they fail to see, and though they listen, they neither hear nor comprehend" — not implying that the Lord causes their ignorance (for it is not lawful to think so), but rather that he has prophetically exposed the ignorance already present in them, and has declared that they would be unable to understand what is said.
Already the Savior himself makes this plain from abundance, according to the capacity of the one who receives, which must be increased through practice — having distributed his possessions to his servants, and returning again to settle accounts with them. When he had accepted those who had increased his silver, those faithful in a little, and had promised to set them over much, he commanded them to come and share in their master's gladness. But to the one who hid the silver entrusted to him instead of lending it out, and returned it idle just as he had received it, he said, "Wicked and slothful servant, you ought to have put my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own." For this the useless servant will be cast into the outer darkness. "You, then, my child," Paul likewise urges, "be made strong by the favor found in Christ Jesus, and what you learned from me before many witnesses, hand these on to trustworthy men, competent in turn to instruct others." And again: "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a workman unashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."
If then both alike herald the message — one through the pen, the other through the voice — why should not both be welcomed, since they have made faith active through love? God is not to blame for the fault of the one who does not choose the best. At once, for the one it is a task to lend out the word; for the other, to test it and either accept it or not. The judgment is decided within themselves. But the skill of proclaiming is already in a way angelic, whichever way it operates, whether through the hand or through the tongue, since it benefits — "because he who sows unto the spirit shall reap eternal life from the spirit"; "and let us not grow weary in doing good." It contributes indeed the greatest things to the one who encounters it, according to divine providence: a beginning of faith, eagerness for right conduct, an impulse toward the truth, a searching movement, a trace of knowledge. In sum, it gives occasions of salvation. And those who are nourished genuinely on the words of truth, having received provisions for eternal life, take wing to heaven. Most admirably, then, the apostle says: "commending ourselves in everything as ministers of God," "as beggars who make many rich, as men with nothing who yet own everything"; "toward you our lips stand open." And, writing to Timothy, he says: "I solemnly charge you, in the sight of God, Christ Jesus, and his chosen angels, to guard these instructions free of bias, acting with favor toward none."
It is necessary, then, that both parties examine themselves — the one, whether he is worthy to speak and to leave behind written records; the other, whether he is fit to listen and to read. In this connection some have even distributed the thanksgiving, as is customary, allowing each of the people to take his own portion. For conscience is best for exact choice and avoidance, and its sure foundation is an upright life together with fitting learning, and the following of others already tested and set right is best both for understanding of the truth and for the practice of the commandments. So that whoever partakes of the loaf and drinks from the Lord's cup in an unfit state stands accountable for the body and blood of the Lord. Let each person put himself to the test, and only then may he taste the loaf and drink from the cup.
It would then be consistent for one who has undertaken the benefit of his neighbors to consider whether he has not leapt into teaching rashly and out of rivalry with certain others, whether the sharing of the word is fond of glory, whether he reaps this reward alone — the salvation of those who listen — and whether he who speaks through writings escapes both speaking to please and the charge of taking bribes. "For we were never found using words of flattery, as you know," says the apostle, "nor as a pretext for greed, God is witness, nor seeking glory from men, neither from you nor from others, though we could have been burdensome as apostles of Christ; but we became gentle among you, as a nurse cherishes her own children." In the same way one must also watch those who partake of the divine words, whether they come to this out of mere curiosity, to inspect it as they would the buildings of cities, or whether they approach for the sake of sharing in worldly goods, having learned that those devoted to Christ are generous with what is fitting. But as for the hypocrites, let them be left alone; but if anyone wishes not merely to seem righteous but to be so, it is fitting for him to be conscious in himself of what is most excellent.
If then the harvest is great but the workers few, it is truly fitting that we should pray that as great an abundance of workers as possible may come to us. Farming is twofold: the one unwritten, the other written. In whichever way the Lord's worker sows the noble wheat and makes the ears grow and reaps them, he will truly show himself a divine farmer. "Labor," says the Lord, "not for the food that perishes, but for that which remains unto eternal life." Food is taken both through solid nourishment and through words. And truly blessed are the peacemakers, who teach anew those here in life who are warred upon by ignorance and error, and lead them over into the peace that is in word and in life according to God, and who feed those who hunger for righteousness by the distribution of the bread. For there are also souls that have their own proper food, some growing by knowledge and understanding, others feeding on Greek philosophy — of which, just as of nuts, not the whole is edible. Both the one who plants and the one who waters, being ministers of him who gives the increase, are one in their ministry; and each will get back a wage matching his own toil. For we are co-laborers of God; you are God's field under cultivation, God's edifice under construction, as the apostle says.
It is therefore not to be permitted that hearers make the test by comparison, nor should the word be handed over exposed to examination by those trained in all sorts of verbal arts and in the power of swollen arguments, whose souls are already preoccupied and not first emptied out. But when someone chooses to be feasted out of faith, this person is secure for the reception of divine words, having faith as a reasonable judgment. From this follows for him persuasion out of abundance. And this, indeed, was that prophetic saying: "Unless you believe, you shall not understand." Since then we have opportunity, let us work good toward all, but most of all toward those bound to us by shared faith. And let each such person, offering gratitude as blessed David once did, sing: "Purge me with hyssop-branch and I shall be pure; wash me and I shall outshine snow in whiteness. Let me catch the sound of joy and cheer; let the bones you crushed leap for gladness. Look away from my transgressions, and wipe every guilt from me. Fashion in me a heart made clean, O God, and set a steadfast spirit fresh within me. Do not banish me far from your presence, nor take your holy breath away from me. Give back to me the gladness of your rescue, and uphold me with a willing spirit."
The one, then, who speaks to those present both tests them over time and judges by decision and distinguishes from the rest the one capable of hearing, watching their words, their manners, their character, their life, their movements, their bearing, their look, their tone of voice, the crossroads, the rock, the trampled path, the fruit-bearing earth, the region running wild with brush, the fertile and good and cultivated ground, capable of multiplying the seed. But the one who speaks through writings dedicates these things to God, crying out in writing that it is not for gain, nor for the sake of empty glory, nor to be overcome by attachment, nor to be enslaved by fear, nor to be lifted up by pleasure, but only to enjoy the salvation of those who encounter his words — a salvation of which he does not even now himself partake, but awaits in hope the reward that will certainly be repaid by the one who has promised to give the workers their wage according to merit. But neither ought one who is enrolled among men to desire a countervailing reward. For it is not that the one who boasts of a good deed has received his reward through renown, while the one who does what is fitting for the sake of a countervailing reward — whether as a benefactor hastening to receive it back, or as an evildoer avoiding the reward — is he not likewise bound by worldly custom? One must, as far as possible, imitate the Lord. And this would be the one who serves the will of God, having received freely and giving freely, receiving as his worthy wage the very way of life itself. "The hire of a harlot shall not enter into the holy place," it says.
It is forbidden, then, to offer at the altar the price of a dog. But whoever has had the eye of his soul dulled toward its own proper light by bad nourishment and bad teaching, let him go to the truth that in writing makes clear the things unwritten: "You who thirst, go to the water," says Isaiah, and "drink water from your own vessels," Solomon exhorts. In the Laws, indeed, the philosopher out of the Hebrews, Plato, commands the farmers neither to irrigate nor to take water from others, unless, having first dug on their own land as far as the so-called virgin soil, they find the earth waterless. For it is not just to supply for want, but neither is it good to provision idleness — for which reason Pythagoras said it is reasonable to help load a burden together, but not fitting to help take it down together. Scripture kindles the spark of the soul and stretches its own eye toward contemplation, perhaps at times even implanting something, as does the grafting farmer, and at other times stirring up what already exists within. "For many among us," according to the divine apostle, "are weak and sick, and a good number sleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged."
Now this treatise before us is no writing contrived for display; rather, notes are being stored up by me for old age, a remedy against forgetfulness, plainly an image and a sketch in outline of those vivid and living discourses and men I was deemed worthy to hear — blessed and truly notable men. Of these, one was in Greece, the Ionian; others were in Magna Graecia (of these, one was from Coele-Syria, the other from Egypt); others were in the East — of these, one belonged to the region of the Assyrians, the other, a Hebrew, was in Palestine from the start. And having met the last of these (though in power he was first), I found rest — having hunted him out, hidden away, in Egypt. Truly a Sicilian bee, culling blossoms from the meadow of prophets and apostles, he planted within the souls of those who heard him a pure treasure of knowledge.
But these men, preserving the true tradition of the blessed teaching directly from Peter and James, John and Paul, the holy apostles — son receiving it from father (though few are like their fathers) — have come, by God's will, even to us as well, to deposit those ancestral and apostolic seeds.
And I know well that they will rejoice — not, I say, delighted by the manner of expression here, but only by the preservation according to the underlying meaning. For, I think, the soul that longs to keep the blessed tradition safe from escape needs just such an outline as this. "The father of a man who loves wisdom shall rejoice." Wells that are drawn from give forth clearer water, while that which no one draws from turns to corruption. And use keeps iron cleaner, while disuse breeds rust upon it. In short, exercise produces a healthy condition both for spirits and for bodies. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, but sets it on a lampstand, so that it gives light to those deemed worthy of the same feast. For what benefit is there in wisdom that does not make wise the one able to understand? Moreover the Savior saves continually and works continually, as he sees the Father doing. One who teaches learns the more, and one who speaks often learns along with those who listen to him; for there is one teacher of both the speaker and the hearer, he who wells up both the mind and the word.
Wherefore the Lord has not forbidden us from good † to keep sabbath, but has granted the sharing of the divine mysteries and of that holy light to those able to receive it. At once, he did not reveal to many things that were not for many, but to the few for whom he knew it was fitting, to those able to receive them and be shaped by them; but the secret things, like God himself, are entrusted by word, not by letter. And if anyone should say it is written, "there is nothing hidden that shall not be made manifest, nor covered that shall not be uncovered," let him hear from us as well that he has by this very oracle foretold that to the one who understands secretly the hidden thing shall be made manifest, and to the one able to receive what is handed down in veiled fashion, the veiled thing shall be shown, as is the truth; and what is hidden from the many shall become manifest to the few. Given this, why does the truth escape everyone's knowledge? And why was uprightness left unloved, if it is meant for all alike? The mysteries, however, are transmitted in a mystical way, so that they rest on the lips of both the one declaring and the one being told — or rather, not on the lips at all, but within the intellect. And God has appointed within the assembly some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as shepherds and instructors, so as to equip the holy ones fully, to carry forward the work of service, and to raise up the body of Christ.
As for the writing of these notes of mine, it is, I know well, weak when set beside that graced spirit whom we were counted worthy to obey; yet it would be an image reminding him who has been struck by the thyrsus of the archetype. "Speak to a wise man," it says, "and he will be wiser still, and to him who has, more will be added." It does not profess to interpret the ineffable things adequately — far from it — but only to remind, whether when we might forget, or so that we might not forget at all. I know well that much has slipped past us, unwritten, through length of time. Hence, to lighten the weakness of my own memory, and to provide for myself a saving reminder by a systematic exposition of the chief points, I have of necessity made use of this sketch. There are indeed some things which we did not even commit to memory (for great was the power in those blessed men), and there are also things which have remained unrecorded by time and have now escaped us, while other things were being extinguished, fading inwardly within the soul itself, because a task of this sort is not simple for those who are not yet tested; and rekindling these by means of notes, some things I willingly pass over, selecting with knowledge, fearing to write what I was also careful not to say — not at all from grudging (for that is not lawful), but fearing on behalf of those who might read, lest they somehow stumble elsewhere, and lest we be found, as those who speak in proverbs say, holding out a knife to a child. For it is not possible that things written should fail to get abroad, even though they remain unpublished, so far as I am concerned. Rolling about, and making use always of one voice alone, the written one, they answer him who questions further with nothing more than what has been written; for they need of necessity a helper, either the one who wrote them, or someone else who has stepped into the same track.
There are also things which my writing will only hint at, and to some it will set them forth plainly, but of others it will only speak, and it will try to say things even while concealing them, and to disclose while hiding, and to point while remaining silent. It will set forth the doctrines held by the notable heresies, and against these it will argue everything that ought to be laid down beforehand for the knowledge that comes by the contemplative vision — knowledge which will advance for us according to the glorious and solemn rule of the tradition, proceeding from the origin of the world, setting out beforehand the things that must necessarily be treated first in natural contemplation, and clearing away in advance the obstacles standing in the way of the sequence, so that the ears may be ready for the reception of the gnostic tradition, the ground having been cleared beforehand of thorns and of all grass, in farmer's fashion, for the planting of a vineyard. For it is a contest, and a preliminary contest, and mysteries before the mysteries; nor will our notes hesitate to make use of philosophy and the rest of preparatory education, taking what is best from them. For it is not only for the sake of the Hebrews and those under the law that it was reasonable, according to the apostle, to become a Jew, but also for the sake of the Greeks, to become a Greek, that we might gain all. And in the letter to the Colossians it is written that every person should be warned and instructed with complete understanding, so that each one might be brought forward mature and complete in Christ.
It suits the sketch of these notes, in another way too, that there be elegance of exposition. At once the abundance of useful learning is, as it were, a kind of seasoning interwoven with the food of the athlete — not of one given to luxury, but of one who takes a good appetite through eagerness for honor. Singing, then, the high note of solemnity, we let it down tunefully from time to time. And just as those who wish to address a people through a herald often do this so that what is said may be heard the more, so also here (for our discourse, before the tradition itself, is addressed to many) we must set forth the customary opinions and the sayings that are cried out on every occasion among them, by which the hearers will the more be turned. And, to put it concisely (for amid a multitude of tiny pearls there is that single one, and within a vast haul of fish the finest catch stands out), in time and with labor the truth will shine forth, a good helper being at hand; for through men, from God, are supplied the most of benefits.
All of us, then, who make use of our eyes, behold the things that fall before them, but different people for different purposes. For instance, the butcher and the shepherd do not look at the sheep in the same way; the one is concerned whether it is fat, the other watches for its breeding. Let one person draw milk from the flock, should he be in want of nourishment; let another shear its wool, if he needs covering. So too, let the fruit of Greek learning serve my purposes. For I do not think any writing so fortunate as to have no one speak against it; rather, that must be reckoned reasonable against which no one reasonably speaks. And so too, both a course of action and a school of thought must be accepted, not the one that is blameless, but the one that no one will reasonably blame. It is not immediately the case that, if someone does not act in a leading way, he acts merely under compulsion of circumstance; rather, he will act while managing something in a God-wise manner and adapting himself. For neither does the one who has virtue still need the road toward virtue, nor does the healthy man need to be restored. And just as farmers first irrigate the earth, so too do we first irrigate, with the drinkable waters of the Greek discourses, the earthy part of them, so that they may receive the spiritual seed that is cast down and be able to nourish it easily.
The Stromateis will contain the truth mingled with the doctrines of philosophy, or rather covered over and concealed, as the edible part of the nut is by its shell; for it is fitting, I think, that the seeds of truth be kept safe for the farmers of faith alone. Nor has it escaped me that certain ignorant and timid people keep repeating that one must busy oneself only with the most necessary things, those that hold the faith together, and pass over the things that are external and superfluous, since they wear us out in vain and detain us over matters that contribute nothing to the goal. And some think that philosophy has even crept into life for evil, to the ruin of men, by the invention of some wicked discoverer. Yet across the entire span of these Miscellanies I will demonstrate that wickedness possesses a wicked nature and could never in any way become the farmer of anything good, hinting in some way or other that philosophy too is a work of divine providence.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 2 ========

As for the memoranda that gather up the opinions of the Greeks at the necessary points, I say this much to those who are fond of fault-finding: first, even if philosophy should be useless, if the confirmation of its uselessness is useful, then it is useful; next, it is not possible even to condemn the Greeks by simply making use of a bare statement of their dogmas, without also entering along with them into the particular unveiling of each point, all the way to a fair judgment. For a very trustworthy proof indeed is refutation joined with experience, since the most perfect demonstration is found to be the knowledge of the things condemned. Many things, moreover, even when they do not contribute to the final purpose, nevertheless adorn the craftsman. And besides, wide learning proves supportive of one who sets forth the most authoritative of doctrines, both by producing persuasion in the hearers and by begetting wonder in those under instruction, and it recommends them toward the truth.
Trustworthy is such a leading of the soul, through which those fond of learning come to receive the truth though it lies veiled — so that they may neither themselves suppose that philosophy corrupts life, as though it were the maker of false affairs and base deeds (a charge some have brought against it), it being in fact a clear image of truth, a divine gift given to the Greeks; nor that we ourselves be dragged away from the faith, as though bewitched by some deceptive art, but rather, so to speak, by employing a fuller compass, in some manner or other procure for ourselves a kind of preparatory exercise demonstrative of faith. Yes indeed, and the linking together of the dogmas, through their being set side by side in comparison, courts the truth, through which knowledge has followed — philosophy having entered in not as the leading principle in the argument, but because through the fruit that comes from knowledge we receive a firm persuasion of true apprehension, by means of the science of the things darkly hinted at. For I pass over in silence the fact that the Miscellanies, being given body by this wide learning, wish skillfully to hide the seeds of knowledge.
Just then as the lover of the hunt, having sought, searched, tracked, and run down with hounds, takes his quarry, so too the truth appears sweet when it has been sought and procured through toil. Why then did it seem good to us to arrange the memoranda in this manner? Because great is the danger of publicly performing, before these men, the truly ineffable account of philosophy as it really is — men who are ready recklessly to contradict everything, and not justly, and who cast away all names and words in no orderly fashion whatever, deceiving themselves and bewitching those who cling to them. For the Hebrews ask for signs, as the apostle says, while the Greeks seek after wisdom.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 3 ========

Great is the crowd of such people: some of them, enslaved to pleasures and wishing to disbelieve, laugh at truth, worthy of all reverence, counting the barbarian teaching a mere game; others, puffing themselves up, strain to invent slanders against our arguments, procuring contentious quibbles, hunters after petty phrases, zealots of paltry arts, wranglers and word-twisters, as that man of Abdera says: "pliant is the tongue of mortals," he says, "and many are the words in it; wide is the range of words of every kind, this way and that." And: "whatever sort of word you speak, such a one you will hear in return." Puffed up, then, by this art, the ill-starred sophists, babbling in their own trumpery, spending their whole life laboring over the discrimination of terms and the particular composition and interweaving of phrases, show themselves more talkative than turtledoves — scratching and tickling, not in a manly way, it seems to me, the ears of those who itch to be scratched, a very river of words but a mere trickle of sense. Indeed, just as with old sandals, the rest of them wears thin and falls apart, while only the tongue is left over.
Most excellently does the Athenian Solon inveigh and write: "mark well the speech and utterance of a flattering man; each one of you treads the fox's path, yet in the lot of you a mind stands empty." This, I think, is what that saving utterance hints at: "foxes possess dens, yet the Son of Man has no place to rest his head"; for only, I suppose, to the believer, set apart completely from the other beasts spoken of by scripture, does the sum of all things find rest — the good and gentle Word, who snares the crafty in their own cunning; for the Lord alone perceives what the clever devise, that it is empty — scripture naming those "clever," I suppose, who are the sophists busy with words and superfluous arts.
Hence the Greeks themselves have called, by a related name, those who are officious meddlers about anything at all both "wise" and "sophists." Cratinus, at any rate, in his Archilochi, having listed the poets, said: "what a swarm of sophists you have dug up." And likewise Iophon, as the comic poet says in the Satyrs Who Sing to the Flute, speaking of rhapsodes and certain others: "for there has come in a whole crowd of sophists, fully equipped." Concerning these and others like them, all who have practiced empty arguments, the divine scripture speaks most excellently: "the cleverness of the clever I will bring to ruin, and the discernment of the discerning I will render void."

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 4 ========

Homer, too, calls even a carpenter "wise," and concerning Margites — if indeed it is his — he writes something like this: "The gods made him neither a digger nor a plowman, nor skilled at anything else; he had failed at every art." Hesiod, having said that Linus the lyre-player had learned wisdom of every kind, does not hesitate to call a sailor "wise" as well, even while writing of himself that he was not at all skilled in seafaring. Daniel the prophet says that the mystery the king asks about is not within the power of the wise, the magicians, the enchanters, or the Chaldeans to declare to the king, but that there is a God in heaven who reveals it — and indeed he calls the wise men of Babylon by this same name. That Scripture calls by the one common name "wisdom" every kind of worldly knowledge or art — and there are many such arts devised by human reasoning through combination — and that the technical and wise conception comes from God, will be clear once we set beside it this text: "And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Behold, I have called by name Bezalel son of Uri, son of Hur, from the tribe of Judah; him I have filled with a spirit that is divine, granting wisdom, understanding, and knowledge for every work, to devise designs and to serve as master-builder; to work gold and silver and bronze, and blue and purple and scarlet, and stone-carving and carpentry in wood — to work at all these tasks."
Then he adds a general statement: "And to every one wise in heart I have given understanding" — that is, to whoever is capable of receiving it through labor and disciplined practice. Again, elsewhere, it is written explicitly in the Lord's own words: "And you shall speak to all who possess a skilled mind; on them I have bestowed a spirit of perception." Those of skilled mind possess indeed some property proper to their own nature, but they receive from the most sovereign Wisdom a twofold spirit of perception, having shown themselves fit to receive it. For those who pursue the manual crafts enjoy an excess bearing on one of the senses: in hearing, the one commonly called a musician; in touch, the sculptor; the singer belongs to voice; the perfumer belongs to smell; and to sight belongs the engraver of designs stamped into seals. But those who spend their time in education are furnished with joint-perception, by which the poets attend to their meters, the sophists to their diction, the dialecticians to their syllogisms, and the philosophers to the theory proper to each. For joint-perception is inventive and able to devise, persuading one plausibly to undertake an inquiry, and practiced discipline directed toward knowledge increases that undertaking.
Fittingly, then, the apostle called the wisdom of God "many-colored," manifested in many parts and many ways — through art, through knowledge, through faith, through prophecy — displaying its own power for our benefit, because "all wisdom is from the Lord and abides with him forever," as the Wisdom of Jesus [son of Sirach] says. "For if you call upon prudence and perception with a loud voice, and seek her out as treasures of silver, and eagerly track her down, you will come to understand the fear of God, and will find divine perception" — the prophet has said this in contradistinction to the perception that belongs to philosophy, which he teaches us to search out greatly and magnificently as an advance toward the fear of God. He therefore set over against it the perception that consists in the fear of God, hinting thereby at gnosis, and saying this: "For wisdom is given by God from his very mouth; perception and prudence come together, and he stores up aid for the upright" — for those made righteous through philosophy, aid is stored up in turn, and likewise the joint-perception that leads toward the fear of God.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 5 ========

Before the Lord's coming, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness; but now it becomes useful for reverence toward God, being a kind of preliminary training for those who reap faith through demonstration, since "your foot," it says, "shall not stumble," for the one who refers what is good back to Providence, whether it be Greek or ours. For God is the source of every good thing—directly the cause of some, such as the Old and New Covenants, and of others, such as philosophy, only by consequence. Perhaps philosophy too was given to the Greeks directly at that time, before the Lord called the Greeks as well; for this too was a tutor to the Greek race, as the Law was to the Hebrews, leading them to Christ. Philosophy, then, prepares the way in advance, making a road for the one who is brought to perfection by Christ. At once Solomon says, "Fence wisdom about, and it will exalt you highly; it will shield you with a crown of delight," since even you, having fortified her further with a battlement through philosophy and true magnificence, would keep her unassailable by the sophists.
There is, then, one road of truth, but into it, as into an ever-flowing river, streams flow in from different places. It is therefore rightly said in an inspired way: "Hear, my son, and receive my words," it says, "that there may be for you many roads of life; for I teach you the roads of wisdom, that the springs may not fail you, springs that gush forth from the same earth." He did not, then, list many saving roads for one just man only, but adds further many roads belonging to many just men, indicating it thus: "But the roads of the just shine alike as light." And the commandments and the preliminary trainings would also be roads and starting-points of life. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I desired to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks." And Jerusalem is interpreted "vision of peace." It shows, then, prophetically that those who have contemplated things peaceably have been trained in many ways toward the calling. What then? He desired it, but was not able; how often, then, or where? Twice — through the prophets, and through his coming. The word "how often," then, indicates wisdom's manifold character, and by each single mode of quality and quantity it altogether saves some, both in time and in the age, because the Spirit of the Lord has filled the inhabited world. And if someone should press the point and say, "Do not pay heed to a base woman, for honey drips from the lips of a harlot woman," meaning that this is Greek education, let him listen to what follows: "which for a season smooths your throat," it says, "but philosophy does not flatter." Whom, then, does it hint at as the one who has played the harlot? It adds explicitly: "for the feet of folly lead down those who make use of her, together with death, into Hades, and her tracks are not sure." "Therefore keep your road far away from senseless pleasure, do not draw near the doors of her house, lest you hand your life over to others." And it further attests: "then in your later years you will feel regret, once your body's flesh has wasted away." For this is the end of senseless pleasure. And so much for that. But whenever it says, "Do not be much occupied with what belongs to another," it counsels making use of, but not lingering in and remaining fixed upon, worldly education; for it prepares in advance the way for the Lord's word by the things fittingly given to each generation according to the appropriate seasons. For already some, enticed by the love-charms of the handmaidens, have slighted their true mistress, philosophy, and grown gray instead—some in music, others in geometry, others in grammar, and the majority in rhetoric.
But just as the general course of studies contributes toward philosophy, their mistress, so too philosophy itself works together toward the possession of wisdom. For philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, while wisdom is the understanding of matters both divine and human, together with their causes. Wisdom, then, is sovereign over philosophy, as philosophy is over the preliminary studies. For if philosophy professes self-control of tongue and belly and what is below the belly, and is choiceworthy for its own sake, it will appear all the more venerable and sovereign if it is pursued for the sake of the honor and knowledge of God.
Scripture will furnish testimony to what has been said, through the following: Sarah was barren long ago, and Abraham's wife. Since Sarah did not bear children, she hands over her own handmaid, by name Hagar the Egyptian, to Abraham for the begetting of children. Wisdom, then, who dwells together with the faithful man—and Abraham was counted righteous and trustworthy—remained at that time barren and without children, having as yet borne no virtuous offspring for Abraham, and reasonably thought it fitting that he, who already had the season for advancement, should first be joined with worldly education (Egypt being allegorized as the world), and only afterward, coming also to her, should beget Isaac according to divine providence.
Philo interprets Hagar as "sojourning" (for it is here said, "Do not be much occupied with what belongs to another"), and Sarah as "my rule." It is possible, then, for one who has first been trained to come to the most ruling wisdom, from which the Israelite race increases. From these things it is shown that wisdom, which Abraham pursued, is teachable — Abraham passing from the contemplation of the heavenly bodies to faith and righteousness according to God. Isaac, in turn, indicates what is self-taught; which is why he is also discovered to prefigure Christ. He had only a single wife, Rebecca, whose name is translated "patience." Jacob, on the other hand, is said to have come together with several women, inasmuch as he is interpreted as "the athlete" (for exercises in doctrines come through several and differing things), whence he is also renamed Israel, the one who is truly clear-sighted, as being both greatly experienced and given to exercise. There would also be something else signified through the three forefathers: that the seal of knowledge is sovereign, being composed of nature, learning, and exercise. You could also find a further illustration of these matters in Tamar, who sat at the crossroads and gave the impression of being a harlot, whom Judah, the lover of learning (his name being interpreted "capable"), who left nothing unconsidered and unexamined, visited and turned aside to, while still preserving his confession toward God.
For this reason too Abraham, when Sarah grew jealous of Hagar who was gaining favor at her expense — as one who had chosen only what was useful from worldly philosophy — said: "Behold, the handmaid is in your hands; deal with her as seems good to you," showing that I embrace worldly education both as younger and as your handmaid, but I honor and revere your knowledge as the perfect mistress. And "Sarah afflicted her" is equivalent to "she brought her to her senses and admonished her." Well, then, is it said: "My son, do not make light of the discipline of God, nor faint when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives." In other places, however, the aforesaid passages of Scripture, when examined, turn out to indicate other mysteries.
We say, then, that on this basis, in bare statement, philosophy has for its object the inquiry into truth and the nature of the things that are — and this is the truth about which the Lord in his own words declared, "I myself am truth" — while the preliminary training, in turn, exercises the mind toward the rest that is in Christ, and arouses the understanding, begetting through true philosophy an inquiring sharpness of intellect. Having found this — or rather, having received it from truth itself — those who are initiated possess it.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 6 ========

Readiness to see what is needful contributes much through preliminary training. And exercise for the mind would be the objects of thought. Threefold is the nature of these, viewed as they concern quantities, magnitudes, and propositions. For reasoning that proceeds from demonstrations implants in the soul of the one who follows it an exact conviction, so that he does not think the thing demonstrated could be otherwise, and it does not allow us to fall prey to those who would trip us up by deceit. In these studies, then, the soul is purified of things perceived by sense and is rekindled, that it may at some point be able to discern the truth. For nourishment, and good upbringing when it is preserved, makes natures good, and good natures, when they lay hold of such upbringing, grow still better than they were before, both in other respects and in respect of begetting, just as also among the other animals. Wherefore also he says: "Go to the ant, O sluggard, and become wiser than she, who lays up much and varied food at the harvest against the threat of winter; or turn to the bee and observe what a diligent laborer she is; for she likewise, roaming across the entire meadow, fashions a single honeycomb."
But if you pray in your chamber, as the Lord taught, worshipping in spirit, then the management of the household would no longer concern the house alone, but also the soul — what one must apportion to it, in what manner and in what measure; and what one must set aside and keep in reserve within it, and when these things must be brought forth, and to whom. For men do not become good and noble by nature, but by learning, just as physicians and pilots do. We all alike, at any rate, look upon the vine and the horse, but the farmer will know whether the vine is good or bad for bearing fruit, and the horseman will readily distinguish a spiritless horse from a swift one. Now the fact that some are by nature better disposed than others toward virtue indicates certain pursuits in which those so disposed excel the rest, but it charges none of those who are better endowed with perfection in virtue, since even those who are ill disposed toward virtue, when they obtain the fitting education, for the most part attain to nobility of character, and conversely those who are aptly disposed become bad through neglect. But by nature, in turn, God fashioned us to be sociable and just.
Whence one must not say that justice appears from mere convention alone, but must understand that the good of creation is rekindled from the commandment, the soul being trained by learning to be willing to choose what is most excellent. But just as we say it is possible to be faithful even without letters, so too we acknowledge that it is not possible to understand the things spoken in the faith without having learned. For it is not faith taken simply, but faith concerned with learning, that produces the acceptance of what is well said and the rejection of what is foreign to it. And if ignorance is at once a lack of education and a lack of learning, then teaching implants the knowledge of things divine and human. But just as it is possible to live rightly in poverty of life, so too it is possible in abundance, and we acknowledge that it is both easier and quicker to hunt down virtue with the aid of preliminary education — though virtue is not unattainable even without these — except that even then it belongs to those who have learned and have trained their faculties of perception together with it. For, says Solomon, hatred stirs up strife, but instruction guards the paths of life, so that one may not be deceived, may not be robbed by those who have practiced the evil art of harming their hearers. And instruction that is unrefuted goes astray, he says, and there must be present the refutative element, for the sake of driving off the deceptive opinions of the sophists.
Well indeed does Anaxarchus the Eudaemonist also write, in his work On Kingship: "Much learning greatly benefits, and greatly harms, the one who has it: it benefits the one who is skillful, but harms the one who readily utters every word in every assembly. One must know the due measure of the occasion, for this is the boundary of wisdom. And as many as sing even at the doors, even if somehow they sing something wise, are not reckoned as being in wisdom, but have the disposition of folly." And Hesiod says: "...of the Muses, who make a man abounding in speech, inspired, of clear voice" — for he calls the man abounding in speech one who is resourceful in words, and the one of clear voice formidable, and the inspired one the man of experience and philosophy and knowledge of the truth.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 7 ========

It becomes clear, then, that Greek preparatory training, together with philosophy itself, has come to mankind from God, not by way of a leading purpose of its own, but in the manner that the rains fall down upon the good earth and upon the dung-heap and upon the housetops alike. Grass springs up in the same way, and so does grain, and a fig tree grows even on tombs, and whatever else of the less noble trees, and the things that grow up merely in outward form fall short of the true, because though they enjoyed the same power of the rain, they did not obtain the same grace as those that grew in rich soil, but either withered away or were plucked up. And here too the parable of the sowing which the Lord expounded proves useful. For there is one farmer of the earth that is in mankind, the one sowing the nourishing seeds from above, from the foundation of the world, who has rained down the Word as Lord at each season, but the seasons and the places receptive of it have produced the differences. Besides, the farmer sows not wheat alone (although even of this there are several varieties), but sows also further seeds — barley, beans, peas, vetch, garden herbs, and flowering plants; and of the same husbandry is also the cultivation of plants, working at whatever pertains to nurseries themselves and to gardens and to orchards and, in general, to the nature and nourishment of trees of every kind. Likewise, too, it is not shepherding alone, but also cattle-herding and horse-breeding and dog-breeding and bee-keeping — all these are arts, and, to put it concisely, herd-tending and animal-rearing generally, differing from one another in degree, yet all beneficial to life. By philosophy I do not mean the Stoic, nor the Platonic, nor the Epicurean and Aristotelian, but whatever has been well said in each of these schools, teaching righteousness along with a reverent knowledge — all this taken together as the eclectic whole I call philosophy. But whatever these men, cutting it off from human reasonings, have counterfeited, that I would never call divine.
Let us now also consider this: that if ever those who do not truly know still live rightly † to do good — for they have fallen in with beneficence, and some also hit the mark well through understanding in reasoning about truth — yet Abraham was justified not by works but by faith. There is therefore no advantage accruing to such people once life has ended, even supposing them to be doers of good in the present, unless they possess faith. For this reason the Scriptures were translated into the tongue of the Greeks, so that they could never at any time put forward the excuse of ignorance, since they were capable of hearing even the things among us, if only they were willing. One speaks of truth in one way, but truth interprets itself in another. Conjecture about truth is one thing, truth itself another; likeness is one thing, the very being itself another; and the one is attained by learning and practice, the other by power and by faith. For the teaching of reverence toward God is a gift, while faith is a grace bestowed. And it is through carrying out God's will that we arrive at knowledge of it. "Open ye," therefore, says Scripture, "the gates of righteousness, that entering by them I may make confession to the Lord." But the ways to righteousness, since God saves in many fashions (for he is good), are many and varied, and lead to the one sovereign way and gate. But if you seek the royal and authoritative entrance, this is what you shall hear: "This gate belongs to the Lord; it is by this that the righteous will pass in." Of the many gates thus opened, this one in righteousness was the gate in Christ, in which all are blessed who enter and direct their course in gnostic holiness. Thus Clement, in his letter to the Corinthians, says word for word, setting forth the distinctions among those approved in the church: "Let one be faithful, let one be able to declare knowledge, let one be wise in the discernment of words, let one be vigorous in deeds."

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 8 ========

The sophistic art, which the Greeks have zealously pursued, is a power of illusion, one that produces through arguments false opinions as though they were true; for it supplies rhetoric for the purpose of persuasion, and eristic for the purpose of contention. These arts, then, if they do not come to be practiced along with philosophy, would surely be more harmful than anything. Plato, at any rate, straightforwardly called sophistic a "base art," and Aristotle, following him, declares it to be a kind of "thievery," inasmuch as it plausibly steals away the whole work of wisdom while professing a wisdom it has never practiced. To put it briefly: just as of rhetoric the starting point is the plausible, its function the argument undertaken, and its end persuasion, so too of eristic the starting point is the opinion held, its function the contest, and its end victory. In the same way, of sophistic the starting point is the apparent, and its function is twofold — the one, proceeding from rhetoric, appearing as continuous discourse; the other, proceeding from dialectic, appearing as question-and-answer — and its end is the dazzling of the hearer. And that dialectic so much talked up in the philosophical schools shows itself to be a philosopher's exercise concerning received opinion, undertaken for the sake of a capacity for argument on both sides; but nowhere in any of this is truth to be found.
Fittingly, then, the noble apostle, disparaging these superfluous arts of words, says that if anyone does not hold to sound words, he is puffed up by some teaching, knowing nothing, but sick over questionings and disputes about words, out of which come strife, envy, slander, and evil suspicions — the constant frictions of men corrupted in mind and deprived of the truth. Do you see how he has moved against them, calling their art of reasoning a "sickness" — the very thing on which they pride themselves, those to whom this glib base-craft is dear, whether they be Greeks or barbarian sophists? Excellently, then, does the tragedian Euripides say in the Phoenician Women: "the unjust argument, being sick in itself, needs skillful remedies." For the saving word, being itself truth, is called sound; and what is sound always remains undying, while separation from the sound and the divine is godlessness and a death-bearing affliction. These men are wolves, snatchers of sheep hidden beneath fleeces, both enslavers and smooth-tongued seducers of souls, stealing secretly, yet when exposed shown to be robbers, striving to capture us — us who are without artifice, and so, one might say, the less capable of defending ourselves — by both crooked trickery and force.
"A man, often overcome for lack of eloquence though he has spoken what is just, fares worse than the glib speaker. But now, with fluent mouths, men steal away the truest things, so that what ought to seem true does not seem so" — thus tragedy speaks. Such are these contentious men, whether they pursue heresies or practice the little arts of dialectic — these are the men who, as Scripture says, pull down the rigging and weave nothing, having zealously pursued a labor that comes to nothing, which the apostle called a "trickery of men" and a "craftiness" suited to the scheming of error. "For there are," he says, "many who are unruly, vain talkers, deceivers of minds." And surely it is not to everyone that this was declared: "You are earth's salt." For among those who have heard the word there are some who resemble sea creatures — fish that, although raised from birth within the brine, nonetheless require seasoning by salt. I, for my part, very much accept what tragedy says: "My child, false words might well be spoken well, and by the beauty of their phrasing might overcome the truth; but this is not the most exact test — rather, it is nature and what is right. And he who conquers by eloquence of tongue is indeed clever, but I for my part always reckon deeds better than words." We ought therefore never to seek to please the many. For the things that gratify them we do not practice; and the things we know are far removed from their disposition. The apostle puts it thus: "Let us not turn vainglorious, challenging each other, begrudging each other."
It is for this reason that Plato, the lover of truth, as though inspired by a god, says: "I am such a man as to be persuaded by nothing other than the argument which, upon my examining it, appears to me best." He accordingly finds fault with those who, without understanding and knowledge, put their trust in opinions, holding that it is not fitting for men, abandoning the right and sound reasoning, to give their trust to that which has fellowship with falsehood. For to be deceived away from the truth is an evil, while to speak truly and to hold opinions of things as they are is a good. Now of these goods men are deprived involuntarily; yet deprived they are, whether by being robbed, or bewitched, or compelled, and ... not having been persuaded. He who has been persuaded willingly is already ... spent; but he who has been persuaded otherwise, or who has forgotten, is robbed — for in the one case time, in the other reasoning, secretly takes the thing away unnoticed. And often pain and anguish do violence and force a change of opinion, and likewise contentiousness and passion; and besides all these, men are bewitched, whether charmed by pleasure or terrified by fear. All such turnings are involuntary, and none of them could ever cast out knowledge.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 9 ========

Some people, thinking themselves naturally gifted, claim that they need touch neither philosophy nor dialectic, nor even learn thoroughly the study of nature, but demand faith alone and unadorned — as if they expected to take the clusters of grapes right from the start without ever having taken care of the vine. But the Lord is allegorized as a vine, from whom, with care and the skill of husbandry that accords with reason, the fruit must be harvested. One must prune, dig, tie up the shoots, and do the rest; and, I suppose, there is need of the pruning-hook and the mattock and the other tools of husbandry for the care of the vine, so that it may show forth to us its edible fruit. And just as in husbandry, so too in medicine, that man is well-schooled who has laid hold of the more varied branches of learning, so as to be better able both to farm skillfully and to cure the sick; thus too do I here name that man well-schooled who refers everything to the truth, so that, gathering what is useful even from geometry and music and from grammar and philosophy itself, he keeps his faith unassailed. The athlete too is looked down upon, as has been said before, yet he contributes to the whole composition.
For instance, we praise the pilot of vast experience, who has voyaged among the towns of countless peoples, and the healer who has grown skilled through many treated cases — from which certain people even fashion their notion of the "empiric." But the man who, in referring each matter to life, brings forward the correct examples both from Greek and from barbarian sources, this man of much experience is a tracker of truth and truly resourceful, and, like the touchstone (which is the Lydian stone entrusted with distinguishing the counterfeit from the native gold), being competent to separate the one from the other — this many-skilled and gnostic man of ours distinguishes the sophistical counterfeit of philosophy, the cosmetic counterfeit of gymnastic, the culinary counterfeit of medicine, the rhetorical counterfeit of dialectic, and magic and the other sects that pass, according to barbarian philosophy, for truth itself. And how is it not necessary for the man who longs to become a partaker of the power of God, when philosophizing about intelligible things, to make careful distinctions? And how is it not useful also to divide the ambiguous expressions and those uttered with the same name across the two covenants? For it was by means of ambiguity that the Lord outwitted the devil at the time of the temptation, and I for my part no longer see, in this matter, how the discoverer of philosophy and of dialectic — as some suppose him to be — could be led astray, deceived by the method of ambiguity.
But if the prophets and the apostles did not know the arts by which the exercises pertaining to philosophy are displayed, yet the meaning of the prophetic and teaching spirit, being spoken in a hidden manner because not everyone has the ear to understand, demands skilled teaching for its clarification. For the prophets and the disciples of the spirit knew that meaning securely; for it was from faith, and it was not possible to speak it as easily as the spirit itself had spoken it. Yet those lacking instruction cannot grasp it in this manner. "Write down the commandments," it says, "doubly, in resolve and in knowledge, so as to answer words of truth to those who put questions to you." What then is the knowledge of how to answer? It is the same as that of how to question; and this would be dialectic. What then? Is not speaking also a work, and does not doing come about from reasoned speech? For if we should not act by reason, we would be acting irrationally. But the rational work is accomplished in accordance with God; and nothing came into being apart from him, it says, that is, apart from the Word of God. Or did not the Lord also do all things by reason? Even cattle, driven by compulsion of fear, perform work. And do not those called "of right opinion" also engage in good works, not knowing what they are doing?

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 10 ========

For this reason, then, the Savior, taking bread, first spoke and gave thanks; then, breaking the bread, he set it forth, so that we might indeed eat rationally, and, having come to know the Scriptures, might conduct our life in accordance with obedience. And just as those who employ a wicked word differ in nothing from those who employ wicked deeds (for slander is the minister of the sword, and blasphemy produces grief, from which come the overturnings of life — these would be the works of the wicked word), so too those who employ a good word draw near to those who accomplish good works. At any rate, the word also restores the soul and urges it on toward nobility of character; and blessed is the one who is ambidextrous in both. Neither, then, is the man capable of speaking well to be reproached by the one who does good, nor is the man capable of doing good to be reviled by the one who speaks well; rather, let each be judged by what he is naturally suited to accomplish. What the one shows by deed, the other speaks in word, as it were preparing the road for well-doing and leading his hearers toward beneficence. For there is indeed a saving word, just as there is a saving deed. Righteousness, at any rate, is not constituted apart from word.
Just as the experience of kindness received vanishes once the act of doing good is removed, so obedience and trust are nullified unless the precept and its interpreter are held together as one. As things now stand, we are of use to one another both in words and in deeds. But the art of contentious wrangling and sophistry is to be altogether refused, since even the very phrases of the sophists not only bewitch and steal away the many, but, forcing their way through, sometimes carry off a Cadmean victory. For nothing is truer than that psalm: the just man will go on living until the last day, since he will not look upon decay, when he observes the wise perishing. Whom then does he call wise? Hear it from the Wisdom of Jesus: there is no wisdom in the knowledge of wickedness. This, then, is what he means — the wisdom that the arts of rhetoric and dialectic have devised. You will seek wisdom among the wicked, then, and you will not find it. And if you ask again, what sort of wisdom is this? — he will tell you: the mouth of the righteous shall drip wisdom. But the sophistic art is called wisdom only by an equivocal use of the name shared with truth.
For my part, I think it fitting to make it my aim to live in accordance with reason and to grasp what is signified, never to court fine speech so as to be content merely with hinting at what is meant. By what name this thing I wish to set forth is designated is of no concern to me. For I know well that to be saved, and to lend aid to those who are eager to be saved, is the best thing, not to arrange dainty little phrases as one arranges ornaments. And if you keep to this, says the Pythagorean in Plato's Statesman, of not being zealous over mere names, you will appear richer in understanding as you grow old. And again, in the Theaetetus you may find: an easy carelessness about names and words, not examined with precision, is for the most part no mark of ill breeding, but rather the opposite of this is illiberal, though there are times when it is necessary. These things Scripture has expressed as concisely as possible, saying: be not many in words. For diction is like clothing upon the body, but the matters themselves are flesh and sinew. One ought not, then, to care for the clothing ahead of the safety of the body. For the one who has taken up the true life must practice not only a frugal diet but also a plain and unelaborate speech, free of excess and affectation, if indeed we are to refuse luxury as treacherous and profligate, just as the ancient Lacedaemonians refused perfume and purple, rightly supposing and naming garments treacherous and unguents treacherous, since neither is that preparation of food fine which has more seasonings than nourishment, nor is that use of speech elegant which is able to please its hearers more than to profit them. Pythagoras counsels us to hold the Muses sweeter than the Sirens, teaching us to practice wisdom not with pleasure, and exposing the rest of soul-enchantment as deceitful. One man sufficed to sail past the Sirens, and one other sufficed to answer the Sphinx — or, if you like, not even one is needed.
One ought never, then, to broaden one's phylacteries out of a zeal for vain glory; for the man of true knowledge it is enough even if only a single hearer is found. One may indeed also hear Pindar the Boeotian writing: do not break open the ancient word to all; there are times when the paths of silence are most trustworthy, but the word that prevails is the goad of battles. The blessed apostle, then, insists most earnestly, exhorting us not to fight over words to no useful purpose, to the ruin of those who hear, but to turn away from profane empty talk. For such people advance further into impiety, and their word will spread like gangrene.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 11 ========

This wisdom of the world, then, is foolishness with God, and the Lord knows the reasonings of these wise men, that they are vain. Let no one, then, boast, priding himself on human understanding. For it is well written in Jeremiah: "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, and let not the strong man boast in his strength, and let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, in understanding and knowing that I am the Lord, who exercises mercy and judgment and justice over the earth; for my will rests in such deeds, says the Lord." This is so that we should not be trusting in ourselves, but in the God who raises the dead, as the apostle says: "who rescued us out of a death so immense, so that our trust would rest not in human wisdom, but in God's own power." For the spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no one. And I hear also his other words: "But this I say, that no one may deceive you with persuasive speech, nor let the one who leads you captive slip in unnoticed." And again: "See to it, then, lest anyone rob you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ." Not every school of philosophy, but rather the Epicurean, the one Paul also singles out in the Acts of the Apostles, denouncing it as one that does away with providence and deifies pleasure — and likewise any other philosophy that has honored the elements without setting over them their maker as cause, and has not conceived of the Creator.
But the Stoics too, whom he also mentions, say — not rightly — that God, being a body, has passed through the most dishonorable matter. He calls logical trifling a "tradition of men." That is why he also writes this: "Avoid the newer disputations, for such contentions are the mark of youths." And virtue is no lover of youths, says the philosopher Plato; and our contest, as Gorgias of Leontini says, requires a twofold virtue, boldness and wisdom — boldness to endure the danger, wisdom to know the riddle. For the word, like the herald's proclamation at Olympia, calls the one who wishes, but crowns the one who is able.
The word does not wish the believer to be immovable toward truth and truly idle. "Seek and you shall find," it says; but it brings the seeking to a finding, driving out empty babbling, and approving instead the contemplation that fortifies our faith. This I say, that no one may deceive you with persuasive speech, says the apostle — meaning, evidently, that we should be taught to discern what is said by such people and be trained to answer what they bring forward.
Just as you welcomed the Lord Christ Jesus, walk accordingly in him — rooted, built up on him, and made firm in the faith, persuasion being that very confirmation of faith — see to it that no one rob you of your faith in Christ through philosophy and empty deceit, which does away with providence, according to the tradition of men. For philosophy according to the divine tradition establishes providence and confirms it; and if providence is done away with, the whole dispensation concerning the Savior appears a myth, since we would then be carried along according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ. For the teaching that follows Christ both deifies the Creator and extends providence down to particulars, and understands that the elements themselves are by nature changeable and created things, and teaches us to conduct our lives with a view toward being made like God, and to receive the dispensation as the guiding principle of all instruction. As for the elements, Diogenes worships air, Thales water, Hippasus fire, and those who posit atoms as first principles — creeping in under the name of philosophy, certain godless little men who are lovers of pleasure.
For this reason I pray, he says, that your love may keep growing, ever fuller, in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you may approve the things that differ. Since, when we were infants, says the same apostle, we were enslaved under the elements of the world. Now the infant, even if he is an heir, differs in nothing from a slave until the time appointed by the father. Infants, then, are the philosophers too, unless the Christ makes men of them. For if the son of the slave woman will not inherit along with the son of the free woman, yet he is at least seed of Abraham, though he has not received as his own the gift that comes by promise. But solid food belongs to the perfect, to those who through practice have their faculties trained for the discernment of good and evil. For everyone who partakes of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, being an infant, and not yet understanding the reasoning by which he has come to believe and by which he acts, nor able to render the account of it within himself. But test all things, says the apostle, and hold fast what is good — speaking to spiritual men who examine everything said according to truth, whether it merely seems so or truly partakes of the truth.
Instruction that goes unreproved wanders astray, and blows and reproofs give the instruction of wisdom — reproofs given with love, evidently. For an upright heart seeks knowledge, since he who seeks God will find knowledge together with righteousness, and those who have rightly sought him have found peace. "And I shall know," he says, not the speech of those who are puffed up, but their power — striking with a blow, as he writes, those who imagine themselves wise but are not truly wise. For God's kingdom does not consist in talk — not in what merely seems true by persuasive opinion — but he declared it consists in power; for it is truth alone that carries force. And again: if anyone thinks he has known something, he does not yet grasp it in the manner he must; since truth is at no point identical with opinion, whereas opinion about knowledge puffs up and fills with conceit, while love builds up, occupying itself not with mere opinion but with truth. Hence, if anyone loves, he is known, as it is said.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 12 ========

Since the tradition is not common and open to all, at least for one who has perceived the majesty of the Word, one must therefore conceal the wisdom spoken in a mystery, which the Son of God taught. Indeed, even the prophet Isaiah has his tongue purified by fire, so as to be able to speak of the vision, and it is fitting that we purify not merely the tongue but the ears as well, if indeed we are striving to share in the truth. These considerations have restrained my hand from writing, and even at this point I remain wary, as he says, of throwing pearls to swine, lest they trample them underfoot and turn and tear you to pieces. For it is a difficult thing to display words that are truly pure and radiant concerning the true light to hearers who are swinish and uneducated; for there are scarcely any sayings more laughable to the many than these, nor again more wondrous and inspiring to those of good natural capacity.
But the man of mere nature does not welcome what belongs to the Spirit of God, since it is folly in his eyes. And the wise withhold from their mouth what they weigh among themselves in council. But what has reached your ear, the Lord declares, announce from the rooftops — bidding us to receive the hidden traditions of true knowledge as interpreted in a lofty and exceptional manner, and just as we heard in the ear, so also to hand them down to those to whom it is fitting, not commanding that what has been spoken to them in parables be given out indiscriminately to all. But the outline of these notes is in truth such that the truth it contains is sown scattered and dispersed here and there, so that it might escape the notice of those seed-gathering jackdaws. But when it meets with a good farmer, each of the seeds will spring up and reveal the wheat.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 13 ========

Since truth, then, is one (for falsehood has countless deviations), the sects of philosophy, both barbarian and Greek, are like the Bacchae who tore apart the limbs of Pentheus: each one, boasting of the portion it has obtained as though it were the whole of truth. But it is, I think, by the rising of light that all things are illumined. All then, Greeks and barbarians alike, who have reached out for the truth — some possessing not a little of it, others some part — might be shown, if indeed they possess anything at all, to have a share in the account of truth. Now the age of time gathers together in a moment the future and the present, and indeed also the past; but far more powerful than the age is truth in gathering together its own seeds, even should they have fallen into a foreign land. For we might find a very great many of the opinions held among the sects (as many as have not been utterly deafened nor cut off from the natural sequence of reasoning, just as the women of the harem, having cut off the man, cut off also his reason) — even though they seem unlike one another, yet in kind and in the whole of truth they agree; for they are joined into one either as a limb, or as a part, or as a species, or as a genus. Already, too, the highest string of the lyre is opposite to the lowest. But both together make a single harmony; and in numbers the even differs from the odd, yet both agree in arithmetic, just as in figure the circle and the triangle and the square, and all the figures that differ from one another, agree in geometry. And moreover, in the whole cosmos, all the parts together, even though they differ from one another, preserve their kinship to the whole. Thus, then, both the barbarian and the Greek philosophy have made a kind of tearing apart of the eternal truth — not the tearing apart of the mythology of Dionysus, but of the theology of the Word that always is. But he who puts the divided pieces back together again and unifies them will, be well assured, without danger behold the perfect Word, that is, the truth.
It is written, then, in Ecclesiastes: "So I outstripped in wisdom every one who had held rule in Jerusalem ahead of me; and my mind took in a great deal, both wisdom and knowledge, and I mastered proverbs and insight. For this too is a chasing after wind, that where wisdom is plentiful, there knowledge too runs deep." And he who is experienced in wisdom of every kind, this man would properly be the gnostic. Accordingly it is written: "A wealth of wisdom's knowledge will grant life to whoever possesses it from her." Again, this saying confirms still more clearly what has been said: "Every one of them is clear to the discerning" (and "every one of them" means what is Greek and barbarian, though the other things are no longer all), "and straightforward to whoever seeks to grasp insight. Take up teaching instead of silver, and take knowledge over refined gold; grasp insight, too, ahead of purest gold; since wisdom outranks costly gems, and no treasure can match her worth."

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 14 ========

According to the Greeks, once Orpheus, Linus, and the oldest poets of their nation had passed, the men first honored for wisdom were a group of seven called the Sages: four hailed from Asia — Thales of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Pittacus of Mytilene, and Cleobulus of Lindos — and a pair came from Europe, namely Solon the Athenian together with Chilon of Lacedaemon; concerning the seventh figure, accounts differ: some name Periander of Corinth, others point to Anacharsis from Scythia, and still others to Epimenides of Crete (a man he recognizes as a prophet among the Greeks, one whom the apostle Paul cites in his letter to Titus, writing thus: "A prophet belonging to their own nation declared, 'Cretans are forever liars, vicious beasts, lazy gluttons'; and that statement holds true." Notice how readily he concedes a degree of truth even to Greek prophets, unashamed, when building up his hearers or exposing the faults of certain persons, to draw likewise on Greek verse; indeed, in his letter to the Corinthians — since this is not his only instance — while making his case for the resurrection of the dead, he borrows a line of tragic iambic verse: "What benefit is there for me," he asks, "should the dead never rise? Let us feast and drink, since tomorrow brings death. Be not misled: bad company ruins upright character.") Some also count Acusilaus of Argos among these seven sages, and others name Pherecydes of Syros instead. Plato, however, sets aside Periander — deeming him unfit for wisdom because he had ruled as a tyrant — and puts Myson of Chenae in his place.
That the wise men among the Greeks arose at some point well after the age of Moses will be shown a little further on; but the manner of philosophy among them, as being Hebraic and enigmatic, must already be examined. They embraced, at any rate, a terse manner of speech given to exhortation, the most beneficial kind. Plato himself, for instance, long ago says that this manner came about through deliberate effort, common to all the Greeks generally, but especially so among the Lacedaemonians and the Cretans, who had the best laws.
Now the saying "know thyself" some have supposed to belong to Chilon, but Chamaeleon in his work On the Gods attributes it to Thales, and Aristotle to the Pythia. It can, however, be taken as an exhortation to pursue self-knowledge. For it is not possible to know the parts without knowing the substance of the whole; one must therefore inquire diligently into the origin of the cosmos, through which it will also be possible to learn thoroughly the nature of man.
Once more, Chilon of Lacedaemon is credited with the maxim "nothing in excess"; yet Strato, in his treatise On Discoveries, gives that saying instead to Sodamus of Tegea, while Didymus attributes it to Solon, much as "measure is best" gets attributed to Cleobulus. Regarding "pledge yourself, and ruin follows," Cleomenes writes in his work On Hesiod that Homer had already voiced it in these words: "pitiful are the pledges that pitiful men offer as security"; Aristotle's circle, however, credits it to Chilon, whereas Didymus says the warning originates with Thales. Moving on, the maxim "most people are wicked" or "the majority are wicked" (since the same saying circulates in two versions) is claimed for Bias by the school of Sotades of Byzantium, who likewise want "habit overcomes everything" credited to Periander, and who similarly hold that the counsel "seize the fitting moment" belongs to Pittacus. Solon, for his part, gave the Athenians their laws, while Pittacus did the same for the people of Mytilene. Afterward came Pythagoras, a student of Pherecydes, the first man to call himself a philosopher.
After the men already mentioned, then, there arose three successions of philosophy named after the places in which their members spent their time: the Italian, from Pythagoras; the Ionian, from Thales; and the Eleatic, from Xenophanes. Pythagoras, then, was a Samian, son of Mnesarchus, as Hippobotus says; but as Aristoxenus says in his Life of Pythagoras, and also Aristarchus and Theopompus, he was Tyrrhenian. But according to Neanthes, he was Syrian or Tyrian, so that according to most accounts Pythagoras was a barbarian by race. But Thales too, as Leander and Herodotus record, was a Phoenician, though as some have supposed, a Milesian. He alone is thought to have conferred with the prophets of the Egyptians, and no teacher is recorded for him, just as none is recorded for Pherecydes the Syrian either, whose pupil Pythagoras became.
But the Italian school of philosophy that followed Pythagoras grew old at Metapontum in Italy.
Anaximander, son of Praxiades, a Milesian, succeeds Thales; and Anaximenes, son of Eurystratus, a Milesian, succeeds him; after whom comes Anaxagoras, son of Hegesibulus, of Clazomenae. This man transferred the school from Ionia to Athens. Archelaus succeeds him, whose pupil was Socrates. Now from these there turned aside "the stone-carver, the endless talker about law, the enchanter of the Greeks" — as Timon says in his Silloi — on account of his having turned away from natural philosophy toward ethics. Of those who heard Socrates, Antisthenes became a Cynic, while Plato withdrew to the Academy. Aristotle, having philosophized under Plato, moved on to the Lyceum and founded the Peripatetic school. Theophrastus succeeds him, whom Strato succeeds, whom Lycon succeeds, then Critolaus, then Diodorus. Speusippus succeeds Plato; him Xenocrates succeeds, whom Polemon succeeds. Of Polemon's hearers were Crates and Crantor, in whom the Old Academy deriving from Plato came to its end. Arcesilaus took part with Crantor, from whom, down to Hegesinus, the Middle Academy flourished.
Then Carneades succeeds Hegesinus, and those after him; and Zeno of Citium, who founded the Stoic school, becomes a pupil of Crates. Cleanthes succeeds him, whom Chrysippus succeeds, and those after him.
The Eleatic school was founded by Xenophanes of Colophon, who according to Timaeus lived during the era of Hieron, Sicily's ruler, and of the poet Epicharmus, whereas Apollodorus places his birth near the fortieth Olympiad and has him surviving into the age of Darius and Cyrus. Parmenides in turn studied under Xenophanes; Zeno studied under Parmenides; then came Leucippus; then Democritus. Among Democritus's students were Protagoras from Abdera along with Metrodorus from Chios; Metrodorus taught Diogenes of Smyrna, who taught Anaxarchus, who taught Pyrrho, who taught Nausiphanes. Some claim that Epicurus in turn studied under this last man.
Such, then, in summary, is the succession of the Greek philosophers; but the dates of those who first began philosophy among them must be stated next in order, so that by comparison we may demonstrate that the philosophy of the Hebrews is older by many generations.
Concerning Xenophanes, who began the Eleatic philosophy, it has already been said; and as for Thales, Eudemus in his Astrological Histories says that he foretold the eclipse of the sun that occurred in the years when the Medes and Lydians joined battle with each other, when Cyaxares, father of Astyages, was reigning over the Medes, and Alyattes, father of Croesus, over the Lydians. Herodotus agrees with him in his first book. The date falls around the fiftieth Olympiad. Pythagoras is found to have flourished in the time of Polycrates the tyrant, around the sixty-second Olympiad. Mnesiphilus is recorded as an admirer of Solon, with whom Themistocles spent time. Solon, then, flourished around the forty-sixth Olympiad. As for Heraclitus, son of Blyson, he persuaded the tyrant Melancomas to lay down his rule; and when King Darius urged him to come to Persia, he disregarded him.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 15 ========

Such, then, are the dates of the oldest of the sages and philosophers among the Greeks. But since most of them were barbarian by race and were educated among barbarians, what need is there even to say it, if indeed Pythagoras was shown to be a Tyrrhenian or a Tyrian, and Antisthenes was a Phrygian, and Orpheus an Odrysian or a Thracian? For most say that Homer was an Egyptian. And Thales, being Phoenician by race, is said to have conversed with the prophets of the Egyptians, just as Pythagoras did with these very men, on whose account he even had himself circumcised, in order that, going down into the inner sanctuaries, he might thoroughly learn from the Egyptians their mystic philosophy; and he associated with the best of the Chaldeans and the Magi, and the assembly now called by him the "homakoeion" hints at this. And Plato does not deny that the best material for philosophy was brought in from foreign peoples, and he concedes that he journeyed to Egypt. At any rate, he says in the Phaedo that the philosopher can be helped from every quarter, writing: "Greece is large, Cebes," he said, "in which there are altogether good men, and the races of the barbarians are many."
So Plato too supposes that there are some philosophers even among the barbarians, whereas Epicurus, on the contrary, supposes that only Greeks are capable of philosophizing. And in the Symposium, Plato, praising the barbarians as having trained themselves exceptionally, says that alone truly [text uncertain] and others elsewhere in many places, both among Greeks and barbarians, of whom already many sanctuaries have come to be on account of such offspring. And it is clear that the barbarians have honored their own lawgivers and teachers exceptionally, addressing them as gods. For according to Plato they suppose that good souls, having left the place beyond the heavens, endured to come down into this Tartarus here and, taking up a body, to share in all the evils belonging to generation, caring for the human race — souls which established laws and proclaimed philosophy, than which no greater good has ever come to the human race from the gods, nor ever will.
And it seems to me that they, perceiving the great benefaction that comes through the wise, both revered these men and philosophized publicly. All the Brahmans, and the Odrysians, and the Getae, and the race of the Egyptians theologized precisely about their own matters, as did the Chaldeans and the Arabians who are called the Blessed, and all who settled Palestine, and no small part of the Persian race, and countless other races besides these. And Plato is plainly found always exalting the barbarians, since he recalls that both he himself and Pythagoras learned most and the noblest of their doctrines among barbarians. For this reason he also spoke of "races of barbarians," recognizing races of barbarian philosophic men; and in the Phaedrus he shows us the Egyptian king, and Thoth, as wiser than we are, whom he knows to be Hermes. But also in the Charmides he appears to be acquainted with certain Thracians, who are said to make the soul immortal.
It is related that Pythagoras studied under Sonchis, the Egyptian chief-prophet, while Plato studied under Sechnuphis of Heliopolis, and Eudoxus of Cnidus studied under Conuphis, another Egyptian. And in his treatise On the Soul, Plato again is evidently acquainted with prophecy, introducing a prophet who proclaims the word of Lachesis to the souls receiving their lots and foretells the future. And in the Timaeus he introduces the wisest Solon as being instructed by the barbarian. The passage runs thus: "Solon, O Solon, you Hellenes are ever as children, and among you no elder Greek exists"; "for none of you carries learning whitened by age." For Democritus composed his so-called Babylonian moral discourses; for it is said that, having had the pillar of Akikaros translated, he incorporated it into his own writings, and one can note from him the phrase, "thus says Democritus," as he writes. Indeed, concerning himself, boasting somewhere of his wide learning, he says: "I, of the men of my time, wandered over the most land, inquiring into the farthest things, and I saw the most skies and lands, and I heard the most learned men, and in the composition of lines with proof no one has yet surpassed me, not even the Egyptians called Harpedonaptae; and besides all these, for eighty years I lived as a stranger abroad." For he traveled through Babylon and Persia and Egypt, being a disciple of the Magi and the priests. And Pythagoras emulated Zoroaster the Persian Magus, and those who follow the sect of Prodicus boast of possessing the secret books of this man.
Alexander, in his work On Pythagorean Symbols, relates that Pythagoras was a disciple of Zaratas the Assyrian (some suppose this man to be Ezekiel, but it is not so, as will be shown later), and he further wishes Pythagoras to have heard also the Galatians and the Brahmans. And Clearchus the Peripatetic says he knew a certain Jew who conversed with Aristotle. For Heraclitus says that it was not by human means but with God that the future was revealed to the Sibyl. At any rate, they say that at Delphi, beside the council-chamber, a certain rock is shown, upon which it is said the first Sibyl used to sit, having come from Helicon, where the Muses raised her. But others say she came from the Malians, being a daughter of Lamia the daughter of Poseidon. And Sarapion in his verses says that the Sibyl did not cease from prophecy even after death, but that the part of her that passed into the air after her end is what prophesies in rumors and omens, while from her body, which changed into earth, grass naturally grew up, and whatever cattle graze upon it, coming to be, as one would suppose, on that very spot, give to men through their entrails a precise indication of the future — and he writes that her soul is what appears as the face in the moon.
So much concerning the prophetess. Numa, who ruled the Romans, followed Pythagorean teaching, and, drawing assistance from what Moses had written, he prohibited the Romans from fashioning a divine image in human or animal form. Indeed, across the first hundred seventy years, though temples were erected, no statue was made among them, neither carved nor painted. Numa taught them in this way, veiling the truth, that the highest reality can be grasped by mind alone and by nothing else.
Philosophy, then, a thing of great benefit, flourished long ago among the barbarians, shining forth among the nations, and later it also came down to the Greeks. Its leaders were, among the Egyptians, the prophets, and among the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, and among the Galatians, the Druids, and the Samanaeans of the Bactrians, and those among the Celts who philosophized, and among the Persians, the Magi (who by their magic even foretold beforehand the birth of the Savior, coming into the land of Judea guided by a star), and among the Indians, the gymnosophists, and other barbarian philosophers besides. Of these there are two kinds, some called Sarmanae among them, others called Brahmans. And of the Sarmanae, those called the "forest-dwellers" neither inhabit cities nor have roofs, but wear garments made from tree bark and feed on uncultivated fruit and drink water cupped in their hands; they know nothing of marriage or of producing offspring — much as those now called the Encratites. These are among the Indians who follow the teaching of Buddha, whom, because of his exceptional dignity, they revere as a god.
Anacharsis too was a Scythian, and he is recorded as surpassing many of the philosophers among the Greeks. Hellanicus relates that the Hyperboreans dwell beyond the Rhipaean mountains, and that they are taught justice, not eating meat but living on wild fruits. These people, when men reach sixty years, lead them outside the gates and make them disappear. And among the Germans there are the so-called sacred women, who, by gazing at the eddies of rivers and the windings and sounds of the currents, make conjectures and foretell the future. These women, at any rate, did not allow them to join battle against Caesar before the new moon had shone forth. Among all of these, the nation of the Jews is easily the most ancient, and that their philosophy, committed to writing, came before Greek philosophy is shown through numerous arguments by Philo the Pythagorean, and likewise by Aristobulus the Peripatetic and various others, so I need not review them individually. Clearest of all is Megasthenes the historian, a contemporary of Seleucus Nicator, who writes as follows in book three of his Indica: "In truth, everything the early thinkers stated concerning nature has its counterpart among the philosophers beyond Greece as well, partly among the Indians through the Brahmans, and partly in Syria through the people called Jews."
But some tell a more mythical tale, that certain sages called the Idaean Dactyls were the first to arise, to whom is attributed both the discovery of the so-called Ephesian letters and the discovery of musical rhythms — for which reason the "fingers" (dactyls) used by musicians have taken their name. The Idaean Dactyls were Phrygians, and barbarians. Herodorus relates that Heracles, having become a seer and a natural philosopher, received the pillars of the world from Atlas the Phrygian barbarian, the myth hinting that he received by instruction the science of the heavenly bodies. And Hermippus of Berytus calls Cheiron the Centaur wise, of whom the writer of the Titanomachy says that he was the first to lead the race of mortals toward justice, having shown them oaths and joyful sacrifices and the figures of Olympus. Under him Achilles, who campaigned against Ilium, was educated, and Hippo, the daughter of the Centaur, having married Aeolus, taught him the contemplation of nature, the ancestral science. Euripides too testifies concerning Hippo thus: "She first foretold divine things by clear oracles at the risings of the stars." With this Aeolus, Odysseus is entertained as a guest after the capture of Ilium. Observe for me these dates, for comparison with the age of Moses and the most ancient philosophy connected with him.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 16 ========

It was not philosophy alone, but almost every art as well, whose discoverers were barbarians.
The Egyptians, at any rate, were the first to bring astrology forth among men, and likewise the Chaldeans also. The Egyptians were again the first to show how to light lamps, and they divided the year into twelve months, and they forbade intercourse with women in temples and made it law that no one should enter a temple from a woman's bed unwashed; and the same people became the discoverers of geometry as well. There are some who say it was the Carians who devised prognostication by means of the stars. The Phrygians were the first to observe the flights of birds, and the Tuscans, neighbors of Italy, perfected the sacrificial art. The Isaurians and the Arabs worked out augury, just as, of course, the Telmisians worked out divination through dreams. The Tyrrhenians devised the trumpet, and the Phrygians the pipe; for Olympus and Marsyas were both Phrygians.
Cadmus the Phoenician was the discoverer of letters for the Greeks, as Ephorus says, whence Herodotus writes that the letters were called Phoenician; but others say it was the Phoenicians and Syrians together who first devised letters. They say that Apis the Egyptian, a native, practiced the medical art before Io came to Egypt, and that afterward Asclepius increased that art. Atlas the Libyan was the first to build a ship and to sail the sea. Celmis and Damnameneus in turn, the Idaean Dactyls, were the first to discover iron, in Cyprus, while another Idaean, Delas, discovered the mixing of bronze, or, as Hesiod says, it was a Scythian. Indeed the Thracians discovered the weapon called harpē, a sword bent into a curve, and they were first to employ light bucklers when mounted on horses. Likewise the Illyrians discovered the so-called parma. They say further that the Tuscans devised the plastic art, and that Itanus (a Sabine) was the first to construct a shield. For Cadmus the Phoenician discovered stone-cutting and devised the gold mines around Mount Pangaeus. Then again another nation, the Cappadocians, were the first to discover the instrument called the nabla, just as the Assyrians discovered the two-stringed instrument. The Carthaginians were the first to build a quadrireme, and it was Bosporus who built it on the spot.
Medea the Colchian, daughter of Aeetes, was the first to devise the dyeing of hair. But also the Noropes (a Paeonian nation, now called Norici) worked bronze and were the first to purify iron. Amycus, king of the Bebryces, was the first to discover boxing-thongs. In music Olympus the Mysian crafted the Lydian harmony as an art; and the people called the Troglodytes discovered the sambyca, a musical instrument. They say that Satyrus the Phrygian discovered the slanting pipe (syrinx), and likewise that Agnis, also a Phrygian, discovered the three-stringed instrument and the diatonic harmony; that Olympus, likewise the Phrygian, discovered percussive strokes, just as Marsyas, of the same region as those mentioned before, discovered the Phrygian harmony and the mixophrygian and mixolydian, and that Thamyris the Thracian devised the Dorian. It is reported to us that among the Persians the wagon, the couch, and the footstool were first constructed, and that the Sidonians constructed the trireme. The Sicels who dwell near Italy were the first to discover the phorminx, not much inferior to the cithara, and they devised castanets. They record that in the time of Semiramis, king of the Egyptians, fine linen garments were discovered. And Hellanicus says that Atossa, who reigned as queen of the Persians, was the first to compose letters.
Scamon of Mitylene and Theophrastus of Eresus and Cydippus of Mantinea, and further Antiphanes together with Aristodemus, Aristotle too, and beyond them Philostephanus, plus Straton the Peripatetic in his treatise On Discoveries, are the ones who set these matters down. I have set out a few of their reports to establish the inventive and life-benefiting nature found among barbarians, from whom the Greeks derived benefit for their own pursuits.
But if anyone disparages the barbarian tongue, then, as Anacharsis says, 'to me all Greeks talk like Scythians.' This was the man the Greeks admired, the one who declared, 'what wraps my body is a rough mantle, and cheese with milk make up my meal.' You see a barbarian philosophy professing deeds, not words.
The apostle speaks in this way: 'And you, if through the tongue you do not give a clear word, how will what is spoken be known? You will simply be talking to empty wind. Perhaps there exist countless varieties of sound throughout the world, and not a single one lacks sense; if then I do not know the meaning of the voice, I will be a barbarian to the one speaking, and the one speaking will be a barbarian to me. Let the one who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret.'
Yes indeed, it was only late that the teaching and writing of discourse passed over to the Greeks.
Alcmaeon, son of Perithous, of Croton, was at any rate the first to compose a treatise on nature. Others record that Anaxagoras, son of Hegesibulus, of Clazomenae, was the first to publish a book in writing. Terpander of Antissa was the first to set melody around poems and set to melody the laws of the Lacedaemonians; Lasus of Hermione devised the dithyramb; Stesichorus, native of Himera, the hymn; Alcman, a Lacedaemonian, the choral dance; Anacreon, from Teos, erotic verse. Pindar the Theban was the first to sing the hyporcheme, and Timotheus of Miletus the first to sing nomes to the accompaniment of chorus and cithara.
Yes indeed, Archilochus of Paros devised the iambus, and Hipponax of Ephesus the limping iambus, and Thespis of Athens tragedy, and Susarion of Icaria comedy. The children of the grammarians hand down the dates of these men; it would take too long to set them out with precision here, though Dionysus himself shows the way — he on whose account there are also the Dionysiac spectacles — a man later than Moses by, at the very least, a great many generations. They say too that Antiphon Sophilus of Rhamnus was the discoverer of set speeches for practice and of the properties of rhetoric, and the first to plead for hire and to write out a forensic speech for publication, as Diodorus says; while Apollodorus of Cyme was the first to introduce the term 'grammarian' in place of 'critic,' and was so called; though some say it was Eratosthenes of Cyrene, since he published two books entitled Grammatical. And Praxiphanes, son of Dionysophanes, of Mitylene, was the first to be called 'grammarian' in the sense we now use the word. Zaleucus the Locrian is on record as the first to have established laws, though others say it was Minos, son of Zeus, in the time of Lynceus. This man comes after Danaus, eleven generations removed from Inachus and from Moses, as will be demonstrated a bit later in this account. Lycurgus, who lived many years after the fall of Troy, one hundred and fifty years before the Olympiads, gave laws to the Lacedaemonians; for we have already stated the dates of Solon.
Draco, who was likewise a lawgiver, is found to have lived around the thirty-ninth Olympiad. Antilochus, in turn, who treated historical matters running from the era of Pythagoras up to the demise of Epicurus, an event occurring on the tenth of Gamelion, calculates the entire span as three hundred twelve years. They say further that the heroic hexameter was discovered by Phanothea, the wife of Icarius, though others say it was Themis, one of the Titanides. Didymus, in his work On Pythagorean Philosophy, records that Theano of Croton was the first woman to practice philosophy and to write poems.
Greek philosophy, then, according to some, has laid hold of the truth by mere chance, in some fashion, but dimly and not in its entirety; while according to others it derives its impulse from the devil. Some have supposed that certain lower powers breathed the whole of philosophy into being. But even if Greek philosophy does not grasp the greatness of the truth, and is still too weak to carry out the Lord's commandments, still it prepares the way beforehand for the most kingly teaching, in some fashion disciplining the character and molding it in advance, and stamping it beforehand for the reception of the truth, in the man who glorifies providence.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 17 ========

Yes, they say it is written: all who came before the coming of the Lord are thieves and robbers. Now all those who existed in the Word — that is, all those before the enfleshment of the Word — are heard of more universally in this saying. But the prophets, as men sent and inspired by the Lord, are not thieves but ministers. For the scripture says: Wisdom sent forth her own servants, calling with a lofty proclamation to the mixing-bowl of wine. But philosophy was not sent by the Lord; rather, it came, as scripture says, having been stolen, or given by a thief — whether it was some power or an angel who learned something of the truth and did not remain in it, but breathed this into men, and having stolen it, taught it — not that the Lord was ignorant, he who knew even the ends of things that were to be before the foundation of the world and knew the being of each thing, but he did not prevent it; for the theft that then came to men had a certain benefit, not because the one who purloined it had regard for what was profitable, but because providence directed the outcome of the daring deed toward what was profitable.
I know many who unceasingly fasten upon us and say that the one who does not prevent is also a cause; for they say that the cause of a theft is the one who did not guard against it or did not prevent it, just as the one who did not extinguish a fire when it began is the cause of the conflagration, and the pilot who did not furl the sail is the cause of the shipwreck. Indeed those responsible for such things are punished by the law at once. For to whomever the power to prevent belonged, to that one also the responsibility for what happened is attached. We say to them in reply that a cause is understood in doing, working, and acting, whereas the one who does not prevent is, in this respect, inactive. Further, the cause is joined to the activity, just as the shipwright is joined to the ship's coming into being, and the builder to the house's being erected; but the one who does not prevent is separated from the thing that comes to be. It is for this very reason, indeed, that the thing is accomplished — because the one able to prevent it does not act and does not prevent it. For what does the one who does not prevent actually do? And their argument already runs into absurdity, if indeed, for a wound, they will lay blame not on the dart but on the shield that failed to keep the dart from going through; for they will not blame the thief but the one who did not prevent the theft.
And so too they say it was not Hector who set fire to the vessels of the Greeks, but rather Achilles, since, though he had the power to hold Hector back, he refrained from stopping him; yet Achilles acted out of wrath (and it was in his power both to be wrathful and not to be), and indeed he did not keep off the fire, and perhaps he is a contributing cause; but the devil, being self-determining, was capable both of repenting and of stealing, and he himself bears responsibility for the theft, rather than the Lord, who simply refrained from blocking it. Nor indeed was the gift harmful, so that its prevention should have been called for. But if one must speak precisely with them, let them know that the failure to intervene, which we say occurred with regard to the theft, carries no causal weight whatsoever, whereas the one who actively intervenes is liable to the charge of being a cause. For the one who shields another in front is the cause, for the one he shields, of not being wounded, by preventing him from being wounded; and for Socrates the divine sign was a cause not by failing to prevent but by turning him away, even if it did not urge him on. Neither praises nor blames, neither honors nor punishments would be just, if the soul did not possess authority over its own impulse and its restraint.
but rather, if vice is involuntary. Hence the one who prevents is a cause, while the one who does not prevent rightly judges the soul's own choice, so that God may remain, as far as possible, blameless of evil for us. But since it is choice and impulse that initiate sins, and a mistaken supposition sometimes prevails, being a matter of ignorance and lack of learning — when we are slow to depart from it, he might justly punish us (for indeed to have a fever is involuntary, but when someone has a fever through his own fault and through lack of self-control, we blame him for it) — so also, though vice itself is involuntary (for no one chooses evil as evil, but being led along by the pleasure attached to it, supposing it good, he regards it as something to be taken). Since matters stand thus, it lies within our own power to be freed both from ignorance and from base and pleasurable choice, and, before these, not to give assent to those deceptive appearances. The devil is called a robber and a thief because he has mixed false prophets in among the prophets, just as the tares among the wheat. So all who came before the Lord are thieves and robbers — not the whole of mankind, but rather every false prophet, and everyone who lacked a proper commission from him.
The false prophets, too, had this theft: the prophetic name, being prophets, but of the liar. For the Lord says: You are of your father the devil, and you wish to do the desires of your father. That one was a murderer from the beginning, and he takes no stand upon truth, since truth has no place within him. When he speaks falsehood, he speaks from his own resources, because he is a liar and so is his father. Yet among their falsehoods the false prophets also spoke some true things, and in truth these men prophesied in ecstasy, as ministers of an apostate. The Shepherd, too — the angel of repentance — says to Hermas concerning the false prophet: for he speaks certain true sayings; the devil, you see, fills him up with his own spirit, hoping thereby to shatter some among the righteous. All things, then, are administered from above toward the good, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known, according to the foreknowledge of the ages which he made in Christ. And nothing is opposed to God, nor does anything stand against him, who is Lord and Almighty.
But even the plans and activities of those who have apostatized, being partial, arise from a base disposition, just as bodily diseases do; yet they are governed by universal providence toward a healthful end, even if the cause is disease-producing. It is indeed among the greatest achievements of divine providence that it does not permit the evil sprung from voluntary apostasy to remain idle and fruitless, nor allow it to turn wholly destructive; for the doing of good belongs not only to divine wisdom, virtue, and power — this being, one might say, simply what God is by nature, just as warming belongs to fire's nature and giving light to light's — but above all it is the work of that same wisdom to bring about, through the evils devised by certain persons, some good and useful end, and to make profitable use of what seems base, just as it does with the testimony that comes from trial.
There is, then, even in philosophy — stolen, as it were, by a Prometheus — a small fire, kindled to useful advantage for a fitting light, some trace of wisdom and some motion concerning God. In this sense the philosophers among the Greeks would be thieves and robbers, having taken portions of the truth, before the coming of the Lord, from the Hebrew prophets — not by way of true knowledge, but appropriating them as their own doctrines, some falsifying them, some sophistically working them out through unlearned meddlesomeness, and some also discovering them for themselves; for perhaps they too had received some spirit of perception. Aristotle also agreed with scripture, calling sophistry a theft of wisdom, as we have already noted. The apostle says that the things we speak we speak not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit. For with regard to the prophets he says, we have all received of his fullness — evidently, of Christ's. So the prophets are not thieves. And, the teaching that is mine is not mine, says the Lord, but the Father's who sent me. But regarding thieves, he says, the one who speaks from himself seeks his own glory. Such are the Greeks, self-loving and boastful. And when scripture calls them wise, it does not mean to slander those who are truly wise, but those who merely seem wise to themselves.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 18 ========

"And of these," he says, "I shall bring to nothing the cleverness of the clever, and the discernment of the discerning I shall cast aside." The apostle then goes on to ask: "Where, then, is your sage? Where your scribe? Where your debater of the present era?" — setting the seekers of this age, that is, the philosophers drawn from the nations, over against the scribes, by way of contrast. "Did God not turn the cleverness of this world into folly?" This is equivalent to saying he showed it to be both foolish and not true, as they had supposed it to be. And should you ask the cause of their conceit of wisdom, he will say it is on account of the hardening of their heart, seeing that, within God's own wisdom — that is, the wisdom proclaimed through the prophets — the world failed to recognize him, namely God, by means of the wisdom voiced through the prophets; "it pleased" this God, "through the folly of the preaching" — the folly that seems such to the Greeks — "to save those who believe"; since "the Jews," he says, "ask for signs" as a basis for faith, while "the Greeks seek wisdom," that is, plainly, the so-called compelling arguments and the other syllogisms; "but we proclaim a crucified Jesus Christ, to Jews an offense" — because though knowing the prophecy they refuse to believe its fulfillment — "and to Greeks folly"; for those who merely fancy themselves wise regard it as mythical that a divine son could speak through a man, and that there could exist a son belonging to God, and moreover that this son should have suffered; and it is from this that the preconception born of their own self-conceit persuades them to disbelieve. For the coming of the Savior did not render men foolish, hard of heart, and faithless, but rather perceptive, compliant, and, further, trusting. And those who were unwilling to be persuaded were shown, by their separation from the willing inclination of those who obeyed, to be senseless and unbelieving and foolish; but to those very ones who were called, Jew and Greek alike, Christ stands as God's power and as God's wisdom.
Should we not, then — and this is indeed the better course — take "did God not turn the cleverness of this world into folly" as equivalent to a negative, that is, to "he left it unfoolished," so that the cause of their hard-heartedness should not appear to have come from God, as though he were the one who reduced their cleverness to nonsense? For, on the contrary, though they were wise, they have incurred the greater blame precisely because, being wise, they refused to trust the message; for both the choice and the turning away from the truth were voluntary. Moreover, by "I shall bring to nothing the cleverness of the clever" he means, he says, that it will be eclipsed once set beside the barbarian philosophy that men despise and look down upon — just as a lamp, once eclipsed by the sun, can be said to be "destroyed," because it no longer produces an equal effect. Since, then, all men have been summoned, those who were willing to obey have been named the called. For there is no injustice with God. Accordingly, from each race those who believed became a people set apart. And within the record of the Apostles' deeds you will discover it put down exactly thus: "So, then, those who took his word to heart were given baptism" — while those who were unwilling to be persuaded plainly separated themselves.
To these the prophecy says: "If you are willing and obey me, you shall feed on the good yield of the land," — putting both the choice and the turning away squarely upon us. And the apostle named the teaching that follows the Lord's pattern "God's wisdom," wishing to show that the true philosophy is handed down through the Son. But indeed the man who merely fancies himself wise also has certain exhortations, those given by the apostle bidding men "put on the new man, created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth." "Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak the truth"; "give no opportunity to the devil"; "let him who steals steal no more, but rather let him labor, working what is good." And to "work" is to labor further in the search for truth, together with reasoned well-doing, "so that you may have to share with him who has need," both of worldly abundance and of divine wisdom. For he wishes the word to be thoroughly taught, and the silver to be deposited at the money-tables, carefully tested, so as to be lent out at interest. Hence he adds: "let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth" — and corrupt is that word which comes of self-conceit — "but only such as is good for building up, as the need may be, that it may give grace to those who hear." And a word that comes of necessity from a good God must itself be good. And how is the Savior not good?

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 19 ========

That the Greeks also are attested to teach certain true doctrines, one may consider from this point as well. Paul is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles as saying to the men of the Areopagus: "Athenians, I take note that in every way you are unusually reverent toward the divine. For while going about and examining closely the things you revere, I came upon a shrine bearing this inscription: To a god unknown. That, then, which you honor while not knowing it, I now announce to you plainly. The God who fashioned the cosmos and all it contains, He, since He is master of sky and earth, makes no home in shrines built by human hands, nor does He receive service from human hands as if lacking something, seeing that it is He who supplies to every creature breath, life, and all else besides. From a single ancestor He brought forth the whole human race to settle across the entire surface of the earth, fixing beforehand the seasons allotted them and the limits of where they would dwell, so that they would search for the divine, and perhaps grope toward Him and come upon Him, though truly He stands at no distance from any single one of us; for it is in Him that we exist, are set in motion, and possess our very being, just as certain poets among your own people have declared: For we too belong to His lineage." From this it is clear that, even while employing poetic examples from the Phenomena of Aratus, he approves what has been well said among the Greeks, and by means of the "unknown god" hints that the Greeks, through a kind of circumlocution, honored the creator God, though they needed to receive and learn Him truly through the Son, unto full knowledge.
"For this reason therefore I sent you to the nations," He says, "to open their eyes, so that they might turn away from the dark into the light, and away from the dominion of Satan toward God, so that they might obtain release from their sins and a share among the ones made holy through trust in me." These, then, the eyes of the blind that are opened, are the knowledge of the Father through the Son, the apprehension of the Greek circumlocution; and the turning from the power of Satan is the change away from sin, through which slavery had come about. Yet we do not simply accept all philosophy without qualification, but that philosophy of which Socrates speaks in Plato: "For indeed, as those concerned with the mysteries say, many are the wand-bearers, but few are the bacchants" — hinting that many are the called, but few the chosen. He adds, indeed, plainly: "These are, in my opinion, none other than those who have philosophized rightly. Of these, so far as I was able, I have left nothing undone in my life, but have striven in every way to become one of them. Whether I strove rightly, and whether we have accomplished anything, we shall know clearly when we arrive there, God willing, a little later."
Does it not seem to you that he makes clear, on the ground of faith, from the Hebrew scriptures, the hope of the righteous after death? And in the Demodocus, if indeed the treatise is Plato's, he says that this is not what it is to philosophize — to live poring over the arts, nor to be widely learned — but something else, since I for my part used to think even this a reproach. For he knew, I suppose, that a wealth of learning does not, by Heraclitus's own reckoning, instill genuine insight. And in Republic Book Five: "Shall we then classify all these, and others like them, as skilled reckoners of particular subjects and craftsmen of minor arts?" "Not at all," I said, "rather as men resembling philosophers." "Then whom do you mean by the genuine ones?" he asked. "Those devoted to gazing upon truth," I answered. "For philosophy has no place in geometry, built as it is on unproven premises and assumptions, nor in music, which rests on guesswork, nor in astronomy, which is stuffed with physical, flowing, and probable arguments, but in the very knowledge of the good itself and of truth, those other studies being ways, as it were, toward the good." So that not even Plato himself grants that the encyclical education accomplishes the good, but that it cooperates toward rousing and jointly training the soul for things intelligible.
Whether then they say that the Greeks uttered some fragment of the true philosophy by chance, the chance itself is of divine providence (for no one will deify mere automatism, given its favor toward us); or whether by coincidence, the coincidence is not without providence; or again, whether one should say that the Greeks had a natural conception — we know that the maker of nature is one, on which ground we have also called righteousness natural; or whether, finally, they had a common mind — let us consider who is the father of this and of the righteousness that goes with the distribution of mind. For if one speaks of a preliminary utterance and charges them with a simultaneous utterance, one is speaking of forms of prophecy. Yes indeed, others wish it said that certain things were spoken by the philosophers according to an impression of truth. The divinely inspired apostle writes concerning us: "For we now see as through a mirror," knowing ourselves by reflection upon Him, and from the divine element within us contemplating together, as far as possible, the creative cause; "for you have seen," he says, "your brother, you have seen your God." I take it that it is the Savior who is called God to us at present; but once the flesh has been set aside, it will be face to face, then already in a defining and comprehending manner, when the heart has become pure. And by impression and by partial manifestation those among the Greeks who philosophized with precision see God indirectly; for such are the true images that arise from weakness, just as an image is seen in water, and as we see things through transparent and translucent bodies.
Well then Solomon says: "He who sows righteousness produces faith." And there are those who, sowing their own, make more. And again: "Attend to the green things in the field, and you shall shear the grass, and gather in the ripe hay, that you may have sheep for clothing." You see how one must also take thought for outward covering and protection. "And you shall come to know surely the souls of your flock." For when the gentiles, lacking the law, nonetheless perform what the law requires as a matter of instinct, such people, though without the law, stand as their own law, their uncircumcised state observing the law's statutes, according to the apostle, existing both prior to the law and prior to its arrival. And drawing, as it were, a comparison between those coming from philosophy and those termed heretics, the word states quite plainly: "A neighbor close by is worth more than a kinsman far away; but the one who props himself on falsehoods herds the breezes and chases feathered flyers." I do not think the saying here refers to philosophy. And yet in many respects philosophy attempts and argues by probabilities, but the word here strikes at the heresies. He adds, indeed: "For he has abandoned the ways of his own vineyard, and has wandered from the paths of his own farming." These are the ways that abandon the church that is from the beginning. At once the one who falls into a heresy travels through a waterless wilderness, having abandoned the God who truly is, deserted of God, seeking waterless water, going through the uninhabitable and thirsty land, gathering barrenness with his hands.
"And to those lacking understanding I make my appeal," says Wisdom, speaking, clearly, of those concerned with the heresies, "gladly taste of hidden bread and of stolen water sweet" — bread and water not in reference to certain others, but to those among the heresies who use bread and water in the offering, not according to the rule of the church, scripture plainly designating this. For there are those who even give thanks over plain water alone. "But leap away, do not linger in her place" — by "place" meaning the assembly, not calling it "church," a name reserved for the true one. Then it adds: "For thus you will cross over strange water" — meaning that heretical baptism is reckoned not one's own and genuine water. "And you will pass over a strange river" — the one that carries off and drags down into the sea, into which the one turned aside from the steadfastness that is according to truth is delivered, swept along again into the heathen and disorderly waves of life.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 20 ========

Just as the many men who haul a ship down to the sea would not each be called causes in the plural, but rather one cause arising out of many (for no single one of them is the cause of the ship's being hauled down, but only in conjunction with the others), so too philosophy, being an inquiry into truth, is taken up as a joint contributor toward the apprehension of truth, not being the cause of that apprehension, but a cause and co-worker together with other things. And perhaps what is a joint-cause may also be called simply a cause. So too, though happiness is one thing, the virtues, being several, are its causes. And just as the sun, fire, the bath, and clothing all contribute toward being warmed, so, though truth is one, many are the things taken up together in the search for it, while the actual finding of it comes through the Son. If, at any rate, we consider it, virtue according to its power is one, yet it happens that, as it comes to reside in these particular matters, it is called prudence, in those, temperance, and in others, courage or justice. By the same reasoning, then, though truth is one, geometry possesses its own particular truth, music likewise has a truth proper to itself, and among the Greeks, right philosophy would hold a truth belonging to it. But this truth alone, the sovereign one which we are taught at the side of the Son of God, is unassailable.
In this way, we say, one and the same drachma, when given to the ship-owner, is called passage-fare, but to the tax-collector, toll, and rent to the landlord, wages to the teacher, and earnest-money to the seller. So too each thing called by the common name of either virtue or truth is the cause only of its own particular effect. It is by the combined use of these that living happily comes about (for we ought not, after all, to be happy merely about names), when we call the right life happiness, and call happy the person whose soul has been adorned with virtue. And if philosophy, too, contributes from a distance toward the discovery of truth, reaching by various approaches toward that knowledge of ours which lays hold of truth directly, still it does contribute, for the one who has been in earnest to grasp knowledge by reasoning. Yet Greek truth is distinguished from ours, even though it has come to share the same name — distinguished both by the greatness of its knowledge and by a more authoritative demonstration, and by divine power, and by other such things; for we have been taught by God, being instructed in truly sacred writings at the side of the Son of God; hence they do not move souls in the same way, but by a different kind of teaching.
But if, on account of those fond of finding fault, we must also draw the distinction, calling philosophy a joint-cause and co-worker of the true apprehension, being an inquiry into truth, we shall acknowledge it to be a preliminary training for the man of true knowledge, without setting down the joint-cause as the cause, nor indeed the co-worker as what holds the thing together, nor as that without which philosophy could not be; since nearly everyone, without the education of the general curriculum and Greek philosophy, and some even without letters, moved by that divine and barbarian philosophy, have received in power, through faith, the account concerning God, having been instructed by a wisdom that worked of itself. What one thing does along with another, being incomplete to act by itself alone, we call a co-worker and joint-cause, either from being a cause together with a cause, or from becoming, by coming together with another, what is named a cause, while being unable by itself to furnish the effect that is in accordance with truth. And yet philosophy by itself once did make the Greeks righteous, though not with a view to universal righteousness, toward which it is found to be a co-worker (just as the first and second step are for the man going up to the upper room, and the grammar-teacher for the one who is going to philosophize); nor is it the case that, by its removal, the universal reason is deficient, or truth is done away with, since sight too contributes to truth, and hearing, and speech, yet it is the mind that recognizes it properly. But of the co-workers, some furnish a greater power, others a lesser. Clarity, at any rate, co-works toward the handing on of truth, and dialectic toward not falling prey to the heresies that come rushing in.
Self-sufficient, then, and in need of nothing is the teaching that comes through the Savior, being the power and wisdom of God, while Greek philosophy, coming alongside it, does not make truth more powerful, but by rendering the sophistic attack upon it powerless, and by deflecting the treacherous plots laid against truth, it has fittingly been called the fence and the wall of the vineyard. And the one, the truth according to faith, is necessary for life like bread; but the preliminary training is like a side-dish and a dessert, or, as the Theban Pindar says, a sweet morsel eaten at the close of dinner. Scripture has said this outright: the guileless man who has understanding will become more shrewd, and the wise man will receive knowledge. And the one who speaks from himself seeks his own glory, says the Lord, but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is truthful, and there is no unrighteousness in him. Conversely, then, the man who appropriates the things of the barbarians and boasts of them as his own, thereby increasing his own reputation and falsifying the truth, does wrong. This man Scripture calls a thief. It says, at any rate: my son, do not become a liar, for lying leads on to theft. Now the thief, whatever he has stolen, does in fact truly possess it, whether it be gold or silver or a saying or a doctrine. So then, in part, the things they have stolen are true, but they know them only by conjecture and by the logical necessities of the arguments. Having been taught as disciples, then, they will come to know them with true comprehension.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 21 ========

We shall discuss a little later how the doctrines of the philosophers were pilfered from the Hebrews; but first, as follows in order, we must now speak of the times of Moses, by which it will be shown beyond dispute that the philosophy of the Hebrews is the most ancient of all wisdom. Now these matters have been treated accurately by Tatian in his Address to the Greeks, and likewise by Cassian, in the opening book of his work called Exegetica; nevertheless our undertaking requires that we too survey again what has already been stated on this topic. Apion the grammarian, then, surnamed Pleistonices, in book four of his history of Egypt, although disposed with hostility toward the Hebrews (being himself Egyptian by birth, so much so that he even wrote a treatise against the Jews), when he mentions Amosis, king of the Egyptians, and what was done under his rule, cites as his witness Ptolemy of Mendes. And his words run thus: "Amosis razed Avaris, living at the same period as Inachus the Argive, as Ptolemy of Mendes recorded within his Chronicles." Now this Ptolemy was a priest, and having laid out, across three complete volumes, the acts of the Egyptian kings, he states that under Amosis, king of Egypt, with Moses as leader, the Jews made their departure from Egypt; from which one gathers that Moses lived in the era of Inachus.
Of Greek affairs the most ancient are those of Argos, that is, those beginning with Inachus, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus teaches in his Chronicles; and of these, Attic affairs, beginning with the two-natured Cecrops (himself likewise earth-born), are, as Tatian states in his own account, forty generations more recent, while Arcadian affairs, beginning with Pelasgus (who is also said to be earth-born), come nine generations later still. Later than both of these by yet more generations are the Phthiotic affairs, beginning with Deucalion. Counting down to the Trojan war from Inachus, some twenty generations, or one beyond that, are reckoned, amounting roughly to upward of four hundred years. But if Assyrian history is many years senior to Greek history, as Ctesias claims, then Moses' exodus from Egypt, which happened during the era of the Egyptian Amosis and the Argive Inachus, will turn out to fall in year four hundred and two of the Assyrian empire, and year thirty-two of the eighth dynasty, that ruled by Belochus. Now within Greece, during the era of Phoroneus, successor to Inachus, there took place the deluge of Ogyges and the founding of the Sicyonian kingdom—first under Aegialeus, then Europs, then Telchis—together with the reign of Cres over Crete. For Acusilaus records that Phoroneus was mankind's very first man; hence the author of the Phoronis likewise names him father of mortals.
Hence Plato, in the Timaeus, echoing Acusilaus, writes: and wishing on one occasion to draw them into a discourse concerning antiquity, he sets out to recount for them the oldest traditions belonging to this city, starting with Phoroneus, called the first, and with Niobe, and the events following the deluge. During Phorbas' era came Actaeus, whence Attica takes its name Actaea. During Triopas' era came Prometheus, Atlas, Epimetheus, the two-natured Cecrops, and Io. During Crotopus' era came the great burning under Phaethon and the flood under Deucalion. During Sthenelus' era came both Amphictyon's kingship and Danaus's landing in the Peloponnese, plus Dardanus's founding of Dardania—whom, Homer says, cloud-gathering Zeus fathered first—and also Europa's crossing from Phoenicia over to Crete. During Lynceus' era came the maiden's abduction, the founding of the holy precinct at Eleusis, Triptolemus's cultivation of grain, Cadmus's coming to Thebes, and Minos's reign. During Proetus' era came Eumolpus's war upon the Athenians. During Acrisius' era came Pelops's crossing from Phrygia, Ion's coming to Athens, a second man named Cecrops, and the feats of Perseus and Dionysus, together with Orpheus and Musaeus.
In year eighteen of Agamemnon's reign, Troy fell, which was also year one of Demophon son of Theseus ruling at Athens; this happened on Thargelion's twelfth day, according to Dionysius of Argos—though Agias and Dercylus name Panemus's twenty-third, and Hellanicus likewise names Thargelion's twelfth. Certain Attic historians instead give the twenty-third, in Menestheus's final regnal year, at full moon: "It was midnight," writes the poet who composed the Little Iliad,"and the moon shone brightly as it rose"; still others place it on that same date in Scirophorion. Theseus, an imitator of Heracles, predates the Trojan events by one generation. In any case, Homer names Tlepolemus, a son of Heracles, as campaigning against Troy.
Moses, then, is demonstrated to precede Dionysus's deification by six hundred and four years, given that Dionysus was made divine in Perseus's thirty-second regnal year, as Apollodorus states in his Chronicles. Counting from Dionysus down to Heracles and the comrades of Jason who sailed aboard the Argo, sixty-three years are counted; Asclepius and the Dioscuri sailed together with that crew, as Apollonius of Rhodes attests within the Argonautica. From Heracles's reign at Argos down to the deification of both Heracles and Asclepius, thirty-eight years are counted, per the chronicler Apollodorus. From that point to Castor and Polydeuces's deification, fifty-three years. Around this same span falls Troy's capture too. But if we ought also to trust the poet Hesiod, let us hear his words: "And to Zeus, Atlas's daughter Maia bore glorious Hermes, herald among the immortals, having entered his sacred bed; and Cadmus's daughter Semele bore him a splendid son, having joined with him in love—joyous Dionysus."
Cadmus, Semele's father, arrived at Thebes during Lynceus's era and became the one who introduced letters to Greece, while Triopas is contemporary with Isis, seven generations removed from Inachus (they claim Isis is also styled Io, on account of her wandering across the whole world); and Istrus, writing on the Egyptian colony, calls her Prometheus's daughter. Prometheus, in Triopas's era, falls seven generations after Moses, so that even prior to mankind's origin according to Greek reckoning, Moses is already seen to have lived. And Leon, author of a work on Egypt's gods, states that Isis is termed Demeter by the Greeks, who during Lynceus's era falls eleven generations after Moses. And Apis, king of Argos, founded Memphis, as Aristippus relates in the opening volume of his Arcadica. This man, Aristeas of Argos says, bore the surname Sarapis, and is the very one the Egyptians worship; while Nymphodorus of Amphipolis, in volume three of his Customs of Asia, states that the bull Apis, upon dying and being embalmed, was set in a coffin within the shrine of the honored deity, hence called Soroapis, and later, through a certain local custom, Sarapis.
Apis ranks third from Inachus. Indeed, Leto too shares her era with Tityus, for "Tityus outraged Leto, Zeus's honored consort"—and Tityus lived alongside Tantalus. Fittingly, then, Pindar the Boeotian writes: "In time Apollo was born"—nothing strange in this, seeing he is even found in service to Admetus for a whole great year, together with Heracles. Zethus and Amphion, who first discovered music, lived around Cadmus's generation. And should anyone claim Phemonoe was first to deliver oracles, to Acrisius, let that person know that twenty-seven years beyond Phemonoe comes the circle of Orpheus, Musaeus, and Linus, who taught Heracles. Homer and Hesiod are considerably later than the Trojan events, and after them, later still by far, come the Greek lawgivers—Lycurgus and Solon—and the Seven Sages, along with the circle of Pherecydes of Syros and great Pythagoras, who lived somewhere around the era of the Olympiads, as already demonstrated. And so, regarding most of the Greek gods, not merely those termed wise men and poets, Moses has been shown by us to be the elder.
Nor is he alone in this, for the Sibyl too predates Orpheus; many accounts circulate concerning both her name and the oracles credited to her renown—that, being Phrygian, she went by Artemis, and that, upon reaching Delphi, she sang: "O Delphians, attendants of far-shooting Apollo, I have come to declare the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus, being angry at my own brother Apollo." There is also a second Sibyl, the Erythraean one, called Herophile; Heraclides of Pontus records both in his treatise on prophetic oracles. I set aside here the Egyptian Sibyl, along with the Italian one who lived at Carmalus in Rome, whose son Evander established in Rome the Pan-shrine known as the Lupercal.
Having reached this point, it is worthwhile for us to examine as well the chronology of the remaining prophets who arose among the Hebrews following Moses.
After Moses' life ended, Joshua takes over leadership of the people, fighting for sixty-five years and then resting a further twenty-five in the good land. As the book of Joshua records it, that same man led in Moses' place for twenty-seven years. Then, having sinned, the Hebrews were delivered into the hands of Chushan-rishathaim, ruler of Mesopotamia, for a span of eight years, according to the book of Judges; but afterward, having implored God, they gained as leader Othniel, Caleb's younger brother from the tribe of Judah, who, after killing the king of Mesopotamia, governed the people for fifty consecutive years. Sinning once more, they were delivered to Eglon, ruler of the Moabites, for eighteen years; and upon turning back again, Ehud governed them for eighty years—a left-handed man from the tribe of Ephraim; this same man killed Eglon.
When Ehud died, they sinned once more and were handed to Jabin, ruler of Canaan, for twenty years; during that period Deborah, spouse of Lapidoth from the tribe of Ephraim, spoke prophecy, while Uzzi son of Bukki served as high priest. Under her guidance, Barak son of Abinoam, from the tribe of Naphtali, mustered his forces against Sisera, Jabin's chief commander, and prevailed; from then Deborah governed the people as judge across forty years. After her death, the people sinned again and were handed to the Midianites for seven years. During this span Gideon, from the tribe of Manasseh, son of Joash, marched to war with three hundred twelve thousand men and, after destroying the enemy, governed for forty years. His son Abimelech then governed after him for three years. Tola son of Puah, son of Dodo, from the tribe of Ephraim, followed, governing for twenty-three years. After him the people, sinning yet again, were handed to the Ammonites for eighteen years.
Upon their repentance, Jephthah of Gilead, from the tribe of Manasseh, led them and governed for six years; after him Ibzan of Bethlehem, from the tribe of Judah, governed seven years, then Elon the Zebulunite eight years, then Abdon the Ephraimite eight years. Some combine Elon's eight years with Ibzan's seven. And after him the people, sinning yet again, fell under Philistine domination for forty years. Upon turning back, Samson, from the tribe of Dan, led them, having beaten the foreigners in battle. He governed for twenty years. After him, no ruler having arisen, Eli the priest served the people as judge for forty years. Samuel the prophet succeeded him, and in Samuel's era Saul reigned, holding power twenty-seven years. Samuel is also the one who anointed David.
Samuel died two years prior to Saul, under the high priesthood of Abimelech. It was this Abimelech who anointed Saul king, the first man to rule over Israel once the era of judges had closed; the total count of years down to Samuel comes to four hundred sixty-three years and seven months. Then, per the first book of Kingdoms, Saul reigned twenty years, having been reconfirmed as king. Following Saul's death, David reigns a second time, at Hebron—Jesse's son from the tribe of Judah—for forty years, as the second book of Kingdoms records; Abiathar son of Ahimelech, of Eli's line, served as high priest, and Gad and Nathan prophesied during his time. From Joshua son of Nun until David took the kingdom, then, some count four hundred fifty years, while by the chronology laid out here, five hundred twenty-three years and seven months are reckoned up to David's death.
After these events Solomon, David's son, reigned forty years. During his time Nathan went on prophesying, and it was he who urged Solomon regarding the temple's construction; Ahijah of Shiloh likewise prophesied, and both David and Solomon were themselves prophets in their own right. Zadok the high priest was first to minister within the temple Solomon erected, being eighth in line from Aaron, the very first high priest. From Moses to Solomon's era, then, some count five hundred ninety-five years, others five hundred seventy-six. But should one take the four hundred fifty years running from Joshua to David and add to them Moses' own forty campaign-years, plus the further eighty years he had lived before the Hebrews' departure from Egypt occurred, and add on top of these the forty years of David's reign, the grand total would reach six hundred ten years.
But our chronology proceeds with greater precision if, to the five hundred twenty-three years and seven months running down to David's death, one adds Moses' hundred twenty years along with Solomon's forty years; the total, down to Solomon's death, will then reach a span of six hundred eighty-three years plus seven months. It was Hiram who gave his own daughter in marriage to Solomon, and it was during this period that Menelaus also arrived in Phoenicia following Troy's capture, as Menander of Pergamum and Laetus report in their Phoenician History. After Solomon, his son Rehoboam reigned seventeen years, with Abimelech son of Zadok as high priest. In his reign, once the kingdom had split, Jeroboam—Solomon's former servant, from the tribe of Ephraim—reigned over Samaria; Ahijah the Shilonite continued prophesying, as did Shemaiah son of Elam, and also the man who journeyed out of Judah to confront Jeroboam and prophesied at the altar.
After him his son Abijam reigned for twenty-three years, and likewise his own son Asa for forty-one; this man, in old age, suffered from gout, with Jehu son of Hanani prophesying in his day. After him his son Jehoshaphat reigned for twenty-five years; during that time Elijah the Tishbite prophesied, along with Micaiah son of Imlah and Obadiah son of Hanani. And alongside Micaiah there was also a false prophet, Zedekiah son of Chenaanah. Next comes the reign of Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat for eight years, during which Elijah prophesied, and after Elijah, Elisha son of Shaphat. In that period the people of Samaria ate the dung of doves, and even their own children. Jehoshaphat's era spans from the closing part of the third book of Kingdoms into the fourth. Under Jehoram, Elijah was taken up, and Elisha son of Shaphat, then forty years old, began a six-year span of prophesying. Ahaziah then reigned one year; during his time Elisha still prophesied, together with Obadiah.
After him Gotholia, the mother of Ozias, rules for eight years, and puts to death her brother's own children, being herself of the house of Achaab. But the sister of Ozias, Iosabaia, stole away Ozias's son Ioas and later invested him with the kingdom. Under this Gotholia, Elissaeus still prophesies, and after her, as I said before, Ioas reigns, the one saved by Iosabaia, wife of Iodae the high priest, and the total comes to forty years. So there is gathered, from Solomon to the death of Elissaeus the prophet, by some counts one hundred five years, by other counts one hundred two, though our present chronological table gives, reckoning from Solomon's reign, one hundred eighty-one years.
Reckoning from the fall of Troy down to Homer's birth, Philochorus counts one hundred eighty years, later than the Ionian colonization; but Aristarchus, in his commentaries on Archilochus, says he is reported to belong to the time of the Ionian colonization, which occurred one hundred and forty years after the Trojan war. Apollodorus places him one hundred years after the Ionian colonization, in the reign of Agesilaus son of Doryssaeus over the Lacedaemonians, so that Lycurgus the lawgiver, still a young man, fell within his time. Euthymenes, in his Chronicles, says he flourished alongside Hesiod under Acastus in Chios, about the two-hundredth year after the fall of Ilium. Archemachus too, in the third book of his Euboean History, holds this same opinion, so that both he and Hesiod turn out younger than Elissaeus the prophet. And if one prefers the view of Crates the grammarian, holding that Homer's life fell near the return of the Heraclidae, eighty years after the fall of Ilium, he will again be found later than Solomon, in whose time occurred the arrival of Menelaus in Phoenicia, as has been said before. Eratosthenes puts Homer's period after the hundredth year from the fall of Ilium. Theopompus, moreover, in the forty-third book of his Philippica, records that Homer came into being five hundred years following the men who made war against Ilium. Euphorion, in his work On the Aleuadae, places him during Gyges's day, whose reign started at the eighteenth Olympiad, and whom he says was the first to be called tyrant. Sosibius the Laconian, in his Register of Times, places Homer in Charillus son of Polydectes's eighth regnal year. Now Charillus reigns sixty-four years, after whom his son Nicander reigns thirty-nine years; in the thirty-fourth year of this Nicander, he says, the first Olympiad was established. So that Homer would be about ninety years before the establishment of the Olympic games.
After Ioas, his son Amasias succeeds to the kingdom for thirty-nine years; after him likewise his son Ozias for fifty-two years, and he died a leper. In his time Amos prophesies, and Esaias his son, and Osee son of Beeri, and Ionas son of Amathi from Geth-chober, who preached to the Ninevites, the one who came forth from the sea-monster. Then Ionathan son of Ozias reigns sixteen years; in his time Esaias still prophesies, and Osee, and Michaias the Morasthite, and Ioel son of Bathouel.
Him his son Achaz succeeds for sixteen years; in his fifteenth year Israel was carried away to Babylon, and Salmanasar king of the Assyrians resettled those in Samaria among the Medes and in Babylon. Again Achaz is succeeded by Osee for eight years, then Ezekias for twenty-nine years. To this man, for his holiness, when he came near the end of his life, God grants through Esaias fifteen more years of life, by the turning back of the sun. Until this time Esaias and Osee and Michaias continue prophesying. These men are reported to have flourished later than Lycurgus, lawgiver of the Spartans; Dieuchidas, in book four of his Megarian History, dates Lycurgus's prime to roughly the two hundred ninetieth year following Ilium's fall; and Esaias, reckoned from the reign of Solomon, in whose time Menelaus was shown to have gone to Phoenicia, appears still prophesying in the three-hundredth year, together with Michaias and Osee and Ioel son of Bathouel.
After Ezekias his son Manasses reigns fifty-five years, then his son Amos two years, after whom his son Iosias, most devoted to the Law, reigns thirty-one years. This man laid the bones of men upon the bones of the idols, as it is written in Leviticus. In his eighteenth year the Passover was kept, since which, [gap], from Samuel it had not been performed in the intervening time. Then too Chelkias the priest, father of the prophet Jeremias, having come upon the book of the Law laid up in the temple and having read it, died. In this man's time Olda prophesies, and Sophonias, and Jeremias. And in the time of Jeremias, Ananias arises as a false prophet. This Iosias, having disregarded Jeremias the prophet, was put to death by Nechao, Egypt's king, at the Euphrates river, having met him while marching out against the Assyrians.
Iosias is succeeded by Iechonias, also called Ioachas, his son, for three months and ten days. Nechao, Egypt's king, put him in chains and carried him off to Egypt, setting up in his place his brother Ioakeim as king, subject to tribute on the land, for eleven years. After him his namesake Ioakeim reigns three months, then Sedekias eleven years. And until this time Jeremias continues prophesying, and Bouzi and Ourias son of Samaias prophesy also, and Ambakoum together with him, and here the history of the Hebrew kings comes to an end. So there are, from the birth of Moses until this deportation, by some counts nine hundred seventy-two years; by the precise chronography, however, one thousand eighty-five years, six months and ten days; while counting from David's reign down to the captivity brought about by the Chaldaeans, four hundred and fifty-two years, six months, but as the precise reckoning of times among us gathers it, four hundred and eighty-two years, six months, ten days.
In Sedekias's twelfth regnal year, Nabuchodonosor, seventy years before the Persian dominion, campaigned against the Phoenicians and the Jews, as Berossus says in his Chaldean History. And Iobas, writing about the Assyrians, admits that he took his history from Berossus, bearing witness to the man's truthfulness. So then Nabuchodonosor, having blinded Sedekias, leads him away to Babylon and resettles the whole people (and the captivity lasts seventy years) except for a few who fled to Egypt. Jeremias and Ambakoum still prophesy even in the time of Sedekias, and in the fifth year of his reign, in Babylon, Iezekiel prophesies; after him Naoum the prophet, then Daniel; and again after him Aggaeus and Zacharias prophesy under Darius the first, for two years, after whom the Angel, one of the twelve.
After Aggaeus and Zacharias, Neemias, chief cupbearer of Artaxerxes, son of Acheli the Israelite, builds the city Jerusalem and repairs the temple. In this captivity occur Esther and Mardochaeus, whose record has come down to us, together with that of the Maccabees. Within this same captivity, Misael, Ananias, and Azarias, having refused to worship the image, were thrown into a furnace of fire and were saved through the appearance of an angel. Then also Daniel, because of a dragon, was thrown by Ambakoum into a den of lions, and, fed by the providence of God, was brought out safe on the seventh day. Here too took place the sign of Ionas, and Tobias, through Raphael the angel, takes Sarra as his wife, the demon having already killed her first seven bridegrooms; once Tobias was wed, his father Tobit regained his sight.
Here Zorobabel, having prevailed by wisdom over his rivals, obtains from Darius the renewal of Jerusalem by purchase, and together with Esdras returns to the ancestral land; through him comes about the ransoming of the people and the recognition and renewal of the inspired oracles, and the saving Passover is celebrated and the dissolution of foreign intermarriage. Cyrus too had already proclaimed beforehand the restoration of the Hebrews, and when the promise was fulfilled under Darius, the feast of the dedication is celebrated, as also had been done at the tabernacle. And the total years, together with those of the captivity, up to the restoration of the people, amount, reckoned from the birth of Moses, to 1,155 years, plus six months and ten additional days; reckoned instead from David's reign, by some accounts five hundred and fifty-two years, but more precisely five hundred and seventy-two years, with the same six months and ten days added.
There is fulfilled, then, from the captivity that occurred in the time of Jeremias the prophet into Babylon, what was spoken by Daniel the prophet, running thus: seventy weeks have been determined upon your people and upon the holy city, for sin to be finished, and for sins to be sealed up, and for iniquities to be blotted out, and for atonement to be made, and for everlasting righteousness to be brought in, and for vision and prophet to be sealed, and for the anointing of the holy of holies. And you shall know and understand, from the going forth of the word to restore and to build Jerusalem until an anointed leader, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks, and it shall return and a broad place and a wall shall be built, and the times shall be emptied out. And after the sixty-two weeks the anointed one shall be cut off, and there is no judgment for him. Together with the leader who comes, he shall bring ruin upon the city and its sanctuary; they shall perish as in a flood, and the war shall run its course, cut short by desolations, until the very end. For a single week he shall make firm a covenant with many; and at that week's halfway point, my offering and libation shall cease; upon the temple shall stand the abomination that desolates, and until the appointed completion, desolation shall be poured out to the full. In that week's middle he shall put an end to the incense of sacrifice and to the desolating wing, until the completion, hastened, of the desolation decreed.
That the temple was built in seven weeks is clear; for it is also written in Esdras. And thus the anointed one, leader and king of the Jews, came into being when the seven weeks were fulfilled in Jerusalem, and across those sixty-two weeks Judaea remained at peace, untouched by war, and our Lord Christ -- himself the Holy of Holies -- arrived, brought the vision and the prophecy to completion, and in those same sixty-two weeks was anointed in the flesh by his Father's spirit, just as the prophet declared. Then, in the final week, Nero, reigning at the time, occupied its first half and raised the abomination in the holy city Jerusalem; partway through that week he was killed, along with Otho, Galba and Vitellius, until Vespasian gained the upper hand, demolished Jerusalem, and left the sanctuary in ruins. And that these things are so is plain, at least to one capable of understanding, according to what the prophet has said.
When, then, the eleventh year was completed, at the beginning of the following year, in the reign of Ioakeim, the captivity into Babylon takes place, under king Nabuchodonosor, in his seventh year as king of the Assyrians, while Ouaphres was king of the Egyptians in his second year, and Philip held the archonship at Athens during the forty-eighth Olympiad's opening year; and the captivity lasted seventy years, coming to a close in Darius son of Hystaspes's second regnal year, who became king of the Persians and Assyrians and Egyptians, in whose time, as I said before, Aggaeus and Zacharias and the Angel, one of the twelve, prophesy, and Jesus son of Iosedec was high priest. And in that same king's second year -- this Darius, whom Herodotus credits with ending the Magi's rule -- Zorobabel son of Salathiel is sent to raise up and adorn the temple in Jerusalem.
The times of the Persian kings, then, are gathered thus: Cyrus occupies the throne thirty years, followed by Cambyses for nineteen, then a Darius for forty-six years, then Xerxes for twenty-six years, then Artaxerxes for forty-one years, next another Darius for eight years, then a second Artaxerxes for forty-two years, then Ochus for eight years, and finally Arses for three years. The total of the Persian years comes together to two hundred and thirty-five. And having overthrown this Darius, Alexander the Macedonian begins to reign in the years next following. Likewise, then, the times of the Macedonian kings are set down thus. Alexander eighteen years; Ptolemy, son of Lagus, holds power forty years; Ptolemy Philadelphus, twenty-seven years; next Euergetes, twenty-five years; next Philopator, seventeen years; following him Epiphanes, twenty-four years; then Philometor takes over and rules thirty-five years; after him Physcon, twenty-nine years; next Lathurus, thirty-six years; and last the one called Dionysus, twenty-nine years.
After all these Cleopatra reigned twenty-two years, after whom the reign of Cleopatra's children lasted eighteen days. The total, then, of the times of the Macedonian kings comes together to three hundred and twelve years, eighteen days. It is shown, then, that those who prophesied under Darius son of Hystaspes, in the second year of his reign — Aggaeus and Zacharias and the Angel, one of the twelve — prophesying during the forty-eighth Olympiad's first year, predate Pythagoras -- who is placed at the sixty-second Olympiad -- and predate Thales, eldest of the sages among the Greeks, whose life fell around the fiftieth Olympiad. And the sages who are counted together with Thales were his contemporaries, as Andron says in his Tripod. For Heraclitus, being later than Pythagoras, mentions him in his treatise.
Whence, without dispute, the first Olympiad would be later than the age of the aforesaid prophets, together with the so-called seven sages, and it is shown to be later than the Trojan events by four hundred and seven years. It is easy, then, to see that Solomon, whose life fell in Menelaus's day (that is, at the time of the Trojan events), was many years older than the sages among the Greeks. And by how many years Moses in turn precedes Solomon has been shown by us before. Alexander, surnamed Polyhistor, in his treatise On the Jews, has recorded certain letters, of Solomon to Ouaphres king of Egypt and to the Tyrians of Phoenicia, and their letters in turn to Solomon, from which it is shown that Ouaphres dispatched eighty thousand Egyptian workers toward the temple's construction, and the other king an equal number together with a Tyrian architect from a Jewish mother of the tribe of David, as is written there, Hyperon by name.
Furthermore, Onomacritus the Athenian, to whom the poems attributed to Orpheus are said to belong, is found under the rule of the sons of Peisistratus, about the fiftieth Olympiad, while Orpheus, who sailed with Heracles, was the teacher of Musaeus; for Amphion precedes the Trojan events by two generations, and Demodocus and Phemius flourished after the fall of Ilium (the one among the Phaeacians, the other among the suitors) for their skill on the lyre. And they say that the oracles attributed to Musaeus belong to Onomacritus, and that the Crater of Orpheus belongs to Zopyrus of Heraclea, and the Descent into Hades to Prodicus of Samos. Ion of Chios, in his Triagmoi, records that Pythagoras too ascribed certain things to Orpheus. Epigenes, in his treatise Concerning the Poems Ascribed to Orpheus, states that the Descent into Hades and the Sacred Discourse should be credited to Cercops the Pythagorean, and the Robe and the Physika to Brontinus. Some, too, place Terpander in ancient times; Hellanicus, for his part, records that his life fell within Midas's era, while Phanias, placing Lesches of Lesbos earlier than Terpander, holds that Terpander came after Archilochus, and adds that Lesches beat Arctinus in a poetic contest; and Xanthus the Lydian says that about the eighteenth Olympiad (though according to Dionysius, about the fifteenth) Thasos was founded, so that it is clear that Archilochus was already known after the twentieth Olympiad. At any rate he mentions the destruction of the Magnesians, which had happened recently. Simonides, then, is placed in the time of Archilochus, and Callinus somewhat earlier; for of the Magnesians, Archilochus speaks of them as destroyed, while Callinus speaks of them as still flourishing; and Eumelus of Corinth, being earlier, is said to have come upon Archias, the founder of Syracuse.
We have been led to say this because they place the poets of the Cycle among the very ancient ones. It is also reported that among the Greeks there have already been many oracle-mongers, such as the two Bakides (one Boeotian, the other Arcadian), who foretold many things to many people. By the counsel of Amphilytus the Athenian, Peisistratus too established his tyranny, Amphilytus having revealed the right moment for the attack. Let there be silence, then, about Cometes of Crete, Cinyras of Cyprus, Admetus of Thessaly, Aristaeus of Cyrene, Amphiaraus of Athens, Timoxenus of Corcyra, Demaenetus of Phocaea, Epigenes of Thespiae, Nicias of Carystus, Ariston, another Thessalian, Dionysius, a native of Carthage, Cleophon, a native of Corinth, along with Hippo the daughter of Chiron, and Boeo, and Manto, and the whole company of the Sibyls — the Samian one, the Colophonian one, the Cumaean, the Erythraean, Phyto, Taraxandra, the Macetian, and the Thessalian called Thesprotis — and Calchas again, and also Mopsus, who lived during the Trojan affair, Mopsus being the senior of the two, since he had sailed among the Argonauts.
They say that Battus the Cyrenaean composed the so-called Mantic Art of Mopsus, and Dorotheus, in the first book of his Pandect, records that Mopsus understood the language of the halcyon and the crow. To foreknowledge, too, the great Pythagoras always devoted himself, as did Abaris the Hyperborean, Aristeas of Proconnesus, Epimenides the Cretan (who came to Sparta), Zoroaster the Mede, Empedocles the Acragantine, Phormio the Laconian, and indeed Polyaratus the Thasian, Empedotimus the Syracusan, and above all, among these, Socrates the Athenian; for he says, in the Theages, "There is for me, beginning from childhood, a divine sign that comes to me by divine allotment; this is a voice, and whenever it occurs it holds me back from what I am about to do, but it never urges me forward." And Execestus, who ruled the Phocians as tyrant, kept two enchanted rings on his hand, judging his opportune moments by the clash they made striking one another — yet even so he perished, cut down through treachery, though their sound had signaled danger to him beforehand, as Aristotle relates in his account of the Phocian constitution.
But also among the Egyptians there were once men who, by human opinion, became gods — Hermes the Theban and Asclepius the Memphite; and Teiresias again, and Manto, at Thebes, as Euripides says; and already Helenus, and Laocoon, and Oenone, and Cebren, at Ilium. †For Cronus, one of the Heraclids, is reported as a renowned seer, and another, Iamus, in Elis, from whom the Iamidae descend; and Polyidus, at Argos and at Megara, whom tragedy remembers. Why should I list Telemus, who, being a seer among the Cyclopes, prophesied to Polyphemus the events of Odysseus's wandering, or Onomacritus at Athens, or Amphiaraus, who together with the seven who campaigned against Thebes is reported to have lived one generation before the fall of Ilium, or Theoclymenus in Cephallenia, or Telmessus in Caria, or Galeus in Sicily? There would be others besides these — Idmon, who sailed with the Argonauts; Phemonoe of Delphi; Mopsus, offspring of Apollo and Manto, active across Pamphylia and into Cilicia; Amphilochus, whose father was Amphiaraus, likewise in Cilicia; Alcmaeon among the Acarnanians; Anius in Delos; and Aristander of Telmessus, who accompanied Alexander. Already too Philochorus, in the first book of his On Divination, records that Orpheus was a seer.
Theopompus, Ephorus, and Timaeus record a certain Orthagoras as a seer, just as Pythocles of Samos, in the fourth book of his Italian History, records Gaius Julius Nepos. But these men are all "thieves and robbers," as Scripture says, having foretold most things from observation and from probability, like physiognomists and physicians and seers, while others were moved by demons, or thrown into disorder by waters and incense and a peculiar quality of air; whereas among the Hebrews the prophets spoke by the power and inspiration of God — before the Law, Adam, who prophesied concerning the woman and concerning the naming of the animals, and Noah, who proclaimed repentance, and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, who openly foretold not a few things that were to come and that were already at hand. And along with the Law, Moses and Aaron, after whom prophesy Joshua the son of Nun, Samuel, Gad, Nathan, Ahijah, Shemaiah, Jehu, Elijah, Micaiah, Obadiah, Elisha, Abdadonai, Amos, Isaiah, Hosea, Jonah, Joel, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Buzi, Ezekiel, Uriah, Habakkuk, Nahum, Daniel, Mishael — the one skilled in reasonings — Haggai, Zechariah, and the Angel among the Twelve.
The prophets all number thirty-five in total. Among women — for these also prophesied — there were Sarah and Rebecca and Miriam, and Deborah and Huldah. Then, in roughly the same era, John prophesies right up to the baptism that brings salvation, and once Christ had been born, Anna together with Simeon did the same; indeed Zechariah, father of John, is likewise said within the Gospels to have prophesied ahead of his own son.
Let us then gather, from the beginning, from Moses onward, the chronography according to the Greeks. Moses was born, and eighty years later the Jews departed Egypt in the exodus; another forty years brought him to the close of his life. That exodus coincides with the age of Inachus, three hundred and forty-five years earlier than the Sothic period, Moses having left Egypt that many years before it. Counting onward from Moses' generalship and from Inachus's own time to Deucalion's flood — the second such deluge, that is — and further to Phaethon's conflagration, which fell in Crotopus's day, forty † generations are tallied, reckoning three generations to every hundred years. Seventy-three years separate the flood from Mount Ida's burning, the discovery of iron, and the appearance of the Idaean Dactyls, according to Thrasyllus. And from the burning of Ida to the rape of Ganymede is sixty-five years.
From there to the expedition of Perseus, when Glaucus also instituted the Isthmian games in honor of Melicertes, is fifteen years. From the expedition of Perseus to the founding of Ilium is thirty-four years. From there to the sailing forth of the Argo is sixty-four years. Thirty-two years later come Theseus and the Minotaur; ten years after that, the Seven against Thebes; then three years on, the games at Olympia which Heracles founded to honor Pelops; nine years further bring both the Amazon campaign against Athens and Theseus's seizing of Helen. Eleven years after that Heracles is deified, and four years later Helen is carried off by Alexander, that is, Paris. Twenty years on, Troy falls. Ten years after Troy's fall come Aeneas's arrival and the founding of Lavinium; eight years more, Ascanius's reign; sixty-one years further, the Heraclids' descent; and three hundred thirty-eight years beyond that, the Olympiad reckoned from Iphitus.
Eratosthenes lays out the chronology as follows: eighty years pass between Troy's fall and the Heraclids' descent; sixty more bring Ionia's founding; another hundred fifty-nine reach Lycurgus's guardianship; a hundred eight lead to the year just before the first Olympiad; two hundred ninety-seven carry that Olympiad forward to Xerxes' crossing; forty-eight further reach the Peloponnesian War's opening; twenty-seven bring its close together with the Athenians' collapse; thirty-four more reach the clash at Leuctra; thirty-five beyond that, Philip's death; and finally twelve years afterward, Alexander's own passing.
Again, some say that from the first Olympiad to the founding of Rome is reckoned as twenty-four years. From there to the abolition of the kings, when consuls came to be, two hundred forty-three years; and from the abolition of the kings to the death of Alexander, one hundred eighty-six years.
Two hundred ninety-four years later Augustus won his victory, the moment Antony took his own life at Alexandria, and this fell in Augustus's fourth consulship. A further hundred fourteen years bring us to the games Domitian founded at Rome, and from that first celebration a hundred eleven years more reach Commodus's death.
Some reckon from Cecrops to Alexander the Macedonian one thousand † eight hundred twenty-eight years, and from Demophon one thousand two hundred fifty years, and from the fall of Troy to the descent of the Heraclids one hundred twenty or one hundred eighty years. Counting onward to Euaenetus's term as archon, under whom Alexander is said to have crossed into Asia, according to Phanias, seven hundred fifteen years; according to Ephorus, seven hundred thirty-five years; according to Timaeus and Cleitarchus, eight hundred twenty years; according to Eratosthenes, seven hundred seventy-four years; and Duris counts the span from Troy's fall to Alexander's Asian crossing as a full thousand years. Eleven years further brings the archonship of † Euaenetus at Athens, under whom Alexander died. Then three hundred sixty-five years onward comes the rule of Germanicus Claudius Caesar, a point from which the reckoning down to Commodus's death likewise becomes clear, insofar as it can be worked out.
After the Greek matters, we must also give an account, in the largest intervals, of the times according to the barbarians. From Adam to the flood is reckoned two thousand one hundred forty-eight years and four days; from Seth to Abraham, one thousand two hundred fifty years; from Isaac to the allotment of the land, six hundred sixteen years. Then, counting onward from the judges' era to Samuel, four hundred sixty-three years and seven months pass. Once the judges' period ends, the kingdoms' years total five hundred seventy-two years, six months, ten days. Following these come the years of Persian rule, two hundred thirty-five; then Macedonian rule down to Antony's death, three hundred twelve years and eighteen days. After that stretch, Roman dominion down to Commodus's death spans two hundred twenty-two years. Once more: counting from the captivity of seventy years and the people's return to their ancestral land up to the captivity under Vespasian gives four hundred ten years; and finally, from Vespasian's time to Commodus's death comes to one hundred twenty-one years, six months, twenty-four days.
Demetrius, in his work On the Kings in Judea, states that Judah's tribe, along with Benjamin's and Levi's, escaped Sennacherib's captivity, yet the gap between that captivity and the final one, which Nebuchadnezzar inflicted on Jerusalem, comes to one hundred twenty-eight years plus six months. Reckoning from when the ten tribes were led captive out of Samaria down to Ptolemy the Fourth gives five hundred seventy-three years and nine months, while counting from Jerusalem instead gives three hundred thirty-eight years and three months.
Philo himself also recorded the kings of the Jews, differing from Demetrius. Eupolemus too, in a similar treatise, states that the whole span running from Adam down through Demetrius's fifth regnal year, a time when Ptolemy the Twelfth held Egypt's throne, comes to 5,149 years. And from the time Moses led the Jews out of Egypt to the aforesaid terminus, one thousand five hundred eighty years are reckoned. And from that time to the consulship at Rome of Gnaeus Domitius and Asinius, one hundred twenty years are gathered.
Ephorus, along with a good number of other historians, claims there exist seventy-five nations and tongues, having taken this from Moses' statement: "All the souls descended from Jacob who went down into Egypt numbered seventy-five." But according to the true account, it appears that the generic dialects number seventy-two, as our own Scriptures hand down; while the many other tongues arise from the mixing of two or three or even more dialects. A dialect is speech that displays the particular character of a place, or speech that displays a character particular or common to a nation. The Greeks say that there are five dialects current among themselves — Attic, Ionic, Doric, Aeolic, and, fifth, the Common — while the tongues of barbarians, being unbounded, are not called dialects but languages.
Plato assigns a certain dialect even to the gods, arguing this chiefly from dreams and oracles, and otherwise also from those possessed by demons, who do not speak in their own voice or dialect but in that of the demons entering into them. He also thinks that irrational animals have dialects, which creatures of the same kind understand. At any rate, when an elephant has fallen into a mire and cried out, another elephant nearby, seeing what has happened, turns back and soon returns leading a whole herd of elephants along with it, rescuing the one that had fallen in. They also say that in Libya, if a scorpion fails to succeed in stinging a man, it goes away and returns with a number of others, each hanging on to the other like a chain, and thus they hasten to accomplish the attempt — the irrational animals surely not using some invisible nod, nor indeed signaling to one another by gesture, but, I think, by their own proper dialect. Others also say that if a fish, being drawn up, breaks the line and escapes, no fish of that same kind will be found in that same spot for that same day. But the first and generic dialects, though barbarian, have names that belong to nature, since people likewise agree that prayers uttered in a foreign, non-Greek tongue carry greater power. And Plato too, in the Cratylus, wishing to explain the word for "fire," says that the name is barbarian; at any rate he attests that the Phrygians call it so, with only a slight variation.
It will not, I think, hurt matters to append here the regnal lengths of Rome's rulers as well, so as to fix the Savior's birth: Augustus held power forty-three years, Tiberius twenty-two, Gaius a mere four, Claudius fourteen, Nero likewise fourteen, Galba just one, Vespasian ten, Titus three, Domitian fifteen, Nerva one, Trajan nineteen, Hadrian twenty-one, Antoninus twenty-three, and finally the pair Antoninus and Commodus together thirty-two. Summed from Augustus down to Commodus's death, this reaches two hundred twenty-two years; counted instead from Adam to that same death, it reaches five thousand seven hundred eighty-four years, two months, twelve days. Certain others, though, tally Rome's rulers differently: Gaius Julius Caesar reigned three years plus four months and six days; his successor Augustus, forty-six years, four months, one further day; Tiberius after him, twenty-six years together with six months and nineteen days; then came Gaius Caesar, holding it three years, ten months, eight days; Claudius followed, ruling thirteen years with eight months and twenty-eight days added; Nero's span came out the same, thirteen years plus eight months, twenty-eight days added on; Galba lasted seven months and six days only; Otho, five months plus a single day; Vitellius, likewise seven months and one day; Vespasian's rule reached eleven full years, adding eleven months and twenty-two days; Titus governed two years and two months; Domitian held fifteen years, with eight months and five days beyond that; Nerva's turn was a year, four months, and ten additional days; Trajan's reign stretched nineteen years, seven months, fifteen days; Hadrian governed for twenty years, adding ten months and twenty-eight days; Antoninus's term ran two decades, plus another two years on top, with three months and seven further days added; after him Marcus Aurelius Antoninus held it for nineteen years plus eleven days; and last, Commodus reigned twelve years, nine months, fourteen days. Reckoning, then, from Julius Caesar down to Commodus's death yields two hundred thirty-six years and six months. And the grand total, running from Rome's founder Romulus all the way to Commodus's death, comes out to nine hundred forty-three years and six months.
Our Lord was born in the twenty-eighth year, when the first order was given for a census to be taken, under Augustus. That this is true is written thus in the Gospel according to Luke: 'It was in Tiberius Caesar's fifteenth year that a divine utterance reached John, son of Zacharias.' And that same Gospel states further: 'Jesus was around thirty years of age when he presented himself for baptism.' And that his preaching lasted only a single year, this too stands written: 'He dispatched me to announce a year of favor granted by the Lord.' Such were the words of both the prophet and the Gospel writer. Fifteen years, then, of Tiberius, and fifteen of Augustus: thus the thirty years are completed, up to the time when he suffered. From the time he suffered until the destruction of Jerusalem there are 42 years and 3 months; and from the destruction of Jerusalem until the death of Commodus there are 122 years, 10 months, 13 days. There are, then, from the time the Lord was born until the death of Commodus, in all 194 years, 1 month, and 13 days. And there are some who, being excessively precise about the birth of our Savior, add not only the year but also the day, which they say falls in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus, on the twenty-fifth of Pachon.
The followers of Basilides also celebrate the day of his baptism, spending the preceding night in readings. They say that the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar corresponds to the fifteenth of the month Tybi, though some of them say the eleventh of the same month. As for his Passion, being precise about it, some of them place it in the sixteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, on Phamenoth 25; others on Pharmuthi 25; and others again say the Savior suffered on Pharmuthi 19. Indeed, some of them say he was born on Pharmuthi 24 or 25.
Moreover, to this chronology we must also add the following, I mean the days which Daniel hints at, counted starting when Jerusalem lay desolate: seven years and eleven months belonging to Vespasian. For to these are added the two years of Otho, Galba, and Vitellius, seventeen months and eight days, and thus there come to be three years and six months, which is half of the week, just as Daniel the prophet has said. He said that 2,300 days passed from the time the abomination was set up in the holy city by Nero until its destruction. For thus the passage cited below shows: 'How long shall the vision stand, the sacrifice that was taken away, and the sin of desolation that was given, and the power and the sanctuary be trodden underfoot?' And he said to him, 'Unto evening and morning, 2,300 days, and the sanctuary shall be cleansed.' These 2,300 days, then, come to 6 years and 4 months, half of which Nero held while he reigned, and this made up half of the week; and the other half Vespasian held, together with Otho, Galba, and Vitellius. And for this reason Daniel says: 'Blessed is he who attains to 1,335 days.' For up to these days the war lasted, and after these it ceased.
This number, too, is shown from the chapter set down below, which reads thus: 'And from the time that the continual sacrifice is taken away, and the abomination of desolation is given, there shall be 1,206 days. Blessed is he who endures and attains to 1,335 days.'
Flavius Josephus the Jew, who compiled the histories of the Jews, brings the chronology down and says that from Moses to David there are 585 years, and from David down to Vespasian's second year, 1,179 years. From that point onward to Antoninus's tenth year, 77 more years, giving a total span from Moses all the way to Antoninus's tenth year of 1,833 years altogether. Others, counting from Inachus and Moses to Commodus's death, put the figure at 1,842 years; still others at 1,021. In Matthew's Gospel, meanwhile, the line of descent beginning with Abraham runs onward to Mary, who bore the Lord; for, as it states, between Abraham and David one counts 14 generations, and from David to the removal to Babylon 14 generations, and from the removal to Babylon to Christ likewise another 14 generations — three mystical intervals, each completed in seven-fold sets.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 22 ========

Let what has been variously narrated by many concerning the chronologies, and set forth by us, stand as it does. As for the translation of the scriptures — those of the law and the prophetic writings — out of the Hebrew dialect into the Greek tongue, they say it was done in the reign of king Ptolemy the son of Lagos, or as some say, of the one surnamed Philadelphus, who brought the greatest zeal to this work, Demetrius of Phalerum having taken exact pains over the interpretation. For while the Macedonians still held Asia, the king, being eager to furnish the library that had been established by him at Alexandria with writings of every kind, thought it fitting also to have the men of Jerusalem translate the prophecies current among them into the Greek dialect.
And they, still living under Macedonian rule, picked out seventy of their most honored men, well versed in the sacred writings and fluent in Hellenic speech, and dispatched this group to him along with the holy books. Working apart from one another, each in seclusion, every man rendered his own share of the prophecy, and once the several renderings were laid side by side they proved identical, matching both in meaning and in phrasing; for such was God's design, accomplished for the benefit of Greek hearers. It is not strange, then, that this rendering too came about — through the inspiration of the very God who had given the prophecy — as, one might say, a prophecy uttered in Greek; just as, in the era of the exile under Nebuchadnezzar, once the sacred writings had perished, Ezra the Levite and priest, living under Artaxerxes king of the Persians, was moved by inspiration to restore all the old writings entirely and to prophesy them once more.
Aristobulus, in the first book of his work addressed to Philometor, writes word for word: 'And Plato too followed our legislation, and is manifestly seen to have worked over carefully each of the things said in it. For before Demetrius, and before the dominion of Alexander and the Persians, it had been translated by others, both the account of the exodus of the Hebrews, our fellow-citizens, out of Egypt, and the manifestation of all that had happened to them, and their conquest of the land, and the exposition of the whole legislation; so that it is quite clear that the aforesaid philosopher took over many things — for he was widely learned — just as Pythagoras also transferred many things from among our teachings into his own system of doctrine.' And Numenius the Pythagorean philosopher states plainly: 'What else is Plato but Moses talking in the tongue of Attica?' This Moses was both a theologian and a prophet, and, so certain writers claim, one who set forth the meaning of holy statutes. His ancestry, his achievements, and his career the scriptures declare on their own authority as trustworthy; still, we too ought to note a few things about him, in as few words as we can.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 23 ========

Moses, then, was by ancestral stock a Chaldean, but was born in Egypt, his ancestors having relocated out of Babylon to Egypt because of a prolonged famine. Born in the seventh generation and reared in royal style, he found himself amid the following circumstances. When the Hebrews in Egypt had increased to a great multitude, the king of the country, fearing a plot arising from their numbers, ordered that the females born to the Hebrews be reared (for a woman is weak for war), but that the males be destroyed, since he suspected their vigorous youth. The child, being of noble family, his parents kept hidden and reared for three months running, natural affection overcoming the tyrant's cruelty; but afterward, fearing lest they perish along with the child, they made a kind of vessel out of the native reed, placed the child in it, and set it out along the banks of the river, which was marshy there, while the child's sister stood watching from a distance to see what would happen.
At that point Pharaoh's daughter, who across many years had borne no offspring though she longed for one, came that same day down to the river to bathe and perform rites of purification; and on hearing the infant's cry, she directed that it be fetched to her, and pitying it she began looking for someone to nurse it. Then the sister of the child ran up and said she was acquainted with a Hebrew woman who had recently given birth and would be able to supply a nurse, should the princess wish it; and once the princess consented and requested this, the sister fetched the child's very own mother, to serve as his nurse, presenting her as though she were a stranger, for an agreed payment. The queen then named the child Moses, aptly, since she had lifted him out of the water (the Egyptians' word for water being "mou"), the water into which he had been thrown to perish. And indeed anyone who perished in water they term "Moyses."
It is plain, then, that earlier on, when the child underwent circumcision, his parents assigned him a different name, and he was then called Joakim. Beyond this he bore a third name conferred in heaven once he had been taken up, as those initiated tell it — Melchi. Upon reaching maturity he was schooled in arithmetic and geometry, in rhythm and harmony, and moreover in metrics and music too, under those Egyptians most accomplished in such matters, and beyond that the symbolic philosophy their hieroglyphic writings display. The remainder of a well-rounded education came from the Greeks then resident in Egypt, fitting for one raised as a prince, so Philo relates in his account of Moses's life; and additionally he mastered Assyrian script and the study of celestial bodies under the Chaldeans and the Egyptians alike, which is why Acts notes that he had been trained in every branch of Egyptian learning. Eupolemus, in his treatise concerning the kings of Judea, states that Moses ranked as the earliest sage, the first to pass the alphabet on to the Jewish people, and that from the Jews the Phoenicians acquired it, and the Greeks in turn from the Phoenicians. And once he had reached full manhood, he honed his intellect further, striving to match the erudition of his own kin and ancestors, until eventually he struck down and slew the Egyptian who had wrongfully attacked the Hebrew.
The initiates say that he destroyed the Egyptian by word alone, just as later, indeed, Peter is recorded in the Acts to have killed by a word those who had embezzled the price of the field and lied about it. Artapanus, at any rate, in his treatise On the Jews relates that Moses, having been shut up in prison by Chenephres king of the Egyptians because he asked that the people be released from Egypt, went out at night when the prison was opened by the will of God, and, entering the palace, stood over the sleeping king and roused him; and the king, shaken by what had occurred, demanded that Moses reveal the name of the deity who had dispatched him, and Moses, leaning in near his ear, whispered it to him; and the king, upon hearing it, collapsed unable to speak, but held upright by Moses, revived.
Concerning the upbringing of Moses, Ezekiel too, the poet of the Jewish tragedies, agrees with us, in the drama entitled Exagoge, writing thus in the person of Moses: For when Pharaoh the king saw our race grown greatly numerous, he devised much treachery against us, afflicting our people with brickwork and heavy buildings, and he built up cities for the sake of those ill-fated men; then he proclaimed to us, the race of the Hebrews, that the male children be cast into the deep-flowing river. There my mother who bore me hid me three months, as she told me; but fearing to be discovered, she put me out, having wrapped an ornament about me, at the edge of the river, into a deep, thick marsh. And Miriam my sister watched nearby; and then the king's daughter came down with her maidservants together to the baths, to brighten her young flesh. And seeing me at once, and taking pity, she took me up, and knew I was a Hebrew; and Miriam my sister, running up, says this to the princess: do you wish that I quickly find a nurse for this child from among the Hebrews? And she urged the girl on. So she went and told our mother, and our mother came at once quickly and took me into her arms. And the king's daughter said: nurse this child, woman, and I will pay you your wage. And she named him Moses, because of the fact that she had drawn him up from the wet bank of the river. And when the time of my infancy had passed, my mother brought me to the princess's halls, having told and related to me everything — my ancestral lineage, and the gifts of God. So then for as long as we had the time of childhood, she promised everything, royal upbringing and education, as though I were from her own womb; but when the full circle of days had come round, I went out from the royal house.
Then, once he has told of the clash between the Hebrew man and the Egyptian, and of how the Egyptian was buried in the sand, he speaks thus concerning the other fight: why do you strike one weaker than yourself? And he said: who appointed you a judge or overseer over us here? Will you not kill me, just as you did the man yesterday? And I, afraid, said: how has this become known? So from there he flees, and shepherds sheep, being trained beforehand for leadership through shepherding; for the pastoral art is a preliminary exercise in kingship for one who is going to have charge of that gentlest flock of all, mankind, just as hunting is by nature a preliminary exercise for men of war. And from there God leads him on to the command of the Hebrews.
Then the Egyptians, who were often foolish, were admonished many times, while the Hebrews became spectators of the evils which others endured without danger to themselves, thereby learning the power of God. And further, the Egyptians, who by hearsay would not accept the effects of that power, disbelieving out of folly like fools, then, as has been said, the fools came to know it only after it had been done; and afterward, when the Hebrews departed, they went off carrying much plunder of the Egyptians with them, not out of love of money, as their accusers say (for God was not persuading them to desire what belonged to others), but first because they were receiving the wage owed to them for all the time they had served the Egyptians, and second because in a certain way they took revenge, paying back the Egyptians in their own coin as lovers of money by the carrying off of plunder, just as those had wronged the Hebrews by their enslavement. So then, whether one should say this happened as in war, they thought it right to carry off the goods of their enemies by the law of victors over the vanquished, since they were the stronger over the weaker (and the cause of the war was just: the Hebrews had come to the Egyptians as suppliants on account of famine, and the Egyptians, enslaving these strangers, forced them to serve them in the manner of captives, without even paying them their wage) — or whether one should say this happened as in peace, they received the plunder as wages from those who were unwilling, who for a long time had not paid it, but had been withholding it.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 24 ========

Moses, then, is for us a prophet, a lawgiver, a tactician, a general, a statesman, a philosopher. How he was a prophet will be said afterward, when we take up the discussion of prophecy; but the part concerned with tactics would be a part of generalship, and generalship a part of kingship; and again the legislative part would likewise be a part of kingship, as would the judicial. Of kingship, one part is divine, namely that which pertains to God and his holy Son, from whom the goods that come from the earth, and external goods, and complete happiness are supplied; for "ask," it says, "for the great things, and the small shall be added to you." A second kind of kingship, after the pure, rational, and divine administration, is that which employs only the spirited part of the soul for its rule, the kind by which Heracles ruled Argos and Alexander ruled the Macedonians. A third kind aims at one thing only, to conquer and to subdue (whether the victory is turned to a bad or a good end is of no concern to this kind); this the Persians employed when they campaigned against Greece. For of spirited feeling, one part is simply contentious, exercising dominance for the sake of mastery alone, while the other is a love of the noble, when the soul makes right use of its spiritedness toward what is good.
A fourth kind of kingship, worst of all, is that arranged according to the desires, such as that of Sardanapalus and of those who make it their end to gratify their desires as much as possible. Now the instrument of kingship, both of the kind that conquers by virtue and of the kind that conquers by force, is the tactical art, though it differs according to differing nature and matter. In arms and in warlike creatures — through both animate and inanimate instruments — it is soul and mind that do the arranging; but in the passions of the soul, over which we gain mastery by virtue, it is reason that is the arranging power, setting its seal upon self-control and temperance together with holiness, and upon good knowledge together with truth, referring the end to piety toward God. For to those who so employ virtue, it is prudence that arranges, wisdom that arranges divine things, statesmanship that arranges human things, and kingship that arranges the whole together. A king, then, is the ruler according to laws, who possesses the science of ruling those who rule willingly, such as the Lord is, who receives to himself those who believe in him and through him. For God delivered over all things and subjected all things to Christ our king, so that before the name borne by Jesus every knee would bow, of beings in heaven, upon earth, and under the earth, and every tongue would confess Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God his Father.
Generalship is bound up with three kinds — the safe, the daring, and the mixture of these — and each of these is in turn composed of three: either through word, or through deeds, or through both of these together. And all of these things it is possible to accomplish either by persuading or by using force or by acting unjustly in self-defense — within which is comprehended either doing what is just, or lying, or speaking the truth, or even employing some of these together at the same time. All of these things, and how one ought to use each of them, the Greeks received from Moses and were benefited by them. As a type of one example, or perhaps a second, of generalship, I shall make mention. Moses, having led out the people and suspecting that the Egyptians would pursue, abandoned the short and direct road and turned toward the wilderness, and made most of the journey by night. For it was a different economy by which the Hebrews were being trained, through much wilderness and a long time, being accustomed by sober endurance to believe in God alone.
The stratagem of Moses, then, teaches that before dangers one must perceive what is useful and only then make one's move. And indeed what he had suspected came to pass: for the Egyptians pursued on horses and chariots, but perished all the sooner when the sea broke open and drowned them together with their steeds and war-chariots, so that not a single one of them remained alive. After this a pillar of fire followed (for it led before them) and guided the Hebrews by night through trackless country, training and habituating them through toils and travels both to manliness and to endurance, so that the good things of the land might appear all the better after the trial of what seemed terrible, into which land it was leading them by way of pathless country.
Yes, and having routed the enemies who lay encamped before the land, he slew them, attacking them out of the desert and by a rugged road (for such is the excellence of the tactical art); for it was a work of experience and generalship to seize the land of the enemy.
Perceiving this, Miltiades, the general of the Athenians who conquered the Persians in the battle at Marathon, imitated this manner in the following way: he led the Athenians by night, marching through pathless country and eluding the barbarians who were watching him. For Hippias, having deserted the Athenians, had brought the barbarians into Attica and, having seized beforehand the strategic places, kept guard over them because he had knowledge of the country. It was, then, a task to escape Hippias's notice; whence Miltiades reasonably made use of pathless country and of night, and attacking the Persians, whom Datis led, brought the contest to a successful issue along with those whom he himself led.
But also for Thrasybulus, who brought back those who had been exiled from Phyle and who wished to escape notice, a pillar became a guide as he went through the untrodden ways. For Thrasybulus, when the season was moonless and stormy by night, a fire was seen going before them, which conducted them without stumbling and left them near Munychia, where the altar of the Light-bearer now stands. Let our own account, then, gain credence among the Greeks even from this, that it was indeed possible for God the Almighty to make a pillar of fire go before the Hebrews by night, which also guided them on their way. A certain oracular utterance likewise declares: "To the Thebans, joy-giving Dionysus is a pillar" — a phrase drawn from Hebrew history. But Euripides too says in the Antiope: "Within the herdsmen's chambers, a pillar of the Euian god, wreathed with ivy." Now the pillar signifies the unimaged nature of God, and the illuminated pillar, besides signifying the unimaged, also makes clear the fixed and abiding character of God, and his unchanging and unshaped light.
At any rate, before the forms of images had been made exact, the ancients used to set up pillars and venerate these as representations of the god. Thus the author of the Phoronis writes: "Callithoe, keeper of the keys for Olympian, queenly Hera of Argos, who was first to deck the tall pillar of the queen with garlands and woolen fillets." Likewise the author of the Europia notes that at Delphi, Apollo's image took the form of a pillar, writing thus: "So that we might dedicate to the god a tithe and firstfruits, from the sacred foundations and the towering column." Yet Apollo, understood mystically as a negation of the many, is the one God. And so that fire which resembled a pillar, and the fire in the bush, is a symbol of holy light passing over from earth and running back up again to heaven through the wood, through which also the power to see intelligibly has been granted to us.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 25 ========

Plato the philosopher, having derived benefit from Moses concerning legislation, found fault with the constitution of Minos and Lycurgus for looking only to courage, but praised as more venerable the constitution that speaks of one thing and inclines always toward a single doctrine; for he says that it is more fitting for us to philosophize with strength and reverence and understanding, having regard to the dignity of heaven, unchangingly employing the same judgment and about the same things. Does he not, in interpreting the things concerning the law, incline toward looking to one God and enjoining the doing of what is just? Of the statesman-like he speaks of two kinds, the one legal, the other called political by the same name; and by "political" in the proper sense he hints darkly at the Demiurge, in the book bearing that same name, and he calls those who look to him and live actively and justly, together with contemplation, "political" men; while the kind called political on an equal footing with the legal he divides into cosmic magnanimity and private arrangement, which they have named orderliness and harmony and self-control, whenever rulers are fitting to the ruled, and the ruled become obedient to the rulers — which is exactly what the enterprise according to Moses is earnestly concerned to bring about.
Further, the legal pertains to becoming, while the political pertains to friendship and concord; and Plato, having derived benefit from this, in the Laws set alongside the philosopher the one in the Epinomis, the man who knows the whole course of all becoming through the wandering bodies, and set another philosopher, the one in the Timaeus, being an astronomer and a contemplator of the motion of those bodies and of their sympathy and communion with one another, and joins this in sequence to the Republic, and then . . . for I think that the end both of the political man and of the man living according to law is contemplation; it is necessary, at any rate, to govern rightly, but it is best to philosophize. For the man of understanding would live his whole life directed toward knowledge, guiding his life by good deeds, and holding in dishonor the opposite things, pursuing instead those studies that contribute toward truth. Now law is not the things that are customary (for neither is seeing the things that are seen), nor is it every opinion (for neither is the wicked opinion law), but law is good opinion, and good opinion is true opinion, and true opinion is that which finds what is, and attains to it: "He who is has sent me," says Moses. Following this, evidently, in accordance with good opinion, some have said that law is right reason, commanding the things that must be done, and forbidding the things that must not be done.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 26 ========

For this reason the Law is fittingly said to have been given through Moses, being a standard of things just and unjust. And this we might properly call the ordinance handed down by God through Moses. It has, at any rate, its guidance directed toward the divine. Paul too says: the Law was set in place because of transgressions, until the offspring for whom the promise had been made should arrive. Then, as if further explaining his meaning, he adds: before faith came, we were held in custody under the Law, locked up together, plainly in dread on account of sins, awaiting the faith destined to be disclosed. And so the Law turned into our guide toward Christ, so that we could be made righteous through faith. Now the man skilled in legislation is he who assigns to each part of the soul, and to the works of these parts, what is fitting to it; and Moses, to put it concisely, was a law ensouled, governed by the good Word.
He at any rate administered a good commonwealth; and this is a fine nourishment for men, in accordance with fellowship. Straightway he took up the judicial art, being a science that corrects wrongdoings for the sake of justice. Allied with it is the punitive art, being a kind of science of the due measure in punishments. And just punishment is a correction of the soul. Now the whole discipline that belongs, so to speak, to Moses is, on the one hand, educative of such men as are capable of becoming fine and good, and, on the other, a hunting-out of those already like this, which would be the generalship of a kind; while the art that makes proper use, by reason, of those thus hunted out would be wisdom befitting a legislator; for to acquire and to use are the special mark of this art, being most kingly. At any rate the philosophers proclaim the wise man alone to be king, legislator, general, just, holy, beloved of God. And if we should find these qualities in Moses, as is shown from the very Scriptures themselves, we would declare, with full conviction, that Moses was in truth wise.
Just as, then, we say that the shepherd's art is to care for the sheep — for thus the good shepherd lays down his soul for the sheep — so too we shall say that the legislative art is to establish men's virtue, rekindling, as far as possible, the good that is proper to man, being watchful over and solicitous for the flock of men that is dear to him. And if the flock allegorically spoken of by the Lord is nothing other than a certain herd of men, the same one will be both shepherd and good legislator of that one herd of his obedient sheep, the one guardian, the one who seeks out and finds what was lost by law and by reason, if indeed the Law is spiritual and leads to happiness; for he who has come to be by the Holy Spirit is spiritual. This is he who is in truth the legislator, who not only promises what is good and noble but also has the knowledge of it. His also is the Law, the saving command belonging to the one who possesses the knowledge — or rather, the Law is the command of knowledge, for the Word of God is power and wisdom. He himself, moreover, is the interpreter of the laws, he through whom the Law was given, the first interpreter of the divine commands, the only-begotten Son who expounds the bosom of the Father.
Further, those who are persuaded by the Law, in that they have some knowledge of it, are able neither to disbelieve nor to be ignorant of the truth; whereas those who disbelieve, being least of all disposed to be found among its works, if any are so, these too are confessedly ignorant of the truth. So where does the distrust of the Greeks come from? Is it not, in some way, a refusal to be won over by the reality showing that the Law came from God by way of Moses, seeing that they themselves, from what is honored among them, do honor to Moses? For they relate that Minos received his laws from Zeus every ninth year, going up to the cave of Zeus; and that Lycurgus, going continually to Delphi to Apollo, was instructed in matters of legislation, as Plato and Aristotle and Ephorus write; and Chamaeleon of Heraclea, in his work On Drunkenness, and Aristotle in his Constitution of the Locrians, record that Zaleucus the Locrian received his laws from Athena. But those who, as far as lies in their power, exalt the credibility of legislation among the Greeks toward the divine, in imitation of the image of the prophecy given through Moses, are ungrateful, not confessing outright the truth and the archetype of the things related in their own histories.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 27 ========

Let no one, then, run down the law on account of its punishments, as though it were not good and noble. For if the one who removes a disease of the body will be thought a benefactor, would not the one who attempts to free a soul from injustice be all the more its guardian, in proportion as the soul is more honorable than the body? Now for the sake of the body's health we submit even to cuttings and cauterizings and doses of medicine, and the one who applies these is called both savior and physician, not out of any grudge or ill-will toward the sufferer, but as the reasoning of the art dictates, even cutting away certain parts so that the healthy parts may not be destroyed along with them, and no one would charge the physician's art with wickedness for this. For the sake of the soul, then, shall we not in like manner submit, whether to exile or to the payment of penalties or to bonds, if someone is ever to gain justice out of injustice by this means alone? For the law, caring for its subjects, trains them toward reverence for God and dictates the things that must be done, and restrains each of the sins, imposing penalties on the more moderate offenses among them; but whenever it observes someone so disposed as to seem incurable, driving on to the furthest extreme of injustice, then, caring already for the others, that they not be corrupted by him, it cuts him off as it were a part of the whole body, and thus puts such a person to death in the most healthful way.
"When we are judged by the Lord," the apostle says, "we undergo discipline, so we will not be condemned together with the world." For the prophet had earlier declared: "The Lord has chastened and chastened me, but he has not given me over to death; for it was so that he might teach you his righteousness," he says, "that he chastened you, and tested you, and let you hunger, and let you thirst in the wilderness, so that all his statutes and judgments might come to be known in your heart, as many as I lay upon you this day, and you shall know in your heart that, just as a man chastens his own son, so the Lord our God chastens you." And that the example brings people to their senses, he adds at once: "A shrewd man, watching a wicked man being punished, is himself made sternly cautious,"
since "the fear of the Lord is the offspring of wisdom." And the greatest and most perfect good is when someone is able to lead another from evildoing over to virtue and right conduct — which is exactly what the law accomplishes. So that even when someone falls into an incurable evil, overtaken by injustice and greed, the one being put to death would be benefited; for the law is a benefactor, able to make the unjust just, if only they are willing to listen to it, and freeing others from the evils now present. For it promises to make immortal those who choose to live temperately and justly. And to know the law belongs to a good understanding. And elsewhere: "The wicked do not comprehend the law, yet those who seek the Lord will grasp every good thing." It is necessary, then, that the providence administering all things be both sovereign and good. For the power of both dispenses salvation: the one bringing people to their senses through chastisement, as sovereign; the other showing kindness through well-doing, as benefactress. And it is possible to escape being a child of disobedience, and instead to cross over from darkness into life, and, having submitted one's hearing to wisdom, to become a lawful servant of God — a slave at first, then to become a faithful attendant, fearing the Lord God; and if one should advance further, to be enrolled among the sons; and when love covers a multitude of sins, having grown to the fullness of blessed hope in love, to await the one who has been enrolled in the chosen and beloved adoption of God, already singing the prayer and saying: "Let the Lord become my God."
That the law does good even to the Jews, the apostle has shown by way of the passage addressed to them, writing something like this: "But if you are called a Jew and rest upon the law and boast in God and know his will and approve the things that differ, being instructed out of the law, and are persuaded that you yourself are a guide for the blind, a beacon for those sitting in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, one who teaches infants, possessing the very outline of knowledge and truth in the law" — for the law is admitted to be capable of these things, even if those who do not live according to law boast as though they lived within the law. "Blessed is the man who has found wisdom, and mortal is he who has seen understanding, and out of her mouth" — that is, wisdom's — "righteousness goes forth, and she carries law and mercy upon her tongue." For the operation belongs to a single Lord, in whom is found the power and the wisdom of God — both law and gospel alike — and the fear which the law begot is this same one, merciful unto salvation. "And let not mercy and faithfulness and truth forsake you; bind them about your neck."
In like manner to Paul, prophecy too reproaches the people for not understanding the law. "Destruction and hardship mark their paths, and the path of peace remains unknown to them; no dread of God stands before their eyes." "Boasting of wisdom, they turned into fools." "We recognize that the law is good, provided one applies it lawfully." But "those wanting to be teachers of the law fail to understand," the apostle says, "either what they say or the matters they so confidently assert," and "the goal of the command is love springing from a clean heart and a virtuous conscience and sincere faith."

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 28 ========

The philosophy that follows Moses is divided fourfold: into the historical, and that properly called legislative — both of which would belong to the ethical discipline — the third into the priestly, which already belongs to the contemplation of nature, and fourth, above all these, the theological kind, the epopteia, which Plato says truly belongs to the great mysteries, and which Aristotle calls the study that comes after the physical treatises. And the dialectic according to Plato, as he says in the Statesman, is a science discovering the manifestation of the things that are, a possession the self-controlled man acquires, not so he might speak or act toward other men for the sake of it, the way those now called dialecticians do, busying themselves with sophistical matters, but so he becomes able to speak what pleases God and act in ways pleasing to God, insofar as that lies within his power.
True dialectic, being mingled with true philosophy, examines things and tests their powers and authorities, and thereby rises up gradually toward the mightiest of all substances, and even ventures further still, up toward the universe's God, laying claim not to acquaintance with mortal affairs but to a knowledge of divine and heavenly realities, which is accompanied also by the proper use of human affairs, both in word and in deed. Fittingly, then, scripture too, wishing us to become dialecticians of this sort, exhorts us: "Become approved money-changers," rejecting the base coin while holding fast to what is good. For this in truth is dialectic — a prudence that divides among intelligible things, that shows each of the things that are, unmixed and pure, in its underlying reality; or a power that divides among the genera of things, descending as far as the most particular, presenting each of the things that are so as to appear pure, just as it is.
Hence this alone leads by the hand to true wisdom, which is a divine power, knowing the things that are as they are, possessing perfection, released from every passion — and this not without the Savior, who through the divine Word led down for us, and stripped away from the eye of the soul, the misty ignorance poured over it by base conduct, and granted us the best gift, "that we might well know both god and man." This is he who in truth showed how we are to know ourselves; this is he who uncovers the Father of the universe to whomever he wishes, and so far as human nature is capable of comprehending; "for no one knew the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son, and whomever the Son chooses to reveal him."
Fittingly, then, the apostle says he came to know the mystery by revelation, "as I wrote before briefly, by which, when you read, you are able to perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ." He said "by which you are able," since he knew that some had received only milk, not yet solid food — it was not simply "milk" without qualification. In three ways, then, we must take the intent of the law: either as revealing a sign, or as establishing a commandment for right conduct, or as declaring something in the manner of prophecy. I know well that it belongs to men of understanding to distinguish and pronounce upon such things; for not all scripture is "one Mykonos" for the purpose of understanding, as those who deal in proverbs say. Rather one must approach it in as dialectical a manner as possible, tracking down the sequence of the divine teaching.

======== Stromata — Book 1, Chapter 29 ========

Hence the Egyptian priest in Plato speaks altogether beautifully: "O Solon, Solon," he said, "you Greeks are always children, and there is no old opinion among you handed down through ancient hearing, nor is there any Greek who is an old man." By "old men," I think, he meant those who know the more ancient things, that is, our things, just as conversely he called "young" those who study the newer practices pursued by the Greeks, things that happened yesterday and the day before, yet who report them as if they were old and ancient. He then added a further point, "a teaching hoary with time," using the metaphor in a certain barbarian manner, plain and not finely wrought, since we ourselves employ figures of that kind without artifice; for the candid, at any rate, approach the whole fabric of interpretation directly. And concerning the Greeks he says their self-conceit differs little from that of children — not that one should understand "children's fables" nor even the fables told to children, but he called the fables themselves "children," as belonging to those among the Greeks who fancy themselves wise while seeing only a little way, thereby hinting at the teaching hoary with time, the truth most ancient among the barbarians, against which word he set the word "fable-as-child," refuting the mythical character of the younger peoples' undertaking as having, like children, nothing older about it, and showing thereby that both their myths and their reasonings alike are childish.
Divinely, then, the power that speaks to Hermas by revelation says that the visions and the revelations are given because of the double-minded, those who reason in their hearts whether these things are so or not. In like manner the proofs drawn from a rich store of wide learning strengthen and confirm and lay the foundation of demonstrative arguments, so long as their minds, being still those of the young, are yet unsteady and easily stirred. "A lamp, then, is a good commandment," according to the Scripture, "and the law is the light of the way"; for instruction convicts the paths of life. "Law, sovereign over everyone, over both mortal men and the immortals, rules them all," says Pindar. And I, for my part, understand by these words him who established the law, and I take the saying of Hesiod to have been spoken of the God of all, even though the poet said it only conjecturally and not with full comprehension: "For this law did the son of Cronos appoint for men, that fish and beasts and winged birds should devour one another, since there is no justice among them; but to men he gave justice, which is by far the best."
Whether, then, he means the law given at once with birth, or that given afterward, in either case both the law of nature and the law of instruction come from God, being one law, just as Plato too, in the Statesman, says the lawgiver is one, and in the Laws says the one who will harmonize the arts of music is one, teaching through these that reason has a single source, that God is a single being. Moses too, unmistakably, calls the Lord a covenant, saying, "Behold, I — my covenant is with you"; since he had also spoken of a covenant before — one should not seek it merely in the letter of Scripture. For a covenant is that which God, the cause of all, establishes; and "God" (theos) is said to derive from "placing" (thesis) and "ordering" (taxis), that is, from the arrangement of the universe. And in the Preaching of Peter you may find the Lord addressed as both Law and Word.
But let this, the first of our Stromateis of Gnostic notes according to true philosophy, be brought to a close here.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 1 ========

Next it would be fitting to explain, since Scripture has called the Greeks thieves of the barbarian philosophy, how this will be shown in a few words. For we shall not only demonstrate that, in their writings, they imitated the extraordinary things recorded among us, but also that, tampering with and falsifying the most authoritative of the doctrines—our writings being the older, as we have shown—we shall refute them concerning faith, and concerning wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, hope and faith, repentance and self-control, and indeed the fear of God (a veritable swarm, in short, of the virtues of truth, as many of them as the exposition proper to the topic before us shall require will be included); and how those who philosophized methodically on the doctrines of the ancients most especially emulated the hidden element of the barbarian philosophy—this symbolic and enigmatic form—as being most useful, or rather most necessary, for the knowledge of truth.
Following upon this, I think it is next in order to defend ourselves, using but a few writings, against the charges the Greeks bring against us—if perhaps even the Jew, coming gently to perceive, might be able to turn from that in which he believed to that in which he did not believe. Fittingly there will follow, for the noble among the philosophers, a loving refutation of their life and of their discovery of new doctrines—not that we are avenging ourselves on our accusers (far from it, since we ourselves have been taught to speak well of those who revile us, even when they hurl empty blasphemies against us), but aiming at their own conversion, in case the all-wise, chastened by a barbarian refutation, might be ashamed, so as to be able at last, late though it be, to discern what sort of studies these really are, for the sake of which they set out on their voyages overseas. For as to the things they have stolen, this must indeed be demonstrated once their self-love has been stripped away; and as to the things they boast of having discovered by their own inquiry, of these too there must be a refutation. Following on from this we must also run through the so-called encyclical education, as to how far it is useful, and concerning astrology and mathematics and magical sorcery. For the Panhellenes pride themselves greatly on these as the greatest of sciences. But he who refutes with frankness makes peace.
We have said many times already that we have neither practiced nor made it our business to speak in the Greek manner; for this alone is enough to lead the many away from the truth, whereas the true philosophy will benefit those who understand it not in respect of the tongue but in respect of the mind. One who cares for truth must, I think, compose his diction not out of artifice and calculation, but must try only to name what he wishes as best he can; for those who cling to words and busy themselves about them let the realities slip away. It is proper to the farmer to pluck unharmed the rose growing among thorns, and to the craftsman to find the pearl buried in the flesh of the oyster; and they say that birds have the sweetest quality of flesh when, no abundant food having been set before them, they themselves scratch with their feet and gather their food with labor. If then anyone who is contemplative of the like desires, amid the many plausible and Greek things, to track down the truth that lies hidden there—as the true face beneath the masks of Mormo—he will hunt it out by diligent inquiry. For that is what the revealing power shown to Hermas in his vision declares: whatever can be disclosed to you shall indeed be disclosed.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 2 ========

"Do not be lifted up over your own wisdom," says Proverbs, "but in all your ways acknowledge her, that she may make your paths straight, and your foot not stumble." By these words it wishes to show that works must follow upon reason, and further to make plain that we ought to have and to pick out whatever is useful from every kind of instruction. The ways of wisdom are various, cutting straight toward the way of truth, and that way is faith; "let your foot not stumble" refers to certain things which seem to run counter to the one, divine, providential government of the world. Hence it goes on: "Do not be wise in your own eyes," that is, according to the godless reckonings that set themselves against God's economy, "but fear the only powerful God," from which it follows that nothing is opposed to God. And besides, what comes next makes plain in unmistakable terms that reverence toward God is a turning away from evil. For it says, "and turn away from all evil." Here we have wisdom's training-school; since it is written that the one loved by the Lord is corrected by him, made to feel pain on the way to understanding, yet restored afterward to peace and to incorruption.
The barbarian philosophy, then, which we follow, is in truth perfect and true. At any rate it says in Wisdom: "For he himself has given me unerring knowledge of the things that are, to know the constitution of the world," and so on, down to "and the powers of roots." In all this it has taken in the natural contemplation that concerns the sensible world of all things that have come to be. Next it hints also at things intelligible, in what follows: "and whatever things are hidden and manifest I have known; for wisdom, the artificer of all things, taught me." There you have, in brief, the profession of our own philosophy. The learning of these things, practiced together with right conduct of life, leads up, through the wisdom that is artificer of all, to the ruler of the universe — a thing hard to catch and hard to hunt down, forever withdrawing and standing far off from the pursuer. Yet this same one, though far off, has come nearest of all, an unspeakable wonder: "I am a God who draws near," says the Lord — far off in essence (for how could that which is begotten ever draw near to the unbegotten?), yet nearest of all in power, by which all things are enfolded in his bosom. "If someone does a thing in secret," it says, "shall I not see him?" And indeed the power of God is ever present, touching us with a power that watches over us, that does us good, and that instructs us.
Hence Moses, persuaded that God could never be known by human wisdom, says, "Show yourself to me," and forces his way even into the thick darkness where the voice of God was, that is, into the unapproachable and formless conceptions concerning the One who is. For God dwells neither in gloom nor within any location, but stands above place alike and time and the particular nature belonging to created things. Therefore he is never confined to any part, neither containing nor contained, whether by some boundary or by division. "For what house will you build for me?" says the Lord; nor indeed did he build one for himself, being beyond all containing, even though heaven is called his throne — not even so is he contained, but he rests there, delighting in his own creative work. It is plain to us, then, that the truth lies hidden, as has already been shown from one example, and a little later we shall establish it through several more.
How, then, are they not worthy of welcome, both those who wish to learn and those who are able, in Solomon's words, "to know wisdom and instruction, and to understand words of prudence, and to receive the turns of speech, and to understand true righteousness" (as though there were also another righteousness, not taught according to truth, put forward by the Greek laws and by the other philosophers), and "to set judgments straight" — meaning not judgments in the law courts, but that we must keep the tribunal within us sound and unerring — "that he may give shrewdness to the innocent, and to the young child perception and understanding." For the one who is wise, having heard these things — the one persuaded to obey the commandments — will become wiser still in knowledge, and the one who possesses understanding will gain the pilot's skill, grasping a proverb along with its veiled meaning, the utterances of sages and their enigmas. For those inspired by God do not put forth counterfeit words, nor do those who traffic in them, nor indeed do they set snares such as the many sophists weave around the young while occupying themselves with nothing true; rather, those who have acquired the Holy Spirit search the depths of God, that is, they become partakers of the hidden meaning concerning the prophecies. But it is forbidden to give of holy things to the dogs, so long as they remain beasts; for it is never fitting to mix the divine and pure stream, the living water, with envious and disturbed and still-faithless characters, shameless in barking at inquiry.
"Let not your waters overflow beyond your own fountain, but let your waters pass through your own streets." For, as the noble Heraclitus says, "the many do not understand such things as they meet with, nor do they know them even after learning, though they think they do." Does it not seem to you that he too is reproaching those who do not believe? "But my righteous one shall live by faith," says the prophet. And another prophet says likewise, "unless you believe, you will not understand." For how could a soul ever make room for the surpassing contemplation of these things while unbelief still fights within it against learning? Faith — which the Greeks slander, thinking it empty and barbarous — is a voluntary anticipation, an assent of piety, "the substance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen," as the divine apostle says; for it was chiefly through this that the ancients had witness borne to them; and "apart from faith, pleasing God cannot be done."
Others have defined faith as an assent of the mind to a thing not apparent, just as demonstration, of course, is an evident assent to a thing not known. If, then, it amounts to a deliberate choice, a kind of stretching-out toward something — a stretching-out, in this case, of the mind — then, given that such deliberate choice starts off every action, faith turns out to be the starting-point of action, the ground on which intelligent choice rests, since through faith the proof has already been supplied beforehand to the mind that does the choosing. And to follow willingly what is beneficial is the beginning of understanding. Indeed, an undistracted choice contributes greatly toward knowledge. Straightway the practice of faith becomes knowledge, resting firm upon a sure foundation. The children of the philosophers, at any rate, define knowledge as a settled state that reason cannot dislodge. Is there, then, some other such true condition belonging to piety itself, of which reason alone is the teacher? I for one do not think so. Theophrastus says that sense-perception is the beginning of faith; for from this the first principles are extended toward the reason and understanding within us. The one, then, who has believed the divine scriptures, holding a firm judgment, receives an irrefutable proof in the very voice of the God who gave the scriptures. Faith, therefore, is no longer something merely fortified by demonstration. "Blessed, then, are those who have not seen and yet have believed." So too the enchantments of the Sirens, displaying a more-than-human power, struck with amazement those who happened upon them, all but readying them, against their will, to accept what was being said.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 3 ========

At this point the followers of Basilides suppose faith to be something natural, inasmuch as they also assign it a place within the process of election, holding that it discovers its doctrines without demonstration, by an act of intellectual apprehension. The followers of Valentinus, on the other hand, having allotted faith to us simple believers, and knowledge to themselves, wish knowledge to be inherent, by an excess of a differing seed, in those who are by nature saved — a knowledge far removed indeed from faith, by which, they say, the spiritual is distinguished from the merely psychic. The followers of Basilides say further that faith together with election is proper to each order of being according to its own interval, and that, following upon the election that is above the world, there attends a faith belonging to the cosmic order proper to the whole of nature, corresponding both to the hope of each and to the gift of faith.
Faith, then, is no longer the achievement of moral choice, if it is an advantage of nature, nor will the man who has not believed meet with just retribution, being without blame, nor is the believer to be credited, and the whole distinctive character and difference between faith and unbelief would, to those who reason rightly, fall under neither praise nor blame, since it has as its antecedent a natural necessity arising from him who is able to do all things. And if we are worked like puppets by strings, moved like lifeless things by natural forces, then both the voluntary and the involuntary become superfluous, along with the impulse that leads the way to them. And I for my part can no longer conceive of that as a living creature whose very capacity for impulse has been allotted necessity, being moved by a cause from outside. Where then is left any repentance of the man once faithless, through which comes remission of sins? So that neither is baptism any longer reasonable, nor is the sacred seal of any use, nor do the Son and the Father count for anything; rather, it is God, I think, who on their view turns out to be the distributor of natures to men, without possessing the foundation of salvation, namely voluntary faith.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 4 ========

We who have received through the scriptures that the choice of good and the flight from evil have been given to men as sovereign, self-determined powers granted by the Lord, rest upon faith as an unshakeable criterion, showing a ready spirit, because we have chosen life and have believed God through his voice; and the one who believes the word knows that the matter is true, for the word is truth; but the one who has disbelieved the speaker has disbelieved God. By faith we grasp that the ages were fashioned through God's word, with the result that what appears was not produced from things visible, as the apostle states; by faith Abel brought a finer offering than Cain, through which he was testified to be righteous, God testifying to him upon his gifts; and through it, though he died, he still speaks, and the passage continues down to "or to have a fleeting enjoyment of sin." These men, then, even before the law, faith made righteous and established as heirs of the divine promise.
Why then do I go on setting forth further testimonies of faith, gathered from our own history? For time would fail me in the telling, were I to speak of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets, along with those who came after them. There being four things in which truth resides — sense-perception, mind, knowledge, and supposition — by nature mind is first, but for us and in relation to us sense-perception is first; and out of sense-perception and mind the substance of knowledge is composed, while what is common to mind and sense-perception is clarity. But sense-perception is the stepping-stone to knowledge, whereas faith, having journeyed through the objects of sense, leaves behind mere supposition, and presses on toward things that cannot deceive, and abides in the truth. But if someone should say that knowledge is demonstrative, proceeding by reasoning, let him hear that even first principles are undemonstrable; for such things are grasped neither through skill nor through practical judgment, since the one concerns things that admit of being otherwise, and the other is only productive, not also contemplative.
By faith alone, then, is it possible to attain to the first principle of all things. For all knowledge is teachable, and what is teachable proceeds from what is already known beforehand. But the first principle of all things was not known beforehand by the Greeks — neither by Thales, who took water to be the first cause, nor by the other natural philosophers who followed him; for even though Anaxagoras was the first to set mind over things, not even he preserved the notion of an efficient cause, but pictured certain mindless vortices, along with the inactivity and unreason of mind. Wherefore the word also says: "Call no man your teacher upon the earth"; for knowledge is a demonstrative disposition, but faith is a grace that leads up from things undemonstrated to the universal, to the simple, which exists neither together with matter, nor as matter, nor under matter.
The unbelievers, it seems, drag everything down to earth from heaven and the unseen, embracing rocks and oaks with their hands, quite artlessly, as Plato says; for laying hold of all such things, they insist that this alone exists, whatever offers impact and a kind of tangible contact, defining substance and body as one and the same. But those who dispute against them defend themselves very cautiously from above, from somewhere in the unseen, forcing certain intelligible and incorporeal forms to be the true substance. Behold, then, "I make new things," says the word, "which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man" — with a new eye, a new hearing, a new heart, all that is visible and audible and comprehensible through faith and understanding, as the Lord's disciples speak, listen, and act in a spiritual manner. For genuine currency exists, and counterfeit exists as well, which deceives ordinary people no less, though not the money-changers, who by training know how to separate and distinguish the falsified from the genuine. Thus the money-changer tells the ordinary person only this much about the coin — that it is counterfeit; but how it is so, how — only the one acquainted with the banker's trade, and the one trained for this purpose, learns. Aristotle says that the judgment which follows upon knowledge, as to whether this particular thing is true, is faith. Faith, then, is more authoritative than knowledge, and is its criterion.
Conjecture plays the hypocrite to faith, being a weak supposition, just as the flatterer plays the hypocrite to the friend, and the wolf to the dog. Since we see that the carpenter becomes a craftsman by having learned something, and the helmsman, once trained in the craft, gains the ability to guide the ship — reckoning that mere wishing to become good and noble is not sufficient, but that of necessity one must learn by being persuaded — and to be persuaded by the word, whom we have proclaimed as teacher, is to have believed that very one, in no way resisting him. For how could it be possible to stand opposed to God? Knowledge, then, is founded on faith, and faith is founded on knowledge, coming about by a certain divine sequence and reciprocal sequence. Indeed, even Epicurus, who esteemed pleasure above truth more than anyone, supposes faith to be an anticipation of the mind; and he defines anticipation as an apprehension directed at something evident, and at the evident conception of the thing; and he says that no one is able either to inquire, or to be at a loss, or indeed to hold an opinion, nor even to refute, apart from anticipation.
How could someone, not having an anticipation of what he seeks, learn concerning that which he inquires about? The one who has learned already makes the anticipation into apprehension. And if the one who learns does not learn apart from an anticipation receptive of what is said, then he himself has ears able to hear the truth; and blessed is he who speaks into the ears of those who hear, just as, of course, blessed also is the one who obeys. To hear fully is the same as understanding. If faith, then, is nothing more than an anticipation of the mind regarding what is said, and this has been called obedience, and understanding, and persuasion, then no one will learn without faith, since indeed no one learns without anticipation. That this is true is demonstrated more than anything by what was said by the prophet: "If you do not believe, neither will you understand." This same oracle Heraclitus of Ephesus paraphrased when he said: "Unless he hopes for the unhoped-for, he will not find it out, since it is unsearchable and trackless."
But Plato the philosopher too, in the Laws, says that the one who is to become blessed and happy must from the very beginning be a partaker of truth, so that he may live as long a time as possible being truthful; for such a one is faithful. But the unbeliever is the one who loves a voluntary lie; and the one for whom the lie is involuntary is mindless; and of these, neither is enviable as a living being, for everyone who is faithless and unlearned is friendless. And is it not this that he means, in a somewhat veiled way, by "kingly wisdom" in the Euthydemus? At any rate, in the Statesman he says, word for word: "Thus the understanding possessed by the true king is itself kingly, and whoever has gained it — whether ruling in fact or merely a private citizen — will properly, by the standard of the art itself, be called kingly in every instance." Accordingly, those who have believed in Christ are good, and are called so, as being truly kingly, since they are cared for by the King. For just as the wise are wise by wisdom, and the lawful are lawful by law, so those who belong to Christ the King are kingly — Christians of Christ. Then, going on a little further, he adds clearly: "What is right would be lawful, and law, being by nature the right reason, and not written in letters nor in anything else." And the Eleatic Stranger declares the kingly and statesmanlike man to be a law animate.
Such a one fulfills the law by carrying out the Father's will, and who was openly inscribed upon a certain lofty piece of wood, set forth as a pattern of divine virtue for those able to discern it. The Greeks know of the staves of the ephors at Lacedaemon, inscribed with law upon pieces of wood; but my law, as has already been said, is kingly, and animate, and is the right reason: "Law, the king of all, of mortals and immortals,"
as Pindar the Boeotian sings. For Speusippus, in his first work addressed to Cleophon, seems to write things similar to Plato's, through this: "For if kingship is a serious matter, and the wise man alone is king and ruler, and law, being right reason, is a serious matter" — which indeed it is. In accord with these things the Stoic philosophers teach that kingship, priesthood, prophecy, legislative authority, wealth, true beauty, noble birth, and freedom belong to the wise man alone — though he himself is exceedingly hard to find, as is admitted even by them.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 5 ========

All the doctrines aforementioned, then, are evidently handed down to the Greeks from Moses the Great. Through them he teaches that the sage owns everything there is; for it is said, "Since he showed pity toward me, I now possess everything." And that he was beloved of God he shows by saying, "God, who belongs to Abraham, who belongs to Isaac, who belongs to Jacob." For the one is found expressly called "friend," while the other is shown to have his name changed to "one who sees God"; and Isaac, allegorizing him as a consecrated victim, he chose as a type that was to be for us of the saving dispensation. Among the Greeks also is sung Minos, the nine-year king, the confidant of Zeus, they having heard how at some time God conversed with Moses, as one might speak with his own friend.
Moses, then, was wise, a king, a lawgiver; but our Savior surpasses every human nature: beautiful, so as to be loved alone by us who long for genuine beauty, since he himself was the genuine light; and he is shown proclaimed as king even by infants still unweaned and by faithless, unknowing Jews, and announced beforehand by the prophets themselves; and rich to such a degree that he despised every ounce of gold found above the soil and buried beneath it, together with all the splendor the adversary dangled before him. Why even mention how he alone, the high priest, alone versed in the service of God, is Melchizedek, king of peace, the one most fitted of all to guide the human race? And a lawgiver, inasmuch as he delivers his statutes through the prophets' own voices, commanding and teaching most clearly what ought to be done as well as what must not.
And who could be nobler than he whose father alone is God? Come, let us set alongside these same doctrines Plato too, as one who lays hold of them. He declares the sage to be rich, in the Phaedrus, saying, "O dear Pan, and all you other gods here, grant me to become beautiful within; and whatever external things I have, may they be friendly to what is within." "I should reckon the sage a wealthy man." And the Stranger from Athens, rebuking those who suppose that men holding great riches count as rich, puts it this way: "It is impossible for those to be both very rich and good whom the many reckon rich; for they call rich those who possess, among the few, possessions worth the most money, which even a worthless man might hold." "To the believer belongs the whole of the world's riches," says Solomon, "but the unbeliever gets not so much as a coin." We must therefore put far greater trust in the Scripture, which declares that a camel would sooner pass through a needle's opening than a rich man take up philosophy; and conversely it pronounces the poor blessed, as Plato understood when he said: "We must consider poverty not as making one's substance less, but as making one's insatiable desire greater. For it is never scantiness of money but insatiable greed that is the real poverty; and he who is free of this, being good, would also be rich." And in the Alcibiades he calls vice slavish and virtue befitting the free. "Cast off the burdensome yoke," says the Writing, "and take up the light one instead," just as the poets too speak of it as a slave's yoke. And "you were sold under your sins" agrees with what has been said before. "Everyone who commits sin is a slave. And the slave does not remain in the house forever. But if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed," and "the truth will set you free." Again, that beauty belongs to the sage, the Athenian speaks thus: if one were to maintain firmly that the just, even should their bodies happen to look unlovely, are according to their most righteous character altogether beautiful in this respect, hardly anyone speaking so would seem to speak amiss; and prophecy foretold that "his appearance was marred beyond that of any of mankind." And Plato, in the Statesman, named the sage a king, and the passage stands before us.
Now that these things have been shown, let us return again to the discourse concerning faith. Indeed with every proof Plato establishes that faith is needed everywhere, at the same time extolling peace as follows: "For a man faithful and sound amid seditions could not come to be without the whole of virtue; while there are very many mercenaries who are warlike and willing to die in war, of whom most turn out to be bold and unjust, insolent and senseless, apart from a very few. If then these things are rightly said, every lawgiver, if he is of even slight use, in laying down his laws will look chiefly to the greatest virtue. And this is faithfulness, of which we have need at every season, both in peace and in every war and in all the rest of life. For in embracing it, it seems to comprehend the others. And neither war nor faction ranks as the finest thing; rather, needing either is something to pray against, while mutual concord together with shared goodwill toward one another is the greatest of goods." From these things it appears that, according to Plato, the greatest prayer is to have peace, and the greatest mother of the virtues is faith.
Fittingly, then, Solomon says that "the believer speaks wisdom from his mouth," since Xenocrates too, in his work On Prudence, says that wisdom is the knowledge of the first causes and of intelligible substance, holding that prudence is twofold, the one practical, the other theoretical, and that the latter is human wisdom. Wherefore wisdom is prudence, but not every prudence is wisdom. And we have already established that grasping the world's originating principle rests on faith, not on proof. For it is indeed absurd that the zealots of Pythagoras of Samos, when declining demonstrations of the things sought, should hold the phrase "he himself said it" as a matter of trust and be content with this bare utterance alone for the confirmation of what they have heard, while those who are lovers of the contemplation of truth, attempting to disbelieve the trustworthy teacher, the only Savior, God, demand from him proofs of the things spoken. But he says, "let him who has ears to hear, hear." And who is this? Let Epicharmus say: "Mind sees and mind hears; all else is deaf and blind." Heraclitus, upbraiding certain men as faithless, says they "know not how to hear nor to speak," having doubtless profited from Solomon: "If you love to hear, you shall receive; and if you incline your ear, you shall be wise."

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 6 ========

"Lord, who has believed our report?" says Isaiah. For "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of God," says the apostle. "How then shall people call on one they have never trusted? And how shall they trust one of whom they have never heard? And how shall they hear apart from someone proclaiming it? And how shall anyone proclaim it unless he has been sent out?" As scripture puts it: "How lovely are the feet of those who bring good news." Do you see how he traces faith, through hearing and through the preaching of the apostles, back to the word of the Lord and the Son of God? Do we still fail to understand that the word of the Lord is itself a proof? For just as playing ball does not depend only on the one who throws the ball skillfully, but also requires the one who catches it gracefully, so that the exercise may be carried out according to the rules of the game, so too teaching turns out to be trustworthy only when the faith of the hearers - being, so to speak, a kind of natural skill - joins in cooperation toward learning.
So too the earth cooperates, being fertile, toward the casting down of seeds. For neither is the finest instruction of any use without the receptivity of the learner, nor indeed is prophecy of use without the ready compliance of the hearers being present. Indeed dried sticks, standing prepared to take in the force of a flame, kindle all the more readily; and the well-known stone draws iron by kinship, just as the Sochian tear-gum draws bits of straw to itself, and amber stirs up chaff; and the things drawn are persuaded by them, being drawn by an inexpressible force, not as by causes, but as by co-causes. Since the form of wickedness is twofold - the one working through deceit and concealment, the other leading and carrying off by force - the divine word cries out, calling all together, knowing well, especially, those who will not be persuaded; nevertheless, since it is within our power to be persuaded or not, so that none may have the excuse of ignorance, it has made the call a just one, while requiring of each according to his capacity. For to some, together with the willing, the being able is also present, since they have grown in this through joint training and have been purified; but others, even if they are not yet able, already have the willing. Now willing is the work of the soul, but doing is not without the body. Nor indeed are things measured by the outcome alone, but judgment is also made by each person's choice - whether he chose readily, whether he repented of the things in which he sinned, whether he gained understanding concerning the things in which he stumbled, and changed his mind, which is to say, came to know afterward; for repentance is a slow knowledge, but the first knowledge is sinlessness.
Repentance, then, is also an achievement of faith; for if one does not believe that the thing he was formerly possessed by is a sin, he will not turn from it either; and if he does not believe that punishment hangs over the one who transgresses, and salvation for the one who lives according to the commandments, neither in that case will he change. And indeed hope too is constituted out of faith. The followers of Basilides, at any rate, define faith as an assent of the soul to something among the things that do not move the senses, because it is not present. But hope is the expectation of the acquisition of a good; and the expectation must necessarily be a believing one. And the believer is the one who steadfastly keeps the things entrusted to him; and there are entrusted to us the accounts concerning God and the divine words, the commandments, together with the carrying out of the precepts. This is the faithful servant, the one praised by the Lord. And when it says "God is faithful," it signifies that it is worthy to believe him who declares; and his word is what declares, and he himself, God, would be faithful. How then, if believing is a kind of supposing, do the philosophers consider the things from them to be certain? For voluntary supposition prior to demonstration is not mere supposition, but assent to something strong.
And who could be stronger than God? Now unbelief is a weak, negative supposition of the opposite, just as distrust is a disposition ill-disposed to receive faith. And faith is a voluntary supposition and a fair-minded anticipation prior to apprehension, while expectation is an opinion about the future; but the expectation of other things is an opinion about what is unclear; whereas confidence is a firm judgment concerning something. Therefore we believe - toward whatever we place our confidence in - unto divine glory and salvation; and we have placed our confidence in God alone, whom we know will not transgress the things well promised to us, things which were also made and given to us by him out of goodwill for our sake. Now goodwill is the wish for good things for another, for that other's own sake. For he himself is without need; but the benefaction and the kindness from the Lord terminate upon us, being a divine goodwill, and a goodwill directed toward doing good. And if it was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness that he believed, and we are the seed of Abraham through hearing, then we too must believe. For we are Israelites, not through signs, but through hearing, being obedient. For this reason, "Rejoice, you barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud," it says, "you who are not in labor; for many are the children of the desolate woman, more than of her who has the husband. You have come to live within the enclosure of the people; your children have been blessed within the tents of the fathers." And if the same dwelling places are announced by prophecy both to us and to the patriarchs, God is shown to be one for both covenants.
At any rate it goes on more clearly: "You have inherited the covenant of Israel," speaking of the calling from the nations, of her who was once barren of this husband - who is the Word - once desolate before the bridegroom. "But the righteous shall live by faith," the faith in accordance with the covenant and the commandments, since these two, though differing in name and time, given dispensationally according to age and advancement, being one in power - the one old, the other new - are supplied through the Son by the one God. To which the apostle also refers in his letter to the Romans, saying: "For the righteousness of God is revealed in it from faith to faith," teaching that the single salvation, carried forward from prophecy to its fulfillment in the gospel, comes through one identical Lord. "This instruction," he said, "I commit to you, my child Timothy, following the prophecies once spoken over you, that armed with them you may fight the noble fight, keeping hold of faith and a clear conscience - which some have thrown aside and so wrecked their faith," because they had fouled with unbelief the conscience that came from God.
It is therefore no longer reasonable to disparage faith as something facile and common and belonging, moreover, to whoever happens along. For if the practice were merely human, as the Greeks supposed, it would long ago have died out; but it grows, and there is no place where it is not. I say, then, that faith - whether it was founded upon love or upon fear, as its accusers claim - is something divine, torn apart neither by any other worldly attachment, nor dissolved by present fear. For love makes the faithful through their affection toward faith, while faith is the foundation of love, bringing in return good deeds - just as the law's tutor, fear, comes from those things by which one believes. And fear too is believed to exist. For if being is shown in acting - but that which is future and merely threatens, and does not act and is not present, is nevertheless believed, then the one believed to exist is not himself the begetter of the faith, insofar as he is tested by it and found worthy of belief.
Divine, then, is so great a change - a man becoming faithful out of unbelief, and coming to believe both through hope and through fear. And indeed faith appears to us as the first inclination toward salvation; after which fear, hope, and repentance, advancing together with self-control and endurance, lead us on to both love and knowledge. Fittingly, then, the apostle Barnabas, from whom he says he received it: "I was eager to send you a portion, little by little, so that together with your faith you might also have complete knowledge." Of our faith, then, the assistants are fear and endurance, and the things that fight along with us are patience and self-control. When these things, then, he says, remain purely toward the Lord, wisdom, understanding, discernment, and knowledge rejoice together with them. Since, then, the aforementioned virtues are elements of knowledge, it turns out that faith is the more elemental thing, being as necessary to the one possessing gnosis as breathing is to living for one who lives in this world; and just as one cannot live without the four elements, so knowledge cannot follow without faith. This, then, is the foundation of truth.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 7 ========

Those who accuse fear run down the law, and if the law, then clearly also that same divine lawgiver stands accused as well. For those three elements necessarily attend the subject at hand: the one who administers, the administering itself, and the thing that gets administered. If, then, by hypothesis one were to remove the law, it would necessarily follow that each person led by desire, indulging pleasure, would neglect what is right, would think little of the divine, and would be impious and unjust at once, having leapt away from truth without fear. Yes, they say, fear is an irrational avoidance, a passion. What do you mean? And how could this definition of yours still hold, seeing that the commandment has been given to me through reason? The commandment forbids, hanging fear over us for the instruction of those who are capable of being admonished in this way. Fear, then, is not irrational, but rather rational; for how could it not be, when it exhorts, "You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness"? But if they play sophist with names, let the philosophers call the fear of the law by the name "caution."
...being a reasonable avoidance. Critolaus of Phaselis not inappropriately called such people word-fighters. So then the commandment appears already elegant and most beautiful to our accusers once it is understood by an interchange of name. Caution, then, is shown to be rational, being an avoidance of what harms, out of which repentance for former sins grows. For it is written, "dread of the Lord marks the start of wisdom, and all who put it into practice gain sound understanding." By "practice" he means the doing of wisdom, which is the fear of God making a way toward wisdom. And if the law breeds this dread, then grasping the law is itself where wisdom starts, and no one is wise apart from the law. Foolish, then, are those who reject the law, from which it follows that they must be reckoned godless. And correction, too, is where wisdom takes its start. "But the impious will despise wisdom and instruction," says Scripture.
Let us consider what sort of fearful things the law announces. If they are the things that lie between virtue and vice — poverty, and disease, and disrepute, and low birth, and all things of that kind — these too are held up and praised by the laws of the city-state, and this opinion is in harmony with those from the Peripatos who introduce three classes of goods and reckon the opposites of these to be evils. But for us, the law that has been given commands us to flee the things that are truly evil: adultery, licentiousness, pederasty, ignorance, injustice, sickness of soul, death — not the death that separates soul from body, but the death that separates soul from truth. For these are truly terrible and fearful evils, and so are the activities that spring from them. Yet the divine oracles do not say that nets are stretched out for birds unjustly, for they themselves, being partakers of bloodshed, store up evils for themselves. How, then, can the law still be said by certain sects to be not good, when they cry out, appealing to the apostle who says, "For through the law comes knowledge of sin"? To these we say: the law did not create sin, but showed it; for by commanding what must be done, it exposed what must not be done. And it belongs to a good thing both to teach out the saving course and to point out the destructive one, both to counsel the use of the one and to command the avoidance of the other.
Indeed the apostle, whom they do not understand, said that knowledge of sin was made manifest through the law, not that sin received its very existence through it. And how is the law that instructs not good — the tutor given to lead us to Christ, so that, being guided through fear in an educative manner, we might turn and be brought to perfection through Christ? "I do not desire," he says, "the death of the sinner so much as his repentance." And it is the commandment that produces repentance, being on the one hand preventive of what must not be done, and on the other hand promissory of benefits. By "death," I think, he means ignorance. And "whoever draws close to the Lord meets with many blows" — meaning that the one who draws near to knowledge plainly experiences dangers, fears, distresses, and afflictions on account of his longing for the truth. For "a disciplined child grows wise, and a discerning child escapes the burning heat," and "a discerning child will take hold of commandments." And the apostle Barnabas, having first said, "Grief awaits those clever in their own estimation and shrewd by their own judgment," added: "let us turn spiritual, a finished sanctuary offered to God. So far as lies within us, let us cultivate reverence for God and labor to hold fast his commands, so that we may take joy in his upright decrees." Hence it has been divinely said that reverence for God is where wisdom begins.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 8 ========

Here the followers of Basilides, expounding this saying, say that the Archon, when he heard the utterance of the ministering spirit, was struck with astonishment both at what he heard and at what he saw, having been given glad tidings beyond his hopes, and that his astonishment was called "fear," becoming the beginning of a wisdom that discriminates by kind, and distinguishes, and perfects, and restores; for it is not only the world but also the Election that he who is set over all things, having distinguished it, sends forward. And Valentinus too, in a certain letter, appears to have had some such notion in mind when he wrote, in these very words: "And just as fear came upon that molded figure on the part of the angels, when it uttered things greater than its molding, on account of him who had invisibly deposited in it a seed of the substance from above and who was speaking with boldness; so too among the generations of worldly men the works of men became objects of fear to their makers — statues, for instance, and images, and everything that hands produce in the name of a god. For Adam, having been molded in the name of Man, produced fear because of the pre-existing Man, as though that Man were himself established within him; and they were terror-struck and quickly made the work disappear."
But since there is one single first principle, as will be shown later, these men will be shown to be fashioning mere trills and warblings. Now since it was deemed advantageous by God that men should be schooled beforehand through the Law and the Prophets by means of the Lord, it is said that "reverence toward the Lord forms the starting point of wisdom," a saying given by the Lord through Moses to people who are stubborn and unyielding in spirit; for those whom argument fails to persuade, dread subdues. And this the Word who trains us, foreseeing from above, fitted as an instrument suited to each of the two dispositions, purifying appropriately unto the reverent fear of God. Now consternation is a fear arising from an unaccustomed appearance, or from an unexpected apparition, † inasmuch as it is also of a message brought. But fear proper is felt toward something that has come to be, or that exists, or is an excessive wonder. They fail to notice, then, that by means of consternation they have made subject to passion the very greatest God, the one hymned by them, and represent him as having existed in ignorance before the consternation. If, then, ignorance preceded the consternation, and the consternation and the fear became the beginning of wisdom — the fear of God — then it is in danger of following that ignorance was the causal starting point not only of the wisdom of God and of the whole making of the world, but also of the very restoration of the Election itself.
Is the ignorance, then, of good things or of base things? But if of good things, why does it cease at consternation? And then the minister and the preaching and the baptism become superfluous for them. But if of base things, how is evil the cause of the noblest things? For if ignorance had not preexisted, the attending spirit would never have descended, nor would the Ruler have been seized with consternation, as they themselves say, nor would he have derived from fear a beginning of wisdom for the discrimination of the Election and of worldly things. But if the fear of the preexisting Man made the angels plot against their own molded work, on the ground that the invisible seed of the substance from above was implanted in the created thing, then either they were jealously provoked by an empty supposition — which is implausible, namely that angels should become the sole authors, so to speak, of a creation entrusted to them, as if it were some child of their own, having been convicted of utter ignorance; or else they were moved while held fast by foreknowledge — but then they would not have plotted against that through which they undertook the very thing they had foreknown, nor would dread of their own handiwork have overtaken them, once they grasped through foreknowledge the seed sent from above; or, finally, they dared the deed relying on knowledge — but this too is impossible, since, having learned the surpassing excellence present in Man within the Fullness, and moreover the fact of the image, in which they had received both the archetype and, along with the rest of the knowledge, its incorruptibility, they would not plot against it.
To these men, then, and to certain others, and above all to the followers of Marcion, Scripture cries out, though they do not hear: "Whoever gives ear to me will dwell secure, resting untroubled, undisturbed by dread of any harm." What, then, do they wish to say of the Law? It is not evil they will name it, but righteous — thereby splitting apart the good from the righteous. Now the Lord, in commanding us to fear evil, does not remove evil by evil, but destroys the contrary by its contrary. And evil is contrary to good, as the just is to the unjust. If, then, he has called the abstention from evils "fearlessness," which the fear of the Lord produces, then fear is good, and the fear that comes from the Law is not only just but also good, since it does away with vice; and by introducing fearlessness through fear, it produces not freedom from passion by means of passion, but moderation of passion by means of discipline. When, therefore, we hear: "Honor the Lord, and you shall be strong, but besides him fear no other," we understand "to fear" as meaning "to sin," and "to follow the commandments given by God" as being the honoring of God.
Now dread is fear of the divine. But even if fear is a passion, as some wish to maintain, on the ground that fear is a passion, not every fear is a passion. Superstition, at any rate, is a passion, being a fear of demons that is both excessive and passionate; but conversely, the fear of the God who is free from passion is itself free from passion. For one does not fear God himself, but rather the falling away from God; and he who dreads this — falling into evils — fears and dreads the evils; and he who dreads this fall wishes to be incorruptible and free from passion himself. "The wise man, being afraid, turned away from evil, but the fool mingles with it in overconfidence," says Scripture; and again, in the fear of the Lord, it says, "there is hope of strength."

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 9 ========

Such fear, then, leads on both to repentance and to hope. And hope is the good expectation of a good thing not yet present, held with good confidence. Indeed, even a readiness to fall into trust is taken up into hope, which we have learned is led by the hand toward love. Love would be concord among those who share the same reasoning, the same life, and the same character, or, to put it concisely, a partnership of life, or an intensity of friendship and affection joined with right reason concerning the use one makes of a companion. And the companion is another self; by which we also call brothers those who have been regenerated by the same word. Bordering on love is hospitality, being a kind of skill in the use of strangers; and strangers are those to whom worldly things are strange. For by "worldly" we understand those who hope in earth and in fleshly desires; "do not be conformed," says the apostle, "to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of the mind, so that you may test what the will of God is, the good and acceptable and perfect." Hospitality, then, is occupied with what is beneficial to strangers, and strangers are guest-friends, and guest-friends are friends, and friends are brothers; "dear brother," says Homer; and there is also love of humanity, on account of which there is likewise affection, being a friendly use of human beings; and affection, being a kind of skill in the cherishing of friends or kin, accompanies love together with these.
But if the true human being within us is the spiritual one, then brotherly love is love-of-humanity toward those who share in the same spirit; and cherishing, in turn, is the preservation of goodwill or of loving, and loving is complete approval, and to love is to be pleased with one's own character, being both drawn and led away; and they are drawn into sameness through concord, which is a knowledge of common goods; for likemindedness is a harmony of judgments. And, it says, "let love among us be without hypocrisy; let us ourselves become those who abhor what is evil, clinging to what is good, in brotherly love," and so on down to "as far as it is possible, so far as depends on you, being at peace with all men." Then it says, "be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." The same apostle also confesses that he bears witness for the Jews, that they have a zeal for God, but not according to full knowledge; for not knowing God's righteousness, and striving to set up a righteousness of their own devising, they refused to yield in submission before what God accounts righteous; for they never came to grasp and carry out what the law requires, but imagined that whatever notion they themselves had taken up was likewise the law's own intention; nor did they place trust in the law as something prophetic, but followed it with bare word and fear, not with disposition and faith; for the end of the law is Christ, unto righteousness, he who was prophesied by the law, for everyone who believes.
Hence it was said to these people through Moses: "I will provoke you to jealousy over a people that is no people, and I will anger you over a foolish nation," that is, over the nation that had become prepared for obedience. And through Isaiah it says: "I was found by those who were not seeking me, I became manifest to those who were not asking after me" -- this evidently spoken before the coming of the Lord, after which those same things prophesied are now said fittingly of Israel too: "I have stretched out my hands the whole day toward a disobedient and contradicting people." Do you see the reason for the calling from among the nations, plainly stated by the prophet as the people's disobedience and contradiction? Then the goodness of God is shown even in these matters; for the apostle says, "but by their trespass salvation came to the nations, so as to provoke them to jealousy and to make them willing to repent." And the Shepherd, simply applying the term to those who have fallen asleep, knows that there are certain righteous ones among the nations and among the Jews, not only before the Lord's coming, but even prior to the law, in keeping with what pleases God -- for instance Abel, or Noah, or whatever other righteous figure one might name.
It says, then, that the apostles and teachers who proclaimed the Son of God's name, once fallen asleep, proclaimed with power and with faith to those who had fallen asleep ahead of them. Then it continues: "and they themselves conferred on those the seal of the proclamation. Down into the water, then, along with these others they descended, and rose up once more. But the living descended alive and likewise rose up alive; whereas those already asleep went down dead and rose up alive; through this means, then, life was given them, and they came to recognize the Son of God's name. On this account they too rose up together with the others and were joined into the tower's structure, built in together unhewn; for their sleep had come while righteous and exceedingly pure, only this single seal was lacking to them." For when nations lacking the law nonetheless carry out its requirements as though by instinct, such people, though the law is absent, stand as a law unto themselves, so the apostle teaches.
As to how the virtues follow one upon another, what need is there to speak, since it has already been shown that faith rests upon repentance and hope, and reverent caution upon faith, and that perseverance and discipline in these things, together with learning, are brought to completion in love, which in turn is perfected by knowledge? But this must necessarily be noted besides: that only the divine is to be understood as wise by nature; wherefore wisdom too is a power of God that has taught the truth, and it is here, in some sense, that the perfection of knowledge is grasped. And the philosopher loves and cherishes the truth, having, from being a genuine servant, now come through love to be reckoned a friend. The beginning of this is wonder at things, as Plato says in the Theaetetus, and as Matthias in his Traditions exhorts, "wonder at the things present," laying this down as the first step of the knowledge beyond; wherefore also in the Gospel according to the Hebrews it is written, "he who has wondered shall reign, and he who has reigned shall rest." It is impossible, then, for the unlearned person, so long as he remains unlearned, to philosophize; nor can one who has not grasped the notion of wisdom philosophize, since philosophy is a longing for that which truly is, and for the studies that stretch toward this. And even if doing well has been practiced by some, still there remains knowing how one ought to use it and do it and labor it out together, by which one is also made like God -- I mean God the Savior -- worshiping the God of the universe through the Word who is high priest, through whom what is truly beautiful and just is beheld. Piety is action that follows and accompanies God.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 10 ========

Our philosopher, then, holds fast to these three things: first, contemplation; second, the fulfillment of the commandments; third, the formation of good men. These, coming together, complete the Gnostic. Whatever of these is lacking, the work of knowledge limps. Whence Scripture speaks divinely: "The Lord addressed Moses in these words: Tell the sons of Israel this, declaring to them: I, your God, am the Lord. Do not act as they act in the land of Egypt, where once you dwelt; nor act as they act in the land of Canaan, to which I am now leading you; do not follow their customs either. Carry out my judgments, hold fast to my statutes, and live by them: I, your God, am the Lord. Keep every one of my statutes, and put them into practice. Whoever carries them out will find life through them: I, your God, am the Lord."
Whether, then, Egypt and the land of the Canaanites stand for the cosmos and its deceptions, or rather for the passions and vices from which we must hold back, the oracle points us toward the sort of conduct we ought to embrace instead, seeing that it is godly rather than worldly. And when it says, "whoever carries them out will find life through them," it names as life both for the Hebrews themselves and for those near them—that is, for us—their amendment and our own discipline and advancement; for the dead in their transgressions are made alive together with Christ through our covenant. And Scripture, by repeating so often "I am the Lord your God," abashes us most persuasively, teaching us to follow the God who gave the commandments, while gently reminding us to seek God and, so far as possible, to attempt to know him—which would be the greatest contemplation, the epoptic vision, the true science, the knowledge that remains unshaken by reason. This alone would be the knowledge of wisdom, from which right conduct is never separated.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 11 ========

But the knowledge of those who merely think themselves wise — be it a non-Greek sect or one of the Hellenic schools of thought — puffs up, according to the Apostle; whereas knowledge is trustworthy only when it is the scientific demonstration of the things handed down according to true philosophy. We would say that it is a reasoned account which, from things agreed upon, procures conviction for the things disputed. Since belief is twofold — the one scientific, the other a matter of mere opinion — nothing prevents us from calling demonstration likewise twofold, the one scientific, the other opinionative. For knowledge too, and foreknowledge, are each spoken of in two ways: the one possessing its own nature in exact and finished form, the other deficient. And perhaps the demonstration current among us alone would be true, seeing that it is supplied from divine writings, from the sacred letters and from the God-taught wisdom spoken of by the Apostle. Learning, then, and the obeying of the commandments, is what it means to believe God. And faith is a certain power of God, being the strength of truth.
Thus he says: if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall remove the mountain; and again: according to your faith be it done to you; and the one is healed, having received healing along with his faith, while the other, dead, is raised up through the strength of him who believed that he would rise. But the opinionative demonstration is a human thing, and comes about through rhetorical arguments or dialectical syllogisms. For the highest demonstration, which we have hinted is scientific, implants belief through the setting-forth and opening-up of the scriptures in the souls of those who reach out to learn — and this would be knowledge. For if the premises taken toward what is sought are received as true, inasmuch as they are divine and prophetic, it is plain, surely, that the conclusion drawn from them will likewise follow as true; and thus knowledge would rightly be, for us, demonstration.
When, at any rate, it was commanded that the memorial of the heavenly and divine food be consecrated in a golden jar, it says that the gomor was the tenth part of the three measures. For in ourselves three measures, three criteria, are signified: sense-perception of things perceived by sense, reason of the things spoken — both names and words — and mind of things thought. The one who possesses knowledge, then, will hold back from sins in respect of reason, in respect of thought, and in respect of sense and act, having heard how the one who looked with desire committed adultery, and having taken to mind the saying that those clean of heart are fortunate, since sight of God awaits them, and knowing further that a man is not defiled by whatever enters his mouth, but rather by what issues forth from his mouth is he defiled; since it is out of the heart that base reckonings arise. This, as I judge it, is the measure — the one that is true and rightly proportioned in God's sight — by which the things measured are measured — the decad that holds a man together, which the three measures spoken of above signified in their totals. And this would be body and soul, and the five senses, and the vocal and generative faculty, and the discursive or spiritual faculty, or whatever else you wish to call it.
One must, so to speak, mount above all the rest and come to stand upon the mind — just as, indeed, in the cosmos too, one leaps over the nine spheres: first the sphere composed of the four elements set in one region because of their equal turning, then the seven wandering spheres and the ninth, the fixed sphere, arriving at the perfect number that lies beyond the nine — and the tenth sphere is where one comes to the knowledge of God, longing, to put it concisely, for the Maker after the creation. For this reason the tithes of the oiphi and of the sacrificial victims were brought to God, and the feast of the Passover began from the tenth day, being a passing-over of every passion and of everything perceived by sense. The one who possesses knowledge, then, stands firm in faith, while the one who merely thinks himself wise does not willingly lay hold of truth, being given over to unsteady and unfixed impulses. Rightly, then, it is written: 'And Cain departed from before God's presence, settling in the land of Naid, facing toward Eden'; and Naid is interpreted as 'tossing,' while Eden is 'delight'; and faith and knowledge and peace are the delight, from which he who disobeys is cast out, while the one who merely thinks himself wise is unwilling even to begin to give heed to the divine commandments, but, as though self-taught, breaks free and willingly removes himself into surging tossing, descending into things mortal and begotten out of the knowledge of the unbegotten, holding now this opinion, now that. Those who lack a steersman fall like leaves; whereas reasoning and the ruling faculty, remaining unstumbling and going before the soul, is called its steersman; for indeed the approach is made by the unchangeable toward the Unchangeable.
Thus Abraham stood before the Lord and, drawing near, spoke; and to Moses it is said, 'But you, stand here with me.' Those about Simon wish to be made like in character to the One who Stands, whom they worship. Faith, then, and the knowledge of truth, produce a soul that has chosen them as ever holding to the same things in the same way. Akin to falsehood are change and deviation and apostasy, just as to the one who possesses knowledge belong stillness and rest and peace. Just as, then, conceit and self-opinion have brought philosophy into disrepute, so too has false knowledge — that which is called by the same name — brought knowledge into disrepute, concerning which the Apostle, writing, says: 'O Timothy, guard the deposit, turning away from the profane empty talk and oppositions of the falsely-named knowledge, which some professing have gone astray concerning the faith.' Being refuted by this very utterance, those of the heresies reject the letters to Timothy. Come, then: if the Lord is God's wisdom and power and truth, which indeed he is, it would be shown that the one who has truly come to know him, and through him the Father, is in reality the one who possesses knowledge; for he perceives along with the one who says: 'The lips of the righteous know lofty things.'

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 12 ========

Since faith, like time, is twofold, we may find that two virtues dwell together with both. For of time, memory belongs to the past, and hope to the future; and we believe that the things past have happened and the things future will be; and again we love, being persuaded by faith that the past things stand thus, and awaiting the future things by hope. For love has, through all things, come to dwell in the Gnostic who knows the one God; and behold, he both knows and marvels at all the things He has fashioned, which are exceedingly good; and reverence lengthens one's days, while awe of the Lord multiplies them further still. Since, then, our days form a share of a life that climbs upward by stages, awe in this manner stands at the root from which love grows, ripening first into faith and afterward into love; yet this is not the dread with which I recoil from a savage beast and detest it (for such dread comes in two forms), but rather the reverence with which I regard my own father, whom I hold in awe even while loving him; and once more, out of concern that punishment might fall on me, I choose that same reverence out of care for myself; yet it is the son unwilling to grieve his father who truly loves him. Blessed, then, is he who becomes faithful, tempered with love and fear; and faith is strength unto salvation and power unto eternal life.
Again, prophecy is foreknowledge, and knowledge is the understanding of prophecy, that is, the knowledge of the things foreknown by those to whom the Lord who reveals all things beforehand made them known in advance. The knowledge, then, of the things foretold shows a threefold outcome: either it has already come to pass long ago, or it is now taking place, or it is yet to be. Then the two extremes fall under faith, whether of things accomplished or of things hoped for, while the activity now taking place furnishes persuasion for the confirmation of both extremes. For if, the prophecy being one, part of it is already being fulfilled and part has been fulfilled, then from this it becomes clear that the reality still awaited and the reality already gone by are alike dependable and genuine. For what is now taking place was formerly future, and then it became past for us, so that the faith regarding things past is an apprehension of what is past, and the hope of things future is an apprehension of a future reality. And not only the followers of Plato but also those of the Stoa say that acts of assent rest with us.
Every opinion, then, and judgment and supposition and item of learning by which we live and are ever in communion with the human race is an act of assent; and this would be nothing other than faith, while unbelief, being a falling away from faith, shows that assent and faith are indeed possible; for privation could not be predicated of what does not exist. And if one examines the truth, he will find that man is by nature averse to assenting to falsehood, but possesses the means for faith in the truth. The virtue, then, that holds the Church together, as the Shepherd says, is faith, the very means by which those God has chosen come to be rescued; and the virtue that makes one manly is self-control. Following upon these are simplicity, knowledge, guilelessness, dignity, love. All these spring forth as children born of faith. And once more: faith goes ahead first, awe raises the structure, and love finishes the work. The Lord, he says, ought to inspire awe that builds one up, whereas the devil should not be feared toward one's own ruin. And conversely: the deeds of the Lord, that is, his commandments, deserve our love and our doing them, while the devil's deeds ought to be shunned in awe and left undone; for holy awe teaches a person and leads him back to love, while the hatred of the devil's works has hatred as its companion. And the same author says that repentance is a great understanding; for one who repents of what he has done no longer does or says it, but by tormenting his own soul over his sins he does it good. The forgiveness of sins, then, differs from repentance, but both show what rests with us.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 13 ========

The one, then, who has received forgiveness of sins must no longer sin. For upon the first and only repentance of sins — this would be the repentance for the sins that existed before, in the pagan and former life, I mean the life lived in ignorance — repentance is at once set before those who are called, the repentance that cleanses the seat of the soul from its transgressions, so that faith might be laid as a foundation. But the Lord, being a knower of hearts and foreknowing the things to come, foresaw from the beginning both the changeableness of man and the fickle and cunning nature of the devil, how, being jealous over man's forgiveness of sins, he would fasten upon the servants of God certain occasions of sin, prudently working his mischief, so that they too might fall together with him.
He gave, then, yet another repentance, a second one, to those who even while in the faith fall into some transgression, being rich in mercy, so that if anyone should be tempted after his calling, being overpowered and outwitted, he might receive one further repentance, not to be repented of again. For if we sin willingly after having received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and a fierceness of fire that is about to devour the adversaries. But repentances that are continuous and repeated one upon another for sins differ in nothing from those who have never trusted whatsoever, except only in this, that they are conscious that they are sinning; and I do not know which of the two is worse — to sin knowingly, or, having repented of what one has sinned, to transgress again in the same things; for on both counts the sin is shown to be culpable, the one condemned by the doer of lawlessness for its being committed, the other by one who, foreknowing what is about to be done, still undertakes it as base. And the one perhaps gratifies wrath and pleasure, not being ignorant of whom he gratifies; but the other, repenting of what he gratified, then running back again into pleasure, joins himself to the one who sins willingly from the very start; for whoever, having repented of a thing, does it again, does it having condemned what he does.
This he does willingly. The one, then, who has set out toward the faith from among the nations and from that former manner of life, has obtained once for all the forgiveness of sins; but the one who sins even after this, and then repents, even if he obtains forgiveness, ought to feel shame, no longer being washed unto the forgiveness of sins. For one must leave behind not only the idols which he formerly worshipped as divine, but also the works of the former life, being one begotten anew, not from blood, nor from bodily desire, but from spirit — which would mean not repenting again for having been carried into the same transgression; for to repent often is, on the contrary, a practice of sins, and a readiness for backsliding born of lack of discipline.
It is, then, a semblance of repentance, not repentance, to ask forgiveness often for the same things we often transgress; but righteousness cuts straight paths that are blameless, the scripture cries out. And again: the righteousness of the blameless man shall make straight his way. Yes indeed, as a father has compassion on his sons, so has the Lord had compassion on those who fear him, David writes; those who sow, then, in tears shall reap in gladness — of those who confess in repentance; for blessed are all who fear the Lord. Do you see the blessing akin to those in the gospel? Fear not, it says, when a man grows rich, and when his household's splendor increases; for he shall not take all things with him when he dies, nor shall his glory go down with him. But I, in your mercy, will enter into your house, I will worship toward your holy temple in fear of you. Lord, guide me in your righteousness.
An impulse, then, is a movement of the mind toward something or away from it; but passion is an impulse that is excessive, or that oversteps the measures set by reason, or an impulse carried out of bounds and disobedient to reason; passions, then, are a movement of the soul contrary to nature, in disobedience to reason (and this defection and standing-outside-oneself and disobedience are within our own power, just as obedience too is within our own power; wherefore also such things are judged as voluntary); indeed, if one should examine each of the passions one by one, he would find them to be irrational appetites.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 14 ========

Now the involuntary act is not judged (and this is twofold: what happens through ignorance, and what happens through necessity); for how could you pass judgment on those said to sin in involuntary ways? Either a man was ignorant of himself, as Cleomenes and Athamas were when they went mad; or of the deed he was doing, as Aeschylus, who divulged the mysteries on the stage, and being tried before it in the Areopagus was thus acquitted, having shown that he had not been initiated; or a man might be ignorant of the person against whom the act is done, as one who lets his adversary go and kills a kinsman instead of the enemy; or of the instrument with which the act is done, as one who trains with blunted spears and kills someone when the spear-head has fallen off; or of the manner in which it is done, as the man in the stadium who kills his opponent (for he was not competing for the sake of death, but of victory); or of the purpose for which it is done, as when a physician has given a healthful antidote and it has killed the patient, though he gave it not for that purpose but in order to save him.
Now the law at that time held even the involuntary murderer liable, just as it held the man with an involuntary flux, but not equally with the voluntary offender. And yet even that man will be punished as though he had acted voluntarily, if one traces the passion back to its truth; for in reality the man who lacks mastery over the generative reason is deserving of punishment. This is itself an irrational passion of the soul, verging close on idle babbling; but the faithful man has chosen to conceal his affairs by his very breath. The things done by deliberate choice, then, are what is judged. For the Lord tests hearts and reins; and the man who looks with desire is judged. Wherefore it says, "Do not even desire," and, "This people give me honor with their mouths, while their hearts stay distant from me." For God looks to the intention itself, since indeed he left the wife of Lot, who turned back only voluntarily toward worldly wickedness, without perception, showing her as a pillar of salt and fixing her so that she should go no further forward — not a foolish and inert image, but one to season and give astringency to the man able to discern spiritually.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 15 ========

The voluntary is either according to desire, or according to choice, or according to deliberate thought. Now these three things stand somewhat side by side with one another: fault, misfortune, wrongdoing. And a fault, for example, is living luxuriously and licentiously; a misfortune is striking a friend as an enemy through ignorance; a wrongdoing is grave-robbing or temple-robbery. To sin arises from not knowing how to judge what one ought to do, or from being unable to do it, just as, of course, someone also falls into a pit either from ignorance or from being unable to step over it through bodily weakness. But it is in our own power both to submit to our training and to obey the commandments.
If we should be unwilling to share in these, giving ourselves over as slaves to anger and desire, we shall sin, or rather we shall do wrong to our own soul. For that Laius of the tragedy says: "None of these things which you warn me of has escaped me, but though I have understanding, nature does violence to me" — that is, that he had given himself over to passion. Medea too, likewise, cries out upon the stage: "I know indeed what evils I am about to do, but anger is stronger than my deliberations." Nor is Ajax silent either, but when about to slaughter himself he shouts: "No calamity ever so gnawed at the soul of a free man as dishonor; thus have I suffered, and a deep, converging stain from the depths turns me back, provoked by the bitter goads of madness."
These men, then, anger drives to tragedy, but desire drives countless others — Phaedra, Antheia, Eriphyle, "who received the precious gold of her husband's friend" [as the price of betrayal]. For as to that comic character Thrasonides, another stage tells us: "a cheap little slave-girl has enslaved me."
Misfortune, then, is unreasoning error, and error is involuntary wrongdoing, while wrongdoing is voluntary vice. Error, therefore, is my own involuntary act. So it is written: "Sin will no longer be master over you, since you stand not under law but under favor" — addressed to those who have already come to belief, because "by his wound we were made whole." Misfortune is another's involuntary act directed at me; wrongdoing alone is found to be voluntary, whether it be mine or another's.
These distinctions among sins the psalmist hints at when he pronounces fortunate those whose lawless deeds God has wiped away, whose sins he has covered over, and whose other sins he did not reckon, and whose remaining sins he forgave. As scripture puts it: "Fortunate are those whose lawless acts stand pardoned, whose sins lie hidden from view; fortunate the man against whom the Lord will reckon no sin, and in whose mouth no deceit is found." This blessing came to rest upon those God had chosen through his Son Jesus Christ. For "love hides away a great many sins," and whoever favors a sinner's turning back over his ruin wipes those sins away.
Those sins are not reckoned which do not arise from deliberate choice; for "whoever has already desired has already committed adultery in his heart," as he says. And the Word who gives light forgives sins: "in that season," the Lord declares, "they will search for Israel's wrongdoing, and none will be found, and for Judah's sins, and they will not turn up, for who compares to me? And who can stand opposed to me, face to face?" Here one benevolent God is proclaimed, apportioning and pardoning sins according to each one's due. John too, in his longer letter, can be seen setting out the distinctions among sins in this passage: "Should anyone notice his brother committing a sin that does not lead to death, let him make request, and life will be granted to him" — spoken of those whose sin does not lead to death; "there is, however, a sin that leads to death; regarding that one, I am not urging that a request be made." "Every wrongdoing is sin,"
and yet there is a sin not leading to death. David, and before him Moses, reveal their grasp of these three doctrines through this passage: "Fortunate is the man who has not entered the counsel of the wicked" — much as fish move through darkness into the deep, for those lacking scales, which Moses forbids touching, feed along the sea floor; "nor taken his stand along the path of the erring" — like those who claim reverence for the Lord yet sin as swine do, squealing while hungry but forgetting its keeper once fed; "nor settled into the chair of the scornful" — like birds poised for plunder. Moses likewise warned: "Do not eat swine, eagle, sharp-winged fowl, raven, or any fish lacking scales." Such, then, is Barnabas's reading. Yet I myself have heard a certain sage offer this interpretation instead — that the nations are the "counsel of the wicked," the assumptions of the Jews the "path of the erring," and the heresies the "chair of the scornful."
Another teacher, speaking with even greater authority, held that the first blessing rests on those who have not embraced false views that fall away from truth, and the second on those who do not linger on the wide, sprawling road — whether reared under the law or converts from the nations; and the "chair of the scornful" would name both the theaters and the courts, or more exactly, the pursuit of corrupt and ruinous authorities and partnership in their deeds. Rather, it is written, "his delight rests in the Lord's instruction" — Peter, in the Preaching, named the Lord "instruction and reason." It also appears, in a further sense, that the lawgiver teaches restraint from sin along three lines: from sins of speech, symbolized by the mute fish — for indeed there are cases where holding one's tongue outperforms speaking, and stillness carries its own secure reward; from sins of deed, symbolized by birds of prey and flesh-eaters; the swine, meanwhile, delights in mud and filth —
and one must also keep a conscience free of stain. Fittingly, then, the prophet declares: "Not so are the wicked," he says, "but rather like chaff that the wind sweeps from the earth's surface. Therefore the wicked will not stand upright at the judgment" — meaning those condemned already, since whoever refuses belief stands condemned from the start — "nor will sinners join the assembly of the just" — those condemned already, so as not to mingle among those whose walk has been without stumbling — "for the Lord watches over the path the righteous take, while the path of the wicked comes to nothing." Once more the Lord makes plain that both missteps and offenses rest within our own power, setting down remedies fitted to each passion, wanting us corrected through the shepherds addressed by Ezekiel, charging some of them, I gather, for failing to keep the commands: "you gave no strength to the feeble," continuing on to "and no one went searching, no one brought back the stray" — for, as the Lord says, "great joy arises before the Father over a single sinner reclaimed." On this count Abraham deserves the higher praise, since "he set out exactly as the Lord had told him."
From this well one of the sages among the Greeks drew and voiced the maxim "follow God." "The devout," Isaiah says, "sought counsel from understanding." Counsel means inquiring how we might act rightly given the situation before us, and sound counsel is prudence applied to our own deliberation. What then? After pardoning Cain, did God not, not long afterward, bring forward the penitent Enoch, showing plainly that turning back naturally invites pardon? And pardon lies not in bare release from penalty but in being healed. The same pattern appears again in the episode of the golden calf fashioned by the people under Aaron's direction. From this same well one of the sages among the Greeks voiced the maxim "pardon outranks vengeance," much as, naturally, "pledge yourself, and ruin stands near," spoken by Solomon: "My child, should you stand surety for your companion, you hand your own hand over to a stranger; for a man's own lips become a tight trap for him, and he is snared by his own words." And in a more hidden sense the maxim "know yourself" has likewise been drawn from this same well: "you have looked upon your brother, you have looked upon your God."
In just this way, "love the Lord your God with your entire heart, and your neighbor as yourself"; he adds that the whole law and the prophets rest upon and hang from these two commands. These words align with them: "I have told you these things so that my joy may be complete within you. This is what I command you: hold each other in the same love I have shown you"; for "the Lord shows mercy and compassion," and "the Lord treats all with goodness." Moses too, urging "know yourself" more directly, repeats often: "watch over yourself." Through almsgiving and through faith, then, sins are cleansed away; and reverence toward the Lord turns everyone aside from wrongdoing. And "reverence for the Lord is discipline and understanding."

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 16 ========

Here again our accusers fasten upon us, saying that joy and grief are passions of the soul; for they render joy as a reasonable elation and the exulting rejoicing over good things, and pity as grief over one suffering undeservedly, and hold that such things are alterations and passions of the soul. But we, it seems, never cease to understand such expressions of Scripture in a fleshly way, and being led up from our own passions we take the will of the passionless God to be received in the same manner as our own movements; and supposing that the case with the Almighty is such as we ourselves are capable of hearing, we wander in godless error. For it was not possible for the divine to be spoken of as it actually is; but as it was possible for us, fettered as we are in flesh, to comprehend, so the prophets spoke to us, the Lord accommodating himself savingly to the weakness of men.
Because, in fact, God wills that the one who obeys the commandments be saved, and likewise the one who turns from his sins in repentance, and because we ourselves take joy at our own salvation, the Lord, speaking through the prophets, claimed for himself that which brings us gladness, just as in the Gospel, out of his love for humankind, he declares: 'Hungry, you fed me; parched with thirst, you brought me drink; whatever you did for one of these humblest ones, you did it for me.' Just as one who is not himself nourished is said to be nourished, because the one he wishes to nourish has been nourished, so he who was not himself moved to gladness rejoiced, because the one who had repented came to be in gladness as he wished. And since God, being good, shows mercy abundantly, giving the commandments through the law, through the prophets, and now still more directly through the coming of the Son, saving and having mercy, as has been said, on those who have received mercy — and since it is properly the greater who has mercy on the lesser, and one man could not be greater than another man, insofar as he is by nature a man, but God is greater than man in every respect — if then the greater has mercy on the lesser, God alone will have mercy on us. For man becomes sociable through righteousness, and shares what he has received from God, both because of natural goodwill and kinship, and because of the commandments which he obeys;
but God has no natural kinship with us, as the founders of the heresies wish to claim — whether they suppose he makes us out of things that are not, or fashions us out of matter, since the one is not a being at all, and the other is in every respect other than God — unless someone should be so bold as to claim that we form a portion of his being and share one essence with him. And I do not know how anyone who has understanding and has come to know God could endure to say this, looking at our life and at the evils in which we are entangled. For it would follow — a thing not even lawful to say — that God sins in part, if indeed the parts of a whole are parts and completive of the whole; but if they are not completive, then they would not even be parts. But rather, God, being by nature rich in mercy through his own goodness, cares for us, though we are neither portions of him nor children by nature.
And indeed this is the greatest proof of God's goodness, that though we stand thus toward him and are by nature altogether estranged, he cares for us nonetheless. For natural is the affection of living creatures toward their offspring, and the friendship arising from familiarity among those of like mind; but God's mercy toward us is abundant though we belong to him in no respect — I mean neither in our being or nature, nor in any power proper to our being — but solely because we are the work of his will. And indeed the one who has willingly, through discipline and teaching, laid hold of the knowledge of truth, he calls to adoption as sons, the greatest of all advancements. But transgressions ensnare a man, and each is bound by the cords of his own sins, and God is blameless; and truly blessed is the man who is fearful of all things through reverence.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 17 ========

Just as knowledge is a state productive of knowing, from which understanding results, and the apprehension it gives is unshakable by argument, so also ignorance is a yielding impression, one that shifts under argument — and what shifts, like what is trained together with it, depends on us and on argument. Now bordering upon knowledge are experience and information, comprehension, intellection, and gnosis. Information would be knowledge of universals according to their form; experience is a comprehensive knowledge, such that one busies oneself with what each particular thing is; intellection is knowledge of an object of thought; and comprehension is knowledge of something combinable, or an unshakable combining, or the power of combining things of which there is both practical wisdom and knowledge — of one thing, of each thing, and of all things reduced to a single account. Gnosis is knowledge of the thing itself as it is, or knowledge in agreement with what actually occurs; and truth is knowledge of what is true, while the state possessing truth is knowledge of true things.
Knowledge is constituted through reason, and it is unshakable by any other reasoning. It is at this point that one must busy oneself closely with gnosis.
The things we do not do, we fail to do either because we cannot, or because we are not willing, or for both reasons together. We do not fly, for instance, because we neither can nor wish to; we do not swim just now, let us say, because though we can, we do not wish to; but we are not as the Lord is, because though we wish to, we cannot. For no disciple is above his teacher, and it is enough if we become as the teacher — not identical in essence, since a thing that exists by position cannot possibly attain equality of being with what exists by nature — but rather in this: that we come to be everlasting, and to have come to know the contemplation of realities, and to be addressed as sons, and to behold the Father solely through what belongs to us. The will to do so, then, takes precedence over all else; for the rational faculties are by nature servants of the will. "Will," it says, "and you shall be able." For the one possessed of gnosis, the will, the judgment, and the practice are one and the same. For if the purposes are the same, the doctrines and judgments are the same too, so that for such a person the words, the life, and the character all follow consistently upon the same fixed disposition. "An upright heart seeks out knowledge and gives heed to it." "God has taught me wisdom, and I have known the knowledge of holy things."

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 18 ========

All the other virtues recorded in Moses are likewise plain to see, and they supplied the Greeks with the starting-point for their whole field of ethics — I mean courage, temperance, prudence, and justice, together with endurance and steadfastness, and gravity, and self-control, and, crowning these, piety. Piety is plain to everyone as that which teaches us to revere and honor the highest and most venerable cause. And the Law itself sets forth justice, and trains prudence through abstinence from the idols perceived by sense and through allotting oneself to the Maker and Father of all, from which opinion, as from a spring, all understanding grows.
'For sacrifices of the lawless are a thing detestable to the Lord, while the prayer of the upright pleases him.' Similarly also the words in Isaiah: 'Of what use to me are your many sacrifices?' says the Lord, and the whole passage: 'Loose every bond of injustice; for this is the sacrifice acceptable to God, a broken heart, and one that seeks him who fashioned it.' 'Deceitful scales are an abomination before God, but a just weight is acceptable to him.' Hence Pythagoras counsels 'not to step over the balance-beam.' Deceitful righteousness is said to be the profession of the heresies, and 'the tongue of the wicked will perish, while the mouth of the just distills wisdom.' Yet indeed they call the wise and prudent 'worthless.' It would take too long to set out testimonies concerning these virtues, since the whole of Scripture sings their praise. Since, then, they define courage as the knowledge of things terrible and not terrible and those in between, and temperance as a disposition which, in choice and avoidance, preserves the judgments of prudence, and since endurance — which they call steadfastness — lies close beside courage, being the knowledge of what must be held to and what must not, as does greatness of soul, the knowledge that rises above events, so too caution lies close beside temperance, being an avoidance accompanied by reason.
The keeping of the commandments, being an unharmed observance of them, is the securing of a safe life. And it is not possible to be steadfast without courage, nor indeed to be self-controlled without temperance. The virtues follow upon one another in sequence, and wherever the sequence of the virtues is found, there too is salvation, which is the preservation of a good condition. Having reasonably gone through these virtues, we may consider that we have examined them all, because he who possesses one virtue knowingly possesses all, by virtue of this mutual sequence. For instance, self-control is a disposition that never oversteps what right reasoning shows to be fitting. Self-control belongs to one who curbs impulses opposed to sound reason, or who restrains himself so as not to be driven against what reason dictates. And this temperance does not exist without courage, since it arises out of the commandments, and prudence follows what has been ordained by God, and righteousness, which imitates the divine disposition, whereby, exercising self-control, we array ourselves pure for piety and for the conduct that follows consistently upon God, being made like the Lord so far as is possible for us, whose nature is perishable.
This is what it means to become righteous and holy along with prudence. For the Divine is without need and without passion, and hence not self-controlled in the strict sense; for it never falls under passion, so as to master it. But our nature, being subject to passion, needs self-control, through which, being trained toward having few needs, it tries to draw near, in disposition, to the divine nature. For the earnest man has few needs, standing on the border between the immortal and the mortal nature — having need on account of the body and on account of birth itself, but taught to need only a few things, by reason of rational self-control. For what sense would it make for the Law to forbid a man to take up a woman's garment? Does it not wish us to be manly, neither becoming effeminate in body and deeds, nor in thought and reason? For it wishes that the one who devotes himself to truth be made manly, both in endurance and in steadfastness, in life and in character, in speech and in discipline, by night and by day, and, if there ever comes need to advance to martyrdom through blood, then too.
Again, 'if anyone,' it says, 'has recently built a house and has not yet managed to live in it, or has worked a vineyard newly planted and has not yet tasted its fruit, or has become engaged to a virgin and has not yet taken her in marriage, the humane Law bids that these be excused from military service' — in a strategic sense, so that we, not being distracted by our desires, may not be reluctant in serving the war effort (for those are free in their impulses who without excuse strip for combat against dangers), and in a humane sense, because the outcomes of wars are uncertain, and it was reckoned unjust that one man should not enjoy the fruits of his own labors, while another, without toil, should take the possessions of those who had labored.
The Law seems also to display the courage of the soul, by legislating that the one who has planted should enjoy the fruit, the one who has built should dwell in the house, and the one who is betrothed should marry; for it will not render the hopes incomplete for those who have trained themselves according to the reasoning of the one who has knowledge, since for a good man, whether he has died or is living, hope does not perish. 'I,' it says, 'love those who love me' — Wisdom speaks — 'and those seeking me will discover peace,' and the like. Well then: was it not the women of Midian who, through their beauty, led the Hebrews who were warring against them, out of intemperance, from temperance into godlessness? For by winning them over through their beauty they enticed them from their solemn discipline into the pleasures of harlotry, and drove them mad after both the sacrifices to idols and after foreign women; and being mastered at once by women and by pleasure, they fell away from God, and they fell away also from the Law, and the whole people came close to being overcome by their enemies through this scheme devised by women, until fear, sounding its warning, held them back as they stood on the brink of ruin.
Straightway those who were left, taking up with love of danger the contest on behalf of piety, became masters of their enemies. 'Fear of God is the origin of wisdom,' and 'the understanding of the holy is forethought,' and 'knowledge of the Law shows sound understanding.' Those who imagine the Law produces nothing but an emotional dread neither comprehend it well nor have truly grasped the Law at all. For 'the fear of the Lord produces life,' while 'the one who goes astray shall suffer pain in troubles which knowledge does not visit.' Indeed Barnabas mystically says: 'And may God, who rules over the whole world, give to you also wisdom and understanding, knowledge, the knowledge of his ordinances, and endurance. Become, then, taught of God, seeking out what the Lord seeks from you, that you may find it in the day of judgment.' Those who attain to these things he called, in a knowing way, 'children of love and of peace.' And concerning giving and sharing, though there is much to say, it suffices to say only this: that the Law forbids lending at interest to a brother (calling 'brother' not only the one born of the same parents, but also whoever is of the same tribe, of the same mind, and shares in the same reason). It does not think it right to collect interest on money, but to give freely, with open hands and open minds, to those in need. For God is the creator of such grace; and already the one who gives freely receives interest worth mentioning — the most valued things among men: gentleness, kindness, magnanimity, good report, good renown.
Does it not seem to you that this precept, too, belongs to love of humanity, like that other one — to pay the poor man's wage on the very same day? It teaches that one must pay without delay the wage due for services rendered; for, I think, the eagerness of the poor man flags if he goes hungry with an eye toward the next day. Further, it says, let the lender not go into the house of the debtor to seize a pledge by force, but let the debtor bring it out himself, and let him who holds it not draw back. And in the harvest it forbids the owners to gather up the ears that have fallen, just as in the reaping it advises leaving something uncut, thereby well training the owners toward sharing and magnanimity by giving up something of their own to those in need, while providing the poor with a means of sustenance.
Do you see how the legislation proclaims at once the justice and the goodness of God, who supplies food ungrudgingly to all? So too, in the vintage, it has forbidden going back over what has been left after the picking, and gathering the grapes that have fallen; and the same rules are prescribed for those who gather olives. And indeed the tithes of both the fruits and the flocks taught men to be pious toward the Divine and not to be wholly given to gain, but to share generously with their neighbors as well. For it was from these firstfruits, I think, that the priests too were maintained. Do we not now perceive that we are being trained by the Law toward piety and fellowship and justice and love of humanity? Is it not so? Does it not command that in the seventh year the land be released and left idle, while bidding the poor to make free use of whatever fruits grow of themselves by God's provision, nature cultivating for those willing? How, then, is the Law not gentle, instructing men in uprightness? Likewise, in the fiftieth year it commands the same practices observed in the seventh, restoring to each man his own property if he has in the meantime been deprived of any land through some circumstance, thereby limiting, by a measured span of enjoyment, the desire of those longing to acquire, and showing mercy to those who have paid the penalty of long poverty and are afflicted throughout their life. 'Acts of mercy and faith are royal safeguards,' and 'blessing is upon the head of him who shares,' and 'he who shows mercy to the poor will be blessed,' because he shows love toward his fellow through the love he bears toward the Maker of the human race.
The foregoing statements admit also of other, more physical interpretations, concerning both rest and the reception of the inheritance, but these are not to be discussed at present. Love is understood in many ways: through gentleness, through kindness, through endurance, through freedom from envy and jealousy, through freedom from hatred, through freedom from resentment; it is undivided in all things, undiscriminating, communal. Again, 'if you see,' it says, 'a stray beast of your kinsmen or friends, or in general belonging to anyone at all, roaming loose in open country, seize it and bring it back.' And even if its master happens to be far away, keep it safe among your own until he receives it, and then restore it. Through this natural sense of fellowship it teaches us to regard a found object as a deposit held in trust, and not to bear a grudge against an enemy.
'The commandment of the Lord is a fountain of life,' in truth, and 'makes one turn aside from the snare of death.' What then? Does it not instruct us to cherish foreigners, treating them not merely as companions and relatives but as we treat ourselves, in both body and soul? Indeed, it has honored the nations too, and does not bear a grudge even against those who have done ill. So it says outright: 'You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in Egypt' — calling by the name 'Egyptian' either the gentile in general or indeed every worldly man. And as for enemies, even if they are already standing at the walls, attempting to take the city, they are not yet to be reckoned as enemies until, having sent heralds to them, they have called them to peace. Indeed, it commands that one not consort with a female captive for the sake of outrage, but, permitting her thirty days to mourn whomever she wishes, it says: afterward, changing her garments, come together with her as with a wedded wife according to the Law. For it holds that intercourse should occur neither for the sake of outrage nor for hire, as with harlots, but only for the begetting of children.
Do you see love of humanity joined with self-control? To a man who has grown enamored of a captive woman, it grants no license for gratifying desire, but checks the desire by a measured interval of time, and moreover has her shear off the hair of the captive, so as to put to shame a love that dishonors. For if reasoning persuades him to marry her, he will keep to her even once she has become plain to look upon. Then again, if anyone, having become sated with desire, no longer thinks fit to live with the captive, it rules that selling her is forbidden, and likewise forbids retaining her as a slave, but wills that she be free and released from bondage, so that she should not, on the entrance of another wife, suffer some irreparable harm through jealousy.
What then? He commands us also to help lift and set upright the pack-animals of enemies, staggering under their loads, the Lord thereby teaching us from afar not to welcome malicious joy nor to gloat over enemies, so that, being trained in these small matters, he might teach us to pray on behalf of our enemies. For it is not fitting either to envy and grieve at the good things of one's neighbor, nor indeed to reap pleasure from the ills of one's neighbor. 'And if,' it says, 'you find the stray beast of some enemy, leaving aside the kindling of the quarrel, take it and restore it.' For upon forgetting an injury follows nobility of character, and upon that follows the breaking-up of hostility. From this we become suited for harmony, which in turn leads us by the hand to happiness. And even if you take someone to be your enemy out of habit, but catch him reasoning falsely, unreasonably, either through desire or through anger, turn him back to nobility of character.
Does it now appear plainly that the Law is humane and kind, being the tutor that leads to Christ, and that the same God is good together with justice, having from beginning to end, in fitting measure, employed each generation toward salvation? 'Be merciful,' says the Lord, 'so that mercy may come to you; grant pardon, so that pardon may reach you; whatever you do to others will return to you; whatever you give will come back as a gift to you; the judgment you pass will be the judgment you receive; the kindness you extend will be extended to you in turn; and the measure you use will be measured out to you again.'
Further, it forbids that those who serve for their sustenance be dishonored, and it grants full release, in the seventh year, to those enslaved through debts. It also forbids handing over suppliants for punishment. Most true of all, then, is that saying: 'As gold and silver are tested in the furnace, so the Lord chooses the hearts of men.' And 'the merciful man is patient, and wisdom is present in everyone who is anxious'; 'for anxiety will befall the man of understanding, and being thoughtful he will seek life'; and 'he who seeks God will find knowledge together with righteousness'; and 'those who sought him with sincerity have discovered peace.'
To me it seems that Pythagoras too derived his gentleness toward irrational animals from the Law. For instance, he forbade that men take for their immediate enjoyment the newborn of the flocks, the goat-herds, and the cattle-herds, not even under pretext of sacrifice, but bade them abstain for the sake of the offspring and of the mothers, thereby cultivating man toward gentleness from the ground up, beginning even with irrational animals. 'Grant,' it says, 'to the mother her offspring even for the first seven days.' For if nothing happens without cause, and milk flows abundantly upon those that have given birth for the nourishment of their young, then he who tears the newborn away from the ordained provision of milk dishonors nature. Let the Greeks, then, be put to shame, and anyone else who runs down the Law, if the Law shows kindness even toward irrational animals, while they expose even the offspring of human beings — though the Law, from far off and in a prophetic manner, checks their savagery through the aforesaid commandment. For if it forbids the offspring of irrational animals to be parted from the mother before the suckling of milk, much more does it, in the case of human beings, forestall a cruel and untamed disposition, so that, even if they show contempt for nature, they may at least not show contempt for instruction.
For it is permitted to gorge oneself on kids and lambs, and perhaps there is some excuse for one who separates the offspring from the mother that bore it; but what reason can there be for the exposure of a child? For one who has no desire to raise children ought not to marry at all, rather than become, through incontinence of pleasure, a murderer of his own child. Again, the good law forbids sacrificing offspring and mother together on the same day. Hence too the Romans, if a pregnant woman is condemned to death, do not allow the penalty to be carried out until she has given birth. Indeed, the law does not even permit any pregnant animal to be slaughtered until it has brought forth, restraining from afar the readiness of those who would do wrong toward man. So far did its equity extend even to irrational animals, in order that, by practicing kindness toward creatures of another kind, we might employ a great abundance of humanity toward those of our own kind.
But those who kick open the wombs of certain pregnant animals before they have given birth, so that they may feast on flesh mixed with milk, have made the womb — created for the bringing forth of life — into a tomb for the creatures still being formed within it, even though the lawgiver expressly commands: 'A young goat is not to be boiled in the milk that came from its own mother'; for, he says, the nourishment meant for the living must not be turned into a sauce for the slain, and let not that which is the cause of life become an accessory to the consumption of the body. The same law also declares: 'You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain'; for the laborer too must be deemed worthy of food. It likewise forbids yoking together an ox and an ass for the plowing of the ground — perhaps aiming at what is unsuitable in the pairing of the animals, but at the same time signifying that one must not wrong any person of a different nation and bring him under a yoke, having nothing to accuse him of except that he is of another race — which is no ground for accusation, since it proceeds neither from vice nor from any evil impulse. It seems to me that the allegory also signifies this: that one ought not to impart equally, to clean and unclean alike, to the faithful and the unfaithful alike, a share in the cultivation of the word, since the one is clean — the ox — while the ass is reckoned among the unclean.
The good word, being lavish in its humanity, teaches that we ought not even to cut down trees that are cultivated, nor to strip the ear of grain to its ruin before the harvest, nor in general to destroy any cultivated fruit, whether of the earth or of the soul; for it does not even allow the cutting down of an enemy's territory. And indeed farmers too have profited from the law in this respect: for it commands that newly planted trees be tended for three successive years, cutting away their superfluous shoots, so that they may not be burdened and weighed down, nor grow weak through the food being divided up out of scarcity, and that the ground around them be hollowed out and dug over, so that nothing growing up alongside may hinder their growth. And it does not allow the fruit to be gathered while unripe from trees still immature, but only once three full years have passed and a fourth is under way, when the tree has by then reached maturity, are the firstfruits to be consecrated to God.
This pattern of husbandry might well be a mode of teaching, instructing us that we must cut away the offshoots of sins and the vain weeds of thought that spring up together with the fruit-bearing growth, until the young shoot of faith is brought to maturity and becomes firm. For in the fourth year — since the catechumen too needs time to become firmly established — the tetrad of virtues is consecrated to God, the third abiding-place already joining on to the fourth, which is the Lord's own substance.
'A sacrifice of praise is above whole burnt offerings. For it is he,' it says, 'who gives you strength to make power.' And if matters are illuminated for you, having received and acquired strength through knowledge, make power. Through these words it points out that every blessing and every gift comes to us as God's provision, and that we, once made servants of that divine favor, are bound to scatter God's good deeds abroad and shape our neighbors toward nobility and virtue, so that, to whatever degree can be managed, the self-controlled person may make others self-controlled, the brave person may make others noble, the wise person may make others prudent, and the righteous person may make others upright.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 19 ========

This is the man made according to image and likeness, the gnostic, who imitates God so far as is possible, leaving out nothing that belongs to the likeness that can be attained, being continent, enduring, living justly, ruling over the passions, sharing what he has, as far as he is able, doing good both by word and by deed. "This one," it says, "is greatest in the kingdom, whoever does and teaches, imitating God by bestowing gifts of a like kind"; for the gifts of God are for the common benefit. "But whoever undertakes to do anything with arrogance provokes God," it says; for boastfulness is a vice of the soul, from which He commands men to repent, along with the other vices, adjusting their life from disharmony toward the better change, by means of these three: mouth, heart, and hands.
These, then, might be a symbol: the hands of action, the heart of counsel, and the mouth of speech. Well then is that oracle spoken concerning those who repent: "You have chosen God today to be your God, and the Lord has chosen you today to become a people for him." For the one who hastens to serve the Existent One, being a suppliant, God takes him into his own household; and even if he is but a single person, he receives the same honor as the whole people; since, as one segment among that people, he becomes what brings it to completion, being restored out of the very stock from which he sprang, and the entire body is named even from that single portion. This is that true nobility which is displayed in choosing and practicing together what is most excellent. Since what did his so-great nobility profit Adam? Yet no mortal begot him; for it was he who fathered the human race that came afterward. He, following after the woman, eagerly chose base things, and neglected the true and beautiful things; on account of which he exchanged a mortal life for an immortal one, but not to the very end.
But Noah, who did not become such as Adam, is preserved by divine oversight; for by bearing himself worthily he dedicated himself to God. And Abraham, having had children by three women, not for the enjoyment of pleasure but, I suppose, for hope of multiplying the race in the beginning, has but one sole heir succeed to the goods of his fathers, while the others were removed from the kinship; and of the twins born from him, the younger inherits, having become pleasing to the father, and receives the blessings, while the elder becomes his servant; for it is the greatest good for the worthless man not to be self-governing. This arrangement is at once prophetic and figurative. And that every possession is the wise man's, he plainly signifies, saying: "Because God showed mercy toward me, I lack nothing." For he teaches that one ought to reach after the One, through whom all things came to be, and by whom the things promised are distributed to those who are worthy.
He therefore records the virtuous man, having become heir of the kingdom, as a fellow-citizen through divine wisdom also of the righteous of old, who lived lawfully both under the law and before the law, whose deeds have become laws unto us. Again, teaching the wise man as king, he makes those not of his own race say to him: "You are a king from God among us," the willing judgment of those ruled submitting, out of zeal for virtue, to the virtuous man.
Plato the philosopher, setting happiness as the end, says that it is likeness to God so far as possible, whether he happened somehow to run alongside the doctrine of the law (for great natures, stripped bare of the passions, hit somehow upon the truth well, as the Pythagorean Philo says in expounding the writings of Moses), or whether he had also been taught by certain oracles of that time, since he was ever thirsting for learning. For the law says: "Go behind the Lord your God, and observe my commandments." For the law names assimilation "following"; and such following, according to one's power, assimilates one to God. "Become," says the Lord, "merciful and compassionate, as your Father in heaven is compassionate."
From this source too the Stoics dogmatized that the end is to live in accordance with nature, having unfittingly renamed God as nature, since nature extends also to plants, to sown crops, to trees, and to stones.
It is clearly said, then: "Evil men do not understand the law, but those who love the law set up a wall for themselves." "For the wisdom of the crafty shall come to know its own ways, yet the senselessness of fools goes astray in delusion." "To whom then will I turn my gaze, if not to the one who is meek and still and stands in awe of my sayings?" says the prophecy.
Friendship, we are instructed, falls into three types, and among these the first and finest is the one grounded in virtue; for the love that comes from reason is firm; the second and middle kind is that according to reciprocity; this is social, sharing, and beneficial to life; for friendship arising from favor is common to many; and the last and third kind we ourselves call that which arises from custom, but others call it that which arises from pleasure, changeable and mutable.
And it seems to me that Hippodamus the Pythagorean writes most excellently: "Of friendships, some are according to knowledge of the gods, others from the provision of men, and others from the pleasure of animals." There is, then, a friendship of the philosopher, another of the man, and another of the animal. For truly man doing good is an image of God, in which very act he himself also is benefited; for just as the pilot both saves and is saved. For this reason, when someone happens to be asking, he does not say to the giver, "You have given well," but rather, "You have received well." Thus the giver receives, and the receiver gives. "The righteous show pity and compassion, and the upright shall dwell as tenants of the land, and the blameless shall remain there, but transgressors of the law shall be swept away from it." And it seems to me that Homer, foreseeing prophetically the man of faith, has said: "Give to a friend." With a friend one must share, so that the friend may yet remain and continue longer as a friend; but to an enemy one must give aid, so that he may not remain an enemy; for by aid goodwill is bound fast, while enmity is loosed. But even if eagerness is set forth, this holds insofar as one has, not insofar as one does not have. For it is not that others should have relief while you have affliction, but from equality in the present time, and so on. "He has scattered abroad, he has given to the poor; his righteousness remains forever," says Scripture. For by "according to image and likeness," as we have said before, what is signified is not what pertains to the body — for it is not right for the mortal to be made like the immortal — but rather what pertains to mind and reason, in which the Lord fittingly seals also the likeness with respect to doing good and with respect to ruling; for leadership is corrected not through bodily attributes, but through the discernment of the mind; for it is the deliberations of holy men that keep cities rightly governed, and a household likewise.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 20 ========

Endurance too presses forward toward likeness to God, through patience bearing the fruit of freedom from passion, if the stories told of the companions of Ananias are still ringing in one's ears — among whom was Daniel the prophet, filled with divine faith. Daniel lived in Babylon, just as Lot lived in Sodom and Abraham, who a little later became the friend of God, lived in the land of the Chaldeans. So the Babylonian king had Daniel thrown into a den crowded with savage beasts, yet the Lord who is faithful over all raised him out unhurt. This is the endurance the Gnostic will acquire, insofar as he is a Gnostic: tested, he will bless God as the noble Job did; like Jonah he will pray while being swallowed by the sea-monster,
and his trust will bring him back to preach repentance among the Ninevites. And if he is confined among lions, he will subdue the creatures; if cast into flame, he will feel only dew, never scorching. He will bear witness by night, he will bear witness by day; in word, in life, in manner he will bear witness. Dwelling with the Lord, a familiar companion and table-fellow according to the spirit, he will remain pure in flesh, pure in heart, having sanctified the Word — "the world," he says, "has been crucified to him," and he himself has been crucified to the world. This man, carrying about the cross of the Savior, follows the Lord "as a footprint follows the god," having become holy of holies.
Mindful therefore of every virtue, the divine law trains the human being especially toward self-control, laying this down as the foundation of the virtues; and indeed it first schools us toward the acquisition of self-control by way of the use of animals, forbidding us to partake of whatever creatures are naturally rich in fat, such as the swine, which happens to be the fattest-fleshed kind — for such a diet supplies fuel to those given to luxury. It is said, at any rate, that a certain philosopher, etymologizing the word "hys" (swine), said it was really "thys," as being fit only for sacrifice and slaughter — since this animal has been given a soul for no other purpose than that its flesh might swell with fat. In like manner the law forbade partaking of fish, curbing our appetite for those lacking both fin and scale; for these outdo the other fish in oiliness and richness of flesh.
From this same source, I think, the founder of the mysteries also forbade the touching not only of certain animals but even withdrew from use certain parts of the sacrificial victims, for reasons known to the initiates.
If then the belly and what lies below the belly must be mastered, it is clear that we have received from above, through the law, from the Lord, the command to cut off desire. This would be accomplished perfectly if, without pretense, we condemned the kindling-material of desire, I mean pleasure. They say that the very notion of it is a smooth and gentle movement accompanied by a certain sensation. Enslaved to this, they say, Menelaus after the fall of Troy rushed to kill Helen as the cause of so many evils, yet he was unable to do the deed, overcome by her beauty, through which he arrived at the memory of pleasure.
Hence the tragic poets, mocking him reproachfully, cried out: "But you, when you saw her breast, threw down your sword and received her kiss, fawning on the treacherous bitch." And again: "Are swords then struck deaf before beauty?" I myself approve of Antisthenes, who said of Aphrodite, "I would shoot her down with arrows, if I could catch her," because she has corrupted many of our fair and good women. And he says love is a vice of nature, and that the wretched, being overcome by it, call the disease a god. For it is shown by this that the more ignorant are overcome through ignorance of pleasure, which one ought not to admit even if it is called a god — that is, even if it happens to be given by the god for the purpose of child-bearing. And Xenophon, calling pleasure outright a vice, says: "O wretched one, what good do you know, or what fine thing do you contemplate — you who do not even wait for the desire for pleasant things, but eat before you are hungry, and drink before you are thirsty, and to eat pleasantly you contrive cooks, and to drink pleasantly you procure costly wines, and in summer you run about seeking snow; and to sleep pleasantly, you provide not only soft beds but even stands beneath the beds."
Hence, as Ariston used to say concerning the whole "tetrachord" — pleasure, pain, fear, desire — much training and much combat is needed; for these, these are what enter into the very bowels and stir up the human heart. For even in those who suppose their tempers to be dignified, pleasure makes them, in Plato's words, waxen — because each pleasure and pain nails the soul to the body when it does not mark itself off and fence itself apart from the passions. "Whoever loses his own soul," says the Lord, "shall save it" — either by recklessly giving it up for the Savior's sake, as he himself did on our behalf, or by releasing it from partnership with our accustomed way of life. For if you are willing to release, separate, and fence off (for this is what the cross signifies) the soul from the delight and pleasure found in this present life, you will find it kept safe and at rest in the hope that is awaited.
This would be the practice of death, if we were willing to be content with desires measured only by nature, transgressing nothing of what is natural toward excess or against nature — the point at which sin is bred. We must therefore clothe ourselves in the complete panoply of God, so that we may hold our ground against the devil's schemes, since "our warfare's weapons are not of the flesh but mighty before God, tearing down fortified places, overturning arguments and every proud thing raised up in opposition to the knowledge of God, and taking every thought captive into obedience to Christ," as the apostle of God declares. There is need of a man who will use, without wonder and without confusion, the things from which the passions arise — such as riches and want, honor and shame, being well or ill, living or dying, labor and delight. For so that we might treat neutral matters neutrally, a great store of discernment is required, being as we are already damaged beforehand by much weakness and by the prior perversion of a bad upbringing and nurture enjoyed beforehand along with ignorance.
Now the simple account of our philosophy holds that all the passions are impressions fixed in the soul when it is soft and yielding — impressions, as it were, sealed in by spiritual powers, against which our wrestling-match is waged. For it is the work, I think, of these malicious powers to attempt at every turn to bring some effect of their own condition to bear, so as to overpower and reclaim as their possession those who have forsworn them. And it follows naturally that some fall in the struggle, while those who conduct the contest in a more athletic way — engaging in the all-in combat and pressing on even to the crown — leave the aforesaid powers, at that point, exhausted amid much gore, marveling at the victors.
Of things that move, some move by impulse and imagination, as animals do, others by displacement, as inanimate things do. And they say that even among inanimate things, plants move progressively toward growth — if one will grant that plants are indeed inanimate.
Stones, then, belong to the category of mere condition; plants, to that of nature; while the irrational animals share both in impulse and imagination and in the two previously mentioned categories as well. But the reasoning power, belonging as it does to the soul of a human, should not be stirred in the manner of the unreasoning animals, but rather to discriminate the impressions and not be carried away along with them.
These very powers, the ones already discussed, dangle before souls too readily carried off alluring pictures of beauty, fame, adultery, and delight, and the like — just as those who drive along cattle wave green branches before them — and then, having outwitted those unable to distinguish true pleasure from false, and the perishable and insolent from the holy beauty, they lead them off, having enslaved them. And each deception, continually pressing upon the soul, stamps its image within it. And the soul, without noticing, goes about carrying the imprint of the passion, the cause arising both from the bait and from our own assent.
The followers of Basilides are accustomed to call the passions "appendages," maintaining that they are, at bottom, particular spirits fastened onto the reasoning soul owing to some primal disturbance and disorder, and that other bastard and alien-natured spirits again grow upon these — of wolf, of ape, of lion, of goat — whose peculiar properties, appearing about the soul, they say assimilate the desires of the soul to those of the animals in a similar fashion; for they imitate the deeds of those whose properties they bear, and they are made akin not only to the impulses and imaginations of irrational animals, but even emulate the movements and beauties of plants, because they also carry attached to them the properties of plants,
and further even the properties of mere condition, such as the hardness of adamant.
But against this doctrine we will argue later, when we take up the discussion concerning the soul. For now this alone must be noted: that the man according to Basilides preserves the image of a kind of wooden horse, as in the poet's myth, having tucked within a single body a whole army of so many differing spirits. Indeed Isidore himself, the son of Basilides, in his work On the Attached Soul, sensing the difficulty of the doctrine, writes, as it were accusing himself, word for word as follows: "For if you persuade someone that the soul is not a single unit, but that through the force of the appendages the passions of the baser kind occur, wicked men will possess a ready-made excuse to claim, 'I was forced, I was swept off, I did it against my own will, I acted contrary to my wish' — they themselves having led the way into desire for evil things and not having fought against the forces of the appendages."
But it is necessary, having become superior by the rational faculty, to show ourselves masters of the lesser creation within us. For this man too supposes, like the Pythagoreans, that there are two souls within us — a matter we shall examine later. But Valentinus also, writing to certain people in these very words, says concerning the appendages: "There is One who is good, whose free utterance is the manifestation through the Son, and through him alone can the heart become pure, every evil spirit being driven out of the heart. For the numerous spirits that inhabit it prevent its purity, and each one carries out its own business, offending it repeatedly with unseemly cravings. And it seems to me that the heart suffers something similar to an inn: for that too is pierced and dug into, and often filled with dung, as men lodge in it dissolutely and take no thought for the place, as though it belonged to another. In just this way the heart too, as long as it goes without provident care, stays defiled, serving as home to a crowd of demons; but once the sole good Father comes to it, it is made holy and gleams with radiance, and thus the one who has such a heart is blessed, because he shall see God."
What, then, accounts for such a soul going uncared-for from its origin — let them tell us. For either it is not worthy (and how then does forethought come to it, as it were out of repentance?); or else it is by nature saved, as he himself wishes, and it must be that this soul, being from the beginning cared for on account of kinship, admits no infiltration by unclean spirits — unless it should be overpowered and proved weak. For if he grants that the soul, upon repenting, chooses the better things, he will unwillingly be saying just what our own truth teaches as doctrine: that salvation comes from a change of obedient disposition, and not from nature. For just as exhalations, both from the earth and from marshes, condense into mists and cloudy masses, so the risings of fleshly desires bring on a sickly condition in the soul, scattering the phantom-images of pleasure before it,
and so they darken the intellectual light, as the soul draws to itself the risings that come from desire, and thickens the masses of the passions through the continuance of pleasures. Now a lump of gold is not lifted straight from the earth, but is refined and purified by smelting, and only then, having become pure, is called gold — earth that has been cleansed. "Ask, and it shall be given you" is said to those who are able to choose for themselves the noblest things. And as for how we say that we sow the workings of the devil's cast net and the unclean spirits into the soul of the sinner, I need not add many more words, calling as my witness Barnabas the apostolic man — numbered among the Seventy and a co-laborer with Paul — whose own words run roughly thus: "Prior to our believing in God, the abode of our heart was frail and perishable, a temple truly fashioned by hand; for it teemed with idol-worship and stood as a residence of demons, since it practiced everything hostile to God."
He says, then, that sinners perform the works that correspond to the demons, yet he never claims that the spirits themselves take up residence in the unbeliever's soul. For this reason he goes on to add: "Take heed, that the temple of the Lord may be gloriously built. How? Learn: having received the remission of sins and and having placed hope in the name, we are made new, formed afresh from the start. For it is not that our demons are driven away, but rather, he says, our sins are forgiven — the very sins which, like those demons, we used to commit before believing." Fittingly, then, he set in contrast what follows: "Therefore in our dwelling-place God truly dwells within us." How? "His word of faith, his call of promise, the wisdom of his ordinances, the commandments of his teaching." I know of a certain heresy I once encountered, whose leader used to claim that by the use of pleasure one fights pleasure with pleasure — this "noble Gnostic" (for he claimed to be a Gnostic too) deserting to pleasure through a pretended combat, given that he claimed there was nothing remarkable in refraining from a delight one had never tasted, but rather, having entered into it, not to be mastered by it — and so, he said, one trains oneself against it by means of it.
But the wretched man, unawares, was outwitting himself with his own pleasure-loving art. It was clearly to this same opinion that Aristippus of Cyrene inclined, he who boasted of being a sophist of the truth. At any rate, reproached for his constant association with the Corinthian courtesan, he replied, "Lais is mine to have, yet she holds no claim over me." Such too are those who claim to follow Nicolaus, adducing some saying of the man, wrested out of its true sense, to the effect that one must abuse the flesh. But the noble man meant that one ought to curb pleasures and desires, and by this discipline wither away the impulses and assaults of the flesh. These others, however, poured out into pleasure like goats, as it were insulting the body, indulge in soft living, not knowing that the body by nature wastes away being a fluid thing, while their soul lies buried in the mire of vice — pursuing a doctrine of pleasure itself, not that of an apostolic man. For how do these differ from Sardanapalus, whose life the epitaph reveals: "These things I have, as many as I ate and as I wantoned in and the delights of love I enjoyed; but those many splendid possessions have been left behind. For I too am ashes, who once ruled great Nineveh." For in general the passion of pleasure is not a necessity, but an accompaniment of certain natural needs — hunger, thirst, cold, marriage.
If, at any rate, it were possible to drink apart from pleasure, or to take food, or to beget children, no other use for pleasure would have been shown to exist. For pleasure is neither an activity nor a disposition, nor indeed any part belonging to us, but it came into life for the sake of service, just as they say salt was given for the seasoning of food. But pleasure, having run out of control and taken mastery of the household, begets desire first of all — an irrational craving and reaching after whatever gratifies it — the very thing that persuaded Epicurus to set down pleasure as the philosopher's end; at any rate he deifies the settled condition of the flesh and the confident hope concerning it. For what else is luxury but a pleasure-loving greed and a superfluous excess given over to soft living? Diogenes writes emphatically in a certain tragedy: those who, stuffed with the pleasures of an unmanly and degraded luxury, are unwilling to labor even a little at heart. And the words that follow these, shameful indeed to speak, are fittingly matched to lovers of pleasure.
For this reason the divine law seems to me necessarily to hold fear suspended over us, so that through caution and attentiveness the philosopher may both acquire and preserve freedom from anxiety, remaining unstumbling and sinless in every respect. Freedom and peace, after all, are won by no other route than an unceasing, unrelenting battle waged against our passions. For these antagonists are massive and Olympic-class, sharper, so to speak, than wasps — pleasure most of all, which plots against us and bites not only by day but also by night, in our very dreams, seductively, with sorcery. How then can the Greeks still be justified in disparaging the Law, seeing that they themselves instruct that pleasure must be mastered through fear? Socrates, at any rate, bids us guard against whatever persuades us to eat without hunger or to drink without thirst, and against the glances and kisses of the beautiful, which by nature inject a poison harsher than that of scorpions and spiders.
Antisthenes too chooses madness rather than pleasure, and Crates the Theban says of women: she who exults in mastery of soul and character, enslaved neither by golden things nor by love that melts one with longing, nor by whatever else keeps company with wanton insolence. And he adds the sum of it: unenslaved and unfulled by servile pleasure, they love an immortal kingdom and freedom. This same man writes elsewhere, plainly, that hunger is the plaster for the uncontrollable impulse toward the pleasures of Aphrodite, and if not hunger, then the noose. As for Zeno the Stoic, even the comic poets, though mocking him, bear witness to his teaching in something like these words: this man philosophizes a strange new philosophy — he teaches hunger and takes on pupils; one loaf, a dried fig for relish, and water to drink after.
All these men, then, plainly are not ashamed to confess the benefit that comes from caution; but true wisdom, which is not without reason, is not persuaded by bare words and oracular sayings, but, practicing with unwounded defenses and effectual mysteries — the divine commandments — through joint training and joint discipline, receives a divine power in the part of it that is inspired by the Word. Indeed, they already depict even the poetic Zeus's aegis as terrible, around which on every side Fear is wreathed as a crown, and in it Strife, and in it Might, and in it chilling Pursuit; and in it the Gorgon head of the dread monster, dreadful and terrifying, a portent of aegis-bearing Zeus.
To those able to discern rightly what brings salvation, I do not know whether anything will appear more dear than the majesty of the Law and its daughter, caution. But when it is said to sing in too high a pitch — as the Lord too says of certain people, lest some of those who are zealous for him should sing off the string and out of tune — I understand it thus: not that it is really too high, but that to those unwilling to take up the divine yoke, it seems too high; for to the untuned and the weak, moderation itself seems excessive, and to the unjust, what is fitting seems the strictest, over-rigorous justice. For all those whom pardon enters because they are on friendly terms with sins take truth for harshness and strictness for cruelty, and count as merciless the one who does not sin along with them nor gets dragged down with them.
Well does tragedy say of Hades: but to what sort of spirit will you come, like Love himself — one who knew neither fairness nor favor, but loved only strict justice, unadorned. For even if you cannot yet accomplish what the Law leaves uncommanded, still, by observing how the finest examples for us are set out in it, we can nourish and increase our love of freedom; and in this way we would be helped, striving according to our ability more eagerly — in part provoked to emulation, in part imitating, in part even put to shame. For the just men of old, who lived according to the law, did not spring from a legendary oak or from a rock. By their genuine will to be true philosophers, offering themselves entirely, they dedicated themselves to God, and it was reckoned to them as faith.
Most finely did Zeno say, concerning the Indians, that he would rather see one Indian being roasted alive than learn all the demonstrations about enduring pain. But for us there are unstinting springs of witnesses, beheld with our own eyes every day — men being roasted, impaled, beheaded. All these the fear that comes from the Law, leading them by the hand as tutor toward Christ, trained to practice caution and to display it even through blood. God stood in the assembly of gods; in the midst he will judge the gods. Who are these? Those stronger than pleasure, those superior to the passions, those who understand each of the things they do, the gnostics, those greater than the world. And again, I said, you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High — of whom does the Lord speak? Of those who renounce, as far as possible, everything human. And the apostle says: for you exist in the flesh no longer, but rather in the spirit. And again he says: though we are in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh; for flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption; and yet, behold, you die as men — this the spirit has said, refuting us.
We must, then, train ourselves in caution against the things that fall subject to the passions, banishing, in the manner of true philosophers, foods that stir lust, and the slack self-indulgence beside the bed, and luxury, and the passions that lead to luxury — a heavy trial for others, but no longer for us; for self-control is the greatest gift of God. For he himself has said, I will not let you go, nor will I ever abandon you, judging us worthy on account of our genuine choice. Thus then, as we try to approach with caution, the Lord's kindly yoke will receive us, one charioteer driving each of us from faith to faith, by progress, toward salvation, so that each may gain the fruit of happiness that is fitting. And training, according to the Coan Hippocrates, belongs not only to the body but also to the health of the soul: tireless endurance of labors, and no surfeit of food.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 21 ========

Epicurus, positing that godlike happiness consists in not hungering, not thirsting, and not shivering with cold, uttered an impious statement, saying that on these points he would fight even with father Zeus — laying down as the blessed victory the doctrine of dung-eating swine rather than of rational and philosophical men. For among those who begin from pleasure are reckoned the Cyrenaics and Epicurus; for these say expressly that the end is to live pleasantly, and that the only complete good is pleasure. Epicurus further says that even the removal of pain is pleasure; and he says that what is choiceworthy is whatever from itself first draws one toward itself, being of course altogether something in motion. Dinomachus and Calliphon said that the end is to do everything on one's own account for the sake of attaining and obtaining pleasure; and Hieronymus the Peripatetic held that the end is to live untroubled, and that the only final good is happiness. Diodorus likewise, coming from the same school, declares the end to be to live untroubled and nobly.
Epicurus, then, along with the Cyrenaics, holds pleasure to be our first proper possession; for they claim that virtue, entering for pleasure's sake, brought pleasure about. But according to the followers of Calliphon, virtue came in for the sake of pleasure, but afterward, having beheld the beauty that belongs to it, made itself equal in honor to that first principle, that is, to pleasure.
The followers of Aristotle hold that the end is to live in accordance with virtue, yet holding that not everyone who possesses virtue thereby has happiness or the end; for the wise man who is tormented and falls into unwished-for misfortunes, and on this account gladly wishes to escape from life, is neither blessed nor happy. For virtue needs also a certain span of time; it is not accomplished in a single day, and it is constituted only in a complete span — since, as they say, there is no such thing as a happy child; and the complete span of time would be a human life. Happiness, then, is completed out of the three kinds of goods. Therefore, according to them, neither the poor man, nor the man without repute, nor even the sick man, nor even one who is a household slave, can be happy.
Again, Zeno the Stoic maintained that virtue itself, lived out, constitutes the end; Cleanthes, that agreement with nature, lived in, is the end; Diogenes held that the end lies in reasoning well, which he took to consist in the selection of things according to nature. Antipater, his disciple, supposes that the end lies in continually and unfailingly selecting the things according to nature and rejecting the things contrary to nature. Archedemus in turn explained the end to be this: to live selecting the greatest and most sovereign things according to nature, being unable to go beyond them. In addition to these, Panaetius declared that the end is found in living out the impulses nature has given us; and above all, Posidonius held it to be to live contemplating the truth and order of the universe and, so far as possible, helping to establish oneself in accordance with it, in no way led by the irrational part of the soul. Some of the more recent Stoics rendered it thus, that the end is to live in accordance with the constitution of man. Why should I catalogue Aristo for you? He said the end was indifference, and he leaves what is indifferent simply indifferent. Or should I bring forward the views of Herillus? Herillus lays down that the end is to live according to knowledge. Some think it proper to attribute to the younger members of the Academy the end of secure suspension of judgment regarding appearances. And indeed Lyco the Peripatetic said that the true joy of the soul was the end, as †Leucimus† said it was joy over noble things. Critolaus, likewise a Peripatetic, spoke of perfection according to a life that flows well in accordance with nature, meaning by this the threefold perfection completed out of the three kinds of goods.
We must not stop, content with these, but must be as zealous as possible also to set forth what is taught by the natural philosophers on the subject before us. They say that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae declared that the end of life is contemplation, and the freedom arising from it; and that Heraclitus of Ephesus declared it to be well-pleasedness. Heraclides of Pontus relates that Pythagoras handed down that the happiness of the soul is the knowledge of the perfection of numbers. But the Abderites too teach what the end is: Democritus, in his work On the End, calls it cheerfulness, which he also named well-being (and he often adds: for delight and non-delight are the boundary-markers †of those who have reached their prime†); Hecataeus calls it self-sufficiency; and indeed Apollodotus of Cyzicus calls it the leading of the soul, just as Nausiphanes calls it fearlessness — for he said this was called by Democritus untroubledness. Further, in addition to these, Diotimus declared the end to be the complete fullness of goods, which is called well-being. Again, Antisthenes named it freedom from vanity, while those called the Annicereans, of the Cyrenaic succession, set no fixed end for life as a whole, but held that each action has its own proper end, namely the pleasure arising from that action. These Cyrenaics reject Epicurus's account of pleasure — namely, that pain's absence counts as pleasure — dismissing it as the state of a corpse; for we rejoice, they say, not only in pleasures, but also in social intercourse and in the pursuit of honor. Epicurus, however, thinks that every joy of the soul arises from the flesh being first affected.
And Metrodorus, in his work On the fact that the cause within us contributes more to happiness than that arising from external things, says that the good of the soul is nothing other than the stable condition of the flesh and the confident hope concerning it.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 22 ========

Yes indeed, the philosopher Plato holds that our final aim divides into two: one is participated-in and primary, subsisting among the very Forms, and this he names "the good"; the other shares in that primary good and takes on a resemblance from it, and this arises in human beings who claim virtue and genuine philosophy for themselves. That is why Cleanthes too, in the second book of his On Pleasure, says that Socrates taught on every occasion that the same man is both just and happy, and cursed the first man to separate the just from the advantageous as having done an impious thing; for truly impious are those who separate the advantageous from the just that accords with law. Plato himself says that happiness (eudaimonia) is having one's daimon well, and that the "daimon" is what is called the ruling part of our soul, and he says that happiness is the most perfect and most complete good. At times he calls it a life that is in agreement and harmony with itself, and at times the most perfect thing according to virtue, and this he situates in coming to know the good, together with growing like unto God, declaring likeness to consist in becoming just and holy together with prudence. Is this not, indeed, how some among our own people also grasp it: that man received the "according to the image" at once, at the moment he was formed, yet is meant to receive the "according to the likeness" afterward, when he reaches perfection?
Straightaway Plato, teaching that this likeness will come to the virtuous man together with lowliness of mind, is interpreting, somewhere, that saying: "Everyone who humbles himself shall be exalted." At any rate he says in the Laws: "God, as also the ancient account has it, holding the beginning and middle and end of all things, accomplishes his straight course, journeying around according to nature; and justice always follows close upon him, the avenger of those who fall short of the divine law." Do you see how he too attaches reverent caution to the divine law? He goes on, at any rate: "whoever is going to be happy follows closely attached to her, humble and well-ordered." Then, adding to these words what comes next, and offering a warning grounded in fear, he continues: "Well then, what manner of behavior pleases God and keeps close beside him? One conduct, and it has a single ancient formula: that like is dear to like, when it is measured, but unmeasured things are dear neither to one another nor to the measured. So the man who is to become dear to God must, as far as possible, become such a one himself."
And according to this same reasoning, the self-controlled man among us is dear to God, for he is like him, while the man without self-control is unlike and at variance with him. In calling this doctrine ancient, he was darkly hinting at the teaching that has come to him from the Law. And in the Theaetetus, having granted that evils necessarily haunt mortal nature and this region here, he adds: "Wherefore one must try to flee from here to there as quickly as possible; and the flight is likeness to God so far as is possible; and the likeness is to become just and holy together with prudence." And Speusippus, Plato's nephew, says that happiness is a perfect condition among those who are in a natural state, or a possession of good things, a settled state that all men desire, though the good aim at freedom from disturbance; and the virtues would be what produce happiness. And Xenocrates of Chalcedon assigns happiness as the possession of one's own virtue and of the power that serves it. Then, as that in which it comes to be, he plainly means the soul; as that by which, the virtues; as that out of which, as parts, noble actions and worthy states, dispositions, movements and relations; and as that without which it cannot occur, bodily and external goods. For Xenocrates' acquaintance Polemon evidently holds that happiness is self-sufficiency in all good things, or in the most and greatest of them. He teaches, at any rate, that happiness could never exist apart from virtue, but that virtue, even apart from bodily and external goods, is self-sufficient for happiness.
So let these matters stand as they are; the objections to the opinions stated will be set out in due course. But it lies before us ourselves to arrive at an end without end, by obeying the commandments — that is, God — and by having lived according to them blamelessly and with understanding, coming to know what God wills; and growing like unto right reason, insofar as that lies within our reach, is the goal, and the restoration into perfect adoption as sons is accomplished through the Son, who ever glorifies the Father, through the great high priest who has deemed us worthy to be called brothers and fellow heirs. And the apostle, briefly sketching the end in his letter to the Romans, says: "But now, having been set free from sin and enslaved to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end, eternal life." And knowing that hope is twofold, the one still expected and the other already received, he there teaches that the end is the restoration of that hope; "for endurance," he says, "produces proof, and proof, hope; and hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit that was given to us." It is on account of this love that the restoration into hope also comes, which elsewhere he calls the rest that is laid up for us.
You would find similar things in Ezekiel as well, running thus: "The soul that sins, it shall die. And the man who becomes righteous and does judgment and righteousness, who has not eaten upon the mountains, and has not raised his gaze toward the idols belonging to Israel's household, and has not defiled his neighbor's wife, and has not approached a woman during the separation of her uncleanness (for he does not wish that the seed of man be treated with outrage), and shall not wrong a man, he says, shall restore the debtor's pledge, shall not commit robbery, shall give his bread to the hungry and cover the naked, shall not give his silver at interest and shall not take increase, shall turn his hand away from injustice, shall execute a true judgment between a man and his neighbor, shall walk in my statutes and has kept my ordinances so as to do truth — such a one is righteous and will live without fail, declares the Lord Adonai." And Isaiah, urging the believer toward a dignified life and the gnostic toward watchfulness, and showing that human virtue is not identical with God's, puts it this way: "Search for the Lord, and once you have found him, call on him; and when he draws near to you, let the ungodly forsake his ways, and the lawless man his ways, and let him turn back to the Lord, and he shall be shown mercy,"
"even your thoughts from my thought." We, then, according to the noble apostle, from faith await the hope of righteousness. "For in Christ neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love." "And we desire that each of you show the same diligence toward the full assurance of hope," until, "after the order of Melchizedek," he has become "a high priest forever." Wisdom, that model of every virtue, voices something akin to Paul: "But whoever heeds me will settle down confident, secure in expectation"; for that recovered expectation goes, under this same term, by the name "hope" once more; and this is why, to the phrase "will settle down," she so fittingly attached "confident," showing that such a person has found repose, having regained the very expectation he had been hoping for; wherefore she adds also: "and he shall be at rest, unafraid of any evil." And directly the apostle, in his first letter to the Corinthians, says expressly: "Become imitators of me, as I also am of Christ," so that this might come about: "If you are mine, and I am Christ's, then you too become imitators of Christ, and Christ of God." He therefore lays down as the aim of faith assimilation to God, so far as it was possible to become just and holy together with prudence, and as the end, the restoration, upon faith, of the promise. From these points, then, arise the wellsprings drawn on by the thinkers who have laid down formal doctrines about the final aim, whom we already noted above. But let this suffice on these matters.

======== Stromata — Book 2, Chapter 23 ========

Since marriage seems to fall under pleasure and desire, we must give an account of it as well. Marriage, then, is the first union of a man and a woman according to law, for the begetting of legitimate children. Thus the comic poet Menander says, "for the plowing of legitimate children I give you my own daughter." We ask whether one ought to marry — a question belonging to the class of things said to be relative in a certain manner. For to whom ought one to marry, and being in what condition, and marrying whom, and she being in what condition? For one ought not to marry just anyone, nor at just any time, but there is a season proper to it, a person suited to it, and a limit of years within which it remains fitting. So one ought not to marry every woman, nor at every time, nor altogether without restraint, but the man must be in a fitting condition, and must marry the sort of woman, and at the time, that is proper, and for the sake of children, and with a partner alike in all respects, who cherishes her loving husband not by force or compulsion.
Hence Abraham, speaking of his wife under the pretext that she was his sister, says: "Her father is mine, though her mother is not; she became my wife, yet she is counted my sister," teaching that those sharing one mother ought not to be joined together in marriage.
Let us run briefly through the history of opinion. Plato ranks marriage among external goods, providing for the immortality of our race and a kind of continuity handed down like a torch from children to children's children. Democritus, on the other hand, declines marriage and child-rearing on account of the many discomforts and distractions from more necessary things that arise from them. Epicurus agrees with him, as do all who place the good in pleasure and freedom from disturbance, and further in freedom from pain. Again, according to the Stoics marriage and the raising of children are indifferent, while according to the Peripatetics they are a good. In sum, these men, carrying their doctrines only as far as the tongue, were enslaved to pleasures — some to concubines, others to courtesans, and most of them to boy-favorites. And that famous wise foursome in the Garden, together with the courtesan, exalted pleasure by their deeds.
Those, then, who do not judge a thing to be to their own advantage and yet urge others to do it — or the reverse — cannot escape the curse of Bouzyges. Scripture has briefly shown this, saying: "What you hate, you shall not do to another." Yet those who approve of marriage say that nature has made us fit for marriage, as is plain from the constitution of the bodies of male and female, and they continually cite "increase and multiply." But even if this is so, let it seem shameful to them that man, fashioned by God, should be more incontinent than the irrational animals, which do not indulge in intercourse promiscuously with many, but with one of their own kind, as do the wood-pigeons and the doves and the turtle-dove kind and whatever is similar to these. Further, they say, the childless man falls short of the perfection that accords with nature, since he has not set up in his place a successor of his own household; for he is perfect who has produced from himself one like himself, and even more so when he has seen that offspring in turn do the same, that is, when the one begotten is established in the same nature as the one who begot it.
One ought, then, by all means to marry, both for the sake of one's country and for the succession of children and for the completion of the world so far as lies in our power. For the poets even pity a marriage that is incomplete and childless, but call blessed the one flourishing on both sides with offspring. And bodily illnesses in particular reveal why a wife is indispensable; the devotion of her care and the steadiness of her attendance seem to outdo what other relatives and friends provide, since out of sympathy she chooses to surpass everyone else and remain at hand, being in truth, as Scripture puts it, a fitting helper for him.
So the comic poet Menander, though running down marriage, nevertheless sets its advantages against it, and answers the one who said, "I am badly off in the matter." "B: You take it the wrong way." Then he adds: "You see in it the hardships and what will grieve you, but you do not look at the good things," and so on. And marriage also helps those advanced in years, presenting a wife who cares for them and children by her who nourish them in old age. "Children are tokens of remembrance to a man who has died"; "like corks they buoy up the net," saving from the deep the thread of the line, as the tragedian Sophocles says. And lawgivers do not permit those who have not married to hold the highest offices. For instance the lawgiver of the Spartans established a penalty not only for remaining unmarried, but for marrying badly, marrying late, and living apart. And the noble Plato even orders the man who does not marry to pay the maintenance of a wife into the public treasury, and to render the appropriate expenses to the magistrates; for if men, by not marrying, will not beget children, they will, so far as lies in them, produce a scarcity of men and will destroy both the cities and the world that comes from them.
Such conduct is impious, since it destroys the divine process of generation. And already it is unmanly and weak to flee from a shared life with wife and children. For that whose loss is an evil is, in every case, a good to possess; and this holds true in other matters as well. But surely, so people claim, having children taken from you ranks among the worst of evils. Therefore the possession of children is a good. And if this is so, marriage is too. For without a father, it is said, there could never be a child, and without a mother not even the conception of a child.
Marriage makes a man a father, as it makes a woman a mother. Hence Homer too counts man and household the greatest of prayers — not simply so, but together with noble likemindedness; for the marriage of other men agrees together for the sake of pleasure, but the marriage of those who love wisdom leads to concord according to reason, a marriage that permits wives to be adorned not in outward form but in character, and does not bid husbands treat their wives as mere objects of desire, making the outrage of bodies their aim, but rather to secure marriage as a help for the whole of life and for the highest self-mastery. For, I think, more honorable than wheat and barley seeds cast down each in its proper season is the man who is sown, from whom all things grow, and even those seeds the farmers cast down while sober. Therefore every filthy and defiled practice must be purged away from marriage, lest we be reproached with a union of irrational animals rather than a human partnership that, according to the accepted definition, is in accord with nature.
Some of these animals, indeed, having sprung forth at the season appointed to them, immediately depart, leaving the work of generation to providence's management. But the tragic poets record that Polyxena, even while being slaughtered, took great forethought, even in dying, to fall becomingly, hiding what it was fitting to hide from the eyes of men. And for her too, marriage was her misfortune. To fall beneath the passions, then, and yield to them, is the utmost slavery, just as, of course, to master them is the only freedom. Thus divine Scripture says that those who transgress the commandments have been sold to foreigners, that is, to sins alien to their nature, until, having turned back, they repent.
Marriage, then, must be kept pure, like some sacred image, from those who would defile it — rising from sleep with the Lord in mind, and returning to sleep with gratitude and petition offered up, "whenever you lie down to rest and whenever the holy dawn arrives," calling the Lord to witness through the whole of our life, possessing piety toward God in the soul, and carrying self-mastery through to the body as well. For it is truly pleasing to God to guide what is orderly from the tongue to one's deeds; shameful speech is a road to shamelessness, and the end of both is shameful conduct. And that Scripture counsels marrying, and never permits departing from the marriage bond, it plainly legislates: "You shall not put away your wife, except on the ground of fornication"; and it regards it as adultery for one to marry again while the other of the separated pair still lives.
It is a woman free from suspicion of slander who does not adorn herself, nor even ornament herself beyond what is fitting, but devotes herself continually to prayers and supplications, guarding against frequent excursions from the house, and shutting herself off as far as possible from being seen by those who are not her own, counting the keeping of the house of more importance than idle chatter out of season. And he who takes a divorced woman commits adultery, it is said; for if anyone divorces his wife, he makes her commit adultery, that is, forces her to be made an adulteress. And not only is the one who divorces her responsible for this, but also the one who receives her, giving her the occasion to sin; for if he did not receive her, she would return to her husband.
What then does the Law say? To check the ready inclination of the passions, it commands that the woman convicted of adultery, having been proven guilty of this, be put to death; and if she is a priestess, it commands that she be handed over to fire. The adulterer too is stoned, but not in the same place, so that death may not even be shared in common by them. The Law, then, is not opposed to the Gospel, but is in harmony with it. How could it be otherwise, since the Lord is the one provider of both? For the woman who has committed fornication lives to sin, but has died to the commandments; but she who repents, as though born again through the conversion of her life, has a regeneration of life, the old harlot having died, and she who has been begotten anew through repentance having passed into life once more. The Spirit bears witness to what has been said, speaking through Ezekiel: "I do not desire the death of the sinner, so much as that he should turn back." At once, those stoned to death die by the Law, to which they did not yield obedience, because of hardness of heart; but for the priestess the penalty is intensified, because to whom more was given, of him more will be required.
Let this second Stromateus of ours here be brought to a close, on account of the length and the number of its topics.

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 1 ========

Now the followers of Valentinus, deriving their pairings from on high, from the divine emanations, are well pleased with marriage; but those from Basilides say that when the apostles inquired whether it were not better not to marry, the Lord is said to have answered: not all can make room for this saying; for there are eunuchs, some from birth, some by necessity. And they interpret the saying somewhat as follows: some have a natural aversion toward woman from birth, and these, making good use of this natural constitution, do well not to marry. These, they say, are the eunuchs from birth; and those by necessity are the ascetics of the stage, who through the counterpull of reputation master themselves; while those who have been castrated by misfortune have become eunuchs by necessity. Those, then, who are eunuchs by necessity do not become so by reasoned choice. But those who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the eternal kingdom, on account of the things that follow from marriage, they say, take up this reasoning, fearing the preoccupation involved in the provision of necessities.
And that it is better to marry than to burn, lest you cast your soul into the fire — this the apostle says, holding out night and day and fearing lest he forfeit the reward of self-control; for a soul that comes to be in the position of holding out is divided from its hope. "Hold out, then," says Isidore, word for word, in his Ethics, "against a combative woman, lest you be torn away from the grace of God, and having discharged the fire, pray with a good conscience. But when your thanksgiving," he says, "falls into petition, and you ask no longer to succeed but merely not to fail, marry." But if someone is young, or poor, or given to excess, and does not wish to marry according to this reasoning, let him not be separated from his brother; let him say, "I have entered into the holy things, I can suffer nothing"; but if he has any suspicion of himself, let him say, "Brother, lay your hand upon me, that I may not sin"; and he will receive help, both intelligible and perceptible. Let him only be willing to accomplish the good, and he will attain it.
But sometimes we say with our mouth, "we do not wish to sin," while our mind is set upon sinning. Such a one does not do what he wishes, out of fear, so that the punishment may not be reckoned against him; but humanity has certain things that are both necessary and natural, and other things that are natural only. To be clothed is both necessary and natural. But the matter of sexual intercourse is natural, yet not necessary.
I have set down these sayings to refute those Basilidians who do not live rightly, as though they either possessed license even to sin, on account of their supposed perfection, or would in any case be saved by nature, even should they sin now, on account of their innate election — since the very forefathers of their doctrines do not permit them to practice these same things. Let them not, then, while sheltering under the name of Christ, and living more licentiously than the most intemperate among the nations, bring blasphemy upon that name; for such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, whose end shall be according to their deeds.
Self-control, then, is a disdain of the body in accordance with our confession toward God. For it is not only concerning sexual matters, but also concerning other things which the soul wrongly desires, not being content with what is necessary, that self-control operates. There is also self-control concerning the tongue, and concerning possession, and concerning use, and concerning desire. Nor does this virtue teach only to be temperate — rather it supplies us with temperance, being itself a power and a divine grace. What, then, is our own view on the matter proposed, must be stated: we count blessed both eunuchhood and those to whom this has been granted by God, and we admire monogamy and the dignity that belongs to a single marriage, saying that we ought to suffer together and bear one another's burdens, lest one who seems to stand well should himself also fall. But concerning a second marriage, if a man burns, the apostle says, let him marry.

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 2 ========

Those who trace themselves back to Carpocrates and Epiphanes claim that women should be held in common, and from this the greatest blasphemy has flowed against the Name. This Epiphanes, whose writings are also in circulation, was the son of Carpocrates and of a mother named Alexandria; on his father's side he was of Alexandria, on his mother's side of Cephallenia. He lived in all seventeen years, and he has been honored as a god at Same in Cephallenia, where a temple of hewn stones has been built and consecrated to him, together with altars, sacred precincts, and a shrine of the Muses; and the Cephallenians, gathering at the temple at the new moon that is his birthday, offer sacrifices of deification to Epiphanes, pour libations, feast, and sing hymns to him. He was educated by his father in the ordinary curriculum and in the teachings of Plato, and he became the founder of the so-called monadic gnosis, from which the heresy of the Carpocratians derives.
This man, then, says in his work On Righteousness that the righteousness of God is a certain fellowship together with equality. For the heaven, stretched out equally on every side, encompasses the whole earth in a circle, and the night displays all the stars equally, and the sun, cause of the day and father of light, God has poured out from above equally upon the earth for all who are able to see; and all see it in common, since it does not distinguish rich from poor, people from ruler, the foolish from the wise, females from males, free from slave. Nor does it act differently even toward the irrational animals, but pouring itself out equally in common upon all living things from above, upon good and bad alike, it establishes righteousness, since no one is able to have more or to take away from his neighbor, so that he himself might have the other's light doubled as well. The sun rises to give common nourishment to all living creatures, and since righteousness common to all is given equally, in such matters the race of oxen becomes alike as oxen, of swine as swine, of sheep as sheep, and all the rest likewise; for righteousness shows itself among them as commonality. Then, in accordance with commonality, all things alike are sown according to kind, and common food is provided for all cattle that graze upon the ground, and for all equally, mastered by no law, but present to all in harmony through the provision of the one who gives and commands it.
But not even the matter of begetting has a written law (for it would have been transcribed by now); rather, they sow and beget equally, having fellowship implanted in them by righteousness. The maker and father of all, having legislated by his own righteousness, granted an eye for seeing to all equally in common, not distinguishing female from male, nor rational from irrational, and in a word nothing from nothing at all, but having apportioned the power of sight with equality and commonality, he has bestowed it on all alike by a single command. But the laws, he says, being unable to punish the ignorance of men, taught them to transgress the law; for the peculiar character of the laws has cut up the fellowship of the divine law and gnaws at it, not understanding the apostle's saying, where he says, 'through the law I came to know sin.' And he says that 'mine' and 'yours' crept in through the laws, so that people no longer enjoy the earth or possessions in common as something new, nor even marriage in common; for God made the vines common to all, which refuse neither the sparrow nor the thief, and likewise the grain and the other fruits. But fellowship, having been transgressed, has also given birth, along with the loss of equality, to the thief of livestock and of crops.
God, then, having made all things in common for man, and having brought together the female with the male in common, and having joined together all the animals alike, has shown righteousness to be fellowship together with equality. But those who were thus born have denied the fellowship that begot their own generation, and they say: let the one who takes a single wife keep her — though all might hold women in common, just as he declared the rest of the animals do. Having said this in these very words, he goes on again, in the same wording, as follows: for God made desire strong and more vehement in males for the perpetuation of the species, a desire which neither law nor custom nor anything else among existing things can do away with, for it is God's own decree. And how, then, could this man still be examined by our own reasoning, when by these very words he openly overthrows both the Law and the Gospel? For the one says, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But the other says, 'everyone who looks with desire has already committed adultery.' For the saying 'you shall not desire,' spoken by the Law, shows the one God proclaimed through Law, Prophets, and Gospel alike; for it says, 'you shall not desire what belongs to your neighbor.' But the neighbor is not the Jew to the Jew, for he is a brother and shares the very same spirit; it remains, then, that the neighbor must mean the man of another nation. For how is he not a neighbor who is able to share in the Spirit? For Abraham is father not only of the Hebrews, but also of the nations.
But if the woman who commits adultery and the man who fornicates with her are punished with death, it is surely clear that the commandment which says, 'you shall not desire the wife of your neighbor,' speaks concerning the nations, so that a man, having in accordance with the Law abstained from both his neighbor's wife and his own sister, might then hear directly from the Lord: 'But I say to you, you shall not desire.' And the addition of the word 'I' shows that the force of the commandment reaches closer still, and that both Carpocrates and Epiphanes are fighting against God — Epiphanes, who in that very much-talked-of book, I mean On Righteousness, adds words to this effect: whence, as though the lawgiver had spoken absurdly in saying 'you shall not desire,' he adds, to make it seem still more absurd, 'the things of your neighbor'; for the very one who gave desire as that which holds together the process of generation commands that it be taken away, though he has removed it from no other animal. And by making 'the wife of your neighbor' a matter of private possession, when he compels fellowship, he speaks even more absurdly still.
These, then, are the doctrines the noble Carpocratians teach. They say that these men, together with certain other zealots of the same kind of evils, gather at their banquets — I could not myself call their assembly a love-feast — men and women together, and that after they have taken their fill (for Cypris, as they say, dwells in satiety), having put out of sight that which would shame this fornicating 'righteousness' of theirs by turning the lamp about so its light is hidden, they mingle with whomever they wish, as they wish; and having thus practiced fellowship in such a 'love,' by day they then demand from whichever women they wish obedience to the law of Carpocrates — for it is not right to call it divine. Such laws, I think, Carpocrates ought rather to have made for the lusts of dogs and swine and goats. It seems to me too that he misheard Plato, who in the Republic says that women are to be held in common by all — common, that is, before marriage, for those who are still eligible suitors, just as he says the theater is common to all who watch it, but that once a woman is claimed by someone she belongs to that one alone and is no longer common, once married.
Xanthus, in the work entitled Magica, says that the Magi hold it lawful to have intercourse with mothers, daughters, and sisters, and that wives are held in common, not by force or in secret, but with the consent of both parties, whenever one man wishes to marry the wife of another. It is concerning these and similar sects, I think, that Jude spoke prophetically in his epistle: 'these also, dreaming in like manner' — for indeed they lay hold of no waking reality — 'even until their mouth speaks bombastic things.'

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 3 ========

Now if Plato himself and the Pythagoreans, just as later on the followers of Marcion also, had supposed generation to be evil (though it was far from Plato's intent to lay down that wives should be held in common), yet the Marcionites hold that nature is evil, arising both from evil matter and from a just Demiurge; and it is on this account, unwilling to help fill up the world made by the Demiurge, that they wish to abstain from marriage, setting themselves in opposition to their own maker and hastening instead toward the one they call the good, but not, as they say, the god in some other fashion — hence, wishing to leave nothing of their own behind here, they become continent not by free choice but by enmity toward their maker, unwilling to make use of the things created by him. But these men, having strayed by an impious war against God from the reckonings that accord with nature, and despising the long-suffering and goodness of God, even while refusing to marry nevertheless make use of created foods and breathe the air of the Demiurge, being themselves his works and dwelling among his things, and they proclaim, as they say, a strange knowledge, though on this very count — that they were evangelized here — they ought to acknowledge gratitude to the Lord of the world.
But against these men, when we take up the discourse concerning first principles, we shall argue with the utmost precision. As for the philosophers we have mentioned, from whom the Marcionites impiously learned that generation is evil and now bluster over it as though it were their own doctrine, the philosophers do not hold generation to be evil by nature, but only in relation to the soul that has perceived the truth; for they bring down the soul, being divine, into this world as into a place of punishment, and it is fitting, according to them, that souls being embodied should be purified. And this doctrine belongs no longer only to the Marcionites, but is proper also to those who hold that souls are embodied and re-clothed and transferred from one body to another — concerning whom another occasion would be fitting to speak, when we take up the discourse on the soul.
Heraclitus, at any rate, clearly disparages generation when he says: 'Being born, they wish to live and to have their fates' — or rather, to find rest — 'and they leave behind children to become fates in turn.' Empedocles is plainly of the same mind when he says: 'I wept and wailed when I saw the unfamiliar place.' And again: 'For out of the living he made the dead, changing their forms.' And again: 'Alas, O wretched race of mortals, O ill-starred — out of what strifes and out of what groanings you were born.' The Sibyl too says: 'Men, mortal and fleshly, being nothing,' likewise to the poet who writes: 'Earth nurtures nothing feebler than man.'
Indeed Theognis also shows generation to be evil, speaking somewhat as follows: 'Best of all for those upon the earth is never to be born, nor to look upon the rays of the piercing sun; but having been born, to pass as swiftly as possible through the gates of Hades.' In agreement with them the tragic poet Euripides writes: 'We ought, gathering in assembly, to mourn for the one who is born, for all the evils into which he comes; but the one who has died and ceased from his labors we ought to send from the house rejoicing and speaking words of good omen.' And again he will say the like: 'Who knows whether living is really dying, and dying, living?'
Herodotus plainly does the same, making Solon say: 'O Croesus, every man is a calamity.' And his tale about Cleobis and Biton clearly means nothing other than to censure birth and to praise death. 'As is the generation of leaves, so too is that of men,' says Homer. And Plato in the Cratylus attributes to Orpheus the account of the soul being punished in the body, speaking thus: 'For some say that this body is a tomb of the soul, as though it were buried in the present life; and because by means of it the soul signifies whatever it signifies, on this account too it is rightly called a 'sign.' It seems, however, that it was chiefly the followers of Orpheus who gave it this name, on the ground that the soul is paying the penalty for whatever it is paying it for.'
It is worth recalling too the words of Philolaus; for the Pythagorean speaks thus: 'The ancient theologians and seers also bear witness that the soul has been yoked to the body as a punishment for certain offenses, and has been buried in this body as in a tomb.' Pindar too, speaking of the mysteries at Eleusis, adds: 'Blessed is he who has seen those rites before going beneath the earth; he knows the end of life, and he knows its god-given beginning.' Plato likewise, in the Phaedo, does not hesitate to write in similar vein: 'And those who established the rites of initiation for us meant nothing other than this — that he will dwell with the gods.' And what does he mean when he says: 'So long as we have the body, and our soul is fouled by association with such an evil, we shall never adequately possess that which we desire'? Does he not hint that generation is the cause of the greatest evils? And in the Phaedo he further bears witness: 'For it is likely that those who rightly lay hold of philosophy escape the notice of others in this, that they themselves pursue nothing other than dying and being dead.'
And again: 'Is it not the case that here too the soul of the philosopher above all dishonors the body and flees from it, and seeks to come to be by itself alone?' And does this not chime with the divine apostle who says: 'Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?' — unless he speaks tropically of the like-mindedness of those dragged down into vice as a body of death. And even before Marcion, Plato plainly turns away from intercourse, which is the beginning of generation, in the first book of the Republic. For in praising old age he adds: 'Know well that, for my part, in proportion as the other pleasures relating to the body wither away, so much the more do the desires and pleasures relating to reason increase' — and, recalling the use of the pleasures of love, he says: 'Hush, man; most gladly indeed have I escaped from it, as from escaping some raging and savage master.'
Again, in the Phaedo he disparages generation when he writes: 'Now the account given in secret teachings concerning these things is that we men are in a kind of guard-post.' And again: 'But those who are found to have lived especially in a holy manner are the ones who are set free from these regions here on earth and released, as it were from prisons, and who arrive above at the pure dwelling.' Yet, being in this condition, he nonetheless perceives that the ordering of things is good, and says: 'One ought not to release oneself from this nor to run away.' And, to put it briefly, he gave Marcion no ground to reckon matter evil, for he himself piously said the following concerning the world: 'From the one who put it together it possesses all that is beautiful; but whatever is harsh and unjust that occurs in heaven, this it possesses of itself from its former condition, and it works this out also in living creatures.'
He adds still more clearly: 'The cause of these things for it is the bodily element of its composite nature, the element bred long ago in its former condition, because it partook of much disorder before it arrived at the present world-order.' No less does he lament the race of men in the Laws also, speaking thus: 'And the gods, taking pity on the toilsome race of men as it is by nature, ordained for them, as respites from their toils, the recurring cycles of festivals.' And in the Epinomis he goes through the causes of this pity and says the following: 'That from the beginning it is hard for every living creature to come into being — first, to partake of the condition of those still in the womb, and then, in turn, to be born, and further to be reared and to be educated — all this comes about through countless toils, as we all agree.'
What then? Does not Heraclitus too call generation death, in a manner similar to Pythagoras and to the Socrates of the Gorgias, when he says: 'Death is all we see when awake; all we see when asleep is sleep'?
But enough of these matters; when we take up the discourse on first principles, we shall then also examine these contrarieties which both the philosophers hint at and the followers of Marcion make into doctrine. Meanwhile I think it has been shown by us clearly enough that Marcion took the starting points of his strange doctrines from Plato, ungratefully and ignorantly.
Let our discourse on continence now proceed. We were saying that the Greeks, suspicious of the difficulty involved, uttered many sayings against the begetting of children, but that the Marcionites, taking these up in a godless manner, show ingratitude toward the Demiurge. For tragedy says: 'Better for mortals never to be born than to be born. Then again I bear children with bitter pangs; and having borne them, if I bear fools, I grieve in vain, seeing them base, though I destroyed good ones in the bearing; but if I bear ones who turn out well, I melt my wretched heart with dread. What good is this? Is it not enough for a single soul to be in distress, and to have its labors on top of that?' And likewise still: 'It seems to me, now as always, that men ought never to beget children, seeing how many toils are in store for those they beget.' And in what is said further on he plainly traces the cause of these evils back to first principles, saying thus: 'O you who were born to misfortune and to fare ill, you became a man, and from that source you took the ill fortune of life, from the source whence this upper air, giving breath to mortals, began to nourish all alike; do not now, being mortal, resent your mortal lot.'
Again he renders the like sentiments thus: 'No mortal is blessed or fortunate; for no one has yet been born free from grief.' And then again: 'Alas, alas, how many are the fortunes of mortal sufferings, and how many their shapes — no one could tell their limit.' And likewise still: 'For among mortals there is nothing that is happy through to the end.'
In this way, they say, the Pythagoreans too abstained from the pleasures of love. But it seems to me, on the contrary, that they marry for the sake of begetting children, but wish, after the begetting of children, to master the pleasure arising from love. In this same spirit they mystically forbid the eating of beans — not because the legume produces flatulence and is hard to digest and makes dreams disturbed, nor indeed because a bean resembles a human head, according to that little verse, 'to eat beans is the same as eating the heads of one's parents,' but rather because beans, when eaten, render women barren. Theophrastus, at any rate, in the fifth book of his Causes of Plants, records that the husks of beans, when placed around the roots of newly planted trees, wither the growing plants, and that domestic hens too, when they feed on these continually, become barren.

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 4 ========

Among those led astray by heresy, we mentioned Marcion of Pontus, who rejects the use of worldly things out of opposition to the Demiurge. Yet the very Demiurge against whom this god-fighting giant imagines he is arrayed becomes, unwillingly, the cause of his continence—if indeed this ought to be called continence—since even while running down both creation and the created order he remains unwillingly continent. And should his followers make use of the Lord's word spoken to Philip, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you follow me," let them consider that Philip too bore the same fleshly form and yet had no dead thing polluting him. How then, though he had a body of flesh, did he have nothing dead in it? Because he had risen from the tomb, the Lord having put to death the passions while making him alive to Christ. We also mentioned Carpocrates' lawless community of wives, but in discussing the saying of Nicolaus we left something out. This man, they say, having a beautiful wife, was reproached by the apostles for jealousy after the Savior's ascension; so he brought his wife forward and gave leave for anyone who wished to marry her. For they say this act followed logically from that saying, that one must make ill use of the flesh; and indeed, following both what was done and what was said simply and without examination, those who pursue his heresy fornicate without restraint.
I myself have learned that Nicolaus used no other woman besides the one he married, that his daughters grew old as virgins, and that his son remained uncorrupted. Since this is so, the bringing of his jealously-guarded wife before the apostles and presenting her publicly was a renouncing of passion, and his continence in the face of eagerly sought pleasures taught that one should make only such use of the flesh as necessity requires. For he did not wish, I think, in accordance with the Savior's command, to serve two masters, pleasure and God. They say, at any rate, that Matthias too taught in this way: to fight against the flesh and make only necessary use of it, granting it nothing toward unrestrained pleasure, but to make the soul grow through faith and knowledge.
There are some who proclaim promiscuous Aphrodite's communion to be a mystical fellowship, doing outrage even to the very word; for "to do" can mean to do something evil, just as it can mean, by the same word, to do something good, and likewise "communion" is a good thing when it means the sharing of money, food, and clothing—but these people impiously call any coupling of sexual acts whatever "communion." They say, at any rate, that one of them approached a virgin of ours, beautiful in appearance, and said, "It is written, 'Give to everyone who asks of you,'" and that she, very solemnly, not understanding the man's licentiousness, answered, "But discuss marriage with my mother." O what godlessness—these partners in licentiousness, these brothers in lust, falsify the Lord's very words; a disgrace not only to philosophy but to all of life, they counterfeit the truth, or rather tear it down as far as lies in their power. For these thrice-wretched men make sacred rites of fleshly and carnal communion, and imagine that this leads them into the kingdom of God.
Such communion as this leads to the brothels, and indeed its true partners would be pigs and goats; and in their grander hopes it would be the prostitutes who preside over the brothel roof, admitting without restraint all who wish it. But you did not so learn Christ, if indeed you heard him and were taught in him, as is the truth in Christ Jesus—that you should put off, with respect to your former way of life, the old man who is being corrupted through the desires of deceit; have your thinking made new at its very core, and clothe yourselves with the new humanity, fashioned after God's pattern in the righteousness and holiness that truth brings, matching the divine image. Become, then, imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God for a fragrant aroma. But let fornication and all impurity or greed not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints, nor shameful talk nor foolish speech. For it is precisely from the mouth that the apostle, teaching us to practice purity, writes: "For know this and understand, that no fornicator" and so on down to "but rather expose them."
Their doctrine flowed to them from some apocryphal book, and I will set down the very wording, the mother of their licentiousness—whether they themselves are the authors of the book (see the madness of it, if they falsify things even about God through their intemperance), or whether they came across it in others and, having heard it perversely, took this fine doctrine as their own. The wording runs thus: "All things were one; but since it seemed good to its unity not to be alone, a breath went forth from it, and it had communion with it, and made the Beloved; from this a breath went forth from him, and having communion with it he made powers that could neither be seen nor heard, each existing under a name of its own." Now if these people, like the followers of Valentinus, posited spiritual unions, perhaps one might grant their supposition some hearing; but to trace fleshly outrage back to a holy prophecy is the mark of one who has despaired of salvation.
Such also are the doctrines taught by the followers of Prodicus, who falsely proclaim themselves "Gnostics," saying that they are by nature sons of the first God; and abusing their noble birth and freedom, they live as they please. And what they please is a life of pleasure, since they have persuaded themselves they can be mastered by nothing, as though they were lords of the Sabbath and by nature superior to every race, royal children—and for a king, they say, the law is unwritten. But in the first place, they do not do everything they wish, for many things will hinder them even when they desire and attempt them; and what they do, they do not as kings but as whipped slaves, for they commit adultery in secret, fearing to be caught, shunning condemnation, and dreading punishment. How can intemperance and foul speech be freedom? For "everyone who sins," the apostle says, "is a slave."
But how can one live according to God who has given himself up as a slave to every desire, when the Lord has said, "But I say to you, do not desire"? And does someone wish to sin willingly, and make it a doctrine to commit adultery and live in pleasure and ruin the marriages of others—when we pity even others who sin unwillingly? And if they have come into a foreign world, having proven unfaithful in what is not their own, they will not possess the truth either. Does a stranger insult the citizens and wrong them, rather than living, as a sojourner using necessary things, without giving offense to the citizens? And how can those who do the very same things as the unjust, the intemperate, the greedy, and adulterers—people hated by the nations for not doing what the laws prescribe—claim to be the only ones who have known God? They ought rather to live well even while present among strangers, so that they might truly display their royal character.
Already they have made themselves hateful both to human lawgivers and to the divine, having chosen to live lawlessly. The man, at any rate, who ran through the fornicator is shown in Numbers to be blessed by God. "And if we say," John says in his epistle, "that we have fellowship with him"—that is, with God—"and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not do the truth; but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from sin."
How, then, are those who do such things better than worldly people, when they resemble the very worst of worldly people? For those who resemble one another in their deeds resemble one another, I think, in their natures too. Those whom they claim to surpass in nobility of birth, these same people they ought to surpass in character, so that they might escape being shut up in prison. For truly, as the Lord said, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of God"; and concerning restraint in foods, this is shown in Daniel. To sum it up, David, singing about obedience, says: "By what shall a young man keep his way pure?" And immediately he hears the answer: "By guarding your word with his whole heart." And Jeremiah says: "Thus says the Lord: Do not walk in the ways of the nations."
Moved by this, certain other vile and worthless men say that man was fashioned by different powers, the parts down to the navel being of a more godlike craft, and the parts below of the inferior one, and that this is why desire for intercourse arises. But it escapes them that the upper parts too crave food and lust after certain things, and moreover they contradict Christ, who said to the Pharisees that the same God made both the man outside us and the inner man. But even desire itself does not belong to the body, though it comes about through the body.
Others still, whom we also call Antitactae, say that the God who is Father of all is our Father by nature, and that all he has made is good; but one of his creatures sowed the tares, engendering the nature of evil things, in which he has enveloped all of us, setting us in opposition to the Father. Therefore, they say, we ourselves stand in opposition to him, to avenge the Father, acting against the will of the second one. Since, then, this second one has said, "You shall not commit adultery," we, they say, will commit adultery, to overthrow his commandment.
We might say to these people as well that we have received that false prophets and all who feign the truth are to be known by their works. But your works stand accused; how then will you still claim to hold fast to the truth? For either there is no evil at all, and the one you accuse as opposed to God deserves no blame—nor has he been the maker of anything evil (for the tree is destroyed along with its fruit)—or, if evil truly exists, let them tell us what they say the commandments given about righteousness, about self-control, about endurance, about patience under wrong, and the like, actually are—base or noble. And if the commandment forbidding most shameful acts is base, then wickedness will be legislating against itself, to its own destruction—which is impossible; but if it is good, then in setting themselves against good commandments they confess that they are setting themselves against the good and doing evil.
Moreover, the Savior himself, whom alone they claim to obey, has forbidden hatred and reviling, and says that when walking with one's adversary, one should try hard to be freed from him as a friend. So they must either deny Christ's own exhortation while opposing him whom they call the Opponent, or, becoming friends with him, they will not go to law with him. What then? Do you not know, noble sirs (for I would speak as though to those present), that in fighting against commandments that are rightly given you stand opposed to your own salvation? For it is not the things rightly declared that you overturn, but yourselves. The Lord said, "Let your good works shine"; but you make your own acts of licentiousness plain for all to see. Besides, if you wish to overturn the lawgiver's commandments, why is it that "you shall not commit adultery" and "you shall not corrupt children" and whatever else contributes to self-control—these you attempt to overturn on account of your own intemperance, yet you do not overturn the winter that he made, so as to make it summer while winter is still at its height, nor do you turn dry land into sea and sea into dry land passable on foot, as the historians say the barbarian Xerxes wished to do?
Why do you not oppose all the commandments alike? For when he said, "Increase and multiply," you, being in opposition, ought not to have made use of intercourse at all; and when he said, "I have given you all things for food and enjoyment," you ought to have enjoyed nothing. But also, when he said "an eye for an eye," you ought not to have repaid opposition with opposition, and when he commanded the thief to repay fourfold, you ought to have given even more to the thief; and likewise, in opposing the commandment "You shall love the Lord," you ought not even to have loved the God of all, and again, when he said, "You shall not make a carved image nor a molten one," it would have followed for you to worship carved images too. How then are you not impious, opposing the Demiurge, as you claim, yet zealously imitating the deeds of prostitutes and adulterers? And how do you not perceive that you make greater the one you consider weak, if what he wishes comes to pass, rather than what the Good One willed? For on the contrary, your own father, as you call him, is shown by your very conduct to be weak.
These men too gather up sayings culled from certain prophetic passages, patching them together badly, taking as literal what was spoken allegorically. For it is written, they say, "They resisted God and were saved." Some of them even add "the shameless God," and they take this saying as a counsel given to them, reckoning it salvation for themselves to resist the Demiurge. Now it is not written of "the shameless God"; but even if it were, understand, you fools, that the one called "devil" is called shameless either as slandering man, or as accuser of sinners, or as apostate. The people, at any rate, of whom this passage speaks, being disciplined for their sins, bore it heavily and, groaning, murmured the saying in question—that while the other nations transgressing the law are not punished, they alone are chastised at every turn—just as Jeremiah too said, "Why does the way of the ungodly prosper?" Similar to this is the passage in Malachi already mentioned, "They resisted God and were saved"; for the prophets, receiving oracles, are shown not only saying that they hear something from God, but also, in delivering their message, reporting by way of anticipated objection what was being murmured by the people, bringing forward, as it were, certain complaints raised by men—and it is from these that the saying in question happens to come.
And is it not perhaps against these people that the apostle, writing in his letter to the Romans, directs himself: "And not, as we are slanderously reported and as some claim we say, 'Let us do evil that good may come'? Their condemnation is just." These are the ones who twist the scriptures, in the reading of them, by tone of voice, to their own pleasures, and by shifting certain accents and punctuation marks, force what was declared prudently and to our advantage into serving their own love of pleasure. "Those who provoke God with your words," says Malachi, "and you say, 'In what way have we provoked him?' In your saying, 'Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them'; and 'Where is the God of justice?'"

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 5 ========

So that we may not spend excessive time paring down this topic by recalling more and more of the absurd heresies, nor be compelled, in going through each of them one by one against each, to feel ashamed on their account and to draw out our notes to an inordinate length, come, let us divide all the heresies into two classes and make our reply to them accordingly. For either they teach that one should live indifferently, or, singing an overstrained continence, they proclaim it through impiety and contentiousness. First we must deal with the former division. If it is permitted to choose any manner of life, clearly one may also choose the life of continence; and if every life is free of danger for the elect, clearly the life joined with virtue and self-control is far more free of danger. For since authority was given to the Lord of the sabbath, so that even if he had lived licentiously he would have been blameless, much more will the one who has conducted himself in an orderly manner be free of blame; for "all things are lawful, but not all things are expedient," says the apostle. And if indeed all things are lawful, clearly to be self-controlled is lawful too.
Just as the one who employs his authority to live according to virtue is praiseworthy, so much more is he who has given us authority that is free and sovereign, and has permitted us to live as we wish, worthy of reverence and worship, in that he has not left us enslaved by necessity to particular choices and avoidances. But if each of the two possesses freedom from fear alike — the one who chooses incontinence and the one who chooses continence — still the dignity is not the same. For the one who runs aground on pleasures gratifies the body, while the self-controlled man frees his soul, which rules the body, from the passions. And even if they say we have been called to freedom, let us only take care not to make that freedom an opportunity for the flesh, according to the apostle. But if one must gratify desire and must consider a life of reproach a matter of indifference, as they themselves say, then either one must obey all desires without exception — and if so, one must do the most licentious and unholy things of every kind, following those who persuade us to it — or else we shall turn aside from some of our desires, and no longer is life to be lived indifferently, nor are we to be enslaved without restraint to the most dishonorable parts of us, the belly and the genitals, which through desire flatter our corpse. For desire, when ministered to for enjoyment, is nourished and kept alive, just as, cut off like a shoot, it withers away.
How is it possible for one who has been overcome by the pleasures of the body to be made like the Lord, or to have knowledge of God? For desire is the origin of every pleasure, and desire is a kind of pain and anxious craving reaching out after something through lack of it. So that those who have chosen this manner of life seem to me to be doing nothing other than what is proverbially said, suffering things fit only for shame, choosing for themselves an evil that clings to them now and hereafter. Now if all things were permitted and there were no fear of failing of one's hope on account of wicked deeds, perhaps there would be some excuse for them to live badly and pitiably; but since a blessed life has been shown to us through the commandments, which all must hold fast to, neither disregarding any of the things spoken nor making light of what is fitting, even in the smallest degree, but following wherever reason leads — and if we should fail in this, we must of necessity fall into undying evil — then, for those who follow the divine scripture, by which the faithful make their way, so as to be made like the Lord according to their power, life is not to be lived indifferently, but one must keep oneself pure, so far as possible, from pleasures, and take care over one's desires, and attend to the soul, which must be devoted to God alone. For the mind, being pure and rid of all vice, becomes in some way receptive of the power of God, the divine image being raised up within it; and everyone who has this hope in the Lord, it says, purifies himself just as that one is pure.
But it is impossible for those still led by the passions to attain knowledge of God; therefore neither can those who have acquired no knowledge of God attain the hope either. And the ignorance of God seems to stand accused in the one who fails of this end, while a manner of life reveals that one does not know God. For it is altogether impossible for a person to be at once possessed of knowledge and yet not be ashamed of pandering to the body; nor can it ever be made to agree that pleasure is a good, with the truth that only the beautiful is good, or that only the Lord is beautiful and only God is good and only he is to be loved. "But in Christ you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ. If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things above, mind the things above, not the things upon the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" — not the fornication which they practice. "So put to death whatever in you belongs to the earth below: sexual immorality, impurity, base passion, evil desire, the very things bringing on divine wrath." Let them therefore also put away wrath, anger, malice, blasphemy, foul talk out of their mouth, having put off the old man together with his desires, and having put on the new man, who is being renewed unto full knowledge according to the image of him who created him.
For the manner of one's life plainly convicts those who have come to know the commandments, since as is the word, so is the life; and the tree is known from its fruits, not from its flowers and leaves. Knowledge, then, comes from the fruit and from the manner of life, not from the word and the flower; for we say that knowledge is not bare speech, but a certain divine science, and that light which comes to be in the soul out of obedience to the commandments, which makes all things manifest, both the things in the created world, and prepares a man to know himself, and teaches him to become a possessor of God. For what the eye is in the body, that is knowledge in the mind. Let them not call freedom the slavery that comes from pleasure, as though calling bile sweet; for we have learned that freedom which the Lord alone sets us free with, releasing us from pleasures and desires and the other passions. "He who says, I have known the Lord, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and in him the truth is not" — so says John.

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 6 ========

To those who, under the fair-sounding name of self-control, are impious toward creation and toward the holy creator, the almighty and only God, and who teach that one ought not accept marriage and childbearing, nor bring into the world others destined to misfortune, nor supply nourishment to death, this must be said: first, the word of the apostle John — "even now many antichrists have arisen, whereby we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us." Next, one must also turn them aside by dissolving the sayings they themselves put forward, in some such way as this: when Salome asked, "Until when shall death prevail?" the Lord did not speak as though life were evil and creation wicked, when he said, "as long as you women bear children," but rather as teaching the natural sequence; for corruption certainly follows upon generation.
Now the law's aim was to lead us out of luxury and every disorder, and this is its end, to bring us out of injustice into righteousness, by our choosing temperate marriages and childbearing and civic life. And the Lord did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it — to fulfill it not as though it were deficient, but by bringing to completion, at his own coming, the prophecies made according to the law, since the ordinances of right conduct had also been proclaimed through the Word even to those who lived justly before the law. The many, then, not knowing self-control, conduct their lives in body but not in spirit. And earth and ashes is the body without spirit. At once the Lord judges adultery from the very intention; for what then? Is it not possible to use marriage with self-control, and not to try to dissolve what God has joined together? For such things are what the dividers of the marriage-bond teach, on whose account the name itself is blasphemed. And these who say that intercourse is defiled, when they themselves also received their own constitution from intercourse, how could they not themselves be defiled?
Of those who have been sanctified, I hold that the seed too is holy. It is fitting, then, that not only the spirit be sanctified for us, but also the manner of life and the conduct and the body; since on what principle does the apostle Paul say that the wife has been sanctified by the husband, or the husband by the wife? And what is it that the Lord said to those inquiring about the certificate of divorce, whether it is lawful to put away a wife, since Moses permitted it? "Because of your hardness of heart," he says, "Moses wrote these things; but have you not read that to the first-formed man God said, 'You two shall become one flesh'? So that whoever puts away his wife, apart from a charge of fornication, makes her to be adulterated." "But after the resurrection," he says, "they take no wives, nor are wives given to them." For it is also said concerning the belly and foods: "Foods for the belly and the belly for foods, but God will bring to nothing both this and these" — striking a blow at those who think they live like boars and goats, so that they might eat and mate without fear.
If, then, they have already received the resurrection, as they themselves say, and on this account set aside marriage, let them neither eat nor drink; for the apostle said that the belly and foods are brought to nothing in the resurrection. How then do they hunger and thirst and suffer the things of the flesh and all the other things that one who has received, through Christ, the perfect resurrection that is expected will not suffer? But even those who worship idols abstain at once from foods and from sexual intercourse. "The kingdom of God," it is said, "is not eating and drinking." Indeed it is also a matter of care for the Magi, who serve angels and demons, to abstain at once from wine and from living creatures and from sexual intercourse. But just as humility is gentleness and not the maltreatment of the body, so too self-control is a virtue of the soul, not displayed openly, but hidden.
There are also those who say outright that marriage is fornication, and lay it down as doctrine that it was handed down by the devil, and these boastful men claim that they themselves imitate the Lord, who neither married nor acquired anything in the world, boasting that they have understood the gospel better than others. But scripture says to them: "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Then, they do not know the reason why the Lord did not marry: first, because he already had his own bride, the church; and next, because he was not an ordinary man, so as to need some helper according to the flesh; nor was it necessary for him to beget children, since he remains forever and has become the only Son of God. And this same Lord himself says: "What God has joined together, let man not separate." And again: "As it was in the days of Noah, they were marrying and giving in marriage, building and planting, and as it was in the days of Lot, so will be the coming of the Son of Man." And to show that he is not speaking of the nations, he adds: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" And again: "Woe to those who are with child and to those who are nursing in those days." And yet these things too are spoken allegorically. For this reason he did not even fix the times which the Father has set in his own authority, so that the world might continue according to its generations.
As for the saying "not all can receive this word" — "for there are eunuchs who were born so, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven; he who is able to receive it, let him receive it" — they do not know that this was said after the statement about the certificate of divorce, when certain people, upon hearing that if the case of the wife is such, it is not expedient for a man to marry, then the Lord said, "Not all can receive this word, but only those to whom it has been given"; for what those who asked wished to learn was whether, once a wife had been condemned for fornication and put away, it is permitted to marry another.
And they say that not a few athletes abstain from sexual intercourse, exercising self-control for the sake of bodily training, such as Astylus of Croton and Crison of Himera. And Amoebeus the lyre-player, though newly married, abstained from his bride. And Aristotle of Cyrene alone disregarded Laïs though she loved him —
for having sworn to the courtesan that he would indeed bring her home to his own country if she would help him against his rivals, when she had accomplished this, he fulfilled his oath with wit: having had a portrait painted that resembled her as closely as possible, he set it up in Cyrene, as Istros relates in his work On the Peculiar Nature of Contests. So that not even eunuch-state is virtuous, unless it comes about for love of God.
Thus, concerning those who abhor marriage, the blessed Paul says: "In later times some will fall away from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods." And again he says: "Let no one disqualify you by delighting in self-imposed humility and severity to the body." And this same man also writes those other words: "Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Have you been released from a wife? Do not seek a wife." And again: "Let each man have his own wife, so that Satan may not tempt you."
What then? Did not the righteous men of old also partake gratefully of creation? And they too, marrying with self-control, begot children. And to Elijah the ravens brought food, bread and meat; and Samuel the prophet, from the store he had kept back of what he ate, brought it and gave it to Saul to eat. But these people, who claim to surpass even these men in conduct and manner of life, will not be able even to be compared with their deeds. Let him then who does not eat not despise him who eats, and let him who eats not judge him who does not eat; for God has received him. But the Lord too, speaking of himself, says — John came, it is said, neither eating nor drinking, and they say, "He has a demon." The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, "Behold, a man who is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners." Or do they also reject the apostles? For Peter and Philip begot children, and Philip also gave his daughters in marriage to husbands,
and indeed Paul himself does not hesitate, in one of his letters, to address his own consort, whom he did not take about with him because of the convenience it afforded to his ministry. He says, then, in one of his letters: "Do we not have the right to lead about a sister as a wife, as do the other apostles also?" But these men, attending closely and without distraction to their ministry and to the proclamation, led their wives about not as wives but as sisters, to be fellow-ministers to the women who kept house, through whom the Lord's teaching also made its way, without giving occasion for slander, even into the women's quarters. For we know too all that the noble Paul prescribes concerning women deacons in his other letter, to Timothy. But moreover this same man proclaims that the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, nor yet abstinence from wine and meats, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Which of them goes about wearing a sheepskin and a leather girdle, as Elijah did? Which of them is wrapped in sackcloth, otherwise naked and unshod, as Isaiah was? Or wears only a linen loincloth, as Jeremiah did? Who will imitate the gnostic steadfastness of John's manner of life? Yet even living in this way, the blessed prophets gave thanks to their Creator.
Now the righteousness of Carpocrates, and of those who along with him pursue licentious community, is undone in the following way. For at the same time as saying, "Give to him who asks you," he adds, "and do not turn away from him who wishes to borrow," teaching this kind of community, and not a lustful one. But how can one ask and receive and borrow from someone who has nothing at all — who has, and gives, and lends? And what of when the Lord says, "I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you offered me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in, naked and you clothed me"? Then he adds: "Whatever you did for one of these humble ones, you did for me." And does he not legislate the same things also in the old covenant? "He who gives to the poor lends to God," and "Do not withhold from doing good to him who is in need," it says.
And again it says, "Let not acts of mercy and faithfulness forsake you." "Poverty humbles a man, but the hands of the brave make rich." And it adds: "Behold, the man who has not given his money on interest is accepted," and "a man's own wealth is judged the ransom of his life." Does this not make it plainly clear? Just as the world is composed of opposites, as it were of hot and cold, dry and moist, so too it is composed both of those who give and of those who receive. And again, when he says, "If you wish to become perfect, sell your possessions and give to the poor," he refutes the man who boasted of having kept all the commandments from his youth; for he had not fulfilled "you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Then, being brought to completion by the Lord, he was taught to share out of love.
He has, then, done well not to forbid being rich, but rather being rich unjustly and insatiably; for property hastily acquired through lawlessness becomes less. For there are those who by sowing make more, and those who by gathering in have less; concerning whom it is written: "He scattered abroad, he gave to the poor, his righteousness endures forever." For the one who sows and gathers in more is the one who, through earthly and temporary sharing, acquires the heavenly and eternal things; while the other, who shares with no one but vainly stores up treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy it (concerning whom it is written, "gathering wages, he gathered them into a bag full of holes") — of this man's land, the Lord says in the gospel, it yielded abundant crops, and then, when he wished to store away the fruits, intending to build greater barns, he says to himself, by way of impersonation: "You have plenty of goods stored away for years to come; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself." "Fool," he said, "for this very night your soul is demanded of you. The things, then, that you prepared — whose will they be?"

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 7 ========

Now human self-control — I mean that which is according to the philosophers of the Greeks — professes to fight against desire and not to serve it in deed, but ours professes not to desire at all, not that one who desires should hold out, but that one should be continent even of the desiring itself. And there is no other way to gain this self-control except by the grace of God. For this reason he said, "Ask, and it shall be given you." This grace also Moses received, though he wore a needy body, so that for forty days he neither hungered nor thirsted. But just as it is better to be healthy than to discourse about health while sick, so it is better to be light than to talk about light, and the self-control that is according to truth is better than that taught by the philosophers. For where light is, there darkness is not; but where desire sits enthroned, even alone, even if it rests from activity through the body, it still consorts in memory with what is not present.
In general, then, let our reasoning go forth concerning both marriage and food and the rest, doing nothing according to desire, but willing only those things that are necessary. For we are not children of desire, but of will. And the man who has married for the sake of childbearing must practice self-control, so as not even to desire his own wife, whom he ought to love, begetting children with a solemn and sober will. For we have not learned to take thought for the flesh unto desires, but to walk becomingly as in the day, by Christ and the lordly, luminous way of life — not in revelings and drunkenness, not in chamberings and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy.
But indeed it is fitting to observe self-control not only concerning one single form, that is, the things of Aphrodite, but also concerning all the other things for which our soul, in its extravagance, lusts, not being content with what is necessary but busying itself with luxury. Self-control is to despise money, to despise luxury, possessions, and spectacle, to master the tongue, to rule over wicked reasonings. Indeed, even certain angels, having become incontinent, were seized by desire and have fallen down here from heaven. But Valentinus, in his letter to Agathopous, says that Jesus, enduring all things, was continent; he was working out divinity; he ate and drank in a peculiar way, not giving back the food. So great was the power of his self-control that the nourishment was not even corrupted within him, since he himself had no part in corruption.
We, then, embrace self-control on account of our love toward the Lord and on account of the good itself, sanctifying the temple of the Spirit; for it is good, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, to make oneself a eunuch from all desire, and to purify the conscience from dead works, so as to serve the living God.
But there are others who, through hatred of the flesh, desire ungratefully to be rid of the union of marriage and the partaking of fitting foods, being ignorant and godless, practicing self-control without reason, just as most of the other nations do. The Brahmans, for instance, neither eat anything that has life nor drink wine; but some of them take food each day as we do, while others of them do so every three days, as Alexander Polyhistor says in his Indian History; and they despise death and count life as nothing, for they believe there is a rebirth, and the gods they revere are Heracles and Pan. And those among the Indians called the Semnoi live naked their whole life; these practice truth and foretell things to come, and they revere a certain pyramid, under which they suppose the bones of some god to be laid up. Neither the gymnosophists nor those called the Semnoi have dealings with women; for they consider this contrary to nature and unlawful, for which reason they keep themselves pure, and the Semnai women likewise remain virgins. They are reputed to observe the heavenly bodies and, through the signs these give, to foretell certain things to come.

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 8 ========

But since those who introduce moral indifference force a few scriptures to plead the case of their own love of pleasure — among them, indeed, this one too: "sin will hold no mastery over you, since you stand not beneath law but beneath grace," and certain other such passages, which it is not reasonable to mention in connection with such conduct (for I am not fitting out a pirate ship) — come, let us cut short their undertaking in a few words. For the noble apostle himself, adding to the aforesaid saying, dissolves the charge: "What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law but under grace? Let it not be!" Thus, inspired and prophetic as he is, he demolishes on the spot the sophistic art of pleasure.
They do not understand, it seems, that "we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, that each may receive through the body the things he has done, whether good or bad," so that whatever a person has done through the body he may receive back. "So that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation," no longer given to sin; "the old things have passed away," we have washed away the old life; "behold, new things have come to be" — purity out of fornication, self-control out of incontinence, righteousness out of unrighteousness. "For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What agreement has Christ with Belial? Or what portion has a believer together with an unbeliever? And what accord has the temple of God with idols?" "Having therefore these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 9 ========

Those who set themselves against God's creation by way of a specious-sounding continence also cite those words spoken to Salome, which we mentioned before; they are found, I believe, in the Gospel according to the Egyptians. For they say that the Savior himself said: "I came to destroy the works of the female" — the female meaning desire, and the works meaning birth and decay. What then would they say? Has this ordering of things been destroyed? They could not say so; for the world remains under the same economy. But the Lord did not speak falsely: he truly did destroy the works of desire — love of money, love of strife, love of glory, mad passion for women, pederasty, gluttony, dissoluteness, and things like these; and the birth of these is the corruption of the soul, if indeed we become dead through our transgressions; and this was the "female" incontinence. But birth and decay within creation must of necessity go on occurring principally until the complete separation and restoration of the elect, on whose account even those substances mingled together with the world are assigned to their proper kindred.
Hence, quite fittingly, when the Word had signified something about the consummation, Salome says: "Until when will men go on dying?" Now Scripture calls "man" in two senses — both the visible man and the soul, and again both the one who is saved and the one who is not. And sin is called the death of the soul. That is why the Lord answers with careful precision: "Until women bear children" — that is, until the desires are active. For this reason, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death passed through to all men, in that all sinned; and death reigned from Adam until Moses, as the Apostle says: by natural necessity, death follows upon birth within the divine economy, and the dissolution of soul and body follows upon their union. And if birth exists for the sake of learning and coming to knowledge, and dissolution for the sake of restoration, then just as woman is thought to be the cause of death through bearing children, so by the same reasoning she will be called the guide to life as well.
Indeed, the one who first began the transgression was called "Life," because she becomes the cause of the succession both of those who are born and of those who sin, being alike the mother of the righteous and of the unrighteous, as each of us either justifies himself or, on the contrary, renders himself disobedient. Hence I, for my part, do not think that the Apostle abhors life in the flesh, when he says: "but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether through life or through death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if to live in the flesh — this also is the fruit of labor for me; and which I shall choose I do not know. I am hard pressed between the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for your sake." For through these words he showed clearly, I think, that the departure from the body is the perfection of love toward God, while the presence in the flesh is a grateful endurance for the sake of those who need to be saved.
Why, then, do they not also bring forward what follows the words spoken to Salome, these men who follow anything rather than the true evangelical canon? For when she says, "I have done well, then, in not bearing children," as though childbearing were not rightly to be undertaken, the Lord replies, saying: "Eat every plant, but the one that has bitterness do not eat." For by this too he signifies that it lies within our power, and not under compulsion by way of a forbidding commandment, to choose either continence or marriage, further making clear that marriage cooperates in a certain way with creation.
Let no one, then, consider marriage according to reason a sin, unless he supposes the rearing of children to be a bitter thing (for to many, on the contrary, childlessness is most grievous); nor, if the begetting of children appears bitter to someone because it distracts him from divine things through necessary occupations, and he does not bear the solitary life easily, let him then desire marriage, since what is pleasing, joined with self-control, is harmless, and each of us is master of his own choice regarding the begetting of children. But I observe how, under the pretext of marriage, some who have abstained from it, not in accordance with holy knowledge, have slipped into misanthropy, and love has departed from among them; while others, entangled and given over to pleasure through compliance with the law, as the prophet says, have become like the beasts.

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 10 ========

But who are the two or three who are gathered together in the name of Christ, among whom the Lord is in the midst? Does he not mean by the three a man, a woman, and a child, because a wife is joined to a husband through God? But even if someone wishes to be unencumbered, not choosing childbearing because of the preoccupation involved in childbearing, let him remain, says the apostle, unmarried as I am. For they explain that the Lord means to say that with the majority he is the Demiurge, the god who is the author of generation, but with the one, the elect, he is the Savior, being manifestly the son of another god, the good one. But this is not so; rather, God is present, through the Son, both with those who have married and had children with self-control, and likewise the same God is present with the one who has practiced continence rationally.
There would also be another way to take the three: passion, desire, and reason; or, according to another account, flesh, soul, and spirit.
Perhaps also the aforementioned triad hints at calling, and election, second, and third, the race that is ranked into the first honor; with these the all-surveying power of God is divided without being divided. He, then, who uses the natural activities of the soul as is fitting, desires what is suitable and hates what is harmful, just as the commandments direct: for it says, you shall bless the one who blesses and curse the one who curses. But when, having also risen above these — passion and desire — he loves creation in deed for the sake of the God and maker of all things, he will live gnostically, having acquired an effortless habit of self-control through his assimilation to the Savior, having united knowledge, faith, and love, being from that point on one in judgment and truly spiritual, in every way wholly unreceptive of reasonings that follow passion and desire — he who is brought to completion according to the image of the Lord by the Artificer himself, a perfect man, already worthy to be called brother by the Lord, being at once both friend and son. Thus the two and the three are gathered together into one, namely the gnostic man.
The concord of the many might also be reckoned from the three with whom the Lord is present: the one church, the one man, the one race. Or was it not the case that with the one, the Jewish people, the Lord was giving the law, while already prophesying and sending Jeremiah to Babylon, and also calling those from the nations through prophecy, gathering together the two peoples, and a third was being created out of the two, one into a new man, in whom indeed he walks about and dwells, in the church itself? Law and prophets together with the gospel are gathered into one knowledge in the name of Christ. Therefore those who do not marry out of hatred, or who indiscriminately abuse the flesh out of desire, are not numbered among those who are saved, among whom the Lord is.

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 11 ========

Now that these things have been shown, come, let us set out how many scriptures oppose these sophists of the heresies, disclosing the canon of the self-control observed according to reason. And whoever understands, choosing out for each of the heresies the scripture that suitably confronts it, will use it in due season for the overthrow of those who set up doctrines contrary to the commandments. From of old, then, the law, as we have said before, said in advance, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife," anticipating the very voice of the Lord which, according to the new covenant, speaks in its own person, saying: "You have heard the law commanding, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say, 'You shall not covet.'" For that the law wished men to use their wedded wives with self-control, and only for the begetting of children, is clear from the fact that it forbade the unmarried man to have intercourse at once with a captive woman, but if he had conceived desire for her, permitted him to mourn thirty days, she having shorn even her hair; and if even so the desire did not wither away, then he might beget children by her, the impulse that mastered him having been tested over the appointed span of time as to whether it tended toward a reasonable longing.
Hence you could not show, according to the scripture, any of the elders approaching a woman who was with child, but afterward, after both the pregnancy and the suckling of the child that had been born, you would find the women again known by their husbands. At once you will find this very aim kept also by the father of Moses, who let three years pass after the birth of Aaron before begetting Moses. Again, the tribe of Levi too, keeping this law of nature from God, entered the land that had been foretold with a smaller number than the other tribes; for a people does not easily grow into a multitude when the men who have taken up marriage according to the laws sow their seed but wait not only for the pregnancy but also for the suckling.
Hence fittingly Moses too, leading the Jews on by degrees into self-control, having had them abstain in succession for three days from the pleasure of intercourse, then commanded them to hearken to the divine words. We, then, are temples of God, as the prophet said: "I will dwell in them and walk about in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people," if we conduct our citizenship according to the commandments, whether each of us individually or the church as a whole. "Therefore go out from among them and set yourselves apart," says the Lord, "and lay hold of nothing impure; and I will welcome you in, and I will become a father to you, and you will become sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty." It is not, as some say, from those who have married, but from the nations still living in fornication, and further, from the aforesaid heresies, that he prophetically bids us be separated as unclean and godless.
Hence Paul too, addressing himself to men like those just mentioned, says: "Having these promises, then, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God; for I am jealous over you with a jealousy of God, for I have betrothed you to one husband, to offer you to Christ as a pure virgin." The church, possessing one bridegroom, does not marry another; but each of us individually has the right, according to the law, to marry whomever he wishes — I mean the first marriage. "But I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts should be corrupted from the simplicity that is toward Christ" — the apostle has spoken with great caution and in the manner of a teacher.
Hence too the admirable Peter says: "Beloved, I urge you, as sojourners and strangers, to abstain from fleshly desires, which war against the soul, keeping your conduct good among the Gentiles, because such is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, as free, and not as having freedom for a covering of malice, but as servants of God." And likewise Paul too writes in the Epistle to the Romans: "We who died to sin, how shall we still live in it? For our former self was nailed to the cross together with him, so that the sinful body might be brought to nothing — even to the point that you present not your members as weapons of unrighteousness to sin."
And indeed, having come to this point, I think I ought not to leave unremarked that the apostle preaches the same God through the law, the prophets, and the gospel; for the "you shall not covet" that is written in the gospel he applies to the law in the Epistle to the Romans, knowing that it is one and the same Father who preached through the law and the prophets and who was proclaimed as good news through him. For he says: "What shall we say? Is the law sin? Certainly not; but I did not know sin except through the law; for I would not have known desire, unless the law had said, 'You shall not covet.'" And should the opponents among those of heterodox opinion suppose that Paul, in what follows, spoke against the Creator when he says, "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh" — let them read also what precedes and what follows. For he had said before: "but sin that dwells in me," on account of which it was consistent for him to say that nothing good dwells in my flesh.
Consistently, then, he went on to add: "For if what I do not wish, this I do, it is no longer I who work it, but sin that dwells in me, which, warring against the law of God and of my mind, he says, takes me captive under the law of sin that is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?" And again — for he does not tire, in whatever way, of doing good — he does not hesitate to add: "For the law of the Spirit has set me free from the law of sin and of death, since through the Son God condemned sin in the flesh, that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." In addition to these, further clarifying what he had said, he cries out: declaring the body dead because of sin, as being no longer a temple but still a tomb of the soul; for whenever the spirit shall be sanctified to God, he will apply it. "of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who will give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you."
Again, then, rebuking those who love pleasure, he adds those words: "For the mind of the flesh is death, because those who live according to the flesh mind the things of the flesh, and the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God; for it will not submit itself to God's law. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God" — not, as some hold as doctrine, but as we have already said. Then, to distinguish these from the church, he says: "But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. But if Christ is in you, the body is indeed lifeless on account of sin, while the Spirit is life on account of righteousness. So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you are about to die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God." And against the nobility and the freedom shamefully introduced by those of heterodox opinion who boast in licentiousness, he adds, saying: "For you did not receive again a spirit of slavery unto fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, in which we cry, 'Abba, Father'" — that is, we received it for this, that we might know him to whom we pray, the Father in very truth, the sole Father of all that exists, who trains us for salvation as a father, and threatens fear...

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 12 ========

The conjugal partnership that by mutual agreement makes leisure for prayer for a season is a teaching in self-control; for he added "by mutual agreement" so that no one should dissolve the marriage, and "for a season" so that the married man, practicing continence not under compulsion, should not at some point slip into sin, sparing his own union but falling into another's desire. On this principle he also said that the man who supposed it a disgrace to himself to be raising a virgin daughter would do well to give her in marriage. The purpose of each — both of the one who has made himself a eunuch and, again, of the one who has yoked himself in marriage for the begetting of children — ought to remain unyielding, not slackening toward the lesser course. For if he is able to intensify his life, he will win for himself a greater worth before God, having practiced self-control both purely and with reason; but if, having overstepped the rule he chose for greater glory, he then falls back short of the hope he set. For just as the eunuch state has its own, so too marriage has its own liturgies and services to the Lord, distinct from the other — I mean caring for children and wife. For it appears, as it seems, that the closeness of the marriage bond becomes an occasion for the man made perfect within marriage to assume providence for all within the common household; accordingly he says that bishops must be appointed from those who have practiced ruling their own household well and the whole church besides. Let each, then, in the work to which he was called, fulfill his ministry, that he may become free in Christ, receiving the wage proper to his mind's ministry.
Again, discoursing about the Law and using allegory, he says: "the married woman is bound by law to her living husband," and so on. And again: "the woman is bound for as long a time as her husband lives; but if he should die, she is free to be married, only in the Lord; but she is more blessed if she remains thus, according to my judgment." But in the earlier passage he says, "you were put to death," to the Law, not to marriage, so that you might become another's, his who was raised from the dead — a bride and a church, which must be pure both from the inner thoughts opposed to the truth and from the outer temptations, that is, from those who pursue heresies and persuade one to commit fornication away from the one husband, the almighty God — lest, as the serpent deceived Eve, called "life," we too should transgress the commandments through the gluttonous cunning that attends the heresies. The second passage establishes monogamy. For it is not, as some have expounded it, that the binding of a woman to a man should be suspected of signifying the entanglement of the flesh with corruption; for he denounces the notion of godless men who attach the invention of marriage directly to the devil — a notion by which the lawgiver himself is in danger of being blasphemed.
I think it is Tatian the Syrian who dares to dogmatize such things. At any rate he writes, word for word, in his treatise On Perfection According to the Savior: "Agreement, then, is fitting for prayer, but partnership in corruption dissolves the supplication." Quite intimidatingly, through the very act of granting permission, he forecloses it; for having again allowed the same union to occur "because of Satan" and "incontinence," he declared that the one who yields to this will be a slave to two masters — through agreement, to God, but through disagreement, to incontinence and fornication and the devil. And he says he is expounding the apostle in saying this; but he sophisticates the truth, fabricating a falsehood by means of a truth. For that incontinence and fornication are passions of the devil we too confess; but the agreement of a chaste marriage serves as mediator, leading with self-control toward prayer and, with dignity, giving in marriage toward the begetting of children. Indeed, both knowledge and the right season for begetting children are spoken of by Scripture, when it says: "Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore a son, and named him Seth: for God has raised up for me another seed instead of Abel." Do you see against whom they blaspheme, those who abhor chaste sowing and attach its origin to the devil? For the one who declared the Almighty by placing the article before the name did not simply say "God" without qualification.
As for the apostle's addition — "and come together again, because of Satan" — this forestalls precisely that: turning aside at some point into other desires. For the temporary agreement, forbidding as it does, does not utterly repel the appetites of nature; for the sake of these he again introduces the conjugal union of marriage — not into incontinence and fornication and the work of the devil, but so that one may not fall prey to incontinence and fornication and the devil. Tatian also separates the old man from the new, but not as we say it; for we too agree with him in saying that the old man is the Law and the new is the Gospel, except not in the way he wishes it, abolishing the Law as though it were of another god. Rather, the same husband and lord, in making old things new, no longer permits polygamy (for God required that then, when it was necessary to increase and multiply), but introduces monogamy for the sake of begetting children and the care of the household, for which the wife was given as a helper. And if to anyone, because of incontinence and burning, the apostle grants a second marriage by way of concession, since even this man does not sin against the covenant (for it is not forbidden by the Law), yet he does not fulfill the intensified perfection of the citizenship according to the Gospel; but the one who remains as he is, and keeps unstained the union that was dissolved by death, and obeys the dispensation with good pleasure, procures for himself a heavenly glory — by which he becomes undistracted for the Lord's service. Nor indeed does the divine providence through the Lord now, any more than of old, prescribe that one be baptized after intercourse within marriage in the same way. For the Lord does not compel believers, through the one baptism that washes them clean for the whole of their intercourse, to abstain from begetting children — the Lord who also embraced the many observances of Moses in a single baptism.
From of old, then, the Law, prophesying our regeneration through fleshly begetting, appointed baptism upon the generative deposit of seed, not abhorring the generation of man; for what appears as a man being born, this the deposit of seed is able to accomplish. Not, then, are the many acts of intercourse fruitful, but the reception by the womb confesses the generation, as the seed is fashioned into an embryo in nature's workshop. How then is marriage merely old and an invention of the Law, while the marriage kept according to the Lord is of a different kind, when it is the same God who is observed by us? For what God has joined together, man would never reasonably dissolve. Much more, then, will the Son keep what the Father commanded. And if the same is both lawgiver and evangelist, he is never at odds with himself. For the Law lives, being spiritual and understood gnostically. But we were put to death to the Law through the body of Christ, that we might become another's, his who was raised from the dead, who was foretold by the Law, so that we might bear fruit to God.
Wherefore the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. We were put to death, then, to the Law — that is, to the sin made manifest by the Law, which it shows but does not beget, the Law refuting the underlying sin through the prescription of what must be done and the prohibition of what must not be done, so that sin might be made to appear. But if marriage according to the Law is sin, I do not know how anyone can say he has known God while saying that God's own ordinance is sin; but since the Law is holy, marriage is holy. This mystery, then, the apostle applies to Christ and the church. Just as what is born of the flesh is flesh, so too what is born of the spirit is spirit — not only in respect of birth but also in respect of instruction. At once the children are holy — the good pleasures — the soul having been espoused to God by the Lord's own words. Fornication and marriage, then, are set apart, since the devil stands far removed from God. And you too, then, were put to death to the Law through the body of Christ, that you might become another's, his who was raised from the dead; for it is understood together, closely, that they became obedient, since even according to the truth of the Law we obey the same Lord, who has long since been exhorting us.
And is it not fitting that in the case of such men the Spirit says outright that in the latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, through the hypocrisy of liars whose conscience is seared, forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful and those who have come to know the truth; for every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified through the word of God and prayer. It is not, then, obligatory to forbid marriage, nor indeed to forbid eating meat or drinking wine, for it is written: "it is good not to eat meat nor to drink wine, if it causes one's brother to stumble"; and "it is good to remain as I am" — but both the one who partakes with thanksgiving and, again, the one who does not partake, he too with thanksgiving —
let him live with self-controlled enjoyment, according to reason. And in general all the letters of the apostle, teaching chastity and self-control concerning marriage, concerning the begetting of children, and concerning the management of the household, containing countless commandments, nowhere set aside chaste marriage; but preserving the sequence of the Law, they receive both alike into the Gospel — both the man who uses marriage thankfully to God and chastely, and the man who lives in the eunuch state as the Lord wishes, according as each was called, choosing it steadfastly and perfectly. And the land of Jacob was praised above all the earth, says the prophet, glorifying the vessel of his spirit. And there is one who runs down generation, calling it corruptible and perishing, and forces the point, saying that the Savior spoke, with reference to begetting children, of not laying up treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy, and is not ashamed to add to these the prophet's words: "all of you, like a garment, will grow old, and the moth will devour you." But we too do not gainsay Scripture, that our bodies are corruptible and by nature subject to flux; and perhaps he was prophesying corruption to those to whom he spoke as sinners. But the Savior did not speak concerning the begetting of children, but was exhorting to a sharing of goods in common those who acquire only an abundance of wealth without wishing to aid those in need.
Wherefore he says: "work not for the food that perishes, but for that which endures to eternal life." And likewise they also bring forward that saying: "the sons of that age neither marry nor are given in marriage." But this question concerning the resurrection of the dead — if one examines both the saying and those who were asking it — one will find that the Lord does not disapprove of marriage, but is addressing the expectation of fleshly desire in connection with the resurrection. And the phrase "the sons of this age" he did not say in contrast to sons of some other age, but equivalently to "those who have come to be in this age," who, being sons through birth, both beget and are begotten, since no one will pass into this life without birth; but this birth, admitting the same corruption, no longer awaits the one who has once been separated from this life. "One is your father, who is in the heavens" — but he himself is also father of all according to creation. "Call no one your father on earth," he says — that is, do not consider the one who sowed you, the fleshly sowing of your substance, to be the cause, but a co-cause of birth, or rather a servant of birth.
Thus, then, he wishes us, having turned back again, to become like children, having come to know the true Father, having been regenerated through water — this being a different sowing from the one in creation. "Yes," he says, "the unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord; but the married man — how shall he please his wife?" But what then? Is it not permitted also for the wife, pleasing God, to give thanks to God together? And is it not granted also to the married man, along with his spouse, to be anxious about the things of the Lord? But just as the unmarried woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit, so too the married woman is anxious about the things of her husband and the things of the Lord, in the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit; for both are holy in the Lord, the one as wife, the other as virgin. And to shame and check those prone to a second marriage, the apostle fittingly raises his voice to a high pitch and says at once: "every sin is outside the body; but he who commits fornication sins against his own body."
But if anyone dares to call marriage fornication, he runs back again to the Law and the Lord and blasphemes. For just as covetousness is called fornication, being opposed to sufficiency, and just as idolatry is a distribution from the one to the many gods, so fornication is a falling away from the one marriage into the many; for in three ways, as we have said, both "fornication" and "adultery" are taken by the apostle. Concerning these the prophet says: "you were sold for your sins," and again: "you were defiled in a foreign land" — regarding as polluted the union entangled with a body not one's own, and not the one given for begetting children within a lawful union. Whence also the apostle says: "I wish, then, that younger women marry, bear children, manage the household, giving no occasion to the adversary for reviling; for already some have turned aside after Satan."
Indeed, he also fully approves the husband of one wife, whether he be presbyter or deacon or layman, using marriage blamelessly; "and she will be saved through childbearing." Again, too, the Savior, calling the Jews an evil and adulterous generation, teaches that they, not having known the Law as the Law intends, but having followed the tradition of the elders and the commandments of men, commit adultery against the Law — not having received it as a husband and lord of their virginity. Perhaps, too, he knows them to be enslaved to alien desires, on account of which, continually enslaved to their sins, they were sold to foreigners, since among the Jews wives were not appointed to be held in common, but adultery too was forbidden. And the one who said, "I have married a wife, and I cannot come to the dinner," was a divine example set forth as a reproof of those who abandon the divine commandment for the sake of pleasures, since by this reasoning neither the righteous before the coming nor those who married after the coming, even if they be apostles, will be saved. And if they should again bring forward that saying, as the prophet says, "I have grown old among all my enemies," let them understand "enemies" to mean sins; for there is one particular sin, not marriage, but fornication, since otherwise they must also call birth itself a sin, and the creator of birth.

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 13 ========

Julius Cassianus, the founder of Docetism, also attempts arguments of this sort. In his work On Continence, or On Being a Eunuch, he says, word for word: "And let no one say that, since we have such parts as these — the female fashioned in this way, the male in that, the one for receiving, the other for sowing — intercourse has been granted by God. For if such an arrangement were from the God to whom we hasten, he would not have called the eunuchs blessed, nor would the prophet have said that they are not a fruitless tree, transferring the image from the tree to the man who by his own choice makes himself a eunuch to this way of thinking."
And still contending further for his godless opinion, he adds: "And how could one not reasonably blame the Savior, if he reshaped us and freed us from error and from the fellowship of the private parts and their appendages and shameful members?" In this he lays down teaching much like that of Tatian, who indeed went out from the school of Valentinus. It is for this reason, then, that Cassianus says: when Salome asked when the things about which she inquired would be known, the Lord said, "When you have trampled underfoot the garment of shame, and when the two become one, and the male with the female is neither male nor female."
Now in the first place, in the four Gospels handed down to us we do not have this saying, but it occurs in the Gospel according to the Egyptians. And in the second place, he seems to me not to understand that by "male" is meant, in a riddling way, wrath, which is an impulse, and by "female" desire — passions which, once acted upon, are followed by repentance and shame. When, then, a man indulges neither wrath nor desire — passions which, nourished by habit and by bad rearing, overshadow and veil the reasoning faculty — but rather, having stripped off the mist that comes from these, being made ashamed through repentance, unites spirit and soul in obedience to the word, then, as Paul also says, "there is among you neither male nor female." For the soul, standing apart from this fashioning by which male and female are distinguished, passes over into union, being neither the one nor the other. But this noble fellow, in a rather more Platonic vein, holds that the soul, being divine, having been made female by desire, has come down from above into becoming and decay.

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 14 ========

Straightway he forces Paul to say, through these words, that generation itself is constituted out of deception: 'But I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve, your thoughts should be corrupted from the simplicity that is toward Christ.' But the Lord too, admittedly, came to those who had gone astray — and they had gone astray not from some point above down into this present birth (for birth is a created thing, and creation belongs to the Almighty, who could never bring a soul down from better things into worse), but rather it was to those whose thoughts had gone astray, to us, that the Savior came — thoughts which were corrupted through disobedience to the commandments, because we loved pleasure, having perhaps anticipated our own proper time, like the first-formed man, and reached out before the hour for the grace of marriage, and so missed the mark, since 'everyone who looks at a woman so as to desire her has already committed adultery with her,' not having waited for the appointed time of the will.
The same Lord, then, was the one who even then judged the desire that anticipated marriage. So when the apostle says, 'put on the new man, which is being created according to God,' he is speaking to us who have been formed by the will of the Almighty as we have been formed; and by 'old' and 'new' he does not mean birth and rebirth, but rather the manner of life, the one lived in disobedience and the one lived in obedience. Cassianus, however, holds that the 'coats of skins' are the bodies — a matter concerning which we shall later show both him and those who dogmatize like him to be in error, when in due course we take up the exposition of the generation of man, following upon what needs to be said beforehand. He further says: 'those ruled by earthly kings both beget and are begotten, but our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we await a Savior.' Now we too know that these words are well said, since we ought to conduct our citizenship as strangers and sojourners: those who marry as though not marrying, those who acquire as though not acquiring, those who beget children as begetting mortal beings, as men who will leave their possessions behind, as ones who will live even without a wife should need require it — not using creation with excessive attachment, but with all thanksgiving and with a great and noble mind.

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 15 ========

Again, when he says it is good for a man not to touch a woman, but on account of fornications let each man have his own wife, he seems, as it were, to explain himself further by adding: that Satan may not tempt you. For he does not say this of those who use marriage self-controlledly for the sake of child-bearing alone, on account of incontinence, but of those who desire to go further than child-bearing, lest, the Adversary breathing hard upon them, their desire be swept out to strange pleasures. And perhaps also, since the Adversary, out of jealousy and rivalry, sets himself against those who live righteously, wishing to draw them under his own dominion, he wants to furnish them occasions through toilsome self-restraint.
Reasonably, then, he says: better to marry than to burn, that the husband may render to the wife her due and the wife to the husband, and that they may not defraud one another of the help given, through the divine dispensation, for the sake of begetting children. But whoever, they say, does not hate father or mother or wife or children cannot be my disciple. He does not bid us hate our kin — for, he says, honor your father and mother, that it may be well with you — but he says, do not be led away by irrational impulses, nor indeed be bound to civic customs; for a household is constituted from kindred, and cities from households, just as Paul also said that those occupied with marriage seek to please the world.
Again the Lord says: let the man who has married not put away his wife, and let the man who has not married not marry; let the one who has professed, according to a purpose of eunuchhood, not to marry, remain unmarried.
To both, then, the same Lord gives fitting promises through the prophet Isaiah, speaking somewhat as follows: let not the eunuch say, I am a dry tree; thus says the Lord to the eunuchs: if you keep my sabbaths and do all that I command, I will give you a place better than sons and daughters. For it is not eunuchhood alone that justifies, nor indeed the sabbath of the eunuch, if he does not do the commandments. To those who have married he adds and says: my chosen shall not labor in vain nor beget children unto a curse, for it is a seed blessed by the Lord. For to the one who has begotten children according to reason and reared them and educated them in the Lord, just as to the one who has begotten through true instruction, there lies a reward, just as also for the chosen seed. But others take child-bearing itself to be the curse, and do not understand that the Scripture speaks against those very ones. For those who are truly the Lord's chosen do not hold doctrines, nor do they beget children, unto a curse, as the heresies do.
A eunuch, then, is spoken of not as one forcibly deprived of his members, nor indeed as the unmarried man, but as one barren of truth. This man was formerly a dry tree; but having obeyed the word and kept the sabbaths by abstaining from sins and having done the commandments, he will be more honored than those who are instructed by word alone without right conduct. Little children, he says, yet a little while I am with you, the Teacher. Wherefore Paul too, writing to the Galatians, says: my little children, for whom I am again in birth-pangs until Christ be formed in you. And again, writing to the Corinthians, he says: for though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet not many fathers; for in Christ, through the gospel, I begot you. For this reason a eunuch shall not enter into the church of God — the one barren and fruitless both in conduct and in reason — but those who have made eunuchs of themselves from all sin for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, these are blessed, these are they who fast from the world.

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 16 ========

"Cursed be the day on which I was born, and let it not be desired," says Jeremiah -- not calling birth itself simply cursed, but venting his distress over the sins of the people and their disobedience. At any rate he goes on: "For why was I born to see toils and pains, and my days have been spent in shame?" Indeed all who proclaim the truth are persecuted and endangered because of the disobedience of those who hear them. "For why did the womb of my mother not become a tomb, that I might not see the trouble of Jacob and the toil of the race of Israel?" says Ezra the prophet. "No one is clean of defilement," says Job, "not even if his life is a single day." Let them tell us where the child that has been born committed fornication, or how the thing that has done nothing has fallen under the curse of Adam. It remains for them, it seems, consistently to say that birth is evil -- not the birth of the body alone, but also that of the soul on whose account the body exists. And when David says, "In sins I was conceived, and in transgressions did my mother conceive me in the womb," he speaks prophetically of Eve as mother; but Eve became mother of the living, and even if she conceived in sin, he himself was not conceived in sin, nor indeed is he himself sin.
And if indeed everyone who turns from sin to faith turns from the sinful habit, as it were a mother, toward life, one of the twelve prophets will bear me witness, saying, "Shall I give my firstborn to pay for my ungodliness, the offspring of my womb as payment for my soul's sin?" He does not disparage the one who said, "Increase and multiply," but calls "ungodliness" the first impulses from birth, by which we do not yet know God. But if someone on this ground calls birth evil, let him on the other ground call it good as well, insofar as it is in birth that we come to know the truth: "Awake to righteousness and sin not, for some are ignorant of God" -- namely, those who sin -- since "our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the spiritual powers," and the world-rulers of darkness are able to put us to the test; for this reason there is forgiveness. For this reason too Paul says, "I buffet my own body and bring it into subjection," because "everyone who contends is temperate in all things" (that is, temperate with a view to all things, not abstaining from all things, but using with self-control those things which he has judged fit), those athletes so that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible one, conquering in the contest, and not being crowned without a struggle. Already some prize the widow above the virgin for her continence, on the ground that she has come to think little of the pleasure she has experienced.

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 17 ========

But if birth is an evil, then these blasphemers are saying that the Lord, who partook of birth, existed in an evil, and that the virgin who bore him existed in an evil. Alas for their evils! They blaspheme the will of God and the mystery of creation, slandering birth itself. It is on this account that Cassian holds to docetism, on this account also Marcion, and indeed Valentinus too, regarding the body as merely "psychic" — because, they say, man has been made like the beasts when he comes to mating; but when a man is so aroused that he truly wishes to mount another's bed, then he in truth becomes a beast: "they were become as lustful stallions, each neighing after his neighbor's wife." And if the serpent, having taken up from the irrational animals their practice of intercourse, talked Adam into agreeing to union with Eve, this having happened by chance, as though the first-formed had not used this nature to begin with, as some would have it — then creation is again blasphemed, as having made men weaker than the nature of irrational animals, whose ways the first-formed of God are said to have followed.
But if it was nature itself that led them, as it leads even the irrational animals, toward the begetting of children, and they were only moved sooner than was fitting, being still young and led astray by deceit, then the judgment of God upon those who did not wait for his will is indeed just, but birth itself, through which the world holds together, through which the essences exist, through which the natures exist, through which angels exist, through which powers exist, through which souls exist, through which the commandments exist, through which the law exists, through which the gospel exists, through which the knowledge of God exists — birth is holy. "Every mortal body is but grass, and every human splendor like a wildflower's bloom; the grass shrivels, its blossom drops away, yet the utterance of the Lord remains forever" — the utterance that anoints the soul and unites it to the spirit. And how, without the body, could the dispensation according to the church among us ever have reached its end? Since he himself, the head of the church, though he came in flesh, came formless and without shape, teaching us to look toward the formless and bodiless nature of the divine cause. For "a tree of life," says the prophet, "comes to be in good desire," teaching us that the desires proper to one living in the Lord are seemly and pure.
Now they already wish the union of husband with wife in marriage, called "knowledge," to be the sin that is spoken of; for they say that this is what was signified by the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, teaching, through the meaning of "he knew," a transgression of the commandment. But if this is so, then the knowledge of truth is likewise an eating of the tree of life. It is therefore possible to partake of that tree also through temperate marriage; and it has already been said by us that marriage can be used both well and badly, and this very thing is the tree of knowledge — provided we do not transgress in marriage. What then? Did not the Savior heal the body of its sufferings, just as he healed the soul? He would not, if the flesh were hostile to the soul, have fortified against it its enemy by furnishing it with health. But this I say, brothers, that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God," nor does corruption inherit incorruption; for sin, being corruption, cannot have fellowship with incorruption, which is righteousness. "Are you so foolish?" he says. "Having begun in the spirit, are you now completing yourselves in the flesh?"

======== Stromata — Book 3, Chapter 18 ========

As for righteousness, then, and the harmony of the Savior's teaching, being dignified and stable, some have stretched it too far, as we have shown, taking self-control blasphemously with utter godlessness, when it was possible to choose eunuchism according to the healthy rule with piety, giving thanks for the grace bestowed but neither hating creation nor despising those who have married; for the world is created, and eunuchism too is created, and both are things for which those appointed to them should give thanks, if they understand also the purpose for which they were appointed. But others, breaking loose, have run into wanton excess, becoming in truth 'horses mad after females' and neighing after their neighbors' wives, themselves pouring out uncontrollably and persuading their neighbors to love pleasure, wretchedly heeding those scriptures which say, 'cast in your lot among us, let us all get one common purse, let there be one bag for us.'
Because of such men the same prophet, counseling us, says: 'do not walk in the way with them, turn your foot aside from their paths; for it is not without cause that nets are spread for birds; for they, sharing in bloodshed, store up evils for themselves' — that is, laying claim to impurity and teaching their neighbors the same things, 'warriors, strikers with their tails,' according to the prophet, which the Greeks call 'kerkoi.' Those the prophecy hints at would be the licentious, the incontinent, warriors 'with their tails,' children of darkness and wrath, murderers, both self-slayers and slayers of their neighbors. 'Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump,' the apostle cries to us. And again, indignant at certain such persons, he directs that we not mix with them: 'if any one called a brother is a fornicator or a covetous man or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or a robber, with such a one do not even eat.' 'For I, through the law, died to the law,' he says, 'that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; yet I no longer live, as I once lived according to my desires, but Christ lives in me,' through obedience to the commandments, purely and blessedly; 'so that then I lived in the flesh, fleshly, but what I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God.'
'Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and enter not into a city of the Samaritans,' the Lord says, turning us away from the opposite way of life, since 'the destruction of lawless men is evil.' 'And these are the ways of all who work lawlessness.' 'Woe to that man,' says the Lord; 'it were good for him if he had not been born, or that he should cause one of my elect to stumble; it were better for him to have a millstone hung about him and be sunk in the sea, than that he should pervert one of my elect'; 'for because of them the name of God is blasphemed.' Hence the apostle nobly writes, 'I wrote to you,' he says, in the epistle, 'not to mix with fornicators' — down to 'the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.' And to show that he does not call marriage fornication, he adds: 'or do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her?' Or will anyone call a virgin a harlot before she marries? 'And do not deprive one another,' he says, 'unless it be by agreement for a season,' by the word 'deprive' pointing to the debt of marriage, that is, the begetting of children, which he had made plain earlier when he said, 'let the husband render to the wife her due, and likewise also the wife to the husband,'
after which creation, according to keeping the household and faith in Christ, a helper — and still more plainly he says: 'to the married I give charge — not I, but the Lord — that a wife not be separated from her husband (but if she is separated, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband), and that a husband not put away his wife. But to the rest I say — I, not the Lord — if any brother...' down to 'but now they are holy.' What then do those who run down the law say to this, and who hold that marriage was permitted only under the law, not also under the new covenant? What have they to say against these enactments, they who abominate procreation and generation, seeing that he even lays down as law that the bishop who presides well over his own household should preside over the church, and that the marriage of one wife constitutes a household fit for the Lord?
'All things, then, are pure to the pure,' he says, 'but to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.' Concerning pleasure contrary to the rule, 'do not be deceived,' he says: 'neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the soft, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor covetous, nor thieves, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God.' 'And such were some of us' — we who have been washed from these things; but others, washing themselves into this very licentiousness, baptize themselves out of self-control into fornication, teaching as doctrine that one should indulge pleasures and passions, teaching men to become incontinent instead of self-controlled, and resting their hope on the shameless acts of their private parts, preparing their disciples to be disowned, not enrolled, in the kingdom of God, having chosen, under the name of a falsely-called gnosis, the road to the outer darkness. 'Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is dignified, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is well-spoken of, if there is any virtue and if any praise, think on these things; what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, these things practice; and the God of peace shall be with you.'
And Peter says similar things in his epistle: 'so that your faith and hope should be in God, having purified your souls in obedience to the truth,' as children of obedience, 'not conforming yourselves to the desires you formerly had in your ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves also in all your conduct, because it is written: "you shall be holy, for I am holy."'
But indeed the necessary polemic against the falsely-named pretenders to gnosis has led us away beyond what was fitting, and has stretched our discourse out to great length. Hence this third Stromateus of ours, among the notebooks of the true philosophy's gnostics, has its close here.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 1 ========

It follows, I believe, that next in order comes the discussion of martyrdom and of what sort of man the perfect one is, topics under which will be comprehended, as the demands of what is to be said require, the matters attendant on them; and how philosophy must be pursued alike by slave and free, whether the person happens to be man or woman by sex. And after supplementing these with what comes next concerning faith and concerning seeking, we shall set forth the symbolic form of teaching, so that, having summed up the ethical discourse as it were in a running survey, we may present in summary fashion the benefit that flowed to the Greek nations out of barbarian philosophy. After this outline, the exposition addressed to the Greeks and that addressed to the Jews, by way of epitome of the scriptures, will be handed down, together with whatever, in the Stromateis prior to this one, we proposed at the opening of the preface to complete in a single treatise but were unable to comprehend, being of necessity enslaved to the sheer bulk of the matter.
After this, once the outline concerning the topics before us has been filled out as far as possible, we must give a historical account of what has been said about first principles in natural philosophy both by the Greeks and by the other barbarians, so far as their opinions have come down to us, and we must come to grips with the most authoritative of the doctrines devised by the philosophers. Following upon these, it would be fitting, after the survey of theology, to treat of what has been handed down concerning prophecy — so that, having shown that the scriptures which we have trusted are authoritative by an almighty authorship, we may be able to proceed through them in due sequence, and thereby, against all the heresies, demonstrate one God and Lord almighty, made known through the law and the prophets, and moreover genuinely proclaimed by the blessed gospel. Many are the refutations against those of heterodox opinion that await us, as we attempt both to dissolve what is put forward by them in writing and to persuade them, even against their will, by refuting them from the scriptures themselves.
When, then, our whole design has been completed in these memoirs, in which, should the Spirit so will, we are serving the pressing need (for great is the necessity of the things that owe to be said beforehand for the sake of truth), then indeed we shall proceed to the truly gnostic natural philosophy, having been initiated into the small mysteries before the great, so that nothing may stand in the way of the truly divine unveiling of sacred things, once the matters that need to be narrated and handed down beforehand have been duly purified and outlined in advance. The natural philosophy, then — or rather the contemplation — that follows the canon of gnostic tradition according to the rule of truth, takes its start from the account of cosmogony, and from there ascends to the theological form. Hence it will be fitting that we make the beginning of the tradition from the genesis that was prophesied, setting forth in part also the views of those of heterodox opinion and attempting, so far as we are able, to dissolve them. But this shall be written, if indeed God so wills and however he may inspire it; for now we must proceed to the matter in hand and bring the ethical discourse to completion.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 2 ========

Let our notes, then, be, as we have often said, on account of those who rashly and inexpertly read them in all sorts of ways, scattered and interwoven — as the very name suggests — passing continuously from one thing to another, indicating one thing according to the sequence of the discourse while pointing to something else. For those who seek gold, says Heraclitus, dig up much earth and find little; but those who mine the substance akin to the true race of gold will find much in little, for scripture will find the one who understands. The Stromateis of these notes, then, contribute both to recollection and to the manifestation of truth for one able to inquire with reason. But we too must labor further upon these things and discover others besides, since for those going a road they do not know, it is enough merely to point out the road that leads there;
one must then walk on further from that point and find the rest for oneself, just as they say the Pythia, when a certain slave once consulted her as to what he might do to please his master, said: you will find it, if you seek. Hard indeed, it seems, truly, is it to discover a hidden good, since before virtue the gods have set sweat, and long and steep is the path to her, and rough at the first; but when one has reached the summit, then thereafter it is easy, hard though it was. For narrow indeed and compressed is the way of the Lord, and the kingdom of God belongs to those who use violence; wherefore, he says, seek and you shall find, holding fast to the truly royal road and not running off to the side.
Fittingly, then, much is the fruitfulness contained in the small seed of the doctrines gathered in this treatise, like the all-herb of the field, as scripture says. For this reason too the Stromateis of these notes properly bear their title, woven together, plain and simple, after the pattern of that ancient offering concerning which Sophocles writes: there was a fleece of wool, and from the vines a libation and a well-stored grape, and there was mingled in it all manner of fruit with barley-groats, and the fat of olive oil, and the most variegated wax-molded instrument of the tawny bee.
At once, then, our Stromateis, like the farmer of Timocles the comic poet, yield a revenue of figs, oil, dried figs, and honey, as though from a plot of ground that bears every crop. On account of which fruitfulness he adds: you speak of an eiresione, not of husbandry — for the Athenians were accustomed to cry out: the eiresione brings figs and rich loaves and honey in a cup and oil to anoint oneself with. One must, then, often, as in winnowing-baskets, shake and toss up the mingled multitude of seeds and pick out the wheat.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 3 ========

The many have a disposition like the condition of storms, unsteady and irrational. Unbelief has done many good things, and belief many evil ones. Epicharmus says, "Remember to distrust; these are the joints of the mind." At once, to disbelieve the truth brings death, just as to believe it brings life; and conversely, to believe the falsehood, while disbelieving the truth, drags one down to destruction. The same account holds for self-control and lack of self-control. For to practice self-control is the work of abstaining from wickedness in doing good, while to abstain from injustice is the beginning of salvation. In this sense the Sabbath seems to me, through abstinence from evils, to hint darkly at self-control, and at what it is by which man differs from the beasts. Again, God's angels are wiser than man: "You made him a little lower than the angels," it says — for they do not take this scripture to refer to the Lord (although he too bore flesh), but to the perfect and gnostic man, who is made lower than the angels only in time and in his garment [of flesh]. I do not, then, mean by wisdom something other than knowledge, since life itself does not differ [for all]; for living is common to mortal nature, that is, to man, as much as to one who has been deemed worthy of immortality, though the one differs from the other in the state of contemplation and self-control.
In this sense it seems to me that Pythagoras too says that God alone is wise (since the apostle also, in his letter to the Romans, writes: "unto obedience of faith among all the nations, God who alone is wise was revealed through Jesus Christ"), while he calls himself, on account of his friendship toward God, a philosopher. "God used to converse with Moses," he says, "as a friend with a friend." What is true, then, is clear to God. Truth at once begets truth, and the gnostic loves truth. "Go to the ant, O sluggard," says Solomon, "and become a pupil of the bee." For if each creature has one work proper to its own nature — the ox likewise, and the horse, and the dog — what should we say is the proper work of man? He seems, I think, like the centaur, that Thessalian fabrication, to be composed of the rational and the irrational, of soul and body; but the body works the earth and hastens toward earth, while the soul is stretched out toward God — that soul, at least, which is trained through true philosophy, hastening toward its kindred above, having turned aside from bodily desire, and moreover away from toil and dread. And yet we have shown that both endurance and fear tend toward good. For if "through the law comes the knowledge of sin," as those who run down the law say, and sin already existed in the world before the law came, yet "apart from the law sin is dead" — this we sing back against them in reply. Once you remove sin, which is the source of dread, you have removed dread itself, and far more still the punishment, when that which is naturally disposed to desire is absent; for "law is not laid down for the righteous," scripture says.
Well then does Heraclitus say that men would never have learned what justice even meant, had these things not existed, and Socrates that law would not have come to be for the sake of good men. But the accusers did not even understand this, that the apostle says that he who loves his neighbor works no evil; for "you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal," and whatever other commandment there is, is summed up in this one word: "you shall love your neighbor as yourself." In this same way it says, "you shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart," and "you shall love your neighbor as yourself." If then he who loves his neighbor works no evil, and every commandment is summed up in this, in loving one's neighbor, then the commandments that hang fear over us produce love, not hatred.
Fear, then, of which the law is the begetter, is not a [mere] passion. So the law is holy and truly spiritual, according to the apostle. It is necessary, it seems, for those who have inquired carefully into the nature of the body and the substance of the soul to grasp the end proper to each, and not to consider death an evil; for "when you were servants of sin," says the apostle, "you were free in regard to righteousness. What harvest did you reap then from deeds that now bring you shame? Their outcome is death. But now, released from sin and made servants to God, your harvest leads to holiness, and its outcome is life without end. Sin's payment is death, whereas what God freely grants is life without end, in Christ Jesus our Lord."
It has, then, perhaps been shown that death is the soul's fellowship with the body while it is given to sinning, and that life is separation from sin. Many are the palisades and trenches of desire that lie in our path, and the ditches of rage and wrath, over which one must leap, and one must escape every overturning of these plots, if one is not to see the knowledge of God any longer only "through a mirror": for "far-seeing Zeus takes away half a man's virtue, whenever the day of slavery seizes him." And scripture knows as slaves those who are under sin and sold to their sins, the pleasure-lovers and body-lovers, and it knows as beasts rather than men those who have been made like cattle — lust-maddened horses neighing after their neighbors' wives; the wanton donkey is the licentious man, the savage wolf the greedy man, and the serpent the deceiver. The soul's parting from the body, then, practiced by the philosopher throughout his whole life, produces in the gnostic a readiness to be able easily to bear the death that comes by nature, since it is merely the loosening of the bonds that tie soul and body together; hence "to me the world stands crucified, and I to the world," he says, and "I now live, while still in the flesh, as one whose citizenship is in heaven."

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 4 ========

Hence the Gnostic, when called upon, reasonably obeys with ease, and cheerfully gives up his little body to the one who demands it, along with its sufferings, stripping these off in advance from his flesh, not insulting the one who puts him to the test, but rather, I think, instructing and reproving him — showing from what honor and from what length of blessedness, as Empedocles says, he has come here and now sojourns among mortals. This man truly bears witness both to himself, that he is genuinely faithful toward God, and to the one testing him, that he has vainly envied the man who is faithful through love, and again to the Lord, that his persuasion toward the teaching is divinely inspired, from which he will not depart for fear of death; yes, and he confirms in deed the truth of the proclamation, showing that the God toward whom he hastens is powerful. One would marvel at his love, which he plainly teaches by being thankfully united to what is akin to him, and moreover by shaming the unbelieving through his precious blood.
This man, then, will not shrink from denying Christ out of fear because of the commandment, so as to become a martyr through fear; nor indeed does he sell his faith in hope of prepared rewards, but through love toward the Lord he will most gladly be released from this life, knowing that he owes thanks, perhaps, even to the one who furnished the occasion of his departure from here and to the one who devised the plot against him, having received a reasonable pretext which he himself did not provide, to show himself for what he is — through endurance toward the one, through love toward the Lord; through which love he was shown, even before his birth, to the Lord who knew the resolve of the one who was to bear witness. Taking courage, then, toward the Lord as a friend, for whose sake he has willingly given up his body, and for whose sake also his soul, as the judges expected, he comes forward, hearing from our Savior, in the manner of poetry, "dear brother," because of the likeness of his life. We accordingly call martyrdom a perfecting, not because the man has reached the end of his life as others do, but because he has displayed a perfect work of love. And indeed the ancients among the Greeks praise the end of those who die in war, not advising that one die by violence, but because he who dies in war, free from fear of death, is released, cut off from the body, and has not worn out his soul beforehand nor grown soft, as men suffer in the case of diseases; for such men are released while turning effeminate and longing to live.
For this reason such men do not release the soul pure, but bearing with it, like lumps of lead, their desires — unless some of these have become notable for virtue. And there are also those who die in war along with their desires, these differing not at all from the others; or even if they were wasted away by disease, the case is the same. If, then, confession toward God is testimony, every soul that has conducted itself purely with knowledge of God, and kept his precepts, stands as a testifier in both life and speech, in whatever way it is released from the body, pouring out its faith, as it were blood, throughout the whole of life, and moreover at its departure. Straightway the Lord says in the Gospel: "Whoever leaves father or mother or brothers," and so on, "for the sake of the gospel and of my name, blessed is this one" — not indicating the simple testimony, but the Gnostic one, as belonging to one whose conduct has followed the gospel's standard out of love toward the Lord; for knowledge of the name and understanding of the gospel signify knowledge, not the bare title — to leave behind worldly kin, to leave behind substance and all possession, because of living without attachment. For fatherland is allegorically called mother and nurse, and the laws of the state are called fathers. These things the great-souled just man must thankfully look down upon for the sake of becoming a friend of God and obtaining the right-hand portions of the sanctuary, just as the apostles also have done.
Then Heraclitus says, "Those slain by Ares gods and men honor," and Plato writes in the fifth book of the Republic: "Of those, then, who have died on campaign, whoever dies having won distinction — shall we not say, first of all, that he is of the golden race?" "Most assuredly of all." Now the golden race belongs to the gods of heaven and of the unwandering sphere, who hold chief command over providence for mankind. But certain of the heretics, having misheard the Lord, impiously and at the same time cowardly cling to life, saying that the true testimony is the knowledge of the God who truly is — which we ourselves also confess — but that the one who confesses through death is a murderer and self-slayer of himself, and they bring forward other such sophistries born of cowardice. To these it will be answered when the occasion demands; for they differ from us concerning first principles.
But we too blame those who leap eagerly upon death; for there are some, not of our number, sharing only the name, who hasten to hand themselves over out of hatred toward the Creator — wretched men, in love with death. These we say bring themselves to an end without true witness, even should they suffer punishment in full view of the crowd. For they fail to keep intact the mark of true, faith-filled martyrdom, since they have not recognized the true God, but give themselves up to an empty death, just as the naked sages of the Indians do to a vain fire. But since these falsely-named ones slander the body, let them learn that the good tuning of the body also contributes to the mind's aptitude.
For this same reason, within Republic's third book, Plato stated — he whom they especially invoke as a witness when they revile the created world — that one must care for the body for the sake of the soul's harmony, through which it is possible both to live and to live rightly, proclaiming the message of truth; for it is through living and through health, as we walk our path, that we thoroughly learn knowledge. And for one to whom it is not even possible to approach the ordinary things of life without being among the necessities and doing through them all that tends toward knowledge, how should living well not be a thing to be chosen by him? At any rate, it is in living that living well is achieved, and he who has practiced right living through the body is escorted onward into the condition of eternity.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 5 ========

It is also worth marveling at the Stoic claim that no bodily state touches the soul at all — that disease cannot push it toward vice, nor health toward virtue — declaring both to be simply indifferent matters. Yet Job, through the sheer excess of his self-mastery and the superiority of his faith, turned poor though he had been rich, dishonored though he had been honored, ugly though he had been comely, diseased though he had been healthy — and he stands recorded for us as a fine example, putting to shame the one who tested him, blessing the one who shaped him, carrying the second portion exactly as he had carried the first, and demonstrating through every circumstance that the true Gnostic can turn anything to good use. That the successes of the ancients are laid out as patterns for correcting us, the apostle states outright, saying that his chains had become evident in Christ across the entire praetorium and among everyone else, and that most of the brethren, growing confident in the Lord on account of his imprisonment, ventured all the more boldly to proclaim God's message fearlessly — since martyrdoms too stand as glorious instances of conversion. For, as he says, everything written down was set in writing for our own teaching, so that through the endurance and comfort found in the scriptures we might hold on to hope, the hope born of that comfort.
It seems that, when pain is present, the soul is somehow inclined to shrink from it and to regard release from the present distress as something precious. Indeed, at that time it also grows slack in learning, just as the other virtues are neglected as well. And we surely do not say that virtue itself suffers — for virtue does not fall ill — but the person who partakes of both virtue and disease is oppressed by what presses hard upon him; and if he does not happen to be great-souled, the one who has not yet acquired the settled disposition of self-mastery gives way, and failing to endure is found to be equivalent to fleeing.
The same reasoning applies also to poverty, since it too, among life's necessities — I mean the necessities of contemplation and of unblemished purity — burdens the soul with preoccupation, compelling someone who has not given himself over to God entirely through love to spend his energy simply earning a living; whereas, by contrast, good health together with an abundance of necessities leaves the soul free and untroubled, provided the soul knows how to put its present circumstances to good use. For such people, the apostle says, will have trouble in the flesh, but I would spare you that. For I want you free from anxiety, so that you may live becomingly and devote yourself to the Lord without distraction.
These matters, then, ought to be maintained not for their own value, but on account of the body, while the tending of the body itself happens on account of the soul, toward which everything ultimately points. For it is within the soul that the one living as a Gnostic must learn what is fitting, since it has already been granted that pleasure is not a good, simply from the fact that some pleasures are bad. Following this same logic it becomes clear that a thing good can also be bad and a thing bad can also be good. Furthermore, since we choose certain pleasures and avoid others, not every pleasure counts as a good. The identical logic governs pains as well: some we bear, others we avoid, and both the bearing and the avoiding proceed according to knowledge; so it is knowledge, not pleasure, that constitutes the good — knowledge for whose sake we will, at times, even opt for a given pleasure.
For instance, the martyr chooses the pleasure that comes through hope by means of the present pain. And if pain is conceived in connection with thirst, and pleasure in connection with drinking, then the pain that existed beforehand becomes productive of the pleasure; but the bad could not be productive of the good, so neither of the two is bad. Simonides, then, just as Aristotle does, writes that to be healthy is best for a man, second is to be born fair of form, and third is to be wealthy without deceit. And Theognis of Megara says: one fleeing poverty ought to hurl himself, Cyrnus, even into the deep-yawning sea and down from sheer cliffs. But conversely Antiphanes the comic poet says that wealth, † seeing more, takes hold of those who see and makes them blind.
For instance, among the poets a man is proclaimed blind from birth: 'and she bore him a son who never saw the sun,' says Euphorion of Chalcis. Wealth, then, was a bad training for manly virtue among men, and so were excessive luxuries, as Euripides has composed in the Alexander. And it has been said: poverty has obtained wisdom as its kin. But love of money would overthrow not only Sparta but every city. So it is not only white silver or gold that is coinage, but virtue too is coinage for mortals, as Sophocles says.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 6 ========

Our holy Savior ranks poverty and wealth, and things like these, on both the spiritual and the sensible plane; for in saying, "Blessed are those persecuted for righteousness' sake," he plainly teaches us to seek the martyr's witness in every circumstance: whoever is poor for righteousness' sake testifies that righteousness, which he loved, is a good thing, and if he hungers and thirsts for righteousness' sake, he testifies that righteousness is the finest thing to attain.
Likewise too the one who weeps and mourns for righteousness' sake testifies that the best law is good. So then, just as he calls the persecuted blessed, so also he calls blessed those who hunger and thirst for righteousness' sake -- he who welcomes the genuine longing which not even famine has been able to cut off. Even if they hunger for righteousness itself, they are blessed; and blessed likewise is he who is poor, be it in spirit or in material things, evidently for righteousness' sake. Is it not, then, simply the poor, but those who have willed to become poor for righteousness' sake, whom he calls blessed -- those who have utterly despised the honors of this world for the securing of the good -- and likewise also those who have become fair in character and body through purity, and the well-born and glorious, those who through righteousness have advanced to adoption as sons and because of this have received authority to become children of God, and to walk upon serpents and scorpions, and to have dominion also over demons and over the army of the adversary.
And in general the Lord's discipline draws the soul away from the body with gratitude, provided that the soul itself also tears itself away by a change of state. For "he who finds his soul will lose it, and he who loses it will find it," if only we cast our perishable part upon God's incorruptibility. Now the will of God is the knowledge of God, which is fellowship with incorruption. Whoever, then, recognizing by the reasoning of repentance that his soul is sinful, will lose it from the sin out of which it has been torn, and having lost it will find it in accordance with obedience -- the soul revived through faith yet dead toward sin. And this, in fact, amounts to finding the soul: knowing oneself.
As for the conversion toward divine things, the Stoics say it comes about through a change, the soul changing over into wisdom; Plato says it comes about when the soul receives a turning about toward the better and a conversion out of a kind of night into day. At once the philosophers too grant a reasonable departure from life to the virtuous man, if something should so deprive him of the power to act that no hope of action is left him any longer; but the judge who by compulsion forces the beloved to deny his faith seems to me to expose who is a friend to God and who is not. Here there is no longer room even for comparison, as to which one would rather choose -- a human threat or the love of God; and in a way abstention from evil deeds is found to be a diminishing and quenching of vices, since their activity is destroyed through inaction, and this is what the saying "dispose of your belongings and distribute to the needy, then come along with me" means -- that is, follow what is spoken by the Lord.
Now some say that by "possessions" he meant the things foreign to the soul, but they cannot say how these are distributed to the poor. But -- since God apportions all things to all according to merit, the economy being just -- "having despised, then," he says, "the possessions which God apportions through your greatness, follow what is spoken by me," hastening toward the ascent of the spirit, being justified not by abstinence from evils alone, but further perfected by the Lord's beneficence. At once he exposed the man who boasted of having fully kept the law's commandments, for not having loved his neighbor; for love, which has lordship over the sabbath by gnostic ascent, promises active benefit. And I think one ought to have come to the saving word neither through fear of punishment nor through some promised reward, but for the sake of the good itself.
Such people take their stand at the sanctuary's right side; but those who suppose that by giving away perishable things they are exchanging them for imperishable ones are termed, in the parable of the two brothers, hired hands -- and does not the matter of likeness and image arise here, so that some hold citizenship with the Savior through likeness to him, while others, standing at the left, hold it merely through the image of these hired hands? There are, then, three things arising out of the truth, a single root underlying the pair, yet the choice between them not equal -- rather, the difference in that choice is not equal. I think it differs whether one chooses through imitation or one chooses through knowledge, just as the heated object differs from the illuminated one, with respect to fire and to light. The light, then, of the likeness according to Scripture is Israel, whereas the other is merely an image. And what does the parable of Lazarus signify to the Lord, presenting the image of a rich man and a poor man? And what is meant by "a man cannot be slave to two masters at once, God and money," the Lord here naming the love of riches?
At once, when called to the invitation of the dinner, the lovers of property, though called, do not come -- not on account of possessing, but on account of possessing with attachment. "The foxes have dens" -- he called those who spend their time around wealth mined and dug out of the earth wicked men and earthborn foxes. Likewise also concerning Herod: "Go and tell that fox: I am driving out demons and performing healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day my work is completed." "Birds of heaven" -- he called those set apart in heaven from the other birds, truly pure, those winging their way toward the knowledge of the heavenly word. For indeed not only wealth and glory and marriage, but also poverty, brings countless cares to one unable to bear it -- and does he not perhaps hint at these very cares in the parable of the fourfold sowing, saying that the word's seed, having landed among brambles and briers, was strangled by them and never bore fruit?
It is necessary, then, to learn how one must make use of each of the things that befall us, so as to be trained through gnostic right-living into a settled state fit for eternal life. "For I beheld," it says, "the godless man raised high and towering like the cedars of Lebanon, and I went by," Scripture says, "and look, he had vanished; I searched for him, but no trace of him could be found." "Guard innocence and behold uprightness, for there is a remnant for the peaceable man." This describes the man who trusts sincerely with all his heart and rests in peace throughout his whole soul; for "this people honor me only with their lips, while their heart stands far off from the Lord." "They bless with the mouth yet curse within the heart; their affection for him was spoken, not felt, and their tongue deceived him, for their heart was crooked toward him and they kept no faith with his covenant."
"Therefore let the deceitful lips be struck dumb, which speak lawlessness against the righteous." And again: "May the Lord destroy all the deceitful lips and the tongue that speaks great things," those who declared, "We shall make our tongue great; our lips belong to us alone -- what master rules over us?" "On account of the wretchedness of the destitute and the sighing of the poor, I will rise up now," says the Lord; "I will place him securely; I will speak of it openly" -- for Christ belongs to those of humble mind, not to those lifted up over his flock. "Therefore do not gather for yourselves riches here on earth, where moth and decay consume them and burglars dig through and carry them off" -- perhaps the Lord says this reproaching the lovers of property, and perhaps also those who are simply full of care and anxiety, and indeed also the lovers of the body; for passions and ailments and degraded reasonings corrode both the rational faculty and the entire person, yet our genuine wealth lies wherever the mind's own kinship rests. Further, he hands down the communal principle of righteousness, showing that one ought to give back to the habit of one's former conduct the things that habit acquired for us, and run back to God asking for mercy. This is truly the purse that does not grow old, provision for eternal life, an unfailing treasure in heaven, "because I will show mercy on whomever I show mercy," says the Lord.
He says these things also to those wishing to become poor on account of righteousness, since they have learned from the commandment that "wide and roomy is the path leading off to ruin, and numerous are those who journey along it" -- speaking of nothing else but dissoluteness and love of women, love of glory, love of power, and similar passions. "Fool," he thus said, "this very night they demand your soul; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" And the commandment runs literally thus: "Watch yourselves, then, against every kind of greed, for one's life is not measured by how much one owns. For what benefit is there to a man who gains the entire world yet loses his own soul? Or what could a man offer in return for his soul? Therefore I say: do not be anxious for your soul, what you will eat, nor for your body, what you will put on; for the soul is more than food, and the body more than clothing." And again: "For your Father knows that you need all these things; but first pursue the kingdom of heaven together with its righteousness, since these are the great matters, and the lesser things needed for life will be supplied to you besides."
Does he not plainly exhort us to pursue the gnostic life, and urge us to seek the truth both in deed and in word? Christ, then, who trains the soul, reckons as rich not the giving but the intention. Zacchaeus, then -- though some say Matthias -- the chief tax-collector, having heard the Lord deem him worthy that he should come to him, said, "Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I give as alms, and if I have wrongfully exacted anything from anyone, I restore it fourfold." Of him too the Savior said, "The Son of Man, having come today, found what was lost." Again, having observed at the treasury the rich man casting in proportionately to his wealth, and the widow casting in two copper coins, he said the widow had cast in more than all of them; for he gave out of his surplus, but she contributed out of her want.
That he referred everything to the training of the soul is shown by: "Blessed are the gentle, since the earth will be their inheritance." The gentle are those who have brought to an end within the soul the truceless battle of anger and desire and the forms that lie beneath these. He commends gentleness chosen freely, not gentleness forced by necessity. For with the Lord there are both rewards and many dwelling-places according to the proportion of lives lived; for "whoever welcomes a prophet because he is a prophet will get a prophet's reward, and whoever welcomes an upright man because he is upright will get an upright man's reward, and whoever welcomes even one of these lowly disciples will not go without reward." Again, the differences according to merit, the noble recompenses of virtue, he has signified through the hours not equal in number, and further, through the equal wage rendered to each of the workers (that is, salvation, which the denarius intimates), he has made known the equal justice by means of those who worked at mismatched hours.
They will work, then, according to the dwelling-places proportioned to the honors of which they were deemed worthy, fellow-workers in the ineffable economy and service. "Those who seem to be preeminently distinguished in living a holy life," says Plato, "are those who are freed and released from these earthly places as from prisons, and arrive above at a pure dwelling." And again, more clearly, he says the same thing thus: "Of these very ones, those who have sufficiently purified themselves through philosophy live altogether without bodies for all time" -- though he assigns them certain forms, to some airy ones, to others fiery ones. He further adds: "And they arrive at dwellings still more beautiful than these, which it is neither easy to describe nor is the time sufficient at present." Whence fittingly, "blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." For those who have repented of the evils in which they formerly lived will be present at the calling; for this is what "to be comforted" means. There are two modes of the one who repents: the more common one is fear over what has been done; the more particular one is the shame which the soul feels before itself out of conscience, whether here or elsewhere, since no place is idle with respect to God's beneficence.
Again he says, "Happy are the compassionate, for mercy will be shown to them." Now mercy is not, as certain philosophers have imagined, sorrow felt over someone else's misfortune, but rather something noble, as the prophets say: "I desire mercy," he says, "and not sacrifice." He wants those to be merciful not only who perform mercy, but also those who wish to show mercy even when they cannot, those for whom acting lies within their intention. For sometimes we wish, by giving money or by bodily effort, to show mercy, as by helping one in need, or attending one who is sick, or standing by one in distress, and we are not able, whether through poverty or sickness or old age (for this too is a natural sickness), to carry through the intention we set out upon, unable to bring to completion what we had resolved. Those who have resolved, then, whose intention is equal, will share the same honor as those who were able, even if others surpass them in resources.
Since two paths are found leading toward salvation's completion -- deeds and understanding -- he pronounced blessed those clean of heart, since God will be seen by them. And if we truly look at the truth, knowledge -- by which the purification of the soul's ruling faculty comes about -- is itself also a good activity. Good things, then, are some in and of themselves, others by participation in the good, as we say of noble actions; but without the intermediate things, which indeed hold the rank of matter, neither good nor bad actions come to be constituted -- I mean, for instance, life and health and the other things that are necessary or circumstantial. He wishes, then, that those who arrive at the knowledge of God should be pure with respect to bodily desires, and holy in their reasonings, so that the ruling faculty may have nothing spurious overshadowing its own power.
When, then, the soul lingers in contemplation, consorting purely with the divine, the one who gnostically partakes of the holy quality comes to be, ever more attentively, in a settled state of impassible identity, so that he no longer merely has knowledge and possesses understanding, but is himself understanding and knowledge.
Blessed, then, are the peacemakers. Those who tame and civilize the law that wages counter-war against the disposition of our mind — the threats of anger and the baits of desire and the other passions, all that make war on reason — and who have lived out their lives with knowledge, good works, and true reasoning, will be restored to that most dear adoption as sons. The perfect peacemaking would be that which keeps the peaceable disposition unshaken through every circumstance that befalls, calling the administration of the world holy and beautiful, grounded in the understanding of things divine and things human, whereby it counts the tensions within the cosmos as the loveliest harmony of all creation. And such people make peace also with those here who are warred upon by the stratagems of sin, teaching them by instruction to change over to faith and to peace.
A summary, I think, of every virtue, teaching us the need to despise death, more gnostically, for love toward God: how blessed, he says, are they who have endured persecution because of righteousness, since they will be named children of God; or, as it stands among some who have tampered with the gospel texts: how blessed, he says, are they persecuted on account of righteousness, since they will be made complete. And how blessed are they persecuted because of me, since a place awaits them where persecution can no longer touch them. And blessed are you whenever people despise you, whenever they shut you out, whenever they hurl your name aside as something vile because of the Son of Man — provided, of course, that we do not abhor those who persecute us and that we endure the punishments from them without hating them, thinking we have been tried more slowly than we expected, but knowing further that any trial whatsoever is an occasion of martyrdom.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 7 ========

Then in what evil, we may ask, is the man who has lied and shown himself faithless and gone over to the devil's army? He lies, then, to the Lord — or rather he has cheated himself of his own hope, this one who does not believe God. And the one who does not do what he was commanded does not believe. What then? Does not the one who denies the Lord deny himself? For a man who deprives himself of his kinship to his master does not thereby strip his master of his lordship. So the one who denies the Savior denies life, because the light was life. Such people he does not call "of little faith" but faithless and hypocrites, bearing the name inscribed on them while denying the reality of being faithful; and "faithful" is said also of a servant and a friend. So if someone truly loves himself, that same love reaches the Lord, and he professes salvation.
So that he may save his soul. And yet, even should you die on behalf of your neighbor out of love — and you should understand the Savior to be our neighbor (for God who saves was said to draw near to the one being saved) — you will die choosing death for the sake of life, and you will have suffered more for your own sake than for his; and it is not for this reason that he is called "brother": that the one who suffers out of love toward God suffers for the sake of his own salvation, while the one who dies for the sake of his own salvation endures it out of love for the Lord. For indeed he himself, being life, was willing to suffer for the sake of those for whom he suffered, so that by his suffering we might live. "Why do you address me as Lord, Lord," he asks, "yet fail to do as I say?" For the people who love with the lips while keeping the heart far from the Lord are other than they claim, persuaded by another, and have willingly sold themselves to that other; but as many as fulfill the commandments of the Savior bear witness by every action, doing what he wills and accordingly naming the Lord and by their deeds bearing witness to the one they are persuaded they belong to — those who have crucified the flesh together with its desires and passions. "If we live by the Spirit," he says, "let us also walk by the Spirit." "The one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life."
To wretched men, death by bloody witness to the Lord seems the most violent of deaths, since they do not know that such a death is the very gate and beginning of the life that truly is. And they are unwilling to understand either the honors after death of those who have lived holily, or the punishments of those who have conducted themselves unjustly and licentiously — and I say this not only from our own Scriptures (for nearly all the commandments make this plain), but they are not even willing to listen to the words of their own authors. For Theano the Pythagorean writes: "Life would in truth be a feast for the wicked who behave badly and then simply die, were the soul not immortal — death would be a windfall." And Plato in the Phaedo: "For if death were release from everything altogether, it would be a windfall for the wicked" — and so on.
It is not, then, as in the Telephus of Aeschylus, right to imagine a single simple path leading to Hades; there are many roads that lead away, the many-wandering sins. It is these faithless men, it seems, that Aristophanes mocks when he says: "Come, you dim-lived men, like unto a generation of leaves, feeble creatures, figures molded of wax, shadow-like tribes, powerless, wingless, creatures of a day." And Epicharmus: "Such is the nature of men — bladders puffed up with wind." But to us the Savior has said: "the spirit indeed is eager, though the flesh grows faint"; hence the apostle explains that "the disposition of the flesh is hostility toward God, since it will not submit itself to God's law, nor indeed is it able; and those who live in the flesh are unable to please God." And, continuing his exposition, he adds — lest, as Marcion does, someone should ungratefully take creation to be evil — "yet if Christ dwells within you, the body is a corpse on account of sin, while the spirit lives on account of righteousness." And again: "For if you go on living by the flesh, you are bound to die"; "for I count the hardships of this present season as nothing worth setting beside the glory about to be unveiled in us, provided we truly share his sufferings, that we may likewise share his glory, as joint heirs with Christ."
"And we know that for those who love God everything works together toward good — for those summoned in accordance with his plan. Those he knew beforehand he also marked out in advance to bear the likeness of his Son, that the Son might be firstborn among a multitude of brothers; and those he marked out beforehand he likewise summoned; and those he summoned he likewise justified; and those he justified he likewise gave glory." You see witness taught through love. And if you should wish to bear witness for the sake of a reward of good things, you will hear again: "For it was in hope that we were rescued; but hope already visible is no longer hope, for who hopes for what he can already see? Yet if we hope for what remains unseen, we await it through patient endurance." "But even if we suffer for righteousness' sake, blessed are we," says Peter. "And do not fear their fear, nor be troubled, but sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts, and be always ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence, possessing a clear conscience, so that whenever you are maligned, those who abuse your honorable conduct in Christ may themselves be put to shame. For it is better, if the will of God should so will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil."
And should some quibbler say: "How is it even possible for weak flesh to withstand the powers and spirits of the authorities?" — let him know this, that trusting in the Almighty and the Lord we wage our counter-war against the rulers of darkness and against death. "While you are still speaking," he says, "he will say: Here I am." Behold the unconquerable helper, the one who shields us. "Do not be surprised, then," Peter says, "at the fiery trial among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though something strange were happening to you, but insofar as you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, so that at the revelation of his glory also you may rejoice exultingly. If you are reproached in the name of Christ, blessed are you, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you." As it is written: "For your sake we are put to death the whole day long; we have been reckoned as sheep for slaughter." "Yet in the midst of all this we emerge utterly victorious through him who loved us."
"What you desire to learn from my mind, neither burning me nor sinking dread saws from the crown of my head down to the soles of my feet could you learn, not even should you apply every kind of bondage" — so speaks, unafraid and playing the man, a woman in tragedy. And Antigone too, scorning the proclamation of Creon, says with courage: "For it was not Zeus who proclaimed these things to me." But God does proclaim to us, and he must be obeyed; "for with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses unto salvation." The Scripture accordingly says: "Everyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced." Fittingly, then, Simonides writes: "There is a saying that Virtue dwells upon rocks hard to climb, and that a holy chorus of swift nymphs attends her, nor is she visible to the eyelids of all mortals, save to him within whom heart-gnawing sweat has come and who has reached the summit through manliness."
And Pindar: "The cares of young men, revolving amid their toils, discover glory, and deeds that have shone forth beneath the sky shine on through time." Taking up this same thought, Aeschylus too says: "To the one who toils, glory, the offspring of his toil, is owed by the gods." For "greater fates obtain greater portions," according to Heraclitus. "And who is a slave, being unconcerned about dying? For God has not given us a spirit of slavery again unto fear, but of power and of love and of self-discipline. Do not, then, be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner" — thus he writes to Timothy. Such a man would be the one who "cleaves to the good," according to the apostle, "abhorring what is evil, having love unfeigned; for he who loves another has fulfilled the law." And if the God of hope is he to whom we bear witness, as indeed he is, we confess our hope, hastening on toward the hope; "and those who are full of goodness," he says, "are filled with all knowledge."
The philosophers of the Indians say to Alexander of Macedon: "You may shift our bodies about from place to place, but you cannot force our souls into acting against their will. Fire, the harshest tool men use for torment, we simply hold in contempt." And on this account Heraclitus chose one thing above all — glory — while confessing that the many are content to be glutted like cattle. "For the sake of the body are the many toils; for its sake we have devised the roofed house, and dig white silver, and sow the earth, and all the other things that we know by their names."
To the many, then, this vain toil is a thing chosen; but to us the apostle says: "This we know, that our old man has been crucified together with him, so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be enslaved to sin." Does not the apostle plainly go on to show the disgrace in which the faith is held among the many? For I think God has displayed us the apostles last, as men appointed to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. Even to this present hour we are hungry and thirsty and go naked and are buffeted and have no fixed home; being persecuted, we endure; being reviled, we entreat; we have become as the refuse of the world.
Such, too, is what Plato says in the Republic: even should the just man be racked, even should his eyes be gouged out, he will be happy. The gnostic, then, will never have his end placed upon fortune, but happiness and blessedness and being a friend of God, royal in nature, would lie in the man's own power; and even should someone surround him with dishonor, exile, confiscation, and, on top of all, death, he will never be torn away from freedom and from the most sovereign love toward God, which "bears all things and endures all things"; love is persuaded that divine providence rightly governs all things.
"I exhort you, then," he says, "become imitators of me." The first step of salvation, then, is the teaching that comes through fear, on account of which we abstain from wrongdoing; the second is hope, on account of which we reach after the best things; but it is love that brings to perfection, as is fitting, already instructing in a gnostic manner.
For the Greeks, somehow — I do not know how — having yielded to irrational necessity, admit that they are unwillingly persuaded by what befalls them. Euripides, at any rate, says: "Accept, then, these counsels of mine, woman: there is no mortal born who does not suffer, who does not bury children and beget other new ones, and himself dies; and at these things mortals grieve." Then he goes on: "These things one must bear, which by nature must be passed through; nothing is terrible among the things necessary for mortals."
For those pressing on toward perfection, rational knowledge stands ready before them, resting on the sacred triad of faith, hope, and love — and love is the greatest among these. Indeed, "everything is permitted, yet not everything proves useful; everything is permitted, yet not everything builds one up," the apostle says. "And let no one pursue merely his own advantage, but rather that of his neighbor," so as to be capable at once of doing and of teaching, edifying and building further still. That the whole earth, in its fullness, belongs to the Lord is granted; yet the conscience of the one who is weak carries a burden. And by conscience I do not mean one's own but that belonging to the other person. "For why should my liberty be measured by someone else's conscience? If I share in something through grace, why am I denounced over what I already give thanks for? Whatever, then, you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for God's glory. For although we walk about in flesh, we do not campaign according to flesh; the weapons we fight with are not of the flesh but carry divine power to tear down fortresses, demolishing arguments and every proud barrier raised against knowing the Lord."
Equipped in this fashion, the gnostic declares: "O Lord, grant me a trial and take the proof; let this dreadful thing come, I scorn dangers for love of you"; "since virtue alone among the things that are in men does not receive her wages from outside, but herself holds herself the prize of her toils." "Clothe yourselves, then, as ones chosen by God, consecrated and cherished, with tender compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, and above everything else, love, the very tie that binds all into perfection. And let Christ's peace govern your hearts, the peace to which you were summoned as one body; and give thanks," you who still dwell within the body, just as the righteous of old did, harvesting a soul untroubled and free from disturbance.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 8 ========

For it was not only the Aesopians and Macedonians and Laconians who, as Eratosthenes says in his work On Goods and Evils, endured under torture without flinching, but also Zeno of Elea, when compelled to reveal certain secrets, held out against the tortures, confessing nothing; indeed, when at last he bit off his own tongue, he spat it at the tyrant, whom some call Nearchus and others Demylus. Theodotus the Pythagorean did likewise, and so did Praylus, the acquaintance of Lacydes, as Timotheus of Pergamum says in his work On the Courage of the Philosophers, and Achaicus in his Ethics. Postumus the Roman too, when seized by Peucetion, not only refused to disclose any of the hidden things, but even laid his hand upon the fire and let it melt away like bronze, with a resolve utterly unshaken. As for Anaxarchus, I pass over in silence the man who, while being pounded, cried out at his pounder, "Pound the sack of Anaxarchus" — for you do not pound Anaxarchus himself, however much he is pounded by the tyrant's iron pestles.
Neither, then, does the hope of blessedness nor love toward God chafe against what befalls it, but remains free, even should it fall among the most savage beasts, even should it fall into the all-devouring fire, even should it be put to death by a tyrant's tortures; clinging fast to divine friendship, it ranges above unenslaved, having handed over the body to those who can lay hold only of that. The Getae, a barbarian nation not untouched by philosophy, choose an ambassador each year to send to the hero Zamolxis. Now Zamolxis was one of the acquaintances of Pythagoras.
So the man judged most worthy is slaughtered, to the grief of those who had practiced philosophy but were not chosen, as men rejected from a blessed service. The whole Church, indeed, is full of those who throughout their entire lives have rehearsed for the life-giving death unto Christ — of temperate women no less than of men. For it is possible for the one who lives as a citizen according to our way to practice philosophy even without letters, whether he be barbarian or Greek, slave or old man, child or woman; for temperance is common to all human beings, at least to those who choose it, and it has been agreed among us that the same nature, within each kind, possesses also the same virtue.
The woman, then, is not found to possess one nature with regard to humanity while the man has another, but a shared nature — and therefore a shared virtue as well. And if the virtue proper to a man is, presumably, self-mastery and justice together with whatever traits are reckoned to accompany these, is it right for the man alone to hold virtue, while the woman remains loose and wrongdoing? Yet even to voice such a thing is shameful. Concern for self-mastery, then, and for justice and for the whole of virtue besides, must be shown equally by woman and by man, by the free person no less than the slave, since virtue, sharing one nature, turns out to be a single thing throughout. We do not claim that the female shares the male's nature purely as female; some distinction must surely exist between the two, through which one became female and the other male; conceiving, certainly, and bringing forth offspring belong to the woman precisely as female, not as a human being generally; yet were there no distinction at all between man and woman, both would perform and undergo identical things.
Where they coincide — namely in soul — they will attain to identical virtue; but where they diverge — namely in the particular constitution of the body — they diverge with regard to conceiving offspring and to managing a household. "Understand well," writes the apostle, "Christ is head over every man, and the woman's head is the man; woman did not come from man — man came from woman. Yet in the Lord, woman is not apart from man, nor man apart from woman." Just as we hold that a man must be self-controlled and rule over his own pleasures, so equally we would insist the woman be trained in that same self-mastery, contending against her pleasures likewise; and by this I mean: "Walk according to the Spirit, and you will not carry out what the flesh craves," as the apostolic precept urges; "for what the flesh wants runs counter to the Spirit, and what the Spirit wants runs counter to the flesh." These, then, stand opposed not as evil against good, but as rivals contending toward our good. He continues, in any case, thus:
"...so that you cannot do the things you actually wish." "The deeds produced by flesh are plain to see: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idol-worship, witchcraft, hostility, quarreling, envy, fits of temper, rivalries, splits, factions, jealous grudges, bouts of drunkenness, orgies, and similar things; regarding which I warn you now, just as I warned before, that people who do such things will have no share in God's kingdom. Whereas the Spirit yields love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, mildness, self-control." By "flesh," I take it, he intends sinners, just as by "spirit" he intends the upright. And indeed courage, too, must be understood along the lines of cheerful endurance — as in offering the other cheek to one who strikes, and handing over the tunic besides to whoever seizes the cloak — subduing wrath through inner strength. For we do not drill women toward a martial boldness resembling the Amazons, given that we wish even men to remain peaceable.
I myself have heard, moreover, that the Sauromatian women make war no less than men, and other women, the Sacae, who shoot arrows while feigning flight backward, on equal terms with the men. I know too that the women near Iberia perform manly labor and toil, and even when they come to give birth they let nothing of their tasks slacken, but often, in the very midst of the contest of their labors, the woman, having given birth to the child, takes it up and carries it home. Even now female dogs are no less than males both in guarding the house and in hunting and in watching the flocks: "A Cretan hound, Gorgo, ran along the track of the deer." Women, then, must practice philosophy just as men do, even if the males happen to be superior and to carry off the first place in all things — unless indeed they should be enervated by softness.
Education and virtue, then, are necessary for the whole human race, if indeed they are eager for blessedness. And it is not, I think, without reason that Euripides writes in varied ways: at one time, "For every wife is worse than her husband, even should the basest man marry the woman of good repute"; at another, "For every temperate wife is a slave to her husband, but the intemperate one, through folly, surpasses the man who lives with her." "For nothing surpasses in goodness or nobility a household where husband and wife share one purpose in their thinking." The head, accordingly, denotes the governing part. And since the Lord governs as head over the man, while the man in turn heads the woman, the man stands as lord over the woman, being God's image and radiance.
This is why he also writes, in his letter to the Ephesians: "Yielding to each another out of reverence for God; wives to husbands, as though yielding to the Lord, since a husband heads his wife much as Christ heads the assembly, he being the one who rescues its body. Yet just as the assembly yields to Christ, wives too should yield to their husbands in every regard. Husbands, cherish your wives, in the manner Christ cherished the assembly; husbands, then, are bound to cherish their wives as they would their own flesh. Whoever cherishes his wife cherishes himself; no one, after all, has ever despised his own body."
And to the Colossians he writes: "Wives, defer to your husbands, as is proper for those in the Lord. Husbands, cherish your wives and do not turn harsh toward them. Children, listen to your parents in every matter, since this pleases the Lord well. Fathers, do not provoke your children, or they may lose all courage. Slaves, listen in every matter to those who own you by earthly reckoning, not merely when watched, as people out to please others, but with a sincere heart, in fear of the Lord. Whatever task falls to you, throw yourselves into it wholeheartedly, as though working for the Lord rather than for men, aware that the Lord will repay you with the inheritance as your reward; it is Christ the Lord you are serving. Whoever does wrong will be repaid in kind for the wrong done, and favoritism plays no part. Masters, give your slaves what is right and equitable, aware that you likewise answer to a Master above, where distinctions of Greek and Jew, of circumcised and uncircumcised, of barbarian, Scythian, bondsman, and free, no longer hold — Christ is everything, in everyone."
The earthly assembly mirrors the heavenly one, which is precisely why we ask that God's will be accomplished on earth just as it stands accomplished in heaven: "Clothe yourselves, then, with tender mercy, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, tolerating one another and pardoning one another wherever a grievance arises between you; forgive as the Lord forgave you. And beyond all these, put on love, the tie that binds everything together in wholeness. Let Christ's peace govern your hearts — the peace to which you were summoned as one body — and remain grateful." Nothing, certainly, forbids repeating this same scriptural passage over and again, to Marcion's discredit, in the hope that he might yet be won over, once he grasps that a believer owes gratitude to the Creator-God, who summoned us and announced the gospel to us while we were still in the body.
From these passages it is clear to us both what unity through faith is, and who is the perfect one — so that, even against the will of some and though most people resist it, even if punishments hang over the wife from her husband or over the slave from the master, both the household servant and the wife will still practice philosophy. Indeed the free man too, even should death be threatened against him by a tyrant, even should he be dragged into the courts and drawn into the extremest dangers, even should he risk the loss of all his property, will not forsake reverence toward God in the slightest degree; nor will a wife bound to a worthless husband ever lose heart, nor the son should he have a worthless father, nor the household servant should he have a wicked master — but they will hold nobly to virtue; rather, just as it is a fine thing for a man to die for virtue's sake and for freedom's sake and for his own sake, so likewise for a woman also; for this belongs not to the nature of males in particular, but to the nature of the good.
Faithfully, then, both the old man and the young man and the household servant, obeying the commandments, will live, and, if need be, will die — which would amount to being made alive through death. We know, at any rate, that children and household servants and wives have often become the best of people even against the will of their fathers and masters and husbands. Those who intend to live in reverence toward God, then, must be no less eager, whenever some seem to be hindering them, but I think it fitting that they be far more zealous and strive all the more, so that, overcome, they may not fall away from the best and most necessary resolutions. For I do not think there is any comparison to be made between becoming an initiate of the Almighty and choosing the darkness of the demons. For as to the things we do for the sake of others, we would in each case do them while trying to look to those others for whose sake they seem to be done, taking as our measure what is pleasing to them; but as to the things that are our own concern rather than that of others, these we should carry out with equal zeal, whether they seem pleasing to some or not.
If, then, some of the indifferent things have obtained such honor that they are held to be choiceworthy even against the will of some, much more must virtue be reckoned a thing to be fought for, looking not to anything else but to the very fact that it can be nobly accomplished, whether it seems so to some or not. Well, then, does Epicurus too write to Menoeceus: "Let no one, being young, delay to practice philosophy, nor, being old, grow weary of practicing philosophy. For no one is either too young or too old for the health of the soul." And the one who says that the season for philosophy has not yet come, or has already passed, is like one who says that the season for happiness has either not yet arrived or is no longer present. So philosophy must be practiced by both the younger and the older — by the one, so that, growing old, he may be young in good things through gratitude for what has come to pass; by the other, so that he may be simultaneously youthful and aged through having no fear of what lies ahead.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 9 ========

Concerning martyrdom the Lord has spoken explicitly, and let us set in order the passages that are written in various forms: "I tell you plainly, whoever acknowledges union with me in front of others, that man the Son of man will likewise acknowledge before God's angels; but whoever disowns me in front of others, that man I will disown before the angels. For if anyone is ashamed of me and what I have taught among this faithless and corrupt generation, of him the Son of man will likewise be ashamed, once he arrives amid his Father's splendor together with his angels. So everyone who acknowledges union with me in front of others, that person I too will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. And whenever they haul you before the synagogue leaders, the magistrates, and those in power, do not fret ahead of time about how you will answer or what words to use, for the Holy Spirit will instruct you at that very moment what needs to be said."
In expounding this passage Heracleon, the most highly esteemed member of the school of Valentinus, says word for word that confession is of two kinds, one in faith and manner of life, the other in the voice. The confession made by the voice, he says, is also made before the authorities, and this alone the many think, wrongly, to be confession; but even hypocrites are able to make this confession. Yet this teaching will not be found to have been stated as a universal rule: for not all those who are saved confessed by the vocal confession and were led out to death — among them Matthew, Philip, Thomas, and Levi, to name just a few. And the confession by the voice is not universal but partial. The universal confession, which the passage now speaks of, is the confession in works and in deeds corresponding to faith in him. And upon this confession there follows also the partial one before the authorities, whenever necessity requires and the occasion demands it; for such a person will also confess with the voice, having rightly made prior confession beforehand in disposition.
And rightly, in speaking of those who confess, he said "in me," while in speaking of those who deny, he added "me." For these, even if they confess him with the voice, deny him, since they do not confess him in deed. Only those confess in him who live their lives in the confession and practice that accord with him, and in these he himself also makes confession, being bound up with them and held fast by them. For this reason such people can never deny him; but those who are not in him do deny him. For he did not say "whoever denies within me," but simply "me" — since not a single person truly abiding in him could ever deny him. And "before men" applies likewise both to those who are being saved and to the gentiles, in some cases by manner of life, in others also by voice. For this reason such people can never deny him; but those who are not in him do deny him.
This is what Heracleon says; and in most other respects he appears to hold the same opinion as we do concerning this passage, but he failed to observe this: that even if some have not confessed Christ before men in deed and in life, yet by confessing him with the voice in the courts and enduring torture even unto death without denying him, they show plainly that they have believed out of a settled disposition. And a disposition that is thus confessed, especially one that does not turn aside even at death, effects the cutting away, all at once, of all the passions that were bred through bodily desire; for it is, so to speak, a sudden repentance in act at the very end of life, and a true confession unto Christ, the voice bearing further witness to it. But given that the Father's Spirit bears witness within us, how can they still be called hypocrites, those he said give testimony only by voice? And to some it will be granted, if it is expedient, to make their defense, so that all may be benefited both through the testimony and through the defense — those of the church being strengthened, while those from the nations who have been earnestly inquiring after salvation marvel and are led to faith, and the rest are held fast by amazement.
Hence to confess is required absolutely, for it lies in our power; but to make a defense is not required absolutely, for this does not lie in our power. "But he who endures to the end, this one will be saved"; for who among the right-minded would not choose to reign in God rather than to be a slave? Some, then, according to the apostle, confess that they know God, but deny him by their deeds, being detestable and disobedient and unfit for any good work; while others, even if they confess this alone, have accomplished at the last one good work. Martyrdom, then, seems to be a cleansing away of sins accompanied by glory. So too the Shepherd says: "You will escape the working of the wild beast, if your heart becomes pure and blameless." But the Lord himself also says: "Satan has asked for you, to sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for you."
First, then, the Lord himself drank the cup because of the men who were plotting against him and for the cleansing of the unbelieving; and imitating him, the apostles, inasmuch as they were truly gnostics and perfect, suffered on behalf of the churches which they had founded. So too those who walk in the apostolic footsteps, being gnostics, are bound to live free of sin, and for love of the Lord to cherish their neighbor as well, so that, should circumstance call for it, they may drink the cup, enduring afflictions without stumbling for the sake of the church. Now as many as bear witness in deed throughout their life, but also with word in the courtroom, whether receiving hope or apprehending fear, these are better than those who confess salvation with the mouth alone. But if one should go further still, unto love, this one is truly blessed and a genuine martyr, having confessed perfectly both by the commandments and to God through the Lord, whom, having loved, he came to know as brother, giving up his whole self out of love toward God, rendering back the man that was demanded of him, as it were a deposit held in trust, with gratitude and with love.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 10 ========

But when, on the other hand, he states, 'Should they drive you out of one town, escape onward to another,' he does not advise flight as though being persecuted were an evil, nor does he command this flight because we fear death; rather, he wishes us to become causes or accessory-causes of no evil to anyone, neither to ourselves nor, besides, to the one who persecutes and the one who kills. For in a manner he charges him to keep out of the other's way, while the man who disregards this is rash and reckless.
But if whoever slays a servant of God commits an offense before God, then the man who delivers himself up to the tribunal becomes an accomplice of his own killer; and this would be the man who does not shield himself from the persecution, offering himself, through recklessness, to be caught. This man, so far as it depends on himself, becomes a fellow-worker in the wickedness of the persecutor, and if he even provokes it further, he is fully guilty, calling out the wild beast. In the same way, too, if a man furnishes any occasion for strife, or loss, or enmity, or a lawsuit, he has begotten an opportunity for persecution. For this reason, then, we have been charged to cling to nothing among the things of this life. But we are also to give up our cloak and tunic besides to the one who takes it, not only that we may remain free from attachment, but also that, by not contending against those who go to law with us, we may not grow savage against them and, through us, stir up blasphemy against the Name.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 11 ========

Yes, they say, if God cares for you, why then are you persecuted and murdered? Or does he himself hand you over to this? But we do not suppose that the Lord willed us to fall into these circumstances; rather, he foretold prophetically what was going to happen, namely that on account of his name we would be persecuted, we would be murdered, we would be impaled. So he did not desire our persecution as such; rather he declared in advance what we would undergo, forming in us through that prediction a capacity for endurance, and through it he also pledged the inheritance. And yet we are not punished alone, but together with many others. But those men, they say, being criminals, justly undergo their punishment.
Unwillingly, then, they bear witness on our behalf to the justice of those who are unjustly punished for the sake of justice. But the injustice of the judge does not touch providence; for a judge ought to govern his own verdict, not be manipulated like a marionette on threads, deriving his impulses solely from something external. He is tested, at any rate, by the very act of judging, just as we too are tested both in our choice of what is preferable and in our endurance; and even if we do no wrong, still the judge looks upon us as though we did — for he does not know our true circumstances, nor does he wish to learn them, but is swept along by an empty prejudice, and by this very fact is himself judged. They persecute us, then, not because they have found us to be unjust, but because they suppose that the mere fact of being Christian is itself a crime of life — supposing both that we ourselves live in this way and that we urge others to choose the same manner of life.
But why, they say, are you not helped when you are persecuted? For how are we wronged, as far as we ourselves are concerned, when we are released by death to the Lord, and undergo, just as a change of age, so too a change of life? And if we think rightly, we shall be grateful to those who have furnished the occasion for our swift journey away, if through love we bear our witness; and if we did not seem base men to the many, and if they too knew the truth, all would leap upon the road, and there would be no selecting out. But indeed our faith, being the light of the world, convicts unbelief. For Anytus and Meletus could kill me, certainly, but they could not harm me in any way at all — for I do not think it lawful for the better to be harmed by the worse. So that each of us may say with confidence: God stands as my ally, so I have nothing to dread; what could a mortal accomplish against me? For righteous souls rest within God's hand, and no torment shall ever reach them.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 12 ========

Basilides, in the twenty-third book of his Exegetics, speaking of those punished in martyrdom, says the following in these very words: "For I say, all who fall under the sufferings called afflictions, are being led to this good because they have sinned in other, hidden lapses, being in reality charged with other things through the goodness of him who leads them along, so that they should not suffer as condemned men for admitted wrongs, nor be reviled as the adulterer or the murderer is, but because they are, so to speak, Christians — which very thing shall console them, so that they do not even seem to suffer. And even if someone should come to suffer who has not sinned at all, this is rare, but even such a one will suffer nothing through the plotting of a power, but will suffer as the infant suffers, which seems not to have sinned."
Then, going on a little further, he adds: "As then the infant, though it has not sinned beforehand, nor indeed committed any actual sin, yet has within itself the capacity for sinning, so that when it is subjected to suffering it is in fact benefited, gaining much that is hard to attain — so likewise even the perfect man, should he happen to have done no wrong in deed, yet if he suffers, suffers this in a manner like the infant's; for having within himself the capacity for sin, though he has not taken the occasion to actually sin, he was not on that account sinless. For just as one who desires to commit adultery is already an adulterer, even should the act of adultery itself elude him, and one who desires murder is already a murderer, even if he proves unable to kill — so too, if I behold the person I call sinless undergoing suffering, though he has committed no wrong deed, I shall pronounce him guilty because of that desire to sin. For I would rather say anything at all than name providence evil."
Then, going on further, he speaks openly, as of a mere man, even concerning the Lord: "If, however, setting aside all these arguments, you come round to press me hard by bringing up certain persons, saying, for instance, 'So-and-so, then, sinned, for so-and-so suffered' — if you will allow me, I will say, he did not sin, but he was like the infant that suffers; but if you press the argument still more forcibly, I will say that whatever man you name is a man, and that God alone is righteous. For no one is clean, as someone has said, from defilement." But according to Basilides' hypothesis it is the soul that, having sinned beforehand in another life, endures its punishment here — the elect soul, honored through martyrdom, and the other soul purified by its own fitting chastisement. And how can this be true, when it lies within our own power whether we confess and are punished, or not? For the providence according to Basilides is undone in the case of the one who is going to deny.
I ask him, then, concerning the confessor who has been seized: whether, according to providence, he will bear witness and be punished, or not. For if he denies, he will not be punished. But if, from the outcome, he will also say that this man ought not to have been punished, he will unwittingly bear witness besides to the destruction, by providence, of those who are going to deny. And how, further, is the most glorious reward still laid up in heaven for the one who bore witness, on account of his bearing witness? But if providence did not allow the one prone to sin to come to sinning, it becomes unjust on both counts: both by not rescuing the one dragged to punishment for the sake of righteousness, and by rescuing the one who wished to do wrong — the one having done what he wished, while providence prevented the deed and did not deal justly with the one prone to sin.
And how is he not godless, who deifies the devil, yet dares to call the Lord a man prone to sin? For the devil tempts, knowing indeed what we are, but not knowing whether we will endure; but wishing to shake us off from the faith and to bring us under his own power, he tempts — which is indeed the only thing permitted to him, both because we must be saved by our own efforts, having taken our starting-points from the commandment, and because of the shaming of the one who tempts and fails, and because of the strengthening of those in the church, and because of the conscience of those who marvel at the endurance. But if martyrdom is a recompense exacted through punishment, then faith too, and the teaching, on account of which martyrdom comes about, are accomplices of punishment — and what greater absurdity than this could there be? But as for those doctrines — whether the soul passes into other bodies, and concerning the devil — these will be discussed in their proper season; for now let us add this to what has been said: where, then, is faith, if martyrdom comes about as recompense for former sins? Where is the love toward God pursued and endured for the sake of truth? Where is praise for the one who confesses, or blame for the one who denies? To what use any longer is right conduct, the mortifying of the desires, and the hating of none of the things created?
But if, as Basilides himself states, we take one sense of what he terms God's will to mean the cherishing of every existing thing, since all things hold a kinship to the whole, a second sense to mean craving nothing, and a third to mean bearing hatred toward not a single thing — then even punishments would fall under God's will, a notion impious even to entertain. For the Lord did not undergo suffering because the Father willed it, nor are the persecuted hounded through any will of God's — since one of two things must be true: either being hunted down counts as good because God wills it, or those who hunt and torment others bear no guilt. Yet in reality nothing occurs outside the will of the Lord over all. What remains, then, is to state briefly that these things happen because God refrains from stopping them; for only this preserves God's providence together with his goodness.
We must not, then, suppose that he actively brings about the afflictions — far be it from us to think this — but it is right to be convinced that he refrains from hindering the ones who carry them out, and that he turns the audacities of adversaries to good use ("I will tear down," he says, "the wall, and it shall become a place to be trampled"), such providence being a disciplinary art, applied in the case of others because of each one's own sins, but in the case of the Lord and the apostles because of ours. Straightway the divine apostle says: "For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from fornication, that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the passion of desire, like the gentiles who do not know the Lord; that no one transgress and overreach his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger concerning all these things, just as we told you before and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us to uncleanness, but in sanctification. Therefore whoever rejects this, rejects not man, but God, who has also given his Holy Spirit to you." It was, then, on account of this our sanctification that the Lord was not prevented from suffering.
If, then, in defense one of them should say that the martyr is punished on account of sins committed before this present embodiment, but will in turn receive the fruit of his right conduct in this present life — for so, they say, the administration has been ordained — we will inquire of him whether the recompense comes about by providence. For if it does not belong to the divine administration, then the arrangement of purifications is gone, and their hypothesis has collapsed; but if the purifications come by providence, then the punishments too come by providence. And providence, even if it begins to be set in motion, as they say, from the Archon, was nevertheless sown into the substances together with the very coming-into-being of the substances, by the God of all. This being so, they are compelled to admit either that the punishment is not unjust (and then those who condemn and persecute the martyrs act justly), or that the persecutions too are wrought by the will of God. No longer, then, do toil and fear, as they themselves say, befall these matters as rust befalls iron, but they come upon the soul from its own choosing.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 13 ========

Much could be said about these matters, which we have set aside to examine later, taking each point up in its proper place. But Valentinus, in a certain homily, writes word for word: "From the beginning you are immortal, and you are children of eternal life, and you wished to divide death among yourselves, so that you might spend it and use it up, and death might die in you and through you. For when you dissolve the world without yourselves being dissolved, you rule over creation and over all corruption." For he, like Basilides, posits a race that is by nature saved, and holds that this distinct race has come here from above for the abolition of death, while the generation of death is the work of the one who created the world. This is why he interprets that scripture in this way: "no one shall see the face of God and live," as though God were the cause of death. About this God he hints at the following, writing in these very words: "To the degree that a portrait falls short of a living countenance, to that same degree does this world fall short of the aeon that lives."
"What then produces the portrait? It is the splendor of the countenance, which gave the painter his model, so that through its name the face could receive honor; for its true form was nowhere to be found, but the name compensated for what the shaping lacked. And God's unseen nature likewise assists belief in what has been shaped." For he called the Demiurge, who is styled god and father, an image of the true God, and a prophet, and he called Sophia the painter, whose molded work is the image, unto the glory of the Invisible One, since whatever proceeds from a conjugal pair is a pleroma, but whatever comes from one alone is an image. And since what appears of him is not the soul that comes from the middle region, that which is distinct comes in, and this is the breathing-in of the distinct spirit; and in general, what is breathed into the soul, the image of the spirit, and universally, what is said of the Demiurge who came into being according to the image — these things, they say, were prophesied beforehand under the guise of a perceptible image in Genesis concerning the origin of man. And indeed they transfer this likeness to themselves as well, teaching that the insertion of the distinct spirit came about unknown to the Demiurge.
Now when we take up the question of the one God proclaimed through the Law and the Prophets and the Gospel, we shall discuss it in its proper place (for the argument governs its own order), but for now we must answer the more pressing point. If the distinct race arrives for the purpose of abolishing death, then it is not Christ who has done away with death — unless he too is said to be of the same substance as they are; but if he abolished it for this end, so as not to touch the distinct race, then these people, the counterfeit imitators of the Demiurge, do not themselves abolish death — they who, into the soul from the middle region, their own image, breathe in the life from above according to the heresy of their doctrine, even if they say this comes about through the Mother. But even if they should say that they wage war together with Christ against death, they would be confessing, by that admission, their hidden doctrine — namely, that they dare to run down the divine power of the Demiurge, correcting his creation as though they were superior, attempting to save the psychic image which he himself was unable to rescue from corruption. And then the Lord would turn out to be better than the God who is Demiurge; for the Son could never contend against the Father — and this among gods, no less.
That this is the Father of the Son, the Demiurge of all things, the Almighty Lord — we have deferred that inquiry to the point at which we promised to argue against the heresies, where we shall show that he alone is the one proclaimed by him. But as for us, the Apostle, writing about endurance in afflictions, says this too comes from God: "it was given to you, for Christ's sake, not merely to trust him but also to endure hardship on his account, waging the very contest you witnessed in my case and now learn is still mine. So if encouragement in Christ counts for anything, if love brings any comfort, if the Spirit gives any partnership, if tenderness and pity are real, then complete my gladness: think alike, hold the same love, be knit together in soul, of a single mind." Yet if he pours himself out like a libation over the offering and priestly service of their faith, delighting and sharing delight with them, and names those he is addressing — the Philippians — as partners in grace, how could he then be branding them "knit together in soul," that is, "psychic," as an insult? So too, speaking of Timothy alongside himself, he writes: "I have nobody else of kindred soul who will truly be concerned for your welfare; the rest are all pursuing their own ends, not the cause of Jesus Christ."
Let not, then, the aforesaid people, nor yet the Phrygians, call us "psychic" as a term of reproach — for these too now call those who do not attend to the New Prophecy "psychic," people against whom we shall argue in our work On Prophecy. The perfect man must practice love, and from this press on toward divine friendship, fulfilling the commandments out of love. Now to love one's enemies does not mean to love evil, nor impiety, nor adultery, nor theft, but rather to love the thief and the impious man and the adulterer — not insofar as he sins and by his particular activity defiles the name of man, but insofar as he is a man and a work of God. Indeed, sinning consists in activity, not in essence; and therefore it is not a work of God.
Sinners are given the name enemies of God — hostile, that is, toward the commandments they have refused to obey, just as those who have obeyed are called friends: some so named because of kinship with him, others because of the estrangement arising from their own choice; for neither enmity nor sin exists apart from the one who is an enemy and the one who sins. And the precept to desire nothing does not teach us to have no longing because the things desired are alien to us — as those suppose who hold the doctrine that the Creator is other than the first God — nor because coming-into-being is something abominable and evil, for such opinions are godless. Rather, we call the things of the world alien not because they are improper, nor because they do not belong to God the Lord of all, but because we do not remain among them for the whole of the age; they are alien in the sense of possession, belonging to a succession of owners, though they become each person's own in the using, for the sake of which use indeed they came to be — yet only to the extent that it is necessary for us to be present alongside them. We must therefore make use, according to natural desire, of things not rightly forbidden, while renouncing all excess and overindulgent attachment.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 14 ========

How great, too, is his goodness! "Love your enemies," he says, "bless those who curse you, and pray for those who insult you," and the like; to which he adds, "that you may become sons of your Father who is in the heavens," hinting at the assimilation to God. And again he says, "Be well-disposed to your adversary quickly, while you are on the road with him"; and this opponent is not, as certain people suppose, our own flesh, but rather the devil (together with all who have taken on his likeness), who accompanies us along the road through those men who copy his deeds in this present life. It cannot happen, then, that men claiming allegiance to Christ, while still passing their days amid the devil's handiwork, will avoid meeting with the harshest possible dealing; since it stands written, "in case he hands you over to the judge, and the judge over to the officer answering to the devil's rule."
For I am persuaded that neither death, which comes by the assault of persecutors, nor life, as lived in this present existence, nor angels, the apostate ones, nor principalities (and the principality belonging to Satan is the life he chose for himself; for such are the principalities and powers of darkness that pertain to him), nor things present, in which we find ourselves during the time of this life, as the soldier has his hope and the merchant his gain, nor anything lofty, nor anything sunk in the depths, nor any other made thing, operating by its own proper force, shall have power, against a man who has chosen faith, to set itself against him (creation being termed, in the same sense, also "force," since it belongs to us as our own doing)—no such force shall have the power to sever us from God's love, the love found in Christ Jesus our Lord. There, then, you have the sum and substance of the gnostic martyr.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 15 ========

We know that we all possess the understanding shared in common affairs, together with the recognition that God is one; for he was addressing believers, and so he continues: yet the understanding granted only to a few is not shared by everyone. Some claim that awareness concerning food offered to idols is absent in everyone, lest our exercising it turn into an obstacle for the weak; for the weak person is ruined through your understanding. And should they claim that one is obligated to purchase whatever is sold in the meat-market, citing by way of argument the phrase "raising no question," as if it applied just as well to "raising a question," their exegesis becomes absurd. For the apostle states, "purchase everything else offered in the market, raising no question," apart from what was disclosed in the joint epistle issued by all the apostles together, by the favor of the Holy Spirit — the letter recorded within the deeds of the emissaries and delivered to believers through Paul's own service; for they proclaimed it a binding necessity to keep away from meat offered to idols, from blood, from what is strangled, and from sexual immorality, and that refraining from these they would act rightly. What the apostle states, then, is a separate matter: "Do we lack the right to take food and drink? Do we lack the right to bring along a sister as wife, as the rest of the apostles do, and the Lord's brothers, and Cephas?" "Yet we have not made use of this right," he says, "but we endure everything, so that we may place no obstacle before the good news of Christ" — whether by hauling burdens around, when a person ought to travel light for every purpose, or by setting an example for those wishing to pursue self-mastery, not encouraging them toward consuming without hesitation whatever is placed before them or taking a wife however it happens; and it is fitting above all that those entrusted with so weighty a stewardship should show themselves a spotless model for those still learning.
"Though I am free from everyone," he says, "I made myself a slave to everyone, so that I might win more," and "every competitor keeps himself disciplined in every respect"; "yet the earth belongs to the Lord, and everything filling it." For the sake of conscience, then, a person must keep away from what must be kept away from. And by conscience I mean not one's own — for that belongs to the one who possesses knowledge — but the conscience of the other, lest that person be poorly formed through imitating in ignorance what he fails to grasp, turning into a scorner rather than someone of noble character. "For why should my freedom be judged by someone else's conscience? If I share in it with gratitude, why am I denounced over something I give thanks for?" "So then, whatever you do, do it all for God's glory" — whatever falls within what faith's rule permits.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 16 ========

With the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses unto salvation. For so the scripture states: "no one whose trust rests on him will ever be disgraced." This is the message of faith that we announce—that if you acknowledge with your lips the claim that Jesus is Lord, and trust in your heart that God raised him up from among the dead, you will be rescued. This plainly describes a perfect righteousness, fulfilled both in deed and in contemplation. We ought, then, to speak well of those who harass us—to speak well, and never to curse. For this is our boasting, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and sincerity we have known God, showing forth through this small occasion the work of love, because it was not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God that we conducted ourselves in the world.
This the apostle says concerning knowledge; and the common teaching of faith he called the fragrance of knowledge in the second letter to the Corinthians. For to this very day the same veil remains upon the many at the reading of the old covenant, not being lifted by their turning to the Lord. For this reason he also pointed to a resurrection for those able to discern it, out of the life that still crawls on its belly in the flesh. Hence too he called such people offspring of vipers—the pleasure-lovers, those enslaved to belly and private parts, and those who for the sake of worldly desires cut off one another's heads. "Dear children, our love should be shown not merely in speech or with the tongue," says John, teaching that to be perfect is this, "but through action and in truth. By this we will know that we belong to the truth." And if God is love, then piety too is love; "there is no dread in love, for mature love drives dread away. This is what loving God means: keeping his commands." And again, to one who longs to become the gnostic it is written: "but be a pattern of the faithful in word, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity"; for the perfection of faith, I think, is distinguished from common faith.
And indeed the divine apostle sets forth the rule of the gnostic through such sayings as these—writing on the one hand: "for I have learned to be satisfied whatever my circumstances. I know what it is to go without, and I know what it is to have plenty; in every situation, in all of them, I have grasped the secret—whether well-fed or hungry, whether prosperous or lacking; I can manage anything through the one who gives me strength"; and on the other hand, speaking to others so as to shame them, he does not hesitate to say: "but call to remembrance the former days, in which, after you were enlightened, you endured a great struggle of sufferings, in part being made a spectacle by reproaches and afflictions, and in part becoming companions of those so treated. For you had compassion on my bonds, and accepted with joy the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you have for yourselves a better and abiding possession. Cast not away therefore your confidence, which has great recompense of reward. For you have need of endurance, that having done the will of God you may receive the promise; for yet a very little while, he who comes will come and will not delay. My righteous one will go on living by faith; and should he draw back, my soul takes no delight in him. But we do not belong among those who draw back to their ruin—we belong among those whose faith preserves the soul."
Then he sets before you a whole swarm of divine models. "Was it not through faith," he says, "and by enduring, that they prevailed"—those who tasted mockery and whips, and beyond that, chains and prison? They were stoned, put to the test, cut down by the sword, wandering about clothed in sheepskin and goatskin, lacking everything, mistreated and oppressed—people the world did not deserve—roaming through deserts, mountains, caves, and holes in the ground. "And all of these, though faith won them a good report, did not obtain what God had promised." It remains to understand what is said by way of silent implication: alone.
He goes on, then, to add: "since God had planned in advance something more excellent for our sake"—for he was generous—"so that they would not reach fulfillment without us." Therefore, given that so vast and luminous a company of witnesses surrounds us, let us throw off every burden and the sin that clings to us so readily, and run with patience the contest laid out ahead of us, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the founder and finisher of our faith. That he means one identical salvation in Christ for the righteous of former times and for ourselves, he has already stated plainly; and just as clearly he adds this concerning Moses: "judging the disgrace borne for Christ to be wealth greater than Egypt's treasures; for he fixed his gaze on the reward to come; through faith he departed from Egypt, unafraid of the king's fury, for he held firm as one who sees the unseen one." Divine Wisdom speaks concerning the martyrs: "to foolish eyes they appeared to have perished, their leaving was reckoned a misfortune, and their passing from among us a ruin; yet they dwell in peace. For even though in the estimation of men they suffer punishment, their hope brims with immortality."
Then it adds, teaching that martyrdom is a glorious purification: "and having undergone brief discipline, they will reap great benefit, for God tested them and found them deserving of himself"—that is, he permitted them to be tried for the proving and confounding of the tempter, and found them deserving of himself, that is, in plain terms, fit to be named children. "He put them through fire like gold, and welcomed them as a complete burnt sacrifice offered whole. And when the moment of their visitation comes, they will blaze forth and dart about like sparks through dry stalks. They will pass judgment on nations and hold sway over peoples, and their Lord shall rule them for all ages."

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 17 ========

Yes indeed, in the letter to the Corinthians the apostle Clement, he too, sketching for us a kind of type of the Gnostic, says: "For which visitor ever stayed among your people without putting your all-virtuous and steadfast faith to the test? Who did not marvel at your sober and reasonable piety in Christ? Who did not proclaim the magnificent character of your hospitality? Who did not bless your perfect and secure knowledge? For you did everything free of favoritism, following God's own statutes as your rule," and so on. Then more plainly: "Let us therefore fix our gaze on those who have perfectly ministered to his surpassing splendor. Consider Enoch: found righteous through obedience, he was carried off out of this life; consider Noah, who trusted and so was rescued; consider Abraham, named friend of God for his faith and his welcome of strangers, and called father of Isaac besides. On account of welcome given to strangers and reverence, Lot escaped Sodom unharmed; on account of faith and the welcome she gave strangers, Rahab the harlot was kept safe; on account of endurance joined with faith, wrapped in goatskins and sheepskins and woven camel's hair, they wandered about heralding the kingdom of Christ" — he means Elijah and Elisha, and Ezekiel and John, the prophets.
For the friend of God, Abraham, called on account of a free faith, was not puffed up by his glory, but said with moderate feeling: "I am earth and ashes." And concerning Job it is written thus: "Now Job was righteous and blameless, true and godly, abstaining from every evil." This man, who conquered the tempter through endurance and both bore witness and was borne witness to by God, clings to lowliness of mind and says: "No one is clean from defilement, not even if his life is but a single day." Moses, the faithful servant in all his house, said to the one addressing him from the bush: "Who am I, that you send me? I am feeble of speech and slow of tongue," to minister the voice of the Lord through a human tongue. And again: "I am a vapor from a pot." For God sets himself against the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Yes, and David too, of whom the Lord, bearing witness, declares: "I have discovered a man suited to my own heart, David, Jesse's son; with sacred oil have I anointed him." Yet he himself says to God: "Show me mercy, O God, in keeping with your abundant mercy, and by your many compassions wipe away my offense. Scrub me still further clean of my lawlessness, and purify me from my failing; for my lawlessness stands known to me, and my failing confronts me continually." Then, hinting at the sin that falls outside the law, moderating his feeling in a Gnostic manner, he adds: "It is against you alone that I have failed, doing what is displeasing in your sight." For scripture says somewhere: "The Lord's breath is a torch that searches out the innermost recesses of the belly," and the more one who practices righteousness becomes possessed of knowledge, the more closely does that luminous breath attend to him. So it is that the Lord comes close to the just, and not one of the schemes and calculations we devise slips past him — I mean the Lord Jesus, who by the almighty will is overseer of our heart, whose blood was consecrated on our behalf.
Let us therefore respect those who lead us and hold them in reverence; let us honor our elders, let us guide the young into training under God. For blessed is he who teaches and carries out the Lord's business as it deserves; that belongs to a mind of magnanimity and to one that contemplates the truth. Let us correct our women toward what is good; let them display, it says, the lovable character of chastity; let them show forth the pure resolve of their gentleness; let them make manifest through their silence the reasonableness of their tongue; let them extend their love not according to partial preferences, but equally and piously toward all who stand in reverence of God. Let our little ones have a portion in the discipline that belongs to Christ; let them learn what power lowliness of mind has with God, what pure love can accomplish with God, how good and great a thing reverence for the Lord is, saving all who conduct themselves in it piously with a pure heart. For he examines every thought and hidden calculation, he whose breath is within us, and whenever he wishes, he withdraws it.
All these things the faith that is in Christ confirms. "Come, children," says the Lord, "listen to me, and I shall instruct you in reverence toward the Lord. Who among you desires life, and longs for good days?" Then he adds a Gnostic mystery of the week and the eighth day: "Hold your tongue back from evil and your lips from uttering deceit; step away from wrong and pursue what is good, chase after peace and run it down." For through these words he hints at knowledge, teaching that one is perfected both by abstaining from evils and by the exercise of good deeds, both in deed and in word. "The Lord's eyes rest on the just, and his attention is turned toward their plea; yet the Lord sets his face against those who commit evil, wiping out all memory of them from the earth."
"The just man called out, and the Lord listened, and rescued him from every one of his troubles." "Numerous are the sinner's blows, but mercy shall wrap around those who set their hope on the Lord." He says that the one who hopes genuinely is encompassed by an abundance of mercy; for it is written in the letter to the Corinthians: "Through Jesus Christ our dull and shadowed understanding puts forth new growth into the light. Through him the Master willed that we should taste of immortal knowledge." And displaying more explicitly the distinguishing mark of knowledge, he adds: "Since, then, these matters lie plain before us already, and we have bent down into that deep well of divine understanding, it is our duty to carry out everything methodically, whatever the Master has directed us to accomplish, each at its proper season. As for the one who is wise, let him give proof of it not merely through speech, but through good deeds; let the lowly-minded refrain from testifying about himself, and instead let another give that testimony on his behalf; let the one pure in flesh not boast of it, aware that self-control was supplied to him by someone other than himself. Consider, brothers, that the greater the knowledge we have been counted worthy to receive, the greater also is the danger to which we are exposed."

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 18 ========

The solemn and pure conduct of our love of humanity, according to Clement, seeks what is of common benefit, whether it bears witness or whether it also teaches, by deed and by word — and this in two modes, one unspoken and one set down in writing. Loving God and one's neighbor: that is what love means. This leads up to the height that cannot be told. "Love covers a multitude of sins"; love endures all things, is patient in all things; love binds us to God, does everything in concord; in love all the elect of God were made perfect; apart from love nothing is pleasing to God. "Of its perfection," he says, "there is no explaining." Who has the capacity for it, apart from those whom God himself judges worthy? Even the apostle Paul says, "if I give up my body" — but do not have love, "I am sounding brass and a clanging cymbal"; unless it be from a chosen disposition, through knowing love, that I bear witness, he says, and not out of fear.
For if I confess the Lord for the sake of a hoped-for reward, applauding with my lips in testimony to the Lord, I am a common man, one who echoes the Lord's name without knowing him. For there is a people who love with their lips, and there is another who hands over the body, that it may be burned. "And though I dole out all my possessions," he says, if this is not done according to the reasoning of loving communion, but according to the reasoning of repayment — either from the man benefited or from the Lord who has made the promise; and "though I have all faith, so as to move mountains" and cast off the passions that darken the mind, yet am not made faithful to the Lord through love, I am nothing — as compared with the one who bears witness with knowledge, being reckoned as no different from the crowd, the merely numerous. All the generations from Adam to this present day have passed away; but those made perfect in love, according to God's own grace, occupy the rank of the devout, who will be revealed when Christ's kingdom holds its oversight.
Love does not permit sinning; but if one falls unwillingly into some such circumstance through the incursions of the adversary, imitating David he will sing a psalm: "I will give thanks to the Lord, and it will please him more than a young calf that sprouts horns and cloven hoofs. Let the poor see and rejoice." For he says elsewhere: "Offer to God a sacrifice of praise, and render to the Lord your vows; then call on me in your day of trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will honor me"; "for the sacrifice pleasing to God is a spirit crushed with sorrow." Love, then, is what God himself is called, being good. He whose love does no wrong to his neighbor — neither doing injustice nor returning injustice ever, but doing good to all alike, in keeping with the likeness of God. Love, therefore, brings the law to its completion, exactly as Christ does — that is, the coming-near of the Lord who holds us dear, together with our love-formed teaching and way of living after the pattern of Christ. By love, then, not committing adultery and not desiring one's neighbor's wife are brought to completion — what fear had earlier only restrained. For the same deed differs according to whether it comes about through fear or is accomplished through love, and whether it is worked either through faith or, indeed, with knowledge.
Fittingly, then, their prizes also differ: for the one with knowledge there has been prepared what "eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man"; but to the one who has simply believed he promises a hundredfold of what he has left behind — a promise that happens to fall within the comprehension of ordinary men.
Having come to this point, I was reminded of a certain man who called himself a knower. For in explaining "but I say to you, whoever has looked at a woman with desire has already committed adultery with her," he did not think that the desire alone, taken bare, ought to be judged, but only if, alongside the desire, the deed corresponding to it, going further than the desire, is actually accomplished within it; for if it happens as in a dream, in the imagination only, the body has already been made complicit as well.
Now those who have compiled the histories tell the following judgment of Bocchoris the just. A young man in love with a courtesan persuades the girl, for an agreed fee, to come to him on the following day. But his desire, running ahead in a dream, having been satisfied with the girl beyond hope, when she arrived at the appointed time he shuts her out from entering; and she, learning what had happened, demanded her fee, saying that in this way she herself had fulfilled the lover's desire. So they came before the judge. He, having ordered the young man to hold out the purse of the fee — but in the sunlight — commanded the courtesan to take hold of its shadow, wittily ordering that the phantom of the fee be given in payment for a phantom embrace.
Now a man dreams when the soul has given its assent to the mere image; but he who looks with desire dreams even while awake — not only, as that so-called "knower" was saying, if together with the sight of the woman he grasps in his mind the act of intercourse (for this already is the work of desire as desire), but also if a man looks upon beauty of body, the reasoning goes, and the flesh itself seems to him beautiful according to desire, having looked upon it fleshly and sinfully — by this very thing that he has admired, he is judged. For, on the contrary, the one who looks with pure love regards the beauty not as belonging to the flesh, but considers the soul beautiful, admiring the body, I think, as one admires a statue, through whose beauty he sends himself onward to the craftsman and to that which is truly beautiful, displaying, as a holy token, the luminous mark of righteousness to the angels stationed along the ascent — I mean the anointing of well-pleasingness, the quality of disposition resting upon the soul, made radiant through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.
This glory that shone upon the face of Moses the people were not able to look upon; therefore he also took a veil over the glory, for the sake of those who beheld it in a fleshly way. For those who bring along with them something of the worldly, those who demand the fee hold fast, weighed down by their own passions; but the one who is stripped of what pertains to that fee, yet full of knowledge and of the righteousness that comes from works, they escort onward with joint prayers, having pronounced the man blessed together with his work; and "his foliage will never wither" — the foliage of the tree of life, fed by the streams of water; and the righteous man is likened to fruit-bearing trees, and not only to those offered in the sacrifice of high places; and there were also, in the bringing of the sacrifices under the law, inspectors of the blemishes of the victims. Those skilled in these matters distinguish appetite from desire, and they class the one directed toward pleasures and licentiousness as irrational, while the appetite directed toward the necessities according to nature they hold to be a rational movement.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 19 ========

This perfection is attainable equally by a man and by a woman alike. To begin with, Moses was not the only one who, hearing from God, "I have addressed you twice already and more," heard him say, "This nation—look how obstinate they are; let me wipe them out, and I will erase their memory from beneath the sky, and I will build from you a people greater and more astonishing, far surpassing this one" — Moses answers with a plea, regarding not his private good but the salvation held in common: "Not so, Lord; either pardon this people their offense, or else strike my own name from the scroll of the living." What a mark of perfection, to have preferred perishing alongside the nation over being spared by himself! But Judith too, brought to perfection among women, when her city lay under blockade, having won over the elders, went forth into the enemy camp, despising every peril, handing herself over for her homeland to the foe out of trust in God; and straightway she won the prize of her faith, having shown herself the finest of women arrayed against faith's foe, becoming captor of Holofernes's severed head.
Again, Esther, made perfect in faith, rescued Israel from a despot's grip and the cruelty of his satrap; a lone woman, worn thin by fasting, she stood arrayed against countless armed men and unraveled a tyrant's decree through faith; indeed she subdued the one, restrained Haman, and kept Israel safe by her flawless entreaty before God. As for Susanna and the sibling of Moses, I leave their stories aside here — how the latter campaigned as it were beside the prophet, foremost among all women famed for wisdom among the Hebrews, while the former, brought to the brink of death by her excess of modesty though her lecherous accusers condemned her, stood firm as an unyielding witness to chastity.
Indeed, Dio the philosopher records that a certain woman Lysidice, out of an excess of modesty, bathed in her tunic itself, while Philotera, whenever she was about to step into the tub, quietly drew up her tunic only so far as the water covered her nakedness, and then, rising a little at a time, put it back on again. And did not Leaena the Athenian also bear tortures manfully? She, being privy along with the circle of Harmodius and Aristogeiton to the plot against Hipparchus, though racked most severely, did not betray it in the slightest. They also say that the women of Argos, led by Telesilla the poetess, appearing armed for war merely turned back the valiant Spartans, and thereby won for themselves fearlessness of death. The author of the Danaid says similar things concerning the daughters of Danaus, thus: "And then the daughters of Danaus armed themselves swiftly, before the fair-flowing river Nile, its lord" —
and so on. The rest of the poets sing of the swiftness of Atalanta in the hunt, and the tender love of Anticleia, and the devotion of Alcestis to her husband, and the courage of Macaria and of the daughters of Hyacinthus. What then? Did not Theano the Pythagorean advance so far in philosophy that, to one who gazed at her arm too curiously and remarked, "A fair forearm," she replied, "but not public"? Of the same gravity is reported also that saying of hers: for being asked how many days after being with her husband a woman may go down to the Thesmophorion, she said, "From her own, at once; from another's, never." And indeed Themisto, daughter of Zoilus, the Lampsacene, wife of Leonteus of Lampsacus, practiced Epicurean philosophy, just as Myia, daughter of Theano, practiced the Pythagorean, and Arignote, who wrote on the mysteries of Dionysus. For the daughters of Diodorus, surnamed Cronus, all became skilled in dialectic, as Philo the dialectician says in his Menexenus, where he sets down their names as follows: Menexene, Argeia, Theognis, Artemisia, Pantakleia. I recall too a certain Cynic woman, called Hipparchia, the Maronite, wife of Crates, in whose honor also the "dog-marriage" was celebrated in the Painted Stoa.
Arete, daughter of Aristippus of Cyrene, educated the Aristippus surnamed "Mother-taught." Under Plato there also studied philosophy Lasthenia of Arcadia and Axiothea of Phlius; and as for Aspasia of Miletus, about whom the comic poets write a great deal, Socrates profited from her toward philosophy, and Pericles toward rhetoric. I pass over the rest, then, given how long this discourse is already running, without listing the poetesses — Corinna and Telesilla and Myia and Sappho — nor the women painters, such as Eirene the daughter of Cratinus and Anaxandra the daughter of Nealces, whom Didymus mentions in his Symposiaca.
And the daughter of Cleobulus the sage, who was monarch of the Lindians, felt no shame in bathing the feet of the guests who came to her father's house; since Sarah too, the blessed wife of Abraham, herself prepared the cakes baked in ashes for the angels, and royal maidens among the Hebrews tended sheep — whence also Nausicaa in Homer went to the washing-troughs.
The temperate woman, then, would choose first of all to persuade her husband to become a partner with her in the things that lead to happiness; but if this proves impossible, let her press on toward virtue alone. She should be obedient to her husband in all things, so as never to do anything against his will, except in matters that are held to bear on virtue and salvation. But moreover, if anyone should hinder a wife or even a household servant, moved without pretense toward such a disposition, such a man plainly does nothing else in doing so than choosing to lead her away from righteousness and temperance, while at the same time contriving to make his own household unjust and licentious.
It is therefore not possible for either a man or a woman to become distinguished in anything whatsoever without applying to it learning, practice, and training; and virtue, we say, lies in nothing else so much as in what depends on ourselves. Now other things one may be hindered in by an opponent, but that which depends on ourselves can in no way be hindered, however strongly one might resist; for it is a gift given by God, and does not fall subject to anyone else. Hence licentiousness would be judged to be the evil of no one else but the one who is licentious, while temperance in turn is the good of the one who is capable of being temperate.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 20 ========

Euripides, giving counsel, describes the husband-loving wife with dignity: "She must seem to speak well whenever she says anything, and even when she says nothing, she must labor to do what will please the one she lives with, as though she were about to say it." And again elsewhere he says things like these: "It is sweet, if her husband fares badly in something, for the wife to share his gloom, and to have a common portion of both grief and pleasure." And showing her gentleness and affection in this way, he adds, even concerning misfortunes: "For you, even when you are sick, I will endure being sick with you, and I will bear the burden of your troubles, and no part of it feels harsh to me; for among those we love, both fortune and misfortune ought to be held in common; for what else, indeed, is love but this?"
Marriage, then, is sanctified when it is brought to completion according to reason, if the union submits itself to God and is governed with a true heart in the full assurance of faith, the hearts sprinkled clean from a guilty conscience and the flesh rinsed in unsullied water, while holding without wavering to the hope we profess; for the one who made the promise can be trusted. A happy marriage must be judged neither by wealth nor ever by beauty, but by virtue. "Beauty," says tragedy, "has profited no wife in her union with her husband, but virtue has profited many; for every good woman who is joined to a husband knows how to be self-controlled." Then, as though giving counsel, it says: "This holds true above all: even if her husband is ill-formed, he must seem to be well-formed to a woman who possesses understanding. For it is not the eye that judges, but the mind that sees" — and so on in that vein. For Scripture very properly said that the woman was given to the man by God as a helper.
It is clear, then, I think, that she will choose to remedy by reason, with persuasion, each of the painful things that befall her from her husband in the management of the household; but if he will not listen, then she will already try, so far as is possible for human nature, to keep her conduct free of sin, no matter whether reason demands death or permits life, regarding God as her helper and partner in such conduct — him who is truly her champion and savior, now and in the age to come, having made him the general and leader of every action, considering self-control and righteousness her task, and making what is pleasing to God her end.
Gracefully, then, in the letter to Titus the apostle says that the older women must be reverent in bearing, not slanderers, not enslaved to much wine, so that they may train the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be self-controlled, chaste, keepers of the household, good, submissive to their own husbands, so that the word of God may not be blasphemed. Rather, he says, pursue peace with all, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord, watching that no one be a fornicator or profane like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal, and that no root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and through it the many be defiled.
Then, placing as it were a capstone on the question of marriage, he adds: "Marriage is honorable among all, and the marriage bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge." Since, then, one aim and one end has been shown for husband and wife alike, as to what is the perfect thing, Peter says in his letter: "Though now for a little while, if it must be, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the proven genuineness of your faith, much more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to bring praise and splendor when Jesus Christ is revealed; him you love though you have not seen him, and in him, though you do not now behold him, you believe and exult with a joy beyond words and full of splendor, carrying off as the reward of that faith the rescue of your souls." Therefore Paul too boasts that for the sake of Christ he has come to be in labors more abundantly, in beatings exceedingly, in near-deaths often.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 21 ========

Here I find "the perfect" understood in many ways, according to a person achieving right conduct in each particular virtue. Thus one is perfected as reverent, another as steadfast, another as self-controlled, another as a worker, another as a martyr, another as a knower (gnostic); but perfect in all things together — I do not know if any human being, still being human, has been, except only him who for our sake put on humanity. And yet even according to the bare law someone might be perfect, one who professes abstinence from evils; and this is a road leading both to the gospel and to good works. But the perfecting of the man under the law is the knowing reception of the gospel, so that he who is perfect according to the law may come to be; for so Moses, who spoke according to the law, prophesied beforehand that we must hear, so that, in the apostle's own phrase, we could welcome Christ as the law's fulfillment. But in the gospel the knower already makes progress, not using the law merely as a stepping-stone, but grasping and understanding it just as the Lord, giver of the covenants, passed it down to the apostles. And if he should also conduct his life rightly — since it is impossible for knowledge to be followed by base conduct — and should become a martyr among these things, having most rightly confessed out of love, thereby receiving a greater worth as reckoned among men, not even so will he attain to being called perfect while still in the flesh, since this title has already been claimed by the completion of one's life, once the knowing martyr has already succeeded in demonstrating and properly presenting the perfect work through knowing love, his blood having been offered in thanksgiving and his spirit sent forth.
And blessed would he be from this point on, and rightly proclaimed perfect, so that the surpassing greatness of the power may be God's and not from us, as the apostle says: let us only preserve our free choice and our love, being afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. For it is necessary, according to the same apostle, that those hastening toward completion give no occasion for stumbling in anything, but commend themselves in everything, not to men, but to God. And let obedience to men also follow as a consequence, for this too is reasonable on account of the slanders that assail us. And this commendation consists in much endurance, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in beatings, in imprisonments, in disorders, in labors, in sleepless nights, in fastings, in purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in unfeigned love, in truthful speech, in the power that belongs to God, so that we may be temples of God, cleansed from every defilement of flesh and spirit. And, as he puts it, I shall welcome you and become a father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, declares the Lord Almighty. Let us therefore, he says, perfect holiness in the fear of God. For even if fear produces grief, I rejoice, he says, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved unto repentance; for you were grieved according to God, so that you might suffer loss in nothing on our account. For grief according to God produces repentance leading to salvation without regret, but the grief of the world produces death. For behold, this very thing, that you were grieved according to God, what earnestness it produced in you — nay, what defense, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what vindication! In everything you have shown yourselves to be pure in the matter.
These are the preliminary exercises of the knowing discipline. But since the Almighty God himself gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until, together, we arrive at oneness of faith and at full knowledge of God's Son — at mature manhood, at a measure matching the fullness and stature of Christ — one must hasten to become fully mature and to be perfected in a knowing way, especially while still remaining in the flesh, having from that point trained oneself, out of perfect like-mindedness, to run together with the will of God toward the restoration of a truly perfect nobility and kinship, unto the fullness of Christ that is completely fitted together from this process of equipping. We can already see clearly in what respect and how and when the divine apostle speaks of the perfect man, and how he indicates distinctions among the perfect. Again, in turn, to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable. For to one is given through the Spirit a word of wisdom, to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the same Spirit, to another workings of powers, to another the prophetic gift, to another the power of discerning spirits, to another kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues; yet one identical Spirit produces all of these, apportioning to each person individually according to its choosing.
This being so, the prophets are perfect in prophecy, the righteous in righteousness, and the martyrs in confession, and others in preaching — not without a share in the virtues held in common, but achieving right conduct in that to which they were assigned. For who in his right mind would say that the prophet is not righteous? What then? Did not the righteous, like Abraham, also prophesy? For to one man God gave deeds of war, to another dance, to another the lyre and song — as Homer says. But each one has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that; while the apostles were filled in all things.
You will find, then, if you wish, from their deeds and their writings, their knowledge, their manner of life, their preaching, their righteousness, their purity, their prophecy. One must know, however, that even though Paul is young in point of time, having come to his prime immediately after the Lord's ascension, nevertheless his scripture is derived from the old covenant, breathing and speaking from that source; since trust in Christ, joined to grasping the gospel, constitutes the law's own interpretation and completion. And for this reason it was said to the Hebrews: unless you trust, you will lack understanding — meaning that unless you trust what the law foretold and decreed, the old covenant will stay closed to your understanding, that covenant which he himself unlocked through his own coming.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 22 ========

This, then — the man of understanding and clear sight — is the Gnostic. His work is not abstinence from evils (for that is but the stepping-stone of the greatest progress), nor indeed doing some good thing out of fear (for it is written: "Where might I run, where could I conceal myself out of your sight? Should I climb up to heaven, you are already present; should I travel to the far edge of the sea, your mighty hand rests there too; should I descend to the deep places, your spirit is there also"), nor yet for hope of promised honor (for it is said: "See, the Lord comes, bringing his reward before him, repaying each man according to his deeds — things no eye has beheld, no ear has caught, things never arising within a human heart, which God has made ready for those who cherish him") — but for the Gnostic the only well-doing that is worthy of choice is that done through love, chosen for the sake of the good itself.
Thus God spoke to the Lord, saying: "Request it of me, and I will grant you the nations as your possession" — teaching the most kingly of requests, that the salvation of men be asked without a fee, so that we might inherit and gain possession of the Lord. For to seek after the knowledge of God for the sake of some need — that this happen to me and that not happen — is not the mark of a Gnostic; for him the ground of contemplation is knowledge itself. Indeed I would dare to say that the one who pursues knowledge for the sake of the divine understanding itself will not choose knowledge because he wishes to be saved; for understanding, through practice, extends into perpetual understanding, and perpetual understanding, becoming the very substance of the one who knows through an undivided blending, remains an eternal contemplation, a living reality. If, then, one were to propose hypothetically to the Gnostic which he would rather choose — the knowledge of God, or eternal salvation — supposing these to be separated (though in fact they are, more than anything, one and the same), he would without the slightest hesitation choose the knowledge of God, judging that this — the property that rises above faith into knowledge through love — is worthy of choice for its own sake.
This, then, is the first well-doing of the perfect man: when it comes about not for the sake of some need bearing upon himself, but because he has judged that doing good is a noble thing, and his activity, carried on unceasingly, is made good in every action — not in some cases and not in others, but having settled into a fixed disposition of well-doing, no longer for the sake of reputation or, as the philosophers say, good repute, nor for reward whether from men or even from God — he would live out his days conformed to the pattern and resemblance of the Lord. And should some adversity meet him as he does good, he will render his response as good, holding no grudge, proving just and good toward just and unjust alike. To such men the Lord says: "Become as your Father is perfect." For this man the flesh has died, and he alone truly lives, having made the tomb sacred as a shrine set apart for the Lord, having redirected the soul that once sinned, back toward God.
This man is no longer merely self-controlled, but has come into a settled state of freedom from passion, awaiting only to put on the divine form. "When you give alms," it says, "let no one else be aware of it, and when you fast, anoint your head," so that only God knows of it, and no other person — indeed, not even the merciful man himself should be conscious that he is showing mercy; otherwise he would be kind at one moment and not the next. But when he carries out his benevolent work as a settled condition, he will mirror the nature of the good; and his disposition will become both nature and ingrained habit. One must not be swept up and carried across in an instant, but must reach the goal on foot, traversing the entire narrow path; for this is precisely what being drawn onward by the Father means — arriving at a state fit to accept the strength of grace granted by God, and pressing ahead freely. And if some hate the elect one, he knows their ignorance, pitying the folly of their judgment.
Fittingly, then, this knowledge loves even those who are ignorant, and teaches and trains all creation to honor the almighty God. And if it has learned to love God, it will in no way have virtue as something it can cast off, neither waking nor in dream nor in any fantasy at all; since a fixed state never departs from itself and ceases to be a fixed state, whether one should call knowledge a fixed state or a disposition. For because no differing notions ever intrude, the governing faculty, remaining unaltered, admits no variation of fancies, dreaming up no phantom-images arising from the motions of the day. For this reason the Lord commands us to be watchful, so that not even in dream should our soul ever suffer passion, but he commands us to keep even the conduct of the night, carried on as though in the day, pure and unstained. For this is likeness to God so far as possible — to keep the mind in a constant, unchanging condition; and this is the condition of mind as mind, whereas the varied disposition arises from attachment to material things.
For this reason it seems to me that men have called the night "euphrone" (the kindly time of good sense), since it is then that the soul, having ceased from the senses, turns inward upon itself and partakes more fully of understanding. For this reason too the mystery rites take place chiefly by night, signifying that the soul's departure from the body happens during the night. Let us therefore not slumber as others do, but stay alert and clear-headed. Sleepers sleep at night, and drunkards get drunk at night; instead let us, belonging to the day, remain clear-headed, clothed in the breastplate made of faith and love, wearing as a helmet the hope of salvation.
And whatever is said about sleep must be understood likewise concerning death. For each one discloses the soul's exit, one to a greater degree, the other to a lesser — a point one might likewise draw from Heraclitus: "A man in the kindly dark kindles a light for himself, his sight having died out, extinguished; living, he brushes against the dead while he sleeps, his eyesight put out; and waking, he brushes against the one who sleeps." Blessed indeed are those who grasp the moment, as the apostle states, "that the hour has now come for you to wake out of sleep; for our deliverance is now closer than it was when we first believed. The night is nearly over, day is approaching. Let us therefore throw off the deeds of darkness, and put on the weapons of light." And he allegorizes the Son as day and light, and the commandments, by metaphor, as the armor of light. This is why they say one must go washed to the sacred rites and to prayers, pure and radiant —
and this outward adornment and purification happens for the sake of a symbol, whereas true purity is to think holy thoughts; and indeed the image of baptism would also be that handed down from Moses to the poets, in some such way as this: "she, having washed herself, having garments clean upon her skin," namely Penelope, approaches to make her petition; and Telemachus, "having rinsed his hands in the gray sea," offers prayer to Athena. This is a custom of the Jews, as also the frequent washing at the bed. And well was that also said: "be pure not by washing, but in mind." For purity, I think, is complete when it belongs to the mind and to works and to thoughts, and further to sincerity of words, and last of all, freedom from sin even in one's dreams.
Sufficient, I think, for man's cleansing is exact and firm repentance, if indeed, having condemned ourselves for our former deeds, we press forward, having afterward come to understanding and having emerged in mind both from the pleasures of the senses and from our earlier transgressions. If, then, one ought to give an etymology of "understanding" (epistēmē), and one should take its meaning from "standing" (stasis), since it makes our soul stand firm amid affairs, whereas before it was carried now this way, now that — likewise "faith" (pistis) should be given its etymology from the standing (stasis) of our soul with regard to what truly is. But we desire to learn of the man who is just always and in all things, who remains just neither fearing the punishment that comes from the law, nor cautious of the hatred of wrongdoing shown by those who are present and who prosecute offenses, nor suspecting the danger arising from the wronged themselves; for the one who abstains from doing any unjust act for these reasons is not willingly upright, but is good out of fear. And indeed Epicurus says that the wise man, according to his teaching, does not wish to do wrong even for some gain; for he cannot gain assurance that he will escape notice. So that if he should be persuaded he would escape notice, he would, on Epicurus's own principle, do wrong.
Such, then, are these dark doctrines. But if one abstains from wrongdoing also out of hope for the recompense that comes from God upon the just, this man too is not willingly upright; for just as fear makes the former just, so reward makes this one just — or rather, shows him merely to seem to be just. But the hope that comes after death is known not only by those who follow the wisdom of the barbarians, as fair for the good and, conversely, ill for the base, but also by the Pythagoreans; for they too held out hope as the end for those who pursue philosophy. Indeed Socrates too, in the Phaedo, says that beautiful souls depart from here with good hope, and again, reproaching the wicked, sets against them the saying that they live with evil hope. And Heraclitus too appears to agree with this, in the words where he speaks concerning men: "there await men after death things they do not expect nor imagine."
Divinely, then, does Paul write plainly to the Romans: "Affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proof, and proof, hope, and hope does not put to shame." For endurance exists for the sake of the hope to come; and "hope" is used equally of the fulfillment and restoration of that hope, which likewise does not put to shame, no longer being reproached. But the man who obeys the bare call simply because he has been called does not press on toward knowledge either out of fear or out of pleasures; for he does not look about to see whether some profitable gain or enjoyment from outside follows for him, but, drawn by love of him who truly is the beloved, and led toward what is fitting, he worships God.
Hence not even if, by hypothesis, he should receive from God the power to do the forbidden things and go unpunished, nor even if he should further receive the promise that he would get as reward the good things of the blessed for these acts — no, not even if he should be persuaded that he would escape God's notice in what he does (which is impossible) — would he ever wish to do anything contrary to right reason, having once for all chosen that the truly noble and worthy of choice is so of itself, and for this reason lovable. For we have not defined what is good as consisting in the belly's feeding. And that man has heard that food will not commend us to God, nor indeed marriage, nor yet abstinence from marriage practiced in ignorance, but the work in accordance with virtue that is the Gnostic's own — since even a dog, an irrational animal, might be said to be "continent," fearing the one who raises the stick against it and for this reason abstaining from the food. Know well that of such men, once the promise formerly held out is taken away, and the threatened fear is removed, and the looming danger is separated from them, their true purpose stands exposed.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 23 ========

For they do not attach themselves to the very nature of the matter so as to grasp with true knowledge that all things created for our use are good — marriage, for instance, and the begetting of children, undertaken with self-control — but that it is better than the good to become, through likeness to the divine, free from passion and virtuous. Instead, being drawn by things outside that are either useful or troublesome, they abstain from some and not from others; but the very things from which they hold back they show themselves to loathe, thereby slandering creation and the Creator, and even while seeming to conduct themselves faithfully they hold an unholy judgment. But the command "you shall not desire" needs neither the compulsion born of fear, which forces abstention from pleasures, nor a wage held out by promise persuading one to check the impulses; nor is obedience for the sake of the commandment. But those who have obeyed God for the sake of a promise choose it on account of the promise, having been taken by the bait of pleasure,
nor indeed would turning away from things perceived by sense in itself bring about kinship with things perceived by mind; rather, conversely, it is the kinship with things perceived by mind that becomes, according to nature, a turning-about for the one with knowledge, away from things of sense, by his choosing the good in accordance with the selection of what is noble, knowingly — marveling at creation and hallowing its Maker, and hallowing likeness to the divine. "But I will free myself from desire," he will say, "for the sake of my kinship with you, Lord. For the order that has been created is good, and all things are well governed, nothing comes to be without cause; I must be among your own, Almighty; even while I am here, I am beside you; I wish to be delivered from every fear, so that I may draw close to you, and to be satisfied with little, practicing your just selection of the noble things from among things alike."
Most mystically and most reverently the apostle, teaching us the truly grateful choice, has shown that it is made not by a rejection of the other things as base, but as a better choice among things already noble, when he said: "So then he who gives his virgin in marriage does well, and he who does not give her in marriage does better," with a view to what is seemly and to sitting attentively by the Lord without distraction. We know that things hard to obtain are not necessary, while the necessary things have been made, out of God's love of the good, easy to obtain. For this reason Democritus says well that nature and teaching are much alike, and he has briefly given the reason as well: for teaching reshapes the man, and reshaping produces a second nature, and it makes no difference whether one is molded to be of such a kind by nature, or transformed in due course by time and learning. Both of these the Lord has furnished — the one according to creation, the other according to the re-creation and renewal that come through the covenant. And that which is advantageous to the more sovereign part is the more choiceworthy, and most sovereign of all is the understanding. Whoever, then, finds the things that are truly noble to be sweetest, procures for himself from his own resources the fruit he longs for — steadfastness of soul. "And he who listens to me," it says, "shall rest in peace, trusting, and shall be at ease without fear of any evil." "Know that you trust with your whole heart and your understanding in God." By this manner it is possible for the one with knowledge already to become god: "I said, you are gods, and sons of the Most High."
Empedocles likewise claims that wise souls are transformed into gods, putting it in words something like these: "and at the last they become seers and singers of hymns and healers and leaders among men who dwell upon the earth; from these they spring up as gods, greatest in honors."
The human being, then, is simply thus molded in outward form by the kindred spirit; for he is not fashioned without shape or figure in the workshop of nature, where the coming-to-be of man is mysteriously brought to completion, the craft and the substance being common to all; but any particular man is stamped according to the impression that comes to be in his soul from whatever he chooses. In this way we say that Adam was made perfect as regards his molding, for nothing was lacking to him of the features that mark out the form and shape of a human being. But that which he was to receive in his becoming — his perfection — and by which he was to be justified through obedience, this was the part left to be made manly, lying within his own power. And when it was he who chose the cause, and still more when he chose the very thing forbidden, God is not to blame; for coming-to-be is twofold, one belonging to things begotten, the other to things that come about.
And the courage proper to man, being one who has passions, they say, makes the one who partakes of it, in respect of its essence, fearless and unconquered, and spiritedness stands as the bodyguard of the mind in endurance and steadfastness and things of that kind; while over desire are set self-control and saving prudence. But God is without passion, without spiritedness, and without desire; and he is not fearless in the sense that he does not avoid terrors, nor self-controlled in the sense that he rules over desires; for the divine nature could not fall into anything terrible, nor does God flee cowardice, just as he will not feel desire, so as then to rule over desire. Mysteriously, then, it was also said of us, in the Pythagorean saying, that man too must become one, since the chief priest is himself singular, God likewise being one according to his unchangeable disposition of ever running toward the good.
Straightway the Savior, along with desire, did away also with spiritedness, which is a desire for revenge; for in general the passionate element belongs to every kind of desire, and the man deified into freedom from passion becomes, without stain, a thing of one nature. Just as those at sea who are held taut by an anchor draw up the anchor, yet do not draw it to themselves but rather draw themselves toward the anchor, so those who in the life of knowledge draw God to themselves, without realizing it, are themselves being drawn toward God; for he who serves God serves himself. In the contemplative life, then, a man takes care of himself by worshiping God, and through his own sincere purification beholds God, who is holy, in holiness; for self-control, conceived as standing ever present, watching over and beholding itself without ceasing, is made like to God, so far as is possible.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 24 ========

To begin with, that which is 'up to us' is that of which we are equally masters, both of it and of its opposite — as, for instance, whether to philosophize or not, and whether to believe or to disbelieve. For it is precisely because we are equally masters of each of two opposed things that what is 'up to us' is found to be possible at all. And indeed the commandments are such as can either be kept or not kept by us, and on this reasonably follow both praise and blame; while those who are punished for the sins they have committed are punished on account of those very acts alone. For what has happened has passed, nor could a thing that has happened ever become as though it had not happened. The sins committed before faith are, at any rate, remitted by the Lord — not so that they should not have happened, but as though they had not happened. Yet not even all of them, says Basilides; rather, only the involuntary ones and those committed through ignorance are remitted, as might be done by some man, though not by God, who confers so great a gift. To such a one Scripture says: 'You supposed, lawless one, that I would be like you.' But even if we are punished for voluntary sins, we are chastised not so that the deeds already done might not have been done, but because they were done. Punishment does not benefit the sinner by undoing what he has done, but toward his no longer sinning, nor indeed toward anyone else falling into similar wrongs.
Here, then, the good God disciplines for these three causes: first, that the one being disciplined may become better than himself; then, that those who can be saved through examples may be forewarned by being admonished; and third, so that the one wronged may not be held in contempt and thus liable to further wrong. And the modes of correction are two: the one instructive, the other punitive, which we have also called disciplinary. It is to be understood, however, that those who fall into sins after the washing are the ones being thus disciplined; for the sins done beforehand were remitted, but those that arise afterward are being purged away. Concerning the unbelieving it has been said that they count for no more than husks a gust scatters off the surface of the ground, or a single drop spilled out of a pail.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 25 ========

Blessed is he who has attained the learning of true inquiry, neither setting out toward the harm of his fellow citizens nor rushing into unjust deeds, but beholding the order of unaging, immortal nature — how it was composed, and where, and how. Upon such men the practice of shameful deeds never settles. Fittingly, then, Plato too says that the contemplator of the ideas shall live as a god among men; for mind is the region of the ideas, and God is mind. He has therefore called the man who contemplates the invisible God "a god living among men," and in the Sophist Socrates likewise named the Eleatic stranger, who was skilled in dialectic, a god — such gods as, "resembling strangers from foreign lands, visit the cities." For whenever a soul, rising up out of the realm of becoming, comes to be by itself and consorts with the forms, it becomes such a one as the chief speaker in the Theaetetus — already become, as it were, an angel — and shall be with Christ, being contemplative, ever looking to the will of God, in truth such a one as is "wise," while the rest "flit about like shadows"; for "the dead bury their own dead." Whence Jeremiah says: "I will fill her with the dead of earth-born men, whom my wrath has struck down."
God, then, being incapable of demonstration, is not an object of scientific knowledge; but the Son embodies wisdom, knowledge, truth, and everything else akin to these, and indeed he admits of demonstration and of discursive exposition. Now all the powers of the Spirit, becoming collectively a single thing, converge upon one and the same object, the Son; yet he is not to be comprehended under the notion proper to each single one of his powers taken separately. And indeed the Son does not come to be simply one as a bare unit, nor many as parts, but as all things being one. Hence he is also all things; for the same circle results when all the powers are rolled together and united into one.
For this reason the Word is called Alpha and Omega, of whom alone the end becomes a beginning, and comes round again to the beginning that is from above, nowhere admitting of separation. Therefore to believe "in him" and "through him" is to become a unity, being indivisibly united in him, whereas to disbelieve is to be divided and set apart and cut into pieces. For this reason the Lord speaks thus: "Every son of a foreign race who bears an uncircumcised heart and an uncircumcised body" — that is, unclean in both flesh and spirit — "shall not enter into the holy things, among the foreigners within Israel's house, except the Levites alone." And by "foreigners" he means those who have not been willing to believe, but have chosen to disbelieve.
Only those, then, who live purely are truly priests of God. For this reason, though all the tribes were circumcised, those anointings that consecrated men as chief priests, as kings, and as prophets were counted holier still. Hence he commands that they not even touch the dead, nor go in to those who have departed — not because the body is defiling, but because sin and disobedience are of the flesh, embodied and dead, and for this reason abominable. Only for a father and mother, a son and a daughter who have died, is the priest permitted to go in, because these alone are kin by flesh and seed, from whom the priest himself has also received the proximate cause of his passage into life. And even these are purified over seven days, the number by which the process of generation is completed; for on the seventh day rest is kept religiously, and on the eighth he offers the propitiatory sacrifice, as is written in Ezekiel, by which propitiation it is possible to receive the promise.
The perfect purification, I think, is the faith that comes through the law and the prophets unto the gospel; and the propitiation is the purity that comes through complete obedience, together with the laying aside of worldly things, unto the grateful rendering of the tabernacle that follows upon the soul's release. Whether, then, it be the time that is restored through the seven periods reckoned unto the highest rest, or the seven heavens, which some number by ascending stages, or the fixed region bordering upon the intelligible world that is called the ogdoad — in any case he says the Gnostic must rise up out of both generation and sin. At any rate, on the seven days sacrificial victims are offered for sins, since caution against turning aside still touches even the seventh revolution.
And Job the righteous himself says, "Naked came I forth from the womb of my mother, and naked shall I go back again" — meaning not stripped of property (that is a trivial and ordinary matter), but that the righteous man goes forth stripped of wickedness and sin and of that shadowy phantom which follows those who have lived unjustly. For this was the meaning of the saying, "Unless you turn and become as little children" — pure in flesh, holy in soul through abstinence from evil deeds — God showing that he wishes us to be such as he has also begotten us from the womb of water; for generation succeeding generation, by way of advance, seeks to make immortal, while "the lamp of the ungodly shall be put out."
Indeed, the purity of both body and soul which the Gnostic pursues, the all-wise Moses signified, employing a striking repetition, when he depicted the incorruption of both body and soul in the case of Rebecca, in something like these words: "And the virgin was fair, a virgin, and no man had known her." Now Rebecca is interpreted as meaning "God's glory," and God's glory is incorruption. This is righteousness in the true sense: not to take more than one's share in either respect, but to be wholly a consecrated temple of the Lord. Righteousness, then, is peace of life and stability, unto which the Lord dismissed her, saying, "Go in peace"; for Salem is interpreted "peace," of which our Savior is recorded as king, whom Moses calls Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God Most High, who gave the wine and the bread, the consecrated food, as a type of the eucharist. And indeed Melchizedek is interpreted "righteous king," and this is a synonym for both righteousness and peace.
Basilides supposes that Righteousness and her daughter Peace subsist as hypostases, arranged and abiding within the ogdoad.
We must now pass from the more properly physical matters to the more evident, the ethical; for the discussion of those former things will follow after the treatise now in hand. The Savior himself, then, quite simply initiates us into the mysteries, after the manner of tragedy: "seeing, he lets the seeing see," and gives the sacred rites. And should you ask, "But what form do these mysteries have for you?" you will hear again: "Things unspeakable for mortals uninitiated in Bacchic rites to know." And should someone press further to learn what sort they are, let him hear again: "It is not lawful for you to hear, yet it is worthy to be known: the rites of God hate one who practices impiety." And God is without beginning, the perfect and total beginning of all things, the maker of beginning. Insofar as he is being, he is the beginning of the realm of nature; insofar as he is the Good, of the ethical realm; and insofar again as he is mind, of the realm of reason and of judgment. Whence also the Word alone is teacher — the Son of the Father who is mind, he who instructs mankind.

======== Stromata — Book 4, Chapter 26 ========

Not without reason, therefore, do detractors of creation and disparagers of the body overlook that man was fashioned upright to gaze toward heaven, that the arrangement of the senses inclines toward understanding, and that limbs and members are suited for good ends rather than crafted for indulgence. Hence this dwelling becomes fit to house the soul -- a possession God prizes above all else -- and worthy of the Holy Spirit, according to the consecration of both body and soul together, brought to completion through the Savior's ordering hand. And truly the reciprocal linkage of the three virtues appears in one who treats the divine gnostically, in ethics, in physics, and in reason. Wisdom, after all, means understanding matters both divine and human; righteousness means harmony among the soul's several parts; holiness means devotion rendered to God. But should someone claim the flesh stands condemned, and generation along with it, appealing to Isaiah's words that every mortal is like grass, and human splendor resembles a blossom in the field -- the blossom withers, the flower drops away, yet the Lord's word endures without end -- let him hear this difficulty resolved through the spirit in Jeremiah: "And I scattered them like brushwood swept off by wind into desolation."
"This is your lot and portion of disobedience, says the Lord; since you forgot me and hoped in falsehoods, I also will uncover your rear parts upon your face, and your dishonor shall be seen, your adultery and your neighing," and so forth. For this is the flower of the grass, namely walking according to the flesh and being fleshly, according to the Apostle, being in sins. The soul has been acknowledged to be better than man's other part, and the body inferior; but the soul is not by nature good, nor again is the body by nature evil, nor indeed is that which is not good therefore straightway evil. For there are also certain intermediate things, both things preferred and things not preferred, among the things in between. It was fitting, then, that the composition of man, coming to be among perceptible things, should be constituted from things differing, but not from things opposite, namely body and soul.
Always, then, good actions, as being better, are attached to the superior part, the spiritual, while pleasure-loving and sinful actions are assigned to the inferior part, the sinning part. Straightway the soul of the wise and gnostic man, as one sojourning as a guest with the body, bears itself toward it with dignity and honor, but without attachment, inasmuch as, should the time of departure call, it will leave the tent without the least delay. "I am a sojourner on the earth," it says, "and a stranger among you." And from this Basilides has taken occasion to speak of the election as strange to the world, as being by nature supracosmic. But this is not so. For all things belong to one God, and no one could by nature be a stranger to the world, since the substance is one and God is one; but the elect man conducts himself as a stranger, knowing all things to be both possessed and not possessed.
As for what the Peripatetics wish to count as threefold goods, he makes use of these, and of the body as well, the way a traveler on a long road makes use of inns and wayside shelters, tending and adorning the place where he lodges, yet leaving the residence and its holdings, and even his use of them, behind without clinging, and follows readily whoever guides him out of life, never glancing back for any reason, offering gratitude for his stay and praising God as he departs, reaching for the dwelling above. "For we are aware that should our earthly tent-home be taken down, we possess a structure granted by God, a residence unbuilt by hands, everlasting among the heavens. Indeed we sigh here, yearning to put on over it our heavenly habitation, provided that once dressed we are not discovered bare; since our course is guided by trust rather than by seeing," so the Apostle states. "We are confident, and would sooner leave the body behind and dwell instead with God." And the word "sooner" functions comparatively, and comparison applies among things that share a likeness, as the bolder man is bolder than one merely bold, but boldest of all compared with the timid.
Whence he added, "Wherefore we are ambitious, whether present or absent, to be well-pleasing to him," that is, plainly, to the one God, by whose workmanship and making all things exist, the cosmos itself and whatever lies beyond the cosmos. I admire Epicharmus saying plainly: "Being reverent in mind, you would suffer nothing evil when you die; the spirit remains above, in heaven"; and the lyric poet singing: "But the souls of the impious fly beneath the sky, over the earth, in murderous pains, under the inescapable yokes of evils, while the souls of the reverent dwell in the heavens above, singing in hymns of the great blessed one with songs." Not, therefore, is the soul sent down here from heaven to the worse condition, for God works all things toward the better; rather it is the soul that has chosen the best life which exchanges earth for heaven, from God and righteousness.
Fittingly, then, Job, having come to share in knowledge, said, "Now I know that you are capable of all things, and nothing lies beyond your power. For who is it that tells me things I had not known, matters great and marvelous, beyond my understanding? But I made light of myself, reckoning myself as dust and ash." For the man steeped in ignorance is himself sinful and is dust and ash, whereas the one grounded in knowledge, having grown godlike to whatever extent lies within his reach, has already become spiritual and is for that reason numbered among the elect. And that Scripture applies the term "earth" to the senseless and the disobedient, Jeremiah the prophet shows plainly, speaking against Joakim and his kin: "O land, O land, listen to what the Lord speaks; record this man as one openly declared cast out."
And another prophet in turn says, "Listen, heaven, and give ear, earth," calling understanding "hearing," and "heaven" the soul of the gnostic man who has raised himself up to the vision of heaven and of things divine, and has by this become an Israelite; for conversely again he has called the one who chooses ignorance and hardness of heart "earth," and has addressed "give ear" from the organs of hearing, the ears, assigning fleshly things to those who cling to sensible things. These are they concerning whom Micah the prophet says: "Hear, you peoples, the word of the Lord, you who dwell together in griefs." And Abraham said, "By no means, Lord, you who judge the earth" -- since the one who has disbelieved the saving voice has already been judged.
And it is written also in the Kingdoms that the judgment and pronouncement of the Lord runs thus: "God hears the righteous, but he does not save the impious," because they refuse to acknowledge God; since the Almighty would never allow anything senseless to occur. What still do the heresies utter against this voice, when Scripture proclaims the Almighty a good God, and not the cause of evil and injustice, since indeed ignorance grows from not knowing, while God does nothing absurd? "For this is our God," it says, "and there is none besides him who saves"; nor indeed is there injustice with God, according to the Apostle. Still more clearly the prophet teaches through these words the counsel of God and the gnostic advancement: "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve him alone?" This he requires of you, who have the authority to choose salvation.
What, then, is the point the Pythagoreans intend when they urge that prayer be spoken aloud? It seems to me that it is not because they thought the divine unable to hear those who speak quietly, but because they wished their prayers to be just, such as no one would be ashamed to make with many people knowing of them. We, for our part, shall discuss prayer in its proper place as the discourse proceeds; but we ought to have our works crying out, as walking in the day. "Let your works shine forth." And "Behold, man, and his works before his face." "Behold God and his works." One must imitate God as far as power allows, for the gnostic. And it seems to me that the poets too address the elect among themselves as god-formed, and divine, and matched-against-gods, and like Zeus in counsel, and equal to the gods, and god-like, nibbling around the phrase "according to the image and likeness."
Euripides, then, says, "Golden wings indeed are fitted about my back," and he fastens on the beautiful winged sandals worn by the Sirens, and declares, "I will rise, borne aloft through the wide upper air, to keep company with Zeus." But I would pray that the spirit of Christ wing me to my own Jerusalem. For the Stoics also say that heaven, properly speaking, is a city, but the things here on earth are no longer cities; for they are so called, but are not; for a city, and a people, is a refined system and multitude of men administered by law, just as the church is administered by the Word -- a city unbesieged, untyrannized, on earth, the divine will done on earth just as in heaven. Depictions of this city are likewise fashioned by the poets in their verses: for the cities of the Hyperboreans and Arimaspians, and the Elysian Fields, are the polities of the righteous; and we know also Plato's city, laid down as a pattern in heaven.

======== Stromata — Book 5, Chapter 1 ========

So much on the gnostic, then, as a running sketch; let us now move on to what follows, and treat again of faith. For there are those who mark off our faith as concerning the Son, and knowledge as concerning the Father. But it has escaped them that one must truly believe in the Son—that he is truly a Son, that he arrived, in what manner and for what cause, and about his suffering—while it is necessary also to know who the Son of God is. Indeed, knowledge apart from faith does not exist, nor faith apart from knowledge, nor indeed the Father apart from the Son; for at the same instant that one is a father, he is father of a son, and the Son is the true teacher concerning the Father. And in order that one may believe in the Son, one must know the Father, toward whom the Son also points; and again, in order that we may come to know the Father, we must believe the Son, because it is God's own Son who instructs us. For out of faith we arrive at knowledge, and through the Son to the Father; and the knowledge of Son and Father, according to the gnostic canon that is truly gnostic, is an apprehension and comprehension of truth by means of truth. We, then, are the ones who are faithful in what is disbelieved and gnostic in what is unknown—that is, in what remains unknown and is doubted by everyone, yet is trusted and recognized by only a handful, we are the gnostics; and gnostics not in word, merely inscribing deeds, but by contemplation itself.
Blessed is he who speaks into the ears of those who hear; and faith is the ears of the soul, and it is this faith the Lord hints at when he says, "Let the one who has ears for hearing pay heed"—in order that, having believed, one may understand what he says, in the way he says it. And indeed Homer too, eldest of the poets, when speaking of perceiving by hearing, using the specific in place of the general, writes especially "they themselves heard well"; for the whole concord and harmony of the faith of both parties comes together to a single end—salvation. Our unerring witness is the apostle, who says: "For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, to the end that you may be established"—that is, that we may be mutually comforted among you, through the faith that is in one another, both yours and mine. And again, going on a little further, he adds: "For in it God's righteousness stands revealed, out of faith unto faith." The apostle, then, appears to be proclaiming a twofold faith, or rather one faith capable of increase and completion; for the shared faith serves as a foundation (indeed to those who longed to be healed and moved in faith the Lord would say, "Your faith has saved you"), while the special faith, being built up upon it, is brought to completion in the believer and is likewise perfected together with that faith which comes from instruction and from fulfilling the commandments of the Word—such as the apostles were, of whom it is said that their faith was able to move mountains and transplant trees.
Hence, perceiving the greatness of this power, they asked that faith be added to them—faith like a grain of mustard seed, which usefully bites into the soul and grows within it to a great size, so that upon it the accounts of lofty matters may find their rest. For if someone knows God by nature, as Basilides supposes, calling the special understanding faith at once also a kingdom and a fair creation—†being worthy of the substance of the Maker, close to him†—interpreting it as substance, but not as authority, and as nature and hypostasis, an undefined beauty of a creation beyond all surpassing—he is not, then, speaking of faith as the rational assent of a soul possessed of free choice. Superfluous, then, are the commandments, both those of the old and those of the new covenant, if someone is saved by nature, as Valentinus wishes, being by nature both faithful and elect, as Basilides supposes. For it would then be possible for that nature to shine forth at some time even apart from the coming of the Savior. But if they say the Lord's advent among us was necessary, then the properties of that "nature" vanish from them, since being elect is preserved through instruction, cleansing, and the performance of virtuous deeds, and not by nature.
Abraham, at any rate, believed by hearing the voice under the oak at Mamre that promised, "To you I give this land, and to your seed"—was he elect, or not? If he was not, how did he believe at once, as it were naturally? But if he was elect, their whole hypothesis collapses, since election is found—and indeed saved—even before the Lord's coming; for "it was reckoned to him as righteousness." For if someone, siding with Marcion, should venture to claim that the Demiurge saves the one who believed in him even before the Lord's coming, and that his own salvation was thereby preserved, then the power of the Good will be shown inferior to him, coming late, after the Demiurge whom they extol, and undertaking to save in the same manner—either by learning or by imitation of him. But even granting that the Good saves in this fashion, according to them, he neither saves his own nor undertakes salvation in agreement with the will of the one who made creation, but by force or by guile. And how, then, is he still good, being thus later and derivative? But if the place differs, and the abode of the Almighty falls short of the abode of the good God, still the will of the one who saves does not fall short of the good, that will which took the initiative from the beginning.
Senseless, then, are the unbelievers, as is shown from what we have already established; for "their paths are crooked, and they do not know peace," says the prophet. And foolish and untaught inquiries the divine Paul urged us to avoid, because they beget quarrels; and Aeschylus cries out: "Do not labor in vain over things that profit nothing." For the inquiry that proceeds together with faith, building upon the foundation of faith the magnificent knowledge of truth, we know to be the best. And we know that neither is inquiry made into things that are manifest (as, for instance, whether it is day when it is day), nor into things that are hidden and will never become manifest (such as whether the number of the stars is odd or even), nor even into matters that turn back upon themselves (those "reversible" cases where opposing arguers can assert the identical claim with equal force, such as whether the unborn fetus counts as a living being or does not)—there is a fourth kind, when from one of these sides an argument is put forward that is irrefutable and cannot be undone. If, then, the cause for inquiring is removed on every count, faith is confirmed; for we set before them that irrefutable thing, which is God himself speaking, and setting it down in writing concerning each and every matter that I seek.
Who, then, is so impious as to doubt God, and to require evidence of God as though from ordinary men? Again, of inquiries, some require sense-perception, as when someone inquires whether fire is hot or snow is white; others require admonition and rebuke, as Aristotle says, such as that question whether one ought to honor one's parents. And there are some that even deserve punishment, such as demanding proofs of whether there is providence. Since providence exists, then, to hold that all prophecy and the whole economy concerning the Savior did not come about according to providence is impious; and perhaps one ought not even to attempt to demonstrate such things, since divine providence is manifest both from the very sight of all things seen, works of art and wisdom, and from the fact that some things come about in order and others are made manifest in order. And he who has given us being and life has also given us reason, wishing us to live at once rationally and well; for the universe's Father has a Word that is not this spoken utterance, but rather the clearest wisdom and goodness of God, and again a power all-mastering and truly divine, not incomprehensible even to those who do not confess it—an all-sovereign will.
Since, then, some are unbelievers and others are contentious wranglers, not everyone reaches the Good's own completion. For it is not possible to attain it without choice, yet neither does everything, such as the outcome, lie entirely within our own judgment. For we are saved by grace, yet not without good works; but it is necessary that those naturally disposed toward the good should devote a certain earnestness to it; and it is necessary also to possess a sound and unrepentant resolve toward the pursuit of the beautiful, for which above all we need the divine grace of right teaching and pure aptness to learn, and the drawing of the Father toward himself. For being bound within an earthly body, we apprehend things perceptible through the body, but we grasp things intelligible through the rational faculty itself. But if anyone should expect to grasp all things by sense-perception, he has fallen far from the truth; the apostle, at any rate, writes spiritually concerning the knowledge of God: "For now we see through a mirror, but then face to face." For to few is the vision of truth given. Plato too says in the Epinomis: "I say it is not possible for all men to become blessed and happy, save for a few; this I determine as long as we live; but a fair hope is there for one who dies, to attain all things." The words of Moses intend the same: "No man may look upon my face and continue living"; it is plain that no one, while life endures, can grasp God with full clarity. Yet those clean of heart will behold God once they reach that ultimate completeness. Because the soul lacked strength for grasping the things that are, we needed a divine teacher; the Savior is sent down, teacher and giver of the possession of the Good, the unspeakable, holy token of the great providence.
Where, then, is your scribe now? Where has the debater of this age gone? "Did God not turn the wisdom of this world into folly?" so it is written. And elsewhere: "I will bring to ruin the cleverness of the clever, and set aside the intelligence of the intelligent"—meaning those who consider themselves wise, these argumentative types. Jeremiah puts it most beautifully: "Thus the Lord declares: Take your stand at the crossroads and inquire after the everlasting paths—that is the good road—and travel along it, and you will discover rest for your souls." "Inquire," he continues, "of those possessing knowledge, apart from quarreling and apart from contention." Having grasped, then, truth's direct path, let us proceed along it without glancing backward, until we reach what we desire. Fittingly, then, the Roman king—Numa by name—being a follower of Pythagoras, was the very first among men to establish a shrine dedicated jointly to Faith and to Peace. And Abraham, because he trusted, had it counted to him as righteousness. He, having pursued the exalted study of atmospheric phenomena and the elevated science tracking the heavenly bodies' courses, bore the name Abram, meaning "exalted father"; yet later, gazing upward toward heaven—whether he beheld the Son through the Spirit, as certain interpreters hold, or a splendid angel, or came in some other way to recognize a God surpassing creation and its entire arrangement—he obtains the additional letter alpha, acquaintance with the sole and singular God, and takes the name Abraham, transformed from a mere student of nature into one wise and devoted to God. For the name means "chosen father of sound"; since spoken language produces sound, and the source of this is the mind, and the chosen one is the mind belonging to the earnest man.
And it comes to me to praise most highly the poet of Acragas, who hymns faith somewhat in this way: "O friends, I know that there is truth in the tales I shall relate; but very hard indeed for men, and grudging to their minds, is the onrush of faith." For this reason the apostle likewise urges that our faith rest not upon the cleverness of men skilled in persuasion, but upon God's own power, which by itself—without proofs, through faith alone—is capable of saving. †For of those who seem to know, the most approved man knows how to keep guard; and moreover, "justice will overtake the fabricators of lies and false witnesses," says the Ephesian. For he too knows, having learned it from barbarian philosophy, of a fiery cleansing undergone by those whose lives were wicked, a process the Stoics afterward termed "conflagration"; according to which they also teach that the individually qualified person will rise again, cherishing this very thing as the resurrection. And Plato says that the earth is purified at certain times by fire and by water, somewhat as follows: "Many destructions of men have occurred in many ways and will occur, the greatest by fire and water, and countless other lesser ones by ten thousand other causes." And a little after he adds: "But the truth is that it is a deviation of the bodies moving about the earth and in the heavens, occurring over long periods of time, that brings a great destruction of the things on earth by fire." Then concerning the flood he will add: "But when, in turn, the gods, purifying the earth with waters, send a flood, those on the mountains are preserved—herdsmen and shepherds—while those in our cities are carried down to the sea by the rivers."
We demonstrated, in the first Stromateus, that Greek philosophers deserve to be called thieves, since they appropriated the most authoritative of their doctrines from Moses and the prophets without gratitude. To this we shall add also this: that those angels who had obtained the upper portion as their lot, slipping down into pleasures, disclosed to the women the secret things that had come to their knowledge, while the other angels kept them hidden—or rather, kept watch over them for the Lord's coming. From that source the teaching about providence flowed forth, and the revelation of things on high. And since prophecy had already been passed on to the poets of the Greeks, the dogmatic enterprise of the philosophers came about—in part true, insofar as they hit upon it by conjecture, in part erring, in that they did not understand the hidden meaning of prophetic allegory—which is also what lies before us to note briefly, running quickly over the most pressing matters.
Faith, then, we say, ought to advance not idle and alone, but together with inquiry. For I do not mean by this that one should not inquire at all; for "seek," it says, "and you shall find." "What is sought can be caught, but what is neglected escapes," as Sophocles says. Similar things Menander the comic poet also says: "All things sought after, the wisest say, require careful attention." But the discerning faculty of the soul must be stretched out toward discovery, and the obstacles cleared away—rivalry, and envy, and strife itself, which most wretchedly destroys men, must be cast off entirely. Most beautifully Timon of Phlius writes: "There roams man-destroying Strife, shrieking emptily, sister and helper of murderous Contention; she, blind, rolls about over everything, and then fixes upon a mortal's head and casts him into hope." Then, going on a little, he adds: "For who has joined these men to fight in ruinous strife? A crowd that runs together at the sound of Echo; for she, angered at their silence, has stirred up upon men a talkative disease, and many have perished around the falsely-denying argument, and the horned one, and the one that lies hidden unnoticed, and again the crocodile-sorites, and the still further veiled one, concerning ambiguities and sophisms."
To seek concerning God, then, if the seeking tends not to strife but to discovery, is salvation-bringing. As David's psalm has it: "The needy will have food and be satisfied, and those who seek him out will praise the Lord; may their heart live on forever and ever." For those who seek in accordance with the true seeking, praising the Lord, come to be satisfied by the gift bestowed from God, that is to say, by knowledge, and their soul shall go on living; for the soul that supplies life is allegorized as "heart," because it is through the Son that the Father is made known. Nor indeed is it right to give one's ears freely and indiscriminately to all who speak and write, since even wine-cups, when handled by many at their ears (handles), become fouled and lose their handles, and besides this, falling, they are themselves broken. In the same way, those who have fouled the pure hearing of faith with their many idle chatterings, in the end becoming deaf to the truth, become useless and fall to the ground.
It is not, then, at random that we bid children, when taken by the ears, to love their kinsfolk, hinting thereby, surely, that through hearing the awareness of love comes to be in them; and God is love, known to those who love, as God is faithful, delivered over to the faithful through learning. And we must make ourselves at home with him through divine love, so that we may indeed behold like by like, hearkening to the word of truth guilelessly and purely, in the manner of children who are persuaded by us. And this was what he hinted at, whoever it was who inscribed at the entrance of the temple at Epidaurus: "Pure must he be who enters within the fragrant temple; and purity is to think holy things." And "unless you become as these little children, you shall not enter," he says, "into the kingdom of the heavens"; for here the temple of God appears, firmly set upon three foundations: faith, hope, love.

======== Stromata — Book 5, Chapter 2 ========

Concerning faith, then, we have set forth sufficient testimonies from the writings current among the Greeks; but so that we may not stray on too long, aspiring to gather up a very great deal also about hope and about love, it suffices to say only this much: that Socrates in the Crito, holding that living well and dying well come before mere living, supposes that he has a certain hope of another life after death. And indeed also in the Phaedrus, saying that the soul, having come to be by itself alone, is alone able to partake of true wisdom and of a power greater than the human, whenever the love from this place here has winged it up toward heaven, he says that, arriving through philosophic love at the goal of hope, it takes the beginning of another, everlasting life.
And in the Symposium he says that in all there is mingled a natural love for the begetting of one's like, and that for men it is only the begetting of men, but for the good man it is the begetting of what is nearly akin to himself. And this the good man simply cannot accomplish unless he holds the virtues in full measure, and by their power he will train the youths who approach him — and, as is stated in the Theaetetus, he will bring them forth and carry them to fulfillment as men; for some, he says, are pregnant according to the body, others according to the soul, since indeed among the barbarian philosophers too the catechizing and enlightening of a person is called begetting anew, and "I have begotten you in Christ Jesus," as the noble apostle says somewhere. And Empedocles among his first principles reckons in also Friendship, conceiving a certain unifying love — "which do thou behold with the mind, and sit not dazed with the eyes." But Parmenides too, in his own poem, speaking in riddles about Hope, says such things as this: "Yet look upon things absent as firmly present to the mind; for thou shalt not cut off the existent from holding fast to the existent, neither scattering itself everywhere entirely throughout the world-order, nor drawing together."

======== Stromata — Book 5, Chapter 3 ========

Since he who hopes, like he who believes, sees with the mind the things that are intelligible and the things that are to come. If, then, we say that something is just, and we say too that something is beautiful, and further we speak of a truth, yet we have never at any time seen any such thing with the eyes but only with the mind alone — and it is the Word of God who declares, "I myself am truth" — so the Word is grasped by mind alone. "And whom do you call the true philosophers?" he said. "Those," I replied, "who are lovers of the vision of truth." And Plato, speaking of truth as an idea in the Phaedrus, will make this plain. Now the idea is a conception of God, which the barbarians have called the Word of God; and the passage runs thus: "One must be bold enough to speak the truth, especially when speaking about truth: for the colorless and shapeless and intangible essence, being real being, is visible to the mind alone, the pilot of the soul." And the Word, having come forth, is the cause of creation; and then he also begets himself, when the Word becomes flesh, so that he might also be seen. The just man, then, will seek that discovery which comes of love, and by hastening toward it he thrives; for so it stands written: "to the one who keeps knocking, the door will be thrown open; keep asking, and you will receive." Those said to seize the kingdom by force are called violent not for contentious wrangling but for their steadfastness of upright living and their tireless prayers, scrubbing away the marks left by earlier sins. Wickedness, to be sure, is chosen readily enough even in crowds. But whoever toils finds God lending assistance too: "since what the Muses give does not come easily — no one stumbles upon that prize lying ready in the open for the taking."
The recognition of one's ignorance is, then, the first lesson for one who walks according to reason. A man, being ignorant, went searching; through that search he comes upon the teacher; upon finding him, he believed; and having believed, he hoped; and having loved, from that point he is made like to the one he loved, striving to be that which, having already loved, he loved. Such a method Socrates points out to Alcibiades when he inquires thus: "Would you not think that I know about just things in some other way?" "Yes, if indeed you had found them out." "But do you not think I would have found them out?" "Very much so, if you had sought." "Then do you not think I would have sought?" "I do, if you had supposed that you did not know." In just this way the lamps of the sensible virgins, kindled amid the deep gloom of unknowing during the nighttime hours — a gloom Scripture pointed to under the figure "night" — are the prudent souls, pure as virgins, who, understanding themselves to stand in worldly ignorance, kindle the light and awaken the mind and illuminate the darkness and drive out ignorance, and seek the truth, and await the appearing of the teacher. "Now a philosophic multitude," I said, "cannot come to be. Many carry the wand, yet the true bacchants are few" — so Plato has it. "Many, indeed, receive the call, yet those chosen are few"; and the apostle tells us that "knowledge is not found in everyone." "Pray that we may be delivered from out-of-place and wicked men"; for faith is not in all. And Cleanthes the Stoic, too, the philosopher-poet, writes something similar to this effect: "Look not to opinion, wishing quickly to become wise, nor fear the undiscerning and shameless opinion of the many; for the multitude possesses no sound judgment either of what is just or of what is noble — this you might find among few men."
More pithily the comic poet says it in brief: "It is shameful to judge noble things by the roar of the crowd." For they have heard, I think, that fair Wisdom saying to us: "In the midst of the senseless, keep watch over the occasion, but in the midst of the thoughtful, dwell continually." And again: "The wise will conceal perception"; for the many, not content with the salvation that comes from faith alone, demand of it the pledge of demonstration as security for the truth. "But it is very much the way of the wicked, when they prevail, to disbelieve; but as our Muse bids for her pledges, know this: the word divided within the entrails." For this, says Empedocles, is customary among the wicked — the wish to master truths by way of disbelief. But that our doctrines are held in honor and worthy to be believed, the Greeks will come to know the more the argument is examined through what follows; for by the like we are taught the like. For Solomon says, "Answer the fool according to his folly." Wherefore also to those who ask for the wisdom current among themselves, one ought to hold out what is proper to them, so that they may most readily, by way of their own things, fittingly arrive at belief in the truth; "for I have become all things to all," he says, "that I might gain all" — since the rain of divine grace too is sent down upon the just and the unjust alike; "or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also," cries the noble apostle, "since God is one."

======== Stromata — Book 5, Chapter 4 ========

But since they are not willing to trust rightly either in the Good or in knowledge for salvation, let us — considering that what is theirs is really God's own, and especially since the good things among the Greeks took their start from us — undertake to deal with them in the manner they are naturally disposed to hear. For this great crowd judges what is prudent or just not on the basis of truth, but by whatever pleases it; and it is pleased by nothing so much as by its own likeness to itself. For so far as anyone is still blind and deaf, having neither understanding nor that fearless and keen-sighted eye of the soul that loves contemplation — which the Savior alone implants — such a one must, like the uninitiated in the mysteries or the tuneless in the choral dances, since he is not yet pure nor worthy of holy truth, but is discordant and disorderly and material, still stand outside the divine chorus; for we compare spiritual things with spiritual. This, then, is why the manner of concealment — a manner truly divine and most necessary for us, on account of the word laid up, sacred in the strictest sense, in the inmost shrine of truth — was hinted at by the Egyptians through what they call their adyta, and by the Hebrews through the veil, through which only those consecrated as priests, that is, those set apart to God, those circumcised in the desires of the passions through their love for God alone, were permitted to pass. For it was agreed, even by Plato, that it is not lawful for the impure to lay hold of the pure.
Hence prophecies and oracles are spoken in riddles, and the mysteries are not displayed indiscriminately to those who come upon them, but only after certain purifications and preliminary sayings: "for the Muse was not yet then greedy of gain, nor a hireling; nor were sweet, honey-voiced, soft-sounding songs sold with silvered faces to Terpsichore."
For instance, those educated among the Egyptians first of all learn thoroughly that method of Egyptian writing called epistolographic; second, the hieratic, which the sacred scribes use; and last and final, the hieroglyphic, of which one kind is literal, by means of the first elements, and the other symbolic. Within the symbolic type, one manner conveys meaning literally through imitation, a second is inscribed as though figuratively, and a third is rendered outright as allegory by way of certain riddles.
So, wishing to write "sun," they make a circle, and "moon," a crescent shape, according to the literal form.
In the figurative manner, adapting by transferring and repositioning, altering some things, and transforming others in many ways, they engrave their inscriptions.
The praises of kings, accordingly, handed over to mythical theologizings, they record by means of relief carvings.
Let this serve as an example of the third kind, that according to riddles: the remaining stars, because of the crooked path they trace, they compared to the bodies of serpents, but the sun to the form of the beetle, since, having molded a round shape out of ox-dung, it rolls it along facing itself. And they say that for six months this creature lives under the earth, and for the other half of the year lives above the earth, and that it deposits its seed into the ball and begets, and that no female beetle ever comes to be.
All, then, so to speak, who have theologized, both barbarians and Greeks, have concealed the first principles of things, and have handed down the truth by means of riddles and symbols, and again by allegories and metaphors and certain such devices — of the very kind found also among the Greeks in their oracles, and indeed the Pythian Apollo is called Loxias.
Yes, and even the sayings of those called wise among the Greeks show forth, in a few words, the meaning of a greater matter — take for instance "be sparing of time," that is, since life is short, one ought not to squander this time in vain; or, on the contrary interpretation, be sparing of one's private expenditures, so that, it says, even if you live many years, you may not run short of necessities.
Likewise also "know thyself" points to many things: that you are mortal, and that you were born a man, and further, by comparison with the other superiorities of life, that you are of no account — whether it speaks of one who is honored or wealthy, or, on the contrary, that though wealthy and honored you should not pride yourself on an advantage that is not permanent; and "know for what you have come to be," it says, and whose image you are, and what your substance is, and what your making, and what your kinship to the divine, and other such things. And the Spirit says also through Isaiah the prophet: "I will give you hidden treasures, secret and unseen." And the treasures of God, and his inexhaustible wealth, is wisdom that is hard to hunt down.
But also the poets who were taught theology by these prophets philosophize much by way of hidden meaning — I mean Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, Homer and Hesiod and the wise men of that school. Poetic enchantment serves them as a veil before the many; dreams and symbols keep all things more obscure to men, not out of envy (for it is not right to think of God as subject to passion), but so that the inquiry, slipping in toward the understanding of the riddles, may run back up to the discovery of truth. It is for this reason that Sophocles, the tragic poet, says somewhere: "And such I know God to be: to the wise, ever a riddler of oracles; but to the foolish, a poor teacher, even in brief speech" — setting "poor" over against "plain."
Indeed, concerning all our scripture, it is written outright in the psalms that it is spoken as in a parable: "Listen, my people, to my teaching; turn your ear toward the words my mouth speaks; I will open my mouth to speak in parables, uttering hidden sayings from ancient days." And the noble apostle says similar things somewhat as follows: "We speak wisdom among the perfect, yet a wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing; but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory; which none of the rulers of this age has known, for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." The philosophers, however, were not driven to insult the Lord's presence; it therefore remains for the apostle to strike down the conceit of those reckoned wise among the Jews. Hence he continues: he states that we proclaim, just as scripture records, what no eye has seen and no ear has heard, what has not entered into the heart of any man—all that God has made ready for those who love him. For God has disclosed these things to us through the Spirit; the Spirit examines everything, even the depths of God." For only one who is spiritual and knowing recognizes the disciple of the Holy Spirit that is supplied from God, which is the mind of Christ; whereas the merely natural man does not welcome what belongs to the Spirit, since to him it is nothing but foolishness.
For instance, the apostle, to distinguish gnostic perfection from common faith, calls the latter now a foundation, now milk, writing in this fashion: "Brothers, I was not able to speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to fleshly people, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able; indeed, not even now are you able, for you are still fleshly. For where there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and walking according to man?" These are the things chosen by sinful men; but those who have abstained from them are minded toward the things of God, and share in gnostic nourishment. "By the grace," he says, "given me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and another builds upon it — gold and silver, precious stones." These are the gnostic structures built upon the foundation of faith in Jesus Christ, whereas the additions of the heresies are straw and wood and hay. "And of what sort each man's work is, the fire will test it." He alludes to this gnostic structure also within his letter to the Romans, saying: "For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, that you may be established." For it was not possible to write of such gifts as these openly.

======== Stromata — Book 5, Chapter 5 ========

To begin with, the Pythagorean symbols are derived, in very heavily veiled fashion, from the philosophy of the barbarians.
The Samian, for instance, counsels not to keep a swallow in one's house — that is, not to receive a talkative, whispering, glib-tongued person who cannot keep quiet the things he shares in. "For the swallow and the turtledove, birds of the field, knew the seasons of their comings," the text states — teaching that idle chatter is never something with which one ought to keep company. Indeed the turtledove, murmuring, aptly gives voice to the graceless slander of complaint and is rightly banished from the house — "lest you sit muttering at me, one from one side, another from another." The swallow, by which he hints at the myth of Pandion, deserves to be shunned on account of the notorious sufferings connected with her, from which we have received that Tereus both suffered certain things and did others. And the swallow, moreover, pursues the musical cicadas, wherefore the pursuer of reasoned speech deserves to be driven off. "Yea, by Hera who wields the sceptre and looks down from Olympus, I have a trusty storehouse set upon my tongue," says the poetic art; and Aeschylus too: "But I too have a key set as guardian upon my tongue."
Again, Pythagoras used to command that when the pot is lifted from the fire, the impression left in the ashes should not be left behind but should be stirred up and confused, and that on rising from bed one should disturb the bedclothes; for he was hinting not only that vanity must be made to vanish, but that not even a trace of anger should be left behind, and that when it has boiled up and then subsides, it should be settled down and every grudge wiped away entirely. "Do not let the sun set while your anger still burns," the writing instructs; and he who said "you shall not covet" thereby removed every form of grudge-bearing; for wrath is found to be, in the last analysis, an impulse of desire in a gentle soul, an irrational craving after vengeance.
In the same manner it is also counseled that the bed be disturbed, so that one should no longer call to mind any wet dream, nor indeed sleep in the daytime, nor even the pleasure of the night. And perhaps he was also hinting that the dark phantasm must be dispelled through truth's illumination; "be angry, yet do not sin," David declares, teaching that one must not give assent to the phantasm nor bring the deed to pass so as to ratify the anger.
Again, "do not sail upon the land" is a Pythagorean symbol, and it signifies that one must decline tax-farming and similar forms of hire, since they are turbulent and unstable. For this reason, indeed, the Word says that tax collectors are saved only with difficulty.
Again, Pythagoras enjoins that one wear no ring nor engrave upon it images of the gods, just as Moses long ago expressly legislated that one must make no carved, molten, molded, or painted image or likeness whatsoever, so that we should not cling to the things perceived by the senses but should pass on to the things perceived by the mind; for familiarity, always ready at hand for the eye, cheapens the dignity of the divine, and to venerate the intelligible substance by means of matter is to dishonor it by means of sense-perception. For this reason too the wisest of the Egyptian priests set apart the seat of Athena in the open air, as the Hebrews established their temple without any image. And there are some who, worshiping God, make a representation of heaven encompassing the stars and bow down before it.
Indeed, since the scripture says, "let us make man according to our image and likeness," I think it worthwhile also to cite the words of Eurysus the Pythagorean, which run thus — he, in his treatise On Fortune, having said that the Craftsman made man using himself as a model, went on to add: "but the bodily frame is like the rest, since it has come to be out of the same matter, though wrought by the finest of craftsmen, who fashioned it using himself as archetype." And in general Pythagoras and his followers, together with Plato above all the other philosophers, held very close intercourse with the Lawgiver, as one may gather from their very doctrines. And by a certain well-aimed report of divination, running together not without divine agency with certain prophetic utterances, having apprehended the truth in parts and in kinds, they honored it with names that are not without their own light nor go outside the disclosure of the realities, having received an impression of their kinship with the truth. Whence Greek philosophy resembles the gleam from a lamp-wick, which men kindle, craftily stealing the light from the sun; but when the Word was proclaimed, all that holy light shone forth. Then, within houses at night the stolen fire is of use, but by day the fire is outshone, and the whole night is illumined by so great a sun of the intelligible light.
To begin with, Pythagoras has made an epitome of what was said by Moses concerning justice, saying, "do not overstep the balance," that is, do not transgress what is equal in distributions, honoring justice, which ever binds friends to friends, cities to cities, and allies to allies; for equality is by nature lawful among men, while the lesser is ever set at war with the greater and "begins a day of hatred," by poetic favor. For this reason the Lord says, "take up my yoke," because it is kind and not burdensome. And to his disciples who were contending over first place he enjoins equality along with simplicity, saying that they must become as little children. Likewise the apostle too writes that in Christ there is neither slave nor free, neither Greek nor Jew; for the new creation that is in Christ is free of contention, free of covetousness, and a just equality; for envy stands outside the divine chorus, and so do jealousy and grief, which the initiates too forbid, in the phrase "to eat one's own heart," teaching that one ought never, through heavy-heartedness and pain over things that happen against one's will, to gnaw and devour one's own soul. Wretched, at any rate, is that man of whom Homer says that, wandering alone, he devoured his own heart.
Again, since the gospel, and likewise the apostles, following all the prophets, lay down two ways, calling the one narrow and constricted, hemmed in by the commandments and prohibitions, and the other, its opposite, the one leading to destruction, broad and spacious, unhindered by pleasures and by passion, and saying, "blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly nor stood in the way of sinners" — and the myth of Prodicus of Ceos concerning Virtue and Vice proceeds along the same lines — Pythagoras too does not shrink from forbidding the walking of the highways, commanding that one must not follow the opinions of the many, which are uncritical and mutually inconsistent.
Aristocritus, in the first book of his Refutations addressed to Heracleodorus, records a certain letter running thus: "Atoias, ruler over the Scythian nation, addresses the citizens of Byzantium: bring no injury to my income, or else my horses will drink from your springs." For the barbarian symbolically signified the war he was about to bring upon them. Likewise the poet Euphorion brings in Nestor saying: "but not yet have we driven our Achaean horses to the Simois."
For this reason, too, the Egyptians set up sphinxes before their temples, since the account concerning God is riddling and obscure, and perhaps also because one must both love and fear the divine — love it as gracious and kindly toward the holy, but fear it as inexorably just toward the unholy. For the sphinx hints at the image of both beast and man together.

======== Stromata — Book 5, Chapter 6 ========

It would be a long task to go through all the prophetic and legal sayings that are spoken in riddles, taking them up one by one. For practically the whole of Scripture speaks its oracles in this fashion. It suffices, I think, for one who has acquired understanding, that a few examples be set forth for a demonstration of the point before us. To begin with, the concealment is confessed by the account current among the Hebrews concerning the ancient temple with its seven enclosures, and by the arrangement of the ankle-length robe, which through the various symbols relating to visible things riddles the covenant that reaches from heaven down to earth. The veil and the curtain were worked in blue, purple, scarlet, and fine linen, and this riddled the fact that the nature of the elements contains the revelation of God: for purple comes from water, linen from earth, blue resembles air in being dark, and scarlet resembles fire.
Between the veil and the curtain, where it was permitted for the priests to enter, there stood the altar of incense, a symbol of the earth set in the middle of this world, from which the exhalations rise. And that place itself was in the middle both of the space within the inner veil, where alone the high priest was permitted to enter on appointed days, and of the outer hanging surrounding it that was open to all Hebrews; wherefore they say it is the very midpoint of heaven and earth. Others say it is a symbol of the intelligible world and the sensible world. The veil, then, was stretched as a barrier against lay unbelief before the five pillars, shutting out those in the outer court. It is for this reason, in the most mystical way, that the five loaves are broken by the Savior and multiplied for the crowd of hearers. For the multitude clings to sensible things as though these alone existed. "Look about you carefully," says Plato, "lest any of the uninitiated overhear." These are they who suppose that nothing exists but what they can grip firmly with both hands, and who do not admit actions and comings-to-be and everything invisible as part of reality; such are those who cling to the fivefold company of the senses alone. But the apprehension of God is inaccessible to hearing and to things of that kindred order.
From this it is said that the Son is the face of the Father, having become flesh-bearing through the fivefold senses, the Word who is the announcer of the Father's own peculiar nature. "But if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit." "We walk by faith, not by sight," says the noble apostle. Within the veil, then, the priestly ministry is hidden, and it shuts off those who labor in it, far removed from those outside. Again, the curtain marking the passage into the holy of holies had four pillars there, a token of the sacred tetrad of the old covenants, and moreover the mystic four-lettered name, which was worn by those alone for whom the inner shrine was accessible. It is spoken as Iaoue, which is translated "He who is and who shall be." And indeed, even among the Greeks, the word "theos" contains a tetrad of letters. Into the intelligible world the Lord alone enters, having become high priest, slipping through the sufferings into the knowledge of the ineffable, withdrawing beyond every name that is made known by speech. Moreover, positioned south of that incense-altar, stood the lampstand, and by it are signified the motions of the seven light-bearers, which make their circuits toward the south. For three branches grow out on either side of the lampstand, and upon them the lamps, since the sun too, like the lampstand, is set in the middle of the other planets, and by a certain divine music imparts its light both to those above it and to those below it.
But the golden lampstand holds yet another riddle of the sign of Christ, not by its shape alone, but also by its casting light in many ways and many parts upon those who believe in him and hope and see through the ministry of the first-created beings. The Lord's seven eyes, it is said, are those same seven spirits resting upon the rod that flowers out of Jesse's root. To the north of the altar of incense the table had its place, on which was the setting-out of the loaves, because the northern spirits are the most nourishing. These might be certain abodes gathered into one body and one assembly of churches breathing together. What is recorded concerning the holy ark signifies the things of the intelligible world, hidden away and shut off from the many. And indeed those golden images, each of them six-winged, whether they signify the two Bears, as some would have it, or, what is more likely, the two hemispheres, while the very name Cherubim is meant to denote "abundant knowledge." Together the pair carries twelve wings between them, and through the zodiacal circle and the time that moves along it they signify the sensible world.
Concerning these things, I think, tragedy too speaks in a naturalistic vein: "Untiring time, full with its ever-flowing stream, goes its way, itself begetting itself, and the twin Bears, with the swift-wandering beatings of their wings, keep watch over the Atlantean pole." Atlas, the pole that suffers nothing, can indeed be the unwandering sphere, but perhaps it is better understood as the unmoved age. But I think it better that the ark, called from the Hebrew name thebotha, signifies something else. It is interpreted as "one instead of one, of all places." Whether then the ogdoad and the intelligible world, or the God who is all-encompassing, formless and invisible, is signified, let this be set aside to speak of for now; only it signifies the rest that comes with the glorifying spirits, which the Cherubim riddle. For never would he who counseled that not even a graven image be made himself have fashioned an image of the holy things, nor is there in truth any composite and sensible living creature so situated in heaven; rather it is a symbol: the face stands for the rational soul, the wings for the lofty services and activities of the powers stationed both to the right side and to the left, and the voice for the grateful glory rendered in unceasing contemplation.
It suffices to have carried the mystical interpretation this far. As for the ankle-length robe of the high priest, it is a symbol of the sensible world: of the seven planets, the five stones and the two carbuncles stand for Kronos and Selene; for the one is southern, moist, earthy, and heavy, while the other is airy — wherefore Artemis is called by some "cutter of the air," the air itself being dark. He describes those set over the planets, who cooperate by divine providence in the coming-to-be of things here below, as fittingly established on the breast and shoulders, through whom is the activity that governs generation, the first heptad; and the breast is the dwelling-place of the heart and soul. And in another way the varied stones might be the manifold modes of salvation, some established among those raised higher, others among those set lower, of the whole body that is being saved. And the three hundred and sixty bells hanging from the robe are the space of a year, "the acceptable year of the Lord," proclaiming and announcing beforehand the greatest manifestation of the Savior. And also the golden mitre, raised aloft, signifies the kingly authority of the Lord, since the Savior is the head of the church.
The mitre placed above the head, then, is a sign of the most governing rule; besides, we have heard, as has been said, that the head of Christ is God, and the head of Christ is also the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Moreover the breastplate is composed both of the ephod, which is a symbol of activity, and of the oracle (by which the Word himself is riddled), with which it is joined and of which it is the image; it is the image of heaven, which came to be through the Word, subordinate to the head of all things, Christ, and moved in the same manner and in accordance with the same laws as he. The luminous emerald stones on the ephod, then, signify the sun and the moon, the co-workers of nature. And the shoulder, I think, is the starting-point of the arm/hand. The twelve stones arranged in four rows on the breast trace out for us the zodiacal circle according to the four turnings of the year. Besides, it was fitting that the law and the prophets be subordinate to the Lord's head, through which the righteous are made known under each of the two covenants; for we should be right to say that the apostles were prophets and righteous ones at once, since one and the same Holy Spirit works through all. And just as the Lord stands over the whole cosmos — or better, beyond even the intelligible world — so likewise the name engraved on the golden plate was judged worthy of standing above every rule and authority, inscribed on account both of the written commandments and of his sensible presence. It bears the name of God because, as the Son gazes upon the Father's goodness, so he acts, called God the Savior, the first principle of all things, molded as an image out of the unseen God, prior to and before all ages, and he has pressed his form upon everything that afterward came to exist.
And indeed the oracle signifies the prophecy that cries out through the Word and proclaims, and also the judgment yet to arrive, for it is one and the same Word who both prophesies and judges, discerning every matter at once. And they say that the vestment, the ankle-length robe, prophesies the dispensation according to the flesh, through which he was seen more directly present in the world. It is for this reason that the high priest, taking off the sanctified tunic (for the world, and the creation within the world, has been sanctified by him who assented that the things coming to be were good), washes and puts on the other tunic, holy of holy as it were, that which accompanies him into the inner shrine — signifying, as it seems to me, the Levite and gnostic man, as the ruler, so to speak, of the other priests, while those others are washed with water and clothed with faith alone and await their own proper abode; but he himself, having distinguished the intelligible things from the sensible, hastens by an ascent above the other priests toward the passage into the intelligible world, washed clean of the things here no longer with water, as he was formerly purified when reckoned into the Levitical tribe, but now already by the gnostic word.
Being then pure in his whole heart, and having set his conduct thoroughly right even to the highest degree, growing beyond the priest to something greater, purified without artifice both in word and in life, having put on over himself the radiance of glory, having received the unspeakable inheritance of that spiritual and perfected human — things no eye has beheld, no ear caught, and no human heart ever conceived — and having now become both son and friend, he is filled, face to face, with contemplation that cannot be sated. Yet nothing compares to hearing from the Word directly, who through Scripture supplies still more toward understanding. For thus he speaks: "And he shall strip off the linen garment he had worn on entering the holy place, and shall set it down there. And he shall wash his body with water in a holy place, and shall put on his robe." In one sense, I think, the Lord takes off and puts on as he descends into sense-perception; in another sense he who believes through him takes off and puts on over himself — as the apostle too has signified — the sanctified robe. Hence, after the image of the Lord, the high priests used to be chosen from the sanctified tribe, the most approved among them, and those elect for kingship and for prophecy were anointed.

======== Stromata — Book 5, Chapter 7 ========

Hence the Egyptians too did not entrust their mysteries to just anyone, nor did they broadcast what they knew of divine matters among the uninitiated masses; rather they reserved it for those destined to rise to kingship, and for such priests as had proven themselves most worthy by reason of upbringing, schooling, and lineage.
The riddling emblems of the Egyptians, then, are similar to the Hebrew ones at least in their manner of concealment. Some Egyptians represent the sun upon a ship, others upon a crocodile. They mean by this that the sun, making its course through sweet and moist air, begets time, which the crocodile signifies for some other sacerdotal reason. Indeed, in Diospolis in Egypt, on what is called the sacred gateway, there is carved a child as a symbol of coming-to-be, an old man as a symbol of decay, and again a hawk as a symbol of god, a fish as a symbol of hatred, and, according to yet another meaning, a crocodile as a symbol of shamelessness.
Assembled together, the whole emblem seems meant to convey this: O you who come into being and pass out of it again, god abhors shamelessness. Those who craft ears and eyes from costly material set them apart for the gods, offering them up within the temples, plainly implying thereby that the divine both sees and hears everything. Along with these figures, the lion is for them a symbol of strength and might, just as, of course, the ox is a symbol of the earth itself, of agriculture, and of nourishment, the horse of manliness and free speech, and the sphinx, having the whole body of a lion but the face of a man, a symbol of strength joined with understanding. In like manner, meaning to signify understanding, memory, power, and skill, they engrave the figure of man upon their sacred things.
Moreover, in what they term the komasiai, the festal processions of the gods, they parade golden figures — a pair of dogs, one hawk, and one ibis — and these four figures they name the four letters. The dogs, accordingly, stand for the two hemispheres, circling as though on watch; the hawk stands for the sun, being a scorching, ruinous creature — indeed pestilence itself they lay at the sun's door; while the ibis stands for the moon, they likening the shadowed parts of its plumage to the black and the luminous parts to the white. There are some who hold that the tropics are indicated by the dogs, which keep watch and guard the sun's passage toward the south and the north; while the equinoctial circle, being high and scorched, is shown by the hawk, just as the oblique circle is shown by the ibis; for the ibis seems to have furnished the Egyptians their first notion of number and measure among animals, just as the oblique circle did among the circles.

======== Stromata — Book 5, Chapter 8 ========

But it was not only the most rational of the Egyptians, but also all the other barbarians who reached for philosophy, who cultivated the symbolic form.
They say, for instance, that Idanthyrsus the king of the Scythians, as Pherecydes of Syria records, when Darius crossed the Ister threatening war, sent as a symbol in place of a letter a mouse, a frog, a bird, an arrow, and a plow. And since, as was natural, there was perplexity over these things, Orontopatas the commander-of-a-thousand said they would hand over their rule, reckoning from the mouse their dwellings, from the frog their waters, the air from the bird, from the arrow their weapons, and from the plow their land. But Xiphodres interpreted it the opposite way; for he said, "unless we fly up like birds, or go under the earth like mice, or dive under the water like the frogs, their arrows are certain to find us, since we hold no command over the land."
They say also that Anacharsis the Scythian, when sleeping, would keep his left hand upon his private parts, pressing his right over his mouth, hinting that though one must master both, it is greater to master the tongue than pleasure.
But why should I linger over the barbarians, when it is possible to bring forward the Greeks themselves, who made very great use of concealment?
Andocides the Pythagorean, then, says that the so-called Ephesian letters, much talked-of among many, hold the rank of symbols, and that Askion signifies darkness, since darkness has no shadow; while Kataskion signifies light, since it casts light upon the shadow. Lix is the earth by an ancient designation, and Tetrax is the year, on account of the seasons, and Damnameneus is the sun that subdues, and the Aisia are the true voice. The symbol thus signifies how the things divine are ordered — as darkness in relation to light, and the sun in relation to the year, and the earth in relation to every kind of coming-to-be of nature.
But Dionysius the Thracian, the grammarian, in his work On Emphasis, speaking of the symbol of the wheels, says in these words: "They used to signify their actions, then, not only by speech but also, some of them, by symbols — by speech, as with the so-called Delphic precepts, 'nothing in excess' and 'know yourself,' along with other such maxims; and through symbols, as with the wheel that is turned in the precincts of the gods, a practice drawn from the Egyptians, and the giving of branches to those who do reverence. For Orpheus the Thracian says: 'of the branches, whatever works are of concern to mortals upon the earth, none has one single fixed lot in their minds, but all things are wheeled round about, and it is not lawful to stand fast in any one part, but each has, as they began, an equal share of the course.'" The branches are either a symbol of the first nourishment, or else so that the many might understand that while the fruits flourish and grow throughout, remaining so for the longest time, they themselves have been allotted but a short span of life; for this reason, they wish the branches to be given, and perhaps also so that they might understand that, just as these branches in turn are burned up, so too must they themselves quickly depart this life and become fuel for fire.
Most useful, then, is the form of symbolic interpretation, contributing to many things — to correct theology, to piety, to a display of understanding, to the practice of concision, and to a demonstration of wisdom; for it belongs to the wise man, says Didymus the grammarian, to use symbolic expression skillfully, and to recognize what is signified through it.
Indeed, the elementary instruction given to children encompasses the interpretation of the four elements. For it says the Phrygians call water "bedu," as Orpheus too says: "and bedu, the bright water of the nymphs, streams down." And Dion the sacrificer likewise appears to write: "and taking bedu, pour it down over your hands and turn to the reading of the sacred signs." But conversely the comic poet Philyllius knows bedu as the air, which gives life, through these words: "I pray to draw in bedu unharmed, which is the greatest part of health — to draw in the air pure, not fouled."
In agreement with this opinion is also Neanthes of Cyzicus, who writes that the priests of the Macedonians, in their prayers, call upon bedu to be gracious to them and to their children, which they interpret as air. As for "zaps" meaning fire, some have taken it ignorantly from "zesis" (boiling); but the sea is called this, as Euphorion says in his replies to Theodoridas: "and the zaps, destroyer of ships, works evil against the rocks." And Dionysius the Iambist likewise: "the salty zaps hems in the raging sea round about." Likewise Cratinus the younger, the comic poet: "the zaps brings forth shrimp and little fish." And Simmias of Rhodes: "the salty zaps was the mother of the Ignetes and the Telchines." And "chthon" is the earth, poured out to its vastness. As for "plektron," some take it as the pole of the heavens, others as the air that strikes all things and sets them in motion toward nature and growth, or as that which fills all things.
Yet those who say this have never opened Cleanthes the philosopher, who openly names the sun "plektron" (the striker); for as it rises, training its beams upon the world as though striking it, the sun sets light moving along its ordered path, and starting from itself it signifies the remaining stars as well. As for "sphinx," this is, according to the poet Aratus, not the binding force that holds the cosmos together and drives the wheeling of the heavens, but rather it would perhaps be the pervading spiritual tension that holds the world together; but it is better to understand it as the aether that holds and binds all things together, as also Empedocles says: "Come then, I shall tell you first of the sun as origin, from which became manifest all things now seen — earth, and the many-waved sea, and moist air the Titan, and aether binding all things round in its circle." Apollodorus of Corcyra says that these verses were uttered by Branchus the seer when he was purifying the Milesians from a plague. For sprinkling the crowd with branches of laurel, he began the hymn somewhat as follows: "Sing, children, of the Far-worker and the Far-working goddess"; and the people, as it were, chanted back in response: "bedu, zaps, chthom, plektron, sphinx; knaxzbich, thyptes, phlegmo, drops." Callimachus too mentions the story in his Iambics. "Knaxzbich," by derivation, means the disease, from "knaiein" (to gnaw) and "diaphtheirein" (to destroy); and "thypsai" means to burn with a thunderbolt. Thespis, however, the tragic poet, says that something else is signified through these words, writing somewhat as follows: "See, I pour out to you knaxzbich, the white, pressed from the udders of the tawny goats; see, I offer you thypten, cheese mixed with red honey; upon your holy altars, two-horned Pan, I set this down; see, I pour out to you the flashing phlegmon of Bromius." He hints, I think, at the first, milk-like nourishment of the soul that comes from the twenty-four elements, after which comes the food that is already curdled milk, and last, the vine's blood belonging to the Word — the flashing wine — teaching the joy that completes the course of instruction. And "drops" is the active word, the word that from the first catechesis leads a man on to growth, to the measure of full stature, kindling and illuminating the man.
But a third children's primer is also current: "marpte, sphinx, klops, zbychthedon"; it signifies, I think, through the ordering of the elements and of the world, that our path must lead toward the knowledge of more perfect things, eternal salvation being won through force and toil. For "marpsai" means to seize, and "sphinx" points to the harmony of the world, "zbychthedon" signifies its harshness, and "klops" (thief) points to the hidden knowledge of the Lord and, at the same time, to the day.
What then? Does not Epigenes too, in his work On the Poetry of Orpheus, setting forth the peculiar terms found in Orpheus, say that by "curved-colored shuttles" plows are signified, and by "warp-threads" the furrows; that the "weft-thread" stands allegorically for seed, and that what Zeus weeps are said to mean the rain; and that the Fates, in turn, are the phases of the moon — the thirtieth, the fifteenth, and the new moon — for which reason Orpheus calls them "white-robed," being parts of light. Again, the word for spring is called "anthion" on account of its nature, night is called "argis" on account of rest, the moon is called "Gorgonion" because of the face that appears in it, and the season in which one must sow is called "Aphrodite" — so this is said, by the theologian.
Such things too the Pythagoreans hinted at in riddles, allegorizing the planets as the "hounds of Persephone," and the sea as "the tear of Cronos." And countless upon countless other things we might find said in riddling fashion by both philosophers and poets, since even whole books display the author's meaning under concealment, as does Heraclitus's work On Nature, who for this very reason was surnamed "the Obscure." Similar to this book is also the theology of Pherecydes of Syria. For the poet Euphorion, Callimachus's Aitia, Lycophron's Alexandra, and compositions of like character, are set forth as an exercise for grammarians' pupils in interpretation.
It is not unreasonable, then, that the barbarian philosophy too, of which we have set out to speak, should prophesy in a hidden manner and through symbols in certain places, as has been shown. Such, at any rate, are the things Moses too enjoins — these familiar precepts: "You shall not eat swine, nor eagle, nor sharp-taloned bird, nor raven." For the swine signifies a pleasure-loving and unclean appetite for food, gluttonous for sexual indulgence, and a defiled licentiousness, ever itching, material, lying in filth, fattened for slaughter and destruction. On the other hand, he permits the eating of what divides the hoof and chews the cud, signifying, says Barnabas, that one ought to cling to those who fear the Lord and to those who ponder in their heart the distinction of the word they have received, with those who speak the ordinances of the Lord and keep them, with those who know that meditation is a work of gladness, and who chew over again the word of the Lord. And what does "dividing the hoof" mean? That the righteous man walks both in this world and awaits the holy age to come. Then he continues: "Notice how excellently Moses framed the law. Yet how could those others perceive or understand these things? We, having rightly understood the commandments, speak as the Lord willed. For this reason he circumcised our ears and our hearts, so that we might understand these things."
Indeed, when he says, "you shall not eat the eagle, nor the sharp-taloned bird, nor the kite, nor the raven," he means, "you shall not cling to," he says, "nor be made like these men, who have no skill in earning their own food by labor and the sweat of effort, but survive instead through pillage and disregard for law"; for the eagle signifies plunder, the sharp-taloned bird signifies injustice, and the raven signifies greed. And it is written: "With an innocent man you shall be innocent, and with the chosen you shall be chosen, and with the crooked you shall show yourself perverse." It is fitting, then, to cling to the holy, because those who cling to them shall be made holy. Hence Theognis writes: "From the noble you shall learn noble things; but if you mix with the base, you will destroy even the mind you have." And again, when in the Song it says, "for he has been gloriously glorified, horse and rider he has thrown into the sea," it means that the many-legged, beast-like, impulsive passion — desire — together with the charioteer mounted upon it, who has given the reins over to pleasures, he has thrown into the sea, casting it away into the disorders of the world.
So too Plato, in his treatise concerning the soul, states that the driver together with the unruly horse — the irrational part, which is in turn divided into two, into spiritedness and desire — fall down together. It is by this too that the myth hints that Phaethon fell from his colts through lack of self-mastery.
Indeed, in the case of Joseph too: his brothers, envying this young man who saw somewhat further ahead by his knowledge, stripped off his coat of many colors and, taking him, threw him into a pit; and the pit was empty and had no water. They, having spurned the manifold knowledge that comes to the diligent through love of learning, or making use of a bare faith according to the law only, threw into the empty, waterless pit and sold off into Egypt the man bereft of the divine word. The pit is empty of knowledge, into which, being thrown and stripped of knowledge, the sage who had gone unrecognized seemed, like his brothers, to be naked of knowledge. According to another sense, the coat of many colors might be desire, which leads down into a yawning abyss. And it is said: "if anyone opens a pit or digs one and does not cover it, and a calf or a donkey falls into it, whoever owns that pit must pay silver and give it to his neighbor, but the dead animal shall be his."
Here bring to bear on my behalf that prophecy: "the ox knew its owner, and the donkey its master's manger, but Israel did not understand me." So then, lest anyone of these, falling into the knowledge taught by you, having become a hearer of the truth, should mishear and stumble, "be secure," it says, "in your use of the word," and toward those who approach it without reason, close off the living spring that lies deep, but offer drink to those who thirst for the truth. Concealing it, then, from those who are not able to receive the depth of knowledge, cover over the pit. It is the one who owns the pit, then — the gnostic himself — who shall be fined, it says, bearing the blame for the one who was scandalized, or rather swallowed up by the greatness of the word while still small in understanding, or for having moved the laborer to contemplation and drawn him away, under pretense, from an unreflective faith. And he shall give silver, rendering account and reckoning to the all-governing will.
This, then, is the pattern of the law and the prophets that reaches as far as John; but he, though he spoke more openly, as one no longer merely prophesying but already showing present the one who from the beginning had been proclaimed symbolically, nevertheless says, "I am not worthy to loose the strap of the Lord's sandal"; for he confesses himself unfit to administer baptism to a power of such greatness, since it is fitting that those who bring about purification should free the soul from the body together with its transgressions, just as one frees the foot from its binding. Perhaps, too, he means the Savior's final working upon us, the immediate one, that which comes through his presence, concealed under the riddle of prophecy; for he who, through eyewitness sight, pointed out the one foretold, having announced the coming that had long been journeying toward manifestation and had now arrived, truly loosed the end of the oracles of the divine economy, unveiling the meaning of the symbols.
Even the practices among the Romans concerning wills have taken on a fixed order — those scales and small coins, for the sake of justice, and the plucking of fruits, and the touching of the ears; the one, so that things might be done justly, the other, for the apportioning of the valuation, and the touching of the ears so that whoever happens to be present, as though some weight were being placed upon him, might stand and listen and take the role of a mediator.

======== Stromata — Book 5, Chapter 9 ========

But, it seems, I have unwittingly, out of a zeal for demonstration, digressed further than was needful. For my life will run out before the multitude of those who philosophize symbolically can be set forth in full. For the sake of memory, then, and of brevity, and of being stretched toward the truth, such are certain of the writings of the barbarian philosophy. For of those who have often drawn near to them and given proof both in faith and in life, all wish that the philosophy which really is, and the true theology, should belong to these alone. Yes, and they hold that we need some expounder and guide; for so, they judged, those worthy of these things would be the more zealously devoted and would be benefited, and would remain undeceived, receiving instruction from those who know well. Besides, all things that are shown forth through some covering display the truth as greater and more august. Just as fruits appearing through water, or forms through veils, lend to them certain added charms of their own. For the direct glare is open to refutation, besides the fact that things plain are understood only in a single way.
There is room, then, to take a good many implied meanings, as indeed we do take them, from things spoken with a covering of concealment. This being so, the inexperienced and unlearned man stumbles, but the Gnostic apprehends. Even in ancient times men were unwilling that all things should lie open recklessly to whoever chanced along, nor that the good things of wisdom should be made common to souls not purified even in a dream; for it is not right to hold out to all comers what has been procured through so many struggles, nor indeed to recount the mysteries of the Word to the profane. They say, at any rate, that Hipparchus the Pythagorean, being charged with having written the doctrines of Pythagoras in plain terms, was expelled from the school, and that a pillar was set up for him as for a dead man. Hence also in the barbarian philosophy they call "dead" those who have fallen away from the doctrines and have subjected the mind to the passions of the soul. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness, as the divine apostle says, or what fellowship has light with darkness? What agreement has Christ with Belial? Or what portion has a believer with an unbeliever? For separate are the honors of the Olympians and of the dead. Wherefore also, "go forth out from among them and set yourselves apart," says the Lord, "and lay hold of nothing impure; and I on my part will welcome you in, and I will stand as a father toward you, and you will be sons and daughters to me."
Not the Pythagoreans and Plato alone, then, concealed many things, but the Epicureans too say that certain things even of Epicurus himself are unspeakable, and that they do not permit all to have access to those writings. The Stoics likewise say that some things were written by Zeno, the first of them, which they do not readily permit their pupils to read unless these have first given proof whether they philosophize genuinely. And the followers of Aristotle say that some of his writings are esoteric, and others common and exoteric. Moreover, those who established the mysteries, being philosophers, buried their own doctrines in myths, so that they should not be plain to all; then, while some, having hidden merely human opinions, kept the unlearned from meeting with them, was it not far more fitting that the truly holy and blessed contemplation of the things that really are should be hidden more than anything else? Yet neither the writings of the barbarian philosophy, nor the Pythagorean myths, nor even those in Plato — the myth of Er the Armenian in the Republic, and that of Aeacus and Rhadamanthus in the Gorgias, and that of Tartarus in the Phaedo, and that of Prometheus and Epimetheus in the Protagoras, and besides these that of the war of the Atlantics and the Athenians in the Atlanticus — are to be allegorized simply in every one of their names, but only so much as signifies the general sense; and this we might discover, indicated through symbols under the covering of allegory.
Yes, and the fellowship of Pythagoras, and his twofold communion with his associates, calling the many "hearers" and certain others "learners" — those who genuinely laid hold of philosophy — while the one teaching was spoken openly and the other kept hidden from the many, hinted at the same thing. Perhaps too that twofold form found among the Peripatetics, called in their discourses the "reputable" and the "scientific," is not free from this same distinguishing of opinion both from good repute and from truth. "Let not the flowers of honor and repute among mortals force you to seize more than is holy to speak." The Ionian Muses, at any rate, say expressly that the many, who only seem wise, follow the songs of the people and observe their customs, knowing that the many are bad and the good are few; yet it is the noblest who chase after fame. "The noblest," it says, "take one thing in place of everything — glory that lasts forever among mortals — while the crowd stuffs itself full like cattle," measuring their happiness by the belly and the private parts and the most shameful things within us. And Parmenides of Elea, the great one, introduces a teaching of two ways, writing something like this: "both the unshaken heart of well-persuasive Truth, and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true belief."

======== Stromata — Book 5, Chapter 10 ========

Fittingly, then, does the divinely-moved apostle state that it was through a disclosure that this mystery got made known to him, exactly as he had already put down briefly beforehand — a passage from which, on reading it, one can grasp how he understands the secret of Christ, that secret which, throughout earlier generations, stayed unrevealed to humanity's offspring, until it was unveiled at last to his consecrated messengers and seers. For a doctrine truly exists reserved for the mature, and concerning it, in his letter to the Colossians, he states: we never stop praying on your behalf and requesting that you be filled up with a full grasp of what he wills, in every kind of wisdom and understanding granted by the Spirit, so that you might walk in a manner worthy of the Lord toward complete satisfaction, producing fruit through every worthwhile deed and growing in acquaintance with God, made strong with all power in keeping with the strength of his splendor. He states further, in line with the stewardship God entrusted to me on your behalf, to bring to completion God's message — the secret concealed away from ages past and generations gone — which has by now been laid open to those he has set apart, to whom God chose to disclose the riches contained in the splendor of this secret amid the nations.
There exist, then, mysteries kept back until the apostles, passed down by them as coming from the Lord — mysteries they themselves had received, concealed within the older covenant — and now laid open to those set apart; and there is yet another: the riches of the splendor of the secret among the nations, namely the trust and the expectation resting in Christ, the very one he names elsewhere as the cornerstone. Once more, as if keen to exhibit his understanding, he writes in a similar vein: warning each person with every form of wisdom, so that we might bring each person forward as complete in Christ — not literally every single individual, since then unbelief would be impossible for anyone, nor even every believer regarded as complete in Christ, but rather he intends each person, that is, the entire human being, cleansed, so to speak, in both flesh and soul — since (given that this understanding is not meant for everyone) he adds pointedly: bound closely together through love and reaching toward the full riches of settled conviction in comprehension, toward complete acquaintance with God's secret in Christ, in whom lie concealed the entire treasury of wisdom and knowledge. Persist in prayer without wavering, staying alert in it with gratitude; and this gratitude applies not merely to the soul and its spiritual blessings but likewise to the body and its bodily goods.
And he lays bare still more openly the point that such knowledge is not meant for all, adding: interceding at the same moment on our behalf too, that God might open for us an entryway to proclaim Christ's secret, on whose account I am likewise held bound, so that I might disclose it as I am obligated to speak. For certain things, in fact, were transmitted apart from any writing. Take the Hebrews, for instance — though by rights, given how much time has passed, they should be instructors by now, he says, as people grown gray within the older covenant, you require once more that someone instruct you in the rudiments that begin God's oracles, and you have turned into people needing milk rather than solid nourishment; for anyone still feeding on milk has no experience in the message of uprightness, being, after all, a mere child, given only the earliest lessons; solid nourishment, though, is for the mature, for those whose faculties, through practice, have been trained to distinguish good from evil. For this reason, setting aside the account of Christ's beginnings, let us press forward toward completeness.
But Barnabas as well, who together with the apostle himself proclaimed the message in service to the nations, states: I am writing to you in plainer terms so that you may grasp it. Then, carrying the thought further, laying out a still clearer trace of the gnostic tradition, he asks: what does the other prophet, Moses, tell them? "See here, thus says the Lord God: go in and take possession of the fine country which the Lord God pledged by oath, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, a land flowing with milk and honey." What does this understanding say? Learn it. Set your hope, it says, on the one about to be shown to you in the flesh, Jesus; for humankind is suffering clay, since Adam's shaping came out of the face of the ground. What, then, does it signify — "into the fine country, a land flowing with milk and honey"? Praised be our Lord, brothers, who has set within us wisdom and understanding of things hidden from him. As the prophet asks: who is able to grasp a parable spoken by the Lord, apart from someone wise, discerning, and devoted to his Lord? Since such matters are meant for only a handful to comprehend. Indeed, not out of jealousy, it says, did the Lord command, in a certain gospel: my secret belongs to me and to the members of my household — choosing what stays secure and untroubled, so that once they had received what was rightly theirs by his choosing, it might be lifted clear of envy; for whoever lacks acquaintance with the good is wicked, since only one is good — the Father; and lacking acquaintance with the Father is death, just as knowing him amounts to unending life gained by sharing in the power of the one who cannot decay. And escaping decay means partaking of divinity, while decay itself is what falling away from the knowledge of God brings about.
Once more the prophet declares: and I will hand over to you concealed treasures, dark and unseen, so you may recognize that I am the Lord God. Matching sentiments David likewise sings: look, you have cherished truth; you have disclosed to me the concealed and secret matters of your wisdom. For daytime pours out speech to daytime — the plainly written matter — while nighttime relays understanding to nighttime, the understanding concealed in mystery, and there exist no words or utterances whose sound goes unheard, by the God who asked: could someone act in secrecy and I not perceive him? For this cause instruction in discipleship gets called illumination, since it is what brings to light what lies concealed, the teacher alone having lifted the covering from the chest — the opposite of what the poets claim Zeus performed, grasping the jar containing good things yet opening the one holding evil. I am aware, states the apostle, that whenever I arrive among you I will come bearing the fullness of Christ's blessing — meaning the spiritual gift together with the gnostic tradition, which he is eager to hand over to them face to face, in person (since such matters could not be entrusted to a letter) — terming it Christ's fullness, in keeping with the disclosure of a secret held in silence across ages without end, but now brought into the open both through the writings of the prophets and, in keeping with the command of the God who is eternal, toward faith's obedience, made known among every nation — meaning those out of the nations who believe — yet to only a handful among these is it shown what these matters within the secret actually are.
Fittingly, then, Plato too, within his Letters, when discussing God, says: I am compelled to address you in riddles, so that should the tablet meet with mishap, whether over folds of sea or land, whoever reads it would fail to grasp it. For the God governing the universe, who lies past every utterance, every thought, and every notion, could never be entrusted to writing, given that he is inexpressible through his own inherent power. And Plato himself makes this clear when he says: bearing this in mind, then, take care, so that you never come to regret, someday, things now carelessly let go; the surest protection lies not in writing but in committing to memory, since it is not feasible — simply not feasible — for anything set down in writing to avoid spreading abroad. Close to these sentiments speaks the holy apostle Paul, guarding the prophetic and genuinely ancient concealment from which the noble teachings made their way to the Greeks: yet we speak wisdom among those who are mature, wisdom that belongs neither to this present age nor to the rulers of this age, who are headed toward nothing; rather, we speak the wisdom of God held within a mystery, the wisdom that has remained concealed.
Carrying the thought further still, he instructs in this manner regarding the caution needed against letting such words reach the multitude: and I, brothers, was unable to address you as people of the Spirit but rather as people still of the flesh, as infants within Christ. I gave you milk to drink rather than solid nourishment, since you were not yet capable of it; nor, in truth, are you capable even now, since you remain fleshly. If, then, milk gets described by the apostle as nourishment fit for infants, with solid food belonging to the mature, milk should be taken as, roughly speaking, the soul's earliest nourishment — namely instruction given to beginners — while solid food represents the contemplative sight of the loftiest mysteries; these amount to the flesh and blood of the Word, that is, laying hold of the divine power and inmost being. It is good, so it says — try it and see for yourself; for in this way he communicates himself to those sharing in nourishment of this kind along a more spiritual path, once the soul has already begun feeding itself, following the truth-loving Plato; for to eat and drink the divine word means gaining knowledge of the divine essence. Hence Plato likewise states, in the second volume of the Republic, that one should seek what pertains to God only after offering, not a pig, but some grand and demanding sacrifice. And the apostle writes that our own Passover victim too was offered up — Christ, indeed a demanding sacrifice, the Son of God set apart on our behalf.

======== Stromata — Book 5, Chapter 11 ========

The sacrifice acceptable to God is the unrepented-of separation of the body and its passions. This is true piety in reality. And is it not fittingly for this reason that philosophy was called by Socrates a practice of death? For he who neither sets his sight before him in thinking nor draws on any of the other senses, but with the mind itself made pure encounters realities, pursues true philosophy. This, then, is also what the five years' silence Pythagoras enjoined on his associates intends, namely that turning away from things perceived by sense they might, with the naked mind alone, behold the divine. It was from Moses that the foremost of the Greeks philosophized in such matters. For he commands that the whole burnt offerings, after being flayed, be divided into their members, since it is necessary that the gnostic soul, having become stripped of the material hide, without bodily foolishness and all the passions which empty and false suppositions produce, and having put off the fleshly desires, be consecrated to the light.
But most men, clothing themselves in what is mortal like snails, and coiling themselves ball-like about their own intemperances like sea-urchins, hold such opinions about the blessed and incorruptible God as they hold about themselves. And it escapes them, even should they happen to be near us, how many countless things God has given us as gifts, of which he himself has no part: being ungenerated, he has no part in generation; being without need, he has no part in nourishment; being ever in equality, he has no part in growth; being immortal and unaging, he has no part in a good old age or a good death. Therefore let no one imagine that feet, hands, mouth, eyes, comings and goings, fits of wrath, and threats, as these are spoken of God among the Hebrews, count as passions of God — by no means — but rather that certain of these names are to be allegorized in a more reverent way, which indeed, as the discourse proceeds, we shall clarify at the proper time. "Wisdom is a cure-all remedy for everything," Callimachus writes in his epigrams; "one wise man from another, both of old and now," says Bacchylides in his Paeans; "for it is not easiest to find the gates of unspoken words."
Well then does Isocrates in the Panathenaicus, having put forward the question "Whom then do I call educated?", add: first, those who make good use of the matters that fall to them each day, and who possess an opinion that hits the mark of the occasions and is generally able to aim at what is advantageous; then those who deal fittingly and justly with those they encounter, bearing the unpleasantness and heaviness of others easily and readily, while presenting themselves as light and moderate as possible to their companions; further, those who master their pleasures and are not overly overcome by misfortunes, but bear themselves manfully in them and worthily of the nature which we happen to share; fourth, and this is the greatest thing, those who are not corrupted by good fortune nor driven out of themselves nor made arrogant, but remain within the order of those who think rightly. Then he adds the capstone of the statement: people whose soul's disposition is well attuned, not merely to one of these matters but to all of them together — these I call both prudent and perfect men and possessors of every virtue. Do you see how even the Greeks, though not knowing how one ought to have knowledge, deify the gnostic life? But what knowledge itself is, they do not know even in a dream.
If, then, it has been agreed among us that knowledge is our rational food, then truly blessed, according to Scripture, are those who hunger and thirst for truth, because they shall be filled with everlasting nourishment. Quite marvelously the philosopher of the stage, Euripides, is found in harmony with what we have said before, through these lines, hinting somehow, I know not how, at Father and Son together: "To you, ruler of all things, I bring libation and offering-cake, whether you delight to be named Zeus or Hades; but do you receive from me a fireless sacrifice, a full libation-offering of all fruits." For Christ is, on our behalf, a fireless whole burnt offering. And that he speaks these things without knowing the Savior himself, he makes clear by adding: "For you among the gods of heaven wield the scepter of Zeus, and among those of earth you share in the rule of Hades." Then he says outright: "Send up into the light the souls of the dead, for those who wish to learn beforehand from what source their trials sprang, what the root of evils is, and to whom of the blessed ones they must offer sacrifice to find rest from their toils." It is not unreasonable, then, that among the Greeks too the purifications stand at the head of the mysteries, just as among the barbarians there is the washing.
After these come the lesser mysteries, which have some basis of instruction and preparation for what is to come, while the greater mysteries concern the sum of all things, where there is no longer any learning left to do, but only beholding and comprehending nature and realities. We might take the purificatory manner as corresponding to confession, and the beholding manner as corresponding to analysis, advancing by analysis to the primary act of understanding, making our starting point from the things that underlie it — stripping away from the body its natural qualities, taking away the extension into depth, then that into breadth, and after these that into length; for what is left over is a point, so to speak, a unit having position, and if we take away its position, a unit is conceived. If then, having stripped away everything that belongs to bodies and to the things called incorporeal, we should fling ourselves toward the vastness of Christ and from there press onward into the boundlessness through holiness, we would in some way draw near to the understanding of the Almighty — not knowing what he is, but knowing what he is not. But as for shape and motion, standing, seat, site, or right hand or left hand of the Father of all, none of this must be conceived at all, even though these things too are written; but what each of them means will become clear in its own place. That primary cause, then, is not in a place, but above place and time and name and thought. For this reason Moses too says, "Show yourself to me," hinting most clearly that God is not teachable by men nor expressible in speech, but is knowable only by the power that comes from himself. For the seeking is formless and invisible, while the grace of knowledge comes from him through the Son.
Most clearly of all will Solomon bear witness to us, speaking in words like these: "Human shrewdness has no place in me — rather God supplies me with wisdom, and so I have knowledge of sacred things." At once, giving an allegory of divine wisdom, Moses named it the tree of life set within paradise — and this paradise may equally be the cosmos, where everything born of creation flourishes. Within this the Word likewise flowered and yielded fruit, taking on flesh, and granted life to those who tasted his goodness, since even apart from the tree no knowledge could reach us; for our life hung in the balance for the sake of our faith. Solomon says further: "She is a tree of immortality for whoever holds firmly to her." And for this reason he adds: "See, I lay before you life and death: to cherish the Lord your God, walk in his paths, listen to his voice, and put your trust in life — yet if you break the statutes and judgments I have handed to you, ruin will overtake you utterly; for this is your life and the measure of your days, to cherish the Lord your God."
Again: "Abraham, having come to the place which God told him, on the third day, lifting up his eyes, sees the place from afar." For the first stage is the longing for beautiful things through sight, the second is the soul's desire for the best things, and on the third the mind discerns spiritual things, the eyes of the understanding having been opened by the Teacher who arose on the third day. The three days might also be a mystery of the seal, through which one truly believes in God. Fittingly, then, he sees the place from afar; since the realm of God is difficult to reach, a realm Plato termed the realm of the Ideas, having taken from Moses that it is a place, as encompassing all things and the whole. And it is reasonably seen by Abraham from far off, because he is still within the realm of becoming, and he is initiated into the mystery immediately through an angel.
Hence the apostle says, "We see now as through a mirror, but then face to face," referring to those alone, pure and incorporeal, acts of apprehension by the understanding. And it is possible even in dialectical discourse to divine something of God, if one attempts, apart from all the senses, through reason to press on toward what each thing itself is, and not to fall away from realities, until, ascending to the things that lie above, one grasps by the understanding itself that which is the Good itself, arriving at the very end of the intelligible, according to Plato. Again, Moses, not permitting altars and sacred precincts to be built in many places, but establishing one single temple of God, proclaimed the cosmos to be only-begotten, as Basilides says, and God to be one — though this is no longer Basilides' own view. And because the gnostic Moses does not enclose the incomprehensible within a place, he placed no image within the temple, showing that God, an object of reverence, is invisible and uncircumscribed, while yet in some way bringing the Hebrews toward a notion of God through the honor of the name attached to the temple. But indeed the Word, forbidding the constructions of temples and all sacrifices, hints that the Almighty is not contained within anything, through the words: "What kind of house will you raise for me? says the Lord — the heavens are my seat," and the rest that follows. Likewise regarding sacrifices: "I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls or the fat of lambs," along with everything else the Holy Spirit forbids through the prophet on these matters.
Most excellently, then, Euripides too sings in harmony with these things, writing: "What house, fashioned by builders' hands, could enclose the divine form within the folds of its walls?" And likewise concerning sacrifices he says: "God, if he is truly God, needs nothing; these are the wretched words of poets." For it was not out of need that God made the cosmos, in order that he might reap honors from men and from the other gods and daimons, as Plato says, as though gaining some revenue from creation — smoke from us, and their proper services from gods and daimons. Most instructively, then, Paul speaks in the Acts of the Apostles, saying: "The God who fashioned the cosmos and everything within it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by hands as if he lacked anything, since he himself gives breath, life, and all things to everyone."
And Zeno too, founder of the Stoic school, says in his book on the Republic that one ought to build neither temples nor images; for nothing worthy of the gods is a construction, and he is not afraid to put it in exactly these terms: "No need will exist to raise temples at all, for one must count nothing a temple unless it is of great worth and holiness, and nothing fashioned by builders and craftsmen is of great worth and holiness." Reasonably, then, Plato too, knowing the cosmos to be the temple of God, showed the citizens a place in the city where the images were to be set up, but privately forbade anyone to possess images of the gods. "Let no one," he says, "consecrate sacred things to the gods in any other way; for gold and silver, in other cities as well, both privately and in temples, is an envied possession; and ivory, from a body that has left its soul, is not a pure offering; and iron and bronze are instruments of wars; but of wood, let one dedicate a single piece of whatever kind one wishes, and likewise of stone, for the common temples."
Reasonably, then, in the great letter he says: "It is in no way expressible in words as the other branches of learning are, but out of much shared living with the thing itself and dwelling together with it, suddenly, as a light kindled by a leaping fire, it is born in the soul and from then on nourishes itself." Are these not similar to what was said by the prophet Sophonias? "And a spirit lifted me and carried me up into the fifth heaven, where I saw angels termed lords, wearing diadems set upon them by the Holy Spirit, and the seat of each one shone sevenfold as bright as the rising sun, as they dwelt in temples of salvation, singing praise to the ineffable, most high God."

======== Stromata — Book 5, Chapter 12 ========

Locating the Father and Architect of this cosmos is hard labor, and once one has located him, telling of him to everyone is a sheer impossibility; for no way exists to put him into words, unlike the remaining objects of study, so says Plato, that lover of truth. For he had listened attentively to how Moses the supremely wise, ascending the mountain (for the purpose of sacred contemplation, up to the peak of things grasped by intellect) was of necessity ordered that the entire nation should not climb up alongside him; and when Scripture states, "Moses went into the thick darkness in which God dwelt," this reveals to those capable of grasping it that God is unseen and beyond speech, and that this darkness is in truth the disbelief and lack of knowledge belonging to the many, a darkness set before the brightness of truth so as to obstruct it. Orpheus the theologian likewise, having drawn benefit from this idea, once declared: "He is one, whole unto himself; out of that one all else took its shape" (or, it is also written, "took its growth"), and adds: "no mortal creature looks upon him, yet he looks upon every creature." And still more plainly he continues further along: "Him I cannot glimpse; for a cloud has settled firmly all around him. For upon all mortal beings mortal eyes have been placed, tiny ones, since flesh and bone have taken root over them."
The apostle attests to what has already been said, when he states, "I am acquainted with a man in Christ who was snatched up as far as a third level of heaven," and from there into paradise, "where he caught unspeakable sayings, words a human tongue has no permission to voice" — thereby gesturing toward the unspeakability of God, not appending that prohibition on account of any statute or dread of a command, but signifying by human capacity that the divine cannot be voiced, given that only past a third level of heaven does utterance begin to be granted, fittingly, to those select souls undergoing initiation there into the mysteries. For I too am aware that Plato conceives of numerous heavens (since the many illustrations drawn from non-Greek philosophy are, for now, set aside by Scripture on my part, held back for their fitting moment according to my earlier pledges). Certainly, puzzling in the Timaeus over whether one should posit several worlds beyond this one or merely this single one, he shows no anxiety about terminology, using world and heaven as interchangeable names; and his words go this way: "Have we then spoken correctly of a single heaven, or would it be truer to describe many, indeed countless ones? A single one, at least if it was shaped after its model."
But also, in that letter sent by the Romans to the Corinthians, we find written, "a sea without limit for humankind, and the worlds that lie beyond it." Appropriately, then, the noble apostle cries out once more, "How deep are the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge belonging to God!" And could this not be exactly what the prophet was pointing toward, when he ordered that the unleavened loaves be baked as "concealed ones," indicating that the truly sacred teaching about the Unbegotten and his powers ought to remain concealed as a mystery? Backing this up, the apostle states plainly in his letter to the Corinthians: "Among the mature we speak wisdom, though not a wisdom belonging to this present age, nor to the rulers of this age, who are being brought to nothing; rather we speak God's wisdom, held within a mystery, wisdom kept concealed." And elsewhere he again says: "toward complete recognition of the mystery of God found in Christ, within whom lie stored every treasure of wisdom and understanding, kept out of sight." Our own Savior confirms these very points, saying words to this effect: "To you has been granted the privilege of knowing the mystery belonging to the kingdom of the heavens." And once more the Gospel reports that our Savior delivered his message to the apostles under cover of mystery; since indeed the prophecy about him states, "His lips will open into parables, and he will voice matters concealed since the world's founding." And earlier still, through the parable about the leaven, the Lord clarifies this same concealment; for he says: "The kingdom of the heavens resembles leaven, taken by a woman and buried within three measures of flour, until it had all risen." For either the tripartite soul finds salvation through obedience by means of the spiritual power concealed inside it through faith, or else the potency of the word entrusted to us, being forceful and vigorous, quietly and imperceptibly pulls toward itself anyone who has accepted it and made it his own within, drawing his entire being together into a single whole.
Most wisely, then, has this been written by Solon concerning God: "Of understanding the unseen measure is hardest to conceive, which alone holds the limits of all things." For the divine, as the poet of Acragas says, "is not possible to approach, within reach of our eyes, or to grasp with hands, by which the greatest highway of persuasion falls upon the mind of men." And John the apostle: "God has never at any time been seen by anyone; the uniquely-begotten God, the one residing close to the Father's breast, that one has made him known" — using the term "breast" for what is unseen and beyond speech in God; and some have accordingly called it the "depth," as having encompassed and taken to its bosom all things, being itself unreachable and boundless. Yes indeed, this is the most intractable of all discourses concerning God. For since the origin of every matter is hard to discover, surely the first and most venerable origin of all is hard to point out — that origin which is the cause to all other things both of their coming to be and of their continuing to be once they have come to be. For how could that be expressible which is neither genus nor differentia nor species nor individual nor number, and moreover is not even an accident, nor that to which an accident has happened? Nor indeed could one rightly call it a whole; for "whole" is classed under magnitude, and it is the father of all wholes. Nor again may parts be spoken of it; for the One is indivisible, and for this very reason also infinite — not conceived of as infinite in the sense of the untraversable, but in the sense of the unextended and having no limit — and therefore also without shape and without name.
And if we ever name it, we do not, in calling it properly, call it either "One" or "the Good" or "Mind" or "Being itself" or "Father" or "God" or "Demiurge" or "Lord" — not as bringing forth a name proper to it do we speak, but out of our perplexity we make use of good names, so that the understanding may have something to lean upon, rather than wandering about among other things. For it is not the particular terms taken singly that indicate God, but all of them together, taken as a whole, are indicative of the power of the Almighty; for the things said are expressible either from what belongs to them or from their relation to one another, and none of these can be applied in speaking of God. But neither is he grasped by demonstrative knowledge; for this is built up out of prior and more knowable things, and nothing exists prior to the Unbegotten. It remains, then, by divine grace and by the Word that comes from him alone, to conceive the Unknown — as Luke too, in the Acts of the Apostles, records Paul as saying: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every respect you are rather given to reverence of the divine. For as I passed through and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar on which was inscribed: 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship without knowing it, this I proclaim to you."

======== Stromata — Book 5, Chapter 13 ========

Everything, then, that falls under a name is begotten, whether men wish it or not. Whether it is the Father himself who draws to himself everyone who has lived purely and has advanced to a conception of the blessed and incorruptible nature, or whether it is the free will within us that, having arrived at knowledge of the good, leaps and bounds beyond the marked lines, as the trainers in the gymnasium say — yet not without that special grace does the soul grow wings and rise up and is lifted above the things that lie over it, laying aside every weight and rendering itself to its kindred nature. Plato too, in the Meno, holds that virtue is a gift of god, as these words make plain: "From this reasoning, then, Meno, virtue appears to us to come to those to whom it comes by divine allotment." Does it not seem to you that he has darkly hinted that the gnostic disposition, which does not come to all, is a divine allotment? He adds more clearly still: "But if in this whole discussion we have inquired well, virtue would be neither by nature nor teachable, but comes by divine allotment, not without understanding, to those to whom it comes." God-given, then, is wisdom, being a power of the Father; it summons forth our free will, welcomes faith, and repays the earnestness of our choosing with the utmost fellowship.
And indeed I shall set before you Plato himself, already thinking it right to believe outright in the children of god. For having made his argument about the visible and begotten gods in the Timaeus, concerning the other daimones he says that to speak of and know their origin is beyond us, but that we must trust those who spoke of it before, being, as they said, offspring of the gods, and who surely knew their own ancestors well. It is impossible, then, to disbelieve the children of gods, even though they speak without probable and necessary demonstrations. I do not think our savior and those anointed unto prophecy could be more clearly attested by Greeks than this — the former proclaimed sons of god, the latter, the lord, being a true son, are true witnesses concerning divine things; wherefore he added that one must trust them as being inspired by god. And even if someone should say more tragically that he does not believe — "for it was not Zeus who proclaimed these things to me" — let him know that it is god himself who, through the son, proclaimed the scriptures. Trustworthy is he who declares his own household's affairs, since the lord says no one has known the father except the son and whomever the son may reveal him to.
This one, then, must be believed, even according to Plato, even if he is proclaimed and spoken of without probable and necessary demonstrations, both through the old covenant and through the new. For if you do not believe, says the lord, you will die in your sins; and conversely, he who believes has eternal life. Blessed, then, are all who have put their trust in him. Trust is something more than faith; for when someone knows that the son is god, our teacher, he has come to trust that his teaching is true. And as learning, according to Empedocles, increases the mind, so trust toward the lord increases faith. We say, at any rate, that it belongs to the same men to disparage philosophy, to run down faith, to praise injustice, and to call blessed the life lived according to desire.
Now faith, even if it is a voluntary assent of the soul, is nonetheless a worker of good things and the foundation of righteous action. And even if Aristotle draws his technical distinctions, teaching that "making" applies also to irrational animals and to inanimate things, while "doing" belongs to men alone, let him set straight those who call god the maker of the universe. He says that whatever can be done is either good or necessary. To act wrongly, therefore, cannot be good, since nobody commits wrong except for some further purpose, and nothing among necessary things is done willingly; wrongdoing, then, is willed, and hence falls outside necessity. Among base men, the more accomplished ones differ chiefly in their choices and in their cultivated desires. For every corruption of the soul comes with lack of self-control, and one who acts under passion acts through lack of self-control and corruption. So it happens that at every turn I marvel at that divine saying: "Amen, amen, I tell you, whoever does not go in by the gate to the fold where the sheep are kept, but climbs over some other way, is a thief and a plunderer; whereas whoever goes in by the gate tends the sheep as their shepherd, and to him the gatekeeper opens up." Then, explaining further, the lord says: "I am the gate for the sheep."
It is necessary, then, that those who have learned the truth through Christ be saved, even if they happen to have philosophized in Greek philosophy; for now it has been shown plainly what was not made known to other generations of the sons of men, but is now revealed. For the impression of the one almighty god was always natural among all who thought rightly, and most people, even those who had not entirely lost their sense of shame before the truth, laid hold of the everlasting beneficence that comes according to divine providence. Universally, then, Xenocrates of Chalcedon does not despair of the notion of the divine even in irrational animals, and Democritus, even if he does not wish it, will admit it by the logical consequence of his own doctrines; for he has made the same images that impinge upon men also impinge upon irrational animals, coming from the divine substance. Far indeed is it from man to be without a share of the notion of the divine, seeing that he is recorded as having received a share of the breath of life at his creation, having partaken of a purer substance than the other animals.
Hence the followers of Pythagoras say that mind comes to men by divine allotment, just as Plato and Aristotle also agree. But we say that the holy spirit is further breathed into the one who has come to believe, while Plato's followers place mind within the soul as an emanation of a divine share, and place the soul within the flesh; for this is plainly declared through the prophet Joel, counted among the twelve: "And afterward it will come to pass that I will pour out my spirit on every living being, and your male and female children will speak as prophets." But the spirit is not a part of god in each of us. How this distribution works, and what the holy spirit actually is, will be shown by us in the treatises On Prophecy and On the Soul. But it is good, according to Heraclitus, to hide the depths of knowledge through distrust, "for through distrust it escapes being known."
XIV. What follows must next be rendered, and the Greek theft from barbarian philosophy must now be set forth more clearly.
For the Stoics say that god is a body, and spirit in substance, just as indeed the soul is too. All these things you will find outright in the scriptures. But do not now suppose that I mean their allegories in the way that gnostic truth hands them down, as if, like clever wrestlers, they show one thing and mean another. Rather, they say that god pervades all substance, while we call him maker alone, and maker by his word. What led them astray was the saying in the book of Wisdom: "it pervades and passes through all things because of its purity" — since they did not understand that this is said of the wisdom first created by god. Yes, they say, but the philosophers posit matter among their first principles — the Stoics, and Plato, and Pythagoras, and Aristotle the Peripatetic too — but not as a single first principle. Let them know, then, that what they call matter, according to their own account, has neither quality nor shape, and Plato even ventures, more boldly, to say it does not exist at all. And is it not perhaps in the most mystical way, knowing that there is truly one single first principle, that he says in the Timaeus, in these very words: "but as for our present discourse, let it stand thus: as to the beginning of all things, whether one beginning or several, or however it may seem regarding these matters, it is not now to be stated, for no other reason than that it is difficult, in the present manner of exposition, to make our views clear"?
Moreover, that prophetic saying, "and the earth was invisible and unformed," furnished them their starting points for the notion of material substance.
Indeed, for Epicurus the intrusion of chance came about because he did not follow the meaning of the saying, "vanity of vanities, all things are vanity" — hence his emptiness of emptinesses. As for Aristotle, he was led to limit providence's reach to no lower than the lunar sphere, taking his cue from this psalm: "Lord, your mercy is in heaven, and your truth reaches to the clouds." For the unveiling of prophecy's mysteries had not yet taken place before the lord's arrival.
As for the punishments after death and the retribution by fire, it was from barbarian philosophy that the whole poetic muse, and Greek philosophy too, stole them. Plato, at any rate, in the final book of the Republic, says in these very words: "There, fierce men, fiery to look upon, stood by, and understanding the sound, took some aside privately and led them away, and having bound Ardiaeus and the others hand and foot and head, and thrown them down and flayed them, dragged them along outside the road over thorn bushes, carding them." For by the fiery men he means to signify angels, who take the unjust and punish them: "He who makes," it says, "his angels spirits, and his ministers a flaming fire."
It follows from these things that the soul is immortal. For that which is punished or disciplined, being in sensation, lives, even if it is said to suffer. What then? Does Plato not know of both streams of fire and the earth's depths, giving poetic names to what the barbarians call Gehenna and Tartarus, and introducing Cocytus, Acheron, and Pyriphlegethon, along with certain other such places of punishment meant to discipline toward self-mastery? And of the small and least, according to scripture, does he not hesitate to write of the angels who see god, and further, showing the oversight that comes to us through the angels set over us: "since all the souls had chosen their lives, as they had drawn lots, they came forward in order to Lachesis, who sent along with each the daimon he had chosen, as guardian of his life and fulfiller of what had been chosen." Perhaps even to Socrates his daimonion hinted at something of this sort.
Indeed, the philosophers, having received from Moses that the world is generated, made a doctrine of it. And Plato himself states plainly: "Was it without any beginning of coming-into-being, or has it come to be, taking its start from some beginning point? It has come to be; for since it is visible, it can be touched, and since it can be touched, it likewise possesses body." And again, when he remarks that discovering the one who made and fathered this universe is itself a difficult undertaking, he has shown not merely that the world is generated, but also signifies that it has arisen from him in the manner of offspring, and that this maker is termed its father, as though the world had sprung from him alone and had been brought into being out of nothing that existed before. The Stoics too hold the world to be generated.
As for the one whom barbarian philosophy loudly proclaims, the devil, the ruler of the daimones, Plato says in the tenth book of the Laws that he is an evil-working soul, in these very words: "A soul administering and dwelling in all things that are everywhere in motion — must we not say it is necessary that it administer heaven too?" "Of course." "One soul, or more?" "More — I will answer on your behalf. Let us posit no fewer than two, at any rate: the beneficent one, and the one able to work the contrary effects."
Likewise in the Phaedrus he writes this: "There are indeed other evils too, but some daimon has mixed pleasure with most of them for the immediate moment." And also, in Laws book ten, he plainly displays that apostolic saying: "our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the spiritual forces of the things in the heavens," writing something like this: "For since we have granted among ourselves that heaven is full of many good things, and also of their opposites, and more of the latter than the former, we say that this is an undying battle, and one requiring wondrous vigilance."
Again, barbarian philosophy knows a twofold cosmos, the intelligible and the sensible, the one archetype, the other an image of what is called the model; and it assigns the one to the monad, as being intelligible, and the sensible to the hexad; for among the Pythagoreans marriage, as being a fruitful number, is called the hexad. And in the monad he establishes an invisible heaven and an unseen earth and intelligible light; for it says, "In the beginning god made heaven and earth; and the earth was invisible."
Then it continues: "And god spoke: let light come to be; and light came to be." But in fashioning the perceptible cosmos he constructs a firm sky — firmness belonging to the perceptible order — along with a visible earth and light that can be seen. Does it not strike you that Plato, following this, keeps the forms of living things back within the intelligible cosmos, while he molds their perceptible shapes to match those intelligible patterns? Fittingly, then, Moses states that the body was molded out of earth, which Plato names the earthly tent, whereas the rational soul was breathed into the countenance from above by god. For that, they say, is where the governing faculty resides, taking the soul's entry through the senses to represent the arrival of the first-formed man, and this is precisely why humanity came into being after image and likeness. For god's image is the divine, kingly word — the man beyond suffering; and the image of that image is the human intellect. And should you wish to name this likeness by another term, you would discover in Moses a sequence termed divine; for he states: "follow the lord your god and observe his commandments." And I take it that all who practice virtue are god's followers and servants.
Hence the Stoics have declared the end of philosophy to be living in accordance with nature, while Plato calls it likeness to god (as we set forth in the second Stromateus); and Zeno the Stoic, borrowing this from Plato, though it too traces back to barbarian philosophy, holds that all good men share mutual friendship. For, in the Phaedrus, Socrates maintains that a bad man cannot be fated to befriend a bad man, nor can a good man fail to befriend a good man — a point he argued sufficiently as well in the Lysis, namely that friendship can never endure amid injustice and wickedness. And the Athenian stranger likewise says that an action that is dear and follows god has one ancient principle, namely, that like is dear to like when it is moderate, but immoderate things are dear neither to the immoderate nor to the measured.
"For God would be the measure of all things for us." Then, going down a little further, he adds again: "For each virtuous man resembles every other virtuous man, and in this respect, being similar to God, such a man is a friend both to every virtuous man and to God." Coming to this point I was reminded of that other passage as well; for at the end of the Timaeus he says that the perceiving part must be made like the thing perceived, according to its original nature, and that, having become like it, one attains the end of the best life set before man by the gods, both for the present time and for the time to come. For those words have the same force as these: "He who seeks shall not cease until he finds; and having found, he shall be amazed; and being amazed, he shall reign; and having reigned, he shall rest."
What then? Are not those sayings of Thales too dependent on these? That God is to be glorified "unto the ages of ages," and that he is called "knower of hearts," is plainly interpreted for us by what follows. For Thales, when asked what the divine is, said, "That which has neither beginning nor end." And when someone else inquired whether a man doing something escapes the notice of the divine, he said, "How could he, seeing that he does not even escape notice when merely thinking?"
Indeed, barbarian philosophy alone knows the good as identical with the beautiful/noble, and knows virtue to be self-sufficient for happiness, whenever it declares: "See, I have placed before your eyes today the good and the evil, life and death; choose life." For it calls life the good, and calls choosing it noble, and calls choosing the opposite evil. And the single goal of the good, and of life itself, is becoming one who loves God; for "in this lies your life and the length of your days," so as to cherish that which tends toward truth.
But those other sayings are clearer still. For the Savior, having commanded that we love God and our neighbor, says that on these two commandments the whole law and the prophets hang. These are the very doctrines the Stoics keep repeating, and before them Socrates in the Phaedrus, praying: "O Pan and you other gods, grant that I may become beautiful within." And in the Theaetetus he says outright: "For he who speaks well is both noble and good." And in the Protagoras he admits to Protagoras's companions that he has met one more beautiful than Alcibiades, if indeed the wisest is the most beautiful; for he said that virtue is the beauty of the soul, and conversely that vice is the ugliness of the soul. Antipater the Stoic, then, having written three books on the thesis that, according to Plato, only the noble is good, demonstrates that according to Plato too virtue is self-sufficient for happiness, and sets forth a good many other doctrines in agreement with the Stoics. And Aristobulus, who lived under Ptolemy Philometor and is mentioned by whoever compiled the digest of the Maccabean books, wrote a considerable number of books in which he demonstrates that the Peripatetic philosophy is drawn out of the Mosaic law and out of the remaining prophetic writings.
Let that matter stand as it is. As for our being brothers, inasmuch as we belong to one God and one teacher, Plato too, it seems, calls us so somewhere, speaking in this fashion: "You are all brothers, all of you who dwell in the city," as we shall say to them in telling the myth; "but the god, in fashioning you, mixed gold into the begetting of whichever among you are suited to govern, wherefore they are most honored; and silver into the auxiliaries; and iron and bronze for the farmers and the other craftsmen." Hence, he says, it is necessarily the case that these embrace and love the things belonging to knowledge, while those embrace and love the things belonging to opinion. For perhaps he is divining this chosen nature that reaches after knowledge — unless indeed, positing three natures, he is sketching out three commonwealths, as some have supposed, and assigning to the Jews the silver one, to the Greeks the third, and to the Christians, in whom the royal gold is mixed in, the Holy Spirit. And showing forth the life of Christians, he writes word for word in the Theaetetus: "Let us speak then of the leading men. For why should one speak of those who spend their time poorly in philosophy? These, I think, know neither the way to the marketplace, nor where the courthouse is, nor the council-chamber, nor any other common assembly-place of the city; and they neither see nor hear the laws and decrees as they are written up. The zeal of political clubs and their meetings, and revels with flute-girls — it does not so much as occur to them even in a dream to take part in these. Whether someone in the city has fared well or badly, or what evil has befallen someone from his ancestors — all this escapes them more than, as they say, the number of gallons in the sea. And they do not even know that they do not know these things, but in truth their body lies and sojourns in the city, while they themselves fly off, as Pindar says, exploring the regions beneath the earth and above the heaven, and searching out the whole of nature everywhere."
Again, that saying of the Lord, "Let your yes be yes and your no be no," is to be likened to this: "But it is in no way right for me to concede a falsehood or to suppress a truth." And this saying in the tenth book of the Laws harmonizes with the prohibition against swearing oaths: "Let praise and oath-taking be altogether absent." And broadly speaking Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato alike, when they say they hear the voice of god, are precisely contemplating the structure of the universe as having come to be by god and as being held together without ceasing; for they have heard Moses saying, "He spoke, and it came to be," describing the word of God as a deed.
And touching on the fashioning of man out of dust, the philosophers everywhere proclaim the body to be earthly; and Homer does not hesitate to place among his curses the line: "But may you all become water and earth," just as Isaiah too, saying, "and trample them like clay."
And Callimachus writes outright: "That was the year in which the bird, and the creature in the sea, and the four-footed beast, spoke thus, just as the clay of Prometheus." And again the same poet: "And if Prometheus fashioned you, and you were made from no other clay..." And Hesiod, concerning Pandora, says: "And he bade renowned Hephaestus as quickly as possible mix earth with water, and put in it a human voice and mind."
Fire, then, the Stoics define as the artificer that proceeds methodically toward generation, calling this nature; and by fire and light Scripture allegorizes God and his Word.
What then? Does not Homer too, paraphrasing the separation of the water from the earth and the visible uncovering of the dry land, say of Tethys and Oceanus: "For now a long time they hold themselves apart from one another's bed and love"?
Again, the most learned of the Greeks likewise attach the power to do all things to God — Epicharmus (who was a Pythagorean), saying: "Nothing escapes the divine; this you must know: he himself is our overseer, and God is powerless to do nothing,"
And the lyric poet: "It is possible for a god to raise up an unstained light out of black night, and to hide the pure gleam of day in dark-clouded darkness" (he who alone, while day stands present, has the power to make it night — this, he says, is God); and Aratus too, in the work entitled Phaenomena, having said "Let us begin from Zeus, whom, men, we must never leave unspoken; full of Zeus are all the streets, full all the marketplaces of men, full the sea and the harbors; everywhere we all have need of Zeus," adds: "For we too are his offspring," a work of divine craftsmanship; "and he, kindly to men, shows favorable signs, and stirs the peoples to their work; and he fixed these signs in the sky, distinguishing the stars; and he considered for the year which stars would give men the clearest signs of the seasons, that all things might grow steadfastly; wherefore they ever propitiate him first and last: hail, Father, great wonder, great benefit to men." And before him Homer, fashioning the world upon the Hephaestus-wrought shield after the manner of Moses, says: "On it he made the earth, and on it the sky, and on it the sea, and all the constellations with which the sky is crowned." For the Zeus who is celebrated in poems and in prose writings refers the notion back to God.
Already, so to speak, almost within our own sight of the light, Democritus writes that there are some few among men who, lifting up their hands toward that region the Greeks nowadays name the air, say: "Zeus discourses all things, and he knows all, gives all, and takes all away, being king over all." More mystically still, the Boeotian Pindar, being a Pythagorean, hands down: "One is the race of men, one the race of gods; from one mother we both draw breath" — namely, matter — and he hands down that there is one craftsman of these, whom he calls "the father, best of craftsmen," who has also granted advancements toward divinity according to merit. I say nothing of Plato. He himself, quite openly, in his letter to Erastus and Coriscus, seems, I know not how, to show forth father and son out of the Hebrew scriptures, exhorting word for word: "swearing together with earnest zeal, not unmusical, and with education, the sister of earnest zeal, by the god who is cause of all things, and by the lord who is father of the guide and cause, whom, if you philosophize rightly, you shall know." And the public address in the Timaeus calls the demiurge father, saying somewhat thus: "O gods sprung from gods, whose maker and father I am."
So that even when he says, concerning the king of all things, "all things are for the sake of him and he is the cause of all noble things, and a second is concerned with the second things and a third with the third things," I for my part hear this in no other way than as indicating the holy Trinity; for the Holy Spirit is the third, and the Son is the second, through whom all things came to be according to the will of the Father. And the same Plato, in the tenth book of the Republic, mentions Er the Armenian, of the tribe of Pamphylia, who is Zoroaster; for Zoroaster himself indeed writes: "These things I, Zoroaster son of Armenius, of the tribe of Pamphylia, have composed, having died in war, all that I learned in Hades from the gods." And Plato says that this Zoroaster, lying on his funeral pyre, came back to life on the twelfth day; and perhaps he hints thereby at the resurrection, or perhaps at this — that through the twelve signs of the zodiac the way lies for souls unto their ascent, and he himself says that the same descent occurs also for their coming into being. In this way one must also suppose that the labors of Heracles came to be twelve in number, after which the soul obtains release from the whole of this world. Nor do I pass over Empedocles either, who, in his natural-philosophical way, likewise mentions a taking-up of all things, as though there were one day to be a transformation into the substance of fire.
Most clearly of all is Heraclitus of Ephesus of this opinion — holding one world to be eternal, and another to be perishable, knowing the one that comes to be according to the ordered arrangement to be, in a sense, no other than that eternal one. That he knew the world, peculiarly qualified as it is out of the whole of substance, to be eternal, he makes plain when he says thus: "This world-order, the same for all, no one of gods or of men has made, but it always was and is and shall be, an ever-living fire, kindling in measures and being extinguished in measures." But that he held it also to be generated and perishable, what follows shows: "The turnings of fire: first, sea; and of sea, half is earth, half fiery storm-cloud." For he means, in effect, that fire, by the governing Word and God of all things, is turned through air into the moist, as it were the seed of the ordered arrangement, which he calls sea; and out of this again come earth and sky and the things contained within them. And how in turn it is taken back up and set ablaze he shows plainly by these words: "Sea is poured out and measured to the same proportion it was before it became earth." And likewise concerning the other elements the same holds.
Similar to this the most notable of the Stoics also teach doctrine, discoursing on the conflagration and the governance of the world and on the world and man each being peculiarly qualified, and on the continued survival of our souls. Again, too, Plato, in the seventh book of the Republic, has called the day here "nocturnal" (because of, I think, the world-rulers of this darkness), and has called the descent of the soul into the body sleep and death, in agreement with Heraclitus. And might not the Spirit have foretold this very thing concerning the Savior, speaking through David: "I lay down and slept; I awoke, because the Lord will sustain me"? For it allegorizes not only Christ's resurrection as a rising from sleep, but also the Lord's descent into flesh as sleep.
So too the Savior himself gives the charge: "Watch," as if to say, practice living and try to loosen the soul free of the body. Now the Lord's day is foreshadowed by Plato in the tenth book of the Republic through these words: "And when seven days had passed for each of those in the meadow, they must rise up from there on the eighth and journey on, and arrive on the fourth day thereafter." One must understand by "the meadow" the fixed sphere, as a tame and gentle region, a place of the holy; and by "seven days" each of the movements of the seven planets, and the whole busy craft of working straining toward the goal of rest. And the journey after the wandering stars brings one up into heaven, namely to the eighth motion and its day. And he says the souls depart "on the fourth day," signifying the journey through the four elements.
But not only the Hebrews but the Greeks too regard the seventh as a holy day, in step with which the whole cosmos turns amid all things that are born and grow. Hesiod, then, speaks thus of it: "First, the fourth, and the seventh, a holy day." And again: "And on the seventh once more the shining light of the sun." And Homer: "And thereafter on the seventh there descended a hallowed day." And: "Holy was the seventh." And again: "That was the seventh day, on which all things stood finished." And again: "On the seventh dawn we quit the stream of Acheron." Indeed, Callimachus the poet too writes: "By the seventh dawn all was likewise brought to completion for him." And again: "Numbered among the good days is the seventh, and a birthday too." And: "Counted among the first is the seventh, and it stands complete." And: "Seven of all things were wrought in the starry heaven, wheeling in circles as the years revolve."
But the elegies of Solon too very much deify the number seven.
What then? Are not the words like those of Scripture, which says, "Let us take away the righteous man from among us, for he is troublesome to us"? Plato, all but prophesying the economy of salvation, in the second book of the Republic says thus: "Being so disposed, the just man will be scourged, racked, bound, will have his eyes put out, and at the last, having suffered every evil, will be impaled." And Antisthenes the Socratic, paraphrasing that prophetic voice, "To whom will you liken me? says the Lord," says that God is like nothing; wherefore no one can come to know him fully from an image. And Xenophon the Athenian says similar things, word for word: "He who shakes and steadies all things is plainly some great and powerful being; but what he is in form is unseen. Nor indeed does even the sun, which seems to shine on all, allow itself to be looked upon directly; but if anyone looks at it shamelessly, it takes away his sight." "For what flesh can behold with its eyes the heavenly and true immortal god, who dwells in the vault of heaven? Nor indeed are men able to stand facing the sun's rays, being mortal creatures" — so the Sibyl foretold.
Xenophanes of Colophon too speaks well when, teaching that God is one and incorporeal, he adds: "One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way like mortals in body or in thought." And again: "But mortals suppose that gods are born, and that they have their own clothing, voice, and body." And again: "But if oxen or lions had hands, so as to draw with their hands and produce works as men do, horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and they would make their bodies of just the sort of shape that they themselves each had."
Let us hear again Bacchylides the lyric poet speaking of the divine: "They who are untamed by unseemly diseases and unharmed, in no way like men." And Cleanthes the Stoic, who wrote these things about God in a certain poem: "You ask me what the good is like? Listen then: ordered, just, holy, pious, master of itself, useful, noble, fitting, austere, straightforward, ever advantageous, fearless, painless, profitable, free from grief, beneficial, pleasing, secure, friendly, held in honor, agreed upon, of good repute, without conceit, careful, gentle, intense, enduring through time, blameless, ever abiding."
The same poet, covertly reproaching the idolatry of the many, adds: "Ungenerous is every man who looks to opinion, as though he would obtain some good thing from it." No longer, then, must one hold notions about the divine according to the opinion of the many. For "I do not think that Zeus came to your bed secretly in the guise of a mischievous light, taking a man's form, as Amphion says to Antiope. Sophocles, however, writes bluntly: "For Zeus wedded this man's mother, not in golden form, nor clothed in a swan's plumage, as when he got the maiden of Pleuron with child, but as a solid man." Then, stealing in further, he adds: "Swiftly the adulterer took his stand upon the bridal steps." On top of this he narrates the intemperance of the mythmakers' Zeus still more plainly thus: "He, touching neither feast nor washing-water, went to the bed, his heart gnawed with desire; and the whole of that night he reveled in lust." Let these things then be left to the follies of the theaters. Directly to the point, Heraclitus says that, though this account is always so, men prove uncomprehending both before they hear it and once they have heard it for the first time.
The lyric poet Melanippides, singing, says: "Hear me, O father, wonder of mortals, ruler of the ever-living soul." And the great Parmenides, as Plato says in the Sophist, writes somewhat thus about the divine: "Many things indeed, since it is unbegotten and imperishable, whole, of a single kind, and unmoving and unbegotten." And Hesiod too says that he himself is king and lord of all the immortals: "and none has ever contested your power."
Indeed tragedy too, drawing men away from idols, teaches them to look up to heaven.
Sophocles, as Hecataeus, the compiler of histories, says in his work Concerning Abraham and the Egyptians, cries out directly upon the stage: "In truth there is one, there is one God, who made heaven and the vast earth and the sea's grey-gleaming swell and the might of the winds. But we mortals, straying in heart, set up as a solace for our sorrows images of gods made of stone, or figures of bronze, gold-wrought, or ivory; and offering to these sacrifices and wicked festivals crowned with garlands, we suppose that in this way we act piously."
Euripides too, in tragic verses upon that same stage, says: "Do you see this boundless ether above, and the earth encircled in its moist embrace? Consider this to be Zeus, hold this to be god." And in the drama Pirithous the same poet also delivers this in tragic form: "You, the self-begotten one, who in the ethereal whirl have woven together the nature of all things, around whom light and dark night of many hues and the countless throng of stars dance in unending chorus." Here he has called the self-begotten one the creative mind, and what follows is assigned to the cosmos, in which are also the opposites of light and darkness. And Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, speaks very solemnly of God: "Zeus is the ether, Zeus is the earth, Zeus is the heaven; Zeus indeed is all things and whatever is above these."
I know too that Plato bears witness to Heraclitus when he writes: "The one, the sole wise thing, is unwilling and yet willing to be called by the name of Zeus." And again: "It is law also to obey the counsel of one." And should you wish to trace out that saying, "he who has ears to hear, let him hear," you would find it somewhat so expressed by the Ephesian: "The uncomprehending, though they hear, are like the deaf; the proverb bears witness of them that though present they are absent."
But do you desire to hear directly, even from the Greeks, of a single first principle? Timaeus the Locrian, in his treatise on nature, will bear witness for me in these very terms: "A single originating source of all beings exists, unproduced; for were it something that had arisen, it would cease to count as an origin, and instead that prior thing from which it arose would be the origin." For from that source flowed the true opinion: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one, and him alone shall you serve." "This one, behold, stands plain and unerring before all," as the Sibyl says.
Already too Homer appears, through the following words, to point to a father and a son, having chanced upon a well-aimed piece of divination, when he says: "If indeed no one does you violence while you remain as you are, yet there is no way to escape the sickness sent by great Zeus. For the Cyclopes take no heed of aegis-bearing Zeus." And before him Orpheus, treating of the same subject, has said: "Son of great Zeus, father of aegis-bearing Zeus." Xenocrates of Chalcedon, calling the one Zeus the Highest and the other the Lowest, leaves an implication of father and son. And, most astonishing of all, Homer appears to have some knowledge of the divine, even though he introduces the gods as subject to human passions - a thing Epicurus does not so much as blush at.
He says, at any rate: "Why, son of Peleus, do you pursue me with your swift feet, being yourself a mortal, an immortal god? You do not yet know that I am a god." He has made plain that the divine is not to be seized or comprehended by a mortal, neither with feet nor with hands nor with eyes, nor at all by means of the body. "To whom then will you liken the Lord? Or with what likeness will you compare him?" says Scripture. "Has a craftsman made an image, or has a goldsmith cast gold and overlaid it with gold?" and so on.
Epicharmus the comic poet too speaks clearly of the Logos, in his Politeia, somewhat thus: "Human life has great need of reckoning and number; we live by number and reckoning, for these things preserve mortals." Then he adds outright: "The Logos governs men, and rightly preserves them." Then, "if
there is reckoning in man, there is also a divine Logos; the one exists in man in regard to the vicissitudes of life, but that other, the divine Logos, accompanies every art among all men, ever itself teaching them what it is advantageous to do. For man did not discover art; rather it is god who bestows it. But man's own reasoning has its nature from the divine Logos."
Indeed, through Isaiah the Spirit exclaims: "Why do your many offerings matter to me? declares the Lord. I have had enough of the burnt rams, and I take no pleasure in the fat of lambs or the blood of oxen," and a little further on he adds: "Cleanse yourselves, make yourselves pure, put away the evil from your souls," together with what comes next - Menander, the writer of comedy, expresses this identical sense in the following lines: "If a man, O Pamphilus, in offering sacrifice, brings a great number of bulls or of kids, or, by Zeus, other such things, or fine furnishings, having made cloaks of gold or of purple, or little figures wrought of ivory or of emerald, thinks by this to make god well-disposed toward him, he has strayed and has a light mind. For a man ought by nature to be useful, not corrupting maidens and committing adultery, stealing and murdering for the sake of money; nor should you covet so much as the thread of a needle, Pamphilus; for god sees you, being present nearby. I am a god who draws near, and not a god from afar; or shall a man do something in secret places, and shall I not see him? says the Lord through Jeremiah."
And again Menander, paraphrasing that scripture, "offer a sacrifice of righteousness and hope in the Lord," writes somewhat thus: "Nor, dearest friend, should you ever covet so much as another's needle; for god delights in righteous deeds and not in unrighteous ones, and allows the man who labors to raise up his own life, plowing the earth by night and by day. Sacrifice to god continually by being righteous, not resplendent in your cloaks while base at heart. If you hear thunder, do not flee, being conscious in yourself of no wrongdoing, master; for god sees you, being present nearby. While you are yet speaking, says Scripture, I will say: behold, I am here."
Diphilus the comic poet, again, discourses somewhat as follows about judgment: "Do you suppose, Niceratus, that the dead who partook of every luxury in life have escaped the divine as though unnoticed? Justice possesses a watching eye that beholds everything. For indeed we hold that in Hades there are two paths, one the way of the righteous, the other of the ungodly. And: 'If the earth shall cover the two of us for all time,' he says, 'go and seize, steal, defraud, mix all together; be not at all deceived; there is judgment also in Hades, which the god, master of all, will render, whose name is fearsome and which I myself would not even utter; who to sinners grants a long extension of life.' If any mortal supposes that in doing some evil by day he escapes the notice of the gods, he thinks wickedly, and in so thinking he is caught, whenever Justice happens to have leisure. See, all you who suppose that there is no god - there is, there is one; and if some man of wicked nature fares well, let him make gain of the time, for in time he will later pay the penalty." Tragedy agrees with these things through the following: "For there will be, there will be, that age of time, when the gold-gleaming ether shall release its treasury laden with fire, and the raging flame, once fed, will burn up all things upon the earth and in the heights, gone mad."
And shortly after he again adds: "When the universe fails, the whole depth of the waves will vanish, the earth will be bereft of its foundations, nor will the air any longer bear up the winged tribes, being on fire; and then it will restore all the things it had before destroyed." Things like these we shall find also written in the Orphic writings, somewhat thus: "Having hidden all things, he brought them up again into the joyous light out of his sacred heart, working wonders." And if we live our lives in holiness and righteousness, we are blessed here, but more blessed still after our departure hence, possessing happiness not for some limited time, but able to rest in eternity, sharing the same hearth with the other immortals, being at their tables free from the sorrows of men, unwearied - so says the philosophical poetry of Empedocles. Not even among the Greeks will anyone be so great as to overreach justice, nor so small as to escape its notice.
The same Orpheus also says this: "Looking to the divine Logos, hold fast to this, directing the intelligent hollow of your heart; and walk well upon the path, and look only upon the immortal lord of the cosmos." And again, concerning God, calling him invisible, he says that he was known to only one man of the Chaldean race, whether he means Abraham himself or his son, through these words: "Unless there be some only-begotten offshoot sprung from of old from the Chaldean race - for he had knowledge of the star's course and of the sphere's motion about the earth, how it revolves in a circle evenly about its own axis, and he guides the winds about the air and about the flowing waters."
Then, as though paraphrasing "heaven is my throne, and earth the footstool of my feet," he adds: "He himself again is set fast upon great heaven, upon a golden throne, and earth lies beneath his feet. His right hand he has stretched out to the bounds of Ocean, and the foundations of the mountains tremble within their hearts, nor can they bear his mighty strength. He himself is everywhere heavenly, and on earth all things find their end, having himself the beginning and the middle and the end. It is not lawful for you to speak of him otherwise; my limbs tremble at the thought. From on high he rules," and so on. For through these words he has made plain all those prophetic sayings: "If you open the heaven, trembling will seize the mountains from before you, and they shall melt, as wax melts before the face of fire";
and the words spoken through Isaiah: "Who has gauged the sky with the span of a hand, and enclosed the entire earth within its hollow?" Again, when he says: "Lord of ether and of Hades, of sea and earth, who with thunders shake the strong house of Olympus; before whom the spirits tremble, and the assembled gods stand in dread; whom the Fates obey, relentless though they are; imperishable one, mother-father, by whose will all things are stirred; who move the winds, and cover all things with clouds, splitting the broad ether with thunderbolts; your order runs among the stars, in unchanging courses; beside your fiery throne stand the toiling angels, whose care it is that all things be accomplished for mortals; your spring shines fresh with purple flowers; your winter comes on with cold clouds; your autumn fruits the reveling Bromios once distributed."
Then he adds, expressly naming God Almighty: "Imperishable, immortal, spoken of only among the immortals. Come, greatest of all gods, with mighty compulsion, awesome, unconquered, great, imperishable, whom the ether crowns." By the word "mother-father" he has signified not only the generation of things out of what does not exist, but has also given occasion to those who introduce emanations perhaps to conceive also of a consort of God; and he paraphrases those prophetic scriptures - both the one through Hosea, "I who establish thunder and create wind, whose hands founded the host of heaven," and the one through Moses: "Behold, behold, that it is I, and no other god exists beside me; death and life are mine to give; I wound and I restore; and no one can snatch anyone free from my grasp." But he himself, according to Orpheus, plants evil for mortals out of good, and chilling war and tearful griefs.
Such things too Archilochus the Parian says: "O Zeus, father Zeus, yours is the power of heaven, and you look upon the deeds of men, both lawless and unrighteous." Let the Thracian Orpheus, too, chant for us once more: "He has extended his right hand to the farthest edge of Ocean all around, while the earth rests beneath his feet." Plainly enough these lines were drawn from that source: "The Lord shall deliver the cities where people dwell, and shall hold the whole earth in his hand like a nest"; "the Lord who made the earth by his strength," as Jeremiah says, "and set up the world by his wisdom." Further, besides these, Phocylides, calling the angels demons, shows through the following that some of these are good and some base - since we too have received that certain of them are apostates: "But there are demons among men, now one, now another; some, when evil is coming on, deliver men from it."
Well then, Philemon the comic poet also cuts down idolatry through these lines: "There is for us no Fortune that is a god, there is not; but whatever happens to each by chance is called Fortune." And Sophocles the tragedian says: "Not even to the gods are all things granted at their own choosing, apart from Zeus; for he holds both the end and the beginning." And Orpheus too: "One power, one god came to be, great, blazing through heaven, and all things have been fashioned into one, in which all these things revolve, fire and water and earth,"
and what follows upon these. And Pindar the lyric poet is fairly carried away in bacchic frenzy, saying outright: "What is god? The whole of everything." And again: "God is he who fashions all things for mortals." Yet when he says: "What do you hope for as wisdom? A man has but little advantage over another. To search out the counsels of the gods is hard for a mortal mind; for he was born of a mortal mother," from that he has drawn his own understanding — "Who has grasped the intention of the Lord? Or who has come to stand as his advisor?" But Hesiod too, in what he writes, agrees with what has been said before: "No seer among men upon the earth could know the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus." Fittingly, then, Solon the Athenian, in his elegies, himself likewise following Hesiod, writes: "Wholly hidden from men is the mind of the immortals."
Again, when Moses prophesied that because of the transgression the woman would bear children into toil and labor, a poet of no small repute writes: "Never will they cease from weariness and misery by day, nor at all be spared it by night as they are afflicted; for the gods will give them grievous cares." Further, Homer, when he himself says, "and the Father stretched out his golden scales," declares god to be just; while Menander the comic poet, interpreting god as good, says: "A spirit stands beside every man the moment he is born, a good guide initiating him into the mysteries of life; for an evil spirit must not be supposed to exist, harming a good life." Then he adds: "and that god is altogether good" — either meaning that every god is good, or, what is more likely, that god is good in all things.
Again, in turn, Aeschylus the tragedian, when he expounds the power of god, is not reluctant to call him even Most High through these lines: "Set god apart from mortal things, and do not suppose him to stand, like yourself, made of flesh. You do not know him: at one time he appears as fire, an irresistible onrush, at another as water, at another as darkness; and he becomes like the wild beasts themselves, like wind and cloud and lightning, thunder, rain. The sea obeys him, and the rocks, and every spring and the gatherings of water. The mountains tremble, and the earth, and the monstrous depth of the sea, and the great height of the mountains, whenever the terrible eye of the master looks upon them; for the glory of the Most High god is powerful over all things." Does this not seem to you to be paraphrasing that saying, "the earth trembles at the presence of the Lord"?
In addition to these, Apollo himself, most skilled in divination, bearing witness to the glory of god, is compelled to say concerning Athena, when the Medes were making war upon Greece, how she begged and entreated Zeus on behalf of Attica. The oracle runs thus: "Pallas cannot appease Olympian Zeus, though she beseeches him with many words and shrewd counsel; he will give many of the immortals' temples over to consuming fire, temples which now, it seems, stand streaming with sweat and quaking with dread," and what follows upon this.
Thearidas, in his work On Nature, writes: "The origin of beings, the truly real origin, is one; for those things exist, from the outset, singly and without partner." "And there exists nothing else besides the great king," says Orpheus; and following him the comic poet Diphilus most sententiously says: "Honor to the end this one alone as the true father of all things, the discoverer and founder of so many good things." Fittingly, then, Plato too accustoms the best natures to arrive at that study which we said before is the greatest — to see the good and to make that ascent; and this, as it seems, would not be a turning of a potsherd, but a turning about of the soul, a return from a kind of nocturnal day to the true upward path of being, which indeed we shall call true philosophy. And those who share in it he judges to be of the golden race, saying, "You are all indeed brothers," while those of the golden race, he says, judge most exactly and in every respect.
By nature, then, and without being taught, all things everywhere apprehend the Father and Maker of the universe, each after its own kind: the inanimate things sharing in sympathy with the living, and among living things, those already immortal working out this daily, while among those still mortal, some are still borne within the mother's womb in fear, others already possess self-determination — and of men, this holds for both Greeks and barbarians alike. For no people anywhere, whether of farmers or of nomads, nor even of city-dwellers, can live without having already been possessed beforehand by faith in something greater. Therefore every nation, whether it dwells toward the sunrise or touches the western shores, whether northern or all that lies toward the south, holds one and the same preconception concerning the one who established sovereign rule, seeing that even his most universal works have gone forth equally to all alike —
and far more the philosophers among the Greeks, those most given to inquiry, setting out from the philosophy of the barbarians, gave the privilege of place to that which is invisible, alone, most powerful, most skilled in craft, and most responsible for all that is most beautiful — yet, not having been instructed by us, they do not know the things that follow from this, nor even how god by nature is to be conceived, but only, as we have already said many times, by way of a true circumlocution. Fittingly, then, the apostle asks: "Is he a god belonging to the Jews alone? Is he not one for the nations too?" — not only speaking prophetically of the fact that those from among the Gentiles who believe will come to know god as Greeks, but also signaling this: that in power the Lord and god would be god of all, and in reality almighty, but in respect of knowledge he is not god of all; since they grasp neither his nature nor the manner in which he serves as Master, Father, and Craftsman, nor do they know the rest of the economy of the truth, not having been taught it by the truth itself.
Likewise the prophetic writings likewise carry a weight equal to that of the apostle's word, for Isaiah declares: "But if you say, 'We have put our trust in the Lord our God' — come then, strike an agreement with my master, the ruler of Assyria." Then he continues: "Have we now marched against this territory to wage war upon it apart from the Lord?" And Jonah, himself also a prophet, hints at the same thing through what he says: "And the ship's captain came to him and said to him, 'Why are you snoring? Get up, call upon your god, that he may save us and we may not perish.'" For the phrase "your god" was spoken to one who knew by way of full recognition, while "that god may save us" made clear the perception of the nations, who had not yet come to faith, of those who had turned their minds toward the Almighty. And again the same prophet: "And he told them, 'I serve the Lord, and it is the Lord I revere, the God who rules heaven.'"
And again the same prophet: "And they said, 'By no means, Lord; let us not perish for the sake of this man's life.'" And Malachi the prophet plainly makes clear god as saying: "I will not accept sacrifice from your hands, for from where the sun rises to the place it goes down my name is held in glory among the nations, and in every place a sacrifice is offered to me." And again: "For I am a great king, says the Lord Almighty, and my name is renowned among the nations." What name? Among those who have believed, the Son declaring the Father; among the Greeks, "god the maker." And Plato shows forth self-determination through these words: "Virtue has no master; honoring or dishonoring her, each of us will share in her more or less. The cause lies with the one who chooses; god is blameless." For god is never the cause of evils. "O Trojans dear to Ares," says the lyric poet, "Zeus who rules on high, who looks upon all things, is not to blame for mortals' great sufferings; but it lies in the midst for all men to find holy Justice, companion of pure Good Order and prudent Right — blessed are the children of those who find her dwelling with them."
Pindar plainly brings in Zeus himself as savior, dwelling together with Themis, a king, a just savior, interpreting it in this way: "First the Fates led wise-counseling heavenly Themis, on golden chariots, from the springs of Ocean, up the holy stairway of Olympus, along the shining road, to be the ancient consort of Zeus the savior; and she bore the gold-filleted, glorious-fruited true Seasons." Whoever then is not persuaded by the truth, but is puffed up by human teaching, is ill-starred and wretched, and, in the words of Euripides, "one who, beholding these things, does not perceive god, but has flung far away the crooked deceits of the astrologers, whose baneful tongue casts random guesses about things unseen, having no share in understanding."
Whoever, then, wishes to arrive at true learning, let him listen to Parmenides of Elea promising: "You shall know the nature of the ether, and all the signs in the ether, and the unseen works of the pure, radiant torch of the sun, and whence they came to be; and you shall learn the wandering works and nature of the round-faced moon; and you shall know also the heaven that encompasses all, whence it arose, and how Necessity led and bound it to hold the bounds of the stars." And Metrodorus too, though he had become an Epicurean, spoke these words as if inspired: "Remember, Menestratus, that being born mortal and having received a life bounded by limits, you have ascended in soul even to eternity and the infinity of things, and have beheld both "the things that shall be and that have been before" — when, together with the blessed company, in the words of Plato, we shall behold the blessed vision and sight, following, some of us in the train of Zeus, others in the train of other gods, being initiated into rites — as is right to speak of them — a most blessed initiation, which we celebrate, being ourselves whole and untouched by the evils which in later time awaited us, and gazing in pure light upon whole and untrembling visions as initiates and beholders, ourselves pure and unmarked by this thing which now, carrying it about, we call the body, bound to it after the manner of an oyster in its shell."
The Pythagoreans call the counter-earth heaven — the earth concerning which it is said through Jeremiah: "I will appoint you as children, and I will give you a chosen land, the inheritance of God the Almighty, which those who inherit it shall rule as kings over the earth."
And ten thousand upon ten thousand upon ten thousand things more flow in upon me to set forth; yet for the sake of due measure the discourse must now be brought to a close, lest we too should suffer the fate of Agathon the tragedian, regarding the incidental as the main task, and laboring over the main task as though it were incidental.
Since it has, then, been shown clearly, as I think, in what sense one must grasp the Lord's naming of the Greeks as thieves, I gladly set aside the teachings of the philosophers. For even if we should go through their very words, we would not get to the end of it, gathering together so vast a store of testimonies, and showing that all the wisdom current among the Greeks is borne along from the philosophy of the barbarians. And we shall lay hold of this subject of inquiry again, no less, as necessity requires, whenever we take up for review the opinions concerning first principles current among the Greeks. Yet this too, from what has been said, quietly presents itself to us for consideration: in what manner one who is able to swim must engage with the waves that are in the Greek books. Blessed, it seems, then, in the words of Empedocles, is he "who has gained a wealth of divine understanding," but wretched is he "whose concern is a dark opinion about the gods." By this he has, in godlike fashion, marked out understanding and unlearning as the two limits between which happiness and misery lie. For, as Heraclitus says, philosophic men must indeed be inquirers into very many things, and in truth one who seeks to be noble must of necessity wander much in the search.
It is already clear to us, then, from what has been said before, that god's kindness has no end, and that, starting from a start which itself had no start, justice by nature is, without artifice, equal toward all, coming to be according to the worth of each kind, never having had a beginning; for god never acquired a starting point for being Master and being good, since he has forever been what he is, nor indeed will he ever cease doing good, even though he brings each thing to its end. And each of us partakes of this beneficence according to what he wishes, since it is the choice and the sustained practice of the soul, becoming worthy, that has made the difference in what is selected.
Here then let this, our fifth Stromateus of gnostic memoranda according to the true philosophy, come to an end.

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 1 ========

This sixth—and together with it the seventh—Stromateus of our Gnostic memoranda according to the true philosophy, having sketched out, as far as possible, the ethical account brought to completion in the preceding books, and having set forth what sort of person the Gnostic would be in his manner of life, now proceeds to demonstrate to the philosophers that in no way is he without reverence for the divine, as they had assumed, but rather is truly devout toward God, setting out in summary the manner of the Gnostic's worship, so far as it is safe to inscribe such things in a written memorandum meant only to jog recollection; for the Lord commanded us to labor for the food that remains unto eternal life, and somewhere the prophet says: Blessed is he who sows upon every water, where the ox and the ass tread — the people gathered out of the Law and out of the nations into the one faith. But he who is weak eats vegetables, according to the noble apostle. Our Paedagogue, already completed and divided into three books, has set forth the upbringing and nourishment of children from their earliest years, that is, the manner of life which, growing up from catechetical instruction together with faith, prepares beforehand the soul of those being enrolled among men to be virtuous, for the reception of Gnostic knowledge. Since, then, the Greeks will learn plainly from what is about to be said through these books how impiously they themselves act in irreligiously persecuting the one beloved of God, then, as the memoranda proceed according to the character proper to the Stromateis, we must resolve the further difficulties raised against us by both Greeks and barbarians concerning the coming of the Lord.
Just as in a meadow the flowers bloom in variety, and in a garden the planting of fruit trees is not separated species by species from those of a different kind (in the same way certain lovers of learning have, plucking a variety of blossoms, composed collections which they call Meadows, and Helicons, and Honeycombs, and Embroidered Robes), so too our sketch of the Stromateis has been made variegated after the fashion of a meadow, out of things that came to memory as they happened to occur, arranged neither in order nor polished in expression, but deliberately scattered about intermixed. And being so disposed, these would serve as living sparks both for me as memoranda, and for anyone suited to knowledge, should he chance upon them, so that the search after what is beneficial and profitable might come about with sweat; for it is right to reckon that not only the toil for food, but far more the toil for knowledge, is fitting for those being escorted, by the narrow and constricted way that truly belongs to the Lord, toward eternal and blessed salvation. And our knowledge and our spiritual paradise is the Savior himself, into whom we are planted, having been transplanted and grafted out of our old life into the good earth; and this change of planting contributes to good fruit-bearing. The Lord, then, is light, and true knowledge, into whom we have been transplanted.
Knowledge is also spoken of, in another way, as twofold: the one common — that understanding and apprehension which appears alike in all men universally, according to the recognizing of each of the things that underlie perception, in which not only the rational faculties but perhaps also the irrational share, which I myself would never call knowledge at all, since it is by nature apprehended even through the senses; but the knowledge properly so called takes its character from judgment and reason, according to which alone the rational faculties become instances of knowledge, those which lay hold purely, by the soul's bare activity, upon the objects of intellect. A good man, says David, is he who has compassion on those perishing in error and lends, by sharing the word of truth — not indiscriminately, but rather he will manage his words with judgment, with deep calculation. This man has scattered abroad, he has given to the poor.

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 2 ========

Before undertaking the subject set before us, I must first, in the manner of a preface, supply what is still owed at the close of the fifth Stromateus.
For since we have shown that the symbolic form of expression is ancient, and that it was not only used among our own prophets but employed by the great majority of Greeks in antiquity, as well as quite a number of other non-Greek nations besides, it was also necessary to go through the mysteries of those who are initiated. These matters I set aside for now, to make clear whenever, taking up what the Greeks have said about first principles, we come to refute them; for I shall show that the mysteries too hold to this same doctrine. But having shown that the character of Greek thought is illumined by the truth given to us through the scriptures — in which sense we understand that the theft of the truth extends to them, and have demonstrated this, if it is not too harsh a thing to say — come, let us bring forward the Greeks themselves as witnesses against themselves of this theft. For those who so openly steal from one another what belongs to each confirm thereby that they are thieves, yet even against their will they show that they are secretly passing on our truth to their own countrymen. For men who will not even spare their own kin will hardly hold back from ours.
And I shall pass over in silence the doctrines of philosophy, since those very men who divide up the schools among themselves confess in writing — lest they be convicted of ingratitude — that they received the most authoritative of their doctrines from Socrates. Making use of the testimony of a few men well known and esteemed among the Greeks, and having exposed their thievish character without regard to strict chronology, I shall turn to what follows.
Orpheus, then, having composed: "nothing else was more shameless and more chilling than a woman," Homer says outright: "nothing else was more dreadful and more shameless than a woman."
And Musaeus having written: "as skill is ever far better than strength," Homer says: "by cunning does the woodcutter prevail rather than by force."
Again, Musaeus having composed: "just as the grain-giving earth likewise puts forth leaves — some wither away upon the ash trees, others grow; so too does it turn about the generation and tribe of men," Homer transcribes it: "leaves — some the wind scatters upon the ground, but others the thriving wood puts forth, and the season of spring comes on; so is it with the generation of men: one grows, another comes to an end."
Again, Homer having said: "it is not righteous to boast over men who have been slain," Archilochus and Cratinus write likewise — the one: "it is no noble thing to mock the dead, over men who have been slain," and Cratinus in the Laconians: "this too is fearful for men, to boast greatly over slain warriors."
Again Archilochus, carrying over that Homeric line: "I was blinded with folly, nor do I myself deny it; instead of many," writes something like this: "I erred, and doubtless this same ruin has overtaken some other man too" — just as, to be sure, that other verse: "common to all is Enyalios, and he who slays is in turn slain," he reworks and puts forth something like this: "†I shall act; for truly Ares is common to men." Further, paraphrasing that saying: "the issue of victory for men lies in the †trial of the gods," he makes it plain through this iambic line: "and he encouraged the young men, saying that the issues of victory lie with the gods."
Again, Homer having said: "unwashed of feet, sleepers on the ground," Euripides writes in the Erechtheus: "they sleep upon an unstrewn floor, and wet not their feet at any spring."
And Archilochus having likewise said: "but one man's heart is warmed by one thing, another's by another," drawing on the Homeric: "for one man delights in one work, another in another," Euripides in the Oeneus says: "but different men take more pleasure in different ways."
I have also heard Aeschylus saying: "the man who fares well ought to stay at home — and the man who fares ill ought to stay there too," and Euripides crying out similar things on the stage: "blessed is he who, faring well, stays at home," and moreover Menander putting it comically something like this: "one ought to stay at home and remain a free man, or else no longer count as one who fares well."
Again, Theognis having said: "there is no friend and faithful companion for a man in exile," Euripides has made: "every friend nearby flees the poor man who is in flight."
And Epicharmus having said: "O daughter, alas for your fortune — you live with a young man though you yourself are older," and adding: "for he takes another, a young girl, while she in turn seeks out some other man elsewhere," Euripides writes: "it is a bad thing to yoke a young woman to a young man; for he longs to take another's bed, while she, being deprived of this, plots evil."
Further, Euripides having said in the Medea: "the gifts of a bad man bring no benefit," Sophocles in the Ajax the Whip-bearer speaks that iambic line: "the gifts of enemies are no gifts, and bring no benefit."
And Solon having composed: "for surfeit begets insolence, whenever great prosperity follows," Theognis writes outright: "surfeit indeed begets insolence, whenever prosperity follows a base man." Whence also Thucydides in his Histories says that most men, when good fortune arrives all at once and unforeseen, tend before long to slide into arrogance. Philistus copies this very idea, putting it something like this: on the whole, prosperity gained gradually and proportionately holds firmer than that which arrives past all expectation... and the same holds for misfortune; those who succeed beyond their hopes, out of nowhere, are the very ones most liable to be carried into arrogance.
Again, Euripides having composed: "children of a father and mother who labor at a hard way of life turn out better," Critias writes: "I begin, then, from the very begetting of a man: how might he become best and strongest in body? If the one who begets him exercises and eats vigorously and toils in body, and the mother of the child that is to be also keeps her body strong and exercises."
Again, Homer having said of the shield forged by Hephaestus: "on it he wrought the earth, and the sky, and the sea; and he set upon it the great might of the river Ocean," Pherecydes of Syros says: "Zas makes a robe great and beautiful, and on it he embroiders the earth and Ogenos and the halls of Ogenos."
And Homer having said: "reverence, which greatly harms men and also benefits them," Euripides writes in the Erechtheus: "as for reverence, I myself am hard put to judge; for it is needed, and yet it is also a great evil."
You might also take, set side by side, passages on this same theft from those who flourished together and contended against one another: from Euripides' Orestes — "O sweet charm of sleep, helper against sickness," and from Sophocles' Eriphyle — "go away, you disturb sleep, the healer of sickness"; and from Euripides' Antigone — "bastardy is blameworthy only in name, its nature is equal," and from Sophocles' Aleadae — "all that is good has an equal nature"; again from Euripides' Temenus — "for even a god joins in helping the man who toils," and from Sophocles' Minos — "fortune is no ally to those who do not act"; and further from Euripides' Alexander — "time will show you; by this token, learning it, I shall know whether you are good or bad," and from Sophocles' Hipponous — "therefore hide nothing, since time, which sees all and hears all, unfolds all things."
But let us likewise run over these as well. For Eumelus having composed: "nine daughters of Mnemosyne and Olympian Zeus," Solon begins his elegy thus: "the splendid children of Mnemosyne and Olympian Zeus."
Again, Euripides paraphrasing that Homeric line: "who are you, and whence, among men? where is your city, and your parents?" employs these iambic lines in the Aegeus: "what land shall we say you have left, to be a guest in this city? what is the boundary of your fatherland? who is he who begot you? whose son are you proclaimed to be?"
What then? Did not Theognis say: "wine, drunk in quantity, is bad; but if a man uses it with understanding, it is not bad but good," while Panyassis writes: "as wine is the best gift of the gods to mortals, when drunk in due measure, but worse when taken beyond measure."
But also Hesiod having said: "instead of fire I shall give you an evil in which all may take delight," Euripides makes: "instead of fire, women have sprung up, another fire, greater and harder to fight."
Besides these, Homer having said: "the belly can in no way be sated, the accursed thing, which gives men many evils," Euripides makes: "necessity, the wretched, ruinous belly, overpowers me, from which all evils come."
Further, Callias the comic writer having written: "they say that one must go mad together with the mad, all alike," Menander in the Men Sold matches this, saying: "prudence does not fit everywhere it is present; in some things one must join in the madness too."
And Antimachus of Teos, once he had said: "gifts bring men many troubles," Agias made: "gifts deceive the mind of men, and their deeds too."
And Hesiod having said: "a man carries off nothing better than a good wife; but again nothing more chilling than a bad one," Simonides said: "a man carries off no possession better than a good wife, nor anything more chilling than a bad one."
Again, Epicharmus having said: "think as one who will live a long time, and also as one who will live but a little," Euripides writes: "why then, standing upon wealth that is not secure, do we not live as pleasantly as possible, free from grief?"
Likewise the comic poet Diphilus, having said: "mortal existence shifts about with ease," Poseidippus: "no man has passed through life without grief, being human, nor has anyone remained to the end without meeting misfortune." And Plato speaks to the same effect, writing of man as "a creature easily changed."
Again, Euripides having said: "O life, full of toil for mortals, how precariously you rest upon everything — some things you increase, others you bring to ruin, and no limit is set for mortals as to when they must be brought to their end, except when the chill end of death sent from Zeus arrives," Diphilus writes: "there is no life that has not acquired its evils — griefs, cares, robberies, torments, diseases. Of these, death, appearing like a physician, gives rest to those who bear them, laying them to rest in sleep."
Further, Euripides having said: "many are the forms of the divine powers, and the gods bring many things to pass beyond hope," the tragedian Theodectes likewise writes: "that the fortunes of mortals are not secure."
And Bacchylides having said: "to few mortals has a divine power granted, faring well the whole time, to reach hoary-templed old age before meeting misfortune," Moschion the comic writer writes: "that man is of all the most blessed who throughout his life has kept to an even course."
You would also find that where Theognis said: "a young wife is of no use to an old husband; for she does not obey the rudder as a boat does," Aristophanes the comic writer writes: "an old husband is a shameful thing for a young wife."
For Anacreon having composed: "I sing of tender Eros, teeming with many-flowered garlands; he is master even of the gods, he tames mortals too," Euripides writes: "for Eros assails not men alone, nor women only, but stirs the souls of the gods above, and goes even over the sea."
But so that my argument may not go on further, as we make it our aim to display how prone the Greeks are to theft both in their words and in their doctrines, come, let us set forth Hippias the sophist of Elis testifying directly on our behalf, since he arrives at this very conclusion on the question before me, speaking something like this: "Of these things, part were perhaps uttered by Orpheus, part by Musaeus, in brief here and there separately; part belong to Hesiod, part to Homer, part to the rest of the poets; and part turn up in prose works, whether among Greek authors or among non-Greek ones. But I, having put together from all these the things that are most important and akin to one another, shall compose this new and manifold discourse."
And so that we may not overlook philosophy and history, but also rhetoric, as liable to this same charge, it is reasonable to set out a few instances of these too.
For Alcmaeon of Croton having said that it is easier to guard against an enemy than a friend, Sophocles made in the Antigone: "for what wound could be greater than a false friend?" and Xenophon has said: "one could not harm one's enemies in any way so much as one who is thought to be a friend."
And indeed, Euripides having said in the Telephus: "shall we, being Greeks, be slaves to barbarians?" Thrasymachus in his speech on behalf of the Larissaeans says: "shall we, being Greeks, be slaves to Archelaus, a barbarian?"
And Orpheus having composed: "there is water for the soul, and death is an exchange for the waters; and from water comes earth, and from earth again comes water; from which the soul, exchanging the whole of aether...," Heraclitus, building his sayings out of these, writes something like this: "for souls it is death to become water, and for water it is death to become earth; but from earth water comes to be, and from water, soul."
And indeed, Athamas the Pythagorean having said thus: "the beginning of all things is unbegotten, and four roots exist: fire, water, air, and earth; for out of these arise the sources of everything that comes into being," Empedocles of Acragas, from Acragas, made: "first hear the four roots of all things: fire and water and earth and the boundless height of aether; for from these come all things that were, and that will be, and that now are."
And Plato having said that for this reason the gods too, being knowledgeable about human affairs, remove more quickly from life those whom they hold in greatest regard, Menander made: "whom the gods love dies young."
And Euripides having written in the Oenomaus: "we judge things unseen by things present," and in the Phoenix: "things unseen are reasonably grasped by tokens," Hyperides says: "as for things that are unseen, those who would teach must of necessity seek them out by tokens and likelihoods." And Isocrates in turn having said that one must judge things to come by things that have already happened, Andocides does not hesitate to say: "one must use as tokens for what is going to be, the things that happened before."
Further, Theognis having composed: "the deceit of counterfeit gold and silver is bearable, Cyrnus, and easy for a wise man to discover; but if the mind of a friend lying hidden in his breast is false, and he holds a deceitful heart in his mind, this god has made the most counterfeit thing for mortals, and the most grievous of all things to recognize," Euripides writes: "O Zeus, why did you give to men clear tokens of counterfeit gold, yet no mark is set into the body by which one may discern which of men is base?" Hyperides too himself says: "no mark of a man's thought is set upon his face for men to see."
Again, Stasinus having composed: "foolish is he who, killing the father, spares the children," Xenophon says: "I now seem to myself to have done just as if a man, having killed the father, should spare his children."
And Sophocles having composed in the Antigone: "when mother and father have gone to Hades, there is no brother who could ever be born again," Herodotus says: "with mother and father no longer living, I shall not have another brother."
Besides these, Theopompus having composed: "old men are, by right reckoning, twice children," and before him Sophocles in the Peleus: "I, Peleus son of Aeacus, keeping house alone, lead the old man about and re-educate him again like a child; for the aging man becomes a child once more," Antiphon the orator says: "the nurture of old age resembles the nurture of children," and so too the philosopher Plato: "so it seems, then, that the old man would become twice a child."
Indeed, when Thucydides says that they alone bore the brunt of danger at Marathon, Demosthenes says: "By those who bore the brunt of danger at Marathon."
Nor will I pass over this: when Cratinus in the Wine-Flask says, "The preparation, perhaps you know," the orator Andocides says: "This preparation, men who sit in judgment, together with the keenness of my foes, nearly every one of you will have learned." Likewise Nicias too, in his speech against Lysias concerning a deposit: "You behold the preparation, judges of this court," he says, "together with the keenness of those opposing me." And after him Aeschines says: "You behold the preparation, citizens of Athens, together with the drawn-up ranks."
Again, when Demosthenes says, "How great, men of Athens, has been the zeal and the summoning of support concerning this trial, I think almost all of you have perceived," Philinus likewise says: "How great, judges of this court, the eagerness and the mustering of forces has been in this cause, I suppose there is no one among you who has failed to notice."
Again, when Isocrates has said "as of money" — though not being his kinsman by blood — Lysias in the speech On Behalf of the Orphans says: "and he was shown to be a kinsman not of the persons, but of the money."
Since also, when Homer composed: "My friend, if indeed, by escaping this war, we were destined ever to be ageless and immortal, neither would I myself fight among the foremost, nor would I send you into the battle that brings men glory; but now — since in any case ten thousand fates of death stand over us, which no mortal can escape or avoid — let us go, whether we shall give glory to another, or another to us," Theopompus writes: "For if it were possible, by escaping the present danger, to pass the remaining time without fear, it would be no wonder to love one's life; but as it is, so many fates of death cling to our life from birth that death in battle seems the more preferable choice."
What then? Did not Chilon the sage utter the saying, "Give a pledge, and ruin is at hand," and Epicharmus bring forward the same thought under a different phrasing, saying: "Pledging is the daughter of ruin, and to pledge is to invite penalty"?
But also, when the physician Hippocrates writes that one must have regard to season and region and age and diseases, Euripides, in a certain speech in hexameter, says: "He who knows how to heal well must, with regard to the manner of life of the inhabitants of a city, look also to the land, and consider the diseases accordingly."
Again, when Homer composed, "I say that no man among men has escaped his fate," Archinus says the same: "To all men it is owed that they die, whether sooner or later," and Demosthenes too: "For to all men the end of life is death, even if one shuts himself up under guard in a little chamber."
And again, when Herodotus, in his account concerning Glaucus the Spartan, says that the Pythia declared that to make trial of the god and to do the deed are one and the same, Aristophanes said: "For to think is equal to doing," and before him, Parmenides of Elea: "For to think and to be are the same."
Or again, when Plato has said — and we too might perhaps say this, not inappropriately, that sight begins love, expectation lessens the ardor, remembrance feeds it, and constant company keeps it alive — Philemon the comic poet writes: "All first see, then they marvel, then they gaze upon closely, then they fall into hope; thus out of these things love comes to be."
But also, when Demosthenes has said, "For death is owed by all of us," and what follows, Phanocles in Loves, or the Beautiful, writes: "But the thread of the Fates is unbreakable, nor is it ever possible to escape it, for as many of us as feed upon the earth."
You would also find that, when Plato has said that the first shoot of every plant, if well set in motion toward excellence, is most capable, by its own nature, of bringing itself to a fitting end, Ephorus the historian writes: "But of wild plants too, none is naturally capable of being tamed once it has passed beyond its younger age."
And that saying of Empedocles: "For I myself was once already a boy and a girl, and a bush and a bird, and a mute fish in the sea," Euripides in the Chrysippus recasts: "Nothing of what comes into being dies, but being separated one part from another it displays a different form."
And when Plato in the Republic has said that women should be held in common, Euripides in the Protesilaus writes: "For the marriage-bed of women ought to be held in common."
But when Euripides writes, "Since what suffices is enough for those who are prudent," Epicurus says outright: "Self-sufficiency is the richest of all things."
Again, when Aristophanes writes, "You will have a secure life if you are just, and you will live well, free of tumult and fear," Epicurus says: "The greatest fruit of righteousness is freedom from disturbance."
Let these examples of the forms of Greek theft in matters of thought, then, suffice as a clear demonstration for one able to discern them. But by now it is not only in thoughts and expressions, stolen and paraphrased, that they have been caught out, as has been shown; rather, they will also be convicted of having whole stolen pieces outright entire. For, taking the works of others complete in themselves, they have put them forward as their own — just as Eugammon of Cyrene took from Musaeus the whole book concerning the Thesprotians; and Peisander of Camirus took the Heracleia from Peisinus of Lindus; and Panyassis of Halicarnassus took the Capture of Oechalia from Creophylus of Samos.
You would also find that Homer, the great poet, transferred word for word from Orpheus, out of the account of the Vanishing of Dionysus, those very lines: "As a man tends a flourishing shoot of an olive tree," and what follows.
And in the Theogony, Orpheus has composed of Cronus: "There he lay, his massive neck tilted sideways, and sleep, subduer of all, took hold of him" — and this Homer transferred to the Cyclops.
Hesiod too, concerning Melampus, composes: "Sweet it is also to learn how many things the immortals have ordained for mortals, a clear sign of the base and of the noble" — and what follows he has taken word for word from Musaeus the poet.
Aristophanes the comic poet, in the first Thesmophoriazusae, transferred lines from the Cratinus's Men Set on Fire. Plato the comic poet and Aristophanes, in the Daedalus, steal from one another. As for the Cocalus composed by Araros, the son of Aristophanes, Philemon the comic poet altered it and made comedy of it under the title The Supposititious Child. Hesiod's works Eumelus and Acusilaus, the historians, transposed into prose and put forward as their own. For Gorgias of Leontini and Eudemus of Naxos, the historians, stole from Melesagoras; and after them Bion of Proconnesus, who also rewrote in summary the works of the ancient Cadmus; likewise Amphilochus, Aristocles, Leandrius, Anaximenes, Hellanicus, Hecataeus, along with Androtion and Philochorus too; and Dieuchidas of Megara transposed the beginning of his account from the Deucalionia of Hellanicus.
I say nothing further of Heraclitus of Ephesus, who drew most of his teaching from Orpheus. And Plato took from Pythagoras the doctrine that the soul is immortal, and Pythagoras took it in turn from the Egyptians. Many of the followers of Plato have composed treatises in which they demonstrate that the Stoics — as we said at the beginning — and Aristotle too, took most and the most authoritative of their doctrines from Plato. But Epicurus also filched his principal doctrines from Democritus.
So much, then, for this matter; for my life would fail me were I to choose to go through each instance in turn, exposing the self-loving theft of the Greeks, and how they appropriate to themselves the discovery of the finest doctrines among them, which they have received from us.

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 3 ========

Now they are convicted not only of stealing their doctrines from the barbarians, but also of going further still and imitating, by way of Greek mythologizing marvels, the things wrought marvelously among us from of old by divine power, through those who have lived in holiness, for our conversion. And indeed we shall ask them whether the things they narrate are true or false. False they would not say (for they would not, of their own accord, condemn themselves to the greatest folly, that of composing falsehoods); true, then, of necessity they would confess them to be. How then do the things marvelously displayed through Moses and the other prophets still appear incredible to them? For God, the almighty, caring as he does for every man, brings some round to salvation through commandments, others through threats, some through portentous signs, and some through gentle promises. Yet, for all that, consider the Greeks. Once when a drought was for a long time wasting Greece and a failure of the fruits prevailed, the survivors, they say, came as suppliants to Delphi on account of the famine and asked the Pythia how they might be delivered from the calamity. She gave them one remedy for the disaster: that they should make use of the prayer of Aeacus. Persuaded by them, Aeacus went up onto the Hellenic mountain, stretched out his pure hands to heaven, called God the common father, and prayed him to have pity on Greece, worn out as she was. And as he prayed, an extraordinary thunder crashed out and the whole surrounding air grew clouded, and violent, unceasing rains, breaking loose, filled the whole land; from this an abundant and rich fruitfulness was brought to completion, cultivated by the prayers of Aeacus.
"And Samuel called upon the Lord," it says, "and the Lord sent thunderclaps and a downpour at harvesttime." Do you not see that it is one God who sends rain on the just and the unjust alike through his subordinate powers? Our whole Scripture, indeed, teems with instances of God listening to and granting, in answer to the petitions of the just, each thing they ask.
Again, the Greeks narrate that once when the Etesian winds failed, Aristaeus sacrificed on Ceos to Zeus Icmaeus; for there was great destruction, everything being burned up by the heat, and in particular the winds that usually refreshed the crops had ceased to stir; and without difficulty he summoned them back again.
The Delphians, when Xerxes was marching against Greece, on the Pythia's pronouncement, "O Delphians, entreat the winds, and it will be better," made an altar and sacrifice to the winds and had them as helpers; for the winds blew mightily about the headland of Sepias and shattered the whole equipment of the Persian fleet.
Empedocles of Acragas was surnamed Wind-Stayer. It is said that once, when a wind blew from the mountain of Acragas that was heavy and pestilential to the inhabitants, and was also the cause of barrenness to their women, he stopped the wind; wherefore he himself writes in his verses: "You shall stay the force of the unwearied winds, which rushing over the earth waste the fields for mortals"; and again, "and when you wish, you will bring back winds in requital." He said that those who attended upon him were, some, men who needed prophecies, others men long transfixed by grievous diseases. Indeed, our own Scriptures have led men to believe that the righteous outright perform healings and signs and wonders; for if there truly are powers that set the winds in motion and apportion the rains, let such people listen to the psalmist: "How beloved are your tabernacles, O Lord of powers." This is the Lord of the powers and of the principalities and of the authorities, of whom Moses speaks, that we may be united with him: "And you shall circumcise the hardness of your heart, and you shall no longer harden your neck; for the Lord your God is himself the ruler over every lord and the deity above every god, that great and powerful God," and the words that come after this. And Isaiah says, "Lift up your eyes on high and see: who has revealed all these things?"
Some, then, say that plagues and hailstorms and hurricanes and the like happen to occur not from material disorder alone, but also according to a certain wrath of demons or even of angels who are not good. At once they say that the magi at Cleonae, who watch the clouds aloft that are about to hurl hail, avert by songs and sacrifices the threat of their wrath. And indeed, if ever a lack of a living creature should overtake them, drawing blood from their own finger they are content with that as the offering. And Diotima of Mantinea, by having the Athenians sacrifice before the plague, procured a ten-year postponement of the disease, just as also the sacrifices of Epimenides the Cretan deferred the Persian war for the Athenians themselves for an equal span of time. And they consider it makes no difference whether we call these souls gods or angels. Accordingly those experienced in such matters, in their foundations in many of the temples and in almost all of them, established the tombs of the departed within, calling the souls of these demons, and teaching that they should be worshipped by men, on the ground that, having received authority through the purity of their life, they range about by divine providence over the earthly region for the service of men; for they understood that certain souls are held fast by nature to the body.
But concerning these matters we shall discourse in due course, as the treatise proceeds, in the discussion about angels.
Democritus, from his observation of the things aloft, foretold many things and was named Wisdom. When Damasus his brother had received him kindly, inferring from certain stars, he foretold that there would be much rain. Those, then, who believed him gathered in their crops (for it was summer, and they were still on the threshing floors), while the others lost everything when an unexpected and heavy downpour of rain broke loose.
How then shall the Greeks still disbelieve the divine manifestation about Mount Sinai, when fire was blazing, consuming none of the things growing on the mountain, and a sound of trumpets was borne along, breathed forth without instruments? For that so-called descent onto the mountain of God is a manifestation of the divine power extending through the whole cosmos and proclaiming the light that is unapproachable. For such is the allegory according to Scripture. Yet the fire was seen, as Aristobulus says, by the whole multitude, no fewer than a hundred myriads, apart from the children, assembled in a circle around the mountain, the circuit around the mountain being no less than five days' journey.
In every place of viewing, then, to all of them, standing round about as if drawn up in array, the fire was seen blazing on every side, so that the descent did not take place locally; for God is everywhere.
Those who have compiled histories say also that around the island of Britain there is a certain cave lying beneath a mountain, and at its summit a chasm; when the wind, then, falls into the cave and breaks against the recesses of the excavation, a sound is heard as of cymbals struck in rhythm. And often too, when the leaves are stirred throughout the woods by a sudden onset of wind, a sound falls upon the ear resembling the song of birds. But those who have compiled Persian history relate that in the upland districts within the territory of the Magi, three mountains stand together in a single line across a long plain; and that travelers passing through, upon reaching the first mountain, catch a jumbled noise of voices, as though countless throngs were crying out in the manner of an army arrayed for battle; then, drawing near the middle mountain, they now make out an even louder and clearer clamor; and finally, at the last, they hear men singing songs of triumph as if victorious. The cause, I suppose, of every such echo is the smoothness of the places and their cavernous nature; for the breath that has entered, being cast back and returning into the same place, resounds more violently.
And so much for this matter. But for God the almighty, even when nothing underlies it, it is possible to generate a voice and an impression upon hearing, displaying his own majesty beyond the customary natural sequence, for the conversion of the soul that does not yet believe and its acceptance of the commandment given. And given that a cloud was present together with a towering mountain, why should it be impossible for a distinctive sound to be produced, once the air is set in motion by the operative cause? Wherefore the prophet also says: "You heard a voice of words, and you saw no likeness." You see how the voice of the Lord is a word without shape; for the power of the Word, the shining utterance of the Lord, the truth that has come down from heaven above to the assembly of the church, was working through a shining and immediate ministration.

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 4 ========

We might find yet another testimony to confirm that the best of the philosophers, having appropriated the finest of their doctrines from us, boast of them as their own, when in fact they have also gathered blossoms from the other barbarians, from those of each school who contributed something — most of all from the Egyptians, both in other matters and especially regarding the teaching on how souls migrate into new bodies. For among the Egyptians there exists a distinct system of thought all their own; and nothing shows this more than their stately, priest-governed rites.
First comes forward the singer, bearing one of the symbols of music. They say he must have taken up two books out of the books of Hermes, one of which contains hymns to the gods, and the second an account of the reckoning of the king's life.
After the singer comes the horoscopist, carrying in his hand a horologion and a palm branch, the symbols of astrology. He must always have on his lips the astrological books of Hermes, four in number: one concerns the ordering of the fixed stars that appear, another concerns the arrangement of the sun and moon and the five wandering stars, another concerns the conjunctions and illuminations of sun and moon, and the remaining one concerns the risings.
Next in order comes forward the sacred scribe, having feathers upon his head, and in his hands a book and a case holding the black fluid for writing and the pen used to write it. He must know the so-called hieroglyphics, dealing with cosmography and geography, the arrangement of the sun and moon and of the five wandering stars, the chorography of Egypt and the mapping of the Nile, the description of the construction of the sacred buildings and of the lands consecrated to them, and matters of measurement and of the things used in the temples.
Then the vestment-keeper follows those already named, holding the cubit of justice and the libation-vessel. He knows all matters of instruction and the so-called calf-sealing rites; and there are ten books relating to the honor of their gods and comprising Egyptian piety, covering offerings, the giving of firstfruits, chants, petitions, sacred processions, feast-days, and such related matters.
Last of all comes forth the prophet, carrying openly in his bosom the water-vessel, followed by those who bear the distribution of loaves. He, as the president of the temple, learns thoroughly the so-called sacerdotal books, ten in number (they contain matters of laws and gods and the whole education of the priests); for indeed among the Egyptians the prophet is also the overseer of the distribution of the revenues.
There are, then, forty-two books that are altogether necessary, belonging to Hermes, of which thirty-six, covering the entire body of Egyptian learning, are mastered thoroughly by those already named, while the remaining six, which are medical, are learned by the pastophoroi — concerning the constitution of the body, and concerning diseases, and instruments, and drugs, and concerning diseases of the eyes, and last of all concerning matters of women.
Such, then, to speak briefly, are the matters of the Egyptians; but the philosophy of the Indians too is itself widely renowned.
Alexander the Macedonian, at any rate, having taken ten of the Indian gymnosophists who were reputed to be the best and the most terse in speech, set problems before them, threatening to put to death the one who did not answer aptly, and ordering the eldest of them to be the judge. The first, then, being questioned whether he thought the living were more numerous or the dead, said the living; for the dead, he said, no longer exist. The second, asked whether the earth or the sea nourishes larger beasts, said the earth; for the sea, he said, is a part of it. The third, asked which animal is the most cunning, said: the one not yet known until now — man. The fourth, being questioned by what reasoning they had made Sabbas revolt, though he was their ruler, answered: because they wished him either to live well or to die well. The fifth, asked whether he thought day or night came first, said: night, by one day; for of questions that admit no solution the answers too must of necessity admit no solution. The sixth, asked how one might be most loved, said: if, being most powerful, he is not feared. The seventh, asked how a man might become a god, said: by doing what it is not possible for a man to do. The eighth, asked which is stronger, life or death, said: life, since it bears so many evils. The ninth, when asked up to what point living remains good for a man, said: until he stops judging death preferable to life. And when Alexander bade the tenth also say something, since he was the judge, he said: each spoke worse than the other. And when Alexander said, will you not then be the first to die, for judging thus? he answered: and how, O king, could you be truthful, having said you would first kill the one who answered worst?

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 5 ========

That the Greeks pilfered from every scripture has, I think, been shown well enough through many proofs already; but that the most esteemed among the Greeks fail to know God through full knowledge, grasping him instead only by roundabout inference, Peter states in the Preaching: "Understand, then, that a single God exists, the one who set in motion the origin of everything and holds dominion over its close"; and again: "the unseen one, who beholds everything, boundless, who bounds everything within himself, lacking nothing, he whom everything needs and because of whom everything subsists, ungraspable, unending, undecaying, never fashioned, the maker of everything through the utterance of his might" — that is to say, through the scripture known to the initiate, which is to say, through the Son. He then continues: "Give this God your worship, not in the fashion practiced by the Greeks" — implying plainly that the very same God was being worshiped both by us and by the esteemed men of Greece, only not with complete knowledge, since they had never received the tradition handed down through the Son. "Do not, then," he says, "give worship" — he did not mean a God the Greeks worship as distinct from ours, but rather "not in the fashion the Greeks use," thereby altering how God is to be revered, not announcing some other deity.
As for what "not in the Greek fashion" actually means, Peter himself clarifies it as he continues: "because, carried along by their ignorance and lacking the perfect knowledge that we possess of God, they molded into images the very materials given them for use — timber and stone, bronze and iron, gold and silver — forgetting the substance and purpose of these things, they raised up as objects for reverence mere tools meant to serve existence, and bow down before them; and as for what God gave them to eat — the birds overhead, the creatures swimming the deep, the things that crawl upon the ground, the beasts roaming wild, together with the herds grazing the pasture, weasels, mice, cats, dogs, and apes — they instead offer up their own food as sacrificial victims fit for a meal, and by presenting dead things to dead things as if to gods, they display no thankfulness toward God, and by this conduct deny outright that he even exists."
And to confirm further that it was as though a single God were recognized by both ourselves and the Greeks — even if not in the same fashion — he goes on to add something along these lines: "nor as the Jews do either, though again not identically; for they, supposing themselves alone to possess knowledge of God, fail actually to comprehend him, since they render service to angels and archangels, to the lunar cycle and the moon itself. And should the moon fail to appear, they forgo what they term the first sabbath, and likewise skip the new-moon rite, the unleavened-bread observance, the festival, and the solemn day." He then supplies the culmination of the whole matter: "so that you too, taking up in a devout and upright fashion what has been passed on to you, might hold fast to it, revering God in a fresh manner through Christ; for we came upon this written among the sacred texts, in the Lord's own words: 'Look, I am forging with you a covenant that is new, unlike the one I forged with your ancestors at Mount Horeb.' A fresh covenant he made with us; for the paths of both Greek and Jew belong to the old order, while we who give him reverence in a manner newly made, forming a third people, are called Christians." By this, I think, he plainly established that this one and only God is known to the Greeks after a pagan fashion, to the Jews after a Jewish fashion, and to us after a manner that is fresh and grounded in the Spirit.
He demonstrated further that this same God stands behind both covenants, and moreover that he is the very one who bestowed philosophy upon the Greeks, the means by which the Almighty comes to be honored in their midst. This much is plain from what follows as well: out of Hellenic learning, and equally out of the Law, those who embrace the faith are drawn together into a single people destined for salvation — the three groups not divided across ages, as though one should imagine them three separate breeds, but rather each trained under a distinct covenant belonging to the one Lord, all the while sharing in the one Lord's utterance. Since, then, God chose to rescue the Jews through the prophets he provided them, he likewise raised up the finest among the Greeks as prophets suited to that people, matched to their own speech, insofar as they could receive whatever benefit flows from God, thereby setting them apart from ordinary humanity — a point the apostle Paul, alongside Peter's Preaching, will confirm when he writes:
"Take up the Greek writings too, get acquainted with the Sibyl, and see how she declares that one God exists and speaks of what is yet to come; and take up and study Hystaspes, and you will discover the Son of God described there with even greater clarity and directness, along with an account of how many kings will muster armies against Christ, despising him and every soul who carries his name, his devoted followers, his patient endurance, and his return." Elsewhere in a single line he puts the question to us: "this world entire, and everything found within it — to whom does it belong? Does it not belong to God?" For this very reason Peter reports the Lord's words to the apostles: "So then, should anyone from Israel wish, by turning back through my name, to place faith in God, his offenses will be pardoned him. Yet after twelve years, go out into the world, so that none may claim, 'We were never told.'"

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 6 ========

But just as the proclamation has now come in its proper season, so too in their proper season the law and the prophets were granted to the barbarian peoples, while philosophy came as a gift to the Greek nation, preparing their ears for what was to be proclaimed. At any rate the Lord who rescued Israel says: "In an acceptable time I heard you, and in a day of salvation I helped you; I gave you as a covenant to the nations, that you might inhabit the earth and inherit a desolate inheritance," saying to those in bonds, "Come out," and to those in darkness, "Be revealed." For if the Jews were the prisoners — of whom also the Lord said, "Come out from your bonds, you who are willing" — meaning those who had bound themselves willingly and, through human presumption, had loaded upon themselves burdens hard to bear, then it is plain that those in darkness would be those who had their governing faculty buried in idolatry. For those who were righteous under the law, faith was lacking, and it was for this reason that the Lord, healing them, said, "Your faith has saved you." But for those who were righteous under philosophy, what was missing was more than trust in the Lord alone; a departure from idol-worship was needed as well. So as soon as the truth was revealed, they too repented of what they had done before; and this is why the Lord preached the good news even to those in Hades.
At any rate Scripture puts it this way: "Hades speaks to Ruin: 'His shape has not appeared before us, yet the sound of him has reached our hearing.'" Surely it was not the region itself that acquired a voice and uttered those very words; rather, it was those ranked within Hades who had surrendered themselves to ruin, much as men who had leapt of their own accord from a vessel into the deep — it is these who caught the sound and force of what is divine. For what person of sound mind would imagine that the souls of the righteous and of sinners lie under one and the same condemnation, thereby pouring injustice upon Providence? What then? Do these texts not make clear that the Lord preached the good news to those who perished in the flood, or rather to those held fast in bonds, and to those confined in prison and under guard? It has also been shown in the second Stromateus that the apostles, following the Lord's example, likewise preached the good news to those in Hades. For it was fitting, I believe, that just as it happened in this world, so likewise in that other realm, the finest among the disciples should model themselves upon their teacher, so that one might lead to conversion those from among the Hebrews, and others the nations — that is, those who had lived their lives in righteousness according to law and according to philosophy, yet not perfectly but sinfully bringing their life to its close. For this was fitting to the divine dispensation: that those who had shown themselves worthy in righteousness and had lived their lives well in the main, and who had repented of their transgressions, even if they happened to be making their confession in another place, being among those belonging to God the Almighty, should be saved according to each one's own knowledge.
And the Savior, I think, is at work in this too, since to save is his work. And this indeed is what he has done: he drew to salvation, through the proclamation, those who were willing to believe in him, wherever they happened to have lived. If, then, the Lord went down into Hades for no other reason than to preach the good news, as indeed he did go down, then either he preached to all, or only to the Hebrews. If, then, to all, then all will be saved who believed, even those who happen to be of the nations, once they have made their confession there — since the punishments of God are salutary and disciplinary, leading to conversion, and choosing the sinner's repentance rather than his death, and this all the more since souls freed from bodies are able to see more clearly, even if they are still overshadowed by their passions, because they are no longer obstructed by the flesh. But if he preached the good news only to the Jews, who lacked the knowledge and faith that come through the Savior, then it is plain, since God shows no partiality, that the apostles too, just as here, so there also preached the good news to those of the nations who were fit for conversion; and the Shepherd says well: "They went down with them into the water, but these went down alive and came up alive; whereas those others, who had fallen asleep before, went down dead and came up alive."
Indeed, the Gospel also says that many bodies of those who had fallen asleep were raised up, clearly having been transferred to a better rank. There has come to be, then, a certain universal movement and transposition according to the dispensation of the Savior. A righteous man, therefore, does not differ from a righteous man insofar as he is righteous, whether he lives under the law or is a Greek; for God is Lord not of the Jews only, but of all men, and more intimately still, Father of those who have come to know him. For if to live well is to live lawfully, and to live reasonably is to live according to law, and since those whose conduct was upright before any law was given were counted among believers and deemed just, then it is plain that those too who found themselves outside the law, because of the particular character of their soul, having lived rightly — even if they happened to be in Hades and under guard — upon hearing the voice of the Lord, whether his own direct voice or that working through the apostles, would be converted and believe with all speed. For we keep in mind that the Lord embodies God's power, and no power can ever be feeble. In this manner, I believe, it becomes clear both that God is good and that the Lord holds the strength to save, dealing justly and evenly with all who convert to him, be it in this world or another. For the power that is at work does not reach only to this place, but is everywhere, and works always.
Straightaway, in the Preaching of Peter, we find the Lord addressing the disciples once he had risen: "You twelve I selected, deeming you disciples fit for myself, chosen by the Lord's own will, and reckoning you trustworthy emissaries, dispatching you across the world to bring the good tidings to mankind everywhere it dwells, so that people everywhere might come to know that God is one, making clear through faith in Christ the things that are to come, through my agency, so that those who hear and believe may be saved, and those who hear and do not believe may bear witness, having no defense to offer by saying, 'We did not hear.'" What then? Was not the same dispensation carried out in Hades as well, so that there too all souls, upon hearing the proclamation, might either show forth their repentance, or acknowledge that the punishment they suffer for their unbelief is just? For it would be an act of no ordinary unfairness that those who departed life before the coming of the Lord, without having had the good news preached to them, and without having furnished from themselves any occasion, by believing or not believing, should nonetheless share in either salvation or punishment. For it is surely not right that some should be condemned without a trial, while only those who lived after the Lord's coming should enjoy the benefit of divine justice. And to all rational souls from of old it has been said: "Whatever any of you did in ignorance, not knowing God clearly, if he comes to recognize this and turns from it, every one of his offenses shall be pardoned." "See," the text declares, "before you I have placed both death and life, so that life may be your choice" — God speaking here of setting before us a comparison for choice, not of having made both.
And elsewhere in scripture he declares: "Should you heed me and consent, the earth's fine yield will be your food; but refuse to heed and withhold consent, and you will be consumed by the blade — for such is the pronouncement issued by the Lord's own mouth." And once more, unmistakably, David — or better, the Lord speaking through the figure of his holy one (this holy one being one continuous identity stretching back to the world's origin, namely each person across the ages who has found salvation or will find it through belief) — declares: "Gladness filled my heart, and my tongue broke into song; my very flesh, too, shall rest in expectation," since, as he says, "my soul you will not leave abandoned in Hades, nor let your holy one witness decay. The road to life you have shown me plainly; your presence will fill me with joy."
Just as, then, the people is precious to the Lord, so too the entire holy people consists, together with the Jew, of the one from the nations who turns to conversion — the proselyte who was prophesied of old. Fittingly, then, the text tells us that ox and bear will share one dwelling place together; the ox stands for the Jew, since it is judged clean under the law as an animal fit for the yoke, because the ox both has a divided hoof and chews the cud; whereas the Gentile is signified by the bear, an unclean and wild beast. This animal bears its offspring as flesh without form, which it then shapes into the likeness of the beast by licking it with its tongue alone; for by reason the one who turns to the faith from among the nations is shaped so as to be tamed from a beast-like life, and having already been domesticated, he too, like the ox, is made clean. Straightaway the prophet declares: "Sirens shall speak well of me, and daughters of sparrows too, and every beast that roams untamed in the open country." Reckoned among unclean creatures are these roaming beasts of open country — meaning of the world at large — since by "beasts" he designates those who, wild in their approach to faith and foul in their manner of life, have not even been purified by the righteousness under the law. Yet by changing, through faith in the Lord, from being wild beasts, they become men of God, having begun by willing to change, and thereby making progress toward becoming so. For the Lord exhorts some, while toward others who have already applied themselves to the effort he extends his own hand as well and pulls them upward; for the Master over all shows no favoritism toward persons, nor will he be put out of countenance by greatness, since he himself made small and great alike, and cares for all in the same manner.
And David says: "But if even the nations were caught fast in the ruin that they themselves made, in the very snare which they hid was their own foot taken, yet the Lord became a refuge for the poor man, a helper in due season and in affliction." It was, then, in due season that those in affliction had the good news preached to them. And it is for this reason that he says: "Proclaim among the nations what he has done, so that they escape an unfair sentence." If, then, the good news was preached to those still in the flesh precisely so that no unfair condemnation would fall on them, how could it fail, for that identical reason, that the good news was also preached to those who had departed life before his coming? For "the Lord is righteous and loved righteousness; his face beheld uprightness." And "he who loves injustice hates his own soul."
If, then, in the flood all sinful flesh perished, the punishment having become for them a discipline, then we must believe, first, that the will of God, being disciplinary and active, saves those who turn to it; and second, that the finer element, the soul, could never suffer anything terrible from the coarser element, water, since it is not held fast by such a thing on account of its fineness and simplicity — for which reason it is also called incorporeal. But whatever coarser element happens to have been made coarse by sin, this is cast off along with the fleshly spirit that lusts against the soul. And already Valentinus, the leader of those who advocate a common ground, writes word for word in his Homily on Friends: "A great deal of what stands recorded in books meant for the general public turns up recorded within the assembly of God too; for these common things are the words that come from the heart, the law written in the heart. This is the people of the beloved, who is loved and who loves him."
By "public books" he means either the Jewish scriptures or those of the philosophers, thereby making the truth common property.
And Isidore, the son and also the disciple of Basilides, likewise writes word for word in the first book of his Exegetica on the Prophet Parchor: "The Attics say that something was revealed to Socrates by a spirit that accompanied him, and Aristotle says that all men make use of spirits that attend them from the time of their embodiment. This teaching he took over from the prophets and set down in his own books, without acknowledging the source from which he had stolen this doctrine." And again, in the second book of the same treatise, he writes somewhat as follows: "Let none imagine that the doctrine we hold to be distinctive of the elect was announced already, in earlier times, by various philosophers; for it is not their discovery, but having appropriated it from the prophets, they attached it to a wisdom which, on their own showing, does not exist." And again, in the same work: "For it seems to me that those who pretend to philosophize, in order to learn what the winged oak is and the many-colored robe upon it — all that Pherecydes, allegorizing, made into theology — took their material from the prophecy of Ham."

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 7 ========

As we noted earlier, we do not mean by philosophy the pursuit peculiar to each sect, but what philosophy really is — rightly, a technical wisdom, that which supplies experience in the affairs of life — while wisdom itself is the settled knowledge of things divine and human, a certain sure and unshakable comprehension, embracing things that are, that have been, and that shall be, which the Lord taught us both through his presence and through the prophets. And it is unshakable by any argument, since it has been handed down by that same will by which it is also altogether true, as known through the Son. And the one wisdom is eternal, the other useful for a time; the one is single and the same, the other kinds are many and indifferent; the one is without any passionate movement, the other accompanied by passionate desire; the one is perfect, the other deficient.
It is this wisdom, then, that philosophy desires — the wisdom of the soul, and of rightness of reason, and of purity of life — being disposed toward wisdom with love and affection, and doing everything for the sake of attaining her. Among us, those are called philosophers who cherish the wisdom belonging to the Maker and Instructor of everything — that is to say, acquaintance with God's Son; among the Greeks, those who lay hold of arguments about virtue. Philosophy would then be that collection, gathered into a single choice selection, of the unobjectionable doctrines found in each of the sects — I mean the sects that pertain to philosophy — together with the way of life that agrees with them. And these very things, stolen from the God-given grace given to the barbarians, have been dressed up in Greek style: for some things they are thieves of, and other things they misheard; and as for the rest, some things they said when moved by inspiration but did not work out completely, and other things by human conjecture and reasoning, in which they also go astray; and they suppose they lay hold of the truth completely, whereas, as we understand them, they grasp it only in part.
In any case they know nothing beyond this world. And just as geometry, occupied with measures and magnitudes and figures by means of drawing on flat surfaces, and painting too, which seems to encompass the entire range of what the eye sees in scene-painting, but thereby deceives the sight, employing marks placed according to the impact of the visual lines in a technical manner (whence highlights and shadows and gradations of tone are preserved, and some things seem to project, others to recede, and others still to appear otherwise on a flat and smooth surface) — so too the philosophers, after the manner of painting, imitate the truth. And self-love is in each case and at each time the cause of all errors. Hence one must not, by choosing the opinion of men, be a lover of self, but rather, loving God, become truly holy together with prudence.
If, then, someone happens to treat particular things as though they were universal, and honors the servant as though he were lord and ruler, he strays from the truth, not understanding what was said by David in confession: I have eaten earth and ashes like bread. For self-love and self-conceit are, for such a one, earth and error. And if this is so, knowledge and understanding come from learning. And since there is learning, one must necessarily seek the teacher. For Cleanthes claims Zeno, and Theophrastus Aristotle, and Metrodorus Epicurus, and Plato Socrates; but even should I trace matters back to Thales, Pherecydes, and Pythagoras, and the earliest sages, I still pause to ask after their instructor; and even should you name the Babylonians, or the Indians, or the Egyptians, or the Magi themselves, I will keep demanding who taught them. And I take you back further still, to humanity's very first generation, and there I begin to inquire: who serves as teacher? Of men, none, for they had not yet learned; nor of angels either, for men do not hear as the angels communicate, insofar as they are angels, nor do those beings have a tongue as we have ears. Nor could anyone give organs of voice to angels — I mean lips and the parts adjoining them, and throat and windpipe and viscera and breath and struck air. Far be it that God should cry out, separated as he is even from the archangels themselves by inaccessible holiness. And we have already received the tradition that even the angels, and the rulers set over them, have learned the truth, for they are created.
It remains, then, that having risen above these we must yearn for their Teacher as well. Since the almighty God is the one unbegotten being, and there is likewise one being begotten before all else, through whom all things came to be and without whom not one thing came to be (for God is truly one, who made the beginning of all things — Peter writes this, pointing to the firstborn Son, understanding precisely the words: In the beginning God made heaven and earth), and every prophet has named this same one Wisdom; he is the Instructor over all things made, the counselor of a God who has known everything beforehand. And out of the heights, from when the world was first laid down, he has, through many means and in many portions, both taught and carried toward completion. Hence it was rightly declared: Call no man upon earth your teacher. You perceive, then, whence genuine philosophy takes its footing. And even granting that the Law amounts to an image and shadow of the truth — the Law indeed being a shadow of what is true — still it is Greek vanity and self-regard that hails certain men as teachers.
As, then, every family traces its origin back to God the maker, so too does the teaching of noble things, and that which justifies, and that which leads and gathers one toward this, trace back to the Lord. But if some, having received seeds of the truth from some sort of making, in whatever manner, did not nurture them, but consigned them to barren and rainless soil, and let them be choked by wild weeds together — just as the Pharisees departed from the Law once they brought in teachings devised by men — the teacher bears no blame for this, but those who chose to disobey. And those of them who were persuaded, both by the Lord's presence and by the clarity of the scriptures, come to full knowledge of the Law, just as those who come from philosophy, through the teaching of the Lord, are established in full knowledge of the true philosophy. For the sayings of the Lord are pure sayings, silver refined by fire, purified of earth, seven times over.
That is, just as silver often refined becomes fit for testing, so the righteous man, having become a coin of the Lord and having received the royal stamp, becomes fit for testing; or else, since Solomon also says that the tongue of the righteous is refined silver, he is signaling that tested and wise teaching is praiseworthy and acceptable, whenever it happens to be richly purified of earth — that is, whenever the gnostic soul is sanctified in many ways through abstention from earthly burnings. And the body too, in which it dwells, is purified, being made its own peculiar possession unto the purity of a holy temple. Now this purification of the soul in the body is the first purification of all, namely abstention from evils, which some consider to be perfection — and this is simply the perfection of the ordinary believer, whether Jew or Greek. But for the gnostic, after the perfection reckoned by others, righteousness advances into the activity of doing good; and for whomever the intensification of righteousness has developed into doing good, for that one perfection abides in an unchangeable condition of doing good, in likeness to God. As for those who form Abraham's offspring, still servants under God, they are the ones called; but the sons of Jacob are his chosen, who have tripped up the working of evil by the heel.
If, then, we say that Christ himself is Wisdom, and likewise his working through the prophets, through which one can thoroughly learn the gnostic tradition, just as he himself taught the holy apostles during his presence, then wisdom would be knowledge — being understanding and a sure and secure comprehension of things present, future, and past, as handed down and revealed by the Son of God. And indeed, if contemplation is the end of the wise man, one who is still a philosopher reaches out for divine understanding but does not yet attain it, unless by learning he receives the prophetic voice made clear to him, through which he receives the things that are, the things that will be, and the things prior to what is, in the manner in which they are, have been, and will be. And this knowledge, handed down without writing by succession to a few from the apostles, has come down to us.
From this, then, knowledge or wisdom must be trained into a habit of contemplation that is eternal and unchangeable.

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 8 ========

For Paul too, in his letters, plainly does not disparage philosophy; rather, he thinks that the man who has laid hold of the height of the gnostic ought no longer to run back to Greek philosophy, allegorizing it as "the elements of the world," as being a kind of elementary instruction and a preliminary training for the truth. Hence, writing to the Hebrews who were turning back from faith to the law, he says, "You have need again that someone teach you what are the first elements of the oracles of God, and you have turned into people who still require milk, rather than firm nourishment." And likewise also to the Colossians, who were turning back from the Greeks, he says: "See lest anyone spoil you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of this world and not according to Christ" — luring them once more to run back into philosophy, elementary teaching that it is. And even if someone should say that philosophy was discovered by the Greeks according to human understanding, still I find that the scriptures say that understanding is sent from God.
The psalmist, at any rate, considers understanding the greatest gift, and asks for it, saying: "I am your servant; give me understanding." And is it not surely the manifold experience of knowledge that David is asking for when he writes: "Teach me kindness and instruction and understanding, since your commandments have earned my trust"? It is agreed, moreover, that the covenants are authoritative, and are given to those held in greater honor. The psalm again says of God: "He has not done thus to any nation, and his judgments he has not shown to them." Now "he has not done thus" indicates that he has indeed done something, but not in this way — for "thus" here is used in comparison, with reference to the superiority shown toward us; for it would surely have been possible for the prophet to say simply "he has not done it," without the addition "thus." Indeed Peter too, in the Acts, says: "Now I truly grasp that God shows no partiality toward persons; rather, in every nation, whoever reveres him and does what is right is welcome to him."
The impartiality of God, then, is not a thing of time, but is from eternity; nor did his beneficence ever begin, nor indeed is it confined to certain places or certain men, for his benefaction is not partial. "Open to me the gates of righteousness," it says; "once through them I will give praise to the Lord. Here stands the Lord's gate; through it the righteous make their entry." Interpreting this saying of the prophet, Barnabas adds: "Though many gates stand open, this is the one in righteousness, the one in Christ, in which all who enter are blessed." Of the same thought is that other prophetic word: "The Lord is upon many waters" — not of the various covenants alone, but also of the modes of teaching, both those among the Greeks that lead to righteousness and those among the barbarians. And David too, bearing clear witness already to the truth, sings: "Let the sinners be turned back into Hades, all the nations that forget God." Now they "forget," clearly, that which they formerly remembered, and him whom they knew before they forgot him is the one from whom they are being sent away. There was, then, some dim knowledge of God even among the nations.
Let this stand as it is. The gnostic must be widely learned; and since the Greeks say — Protagoras having been the first to maintain it — that to every argument an opposing argument may be set, it is fitting that he too be prepared to speak against such arguments. For scripture says: "The one who talks a great deal will also get an answer in turn." And who could grasp one of the Lord's parables unless he is wise, well-informed, and devoted to his Lord? Let such a man be faithful, then; let him be able to declare knowledge; let him be wise in the discernment of arguments; let him be vigorous in works; let him be pure. "For the more one seems to be greater, the more he ought to be humble-minded," says Clement in his letter to the Corinthians. Such a man is capable of obeying that command: "Those whom you snatch from the fire, and those who are wavering, have mercy on them." Indeed the pruning-hook was made chiefly for the purpose of pruning, but with it we also separate the tangled vine-shoots and cut away the thorns that grow up together with the vines, which it is not easy to approach; and all these operations bear reference to the pruning. In the same way man's chief purpose is knowing God, yet he also tills the soil, studies geometry, and pursues philosophy; of these the first supports mere survival, the second living well, and the third the practice of demonstrative reasoning.
Indeed, let those who say that philosophy originates from the devil take note of this as well: that scripture says the devil disguises himself as a messenger of radiance — toward what end? Evidently, in order to prophesy. Yet if he foretells things while posing as a shining messenger, then what he speaks will be true. If his acts are angelic and full of light, he will prophesy and be useful precisely then, when he transforms himself according to a likeness of that activity, even though he is other in the substance of his apostasy. For how could he deceive anyone, if he did not lead the lover of learning by means of true things into familiarity, and only afterward drag him down into falsehood? Besides, he will be found to have knowledge of the truth, even if not by way of full comprehension, yet certainly not without experience of it. Philosophy, then, is not false, even though the thief and the liar, by a transformation of his activity, speaks true things; nor indeed must one, on account of the speaker, condemn beforehand and in ignorance the things spoken — which is a caution to be observed also with regard to those now said to prophesy — but one must examine what is said, to see whether it holds to the truth.
Already, then, speaking in general terms, we would not err in saying that everything essential and beneficial for our existence has come to us from God, and that philosophy was given to the Greeks especially, as a covenant of their own, being a foundation for the philosophy that is according to Christ — even though those who philosophize among the Greeks willfully turn a deaf ear to the truth, disdaining the speech of the barbarians, or else fearing the danger of death hanging over the believer under the civil laws. But just as in barbarian philosophy, so also in Greek philosophy the tares were sown by the farmer proper to the tares. Whence both the heresies among us have sprung up together with the fruitful wheat, and those who proclaim the godlessness of Epicurus, and pleasure, and whatever else has been sown contrary to right reason within Greek philosophy, are bastard fruits belonging to the Greeks, of the husbandry given by God.
This is the wisdom of this age, the pleasure-loving and self-loving kind, that the apostle speaks of, as teaching only the things of this world and what pertains to it, and consequently subject, by way of subordination, to the rulers of this age; wherefore this partial philosophy is a kind of elementary instruction, falling short of that truly perfect knowledge which ranges beyond the world, about the intelligible realities, and further still about the more spiritual of these — things which "eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man" — until the Teacher disclosed to us the account concerning these things, revealing the holy of holies and, by a further ascent beyond even these, the still more holy things, to those who are the genuine, not spurious, heirs of the sonship of the Lord. For we may boldly say (for here is the gnostic faith) that the true gnostic is one who has knowledge of all things and comprehends all things, employing a firm apprehension even of matters that are obscure to us — such a man as James was, and Peter, John, Paul, along with the other apostles. For prophecy overflows with knowledge, since it was granted by the Lord and afterward made plain to his apostles through him; and is not knowledge, perhaps, a property peculiar to the rational soul, which is trained toward this end, that through knowledge it may be inscribed for immortality? For both are powers of the soul, knowledge and impulse.
Now impulse is found to be a movement occurring after a certain assent; for the one who is impelled toward some action first receives knowledge of the action, and second, the impulse. Let us consider the matter further from this angle: since learning is prior to doing (for by nature the one who does a thing first learns that which he wishes to do), and knowledge comes from learning, and doing comes from being impelled, and knowledge from learning, and impulse follows upon knowledge, and after impulse comes the deed — knowledge would then be the beginning and the maker of every rational act, so that it is by this alone that the property peculiar to the rational soul may reasonably be characterized. For in truth impulse is, as it were, a kind of knowledge in motion with respect to the things that are, while knowledge itself is precisely this: a certain contemplation by the soul of the things that are, or of certain of them, but when perfected, of all things together.
And yet certain thinkers claim that the wise man is convinced there are things that cannot be grasped, so that even about these he possesses a kind of grasp, in that he comprehends that the incomprehensible things will be incomprehensible. This, however, is common even to those capable of only a little foresight; for such a person merely affirms that there exist certain incomprehensible things. But that gnostic of whom I speak comprehends, for himself, the very things that seem incomprehensible to others, having believed that nothing is incomprehensible to the Son of God, and hence nothing is untaught by him; for he who suffered for love of us would withhold nothing from the teaching of knowledge. This faith, then, becomes a firm demonstration, since truth follows upon the things handed down by God. And if one also longs for manifold experience, the disciple of wisdom knows the things of old and conjectures the things to come; he understands the turns of arguments and the resolutions of riddles; he has foreknowledge of omens and marvels, and of how seasons and epochs will unfold.

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 9 ========

For such is the gnostic, that the only experiences befalling him are those tied to the body's need for upkeep — craving food, craving drink, and similar wants. But that the Savior's body should demand the services necessary for its own upkeep, in the way a body does, would be laughable; for he ate not for the body's sake, since it was sustained by a holy power, but so that his companions should not drift into a mistaken notion about him, just as, in fact, some later imagined he had appeared only in seeming. He himself was, in the fullest sense, free of passion, untouched by any passionate stirring, whether of pleasure or of pain. But the apostles, having under the Lord's instruction mastered anger, fear, and desire in a more gnostic manner, would not even accept the things counted as goods among passionate stirrings — boldness, say, or zeal, joy, or good cheer — remaining unmoved by any fixed state of mind at all, unaltered in every way, but abiding always immovable in a settled practice, at least once the Lord had risen. For even granting that the goods just named might arise reasonably enough, they are still inadmissible where the perfect man is concerned, one who has no need to be bold (for he does not find himself among terrors, considering nothing in life terrible, nor can anything, even apart from this, separate him from love toward God), nor has need of cheerfulness (for he does not fall into grief, being persuaded that all things happen well), nor indeed does he grow angry (for there is nothing that will stir him to anger, since he loves God always and is wholly turned toward him alone, and on this account hates none of God's creatures); but neither does he feel zeal — for he lacks nothing needed to be made like the beautiful and the good; nor therefore does he love anyone with that common kind of friendship, but he loves the Creator through his creatures.
Therefore he falls into neither desire nor any craving, nor is he in want, so far as his soul is concerned, of anything else, being already joined through love to the Beloved, to whom he has been made akin by his very choice, and drawing nearer to him ever more closely through the disposition acquired by practice, blessed through the abundance of good things, so that for the sake of these very things he is driven to be made like his Teacher unto passionlessness. For the Word of God is intellectual, and it is by this that the imprinting of mind is seen in man alone, whereby the good man is godlike and god-resembling in soul, even as God in turn is man-shaped; for the mind is the form of each thing, by which we are characterized. This is precisely why wronging a fellow human being counts as an impious, unholy act. It is nonsense, then, to say that the gnostic and perfect man ought to keep his anger and boldness intact, on the ground that stripped of these he could not rise up against circumstances nor endure terrors,
or that, if we were to take cheerfulness away from him, he would surely be overwhelmed by things that cause grief and would therefore be worst off, even in regard to living itself. And if he had no share of desire, as some have supposed, they say he would not conceive a longing for things like the beautiful and good. If, then, all affinity toward beautiful things comes about together with craving, how, they ask, does the man who craves beautiful things remain passionless? But these people, it seems, do not know the divine nature of love. For love is no longer a craving on the part of the one who loves, but an affectionate affinity that has restored the gnostic to the unity of faith, needing neither time nor place. The one who is already, through love, present among the things he will be, having laid hold beforehand of hope through knowledge, no longer craves anything, possessing, so far as possible, the very object of craving. Reasonably, then, he remains in that one unchanging disposition, loving in a gnostic way, and so he will not feel zeal to be made like beautiful things, since through love he already possesses beauty itself. What further need has he of boldness and desire, having already received through love the affinity to the passionless God and having inscribed himself, through love, among his friends?
We must therefore separate the gnostic and perfect man from every passion of the soul; for knowledge produces sustained practice, sustained practice produces a disposition or state, and such a settled condition produces passionlessness, not moderation of passion; for the complete excision of desire yields passionlessness as its fruit. But the gnostic does not even partake of those much-talked-of goods, that is, of the passionate goods that lie alongside the passions — I mean, for instance, mirth (which lies alongside pleasure), dejection (for this is yoked to grief), and caution (for this shrinks back through fear), nor indeed anger (for this is ranged alongside wrath) —
even if some say that these are no longer evils, but are now goods. For it is impossible that the man who has once been made perfect through love, and who is eternally and insatiably feasted on the unfillable joy of contemplation, should still find pleasure in petty, crawling things. For what sensible reason remains for him to turn back toward worldly goods, once he has grasped the unapproachable light — even if not yet in place and time, still already within that gnostic love, from which inheritance and full restoration follow, the Rewarder confirming through deeds what the gnostic, having gnostically chosen it through love, has already reached forward to and taken hold of in advance? Is it not so, then, that journeying toward the Lord out of love for him, though his earthly tent remains visible here below, he does not remove himself from life (since that option is denied him), but rather he has drawn his soul back and away from all the passions (since this much is permitted to him), and he lives, having put the desires to death, and no longer makes full use of the body, but permits himself to use it only for necessary things, so that he may not furnish an occasion for its dissolution?
How, then, could this man have any further need of courage, since he does not find himself among terrors — not being present to them at all, but already wholly with the Beloved? And what call has he for self-mastery, who lacks nothing that self-mastery would restrain? For possessing desires strong enough to require reining in belongs not to the man already purified, but to one still gripped by passion, and courage likewise is taken up on account of fear and cowardice. For surely it no longer suits the friend of God, whom God marked out before the world's founding for the highest sonship, to sink into pleasures or terrors and be caught up in wrestling down the passions. For I would venture to say: just as it lies foreordained by what deeds he will act and what he will obtain, so also he himself, having foreordained, possesses already, through what he has come to know, the one whom he has loved, not having the future hard to discern, as the many live guessing at it, but having received through gnostic faith what remains hidden to others.
And for him, through love, the future is already present; for he has believed, both through prophecy and through the presence of the Lord, in the God who does not lie, and what he has believed he holds and possesses as promise (and truth is the one who made the promise), and he has firmly and with certain knowledge already received the fulfillment of the promise through the trustworthiness of the one who promised. And the one who knows that the settled condition in which he stands is a firm apprehension of what is to come, meets the future beforehand through love. Accordingly, he who is persuaded that he will obtain the truly good things will not even pray to obtain the things of this world, but only to hold fast always to the faith that lays hold and sets aright. And besides this he will pray that as many as possible should become, as far as may be, like himself, to the glory of God, which is perfected according to full knowledge; for he who is made like the Savior is in some sense a savior, so far as it is right for the image to be received into human nature, unfailingly setting right whatever pertains to the commandments. And to the man to whom it belongs to worship the divine through true righteousness, both in deeds and in knowledge,
of this man the Lord does not wait for the voice in prayer, saying: Ask, and I will do it; think it, and I will grant it.
For in general it is impossible for the unchangeable to take hold and stability within that which is changeable, since it is in continual change, and because of this the ruling faculty becomes unstable, and the settled power is not preserved. For that which is always being altered by things that slip in and befall it from outside — how could it ever come to be in a fixed disposition and state, and, in sum, in the possession of knowledge? And yet even the philosophers suppose the virtues to be dispositions, states, and forms of knowledge. But since knowledge is not innate in men but is acquired, and the learning of it requires attention at the beginning for its nurture and growth, and then, from unceasing practice, comes to a settled state — so, having been brought to perfection in that mystical disposition, it remains unshaken through love. For it is not merely that he has grasped the first cause together with the cause begotten from it, holding these firmly and possessing reasonings about them that are stable, unshakable, unmoved; he likewise holds, concerning goods and evils, concerning everything that comes into being, and, in short, concerning what the Lord spoke of, precise truth learned from the truth itself, running from the world's beginning clear to its end — not preferring, if something should appear plausible or in accordance with some compelling Greek argument, that above the truth itself, but holding what has been said by the Lord as clear and evident. And even if these things remain still hidden to others, he has already received knowledge concerning all things. And the oracles that are among us pronounce concerning things that are, as they are; concerning things that will be, as they will be; and concerning things that have happened, as they happened.
And in matters of knowledge, being alone truly a man of knowledge, he will excel above all and will hold in honor the doctrine concerning the Good, ever attending to the objects of thought, transcribing his own management of human affairs from those archetypes above, just as sailors steer their ship by the star, being prepared to be ready for every fitting action, accustomed to look down upon all things troublesome and terrible whenever he must endure them, doing nothing rash nor discordant, either with himself or ever with the common good, being forward-looking and unbending before pleasures, whether those of waking life or those that come through dreams; for, being schooled to a simple diet and to self-sufficiency in a temperate way, he is trim in bearing along with dignity, needing few necessities to sustain life, pursuing nothing superfluous, and not even these things as of primary importance, but admitting them, out of the fellowship belonging to life, as necessary to the flesh's sojourn here, only so far as necessity requires; for knowledge takes precedence for him.

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 10 ========

As a consequence, then, he devotes himself also to those studies that train him toward knowledge, taking from each branch of learning what is serviceable to truth: from music pursuing the proportion found in harmonized things; in arithmetic observing how numbers grow and diminish and stand in ratio each to the rest, and how the greater part of things falls under some numerical proportion; in geometry contemplating being itself in its own right, and becoming accustomed to conceive of a continuous magnitude and of an unchangeable being other than these bodies; and again from astronomy, being lifted in mind from earth, he will be raised up together with heaven and will circle round with its revolution, ever tracing out divine things and their harmony with one another — the very pursuits from which Abraham, setting out, rose up to the knowledge of the Creator. But the gnostic will also make use of dialectic, choosing the division into species of the genera, and will apply himself to the discrimination of things that are, until he lays hold of the first and simple things. But the many, like children before hobgoblins, are so afraid of Greek philosophy, fearing lest it lead them astray.
But if such is the faith they hold (for I would not call it knowledge), that it can be dissolved by plausible argument, then let it be dissolved — for by this very fact they are confessing most plainly that they do not possess the truth; for truth, it is said, is unconquerable, whereas false opinion is overthrown. At once we choose purple by setting it side by side with another purple. So then, if someone confesses that he does not have a well-articulated heart, he has neither the table of the money-changers nor the standard of judgment for arguments. And how is such a man any longer a banker, being unable to test and distinguish the genuine coin from the counterfeit? David cries out: that the righteous shall not be shaken forever; not, that is, by deceitful argument nor by wandering pleasure — wherefore he shall not be shaken even from his own inheritance. From an evil report, then, he shall not be afraid — not from empty slander, nor indeed from false opinion concerning himself; but he who is able to discern such things will not be frightened even by cunning arguments, whether in questioning rightly or in answering. For dialectic is, as it were, a parapet, so that truth may not be trampled underfoot by the sophists. For those who are praised in the holy name of the Lord ought, according to the prophet, to make their heart rejoice while seeking the Lord. Seek him, then, and be strengthened; seek his face always and in every way. For having spoken in many parts and in many manners, he is not known in a simple, single way.
Not, then, as though making use of these excellences for their own sake will the gnostic among us become a man of much learning, but rather employing them as certain helpers; and in distinguishing what is common from what is peculiar he will apply himself to the truth. For the cause of all wandering and false opinion is the inability to discern in what way things that exist share in common with one another and in what way they differ. And if one does not proceed in reasoning according to what has been properly distinguished, he will unwittingly confuse what is common with what is particular, and once this happens he must inevitably fall into pathlessness and error. Now the distinguishing of both names and things, even within the scriptures themselves, engenders a great light in souls; for it is necessary to attend to words that signify more than one thing, and to the several words that, when they signify one and the same thing, must be distinguished — from which also right answering results. But excessive uselessness is to be avoided, that which busies itself about things that contribute nothing, whereas the gnostic makes use of these studies as a kind of joint-contributing preliminary exercise toward the exact transmission of the truth, so far as that is attainable, and toward being undistracted, and also as a safeguard against those who craft arguments with evil skill for the cutting away of the truth.
He will not, then, be left behind those who make progress in the encyclical branches of learning and in Greek philosophy — yet not according to the leading, primary reasoning, but according to the necessary, secondary, and circumstantial one; for whatever weapons those who labor over the heresies use with cunning, these the gnostic will turn to good use. Since, then, the truth that appears in Greek philosophy is but partial, the truth that truly is, like the sun shining upon colors, both the white and the black, reveals what each of them is, and thus itself refutes every sophistic plausibility. Fittingly, then, this too has been proclaimed beforehand even among the Greeks: 'Truth, queen, beginning of great virtue.'

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 11 ========

Just as, then, in the case of astronomy we have Abraham as our example, so too in the case of arithmetic we have that same Abraham. For when he heard that Lot had been taken captive, he numbered his own household servants — three hundred and eighteen — and, going out after them, overpowered a very great number of the enemy. Now they say that the shape of that three-hundredth letter typifies the Lord's emblem, while the iota and eta of the name mean "the one who saves"; whereby it is shown that Abraham's household belonged to salvation, since those who had taken refuge in that emblem and name became masters over their captors and over the very many faithless nations that followed them. Now the number three hundred is already a triad in the hundreds, and the decad is agreed to be perfect in every respect. And eight, the first cube, is equality in all its dimensions — length, breadth, and depth.
"And the days of man," it says, "shall be one hundred and twenty years." Now this number, reckoned by addition from unity, is the fifteenth, and the moon becomes full on the fifteenth day.
There is also another sense in which the number one hundred and twenty is triangular, and it is composed, on the side of equality, from sixty-four, whose successive partial sums produce the squares — one, three, five, seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, fifteen — and on the side of inequality, from fifty-six, the seven even numbers from two onward, which produce the oblong numbers — two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen. According to yet another meaning, the number one hundred and twenty is composed of four numbers: one triangular, the fifteenth; another square, the twenty-fifth; a third pentagonal, the thirty-fifth; a fourth hexagonal, the forty-fifth. For by the same proportion the five is taken up in each kind: among the triangular numbers, reckoned from unity, the fifth is fifteen; among the squares, twenty-five; and so on proportionally for the rest. Indeed the number twenty-five, being the fifth from unity, is said to be a symbol of the tribe of Levi, and thirty-five likewise belongs to the diagram of doubled numbers — arithmetical, geometrical, and harmonic — of six, eight, nine, twelve, whose sum produces thirty-five; on these days, the Jews say, seven-month children are formed in the womb. And forty-five belongs to the diagram of tripled numbers, six, nine, twelve, eighteen, whose sum produces forty-five, and on these days likewise, they say, nine-month children are formed.
This, then, is the form of the arithmetical example. Let the tent that was built, and the chest that was fashioned, serve as witness for geometry — put together by certain most rational proportions, by divine designs, according to the giving of understanding, leading us from the things perceived by the senses to the things perceived by the mind, or rather from these to the holy things, and from the holy things to the holy of holies. For the square timbers, by the square figure standing firm in every direction and forming right angles, show forth stability. Its span measured three hundred cubits in length, fifty in breadth, thirty in depth; and above it was finished off to a single cubit, narrowing from its wide base after the manner of a pyramid — that chest standing as an emblem for those refined and proven through fire. This geometrical proportion supplies a means of conveying those holy unities, whose differences the differences of the subordinate numbers indicate.
The ratios involved are sixfold, as three hundred is to fifty; tenfold, since thirty taken ten times yields three hundred; and in the ratio of three to two, for fifty is one and a half times thirty. Some say that the three hundred cubits are a symbol of the Lord's emblem, and the fifty of hope and of the remission proclaimed at Pentecost, and the thirty — or, as in some accounts, twelve — they record as signifying the preaching, since it was in his thirtieth year that the Lord took up his preaching, and the apostles were twelve; and that the structure was completed to a single cubit, since the righteous man's advancement comes to an end in unity and in the oneness of faith.
Now the table set in the temple measured six cubits, and each of its four feet was a cubit and a half. Adding them all together one gets twelve cubits, matching the yearly circuit's turning through twelve months, in which the earth, adjusting to the four seasons, produces and brings to completion all things. The table, I think, signifies an image of the earth, resting upon four feet — summer, autumn, spring, winter — through which the year travels. This is why it is said that the table had twisted wreath-work, either because all things revolve in cycles of seasons, or perhaps because it also signified the earth encircled by Ocean.
Further, let David be set forth as the pattern of music, both singing psalms and prophesying at once, hymning God tunefully. Now the enharmonic genus, as Aristoxenus says, is especially suited to the Dorian mode, and the diatonic to the Phrygian. The harmony, then, of the barbarian psaltery, displaying the solemnity of its melody and being the most ancient of all, becomes an example especially for Terpander, who hymned Zeus to the Dorian mode in something like these words: "Zeus, beginning of all things, leader of all, Zeus, to you I send this beginning of hymns." The lyre might, allegorically, for the psalm-singer signify in its first sense the Lord, and in its second sense those who, near at hand, strike the strings of souls under the Lord as leader of the music. And even if the saved people is called a lyre, it is understood musically as glorifying God by the inspiration of the Word and by the knowledge of God, being struck into faith by the Word. One might also take, in another sense, the musical harmony of the church to be the concord of the law and the prophets together with the apostles, along with the gospel — the harmony that runs, in each prophet, according to the shifts of persons, in a subordinate register.
But, as it seems, the majority of those who bear the name, like the companions of Odysseus, approach the word crudely, dodging not the Sirens themselves but their cadence and tune, plugging their ears with ignorance, aware that once they let Greek learning reach their hearing they will afterward be unable to reach home. But for one who gathers out what is useful for the benefit of catechumens, especially since they are Greeks (for the whole earth belongs to the Lord, together with everything filling it), one must not abstain from the love of learning like an irrational animal, but rather must gather as many aids as possible for those who understand. Yet one must in no way linger over these things, except only for what is useful from them, so as, having taken and acquired this, to be able to return home to true philosophy, having procured for the soul a firm cable — the safety that comes from all things together.
Music, then, must be engaged for the ordering and composure of character.
Indeed, even over wine we sing to one another in our toasts, charming our desiring part and glorifying God for the ungrudging gift of human enjoyments — both the foods eternally supplied for the growth of the body and those for the growth of the soul. But excessive music, which softens souls and casts them into variety — now mournful, now licentious and voluptuous, now frenzied and maddening — must be spat out and rejected. The same reasoning applies also to astronomy; for this discipline, after the study of the heavenly bodies concerning the shape of the universe, the motion of heaven, and the movement of the stars, bringing the soul nearer to the creative power, teaches one to grasp keenly the year's turning seasons, the shifts of weather, and the risings of the stars; since both seafaring and farming are supplied by its usefulness, just as architecture and building are supplied by geometry. This branch of learning also prepares the soul, as far as possible, to be attentive, keen-sighted for truth and able to refute falsehood, discovering agreements and analogies, so as to track down the like among the unlike; and it leads us on to discover length without breadth, surface without depth, and the point without parts, and transposes us from the things of sense to the things of the mind.
The mathematical disciplines, then, are auxiliary to philosophy, and philosophy itself is auxiliary to grasping the truth. For instance, the cloak was at first fleece, then it was carded and became weft and warp, and only then was it woven. So too the soul must be prepared beforehand and worked upon in various ways, if it is to be fashioned in the best condition, since of truth one part is a matter of knowledge, another a matter of practice; it flows from the contemplative part, and requires much practice, joint training, and experience. But even of the contemplative part, one aspect concerns one's neighbors, another concerns oneself alone. For this reason education must be so equipped as to be fitted to both. It is enough, then, for one who has thoroughly learned the essentials of what leads to knowledge to remain at rest in quiet for the future, directing his actions toward contemplation; but for the benefit of one's neighbors — some being eager to write, others intent on handing down the teaching — both the rest of education generally and the reading of the Lord's scriptures are necessary, for the proof of what is said, especially if those who are learning have been led up from Greek education.
Such is the kind of church that David describes: "The queen stood at your right hand, clothed in gold-worked robes, arrayed in many colors" — including, indeed, both the Greek and the extraneous — "in golden fringes, arrayed in many colors." But the truth comes through the Lord. "For who has known your counsel," he says, "unless you have given wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high? And so the paths of those on earth were made straight, and men were taught what pleases you, and rescued through wisdom." For the Gnostic, according to scripture, knows the ancient things and conjectures the things to come; he understands the turns of speech and the resolutions of riddles; he foreknows signs and wonders and the outcomes of seasons and times, as we have said before.
Do you see the fountain of the disciplines springing forth from wisdom? But to those who raise objections — for what use is it, they say, to know the causes of how the sun moves, for instance, and the rest of the stars, or to have examined the theorems of geometry, or the principles of dialectic, and each of the other disciplines, since these things are of no use for rendering our duties, and Greek philosophy is a merely human understanding — to those who say that truth is not something that can be taught, this must be said, first of all: that these people stumble even in the greatest of matters, that is, in the very direction of their mind. For, it says, "those who reverently observe the sacred things shall themselves be hallowed, and those instructed in them shall find recourse." For the Gnostic alone will reasonably do all that is to be done, piously, as he has learned according to the Lord's teaching, having received it through men. Again, one may hear it said: "since within his grasp — that is, within his strength and understanding — lie we ourselves and our sayings, and all comprehension and craft in what is made. For God loves nothing except the one who dwells together with wisdom." And further, have they not read what was said by Solomon? For, discoursing about the building of the temple, he says outright: "Wisdom, the craftswoman, built it; but your providence, Father, steers it."
And how is it not unreasonable to consider philosophy inferior to carpentry and shipbuilding? Perhaps, too, the Lord fed that multitude reclining on the grass opposite Tiberias with the two fish and the five barley loaves, hinting at the preliminary training of both Greeks and Jews prior to the divine wheat — the food cultivated according to the law; for barley ripens more readily than wheat, toward the season of summer. And the fish signified the Greek philosophy that is generated and carried about in the surge of the nations, given for abundant nourishment to those who still lay upon the ground; though it did not grow, unlike the fragments of the loaves, yet those who partook of the Lord's blessing were inspired, through the power of the Word, with the resurrection of divinity. But if you are curious, take one of the fish as signifying the encyclical learning, and the other as signifying that higher philosophy itself which has ascended beyond it — sounds in accord with the Lord's word; "a chorus of voiceless fish sounded around," as the tragic muse has said somewhere. "And I must decrease," while only the Lord's word must henceforth increase — the word into which the law comes to its end, as the prophet John has said.
Understand from me, then, the secret of the truth, granting pardon if I hesitate to proceed further with its elaboration, proclaiming only this: "all things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be." Indeed he is called the chief cornerstone, in whom every building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple of God, according to the divine apostle. I say nothing for now of the gospel parable that says: "heaven's kingdom resembles a man who threw a net into the sea, and from the great haul of fish gathered picked out the better ones." And already our wisdom proclaims outright, in something like these words, the four virtues, so that even the sources of these were given to the Greeks from the Hebrews. One may learn this from the following: "and if one loves righteousness, her labors are virtues; for she teaches self-control and prudence, righteousness and courage, than which nothing is more useful to men in life." Above all, they ought also to have known this: that we have come to be by nature disposed toward virtue, yet not so as to possess it from birth, but rather fit to acquire it.

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 12 ========

By this argument the difficulty raised against us by the heretics is resolved, namely whether Adam was created perfect or imperfect. For supposing him imperfect, how could an imperfect thing, and a human being above all, come from a perfect God's craftsmanship? But if perfect, how does he transgress the commandments? They will hear from us that he was not made perfect in his constitution, but was made fit for the acquiring of virtue; for it is one thing surely to have come into being fit for virtue, and another to possess it; and God wishes us to be saved by our own efforts. Such, accordingly, is the soul's own nature — self-moved; and moreover, since we are rational creatures and philosophy too is a rational thing, we bear a real affinity to it; but fitness is an inclination toward virtue, and not virtue itself.
All men, then, as I have said, are by nature disposed toward the acquisition of virtue, but one advances further, another less, through learning and through practice; wherefore some have persevered all the way to perfect virtue, while others have reached only some point, and yet others, being neglected, even if otherwise well-endowed by nature, have been turned to the opposite. But far more difficult to acquire than all these is that knowledge which surpasses all learning in greatness and in truth, and it is won only with much toil.
But, it seems, they have not known the mysteries of God, that God fashioned humankind for incorruption and shaped him after the pattern of God's own distinctive being, according to which peculiar nature the gnostic, being just and holy with prudence, hastens to arrive at the measure of perfect stature. And that not only actions and thoughts but also words are pure to the gnostic. "You have tried my heart, you have visited it by night," it says, "you have tried me by fire and no unrighteousness was found in me, that my mouth should not speak of the works of men." And what does it mean by "the works of men"? It means sin itself, recognizing it, not sin already led toward repentance (for that is common also to the rest of the faithful), but sin as such; for the psalmist condemns not this or that particular sin, but simply all sin altogether; nor does he establish what someone has done wrong, but what ought not to be done at all. Whence repentance is also twofold: the one common, on account of having erred; the other, having learned the very nature of sin, persuades one to stand apart from sinning by a governing principle, upon which follows not sinning at all.
Let them not say, then, that the one who does wrong and sins by the working of demons commits an offense — since in that case he would even be innocent — while yet, by choosing the same things as the demons in the matter of sinning, fickle, flighty, and quick to shift in what he craves, comes to resemble a demon in human shape. For instance, the man bad by nature, having become prone to sin through vice, is established as base, possessing what he willingly chose; and being prone to sin, he also goes wrong in his actions; whereas conversely the virtuous man acts rightly. Hence we reckon as good not merely the virtues, but the honorable deeds as well; and of goods we know that some are choiceworthy for their own sake, as knowledge (for we seek nothing else from it, once it is present, than simply its being present, and our being in unceasing contemplation, and our striving toward it and through it), while others are chosen for the sake of other things, as faith, on account of the escape from punishment that results from it, and the benefit that comes from the recompense. For fear is, for most people, the cause of not sinning, while the promise is the occasion for pursuing obedience, through which comes salvation.
Knowledge, then, is the most perfect good, being choiceworthy for its own sake, and as a consequence the noble things that follow through it are choiceworthy too. And punishment is, for the one being punished, a cause of correction, while for those able to see from afar it becomes an example, through which they check themselves from falling into like offenses. Let us therefore receive knowledge not desiring its outcomes, but embracing it for the sake of knowing itself. For the first benefit is the gnostic disposition itself, which affords harmless pleasures and exultation both now and hereafter. And they say that exultation is a kind of gladness, being a reckoning of the virtue that accords with truth, arising through a certain feasting and expansion of the soul. And the works that share in knowledge are good and noble deeds. For true wealth is abundance in the actions that accord with virtue, and poverty is the lack that accords with worldly desires. For the possession and use of necessary things has no harmful quality in itself, but only in the quantity that exceeds due measure.
For this reason the gnostic sets bounds to his desires, both as to possession and as to use, not overstepping the limit of what is necessary. Deeming life here necessary for the increase of understanding and the acquisition of knowledge, he will therefore hold not mere living but living well of the highest importance, preferring neither children nor marriage nor even his parents above love toward God and righteousness in life. His wife becomes, after the bearing of children, as a sister to him, judged as it were of the same father, being reminded of her husband only at the times when she looks upon the children, since, once the flesh is set aside — the flesh that partitions and marks off spiritual understanding by outward, bodily distinctions — she truly becomes a sister in fact. For souls, taken in themselves, are alike simply souls, neither male nor female, at that point where none is wedded nor given to a spouse; and might not the woman thus be transposed into the man, becoming equally unfeminine, and manly, and perfect?
This, then, was the meaning of the laughter of Sarah when word reached her announcing that a child would be born — not, I think, from disbelieving the angel, but from feeling shame at that intercourse again, through which she was to become the mother of a child. And might it not be that from that time on Abraham, when he was in danger before the king of Egypt on account of Sarah's beauty, fittingly called her sister, and of the same father, but not yet of the same mother?
To those, then, who have repented of their sins and have not yet believed steadfastly, God grants their requests through supplications; but to those who live without sin and gnostically, he gives merely upon their conceiving the thought. For instance, to Hannah, upon her merely conceiving the thought, was given the conception of the child Samuel. "Ask," says Scripture, "and I will do it; conceive the thought, and I will grant it." For we have received that God is a knower of hearts, not judging from the movement of the soul as we men do, nor yet from the outcome (for it would be ridiculous to think so), nor as the master-builder praises the work once it has come to be — as God, having thus made the light, then, upon seeing it, said it was good; but he, knowing even before making it what it would be, praised this beforehand; and the "it came to be" belongs to the power of one making, from above, through the beginningless purpose, that which was to be, actually good. In other words, he had already foretold that what was to be was good, the truth being concealed by the inversion of the phrasing.
The gnostic, then, prays also in his very thought at every hour, being made a familiar of God through love. And at first he will ask forgiveness of sins, but after he has ceased sinning, he will further ask to be able to do good, and to understand the whole creation and dispensation that pertains to the Lord, in order that, having become pure in heart, through the understanding granted by God's own Son, he may be led into the blessed vision, seeing face to face, having heeded the Scripture that says, "Fasting with prayer is good." And fastings signify abstinence from all evils altogether, both those in deed and those in word and those in the very thought. Righteousness, then, appears foursquare — even and matched on every face: in speech, in conduct, in holding back from wrongdoing, in active benefit, in the gnostic's completeness — halting nowhere in any respect, so that it may not appear unjust and unequal. Now insofar as someone is righteous, he is altogether also faithful; yet being faithful does not by itself make him righteous already — I refer to that righteousness reached through advancement and completeness, the standard by which the gnostic earns the name righteous.
For instance, to Abraham, having become faithful, it was reckoned unto righteousness, once he had risen to a fuller, more complete measure of trust. For the man who merely abstains from evil action is not righteous, unless he also further accomplishes doing good and knowing, the reason for which some things are to be abstained from and others to be actively done. Through the weapons of righteousness, those on the right hand and those on the left, the apostle says, the righteous man is escorted to the utmost inheritance, fortified by the one and active with the other. For the mere protection of the full armor and the abstinence from sins is not sufficient for perfection, unless one also takes on the work of righteousness, the activity directed toward well-doing. Then the ambidextrous and gnostic man is revealed to us in righteousness, already glorified even from this present life, just as Moses was glorified in the countenance of his soul, which we said before was the characteristic mark of the righteous soul. For just as with wool the astringency of the dye, once it has taken hold, provides its distinctive quality and difference from the rest of the wool, so also with the soul: the toil passes away, but the good remains, and the pleasure is left behind, while the shame is wiped away. For these are the characteristic qualities of each of the two kinds of soul, by which the one is recognized as glorified, and the other as condemned.
Yes indeed, just as for Moses, from his righteous conduct and from his continual converse with God who spoke to him, a certain glorified radiance settled upon his countenance, so also upon the righteous soul a certain divine power of goodness, imprinted through oversight, through prophecy, and through administrative activity, signifies itself as it were a ray of intellectual light, like the warmth of the sun, an evident seal of righteousness, a light united to the soul through unceasing love, as the soul is borne along by God. Here the likeness to the saving God arises for the gnostic, so far as is lawful for human nature, becoming perfect "as the Father," it says, "who is in the heavens." He himself it is who said, "Little children, yet a little while I am with you," since God too — not insofar as he is good by nature does he remain thus blessed and incorruptible, neither being troubled himself nor causing trouble to another — but doing good things in his own proper way, being truly God and a good Father, both being and becoming so in unceasing acts of well-doing, remains unswervingly in the sameness of his goodness. For what use is a good that neither acts nor does good?

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 13 ========

He, then, who has first practiced moderation of the passions and trained himself toward passionlessness, and has grown into the well-doing of gnostic perfection, is here already the equal of the angels; and being now full of light, and shining like the sun in his beneficence, he hastens by the righteous knowledge that comes through love of God toward the holy abode, just as the apostles did — not because they were apostles by becoming apostles through some special peculiarity of nature (since Judas too was chosen along with them), but because they were of such a kind as to be capable of becoming apostles, having been chosen by him who also foresees the ends of things. Matthias, at any rate, who was not chosen along with the others, having shown himself worthy to become an apostle, is set in the ranks in Judas's place.
It is possible, then, even now for whoever has trained himself in obedience to the Lord's precepts and has, gospel-wise, attained perfect and gnostic living, to be numbered among the elect rank of the apostles. Such a man is truly a presbyter of the church and an authentic servant of God's purpose, provided he both acts on and teaches the Lord's affairs — not through human ordination, nor accounted righteous merely for holding the presbyter's office, but rather admitted to that office because righteous; and even should he go unhonored on earth with the foremost seat, he will nonetheless occupy one of the twenty-four thrones and judge the nations, just as John declares in his Apocalypse. For truly there exists a single covenant of salvation extending toward us since the world began, even though its manner of bestowal has seemed to vary across successive ages and generations; it therefore emerges that a single unalterable gift of deliverance proceeds from a single God by way of a single Lord, working good in various fashions — and on that account the dividing wall separating Greek from Jew has been removed, uniting them into one particular people.
And thus both come together into the unity of the faith, and the election out of both is one. And of the elect, it is said, still more elect are those who according to perfect knowledge have been culled, as it were, from the church itself, and honored with the most magnificent glory — judges and administrators, equally from Jews and from Greeks, the twenty-four, the grace being doubled; since indeed the ranks of advancement here within the church — bishops, presbyters, deacons — represent, I believe, copies of that angelic splendor and of the arrangement which scripture promises awaits those who, walking in the apostles' own path, have spent their lives in righteousness brought to gospel perfection. The apostle writes that these, having been caught up in clouds, will minister at first, then be enrolled in the presbytery according to advancement in glory (for glory differs from glory), until they grow up into the perfect man.

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 14 ========

Such men, according to David, will find rest on the holy mountain of God, in the highest church, in which the philosophers of God are gathered together—those who are truly Israelites, clean of heart, having no trace of deceit within them, who have not stayed resting on the seventh day, but through the good work of divine assimilation have ascended beyond it to the inheritance of eighth-day blessedness, clinging in pure contemplation to a vision that cannot be sated. "And I have other sheep too," says the Lord, "not belonging to this flock," judged worthy, according to the measure of their faith, of a different flock and dwelling. "But my sheep hear my voice," understanding the commandments gnostically; that is, receiving them with a great and worthy mind, together with the requital and consequence that follows upon deeds. So that when we hear, "Your faith has saved you," we do not understand him to mean simply that those who have believed in whatever manner will be saved, unless works also follow. Indeed he spoke this saying to Jews alone, to those who had lived lawfully and blamelessly, to whom only faith in the Lord remained lacking.
One could not, then, be faithful together with intemperance; rather, even if he does not depart the flesh, he must lay aside the passions, so as to be able to pass into his own proper abode. Now knowing is more than believing, just as, after being saved, being deemed worthy of the highest honor is more than the mere being saved. Through much discipline, then, the faithful man among us, having stripped off the passions, passes on to the better abode in place of the former one, bearing as his greatest punishment the peculiar mark of repentance for the sins he committed after baptism. He is grieved, indeed, all the more, either at not yet obtaining, or at not obtaining at all, what he sees others have received. And besides, he is ashamed of his transgressions, which are indeed the greatest punishments for the faithful man. For the righteousness of God is a good thing, and what is good in him is just. And even should the punishments cease at some point, upon the completion of the atonement and each one's purification, those found worthy of the other fold still retain the greatest abiding grief—that of not being together with those glorified for righteousness.
Thus Solomon, calling the gnostic wise, says the following concerning those who marvel at the dignity of his abode: "For they will see the end of the wise man and not understand what the Lord planned concerning him and for what he made him secure; and concerning his glory they will say: this is he whom we once held in derision and as a byword of reproach—we fools; we counted his life sheer folly and his death without honor; how then has he come to be numbered among God's children, and his portion set among the holy ones?" Not only the faithful man, then, but the pagan too is judged most justly. For since God, knowing beforehand, was aware that this man would not believe, still, so that he might reach the fulfillment proper to himself, granted him philosophy—prior to faith—and set the sun, moon, and stars before him for worship, "which God made for the nations," says the law, "that they might not, becoming utterly godless, be utterly destroyed as well." But those who were ungrateful even in this commandment, having devoted themselves to carved images, are judged, unless they repent—some, because though able they were unwilling to believe God; others, because though willing they did not labor to attain to being faithful;
and indeed those too who, from the veneration of the stars, did not run back up to their Maker. For this was a way given to the nations, to look up toward God through the worship of the stars. But those who were unwilling to remain even upon these, the stars given to them, but fell away even from these to stones and wood, "were reckoned," it says, "as dust, and as a drop from a bucket"—superfluous unto salvation, cast off from the body. Just as, then, simply being saved belongs to the middling things, while doing so rightly and fittingly is an achievement, so too every action of the gnostic is an achievement, while the action of the simply faithful man might be called a middling action, not yet performed according to reason nor indeed rightly done with understanding, yet altogether the reverse of the sinning way of the pagan; for it is not the mere doing of good, but the directing of one's actions toward a defined goal and the acting in step with reason, which the scriptures put forward as proper.
Just as, then, the lyre must not be touched by those unskilled in playing the lyre, nor the flute by those unskilled in flute-playing, so too matters must not be touched by those who have not received knowledge and do not know how they are to be used throughout the whole of life. Indeed, the contest for freedom is fought not only in wars by the athletes of war, but also at banquets and on the couch and in the courts, by those anointed by reason, ashamed to become captives of pleasure: "never will I exchange virtue for unjust gain." And unjust gain, plainly, is pleasure and pain, and desire and fear, and, to sum it up, the passions of the soul, whose immediate delight is painful in what follows. "For what profit is it," it says, "if you gain the world but lose your soul?" So it becomes evident that whoever fails to carry out good deeds does not even grasp what is truly to their own advantage. And if this is so, such men are not even able to ask rightly of God to receive good things, being ignorant of the things that are truly good; nor, even if they received them, would they perceive the gift, nor would they enjoy in any worthy measure that which they did not know—through both inexperience in using well what has been given and through excessive ignorance, not yet knowing how the divine gifts are to be used. And ignorance is the cause of not-knowing.
And it seems to me the boast of a vainglorious soul—except when well-grounded in conscience—to declaim over the things that happen by circumstance: "against these let him contrive whatever he must; for the good, together with me, and justice, will be my ally, and never shall I be caught, doing what is right." And this good conscience preserves both holiness toward God and justice toward men, keeping the soul pure by dignified thoughts and chaste words and righteous deeds. Thus having received the Lord's power, the soul practices being god, counting nothing evil but ignorance and deeds out of step with right reason, and offering gratitude continually, for every circumstance, to God, through upright listening and sacred reading, through honest search, through consecrated offering, through blessed prayer—praising, hymning, blessing, chanting psalms. Such a soul is at no moment ever cut off from God. Fittingly, then, it has been said: "And those who trust in him will understand truth, and the faithful will abide with him in love." You see what things wisdom discusses concerning the gnostics.
Correspondingly, then, the dwellings too differ according to the merit of those who have come to believe. So Solomon: "For there will be given to him the elect gift of faith, and a lot more pleasant within the sanctuary of the Lord." Here the comparative degree points to the lesser things situated inside God's sanctuary, which is the church entire, while leaving room to conceive also a superlative, where the Lord himself dwells. These three dwellings, being the elect ones, are signified by the numbers found in the gospel—thirty, sixty, and a hundred. And the complete inheritance belongs to whoever, growing to full maturity, comes to bear the Lord's own image; and this likeness (ὁμοίωσις) is not, as some imagine, a likeness of bodily shape (for this notion is godless), nor indeed likeness in virtue with reference to the first cause—for this account too is impious, expecting that man's virtue and that of the almighty God are the same. "You supposed, lawlessness," it says, "that I would be like you"; but it is enough for the disciple to become as the teacher, says the teacher. According to the likeness of God, then, he who is enrolled unto adoption and friendship with God becomes, in the joint inheritance of the lords and gods, a fellow heir—if, as the Lord himself taught, he is made perfect according to the gospel.

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 15 ========

The Gnostic, then, forms in himself the closest likeness — the very mind of the Teacher — that mind which he, understanding it, both commanded and counseled to the prudent and self-controlled, this mind the Gnostic comprehends, as the one who taught it wished, and having taken up for himself that magnificent understanding, taught worthily upon the housetops those able to be built up loftily, and himself took the lead in the practice of what was spoken, according to the pattern of his conduct as a citizen; for he commanded things possible, and truly the royal and Christian man must be a ruler and a leader, since we were appointed to be masters not only of the wild beasts outside us but also of the savage passions within ourselves. By watchfulness, then, as it seems, over the evil and the good in life the Gnostic is saved, understanding and acting more than the scribes and Pharisees. "Bend your bow and prosper and reign," David writes, for the sake of truth and meekness and righteousness, "and your right hand shall guide you marvelously" — that is, the Lord. "Who, being wise, will grasp these matters? Who, being discerning, will come to know them?" "For the paths of the Lord are straight," says the prophet, showing that only the Gnostic is able to understand and to make clear the things spoken by the Spirit in a hidden manner; and "whoever has discernment at that season will hold his peace," says Scripture, plainly meaning toward the unworthy, that the Lord says: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear," saying that it is not given to all to hear and to understand.
For instance, David writes of "dark water in clouds of the air"; "from the brightness before him the clouds passed through, hail and coals of fire," teaching that the holy words are hidden. And indeed he indicates that to the Gnostics they are sent down from God transparent and clear as harmless hail, but to the many they are dark, like coals quenched from the fire, which, unless someone kindles and rekindles them, will not burst into flame nor give light. "The Lord," then he says, "gives me a tongue of instruction, to know in season when it is necessary to speak a word" — not only with reference to testimony, but also to that which comes by question and answer; "and the instruction of the Lord opens my mouth." It belongs to the Gnostic, then, also to know how to use speech — both when and how and to whom.
Already the apostle too, speaking of those "according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ," hands down the Greek teaching as elementary, but that according to Christ as perfect, just as we have already shown before.
For instance, the wild olive is grafted into the richness of the cultivated olive and indeed grows in the same form as the domesticated olive trees; for the graft uses the tree into which it is planted in place of soil; but all plants alike have sprung up by divine command. Therefore even though the wild olive happens to be a wild shoot, it crowns the Olympic victors, and the elm, raising the vine on high, teaches it to bear good fruit. And we see already that the wild trees draw in more nourishment because they are unable to digest it. The wild trees, then, are less able to digest than the cultivated ones, and the cause of their being wild is a deficiency of digestive power.
The grafted olive, then, takes in more nourishment because it was planted while wild; but as it becomes accustomed to digest its food, it grows like in kind to the richness of the cultivated tree — just as the philosopher too, likened to the wild olive, having much that is undigested because he is inquisitive and quick to follow along and desirous of the richness of truth, if he receives in addition the divine power through faith, being planted into the good and cultivated knowledge, just as the grafted wild olive digests the nourishment handed over to it and becomes a fine olive tree. For grafting, by the art of farming and by gnostic knowledge, makes useless trees noble and forces the unfruitful to become fruitful.
They say, then, that grafting occurs in four ways: one, in which the graft must be fitted between the wood and the bark, just as the unlearned from among the nations are catechized, receiving the word superficially; another, when they split the wood and insert into it the noble plant, which happens in the case of those who have philosophized — for when their doctrines are cut apart, the recognition of the truth comes to be in them; and thus also for the Jews, when the old scripture is opened up, that noble young olive-shoot is grafted into it. The third kind of grafting concerns wild trees and heretics who are led by force into the truth; for having pared each wedge-shaped piece with a sharp sickle, until they lay bare the pith without wounding it, they bind them to one another. The fourth manner of grafting is what is called budding; for a bud is removed from a noble trunk, with the bark cut around it in a circle about a hand's-breadth in length, then the trunk is pared out at the bud equal to the outline, and thus the bud is inserted, being bound round with cord and smeared with clay, the bud being kept unharmed and unstained. This is a form of gnostic teaching, capable of examining matters thoroughly; and indeed this form proves especially useful in the case of cultivated trees.
Now the grafting spoken of by the apostle can occur into the fine olive tree, that is, Christ himself, the untamed and unbelieving nature being planted into Christ, that is, into those who put their trust in Christ; yet it is preferable that the faith of each be grafted into his own soul individually. For indeed the Holy Spirit is in some such way transplanted, being distributed without limit according to the measure proper to each. Concerning knowledge Solomon, discoursing, says the following: "Radiant and unfading is wisdom, and she is readily seen by all who cherish her; she comes forward to meet those wishing to recognize her. He who rises early for her shall not grow weary; for to think upon her is the perfection of prudence, and he who keeps watch for her shall quickly be free from care; because she herself goes about seeking those worthy of her" (for knowledge does not belong to all), "and in their paths she appears to them graciously" — the paths being the conduct of life and the manifold variety according to the covenants. At once he adds:
"And in every thought she meets them," being contemplated in various ways — clearly through the whole of instruction. Then he adds, setting forth the perfecting love, by a syllogistic argument and by true premises drawing a most demonstrative and true conclusion in some such way as this: "For the truest beginning of instruction is the desire for her" — that is, of knowledge — "and the care for instruction is love, and love means obeying her laws, and heeding those laws confirms incorruption, and incorruption brings one close to God. Desire for wisdom, then, mounts up toward a kingdom." For he teaches, I think, that true instruction is a kind of longing for knowledge, and the exercise of instruction lies in loving knowledge; and love means obeying the commandments that conduct one to knowledge, and obeying them confirms those very commandments, on account of which incorruption comes about, and incorruption makes one near to God. If, then, love of knowledge makes one incorruptible and leads the royal man near to God the king, one must therefore seek knowledge with a view to finding it. Now seeking is an impulse toward apprehension, discovering the underlying object through certain signs, while finding is the limit and the rest of the search, occurring in apprehension, which is knowledge. And this, properly speaking, is what finding is — knowledge, being the apprehension reached through search. And they say that a sign is that which precedes, or coexists with, or follows the thing.
Of the search concerning God, then, the finding lies in what is taught by way of the Son, and the sign that our Savior is that very Son of God consists both of the prophecies preceding his coming, which proclaimed him, and of the testimonies concerning him that coexisted with his sensible birth, and further of his powers proclaimed and manifestly displayed after his ascension. It is proof, then, that truth resides with us, in that the Son of God himself was its teacher; for if in regard to every question these universal marks are found — both a person and a matter — then true reality is shown to be with us alone, since the person of the truth that is shown is the Son of God, while the matter is the power of faith, which increases even though everyone opposes it and the whole world itself resists. But since it has been agreed that this has been confirmed by eternal works and words, and it has already become evident, everyone who does not think there is providence, and is truly godless, deserves punishment, not refutation; but it lies before us to determine what we must do and in what manner we must live so as to arrive at the knowledge of God the Almighty, and how by honoring the divine we may become causes of salvation for ourselves — learning and gaining understanding, not through the sophists, but directly from God, of what pleases him, and setting ourselves to act justly and in holiness. That we be saved pleases him, and salvation is achieved both through right conduct and through knowledge, and the Lord instructs us in each of these.
If, then, according to Plato too, it is possible to learn the truth thoroughly only from God or from the offspring of God, we reasonably boast that, choosing our testimonies from the divine oracles, we are taught the truth through the Son of God — the truths having first been prophesied and then afterward made clear; and the things that cooperate toward the discovery of truth are themselves not without value. Philosophy, at any rate, proclaiming providence and the reward of the happy life, and in turn the punishment of the wretched life, speaks of God in a summary way, but does not preserve accuracy and particulars. For it does not discourse about the Son of God, nor about the dispensation according to providence, in the same way we do; for it did not know the worship that is according to God. Therefore the sects within barbarian philosophy, even if they speak of one God and even if they hymn Christ, speak of him only in a summary way, not in accordance with truth; for they invent another god, and they do not receive Christ as the prophecies hand him down. But surely the false doctrines among them, so long as they do not oppose the way of life according to truth, are not against us.
For instance, Paul circumcised Timothy on account of those from among the Jews who believed, so that, while he was doing away with what had been assumed too carnally from the law, those catechized from the law might not fall away from the faith — knowing full well that circumcision has no power to justify; for he declared himself made all things to all men, preserving by his accommodation the essential points of doctrine, in order to gain all. And Daniel wore the golden collar before the king of the Persians, not disdaining lest the people be afflicted. Liars, then, in truth are not those who accommodate themselves for the sake of the dispensation of salvation, nor those who err in some particular matter, but those who fall away in the most essential matters and, as far as lies in them, set the Lord at nought, and deprive the Lord's true teaching, those who fail to interpret and hand down the writings as befits God and His Lord; for grasping and jointly practicing the reverent tradition, passed down through the apostles in accord with the Lord's teaching, constitutes a deposit rendered back to God. And "that which you hear whispered in the ear" (plainly denoting what is concealed and enigmatic, since such matters are figuratively described as whispered into the ear), "announce," it says, "from the rooftops" — receiving it with lofty thought and handing it down with elevated speech, and making clear the scriptures according to the rule of truth; for neither the prophecy nor the Savior himself uttered the divine mysteries so simply that they would be easy prey for whoever happened along, but spoke in parables.
The apostles at any rate say of the Lord that "he spoke all things in parables and spoke nothing to them without a parable." But if "all things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be," then prophecy too and the law came to be through him, and were spoken in parables through him; "yet all things are straight before those who understand," says Scripture — that is, before all who, receiving the interpretation of the scriptures made clear by him according to the ecclesiastical rule, preserve it; and the rule of the church consists in the agreement and mutual accord of the law and the prophets together with the covenant delivered at the Lord's coming. Prudence, then, follows knowledge, and self-control follows prudence; for let it be said that prudence is divine knowledge, existing also among those who are deified, while self-control is mortal and exists among men who philosophize, but are not yet wise. For instance, if virtue is divine, so too is knowledge of it; but self-control is, as it were, an imperfect prudence, aspiring to prudence, but laborious and active rather than contemplative — just as, indeed, righteousness too, being human, is common to all, but falls short of holiness, which is divine righteousness. For in the perfect man righteousness consists not in civic contracts nor in the prohibition of the law, but arises from his own proper conduct and from love toward God.
For many reasons, then, the scriptures hide their meaning: first, that we may remain seekers and stay continually alert toward uncovering the sayings that bring salvation; then also because it was not fitting that all should understand, lest, taking them otherwise, they be harmed by what was spoken for salvation by the Holy Spirit. Therefore the holy mysteries of the prophecies, kept for the elect among men and for those approved from faith unto knowledge, are veiled in parables; for the parabolic character belongs to the scriptures, because the Lord too, though not worldly, came to men as if worldly; for he bore the whole of virtue, and was destined to lead man, the fellow-inhabitant of the world, up to the things intelligible and essential through knowledge, out of one world into the other. Therefore he also employed a scripture that is metaphorical; for such is a parable — a saying from something not properly so called, but resembling that which is properly so called, leading the one who understands to the truth and to the essential thing — or, as some say, an expression that through other things presents with force the things properly meant.
Already too the entire dispensation concerning the Lord that was prophesied appears truly as a parable to those who have not come to know the truth, whenever anyone speaks of the Son of God, who made all things, as having taken on flesh and having been carried in the womb of a virgin — inasmuch as his sensible flesh was born — and consequently, inasmuch as this came to be, as having suffered and been raised; and those who hear this take it as "to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness," as the apostle says. But the scriptures, opened up and showing to those who have ears the very truth of that which the flesh suffered, which the Lord took on, proclaim the power and wisdom of God. And above all, the parabolic form of scripture, being most ancient, as we have shown, naturally abounded most among the prophets, so that the Holy Spirit could demonstrate how the Greek philosophers, along with the sages found among the other non-Greek peoples, remained ignorant of the future coming presence of the Lord, and of the mystical teaching that was to be handed down by him. Reasonably, then, prophecy, proclaiming the Lord, so as not to seem to some to blaspheme by speaking contrary to the opinions of the many, shaped what it signified in words that could also be led to other meanings. For instance, all the prophets who foretold beforehand the coming of the Lord, and along with it the holy mysteries, were persecuted, were put to death — just as the Lord himself, who made clear their scriptures, and his own disciples who proclaimed the word after him, likewise staked their lives.
Hence too Peter, speaking about the apostles in the Preaching, says: "But we, unrolling the books which we had of the prophets, who name Christ Jesus, some by parables, some by riddles, and some in a straightforward and literal fashion, found both his coming and his death and his cross and all the rest of the punishments which the Jews inflicted upon him, and his rising and his ascension into the heavens before Jerusalem was founded, just as it had been written, all that he must suffer and what would be after him. Recognizing these things, then, we believed in God through what has been written concerning him." And a little later he adds again, establishing that the prophecies came about by divine providence, as follows: "For we knew that God truly ordained all this, and apart from the Scripture we assert nothing."
The Hebrew dialect, then, like each of the other tongues, has certain peculiarities of its own, containing a certain quality that exhibits a national character. Indeed they define a dialect as speech brought to completion with a national character. But it is not to those dialects that prophecy is made familiar; for among the Greek dialects the so-called variations of "tropes," pursued as a craft, produce their concealments after the image of our own prophecies, being derived from them, except that the deviation from the straight is shown to occur willfully, in metrical or extemporaneous phrasing. The trope, at any rate, is a word written down as diverging from its proper sense to a sense not proper to it, for the sake of construction and for the sake of a useful turn of phrase within the discourse. Prophecy, however, does not at all pursue figures of diction for the sake of beauty of phrasing; rather, because the truth is not for everyone, it is concealed in many ways, dawning as light only for those initiated into knowledge, for those who through love seek the truth.
It is said, then, that one form of prophecy, according to the barbarian philosophy, is the proverb, and another is called the parable, and besides these the riddle. But indeed it is also called wisdom, and, as something distinct from it, instruction; and again words of prudence and turns of speech, and true righteousness, and again teaching how to direct judgment, and cunning that comes to the innocent through instruction, and perception and understanding that come to the newly catechized. "He who hears these," it says, "of the prophets, being wise, will become wiser, and the intelligent man will acquire the art of steering, and will grasp a parable together with its dark meaning, and the sayings of the wise, and riddles." But if it happened that the Greek dialects came to bear that name from Hellen, son of Zeus and surnamed Deucalion, it is easy to see, from the chronology we have already set forth, by how many generations the dialects among the Greeks are more recent than the Hebrew tongue.
As the writing proceeds, we shall note the aforesaid tropes employed by the prophet in each passage and set them forth, artfully exhibiting the gnostic method of guidance according to the rule of truth. For was it not also in the vision to Hermas that the Power, appearing in the figure of the Church, gave him the book to copy out, which she wished to be announced to the elect? And he, it says, copied it letter by letter, not being able to make out the syllables. This showed, I think, that the mere Scripture, when taken simply by its plain reading, is clear to everyone, and that such is the faith occupying the rank of the letters, and this is why also the reading according to the letter is allegorized; but the gnostic unfolding of the Scriptures, now that faith is already advancing, we understand to be figured by the reading according to syllables. And Isaiah the prophet too is bidden to take a new book and write certain things in it, the Spirit prophesying that the holy knowledge, through the exposition of the Scriptures, would come to be later, that knowledge which at that time was still unwritten because it was not yet known; for from the beginning it had been spoken only to those who understand. Presently, when the Savior had taught the apostles, the unwritten tradition of that which is written is handed down even to us also, inscribed upon new hearts according to the renewal of the book, by the power of God.
In this way the most learned among the Greeks consecrate to Hermes, whom indeed they say to be the Logos, the fruit of the pomegranate, on account of its interpretation; for the Logos is full of hidden depths. Fittingly, then, Joshua the son of Nun, when Moses was being taken up, saw him double: the one with angels, and the other, on the mountains among the ravines, being accounted worthy of burial. And Joshua saw this sight from below, being lifted up in spirit, together with Caleb also. But the two did not behold it in the same way; rather, the one came down more quickly, bringing with him much of the heaviness, while the other, coming down afterward, related the glory which he had beheld, having been able to gaze upon it more fully than the other, inasmuch as he had become purer. This history shows, I think, that knowledge is not for everyone, since some look upon the body of the Scriptures, the words and the names, just as upon the body of Moses, while others discern the meanings and what is signified by the names, busying themselves with the Moses who was with the angels. Indeed, of those who called upon the Lord himself, the crowd cried out, "Have pity on me, O Son of David," yet few recognized him as Son of God, as did Peter, whom he also called blessed, because flesh and blood had not revealed the truth to him, but rather his Father who is in the heavens — showing that the gnostic comes to know the Son of the Almighty not through his flesh, which was born, but through the very power of the Father. Not, then, only for those who happen upon it in a simple way is the acquisition of the truth difficult, but even for those to whom the discipline properly belongs, the history concerning Moses teaches that not even to them is contemplation given all at once, until, having become accustomed to look steadily, just as the Hebrews grew accustomed to the glory of Moses and the holy ones of Israel to the visions of the angels, so we too may become able to look steadily upon the flashing brightness of the truth.

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 16 ========

Let the Decalogue be set forth by us in passing, as an example for the sake of gnostic clarity. That the number ten is sacred there is no need now to say. But if the tablets that were inscribed came about as God's handiwork, they will be seen to exhibit a natural, generative operation; for the finger of God is understood as a divine power, by whose agency heaven and earth were brought into existence, and of both of these the tablets will be understood as symbols. For God's writing and the shaping of forms laid up in the tablet amount to the fashioning of the cosmos. Now the Decalogue, according to the heavenly image, comprises sun and moon, stars, clouds, light, spirit, water, air, darkness, fire. This is the natural decalogue of heaven. And the image of earth comprises human beings, cattle, creeping things, wild beasts, and among water creatures fish and sea-monsters, and likewise among winged creatures both the flesh-eating and those that use tame food, and likewise among plants the fruit-bearing and the fruitless. This is the natural decalogue of earth. And the ark that comprised these things would be the knowledge of things divine and human, that is, wisdom. Perhaps these two tablets would also be a prophecy of the two covenants.
They were, then, mystically renewed, when ignorance and sin alike were increasing. In a twofold way, it seems, the commandments are written for two spirits, the ruling one and the subordinate one, since flesh sets its desire in opposition to spirit, even as spirit opposes flesh in turn. There is also a certain decad concerning man himself: the five senses, and the faculty of speech, and the seminal faculty, and this indeed is the eighth, the spiritual element belonging to his formation, and ninth, the faculty that governs the soul; and tenth, the mark of distinction added on account of faith, that of the Holy Spirit. Further, besides these, the legislation appears to give commands regarding ten human parts: sight and hearing and smell, touch and taste, and their serving instruments, which are twofold, hands and feet; for this is the formation of man.
The soul is introduced in addition, and further added to it is the ruling faculty by which we reason, which is not begotten according to the deposit of seed, so that even without this the number ten is arrived at, the number through which the whole activity of man is accomplished. For by order, as soon as he comes into being, man takes the beginning of his life from the passible elements. We say, then, that the rational and ruling element is the cause of the constitution of the living being, but also of the ensouling of the irrational part and of its being a portion of it. Thus the vital power, in which is comprised the nutritive and the growth-producing and generally the motive faculty, has been allotted to the fleshly spirit, which moves swiftly and ranges throughout the body by means of the senses, being the first part to be acted upon bodily; but the ruling faculty possesses the power of choice, which is concerned with inquiry and learning and knowledge. But indeed the reference of all things is ordered toward one thing, the ruling faculty, and it is by this faculty that man is alive, and alive in a particular fashion.
Through the bodily spirit, then, man perceives, desires, feels pleasure, grows angry, is nourished, grows; and indeed it is through this that he proceeds to actions in accordance with thought and understanding, and whenever he masters his desires, the ruling faculty reigns as king. The command, therefore, 'you shall not desire,' means: you shall not be enslaved to the fleshly spirit, but shall rule over it, since the flesh desires against the spirit and rises up to disorder contrary to nature, while the spirit prevails against the flesh toward the conduct of man according to nature. Is it not, then, reasonably said that man came to be according to the image of God, not with respect to the form of his bodily constitution, but because as God creates all things by his Word, so the man who has become gnostic performs good actions by his own reason. Reasonably, then, it is said elsewhere that the two tablets signify the commandments given to the two spirits, those given to the formed man and to the ruling faculty, handed down before the law; and the movements of the senses are imprinted according to understanding, and are made manifest according to the activity proceeding from the body; for apprehension comes from both.
Again, further, as sense-perception is to the perceptible, so is thought to the intelligible. And actions too are twofold, some according to thought, others according to activity.
And the first commandment of the Decalogue establishes that there is only one God, the Almighty, who led the people out of Egypt through the wilderness into the ancestral land, so that they might apprehend his power, so far as they were able, through his divine works, and might turn away from the idolatry of created things, placing all their hope in the God who truly is. The second commandment indicated that one must not receive nor apply the great power of God — that is, his name (for this alone they were capable of learning, as indeed most people still are today) — that one must not apply the invocation of it to things created and vain, which the craftsmen among men have made, over which the One who Is is not ranked; for the One who Is is himself alone in ungenerated identity. The third commandment is the one indicating that the world came into being through God, and that the seventh day was granted to us as respite, because of the labor belonging to this present life; for God is untiring and impassible and lacking nothing, but we who bear flesh are in need of rest.
The seventh day, then, is proclaimed as rest, preparing through abstinence from evils the primal day, which is truly our rest, and which indeed is truly the first genesis of light, in which all things are contemplated together and all things are inherited. From this day the primal wisdom and knowledge shines upon us; for the light of truth is true light, without shadow, the spirit of the Lord divided without division among those sanctified through faith, holding the place of a lamp for the recognition of the things that are. Following it, then, throughout the whole of life we become free from passion, and this is to have rested. That is why Solomon also says that wisdom came to be for the Almighty before heaven and earth and all things that are, and that participation in it (I mean according to power, not according to essence) teaches one to be knowledgeable, with comprehension, of things divine and human. Having come to this point, these things too should be recalled in passing, since the discussion has touched upon the hebdomad and the ogdoad; for it seems that the ogdoad is properly the hebdomad, while the hebdomad, at least in outward appearance, is a hexad, and that the former is properly the sabbath, while the hebdomad is the working day; for the cosmogony is completed in six days, while the sun's course from one solstice to the next takes half a year — a span across which the foliage drops away in one season, and in another the shoots spring up and the seeds reach ripeness.
It is also said that the fetus reaches its exact completion by the sixth month — namely, across a hundred eighty-two and a half days — as Polybus the physician records in his work On Eight-Month Children, and Aristotle the philosopher in his work On Nature; and it is from this, I think, following the account of the coming-to-be of the cosmos according to the prophet, that the Pythagoreans consider the number six to be perfect, and call it the mid-point and marriage, since it occupies the middle position of the straight line running between two and ten; for it appears to be equidistant from both. And as marriage produces offspring from male and female, so six is produced from three, which is called an odd, that is, a male number, and two, which is considered even, that is, female; for twice three makes six. Such, moreover, are the broadest categories of motion by which all becoming is conveyed: upward, downward, rightward, leftward, forward, and back.
Reasonably, then, they reckon the number seven to be motherless and unproductive, in this way interpreting the sabbath and allegorizing the form of rest, in that state where none any longer take a spouse or are given as a spouse; for neither does seven arise from any number multiplied by another, nor, when it is multiplied by another, does it produce another number within the decad. The ogdoad they call a cube, reckoning together with the seven wandering spheres the fixed sphere as well, through which the great year comes about, being as it were a certain cycle of the requital of the things promised. It is for this reason that the Lord, having gone up the mountain as a fourth, becomes a sixth, and is illumined round about with spiritual light, laying bare, so far as it was possible for those chosen to see to behold, the power that comes from him, being proclaimed through the seventh voice to be the Son of God, so that some might rest, having been persuaded concerning him, while he, through generation, which the hexad indicated, might appear distinguished, being an ogdoad, God in flesh displaying his power, being numbered as man while concealing who he truly was; for by the order of numbers six too is reckoned along with the rest, but the sequence of the letters marks as distinguished the one not written.
Here, according to the numbers themselves, each unit is preserved in its order into the hebdomad and the ogdoad, but according to the number of the letters, zeta comes sixth, and eta comes seventh. But since the episemon (the obsolete digamma-sign) has somehow been smuggled into the alphabet, if we follow this reckoning, the hebdomad becomes sixth, and the ogdoad seventh; for which reason it is also said that man was made on the sixth day, he who became faithful to the episemon, so that he might straightway receive the rest belonging to the Lord's inheritance. Something of this sort the sixth hour of the saving dispensation also shows, in which man was made perfect. Indeed, of the eight the intervals become seven, and of the seven the intervals appear to be six. But that is another matter, when the hebdomad glorifies the ogdoad, and heaven proclaims to heaven the splendor of God. The perceptible types of these are, among us, the vowel letters. So it is that the Lord is himself named Alpha and Omega, start and finish, the one through whom everything was made, without whom nothing at all was made. God, then, has not ceased from working, as some suppose the rest of God to mean; since, being good, were he ever to stop doing good he would likewise stop being God — a thing not even permitted to be spoken.
It is, then, possible to have rested in this sense: to have ordained that the order of the things that came to be should be kept unbroken for all time, and that each of the created things should have ceased from the former disorder; for the acts of creation on the several days had received their order in the greatest sequence, as it were their honor from what was prior, all the things that came to be being destined to have order, though created together in a single act of thought, yet not being of equal honor; nor would the coming-to-be of each have been made clear by speech, had the creation been spoken of as accomplished all at once; for it was necessary to name something first as well. For this reason, then, the first things were foretold prophetically, from which the second things proceed, all things having come to be together from one substance by one power; for one, I think, is the will of God, in a single identity. And how could creation come to be in time, when time itself came to be together with the things that are?
Already, moreover, the whole cosmos of living things generated and of all things that grow revolves in cycles of seven.
Seven are the archangels of greatest power, the firstborn rulers of the angels, and seven also are the stars which those versed in the mathematical sciences say are the wandering stars accomplishing the governance of things around the earth, by whose sympathetic influence the Chaldeans suppose that everything concerning mortal life comes to pass, on account of which they also undertake to speak of things to come; and of the fixed stars, seven are the Pleiades, and seven-starred are the Bears, by which farming and seafaring are regulated, and the moon takes on its changes of shape over seven days. In the first week it becomes half; in the second, full; in the third, from its decline, half again; and in the fourth it disappears. But it also, as Seleucus the astronomer relates, changes shape seven times. For it becomes, from being without light, crescent-shaped, then half, then convex on both sides and full, and again on the wane convex on both sides, then half again likewise, and crescent-shaped.
'With the seven-toned lyre we shall sound forth new hymns,' writes a poet not without renown, teaching also that the ancient lyre had seven strings. Seven, too, are the instruments of the senses set upon our face: two of the eyes, two of the passages of hearing, two of the nostrils, and seventh that of the mouth. And that the changes of the ages of life occur by sevens the elegies of Solon show, somewhat as follows: 'A boy, while still a child and not yet come of age, casts his first set of teeth at seven years; and when God brings to completion another seven years, he shows the signs of coming manhood; and in the third seven, as his limbs still grow, his chin becomes downy, the bloom of his skin changing; and in the fourth seven, everyone is at his very best in strength, by which men bear the marks of excellence; and in the fifth it is fitting for a man to be mindful of marriage and to seek offspring for the future; and in the sixth a man's mind is fully trained in all things, and he no longer wishes likewise to do vain deeds; and in seven sevens a man is at his very best in mind and speech, and in eight, that is, fifty-six years; and in the ninth he is still capable, but his body and strength are more moderate for great excellence; and in the tenth, when God has brought to completion another seven years, he would not, being of ripe age, meet an untimely fate.'
Again, in illnesses, the seventh day and the fourteenth are critical, on which nature struggles against the causes of disease. And countless such things, sanctifying the number, are set forth by Hermippus of Berytus in his work On the Hebdomad. And clearly the blessed David hands down the mystic teaching about the hebdomad and the ogdoad to those who have understanding, singing somewhat as follows: 'Our years have been pondered as a spider's web. Taken by themselves, the days of our years number seventy, or, given strength, eighty... may it fall to us to reign.' In order, then, that we might be taught that the cosmos is generated, yet not suppose that God makes it in time, the prophecy added: 'This is the record of the generation, and of what belongs to them, at the time they came into being — on the day God fashioned heaven and earth.' For the phrase 'when they came to be' signifies an indefinite and timeless expression, but the phrase 'on the day that God made,' that is, on which and through which he made all things, apart from which not one thing came to be, indicates the activity through the Son, of whom David says: 'This is the day the Lord has fashioned; let us be glad and take joy in it,' that is, let us feast, according to the knowledge handed down through him, upon the divine banquet. For 'day' is said of the Word who illumines hidden things, and through whom each of the created things came into light and into being. And the Decalogue as a whole, through the letter iota, signifies the blessed name, presenting Jesus as being the Word.
The fifth discourse in order is about the honoring of father and mother. Now by father and lord he clearly means God. That is why he proclaims those who have come to know him as sons and gods. Lord and father, then, is the creator of all things; but the mother is not, as some hold, the substance out of which we came to be, nor, as others have handed down, the church, but rather divine knowledge and wisdom, as Solomon says, calling wisdom the mother of the righteous. And she is to be chosen for her own sake. And again, all that is beautiful and reverent is known from God through the Son.
Next in order follows the discourse on adultery. Adultery is when someone, abandoning the church's true knowledge and the correct understanding concerning God, turns to an unfitting false opinion, either deifying something that has come into being or fashioning an idol of something that does not exist, so as to overstep, or rather to fall away from, knowledge. False opinion is alien to the gnostic, just as true opinion is his own and his fitting consort.
For this reason the noble apostle calls idolatry one of the forms of fornication, in agreement with the prophet who says: it has committed adultery with wood and with stone; to the wood it said, You are my father; and to the stone, You gave birth to me.
Then follows the discourse on murder. Murder is a violent taking-away. So whoever wishes to take away the true account of God and of his eternity, in order to admit falsehood in its place, saying either that the universe is without providence, or that the world is uncreated, is the most destructive of all the things firmly held by true teaching.
After this comes the discourse on theft. Just as the one who steals another's goods, doing great wrong, deservedly falls into deserved evils, so too the one who appropriates divine works to himself through an art, whether sculpture or painting, and says that he himself is the maker of living creatures and plants, is a thief; and likewise those who merely imitate true philosophy are thieves as well. Even if someone is a farmer, even if a father of a child, he is only a servant of the sowing of seeds, while it is God who supplies the growth and completion of all things and brings what comes to be to its natural end.
But most people, along with the philosophers, attribute growths and changes primarily to the stars, thereby robbing, so far as lies in their power, the Father of all of his unwearied power. The elements and the stars — that is, the governing powers — have been appointed to carry out what is fitting for the ordering of the world, and they themselves are obedient and are led by those set over them, in whatever direction the word of the Lord guides, since the divine power is by nature accustomed to work all things in a hidden manner. Whoever, then, claims to have devised or made anything of what contributes to the work of creation shall render account for his impious presumption.
The tenth discourse is concerning all desires. Just as blame falls on the one who desires what is not fitting, so likewise one must not desire false things, nor to suppose that among created things the ensouled can act of themselves while the unensouled are altogether unable to save or to harm; and if someone says that the antidote cannot heal and that hemlock cannot destroy, he deceives himself by his own sophistry. For none of these things works without the one who makes use of the herb or the drug, just as neither does the axe work without the one who cuts, nor the saw without the one who saws. But just as these things do not act of themselves, yet possess certain natural qualities that, together with the craftsman's activity, contribute to their proper effect, so too by the universal providence of God, through things moved more immediately, the effective power is distributed by successive stages down to particular things.

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 17 ========

But, as it seems, the philosophers of the Greeks, when they name God, do not know him, since they do not worship God as God ought to be worshiped. What is philosophized among them, according to Empedocles, having come as it were through many tongues, has been poured out vainly from mouths that saw but a small part of the whole. For just as the light of the sun, by means of a glass vessel full of water, is by art brought to kindle fire, so also philosophy, having taken its spark from the divine scripture, gives but a faint image of it in a few things. Yes, and just as all living creatures breathe the same air, yet differently, each in its own way and toward some different end, so too the majority pursue truth, or rather the account of truth. For they do not say anything about God, but expound their own passions, referring them up to God. For their life has become one of seeking the plausible, not the true; and truth comes not from imitation, but is learned. For our belief in Christ is not so that we might appear good, just as we do not pass our lives in the sun merely for the sake of appearing to be in the sun, but here for the sake of being warmed, so there we are compelled to be Christians for the sake of being noble and good, because the kingdom belongs especially to those who use force, to those who through inquiry and learning and complete joint discipline reap the becoming of a king.
He, then, who imitates mere seeming falsifies also his preconception. But when someone, having caught a spark of the matter, kindles this within, in the soul, by longing and learning, he sets everything in motion toward full knowledge on this basis. For that which someone does not apprehend, he neither longs for nor welcomes the benefit that comes from it. Therefore it is only afterward, at the completion of his right actions, that the gnostic imitates the Lord, so far as is attainable for men, having taken on a certain lordly quality for assimilation to God. But those who do not possess knowledge are not even able to bring truth under a rule. It is not possible, then, to partake of the gnostic contemplations unless we first empty ourselves of our former notions. For in the simplest sense truth is spoken of in common of everything intelligible and everything sensible. One may at once observe a truth of painting distinct from the vulgar sort, and a dignity of music distinct from the licentious kind. And so too there is a certain truth of philosophy distinct from that of the other philosophers, and a true beauty distinct from the counterfeit. One must therefore never busy oneself with the particular truths, of which truth itself is predicated, in place of truth itself, nor seek merely to learn names; for the matter concerning God is not one thing but countless things, and it makes a difference whether one seeks God or seeks the things concerning God. And speaking generally, in the case of every matter, the accidents must be distinguished from the essence.
And for my part it is enough to affirm: the Lord of all things is God. I say "of all" in the absolute sense, with nothing excepted or left aside. Since, then, there are two kinds of truth, names and things, some speak of names — those who spend their time on the beauties of speech, the philosophers among the Greeks — while the things belong to us, the barbarians. Thus the Lord deliberately chose to take on a humble bodily shape, so that none, extolling its fairness and marveling at its charm, might fall away from the things spoken and, clinging to what is left behind, be cut off from the intelligible things. One must therefore turn not about the wording but about what is signified. To those, then, who lay hold only of the wording and are not moved toward knowledge, the word is not entrusted as a matter of belief, since even crows imitate human voices without having any notion of the matter they speak of; but intelligent apprehension belongs to faith. So too Homer said "father of men and of gods," not knowing who the Father is nor how he is Father.
Just as for one who has hands it is natural to take hold, and for one who possesses sound eyes it is natural to see the light, so for one who has received faith it is proper by nature to partake of knowledge, if he is eager further to work upon and build upon the foundation laid, with gold, silver, and precious stones. He does not, then, merely promise to wish to partake, but begins; nor does he merely intend, but it is fitting for him to actually be kingly and full of light and knowing, and it was proper to wish to lay hold of realities not in name but in deed. For God, being good on account of his governance over all creation, wishing this to be saved, turned to making both this and the rest, granting from the beginning, as the first benefit, the very fact of coming into being; for everyone would agree that being is far better than not being. Then, according as the nature of each thing allowed, each came to be and comes to be, advancing toward what is better for itself.
So it is not absurd that philosophy too was given by divine providence as a preparatory training leading to the perfection that is through Christ, provided philosophy does not feel ashamed, in being schooled by barbarian knowledge, to advance toward truth. But the very hairs of our head have been numbered, and our most trivial movements — how then is philosophy not accounted worthy of reason? And indeed to Samson too power was given in his hairs, so that one might understand that not even the abandoned skills of this present existence — left lying upon the earth once the soul has departed — are granted without divine power. Just so, it says, providence from above extends from the leading parts, as from a head, down to all, like the ointment, it says, that runs down upon the beard of Aaron and upon the fringe of his garment (that is, of the great high priest, through whom all things came to be, and without whom not one thing came to be) — not into the world of the body, but, outside the people, as a garment, philosophy.
The philosophers, then, who have been trained by a perceptive spirit toward their own proper apprehension, whenever they busy themselves not with a mere part of philosophy but with philosophy entire, bearing witness to the truth in a spirit of love of truth and without conceit, even among those of other persuasions, wherever things are well said, advance toward understanding, in accordance with the divine dispensation, that ineffable goodness which continually brings forward the nature of existing things toward what is better, so far as this is possible; and then, having associated not only with Greeks but with barbarians too, they are led from common discipline to faith, and from faith to their own proper understanding; and having accepted the foundation of truth, they receive power to advance further in their inquiry, and from this point, having become disciples, they love, and yearning after knowledge, they hasten toward salvation. In this sense scripture says that a spirit of perception was given by God to the craftsmen; and this is nothing other than prudence, a power of the soul contemplative of existing things and of what follows, and discriminative and combinative of like and unlike, and directive and prohibitive, and conjectural of things to come. And it extends not only to the arts but to philosophy itself.
Why then, pray, is even the serpent called prudent? Because even in wicked deeds one can find a certain consistency, and discrimination, and combination, and a conjecturing of what is to come. And indeed most wrongdoings escape notice for this reason, that the wicked contrive for themselves ways of altogether and in every way escaping punishment. And prudence, being many-sided and extending through the whole world and through all human affairs, changes its name according to each of these: when directed toward primary causes, it is termed understanding; when it confirms this by demonstrative reasoning, it is named knowledge and wisdom and science; when it occurs in matters that tend toward reverent caution, and, without contemplation, accepts the ruling principle by the observed maintenance of what is worked out in it, it is called faith; and when, even in matters of sense, it gives assurance to what merely seems, as being in these cases the truest thing, it is called right opinion; and again, in actions accompanied by manual work, it is called art; and where, without contemplation of first causes, by observation of similar cases and by transference, it produces a certain impulse and disposition, it is called experience. And that other thing is properly its own, and is in truth lordly and governing, which the believer receives over and above all, after settled faith, by way of oversight — the holy spirit.
Philosophy, then, having partaken of a more discriminating perception, as has been shown from what was said before, shares in prudence. Now the rational process concerning things conceived, together with choice and assent, is called dialectic — confirmatory, through demonstration, of what is said concerning truth, and repellent of the objections that are brought against it. Those, then, who assert that philosophy has not come here from God run a risk: they must say it is impossible for God to know all particular things, and claim he is not responsible for all good things, even though each individual good in fact belongs to him. But nothing among existing things would have come into being at all in the beginning if God were unwilling; and if it was by his will, then philosophy is from God, since he wished it to exist in just this fashion, for the benefit of those who would not refrain from wrongdoing by any other means. For God knows all things, not only what exists but also what will be and how each thing will be; foreseeing the particular movements, he watches over everything and listens to everything, perceiving the soul naked within, and holding the concept of each particular thing throughout the ages; and what happens in theaters, with regard to each individual part, by way of looking-in and looking-around and looking-together, this happens also with God. For he beholds all things together, and each in its part, in a single glance, though not all in accordance with the same primary emphasis.
Indeed, many things in life take their origin also through some human reasoning, though they have received their spark from God. For instance, health comes about through medicine, and good bodily condition through gymnastic training, and wealth through business — all receiving their origin and presence according to divine providence, but according to human cooperation. And understanding, too, is from God. For instance, the choice of good men obeys especially the will of God. Wherefore many of the advantages are common to both good and bad men, yet they become beneficial only to the good and earnest, for whose sake God made them; for the power of God-given things is by nature suited for the use of good men. But moreover, the thoughts of virtuous men come about through divine inspiration, the soul being disposed in a certain way and the divine will being transmitted into human souls, particular divine ministers cooperating in such services; for the guardianship of the angels has been distributed according to nations and cities, and perhaps also of particular individuals, to some of whom certain angels have been assigned.
The shepherd, at any rate, cares also for each of his sheep individually, and his oversight is especially present and attentive to those who are distinguished in nature and capable of benefiting the multitudes. And these are the leading and educative men, through whom the working of providence is clearly shown, whenever God wishes, whether through education or through some form of rule and administration, to do good to men. And he wishes this always; wherefore he stirs up those who are fit for the beneficial working-out of the things that tend toward virtue and peace and toward well-doing. And everything virtuous both comes from virtue and is referred back to virtue, and is given either toward men becoming earnest, or toward those who already are such making use of the advantages that accord with nature; for it cooperates both in general matters and in particular ones.
How, then, is it not absurd, when men attribute disorder and injustice to the devil, to make him the giver of so virtuous a thing as philosophy? For it is more likely that a more benevolent power has become responsible to the Greeks for their becoming good men — that of divine providence and purpose. On the contrary, I think, it is the property of law and of every right reasoning to render to each what is fitting, and what is proper, and what falls to it. For just as the lyre belongs only to the lyre-player, and the flute to the flute-player, so the advantages of good men are their own possessions, and just as the nature of one who does good is to do good, just as fire's nature is to give heat and light's nature is to shine. A good man could not do evil, just as light will not darken nor fire chill. So conversely, vice could not produce anything virtuous; since its function is to work evil, just as darkness obscures vision. Philosophy, then, in making men virtuous, is not the work of vice. It remains, then, that it is of God, whose work alone is to do good, and everything that is given by God is both well given and well received. Indeed, the use of philosophy does not belong to bad men; but since it was granted to the most excellent among the Greeks, it plainly shows its source — providence, which distributes to each what is fitting according to worth. Fittingly, then, to the Jews was given the law, to the Greeks philosophy, until the coming; and from then on, the universal calling, gathering a people of surpassing righteousness by the teaching that is from faith, through the one Lord, the only one God of both — of Greeks and of barbarians alike, or better, of humankind entire.
We have often said that philosophy is what, in accordance with philosophy, attains to the truth, even if only in part; and further, that the good things found in the arts, as being found in arts, have their beginning from God. For just as doing something skillfully is comprehended within the theorems of the art, so acting prudently is placed under prudence; and prudence is virtue; and it is proper to it to know other things, but far more, its own affairs first of all; and wisdom, being a power, is nothing other than the knowledge of divine and human goods. And to God belong the earth and its fullness. Scripture, teaching that good things come to men from God, has declared this by divine power and by the strength of a distribution fitting for human assistance. For instance, there are three modes of every benefit and transmission from one to another: one by way of accompaniment, as the trainer of boys shapes the boy; another by way of resemblance, as one who urges another toward advancement by having advanced beforehand himself; and of these, the one cooperates with the learner, the other benefits together with the one who receives. The third mode is by way of command, whenever the trainer no longer shapes the learner nor demonstrates the wrestling-hold himself for the boy to imitate, but, as to one already well-practiced, commands the wrestling-hold by name.
The Gnostic, then, having been granted by God the power to act beneficially, does good: molding some by attendance on them, urging others on by way of likeness, and instructing and teaching others still by way of command. He himself, of course, has been benefited by the Lord in these same ways. So too the benefit that reaches down from God to men becomes discernible, with angels joining in the summons; for the divine power supplies good things through angels as well, whether these are seen or not. Such, too, is the manner of the Lord's own appearing. And at times, working through men's own conceptions and reasonings, the power breathes something into them and instills in their minds both strength and a more exact perception, supplying vigor and a bold eagerness both for inquiries and for deeds. Yet there also lie before us, for imitation and likeness, examples of virtue truly wonderful and holy, set down in the recorded deeds of Scripture. And indeed the mode that works by command is most evident both through the Lord's covenants and through the laws current among the Greeks, and also through the precepts delivered in philosophy. And, to put it concisely, all benefit for living, in the highest sense, is accomplished by God the Almighty, the Father who guides all things, through the Son -- who for this reason is, as the Apostle says, 'the Savior of all men, but especially of believers' -- while, proximately, it comes through those set nearest to each person, in accordance with the command and injunction of the one set nearest to the first cause, the Lord.

======== Stromata — Book 6, Chapter 18 ========

Our Gnostic always spends his time on the most authoritative matters; but if leisure and an occasion for relaxation should arise from those principal pursuits, then instead of other idle amusement he takes hold of Greek philosophy, tasting it as one might nibble some little relish alongside the main dinner, not neglecting the better things but adding this too, so far as is fitting, and for the reasons I stated before. But those who have reached out for the unnecessary and superfluous parts of philosophy and cling only to contentious sophistries have been left behind in the necessary and most authoritative matters — men who quite literally chase the shadows of arguments. Now it is a fine thing to know everything; but whoever's soul is too weak to stretch itself toward such wide-ranging learning will choose only the principal and better things. For true knowledge, which we say the Gnostic alone possesses, is a firm apprehension arrived at through true and firm reasonings, leading up to knowledge of the cause; and one who has knowledge is at once knowing both the truth and the falsehood concerning any given matter. And indeed that saying seems to me somehow well put: if one ought to philosophize, one must philosophize; for the statement follows from itself; but even if one ought not to philosophize — for no one could condemn a thing without first having known it. Therefore one must philosophize.
Since these things are so, the Greeks must learn thoroughly, through the Law and the Prophets, to worship one God alone, the truly existing Almighty, and then be taught this also through the Apostle: that for us there is no idol in the world, since no image of God can exist among created things, and further be taught that not even the statues they worship could be likenesses of these beings whose worship they render; for the class of souls is not, in its form, such as the Greeks fashion their carved images to be. For souls are invisible — not only the rational ones, but also those of irrational animals — and their material frames are at no point constituents of the souls proper, but function instead as tools: for some souls, a dwelling; for others, a conveyance; and for others yet, a possession held in still another fashion.
But not even of these instruments can images be made that accurately reproduce them — since one might just as well try to mold the sun as it appears to sight, or to represent the rainbow in its colors. But when they abandon their idols, then they will hear the words of Scripture: unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, who are justified only by abstaining from evils, you will not be of the kingdom — unless, along with the perfecting found in these things, you are also able to love and do good to your neighbor. For it is the intensification of the righteousness according to the Law that reveals the Gnostic. Thus one who is ordered according to that which governs his own body, namely the head, and who has advanced to the summit of faith, will likewise attain the loftiest inheritance in knowledge itself, that toward which all the senses are directed. The Apostle clearly points out the governing element of knowledge to those capable of discerning it, writing thus to those Greek-speaking Corinthians: having hope that as your faith grows, we shall be enlarged among you according to our rule unto abundance, so as to preach the gospel unto the regions beyond you — not speaking of the geographical extension of the preaching (since he himself says that faith had already increased in Achaia,
and this is also recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, where he preached the word in Athens) — but he is teaching knowledge, which is the perfecting of faith, as abounding beyond mere catechetical instruction, matching the magnitude of what the Lord taught and the Church's governing standard. This is why, going on, he adds: even if unskilled in speech, yet not in knowledge. Yet let those among the Greeks who boast of having grasped the truth tell us from whom they learned it, that they can boast so. They would not say from God; they admit it was from men. And if so, either they learned it late from themselves — just as, indeed, some of them boast, being puffed up — or from others like themselves. But men are not trustworthy teachers concerning God, insofar as they are men; for a man is not competent to speak the truth about God, being himself weak and perishable, when it comes to the Unbegotten and Incorruptible One — the work speaking about its Maker.
Then again, is not one who cannot speak the truth about himself even less to be trusted concerning God? For to the degree that a man falls short of the power of God, to that same degree his reasoning grows weak also, even when he speaks not of God himself but merely about God and about the divine word. For human reason is by nature weak and unable to express God — I do not mean the name (for it is common not only to philosophers but also to poets to use it), nor the essence (for that is impossible), but rather God's might and his deeds. And yet even those who claim God as their teacher scarcely arrive at a conception of God, grace assisting them toward a certain measure of knowledge, as they train themselves to perceive, as it were, one will meeting another will, one Spirit answering that same Spirit — since the Spirit searches the depths of God, but the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit. Therefore ours alone is the God-taught wisdom, from which all the springs of wisdom depend, as many as aim at the truth. Indeed, as though the Lord were coming among men to teach us, countless signs, heralds, preparers, and forerunners from above, from the foundation of the world, foretold him ahead of time through deeds and through speech, declaring in advance that he would arrive, from what place, in what manner, and what tokens would mark it.
Indeed, from far off the Law and prophecy rehearse it beforehand, and then the forerunner points out the one who is present, after whom the heralds, teaching fully the power of his manifestation, proclaim it. Yet these were pleasing to only a few, and not even to all of those: Socrates pleased Plato, and Plato pleased Xenocrates; Aristotle pleased Theophrastus, and Zeno pleased Cleanthes — men who persuaded only their own particular followers. But the word of our Teacher did not remain in Judea alone, as philosophy remained in Greece, but was poured out over the whole inhabited world, persuading Greeks and barbarians alike, by nation and village and every city, whole households and each of the hearers individually, and converting to the truth not a few even of the philosophers themselves. And whereas Greek philosophy, if some chance ruler forbids it, vanishes at once, our teaching, from the very beginning together with its first proclamation, has been opposed alike by kings and tyrants and the various rulers and governors together with all their hired soldiers, and besides these, by countless ordinary people, who wage war against us and try with all their power to cut it down — yet it flourishes all the more. For it does not die like a human teaching, nor does it wither like a feeble gift (for no gift of God is feeble), but remains unhindered, prophesied to be persecuted to the very end.
Then, concerning poetry, Plato writes that a poet is a light and sacred thing, and is not able to compose until he becomes inspired and out of his senses. And Democritus says likewise: whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and sacred inspiration is altogether beautiful. Yet we know the sort of things poets say. Should one not, then, be all the more struck with awe before the prophets of the Almighty God, who became instruments of a divine voice?
Just as, then, having modeled a statue of the Gnostic, we have already shown what sort of person he is, indicating the greatness and beauty of his character as in a sketch — for what he is like in contemplation regarding natural things will be shown afterward, when we begin to treat of the origin of the world.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 1 ========

It is now time for us to show the Greeks that it is truly the gnostic alone who is god-fearing, so that the philosophers, once they have learned properly what the man who is really a Christian is like, may condemn their own ignorance — they who pursue the name at random and haphazardly, and vainly call atheists those who have come to know the God who truly is. It is fitting, I think, to employ with the philosophers more evident arguments, such as men already trained by their own education are able to follow, even if they have not yet proven themselves fit to receive the strength that belief brings. For the present we shall make no mention of the prophetic sayings, since we shall later make use of the scriptures at the appropriate places; but we shall indicate summarily what is signified by them, sketching out Christianity in outline, so that we may not break the continuity of the discourse by bringing in the scriptures alongside it, especially for those who do not yet understand their wording. And when we have set forth the things signified, then, once they have come to believe out of abundance, the testimonies too will be made plain to them. (And if what we say appears to some of the many to differ from the Lord's scriptures, they should know that it breathes and lives from that very source, and that in taking its starting-points from them it professes to present only the sense, not the wording.) For excessive elaboration, when not done at the fitting time, would reasonably seem superfluous, while to have given no consideration at all to what is urgent is altogether slothful and deficient. Truly blessed are "they who search out the testimonies of the Lord; with their whole heart shall they seek him out"; and the law and the prophets bear witness concerning the Lord.
It lies before us, then, to show that only the gnostic is pious and holy, worshiping in a manner befitting God the God who truly is; and upon what befits God follows what is dear to God and loving toward God. He holds honorable, then, everything that is superior, in proportion to its worth: among sensible things one must honor rulers and parents and every elder; among things taught, the most ancient philosophy and the most venerable prophecy; and among things intelligible, that which is eldest in coming-to-be — the timeless, beginningless beginning and first-fruit of the things that are, the Son. From him it is possible to learn of the cause beyond, the Father of all things, the most venerable and most beneficent of all, no longer handed down in speech, but honored and revered, in the most proper sense, with reverence and silence accompanied by holy awe — spoken of by the Lord insofar as it was possible for those learning to comprehend it, but understood only by those chosen by the Lord for knowledge, "those," as the apostle says, "whose senses have been trained by exercise."
The service of God, then, for the gnostic, is the unceasing care of the soul and his occupation with the divine according to unbroken love. Of the service rendered to men, one kind improves, the other assists: medicine improves the body, philosophy the soul; from children toward parents, and from subjects toward their rulers, comes an assisting benefit. Likewise also in the church, the elders preserve the image of that which improves, the deacons that of what assists. In both these ministries angels too serve God, according to the administration of earthly affairs, and so does the gnostic himself, ministering to God while displaying to men the contemplation that improves, so that he may be appointed also to teach, for the correction of mankind. For he alone is truly god-fearing who ministers to God well and blamelessly in matters concerning men. For just as the best tending of plants, by which fruits come to be and are gathered in through agricultural knowledge and experience, provides to men the benefit that comes from them, so the god-fearingness of the gnostic, receiving into itself the fruits of the men who have come to believe through him — as more of them come into full knowledge and are thereby saved — accomplishes through experience the best harvest. And if propriety toward God is a settled disposition that preserves what befits God, then he alone who is befitting to God is dear to God; and this would be the one who knows what is fitting both in knowledge and in life, in the manner in which one who is to become — and indeed already is becoming — like God ought to live.
In this way, then, he is a lover of God [in the first place]. For just as a son who honors his own father thereby loves that father, so one who honors God thereby loves God. And on this point I would count three marks of gnostic power: first, to grasp the things that exist; second, to perform whatever reason commands; and third, to be capable of transmitting, in a way suited to God, the things that lie concealed within truth. Such a man, convinced that God holds power over all, and instructed in the divine mysteries by God's only Son, how could he possibly be called an atheist? For an atheist is one who does not consider that God exists, and superstitious is he who fears the spirits; but he who deifies everything, both wood and stone and spirit, is a man enslaved, not living according to reason.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 2 ========

Faith, then, in the knowledge of God is the first thing; and, joined with the Savior's teaching, the conviction that one must in no way act unjustly — this is what befits our thinking to be proper to the knowledge of God. By this measure the most excellent being on earth is the most God-fearing man, and the most excellent in heaven is the angel, who by nearness of place already partakes 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 of all stands the essence of the Son, closest of every being to the one and only Almighty. This is the greatest preeminence, which orders all things according to the will of the Father and steers the universe in the best way, working all things by a power unwearied and untiring, through which it exercises oversight, beholding even the hidden thoughts. For the Son of God never departs from his own watch-post, neither being divided nor cut off nor 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 out the powers by his power. To him is subject the whole host of angels and of gods, to the Word who is the Father's own and who has taken up the holy stewardship "on account of him who subjected it," through whom also all men belong to him. But some belong to him "according to knowledge," others not yet; and some as friends, others as faithful servants, and others simply as servants.
This teacher is the one who instructs the gnostic in mysteries.
and the believer in good hopes, and the hardhearted through corrective discipline by way of perceptible action. From this comes providence, both private and public and everywhere. That he is the Son of God, and that this is the Savior and Lord whom we proclaim, the divine prophecies plainly set forth. So it is that the Master over everyone, Greek and foreigner alike, wins over those who consent freely; he forces no one, though able to grant deliverance to whoever is willing, but acts through free choosing, and on his own side completes everything toward the one capable of grasping hold of that hope. This is he who gave philosophy also to the Greeks through the lesser angels; for angels have been apportioned by divine and ancient ordinance according to the nations. But "the Lord's own portion" is the glory of those who believe. For it must be that the Master is indifferent toward humanity as a whole — and that would follow either from powerlessness, an idea one cannot properly voice, since it marks weakness, or from a refusal despite having the power, which is foreign to a good nature (nor is he slack through self-indulgence, seeing he took on flesh capable of suffering for our sake) — or, as fits one who has become Ruler over everyone, he tends to all alike. For he is Savior, not of some and not of others; but according to the fitness each one possessed, he apportioned his own beneficence, to Greeks and to barbarians and to those among them foreordained, but called in their own proper time, both faithful and elect.
Never, then, could he who has called all equally, yet has apportioned special honors to those who have believed in a special way, be envious toward any. Nor could the Lord of all ever be hindered by another, especially since above all he carries out the purpose of the Father, who is good and all-powerful. But envy does not touch the Lord, who is without passion and has come to be without beginning. Nor indeed are the affairs of men such as to be objects of envy on the Lord's part; the one who envies is a different sort, one whom passion has touched. And surely one cannot say that the Lord is unwilling to save mankind through ignorance, as though he did not know what care is owed to each. For ignorance never touches the Son, who was made counselor to the Father before the world's foundation. This was the wisdom "in" which the all-powerful God "took delight"; for the Son is "God's" own "might," existing, as prior to everything that came into being, the Father's most originative Word, and might properly be called his "wisdom" and also the teacher of those fashioned through him. Nor indeed, being drawn aside by any pleasure, would he ever abandon his care for mankind, he who even took up the flesh that had become subject to passion by nature and trained it into a condition of freedom from passion. And how could he be Savior and Lord, if not Savior and Lord of all? But he is Savior of those who have believed, because he willed to know them, and Lord of those who have disobeyed, until, becoming able to make confession, they attain the fitting and corresponding benefit that comes through him. And the entire operation of the Lord is directed back toward the All-Powerful One, the Son being, one might say, a kind of activity belonging to the Father.
The Savior, then, could never be a hater of mankind, he who, on account of his surpassing love for man, did not disdain the frailty of human flesh, but clothed himself in it, and arrived to bring deliverance shared by mankind alike; for trust in it is open equally to whoever chooses it. Nor could he ever neglect his own work, since to man alone among the other living creatures understanding has been implanted by God at creation. Nor could any other government of men be better or more harmonious for God than the one that has been ordained. For it befits that by nature the better should always lead the worse, and that the government of the latter be entrusted to the one able to administer it well. And that which truly rules and governs is the divine Word and his providence, overseeing all things, yet passing over none of its own concerns in its care. These would be those who have chosen to be his own — those brought to perfection through faith. Thus, through the purpose of the all-powerful Father, the Son stands established as cause of every good thing, the first-working power of motion, ungraspable by sense. For it was not what he was that appeared to those unable to receive it because of the weakness of the flesh; but taking up a perceptible flesh, he came to show what is possible for men according to obedience to the commandments.
Being, then, a paternal power, he easily prevails over whatever he wills.
leaving not even the smallest part of his own governance uncared for; for otherwise the whole would no longer be well accomplished by him. And it belongs, I think, to the greatest power that the exact examination of all the parts, extending even to the smallest, should look to the first administrator of the whole, who by the Father's will governs the salvation of all, with some set in order and ruled under others, until one arrives at the great high priest. For from one origin above, working according to the will, hang the first and second and third ranks; then at the end of what is manifest, at the summit, comes the blessed order of angels, and so on down even to ourselves, others under others being arranged, saved and saving from one and through one. Just as a very long chain of iron is moved together by the power of the Heraclean stone, extended through many iron rings, so also, drawn by the Holy Spirit, the virtuous are made kin to the first abode, and others in succession down to the last, while those who are bad through weakness, having fallen into ill condition through unjust insatiableness, neither holding nor being held, slip down entangled in their passions and fall to the ground. For this is a law from above, that whoever wishes may choose virtue.
Wherefore also the commandments, both those under the law and those before the law, since they were not for the lawless ("for law is not laid down for the righteous man"), ordained that the one who chose eternal and blessed life should receive it as a prize, while they permitted the one who took pleasure in wickedness to abide with what he had chosen; and again, that the soul continually being improved should receive, for its increasing knowledge of virtue and righteousness, a better rank in the whole, "stretching forward" with each advance toward a condition free from passion, until it "arrives at the perfect man," the preeminence of knowledge together with inheritance. These saving revolutions are apportioned according to the order of transformation, both by times and places and honors and knowledges and inheritances and ministries, each in its turn, until it reaches the higher and closer contemplation of the Lord in eternity. And what draws one toward this contemplation is the object of love itself, for everyone who has given himself wholly over to the love of knowledge in contemplation.
Wherefore also the commandments, both the earlier and the later, which the Lord gave, drawing from one single source, neither disregarded as lawless those who lived before the law, nor allowed those who had no share in barbarian philosophy to be left unbridled. For to some he gave commandments, to others philosophy, and thus he "shut up" unbelief until his coming, so that everyone who has not believed is without excuse. For he leads, by each of the two paths of advancement, the Greek and the barbarian, toward the perfection that comes through faith. But if any Greek, passing beyond the leading part of Greek philosophy, set out at once toward the true teaching, this man has outthrown the mark, even if he be an ordinary person, having chosen the short way of salvation through faith unto perfection.
All things, then, which in no way prevented man's choice from being voluntary, he made and showed to be helpers toward virtue, so that in some manner, even to those able to see but dimly, the one who is truly the sole almighty good God might be revealed, saving from age to age through the Son, yet in every way wholly blameless of evil. For toward the salvation of the whole, all things have been ordained by the Lord of all, both universally and in particular. It is, then, the work of saving righteousness always to lead each thing forward to the better, as far as is possible for it. For toward the preservation and continuance of the better, even the lesser things are administered in proportion to their own characters. At once everything virtuous changes into better dwellings, having as the cause of its transformation the choice of knowledge, which the soul possessed as its own sovereign power. And the necessary disciplines, through the goodness of the great Judge who oversees all, both by means of the attendant angels and by various preliminary judgments and by the judgment that is complete, compel those who have become too callous to repent.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 3 ========

"Of the rest I am silent," glorifying the Lord. Yet I do speak of those gnostic souls who, by the magnificence of their contemplation, surpass the constitution proper to every holy order, according to which the blessed dwellings of the gods have been distinctly allotted — souls reckoned holy among the holy and translated wholly out of the whole, arriving at better places among the better, no longer embracing the divine contemplation in mirrors or through mirrors, but feasted upon a vision that is as clear as possible and precisely unmixed, with souls that love it insatiably beyond nature, reaping everlastingly an everlasting, insatiable gladness unto ages without end, all alike honored in the sameness of their pre-eminence. This is the comprehending contemplation of "the pure in heart." This, then, is the activity of the gnostic made perfect: to commune with God by means of the great high priest, becoming as like the Lord as one may through the entirety of the service offered to God — a service which extends to the salvation of men, in accordance with the care of the benefaction shown toward us, both in liturgy and in teaching and in the beneficence that comes through works. Yes indeed, he both builds and fashions himself, and moreover adorns those who give ear to him, the gnostic being made like God, who by nature possesses freedom from passion, likening to it, as far as is possible, that freedom from passion which is compressed out of practice — and this while holding converse and communion with the Lord "without distraction." Gentleness, I think, and love of mankind and magnificent reverence toward God are the rules of gnostic assimilation to God.
These virtues, I say, are "an acceptable sacrifice" before God — the heart free of vanity, joined with right knowledge, which Scripture calls "a whole burnt offering to God," when every man taken up into holiness is wholly illumined into undivided union. For to seize hold of themselves and bring themselves to nothing — mortifying "the old man, corrupted through his own desires," and raising up "the new" from the death of the former depravity — this is what both the gospel and the apostle enjoin, laying aside the passions and becoming sinless. This, then, was what the law too was hinting at darkly when it commanded that the sinner 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, receiving the law in a contentious spirit, have furnished occasions to those who vainly attempt to slander it. For this reason we do not, as is fitting, offer sacrifice to God, who is in need of nothing, who has furnished all things to all; rather, we glorify him who was made a priestly victim on our behalf, offering ourselves as priests unto that which is without need, out of that which is without need, and unto that which is without passion, out of that which is without passion. For God delights only in our salvation. Fittingly, then, we do not bring sacrifice to him who is not conquered by pleasures — a sacrifice that reaches down somewhere low, not even as high as the thickest clouds, and far short even of these, since the smoky exhalation reaches only as far as it reaches, and no further.
The divine, then, is neither in need nor fond of pleasure nor fond of gain nor fond of money, being full and providing all things to every created and needy thing. It is not charmed by sacrifices, nor indeed by votive offerings, nor again by glory and honor, nor is it led astray by any such things, but appears like men who are truly noble and good, who would never betray justice, whether for fear of threatened harm or for the promise of greater gifts. But those who have not perceived the self-determination of the human soul and its freedom from bondage in the choice of a life, being vexed at what happens through untutored injustice, do not believe there is a God. Equal to these in their opinion are those who, falling into the intemperance of pleasures and into excessive griefs and into unwanted misfortunes, and giving up hope amid disasters, claim either that no God exists at all, or that, granting his existence, he takes no oversight of everything. And there are others who are persuaded that the so-called gods are to be won over by sacrifices and gifts, being as it were accomplices in men's licentiousness, and who are not even willing to believe that the one who truly is God is he alone who exists in the sameness of righteous goodness.
The gnostic, then, is pious, caring first for himself, and then for his neighbors, so that we may become the best possible — for the son too gratifies a good father by showing himself earnest and like his father, and the one ruled gratifies the ruler, since believing and being persuaded lie in our own power; while one might suppose that the cause of evils is the weakness of matter, and the unwanted impulses of ignorance, and the irrational compulsions that come through lack of learning — over which the gnostic, having risen above them like wild beasts through learning, imitating the divine purpose, does good, according to his power, to such men as are willing; and should he ever be established in a position of rule, like Moses, he will lead for the salvation of those under his rule, and will tame what is savage and unpersuadable, by honoring the best and punishing the wicked, inscribing them into education according to reason. For above all the soul of the righteous man is a divine image and closely resembling God, in which, through obedience to the commandments, there is consecrated and enshrined the leader of all things, both mortal and immortal — king and begetter of all that is beautiful, being in truth law and ordinance and eternal reason, one savior both privately to each and in common to all. This is he who is truly the only-begotten, the very stamp of the glory of the Father who is king over all and ruler over all, who seals upon the gnostic the perfect contemplation after his own image, so that the divine image is now a third thing, rendered like, so far as ability permits, the second cause, to the genuine life whereby our true living comes — as if copying out the gnostic to become for us a type, turning about among things stable and utterly unchangeable.
Ruler, then, of himself and of what is his own, having acquired a firm grasp of divine knowledge, he approaches truth as one legitimately born to it. For the knowledge and firm grasp of intelligible things would rightly be called science — one part of which has as its task, concerning divine things, to consider what the first cause is, and what that is "through whom all things came to be, and without whom nothing has come to be"; and again which things pervade others, and which contain them, and which are conjoined and which disjoined, and what order and what power and what function each of these brings to bear. And again, in human affairs, what man himself is, and what belongs to him according to nature or against nature, and how it is fitting for him to act or to be affected, and what his virtues are and what his vices, concerning goods and evils and things in between, and all that concerns courage and prudence and temperance and that all-embracing virtue over all, justice. By prudence and justice he has made use for the acquisition of wisdom, but by courage not only in enduring circumstances, but also in mastering pleasure and desire, and again grief and anger, and in general in setting himself against everything that would lead our soul astray either by force or by some deceit. For one ought not to endure vices and evils, but to thrust them away, while enduring things fearful. Pain, then, is found useful, in medicine and in education and in punishment, and through it characters are corrected to the benefit of men.
The kinds of courage are: endurance, greatness of mind, magnanimity, liberality, and magnificence — for which reason the gnostic incurs neither blame nor ill repute from the many, nor is he subject to opinions or flatteries; and in enduring toils, while at the same time accomplishing something of what is fitting and courageously rising above all circumstances, he shows himself truly a man among other men; and further, preserving prudence, he is temperate in the tranquility of his soul, receptive of the promised goods as his own, and averse to base things as alien to him, having become orderly and beyond the order of this world, doing all things in order and arrangement and offending in nothing anywhere, being rich in the highest degree in this, that he desires nothing, since he needs little and abounds in every good through his knowledge of the Good. For the first work of his righteousness is to spend his life in love with those of his own kind and to be with them both on earth and in heaven.
In this way, being one who shares what he has acquired, he is also a lover of mankind, being most hostile to wickedness, through his perfect aversion to every evildoing. One must learn, then, to be faithful both to himself and to his neighbors, and obedient to the commandments. For this man is "the servant of God," who submits willingly to the commandments; but he who no longer acts for the sake of the commandments, but for the sake of knowledge itself, being "pure in heart," is "a friend of God." For we are not born possessing virtue by nature, nor does it come to us afterward by nature once we are born, as certain other parts of the body naturally develop later (since then it would no longer be voluntary or praiseworthy); nor indeed is virtue perfected out of the incidents and habituation that come afterward, in the manner that speech is (for it is nearly in this manner that vice arises); nor again does knowledge come about from any craft, whether of the money-making sort or of those that tend the body; nor even from ordinary education — one should be content if this can merely prepare the soul and be of service. For civic laws are perhaps able to restrain wicked deeds,
but neither they themselves nor persuasive arguments, being superficial, could furnish a scientific and abiding possession of the truth. Greek philosophy, however, in a sense purifies beforehand and habituates the soul to the reception of faith, upon which truth builds up knowledge.
This is he, this is the athlete, truly the one in the great stadium, the beautiful world, crowned with a genuine triumph over every one of the passions. For the president of the games is God the ruler over all, and the umpire is the only-begotten Son of God, and the spectators are angels and gods; and the all-conquering contest of every kind is "not against blood and flesh," but against the "spiritual powers" of passionate passions that operate through the flesh — over these great struggles he prevails, and having contended, as it were, in certain contests set before him by the tempter, he has gained mastery of immortality; for the verdict of God is not to be gainsaid, unto the most righteous judgment. Now the theater is called to the contest, but the athletes engage in the all-out combat in the stadium; and indeed it is out of these that he prevails who has become obedient to his trainer. For all things are laid out equally for all by God, and he himself is blameless, while the one who is able and willing chooses, and shall have strength; for this reason too we have received mind, that we might know what we are doing, and here too the "know thyself," that we might know for what we have come into being. And we have come into being for the purpose of being obedient to the commandments, if we should choose the will to be saved. This, I suppose, is Adrasteia, according to which it is not possible to flee from God.
The task proper to man, then, is ready obedience to God who has proclaimed manifold salvation through the commandments, and well-pleasing is agreement with him. For the benefactor takes the initiative in doing good, while he who receives it eagerly with due reasoning and keeps the commandments is faithful; and he who further, to the extent of his power, repays the benefaction through love, is now a friend. And there is one recompense most proper of all from men — to do those things that are pleasing to God; and just as one would of his own offspring or of some kindred achievement, so the Teacher and Savior accepts the benefits and corrections of men as his own grace and honor — regarding likewise the harms done to those who have believed in him as his own ingratitude and dishonor (for what other dishonor could touch God?). For this reason there is no other recompense so fitting to render, worthy of the salvation received from the Lord's benefit. And just as those who mistreat property insult its masters, and as those who mistreat soldiers insult their commander, so it belongs to the Lord that the mistreatment of those consecrated to him is an act of disregard toward himself. For just as the sun does not merely light up the sky and the entire cosmos, shedding its rays over land and sea, but also casts a beam through windows and even a narrow gap into the rooms deepest within, so the Word, poured out everywhere, looks even upon the smallest of life's actions.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 4 ========

The Greeks suppose that the gods are shaped like men, and that they have the same passions as men. And just as each people paints the gods' forms to resemble themselves — as Xenophanes says, "Ethiopians say their gods are black and snub-nosed, and Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired" — so too they fashion the gods' souls to resemble their own: barbarians at once make them beast-like and savage in character, Greeks make them gentler, yet still subject to passion. It follows reasonably that the wicked must have base conceptions about god, while the good have the best. And for this reason the one who is truly "kingly in soul," the knower, is also god-fearing and free of superstition, persuaded that God alone is honorable, august, magnificent, beneficent, well-doing, the source of all good things and guiltless of evils. Concerning Greek superstition I think I have said enough; in the discourse entitled by us the Protrepticus we set it forth thoroughly, drawing as much on history as the pressing need required. There is no call "to tell again as myth what has already been said plainly."
But it is worth noting a few things out of many, since we are on the subject. It suffices to bring forward these too, as proof of the godlessness of those who liken the divine to the most wicked of men. For either the gods are harmed by men — and are shown thereby to be worse than the men who harm them — or, if not, how can they be provoked over things by which they are not harmed at all? Like a quick-tempered old woman roused to anger, they grow embittered — as they say Artemis was angered against the Aetolians on account of Oeneus. For how, being a goddess, did she not reckon that Oeneus had not scorned her, but had either forgotten her or, having already sacrificed, simply neglected her? Well spoken too is Auge, pleading her case against Athena, who was harsh with her for giving birth within the temple: "You delight to look upon spoils that destroy mortals, and the wreckage of corpses, and these are no defilement to you; but if I gave birth, you think this a terrible thing? And yet the other animals too, giving birth within the temples, do no wrong."
Reasonably, then, growing superstitious about beings so quick to anger, they consider everything that happens to be a sign and a cause of evils: if a mouse burrows through an altar made of clay, or gnaws through a sack though there is nothing else it could have eaten, if a cock kept for food crows in the evening — they take all this as a sign of something.
Menander mocks just such a man in his Superstitious Man: "May something good come to me, O much-honored gods" — while putting on his sandal, for he had torn the strap of his right shoe. "Naturally, you babbler; it was rotten, and you are too stingy to buy new ones."
Charming is the remark of Antiphon: when someone took it as an omen that a sow had eaten her piglets, he saw that she had been wasted by hunger through the stinginess of the man who fed her, and said, "Rejoice at this omen — starving as she was, she still refrained from devouring her own young."
"What is there to wonder at," says Bion, "if the mouse gnawed through the sack, having found nothing else to eat? Now that would have been a wonder — as Arcesilaus proposed in jest — if the sack had eaten the mouse."
Well said too was Diogenes, to the man who marveled that he had found a snake coiled around a pestle: "Do not marvel," he said, "for it would have been far more strange had you seen the pestle coiled upright around the snake."
For even the irrational animals must run and race and fight and give birth and die — things which, being natural to them, could never become unnatural for us; "and many birds range beneath the rays of the sun."
The comic poet Philemon mocks such things too: "Whenever I see," he says, "a man watching closely who sneezed, or who spoke, or who it is passing by, keeping tabs — I sell that fellow off at once in the marketplace. Each of us walks and talks and sneezes for himself, not for the people of the city; things happen as they are made by nature to happen."
Then, while sober, they pray for health, but overfilling themselves and wallowing in drunkenness during the festivals, they bring diseases upon themselves.
Many too are afraid of paintings set up as offerings. Diogenes, very wittily, finding inscribed over the house of some scoundrel, "Glorious Heracles the victor dwells here; let nothing evil enter," said, "And how then will the master of the house get in?"
These same people worship every piece of wood and every stone that is, as the saying goes, greasy with anointing, and they dread crimson wool, chunks of salt, blazing torches, squill, and brimstone, utterly deluded by frauds through certain foul rites of cleansing. But God — who is truly God — knows as holy only the character of the just man, just as the unjust and wicked character is accursed. One can indeed see that the eggs taken from those who have undergone such purifications, if kept warm, still hatch into life; but this would not happen if they had taken on the evils of the one purified.
Wittily too the comic poet Diphilus mocks the charlatans in these lines: "Purifying the daughters of Proetus, and their father Proetus son of Abas, and a fifth besides, an old woman — so many bodies of mortals, for all that — with one torch and one squill, with sulphur and asphalt and the loud-roaring sea drawn from gently-flowing, deep-flowing Ocean. But blessed Air, send this bedbug through the clouds to Anticyra, that I may turn him into a drone."
Menander speaks well too: "If you had some real evil, Phidias, you would need to seek a real remedy for it; but as it is you have none — you have found an empty remedy for an empty complaint; and you imagine it does you some good. Let the women wipe you all around in a circle and run about you; sprinkle yourself with water from three springs, tossing in salt and lentils. Everyone is pure who is conscious of no evil in himself."
At once tragedy says: "Orestes, what sickness destroys you?" "My conscience — because I am conscious of terrible deeds done." For indeed true purity is nothing other than abstaining from sins.
Well too does Epicharmus say: "If you keep your mind pure, your whole body is pure."
At once we too say that souls must first be purified from base and wicked opinions through right reason, and only then turn in this way to the recollection of the chief points already discussed, since even before the mysteries are handed down, custom deems it proper that candidates for initiation first undergo certain rites of cleansing, on the ground that the impious notion must be cast aside before one turns to the true tradition.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 5 ========

Is it not right and true that we do not circumscribe the Uncontainable within any place, nor shut up in "handmade" shrines that which encompasses all things? What holy work could there be belonging to the art of builders and stone-cutters and vulgar craftsmen? Are not those better than these who have judged the air and the encompassing atmosphere -- or rather the whole cosmos and the universe -- worthy of God's transcendence? Surely it would be absurd -- as the philosophers themselves put it -- for man, who is "a plaything of God," to fashion God and for God to become a plaything of art. Since what comes into being is identical and similar to that out of which it comes into being, as what is made from ivory is ivory-like and what is made from gold is golden; but the statues and shrines fashioned by vulgar men are made out of inert matter, so that they themselves would be inert and material and profane. And even if you bring the craft to completion, it has partaken of vulgarity; the works of the craft are therefore no longer holy and divine. What indeed could be enshrined, when nothing is un-enshrinable, since all things exist in a place? Yet surely that which is enshrined is enshrined by something else, having been previously un-enshrined. If then God is enshrined by men, he was at some time un-enshrined and did not exist at all. For that would be un-enshrined, which does not exist; since everything that is not existent is enshrined. But that which exists could not be enshrined by that which does not exist, nor indeed by another existing thing; for that too is itself an existent.
It remains, then, that he is enshrined by himself. And how will a thing beget itself? Or how will the existent itself establish itself in being? Was it, being previously un-enshrined, that it enshrined itself? But then it would not even have existed, since the non-existent is un-enshrined; and how could that which is thought to be enshrined, having already possessed being beforehand, afterward make itself this same thing? And that from which all existing things derive, how could this stand in need of anything? But if indeed the divine is human-shaped, it will need the same things as man does -- nourishment and shelter, a house, and all the accompanying necessities. For beings of like form and like experience will need the same manner of life. But if "sacred" is understood in two senses -- both God himself and the structure made in his honor -- how should we not properly call the church, that has come to be in honor of God according to holy knowledge, a temple of God -- a thing of great worth, and not fashioned by vulgar craft? Nor indeed wrought by the hand of some charlatan, but made into a shrine by the will of God? For I do not now mean the place, but I call the church the gathered assembly of the elect. This temple is better suited to receive the greatness of God's worth. For the living being of great worth belongs to him who is worthy of the universe -- or rather, worthy of comparison to none. Through excess of holiness it has been consecrated. And this would be the Gnostic, the one of great worth, precious to God, and it is within this soul that God dwells enshrined -- meaning that the knowledge concerning God has taken up residence there. Here too we might find the image, the divine and holy statue, in the righteous soul, whenever that soul is blessed, being already purified beforehand, and blessed in the works it accomplishes. Here too is both that which is already enshrined and that which is being enshrined -- the one applying to those who are already Gnostics, the other to those who are capable of becoming so, even if they are not yet worthy to receive the knowledge of God. For everyone who is about to believe is already faithful to God, and, established for honor, is a virtuous statue dedicated to God.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 6 ========

Just as God, therefore, occupies no fixed spot in space, nor is he ever pictured in the form of any living creature, so too he is not subject to feelings like ours, nor is he in need, as created things are — as if, in the manner of nourishment, he desired sacrifices out of hunger. Whatever is touched by passion is all perishable, and it is vain to bring food to that which is not nourished. And indeed that comic poet Pherecrates, in his Deserters, has amusingly represented the very gods reproaching men over their sacrifices: "Whenever you sacrifice to the gods, first you set apart for the priests the customary portion, and then for yourselves, and then — it is shameful to say it — having stripped the two thighs clean right down to the groin, all the meat, and the loin quite bare, and then having filed off the backbone itself as with a file, you dole it out to us just as to dogs, and then, ashamed before one another, you hide it under many wrappings of fat." And Eubulus, himself also a comic poet, writes something like this about sacrifices: "To the gods themselves you sacrifice only the tail and the thigh, as though to boy-lovers." And having brought Dionysus onto the stage in his Semele making a distinction, he has written: "First of all, whenever certain people sacrifice anything to me, they sacrifice blood, bladder, liver, heart, a thin outer membrane; for I myself do not eat sweetmeat nor thigh-piece."
And Menander too has made the topmost part of the loin and the gall — the inedible bones, he says — the portion set before the gods, while they themselves consume everything else.
For is not the reek of whole burnt offerings something even wild beasts flee from? And if in truth the reek is the prerogative of the gods among the Greeks, they would not be far from making gods of the cooks as well, who are deemed worthy of the same happiness, and from worshipping the very cooking-oven, since it comes into closer contact with that highly prized reek. And somewhere Hesiod says that, in a certain division of the meat, Zeus was deceived by Prometheus and received "the white bones of the ox by a crafty device," concealed "in glistening fat" — and from this, for the immortals, the tribes of men upon the earth burn white bones of sacrificed victims on their altars. But they say that god could in no way be sustained, being harmed by desire arising from want, in the way described. They will therefore make him like a plant, being nourished without appetite, and like the beasts that hibernate in their dens. They say, at any rate, that such creatures grow without harm, nourished either by the thickness of the air or, again, by the very exhalation of their own body. And yet, if the divine is nourished by them without need, what further need is there of food for that which lacks nothing? But if, being by nature free of need, it delights in being honored, then it is not unreasonable that we honor God through prayer, and that we offer up this sacrifice, the best and holiest, together with righteousness, glorifying him with the most righteous word, through which we receive knowledge, and through this same word giving glory to him whom we have come to know. Indeed, our altar here on earth is this: the gathered assembly of those devoted to prayer, joined in what amounts to a single shared voice and a unified mind.
As for offerings through the sense of smell — even if they are more divine than those through the mouth — they are nourishment; but they are indications of breathing. What then do they say about God?
Does he breathe through and through, as the race of daemons does? Or does he merely draw breath inward, as creatures of the water do through the slits of their gills? Or does he take in breath on every side, as insects do through the pressure exerted by their wings upon the incision of their body? But they could not liken God to any of these things, if they were of sound mind. As for creatures that breathe, they draw in air by the counter-expansion of the lung against the chest. Then, if they should assign to God internal organs, arteries, veins, sinews, and bodily parts, they will be introducing things no different from these. But the term "common breath" is properly spoken of the church. For indeed what the church offers up as sacrifice is the word, rising like incense-smoke from holy souls, the whole mind being uncovered to God together with the sacrifice. But they have long repeated the story that the most ancient altar, on Delos, is pure, the one to which alone, they say, Pythagoras even approached, unstained by murder and death — yet will they disbelieve us when we say that the altar that is truly holy is the righteous soul, and that the incense rising from it is the pious prayer? Sacrifices, I think, were devised for men under the pretext of meat-eating. But it was possible in another way, without such idolatry, for whoever wished to partake of meat. For the sacrifices prescribed by the Law allegorize our piety toward God, just as the turtledove and the pigeon, offered up for sins, signify the purification of the irrational part of the soul as acceptable to God. And if any righteous person does not burden the soul with the eating of meat, he makes use of some reasonable argument — not the one Pythagoras and his followers dream up, of the transmigration of the soul. Xenocrates, in his separate treatise On Food from Animals, and Polemon, in his works On Life According to Nature, appear to say clearly that flesh-food is disadvantageous, since, once assimilated, it makes men resemble the souls of irrational creatures.
For this reason especially the Jews abstain from pork, on the ground that this animal is unclean, since more than any other it roots up and destroys the crops. And if they say that animals were given to men, we too agree — except not entirely for eating, nor indeed all animals, but only those that do no work. Hence the comic poet Plato, in his play the Festivals, not badly says: "For of the four-footed animals we ought henceforth to kill none, except pigs; for their meat is most pleasant, and nothing comes from a pig except bristles and mud and squealing for us." Hence too Aesop said, not badly, that pigs squeal loudest when they are being dragged along, for they are conscious that they are useful for nothing else except sacrifice. Wherefore Cleanthes too says that they have a soul instead of salt, so that the flesh not rot. Some, then, eat them as being of no other use, others because the animal is destructive of crops, and others again abstain from eating it because the creature is prone to excessive sexual activity. For this reason too the Law does not sacrifice the goat, except solely for the sending-away of evils, since pleasure is the mother-city of vice. Indeed, people claim that eating goat's flesh brings on the falling sickness. And it is said that pork supplies the richest nourishment of all, which is why it benefits those who train the body; but to those who attempt to strengthen the soul itself it is no longer useful, because of the sluggishness that arises from meat-eating. Perhaps, then, one of the gnostics might abstain from flesh-eating even for the sake of discipline, and so that the flesh not grow wanton with regard to sexual matters. "Wine," says Androcydes, "and a surfeit of meats render the body vigorous, yet leave the soul duller." Such food, then, is unsuited for exact understanding. Wherefore the Egyptians too, in their rites of purification, do not permit their priests to eat meat; they use fowl as being lightest, and they do not touch fish, both for certain other legendary reasons and, above all, because such food renders the flesh flabby.
Now land animals and winged creatures, breathing the same air as our souls, are nourished by it, having a soul akin to the air. But fish, they say, do not breathe this air at all, but that other air which is mixed into the water from the very first moment of their generation, just as it is with the other elements — which is also a proof of the persistence of matter.
We must, then, offer to God "sacrifices not costly, but pleasing to God." And that composite incense spoken of in the Law, made up of many tongues and voices arranged according to the prayer — or rather, that incense compounded from different peoples and natures by the giving of the covenants "into the unity of the faith," and gathered together according to the hymns of praise — with a pure mind, and a righteous and upright manner of life, out of holy works and righteous prayer. For who is so foolish, to use the poet's graceful phrase, and so utterly loose and credulous among men, as to hope that the gods rejoice in fleshless bones and burning gall — things not even fit for hungry dogs to eat — and that all of them obtain this as their due honor, and that in return for these things they repay favor to those who perform them, even should these be pirates or robbers or tyrants? But we say that it is not the flesh that fire sanctifies, but sinful souls — meaning by fire not the all-devouring and vulgar kind, but the intelligent fire, that "which pierces through the soul" as it passes through it.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 7 ========

We are enjoined to revere and honor the Word, being persuaded that he himself is Savior and Leader, and through him the Father, not on select days, as some others do, but continually throughout our whole life and in every way. Indeed, "the chosen race" declares, "seven times in a day I have offered you praise," being made righteous in keeping with the commandment. Hence the Gnostic has no fixed place, nor any special temple, nor indeed any set festivals or appointed days, but through his whole life, in every place, whether he happens to be alone by himself or wherever he has some of those who have likewise believed, honors God, that is, acknowledges gratitude for knowledge and for his manner of life. And if the presence of some good man, through the reverence and shame it inspires, always shapes for the better the one who meets him, how much more would he who is always accompanied by God through knowledge and life and unceasing thanksgiving not reasonably be better than himself at every turn, in all his deeds and words and disposition? Such is he who is persuaded that God is present everywhere, and does not suppose him shut up in certain fixed places, so as to imagine himself apart from him at some point and thereby run wild by night and by day. Making, therefore, our whole life a festival, persuaded that God is present on every side in every way, we farm while praising, we sail while singing hymns; in the rest of our conduct we comport ourselves according to rule. But the Gnostic, closer than any other, is made kin to God, combining seriousness with gladness at once in every circumstance: serious on account of his orientation toward what is divine, glad on account of tallying up the human blessings God has bestowed on us.
The prophet shows the excellence of knowledge plainly here.
"Teach me goodness and discipline and knowledge," increasing by ascending stages the ruling faculty toward perfection. This, then, is truly the royal man; this is the holy priest of God. This is what is still preserved even now among the most learned of the barbarians, who advance the priestly race to kingship. This man, then, nowhere gives himself over to the mob-rule that lords it over the theaters. What is said and done and seen for the sake of dissolute pleasure he admits not even in a dream — neither these pleasures of the spectacle, nor the varied enjoyments derived from other indulgences, such as the extravagance of incense that bewitches the sense of smell, or the elaborate confections of foods and the enjoyments from various wines that entice the taste, nor the flower-laden and fragrant garlands that soften the soul through sensation. But referring the reverent enjoyment of all things always to God, he offers first-fruits of his food and his drink and his anointing to the Giver of all, acknowledging gratitude both for the gift and for the use of it, through the word given to him. He rarely attends banquets and drinking-parties, unless the friendly and harmonious spirit of the gathering should invite him to come. For he is persuaded that God knows and hears everything, not only the voice, but also the thought, since even our hearing, though effected through bodily passages, does not have its perception through bodily power, but through a certain perception of the soul and through the discerning understanding of sounds that signify something.
God is not, therefore, of human form for this reason, that he might hear, nor does he need senses, as it pleased the Stoics to think, especially hearing and sight, on the ground that he could never otherwise perceive; but both the responsiveness of the air and the most acute joint-perception of the angels, and the faculty of conscience that touches the soul, know all things by a certain ineffable power, together with the thought itself, without need of sensible hearing. And even if one should say that the voice does not reach as far as God, rolling below through the atmosphere, still the reflections of the sanctified pierce through not merely the air but the entire cosmos. The divine power, like light, is beforehand in seeing through the whole soul. What then? Do not our purposes, too, reach beforehand to God, sending forth their own voice? Are they not conveyed also by conscience? What voice at all would he wait for, who according to his design has known the elect one, and what is to be, as already existing, even before its coming into being? Or does not the light of that power shine altogether into the depth of every soul, "searching the inward chambers," as Scripture says, of "the lamp" of that power? For God is wholly hearing and wholly eye, if one may use such terms of him.
In general, then, no notion that is unbecoming concerning God preserves any true piety toward God, whether in hymns or in words, nor indeed in writings or doctrines, but rather turns aside into base and unseemly conceptions and suspicions. Hence the good report of the many differs in nothing from ill report, because of their ignorance of the truth. Now of those beings who have cravings and desires, and, to speak generally, impulses, of these also are prayers. Wherefore no one desires drink as such, but rather the drinking of the drink; nor indeed an inheritance, but the inheriting of it; and likewise not knowledge, but the coming to know; nor indeed right conduct of life, but the living rightly. Of these things, then, are the prayers whose objects are also requests, and of these the requests are of things that are also desires. And to pray and to strive after something come about correspondingly, in order to have the goods and the benefits that lie close to their acquisition. The Gnostic, then, always makes his prayer and request for the things that are truly good, those concerning the soul, and he prays, working together at the same time himself, to come to a settled state of goodness, so that he may no longer have the goods as though they were, so to speak, lessons lying beside him, but may himself be good.
Wherefore it is fitting above all for those to pray who know the divine as they ought and possess the virtue befitting it — those who know what things are truly good, and what one ought to ask for, and when, and how, in each case. But it is the height of ignorance to ask of those who are not gods as though they were gods, or to ask for things that are not beneficial, requesting for oneself evils under the appearance of goods. Hence, reasonably, since there is one good God, we pray, both we and the angels, that some good things be given by him alone, and that others remain with us; but not in the same manner. Asking that a favor persist is not identical with being keen to obtain it to begin with. And the turning away of evils is also a kind of prayer; yet one must never make use of such a prayer for the harm of other men, unless the Gnostic, contriving thereby the conversion to righteousness, should manage his request for those who have "become past feeling." Prayer, then, is, to speak somewhat boldly, converse with God; and even if we speak in a whisper, without even opening our lips, in silence, we cry out within; for God unceasingly hears the whole inward converse.
In this way we also stretch our head upward and raise our hands to heaven and rise onto our toes at the closing words of the petition, chasing after the spirit's ardor toward the intelligible reality, and attempting, along with the word spoken, to lift the body clear of the earth, giving the soul, so to speak, "wings" through its yearning for the better things, we press onward toward "the holy places," holding the fetter of the flesh in contempt. For we know full well that the Gnostic, just as the Jews did in departing from Egypt, makes his escape from the whole world willingly, showing clearly, more than by anything else, that he would be as near as possible to God. And though some allot set hours to petition — say the third, the sixth, and the ninth — the Gnostic instead prays across the whole span of his existence, laboring through petition to be joined with God, and having left behind, to sum it up, everything that is not useful to him once he has come there, as one who has already, from this present life, received the perfection of what is done through love. But also the divisions of the hours into three parts, honored with equal prayers, are known to those who recognize the blessed triad of holy dwellings.
Having come to this point, I was reminded concerning the doctrines introduced by certain heterodox persons — those, I mean, of the sect of Prodicus — to the effect that one ought not to pray at all. In order, then, that they may not be puffed up over this godless wisdom of theirs as though it were some novel heresy, let them learn that it was anticipated by the so-called Cyrenaic philosophers. Nevertheless the unholy "knowledge" of these falsely-named people will meet its refutation in due season, so that, since it is now stealing in upon our discussion, its onslaught — which is no small one — may not cut short the argument in hand; while we for our part show only that he who is truly holy and pious toward God is he who is, in reality, according to the rule of the Church, the Gnostic, to whom alone the granting of his request comes to pass according to the will of God, both when he has asked and even when he has merely conceived the thought. For just as God is capable of accomplishing everything he intends, likewise the Gnostic "obtains" "everything he requests." For in general God knows both those who are worthy of good things and those who are not; hence he gives to each what is fitting. Wherefore often he would not grant to the unworthy who ask, but he would grant, clearly, to those who are worthy. Yet the asking is not superfluous, even if the good things are given apart from any claim of worthiness. Indeed, both thanksgiving and the request made on behalf of one's neighbors for their conversion are a work of the Gnostic. In this manner the Lord too used to pray, giving thanks for having brought his ministry to completion, and praying that as many as possible should come to full knowledge, in order that, among those being saved through salvation according to full knowledge, God might be glorified, and the only good one and only Savior, through the Son, might be known from age to age. And indeed faith itself, that one shall receive, is a kind of prayer already laid up in a Gnostic manner.
But if prayer is a kind of occasion for converse with God, no occasion whatever for approach to God ought to be passed by. Indeed, the sanctity belonging to the Gnostic, woven together with the blessed forethought of God, exhibits, by way of freely-given acknowledgment, the complete generosity that is God's own. For the Gnostic's sanctity is, in a manner of speaking, providence turned back upon itself, a mutual goodwill shown by the friend of God. God is not gracious under compulsion, the way fire warms of necessity — rather his bestowal of good things happens by free choice, even anticipating the request itself — nor, indeed, is the man being rescued rescued against his own wishes; for he is no soulless thing, but will instead pursue rescue of his own accord and by deliberate decision. Wherefore man also received the commandments as one impelled from within himself toward whichever he might wish, of things to be chosen and things to be avoided. God, therefore, does not do good by necessity, but does well by deliberate choice to those who turn toward him from themselves. For the providence coming to us from God is not, so to speak, a servile thing, as though advancing from worse to better; rather it is out of mercy for our weakness that the immediate dispensations of providence are worked out — just as also the care of shepherds toward their flocks, and that of a king toward his subjects, and just as we ourselves are obediently disposed toward our leaders, having those set in order to manage us according to the rank in which they have been entrusted by God. Servants, then, and ministers of the divine are those who render the most free and most royal service — the service that comes through godly disposition and knowledge.
Every place, then, is truly holy in which we receive the perception of God, and so is every time. And whenever one who is well-disposed and at the same time thankful makes his request through prayer, he in some sense himself cooperates toward the receiving, gladly obtaining, through his very prayer, the thing longed for. For when the Giver of good things receives what is favorably brought forward by us, all good things follow together, all at once, upon that very reception. Indeed, through prayer the manner of a man is put to the test, to see how he stands in regard to what is fitting. And if voice and speech have been given to us for the sake of thought, how should God not listen to the very soul and mind itself, seeing that already soul hears soul and mind hears mind? Hence God does not wait upon many-tongued languages, as human interpreters do, but recognizes at once, without exception, the thoughts of all; and what our voice signifies to us, that our thought speaks to God, which he knew, even before creation, would come to be a thought. It is possible, then, to send forth one's prayer without even a voice, straining only inwardly the whole spiritual faculty toward the intelligible voice, in undistracted turning toward God.
Since the break of dawn pictures the day one is born, and from that moment brightness grows, having "shone forth out of darkness" at the very start, in the same way for those wandering about in ignorance a day of truth's knowledge has dawned, matching the sun's pattern; that is why prayers face toward daybreak in the east. This is also the reason the oldest sanctuaries were oriented toward the west, so that people standing before the statues, looking at them, would be trained to turn themselves eastward. "Let my prayer be directed as incense before you, the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice," say the psalms.
For wicked men, then, prayer is most harmful, not only toward others but also toward themselves. Indeed, even if they should ask for and obtain what they call good fortunes, it harms them once obtained, since they are ignorant of their proper use. For some pray to acquire what they do not have, and ask for things that seem good, not things that are truly good. But the Gnostic asks for the continuance of what he already possesses, and for fitness for the things he is destined to pass beyond, and for [an unbroken permanence] of the things he will not lose. But he prays for the things that are truly good, those concerning the soul, both to have them and to have them remain. In this way he does not even long for any of the things that are absent, being content with what is present; for he is not lacking in the goods that are properly his own, being already sufficient to himself through divine grace and knowledge. Rather, having become self-sufficient and in need of nothing else, and having come to know the almighty will, both possessing and praying at the same time, having drawn near to the all-powerful power, and having striven to be spiritual, he has been united to the Spirit through boundless love. This is the great-souled man, he who has acquired, according to knowledge, the most honorable of all things, the best of all things — quick of perception in the application of contemplation, and possessing in his soul the abiding power of the things contemplated, that is, the piercing sharpness belonging to knowledge. This capacity he labors with every effort to gain, having gained mastery over "the things that war against the mind," and continually attending upon contemplation, while also training himself, through ascetic practice, in the restraint of pleasures and the right accomplishment of duties. Besides these, having gained much experience both in learning and in life, he has boldness of speech — not the power of a loose and idly-babbling tongue, but a power that employs plain speech, keeping back none of the things that can be said at the fitting time, on those matters where it is most needful — a boldness that hides nothing either out of favor or out of fear.
It is with good reason, then, that the one who has grasped the truths about God, taught by Truth herself in her mystic choir, makes use of the reasoning that exhorts to the greatness of virtue, exhibiting worthily both virtue herself and what proceeds from her, and appropriating himself, with divinely-inspired uplifting of prayer, to intelligible and spiritual things in the most gnostic manner possible. Hence he is always gentle and mild, easy of access, easy to meet, patient of wrong, considerate, conscientious, and austere — this austerity of ours being directed not only toward incorruption but also toward being untempted (for in no way does he present his soul as yielding or capturable to pleasure or pain). He is a judge, whenever reason calls him to be one, having become unbending and granting nothing whatever to the passions, walking unshakably along the path where the just, by its nature, must go, thoroughly persuaded that all things are most excellently administered and that advance toward the better always proceeds for souls that have chosen virtue, until they arrive at the Good itself, having come, so to speak, "to the forecourts" of the Father, near to the great High Priest.
This is our faithful gnostic, the one persuaded that the affairs of the world are administered in the best way. Accordingly he is well pleased with everything that happens to him.
Reasonably, then, he seeks nothing among the things suited to necessary use in life, for he is convinced that God, since He knows every single thing, furnishes the good with what is fitting even before they ask. For just as, I think, the craftsman receives his portion in a craftsman's manner, and the plain person receives his in a plain manner, so too each portion is rendered to the gnostic in a gnostic manner. And the convert newly come from paganism asks for faith, whereas the one moving onward toward knowledge will ask for "love brought to its completeness." The one who is already at the summit, the gnostic, prays that contemplation may increase and remain, just as the common person prays for continual health. Nor, indeed, will he ask ever to fall from virtue, but rather works together chiefly toward remaining unfallen. For he knows that even some of the angels, through negligence, slipped down again to earth, not having yet, out of their disposition toward duality, wholly pressed themselves out into that single state. But for the one exercised in advance, along the way, in all things according to time and place, toward the summit of knowledge and that elevated height belonging to the complete man, who has chosen to live unchangeably and practices this because of the uniform steadfastness of his judgment on every side — but as for those in whom some weighty corner still remains inclining downward, that which is raised up through faith is dragged back down. To the one, then, who through gnostic practice has made virtue unable to be cast away, his condition is confirmed by nature; and just as weight belongs to the stone, so to this man knowledge unable to be cast away is established, not involuntarily but voluntarily, by a rational, gnostic, and provident power.
Since that which is not cast away becomes unable to be cast away through carefulness exercised through good reasoning, carefulness will hold fast against sinning, and good reasoning will hold fast toward the permanence of virtue. Knowledge, it seems, supplies this good reasoning, teaching one to discern the things able to help toward the continuance of virtue. Greatest, therefore, is the knowledge of God; wherefore by this too the permanence of virtue is preserved. And the one who has come to know God is holy and pious. The gnostic alone, then, has been shown by us to be truly pious. He rejoices in the goods that are present, and he delights in the things promised, as though they were already present. For it has not escaped him, even while they are still absent, what sort of things they are, since he has already come to know them beforehand. Persuaded, then, by knowledge, that each of the things to come already is, he possesses this. For the state of lacking and needing is measured against what is due. If, then, he has acquired wisdom, and wisdom is divine, the one who partakes of that which lacks nothing would himself lack nothing. For the sharing of wisdom does not occur through the mover and the moved affecting one another in their activity and their partaking, nor by something being taken away or becoming deficient; rather, the activity is shown, precisely through this very sharing, to be undiminished. Thus, then, our gnostic has all good things according to power, though not yet according to number, since otherwise he would be unchangeable with respect to the advances and dispensations still owed him by God.
In this God also cooperates with him, honoring him with a more attentive oversight.
For have not all things come to be for the sake of good men, and for their use and benefit, or rather their salvation? God, then, would not take away from these men the things that come through virtue, for whose sake the things that exist came to be. For it is clear that he would honor their good nature and their holy choice, he who indeed breathes strength for the rest of salvation even into those who have set themselves to live well — to some merely exhorting, but to those who have become worthy through their own efforts, cooperating as well; for every good is, for the gnostic, something added afterward, if indeed his end is to know and to do each thing knowledgeably. And just as the physician provides health to those who cooperate toward health, so also God provides eternal salvation to those who cooperate toward knowledge and right conduct — along with the doing, since the things the commandments prescribe are within our power, and the promise is fulfilled. And it seems to me that this too is well said among the Greeks: a certain athlete of no mean repute among the ancients, having for a long time trained his body well toward manly strength, went up to Olympia, and looking toward the statue of Pisaean Zeus, said, "O Zeus, if all things have been duly prepared by me for the contest, grant and render the victory justly to me."
So too for the gnostic: having discharged, blamelessly and with an untroubled conscience, everything that falls to his own share, in learning, in joint practice, in well-doing, and in pleasing God, everything else contributes together toward his most perfect salvation. These things, then, are required of us — the things in our own power, and, among the things pertaining to us, whether present or absent, the choosing, the longing, the acquiring, the using, and the persevering.
Wherefore it is necessary that the one who consorts with God keep his soul unstained and utterly undefiled, best of all if he has thoroughly wrought himself into perfect goodness; but if not, then at least advancing toward knowledge and reaching after it, and altogether torn away from the works of wickedness. But it is also fitting that he offer all his prayers reasonably, both together with and among reasonable people; for it is a dangerous thing to be enrolled together with the sins of others. Concerning these matters, then, the gnostic joins his prayer with those whose belief is of the more ordinary sort, in whatever concerns it is proper to cooperate on. And his whole life is a holy festival. Indeed, his sacrifices are prayers and praises, and the readings of the scriptures before the meal, while psalms and hymns accompany the meal and precede sleep; and again prayers by night. Through these he unites himself with the "divine choir," set, by continual remembrance, into unceasing contemplation. What then? Does he not also know that other sacrifice, the giving to those in need both of teachings and of money? Very much so. But in prayer spoken aloud he does not use many words, having learned from the Lord even what one ought to ask for. In every place, then, he will pray, yet not openly or conspicuously before the many; rather, whether walking, or in conversation, or in silence, or in reading, or in works done according to reason, in every way he prays; and even if he only forms the thought within the very "inner chamber" of his soul and "calls upon the Father with unspoken groanings," the Father is near and present even while he is still speaking. And since every action has three ends, he does all things for the sake of the good and the expedient, but leaves the doing of things for the sake of pleasure to those who pursue the common life.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 8 ========

It is far indeed from the case that the man who is put to the test in such piety should be quick either to lie or to swear an oath. For an oath is a determining affirmation with the additional assumption of the divine. But how could the man who is once for all faithful render himself unfaithful, so as to have need even of an oath, rather than have his very life stand, firmly and determinately, as an oath for him? He lives and conducts himself as a citizen, and shows the fidelity of his affirmation in a life and a word that never shift and stand fast. And if the doing of wrong lies in the judgment of the one acting and speaking, and not in the experience of the one wronged, he will neither lie nor swear falsely as one wronging the divine, knowing this to be by nature harmless; but neither will he lie or transgress anything for the sake of his neighbor, whom indeed he has learned to love, even if that person happens not to be an intimate; and for his own sake he will still less lie or swear falsely, since of his own will he could never be found unjust even toward himself. But he will not even swear, choosing to set, over assent, only the word "yes," and over denial, the word "no." For to swear an oath is either this, or else it is to bring forward, in effect, from one's very mind, something equivalent to an oath.
It suffices for him, then, either to his assent or to his denial, to add "I speak truly," as a demonstration for those who do not clearly perceive the firmness of his answer. For, I think, one must have, toward outsiders, a life so trustworthy that not even an oath is asked of him, and toward himself and those who understand, a good conscience, which is a justice chosen freely. Accordingly the Gnostic is one who keeps his oath, yet is not prone to swearing — one who rarely arrives at swearing, and even then only in the manner we have described. And yet speaking truly in accordance with an oath comes about together with an agreement in respect of the true; keeping one's oath, then, results from rightness in matters of duty. Where, then, is there still any need of an oath for the one who lives at the very summit of truth? The man who does not even swear is very far indeed from perjuring himself, while the man who transgresses none of the terms of his agreements would never even have sworn at all, seeing that the ratification both of transgression and of fulfillment lies in deeds — just as, of course, lying and false swearing lie in speaking and swearing contrary to duty. But the man who lives justly, transgressing none of his duties, keeps his oath in his deeds, at the very point where the judgment concerning truth is put to the test; the testimony of the tongue is therefore superfluous for him. Persuaded, then, in every way that God exists always, and reverencing 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 does not lie, nor does he act contrary to his agreements, and in this way too he does not swear an oath when one is demanded of him, nor does he ever deny anything, so as not to lie, even should he die under torture.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 9 ========

The dignity of the Gnostic is heightened and increased still further in the one who takes up the charge of teaching others, who assumes in word and deed the stewardship of the greatest good on earth, through which he mediates conjunction and communion with the divine. Just as those who worship earthly things pray to their statues as though they could hear, placing firm confidence in them, so too in the case of living statues — that is, human beings — the true magnificence of the Word is received from the trustworthy teacher, and the benefit done to these is referred back to the Lord himself, in whose image the man who is truly a man, by instructing, forms and reshapes, renewing unto salvation the man who is being catechized. For just as the Greeks call iron "Ares" and wine "Dionysus" by a certain figure of reference, so too the Gnostic, reckoning the benefit of his neighbors to be his own salvation, might fittingly be called a living statue of the Lord — not with respect to the peculiarity of outward form, but with respect to the symbol of his power and the likeness of his proclamation.
Whatever, then, he has in mind, this he also carries on his tongue to those worthy to hear it, speaking from assent, out of conviction, both speaking and living at once. For he thinks what is true and speaks truly at the same time, except perhaps when, as part of a course of treatment — as a physician does toward the sick, for the safety of those who suffer — he will tell a falsehood or utter an untruth, in the manner the sophists mean it. So, for instance, the noble apostle circumcised Timothy, even while crying out and writing that circumcision made by hand profits nothing; but in order that he might not, by abruptly tearing them away from the law toward the circumcision that comes from faith of the heart, force those Hebrew hearers who were still restive to break away from the synagogue, accommodating himself to the Jews he "became as a Jew, that he might gain all." The one, then, who condescends this far in accommodation — for the sake of the salvation of his neighbors — merely for the sake of the salvation of those for whom he accommodates himself, sharing in no hypocrisy on account of the danger hanging over the righteous from the zealous, this man is in no way compelled to it; rather, for the benefit of those near him alone he will do certain things which would not, in the first instance, have been done by him, were it not for their sake that he does them. This man gives himself up on behalf of the church, on behalf of those acquaintances whom he himself "begot" in faith, as a pattern for those capable of inheriting to the fullest degree the stewardship of a teacher who loves humanity and loves God — so as to display how genuine his words are, and to show love toward the Lord in action. This man is unenslaved in fear, truthful in speech, steadfast in toil, never willing even in spoken word to lie, and in this too always achieving sinlessness. For a lie, being uttered along with some measure of trickery, counts as no mere careless remark, but tends toward wrongdoing.
From every side, then, the Gnostic alone bears witness to the truth, both in deed and in word; for he always acts rightly in all things without exception, both in word and in deed and in thought itself.
This, then, to put it briefly, is the piety of the Christian. If he indeed acts fittingly and in accordance with sound reasoning, he acts with reverence and with justice. And granted this, the Gnostic alone would in truth be reverent, just, and God-fearing. The Christian, then, holds no atheism (for this was precisely the matter we set out to prove against the philosophers), such that never, under any circumstance, will he commit anything wicked or disgraceful — that is, anything unjust. It follows, therefore, that he is not impious either, but he alone genuinely worships God in holiness and in a fitting manner, bowing in devout reverence, according to true piety, before the God who truly exists, ruler over all, king over all, and almighty.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 10 ========

For knowledge is, so to speak, a certain perfecting of man as man, brought to completion through the science of divine things in respect of manner of life and reasoning, harmonious and in agreement both with itself and with the divine word. For through this faith is perfected, since it is only in this way that the believer becomes perfect. Faith, then, is a certain good disposed within, confessing that God exists without seeking further, and glorifying him as existing. Hence one must, being led up from this faith and increased in it by the grace of God, receive concerning him the knowledge that is possible. And we say that knowledge differs from the wisdom that comes about through teaching. For wherever there is knowledge, there wisdom is also found in every case; but wherever there is wisdom, it is not in every case knowledge. For it is only in the sphere of the uttered word that the name of wisdom is imagined to apply. Yet not to doubt concerning God, but to believe, is the foundation of knowledge, and Christ is both — the foundation and the structure raised upon it, since through him come the starting point and the twin outer limits. Now those two limits are not themselves taught: on one side stands faith, on the other stands love — but knowledge, passed on by tradition in keeping with the grace of God to those who make themselves worthy of the teaching, is committed as a sort of trust, out of which the worth of love shines forth, brightness kindling brightness. For thus it has been said: "to him who has, still more will be given" — so faith yields knowledge, knowledge yields love, and love yields the inheritance.
This comes to pass whenever one hangs upon the Lord through faith, through knowledge, and through love, and ascends together with him to where the God and guardian of our faith and love is. Hence at the end knowledge is handed down to those fit and approved for this, because it requires greater preparation and prior training, both for hearing what is spoken, and for the ordering of one's life, and for having advanced by increased effort beyond the righteousness that is according to the law. This leads on to the endless and perfect end, teaching beforehand the dwelling that will be ours with the gods according to God, once we have been released from all chastisement and punishment, which we undergo for our sins as a saving discipline. After this ransoming, the prize and the honors are rendered to those who have been made perfect, who have ceased from purification and have ceased also from every other service, even if it be holy and among the holy; then, having become pure in heart, restoration to eternal contemplation awaits them next in nearness to the Lord. And they have been called gods, enthroned together with the other gods who are ranked first under the Savior. Swift, then, toward purification is knowledge, and fit for the welcome change toward the better.
Hence it also easily removes the soul into what is akin to it, the divine and holy, and by a certain light of its own leads the man across through the mystical stages of advancement, until it restores him to the topmost place of rest, having taught the one pure in heart to look upon God directly, in an encounter of knowing and grasping. For it is somewhere here that the perfecting of the gnostic soul takes place, having passed beyond all purification and service, coming to be with the Lord, where it is directly subordinated to him. Faith, then, is, so to speak, a summary knowledge of urgent things, while knowledge is a strong and firm demonstration of the things received through faith, built up by the Lord's teaching upon faith into unshakeable stability, and conveying it to a comprehension attained with science. And it seems to me that the first saving turn is the passage from the nations into faith, as was noted earlier, while the second is the passage from faith into knowledge; and this, coming to its end in love, thereupon presents the one who knows as friend to friend with the one known. And perhaps such a one already has, from this point on in advance, the being "equal to angels." At any rate, after the last preeminence in the flesh, ever changing according to what is fitting toward the better, he hastens toward the paternal court, toward the truly dominical abode, through the holy seven-fold path, destined to be, so to speak, a light standing and abiding eternally, altogether and in every way unchangeable.
The first mode of the Lord's activity is a sample of the recompense we have spoken of according to piety toward God. Though there are many testimonies, let me offer just one in brief, put this way by the prophet David: "Who will climb up onto the Lord's mountain? Who will take his place in that holy site? Someone clean of hand and clear of heart, who has not lifted up his life toward emptiness, nor given a false oath against his neighbor: such a man will carry off a blessing sent by the Lord and mercy given by God his deliverer. Such is the line of those who search him out, who look for the presence of Jacob's God." Briefly, I think, the prophet has pointed to the gnostic here; and in the process, it would seem, David has revealed to us that the Savior is God, naming him the "presence" "of Jacob's God," the bearer of good news who taught what concerns the Father. That is why the apostle likewise named the Son "the stamp of the Father's glory," the one who both taught and marked out the truth about God, namely that "God and Father are one," he alone almighty, "whom none has recognized but the Son, and whoever the Son chooses to show him." And that God is a single one is signaled through this phrase, "those who look for the presence of Jacob's God," the very ones our Savior and God marks out as belonging to the "one" who is "good," as Father and as God. And this line of people looking for him is "the chosen race," the race set apart for the pursuit of knowledge.
For this reason the apostle also says: "What good am I to you, if my words to you carry no revelation, no knowledge, no prophecy, and no teaching?" And yet certain things are also done rightly by those who are not gnostics, but not according to reason — for example, in the case of courage. For some, being naturally high-spirited, and then having nourished this without reason, rush impetuously into many things without reasoning, and do things similar to what the courageous do, so that at times they achieve the same results, such as enduring tortures with ease; but they do so neither from the same cause as the gnostic, nor with the same purpose set before them, nor even "if they hand over their body to be burned"; "since love is absent from them," as the apostle puts it, the love that is born out of knowledge. Every action, then, that is done through knowledge is well-doing, but that which is done through ignorance is ill-doing, even if it maintains its steadfastness. Since he does not act with courage out of reasoning, nor does he direct his action toward anything useful among the things that turn toward virtue and away from virtue. And the same account holds also for the other virtues, so that it applies proportionately also to piety toward God. Not only, then, is the gnostic such as this in regard to holiness for us, but the professions concerning the rest of his conduct also follow the pattern of scientific piety toward God. For it lies before us now to describe the life of the gnostic, not to set forth the contemplation of doctrines, which we shall expound later at the fitting time, while preserving at the same time the sequence of our discourse.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 11 ========

Now concerning the universe he has spoken truly and magnificently, as one who has taken in a divine teaching. Beginning, at any rate, from wonder at creation, he brings from his own store a proof of his capacity to receive knowledge. He becomes an eager disciple of the Lord. As soon as he hears of God and of providence he believes, on the strength of the very things he wondered at. Setting out from this point, then, he cooperates in every way toward learning, doing all those things through which he will be able to receive the knowledge he longs for (and longing is constituted by an admixture of the advance of faith together with seeking), this being what is worthy of so great and so momentous a contemplation. Thus the gnostic tastes what God wills; since it is not his hearing alone but his soul that he brings to bear upon the realities signified by what is said. Taking hold, then, of the very realities themselves, along with their essence, through the words, he fittingly leads his soul as well to what is needful, understanding "you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder" in the particular sense in which it is spoken to the gnostic, and not as it is understood among the rest.
He advances, then, being trained by scientific contemplation toward contending for the things spoken more universally and more magnificently, knowing well that, as the prophet says, it is the Lord "who teaches mankind knowledge," the Lord acting through a human mouth; for this reason he has also taken on flesh. Fittingly, then, he never chooses the pleasant before the expedient, nor, should a beautiful woman, caught in some circumstance and playing the harlot, try to force herself upon him, does he yield — since not even the wife of his master was able to lead Joseph astray from his resolve. He stripped off his tunic for her as she forcibly held onto it, becoming naked of sin while clothing himself in the decency of character. For even if the eyes of his master — I mean the Egyptian's — did not see Joseph, yet the eyes of the Almighty were watching over him. For we hear the voice and behold bodies, but God examines the very reality from which speaking and seeing proceed. Accordingly, even should illness come upon the gnostic, or some circumstance of distress, and above all the most fearful thing, death, his soul remains unshaken, aware that such events are simply a necessity of creation, yet even so, by the power of God, they become a "medicine of salvation," benefiting through discipline those being reshaped rather too harshly, being apportioned according to worth by truly good providence.
Making use, then, of created things, whenever reason permits, and to the extent it permits, in accordance with thanksgiving to the Creator, he becomes lord even of his enjoyment of them. He never bears a grudge, he is never harsh toward anyone, even should that one deserve hatred for what he does; for he reveres the Maker, and he loves his fellow traveler through life, pitying him and interceding for him because of his ignorance. Indeed he shares the suffering of the body, bound as it is by nature to suffering, but he does not suffer as the primary thing in accordance with the passion. In involuntary circumstances, then, drawing himself up from his pains toward what is properly his own, he is not carried away together with what is alien to him, but he accommodates himself to his necessities only to the extent that his soul is kept unharmed. For he does not wish to be faithful in mere supposition, nor even in seeming, but in knowledge and truth, which is to say, in firm deed and effectual word. Therefore he not only praises what is good but himself is impelled to be good, passing from being the "good and faithful servant" through love into being a "friend," because of the perfection of his disposition, which he has acquired purely through true learning and much joint training.
Since he is thus impelled to arrive at the summit of knowledge, adorned in character, composed in bearing, possessing all those advantages that belong to the gnostic in truth, looking to the beautiful images before him — the many patriarchs who succeeded before him, the very many prophets, the countless angels beyond number, and the Lord over all, who taught and demonstrated that it is possible to acquire that most excellent life — for this reason he does not love all the ready-at-hand good things of the world, so that he may not remain grounded, but rather to cling to what is hoped for — or rather already grasped, awaited only in respect of its complete fulfillment. In this way, then, he endures toils and torments and afflictions, not as the courageous do among the philosophers, in hope that present pains will cease and that he will again partake of pleasures, but knowledge has begotten in him a most firm conviction of the reception of the things to come. Wherefore he despises not only punishments here but also all pleasures. They say, at any rate, that the blessed Peter, on seeing his own wife led away to death, rejoiced because of her calling and her return home, and called out to her very encouragingly and consolingly, addressing her by name: "Remember, woman, the Lord."
Such, then, was the union of these blessed ones, and such their perfected attitude even toward those closest to them. For this reason too the apostle says, "let him who marries be as though he did not marry," holding that marriage should be free of passion and "undistracted" from love toward the Lord — a love that the true husband urged his wife to hold fast to as she journeyed forth from life to the Lord. Was not their faith in the hope after death manifest, in that they gave thanks to God even at the very peak of their torments? For firm, I think, was the faith they possessed, and faithful actions followed it accordingly. The gnostic's soul, then, is vigorous in every circumstance, like an athlete's body established in the height of good condition and strength. For he is well-counseled concerning human affairs, judging by what is just what must be done, deriving his first principles from above, from God, and having acquired, toward the assimilation to the divine, gentleness with regard to bodily pleasures and pains; he rises up above fears courageously and with confidence in God. The gnostic soul is, without artifice, an earthly image of divine power, adorned with perfect virtue, having grown together out of all these at once — nature, discipline, reason. This beauty belonging to the soul becomes a "shrine of the Holy Spirit" whenever, across the whole of life, it acquires a disposition in agreement with the gospel.
Such a one, then, rises up above every fear, every terror — not only of death but also of poverty and disease and disrepute and whatever is akin to these — becoming unconquered by pleasure and lord of irrational desires. For he knows well what is to be done and what not, having mastered the knowledge of what is truly fearful and what is not. Hence he undergoes, with understanding, what reason dictates is necessary and fitting for him, discerning with understanding what is truly to be faced with confidence — that is, the good things — from what merely appears so, and what is truly fearful from what merely seems so, such as death and disease and poverty, which belong to opinion rather than to truth. This is the man who is truly good, who is beyond the passions, who by the settled state or disposition of his virtuous soul has risen above the whole life of passion. For him "all things depend upon himself" toward the acquisition of the end. For the things called terrible by fortune are not fearful to the earnest man, since they are not evils, while the things that are truly terrible are alien to the Christian gnostic, running diametrically opposite to the good things, since they are evils, and it is impossible for opposites to meet in the same subject at the same time. Blamelessly, then, "playing his part in the drama of life," whatever role God grants him to contend in, he recognizes both what must be done and what must be endured.
Is it not the case, then, that if cowardice arises from ignorance of what is fearful and what is not, the gnostic alone is courageous — knowing the things that are good both now and in the future, and knowing along with these, as I said, also the things that are not truly fearful, since he knows that vice alone is hostile and destructive of those advancing toward knowledge, and, fortified with the weapons of the Lord, he wages war against it? For if something arises through folly and through the working — or rather cooperation — of the devil, this is not therefore immediately identical with the devil or with folly (since no working is prudence, for prudence is a settled state, and no settled state is a working); nor, then, is an action arising through ignorance itself already ignorance, but rather vice arising through ignorance, not ignorance itself; for neither are the passions, nor are sins, vices, even though they proceed from vice. No one, then, is a gnostic who is courageous without reason; since one might as well call children courageous for facing frightful things in ignorance of what is dangerous (at any rate they even touch fire), and call wild beasts that charge straight at spears courageous, virtuous, though they are irrational. Perhaps in this way people will also call jugglers courageous who tumble onto knives out of some practiced skill, plying a wretched trade for a paltry wage. But the man who is truly courageous, having the danger plainly before him because of the zeal of the many against him, cheerfully accepts whatever comes upon him. In this he is distinguished from those others called martyrs, in that some, offering pretexts to themselves, hurl themselves recklessly into danger in a manner I cannot quite endorse (though it is proper to speak with reverence), while others, guarding themselves according to right reason, then, when God truly calls, give themselves up eagerly, and by having nothing rash on their conscience "confirm their calling" and show that their courage is to be judged by true, rational courage.
Neither, then, out of fear of greater terrors do they endure lesser ones, as the rest do, nor again, dreading the censure of their equals and those of like mind, do they abide in the confession of their calling; rather, through love toward God they willingly submit to the calling, choosing no other aim than pleasing God, and not because of the prizes of their toils. For some endure out of love of glory, others out of caution against some other sharper punishment, others because of certain pleasures and joys after death — these remain children in the faith. They are blessed indeed, yet not yet grown men in love toward God, as the gnostic has become — for just as in athletic games, so also within the assembly, there exist prizes suited to grown men and prizes suited to little ones; but love itself is desirable for its own sake and nothing besides. So then, for the gnostic, together with knowledge, the perfection of courage grows through the joint training of life, as he continually practices mastery over the passions.
Love, then, anointing and training its own athlete, renders him fearless and undaunted and confident in the Lord, just as righteousness secures for him truthfulness throughout his whole life. For it was the sum of righteousness to say, "let your yes be yes and your no, no." The same account applies also to self-mastery. For it is neither through love of honor (as athletes compete for the sake of crowns and renown) nor through love of money (as some pretend to be self-controlled, pursuing the good out of a fearful passion), nor indeed out of bodily attachment aimed merely at wellness, nor even out of plain crudeness that anyone is truly self-controlled, continent and untasting of pleasures (for indeed, once they have tasted pleasures, those who wear away a life of labor immediately break the rigidity of their self-restraint before pleasures). Such also are those restrained by law and by fear, for once they seize an opportunity they steal past the law by stealth, running away from the good. But self-mastery choiceworthy for its own sake, being perfected according to knowledge and ever abiding, makes a man ruler and owner of his own self, so that the gnostic becomes continent and untouched by passion, unmelted by pleasures and pains, just as they say adamant is unmelted by fire.
The cause of these things, then, is the most holy and most sovereign love of all knowledge; for through devotion to the Best and Most Excellent — which is indeed characterized by the One — it makes the gnostic simultaneously a son and a friend, grown into a genuinely "complete man, matching the full measure of stature" belonging to maturity. But concord too is agreement concerning the same reality, and the same is one; and friendship is accomplished through likeness, its commonality resting in the One. The gnostic, then, being a lover of the truly One God, is a truly perfect man and friend of God, having been inscribed among those holding the standing of a son. For these titles denote nobility, and knowledge, and completeness, according to the contemplation of God, which the gnostic soul receives as its most consummate advance, having become perfectly pure, counted worthy everlastingly to behold the Almighty God "face," as scripture puts it, "to face." Since it has turned wholly spiritual, and has passed onward to what is akin to itself, it abides within the spiritual assembly, in the rest belonging to God.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 12 ========

So much, then, for this. Being thus disposed toward body and soul, and toward his neighbors—whether one be a household slave, or an enemy made so by law, or whoever he may be—the gnostic is found to be equal and alike toward all. He never scorns a brother sharing the same father and the same mother under the divine law; rather, he eases the burden of the suffering with comfort, encouragement, and aid toward life's necessities, giving to everyone in want, not equally to each, but rightly and according to merit—and even to one who pursues and hates him, should the need arise. He pays little heed to those who claim he gave from fear, unless perhaps it was for the purpose of aid that he acted. For those untouched by love of money and holding no grudge even against enemies—how much warmer, then, is their disposition toward their own household? From this a man of this sort goes on to learn precisely to whom, above everyone, and how much, and when, and in what manner he ought to give. And who, reasonably, could turn hostile toward a man who supplies no ground at all for hostility? None whatsoever. In the very way we hold, regarding deity, that god stands opposed to nobody and is nobody's foe (since he fashioned everything that exists, and there is nothing among the things that have come to be which he does not will), while still calling those who disobey and refuse to walk by his commands his foes—meaning those who place themselves at war with his covenant—so too we might discover the matter stands with the gnostic. For he himself could never in any way become anyone's enemy, but those who turn toward the opposite path would be reckoned his enemies—especially since the disposition that shares with others is called justice among us; but also the disposition that discriminates according to worth, toward more or less, in matters where this must come about by knowledge, turns out to be a form of the highest justice. There are, indeed, things that are also achieved rightly by some according to mere natural disposition—continence in pleasures, for instance. For just as among the nations some abstain from the pleasures at hand because they cannot 'obtain what one desires,' and from fear of men, while others abstain because of greater pleasures, so too in the faith some practice continence either through hope of the promise or through fear of God.
But such continence is a foundation of knowledge, and a certain advance toward what is better, and an impulse toward perfection. As scripture puts it, dread of the Lord stands at wisdom's threshold. But the perfect man, moved by love, endures every hardship and bears up under everything, aiming to please not man but god. And praise trails after him too, as a byproduct—not for his own gain, but so others might imitate and profit by praising him. 'Continent' carries yet another meaning—not merely one who has subdued the passions, but one who has taken firm hold of good things and securely won the great riches of knowledge, from which the fruits of virtuous deeds follow. In this the gnostic never shifts from his settled character, whatever circumstances arise; for possessing the good through understanding is stable and unshaken, being acquaintance with matters both divine and human. Understanding, then, never turns into ignorance, nor does goodness turn to wickedness; so he eats, drinks, and takes a wife, not as his chief aim but as necessity demands. Regarding marriage, I mean—provided reason sanctions it and it suits the occasion: once made perfect, he takes the apostles as his exemplars, and a man proves himself truly a man not through opting for a solitary existence, but that man 'conquers men' who has trained himself without pleasure and without pain in marriage and childbearing and the care of a household, remaining undivided in his love for God even amid the care of the household, and rising above every trial brought on through children and wife and servants and possessions. But to the man without a household it mostly falls to be untried; caring only for himself, he is inferior to the one who falls short in regard to his own salvation, yet excels in the management of life, preserving without art but a small image of true providence.
But we for our part must, so far as possible, train the soul in manifold ways.
so that it may become a good worker fit for the reception of knowledge. Notice how heated wax turns pliant and bronze gets polished bright, each thereby ready to take the stamp pressed upon it? In the same manner that dying means the parting of soul from body, understanding acts, so to speak, as a rational sort of dying, drawing the soul off from the passions and setting it apart, carrying it forward instead into a life of doing good, so it may then declare to god without hesitation: I am living as you desire. For whoever chooses to gratify men fails to gratify god, since most people select not what benefits but what delights; yet whoever gratifies god thereby, as a result, gratifies the serious-minded among men as well. How, then, could matters of food, drink, and erotic pleasure still hold appeal for such a man, when he regards with wariness even a delight bound up with reasoning, or a stirring of the intellect, or an activity yielding enjoyment? For no man can be slave to two masters at once, god and wealth. By this he means not cash on its own merely, but what money supplies toward assorted pleasures; for truly it is not possible for one who has known God greatly and truly to be a slave to the opposing pleasures.
There is, then, only one who from the beginning was free of desire—the Lord, the lover of mankind, who for our sake became man. But as many as strive to become like the pattern given by him force themselves, through discipline, to become free of desire. For the one who has desired and yet mastered himself [becomes, as it were, like] the widow who through self-control becomes a virgin again. This is the recompense of understanding owed to the Savior and Teacher, the very thing he requested—keeping clear of wrongdoing and practicing good deeds, through which deliverance is won. Just as those trained in crafts earn their bread by the skills they mastered, so the gnostic, through what he understands, earns life and is delivered. For whoever refused to sever the soul's passion has effectively destroyed himself; yet ignorance, it appears, leaves the soul famished, while understanding feeds it. These are the gnostic souls the gospel compared to the consecrated virgins waiting for the Lord—virgins in that they kept apart from wrongdoing, waiting on him out of love, tending their own lamp for contemplating reality—prudent souls declaring: we yearn for you, Lord; grant now at last that we receive: we have lived by what you commanded, breaking none of your instructions; so we request the promises, seeking in prayer what does us good rather than what merely delights, since it befits us to ask you for the finest things; and we will receive everything as beneficial, even if the exercises that come our way seem harsh—those which your providence brings us for the further training of our steadfastness.'
The gnostic, then, out of excess of holiness, is ready rather to fail in asking than to obtain without asking. For his entire existence amounts to prayer and communion with god, and provided he is free of sin, he is sure to gain whatever he desires. For god tells the upright man: request it, and I shall grant it to you; form it in your thought, and I shall bring it about. If, then, what is asked benefits him, he obtains it right away; but he will never request anything unhelpful, and so will not obtain it. Thus matters unfold as he desires. And should someone point out that certain sinners also succeed in getting what they ask, this occurs infrequently, owing to god's righteous kindness, and is granted to those capable of benefiting others besides. Hence the favor is bestowed not for the sake of the petitioner, but because providence, foreseeing the one destined to be rescued through him, renders the gift just after all. Yet to those deserving of the truly good things, such things come even unrequested. Whenever, then, a person is upright not through compulsion, fear, or expectation, but from deliberate choice, this path bears the name of the kingly way, traveled by the kingly people; the other detours are treacherous and steep. If indeed one were to remove fear and honor, I do not know whether the noble among the outspoken philosophers would still endure their afflictions.
Desires and the other sins are called 'thorns and thistles.' The gnostic, then, labors in the vineyard of the Lord, planting, pruning, watering, being truly a divine husbandman of those who have been planted for faith. Now those who have not done evil think themselves entitled to the reward of idleness, but the one who has done good out of pure choice demands his wage as a good workman; indeed he will receive double—both for what he did not do and in return for what good he did. This gnostic is tempted by no one, unless God permits even this for the benefit of those with him. For they are strengthened toward faith when they are encouraged by his manly endurance; indeed, it was for this reason too that the blessed apostles were led into trial and testimony of perfection, so as to build up and strengthen the congregations. The gnostic, then, having ever in his ears the voice that says, 'The one whom I strike, do you have mercy on,' asks even for those who hate him to repent; for it is not fitting even for children to watch the punishment inflicted on wrongdoers in the arena. For there is no way the gnostic could ever be trained or delighted by such spectacles, having by deliberate choice trained himself to be noble and good, and having in this way become unyielding to pleasures; never falling into sins, he is not instructed by examples of others' evils; far indeed is he from being pleased by earthly pleasures and spectacles, he who has looked down even upon the promises of the world, though they are divine. 'Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of God, but the one who does the will of God.' This would be the gnostic workman, who masters 'the desires of the world' while still in the flesh itself, but concerning the things he has come to know—the things to come, still unseen—he is precisely persuaded to regard them as more present than the things at hand.
This man is a fit workman, rejoicing in what he has come to know, but restrained in regard to what still entangles him through the necessity of life, not yet counted worthy of the sharing that would carry into practice what he has come to know. In this way he makes use of this present life, as of something not his own, only so far as necessity requires. He himself knows the riddles of fasting on these days—I mean the fourth day and the day of preparation. For the one is named after Hermes, the other after Aphrodite. At once, then, according to his way of life he fasts from both love of money and love of pleasure together, from which all the vices spring; for we have already shown repeatedly, following the apostle, that unchastity divides into three chief branches: fondness for pleasure, fondness for money, and idol-worship.
He fasts, then, in keeping with the law from base actions, and in keeping with the gospel's completeness from wicked thoughts. To this man trials also come, not for purification, but, as we said, for the benefit of his neighbors, if, having had experience of toils and pains, he shows contempt for them and dismisses them. The same argument holds also concerning pleasure. For it is a very great thing, when one has had experience of a thing, then to abstain from it; for what great thing is it if someone practices continence with regard to what he does not know? This man, having fulfilled the commandment according to the gospel, makes that day the Lord's day, whenever he casts away an evil thought and takes up a gnostic one, glorifying the Lord's resurrection in himself. But also, whenever he grasps the apprehension of a scientific theorem, he thinks he sees the Lord, guiding his sight toward the invisible things, even if he seems to see what he does not wish to see, chastening his faculty of sight, whenever he becomes aware of himself taking pleasure at the impact of sight—since he wishes to see and hear only what is fitting for him. At once, when contemplating the souls of the brethren, he sees also the beauty of the flesh by means of the soul itself, which is accustomed to look only upon the beautiful apart from fleshly pleasure.
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 holy and good deeds, which the Lord wished them, being chosen, to have in mind. For faith consists in choosing the same things, knowledge in having learned and understood the same things, hope in longing for the same things. And even if, according to the necessity of life, he spends a little portion of the hour on food, he thinks himself cheated, being distracted by the matter. In this way he never sees even in a dream anything unfitting for one chosen; for truly every such man is 'a stranger and a sojourner' in his whole life, one who, while dwelling within a city, has looked down on what others in that city hold in high regard, occupying the city as if it were empty wilderness, so that his surroundings impose nothing on him, but his own deliberate choice proves him upright. This gnostic, to put it concisely, fills up in his own person the absence of the apostles, living rightly, knowing accurately, benefiting those who are fit for it, 'removing mountains' from his neighbors and casting off the irregularities of their souls—though each of us is himself both vineyard and workman. And the man who does the best things wishes to escape the notice of men, persuading both the Lord and himself at once that he lives according to the commandments, preferring those things by which he has come to believe he truly is (for 'where a man's mind is,' it says, 'there also is his treasure'); he holds himself in lesser account so as never to overlook a brother who has fallen into affliction, for the sake of perfection in love, especially if he knows that he will bear the brother's want more easily than the brother would.
He regards, then, that man's pain as his own pain; and even if, by giving out of his own want for the sake of well-doing, he suffers something hard because of it, he is not vexed at this, but increases his beneficence all the more. For he has unmixed faith concerning these matters, commending the gospel through works and contemplation. And indeed he reaps 'not the praise of men, but of God,' by fulfilling what the Lord taught. This man, being drawn on by his own hope, does not taste of the good things in the world, looking down on all things here; pitying those who after death are trained through punishment, confessing involuntarily, he has a good conscience toward his departure and is always ready, as being 'a sojourner and a stranger' to the things here, mindful only of his own inheritances, and regarding everything here as foreign—not merely holding the Lord's commandments in esteem, but, one might say, sharing through understanding itself in the divine purpose, truly a kinsman of the Lord and of the commandments, chosen as righteous. And he is a leader and a king, as the gnostic is, looking down upon all the gold on the earth and under the earth, and upon a kingdom stretching from one end of ocean to the other, so as to hold fast only to the service of the Lord. Therefore, both eating and drinking and marrying, if reason approves it, and even seeing dreams, he does and thinks holy things; in this way he is always pure for prayer. And he prays even with angels, as being already 'equal to angels,' nor is he ever outside the holy guard, even if he prays alone, having the choir of the saints gathered with him.
This man knows faith to be twofold: the one is the activity of the believer, the other is the excellence, according to worth, of the one believed in — since righteousness too is twofold.
The one is through love, the other through fear. For indeed, as scripture puts it, 'reverence toward the Lord, kept undefiled, abides into the age of ages.' For those who turn from fear to faith and righteousness endure forever. At once fear produces abstinence from evils, while love, building further toward what is voluntary, urges one on to do good, so that one may hear from the Lord, 'No longer do I call you servants, but friends,' and may already approach his prayers with confidence. The very form of that prayer is thanksgiving for things past, for things present, and for things to come, as though the last were already present through faith; and the having received knowledge takes the lead in this. And indeed he prays to live out the life appointed for him in the flesh in such a way as befits one who is a gnostic — as though fleshless — obtaining the best things and fleeing the worse. He prays also for a lightening of the sins we have committed, and for a turning to full knowledge; following so swiftly the one who calls, at the time of his departure, exactly as that one calls, going forward, so to speak, because of his good conscience, hastening there too to give thanks, having come to be with Christ. Having shown himself worthy through purity, he possesses, by commixture, the power of God supplied through Christ. For he is not warm by mere participation in warmth, nor luminous by participation in fire, but wishes to be wholly light. This man knows exactly the saying: 'Unless you hate father and mother, and further your own soul too, and unless you bear the sign.' For he has hated the fleshly attachments that carry much of the charm of pleasure, and he looks down on all things proper to the fashioning and nourishing of the flesh; but he also rises up against the bodily soul, casting a bit into the mouth of the irrational spirit when it grows restive, because 'the flesh lusts against the spirit.' And 'to bear the sign' is 'to carry death about,' having, while still living, 'renounced all things,' since the love of the one who sowed the flesh is not equal to that of the one who created the soul for knowledge.
This man, having come into a settled habit of doing good, does good more quickly than he can speak of it — praying to take upon himself a share of the brethren's sins, for their confession and the turning of his kinsmen, and being eager to share his own goods with those dearest to him, while they in turn are such friends to him. Increasing, then, the seeds deposited within him according to the cultivation the Lord has commanded, he remains sinless and becomes self-controlled, and passes his life in spirit together with his equals in the choirs of the saints, even while still held fast upon earth. This man, throughout the whole day and night, speaking and doing the commandments of the Lord, rejoices exceedingly — not only when rising in the morning and at midday, but also while walking and while sleeping, while dressing and while undressing; and he teaches his son, if his offspring is a son, being inseparable from the commandment and from hope, always giving thanks to God, like the creatures of praise allegorized through Isaiah, enduring patiently every trial: 'The Lord,' he says, 'gave, the Lord took away.' For such was Job also, who, even before the loss of his outward goods along with the health of his body, had already laid all things aside through his love toward the Lord. 'For he was,' it says, 'righteous, holy, abstaining from all wickedness.' And the word 'holy' signifies the things that are just toward God according to the whole economy — things which the gnostic, knowing them, already possessed. For one must neither, if things are good, cling fast to them, since they are merely human, nor again, if they are evil, be at enmity with them, but stand above both, treading the one underfoot and passing the other on to those in need. And the gnostic is secure in his dealings with others, taking care that this way of dealing with others does not unnoticed become a fixed disposition.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 13 ========

He holds no memory at all of anyone who has wronged him, but forgives instead. So he is right, too, when he prays, "Forgive us," since "we forgive as well"; this too belongs among the things God intends: craving nothing, holding hatred toward no single soul, since every human being is the product of one same will. Is it not so that our Savior, in willing his gnostic to be "perfect, even as the heavenly Father is," meaning as he himself is -- he who says, "Come, little ones, hear me, the fear of the Lord" -- wants such a person to stand in need no longer of aid mediated through angels, but instead to draw it from the Savior directly, once he has grown worthy, and to keep watch over himself by his own obedience? Such a man seeks this from the Lord, yet never merely begs for it. And in the case of brothers in poverty, the gnostic himself will not ask for an abundance of money to distribute, but will pray that a supply of what they need come to be for them. For thus the gnostic also gives prayer to those in need, and provides what comes through prayer both unknowingly and without vanity. Now poverty and disease and such trials are often brought for admonition, and for the correction of things past and for the conversion of things to come. Such a man, in asking relief from these for others, since he possesses the special excellence of knowledge, works the good deed himself, not for vainglory but simply because he is a gnostic, becoming an instrument of God's goodness.
They say in the traditions that the apostle Matthias used constantly to say that "if a neighbor of one of the elect sins, the elect one has sinned; for if he had conducted himself as the word prescribes, his neighbor too would have been so moved with reverence for his life as not to sin." What then should we say concerning the gnostic himself? "Do you not realize," the apostle asks, "that you yourselves are God's sanctuary?" The gnostic, then, is a divine being, holy already, carrying God within and carried by God in turn. And indeed, to show that sinning is a foreign matter, Scripture hands over to slavery among strangers those who have lapsed; and where it says, "do not covet your neighbor's wife," it is plainly naming sin as foreign and unnatural to God's sanctuary. This sanctuary is, in one sense, vast -- namely the church -- and in another sense small, namely each single person who keeps alive the seed of Abraham. So whoever houses God within will crave nothing further. Straightaway, casting off every hindrance and scorning all the matter that would drag him down, he pierces through heaven by way of knowledge, and moving past the spiritual powers and every principality and dominion, he seizes hold of the highest thrones, hastening toward that single thing which he alone has come to know. Blending together, in this way, the wisdom of the serpent and the innocence of the dove, he lives a life at once complete and clean of conscience, joining hope to faith as he awaits what is coming. For he perceives the gift he has received, having become worthy to obtain it, and having been transferred from slavery into adoption as a son; and, acting in accordance with knowledge, he performs the deeds that follow from "having known God, or rather, having been known by him," displaying works worthy of the grace received. For works follow knowledge as the shadow follows the body.
He is therefore reasonably disturbed by none of the things that happen, nor does he suspect anything among the events of providence that occur for his benefit, nor is he ashamed to die, being of good conscience to be seen by the powers, having cleansed himself, one might say, of every stain of the soul, since he knows well that it will go better for him after his departure. Hence he never prefers the pleasant and the expedient to what providence appoints, training himself through the commandments, so that he may become well-pleasing to the Lord in all things and praised by the world. Since all things stand upon the one almighty God: "He came to his own," it says, "and his own did not receive him, the Son of God." Therefore, in his use of worldly things, he not only gives thanks and marvels at creation, but is also praised for using it as is fitting, since his end is brought, through gnostic activity carried out according to the commandments, to completion in contemplation. Even now, reaping through knowledge the provisions for contemplation, and greatly embracing the magnitude of knowledge, he advances toward the holy reward of his transformation. For he has heard the psalm saying, "Go about Zion, and encompass her, tell it out in her towers"; for it hints, I think, that those who have received the word in a lofty manner will themselves be lofty like towers, and will stand firm both in faith and in knowledge.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 14 ========

Let this much, then, be said as briefly as possible about the gnostic, sown in seed-form for the Greeks. But one must know that if the man of faith succeeds in one of these things, or even a second, still he does not succeed in all of them together, nor with the highest knowledge, as the gnostic does. And indeed there are many other testimonies from Scripture that could be adduced concerning that freedom from passion which belongs, so to speak, to the gnostic — that state in accordance with which the perfection of the man of faith, advancing through love, arrives "at a perfect man, at the measure of the stature" of maturity, being made like to God, becoming truly "equal to the angels." But I think it better to defer such an ambition of proof-texts on account of the length it would require, leaving it to those who wish to labor and to work out the doctrines further by their own selection from the Scriptures. I will, however, mention one passage very briefly, so as not to pass over the topic unmarked. For the divine apostle says in the former letter to the Corinthians: "Does any among you, holding a grievance against a neighbor, presume to seek judgment from wrongdoers rather than the holy ones? Or are you unaware that the holy ones shall pass judgment on the world?" and so forth. Since this is quite an extended passage, drawing on the apostle's own timely phrasing, briefly and in summary — restating it in our words, as it were — we shall lay out what the apostle means, and in doing so trace how he outlines the gnostic's perfection. For he does not fix the gnostic merely on the point of being wronged rather than wronging, but he also teaches him to bear no malice, not even permitting him to pray against the one who has wronged him; for he knows that the Lord himself expressly commanded us "to pray for our enemies." So then, seeking judgment from the unrighteous, he says, means that the wronged party appears to wish nothing else than to pay back in kind, wanting in turn to commit a second wrong himself, which amounts equally to committing wrong himself. But seeking judgment from the holy ones indicates that he means some who wish, through prayer, that the injustice be repaid to those who wronged them; and that the second sort are better than the first, yet not yet free from passion, unless, having become wholly free of malice, they pray, according to the Lord's teaching, even for their enemies.
It is good, then, that they too should adopt good sense out of repentance, passing over into faith. For even if truth seems to have acquired enemies in those who provoke it out of jealousy, yet truth itself is not at enmity with anyone. For "God makes his sun to rise upon the just and the unjust," and indeed dispatched the Lord in person to both the just and unjust alike; and the one who strives to be made like God, through abundant freedom from malice, "forgiving seventy times seven" (that is, throughout the whole of life and through the entire cosmic circuit signified by numbered sevens), shows kindness to everyone, even if someone who has lived his whole time in the flesh wrongs the gnostic. For the earnest man does not think it right merely to leave judgment of those who have wronged him to others, but wishes even to ask of those very judges, the righteous ones, forgiveness of sins for those who have offended against him — and reasonably so; since if it is only the outward thing, the thing concerning the body, even should it go so far as death, those who attempt to do wrong have the advantage, and none of this belongs properly to the gnostic. How indeed could one judge even the angels who apostatized, having himself become an apostate from that freedom from malice which is according to the gospel? "Why not rather be wronged?" he says; "why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong [and defraud]," praying, clearly, against those who offend through ignorance, "and you defraud" those against whom you pray, so far as it depends on you, of God's love for humankind and goodness. "And this, brothers" — not only those who share the faith, but he means also the proselytes. For whether the one now at enmity will later come to believe.
we do not yet know. From which it is clearly gathered that, even if it is not the case that all are so, still it seems to us that they ought to be reckoned brothers — and indeed that all people already, being the work of one God and clothed in one image upon one substance, even if some happen to be more sullied than others, only the man of knowledge recognizes both this and the working of created things, through which, in turn, he worships the will of God.
"Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?" So then he who wrongs in return does wrong, whether in deed or in word or even in the mere intention of the will, which the gospel proscribes, coming after the tutelage of the law. "And such were some of you" — plainly such as those still are whom you yourselves do not forgive. "But you were washed" — not simply as the rest are washed, but with knowledge you cleansed away the passions of the soul, so as to be conformed, insofar as that is achievable, to the benevolence of God's providential care, both through patience and through freedom from malice, casting the kindliness of word and deed "upon the just and the unjust" alike, just as the sun does. Whether the gnostic secures this through magnanimity or through imitating the Better One — and a third motive lies in "pardon others and pardon will come to you," a precept that, so to speak, urges us onward to salvation by an overflow of goodness. "But you were sanctified": for to the one who has come to this condition it falls to be holy, encountering none of the passions in any way at all.
but as one already, so to speak, without flesh and above this earth, having become holy. Wherefore he says, "you were justified in the name of the Lord" — you were made, so to speak, righteous by him, as he himself is righteous. And "by the Holy Spirit" you were mingled together, so far as is possible according to your capacity. For does he not say, "everything is permitted to me, yet I refuse to be mastered by anything" — that is, refusing to be ruled in deed, thought, or speech by anything opposed to the gospel? "Foods are for the belly, and the belly for foods," which "God will bring to nothing" — that is, those who so reason and live as though they had come to be for the sake of eating, and not rather eating in order that they might live, following what is consequent, while attending in what is primary to knowledge. And is he not perhaps saying that these are like flesh cut off from the holy body? The church of the Lord is allegorized as a body — the spiritual and holy choir — from which those who bear the name only, but do not live according to reason, are mere flesh. "But this body," the spiritual one, that is, the holy church, is in no way and by no manner whatsoever to be made intimate "with fornication," nor with apostasy from the gospel toward the pagan way of life.
For the one who conducts himself in the church in a pagan manner — whether in deed, or in word, or in intention itself — commits fornication against the church, that is, against "his own body." The one thus "united with the prostitute," that is, with conduct running counter to the covenant, turns into a separate body, unholy, made "one flesh" with a pagan way of life and a different hope; "but whoever is united with the Lord is one spirit" — a "spiritual body," a kind distinct from that ordinary assembly. This one is wholly a son, a holy man, free from passion, gnostic, brought to completion under the Lord's own instruction, so that indeed, being attentive to the Lord in deed and in word and in the very spirit itself, he may receive that abode owed to one thus made truly a man. The indication suffices for those who have ears; for the mystery ought not to be paraded about, but only so much revealed as serves for remembrance to those who have shared in knowledge, who will also understand how it has been said by the Lord: "become perfect as your Father is perfect" — perfectly forgiving sins, bearing no malice, and living out their lives in the condition of freedom from passion. For just as we speak of a perfect physician and a perfect philosopher, so too, I think, of a perfect gnostic; yet none of these, great as it is, is taken up into likeness to God. For we do not, like the Stoics, say — quite godlessly — that the very same virtue belongs to man and to God. Are we then perhaps obliged to become perfect, as the Father wishes? For it is impossible and beyond all means for anyone to become perfect as God is; but the Father wishes us, living according to the obedience of the gospel, to become blamelessly perfect. If then, since the saying is expressed by way of ellipsis, we supply what is lacking to complete the sense of the passage — leaving what is omitted to be grasped by those capable of understanding — we shall both come to know the will of God and shall conduct our lives, worthily of the commandment, both piously and with greatness of mind.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 15 ========

Since it is next in order, after the foregoing, to make our defense against the charges brought against us by Greeks and Jews alike — and in some of these difficulties the heresies that concern true teaching join in as well, in the same way as those already mentioned — it would be well, first clearing away what stands in the path, to proceed, ready for the resolution of these difficulties, to the Stromateus that follows.
First, then, they bring this very charge against us, saying that one ought not to believe because of the disagreement among the heresies; for with whom, they ask, is the truth to be found, when different people teach different doctrines? To these we reply that among you Jews as well, and among the most esteemed of the Greek philosophers, very many heresies have arisen. And surely it is not your claim that philosophizing, or Judaizing, ought to be avoided because of the disagreement among your own sects with one another. Furthermore, that the heresies would be sown alongside the truth, just as "the tares" alongside the wheat, was spoken prophetically by the Lord, and it is impossible that what was foretold should not come to pass; and the reason for this is that upon everything good, blame follows close behind.
Is it, then, the case that if someone should break the covenant and depart from the agreement made with us, we too should abstain from the truth on account of the one who falsified the agreement? No — rather, the honorable man must be truthful and must annul nothing of what he has promised, even if certain others break covenants. So too it is fitting that we, in no way, transgress the rule of the church; and above all, we keep the confession concerning the greatest matters, while they transgress it. One must therefore trust those who hold firmly to the truth. And already, using this defense in a broader sense, one may say to them that physicians too, though holding opposing views according to their respective schools, nevertheless heal equally well in practice. Does someone who is sick in body and in need of treatment therefore refuse to admit a physician on account of the divisions within medicine? Then neither should the one who is sick in soul and full of idols, for the sake of being healed and turning to God, ever plead the heresies as an excuse. Yes indeed, "heresies exist for the sake of the approved," it says. By "the approved" it means either those who come to faith, approaching the Lord's teaching with greater discernment — just as approved money-changers distinguish the Lord's unadulterated coin from the counterfeit — or those who have already become approved in the faith itself, both in life and in knowledge.
For this very reason, then, we need still greater care and forethought in examining how one ought to live with precision, and what true piety really is. For it is clear that because truth is difficult and hard to attain, the various inquiries have arisen; from which come the self-loving and glory-loving heresies, on the part of those who have not truly learned nor truly received, yet have taken up a conceit of knowledge. With greater diligence, then, must the truth that truly is be searched out, which alone occupies itself with the God who truly is. And upon toil follows sweet discovery and memory. One must therefore strip for the labor of discovery on account of the heresies, but not abandon it altogether. For when fruit lies before us, the one true and ripe, the other made of wax as closely resembling it as possible, one must not, because of the resemblance between the two, refrain from both alike, but must distinguish, by both comprehensive contemplation and by the most authoritative reasoning, the true from the merely apparent. And just as, when there is one royal road, but many others besides — some leading to a precipice, others to a rushing river or to a sea of deep water close inshore — no one would hesitate to travel because of this divergence of roads, but would use the safe and royal highway; so too, though different people say different things about the truth, one must not abandon the search, but hunt all the more diligently for the most exact knowledge concerning it. Since even among cultivated vegetables in gardens weeds spring up alongside them; do farmers, then, on that account abstain from the care of gardening? Having, then, many natural resources for examining what is said and for discovering the sequence of truth, we are obligated to use them. Wherefore we are justly condemned, we who, though we ought to be persuaded, do not assent, and do not distinguish what is contradictory, unseemly, contrary to nature, and false, from what is true, consistent, fitting, and according to nature — resources which must be used for the recognition of the truth that truly is.
Vain, then, is this excuse for the Greeks: for to those who are willing, it will be possible also to find the truth, while for those who put forward irrational pretexts, judgment is without defense. For do they deny, or do they grant, that proof of any kind can exist? I think all would grant it, except those who reject the senses altogether. And since proof does exist, it is necessary to descend into the inquiries and to learn thoroughly, by demonstration, through the very Scriptures themselves, both how the heresies went astray, and how it is in the truth alone, and in the ancient church alone, that the most exact knowledge and the truly best sect are found. Of those who turn aside from the truth, some deceive only themselves, others attempt also to deceive their neighbors. The former, called those of "seeming wisdom," who suppose they have found the truth, having no true demonstration whatever, deceive themselves, supposing they have found rest; and no small multitude of these, turning aside from inquiry because of the refutations it brings, also flee from instruction because of the condemnation it entails. The latter, who deceive those who approach them, are exceedingly cunning; and though they themselves are well aware that they know nothing, they nonetheless darken the truth with plausible arguments. But the nature of plausible arguments, I think, is one thing, and that of true arguments another. And we know that the very name "heresies" is necessarily used as the opposite term to the truth; and it is from that truth that the sophists, having torn away certain fragments for the ruin of mankind, and having buried them within the human arts they themselves have devised, boast of presiding over a school rather than over a church.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 16 ========

But those who are ready to toil for the noblest things will not stop seeking the truth until they have received demonstration of it from the Scriptures themselves. Now there are certain criteria common to all men, just like the senses; but the other criteria belong to those who have willed and trained themselves in the true things — those that operate through mind and reasoning, skilled at distinguishing true statements from false ones. And the greatest thing is to lay aside conceit as well, standing in the middle between exact knowledge and rash pretended wisdom, and to know that the one who hopes for the eternal rest also knows that its entrance is toilsome and "narrow." But let the one who has once been given the good news, and "seen the salvation," as it says, in whatever hour he recognizes it, not "turn back, like Lot's wife," nor back to the former life fixed on things perceived by sense, nor let him run back again to the heresies — for they quarrel among themselves in some fashion or other, not knowing the God who truly is. "For he who loves father or mother more than me" — that is, more than the true Father and Teacher of truth, who regenerates and re-creates and nurtures the soul that has been chosen — "is not worthy of me": he says that the one worthy is worthy of being both son of God and disciple of God, and friend, and kinsman. "No one fit for God's kingdom keeps his hand upon the plow while turning to glance backward."
But, so it seems, to most people it still appears to this day that Mary was a woman in childbed because of the birth of the child, though she was not in childbed (for indeed, some say that even after she had given birth and been delivered, she was found to be a virgin) —
such for us are the Scriptures of the Lord: they bring forth truth and yet remain virgins, while keeping hidden the deep secrets that truth holds. "She has given birth and has not given birth," says the Scripture, as though from herself, not having conceived by union. Wherefore the Scriptures have conceived for those with knowledge, but the heresies, not having learned fully, are dismissed as not having conceived. Though all men have the same faculty of judgment, some, following the reasoning that lays hold of them, form their beliefs accordingly, while others, having given themselves over to pleasures, force the Scripture to fit their desires. But the lover of truth needs, I think, vigor of soul; for those who take on the greatest matters must necessarily fail most greatly, unless they have received from truth herself the rule of truth and hold it fast. Such people, having fallen from the straight road, naturally go wrong in most particular matters too, because they do not have a criterion of true and false thoroughly trained to choose what is needed. For if they had possessed one, they would have been persuaded by the divine Scriptures.
Just as, then, if a man should become a beast, like those drugged by Circe, so too the one who has kicked away the ecclesiastical tradition and bounded off into the opinions of human heresies has thrown away what it means to belong to God as a faithful man devoted to the Lord. But the one who runs back from this deception, having listened closely to the Scriptures and entrusted his own life to the truth — such a one is made, as it were, out of a man into a god. For we have the beginning of the teaching: the Lord, through the prophets and through the gospel and through the blessed apostles, guiding knowledge "in many ways and in many parts" from beginning to end. But if anyone should suppose the beginning needs something else, it would no longer truly be kept as a beginning. So then, the one who is faithful of himself to the Lord's Scripture and voice is reasonably worthy of trust, as though it operated through the Lord for the benefit of men; indeed we use it as a criterion for the discovery of matters. But everything under judgment is still unbelieved until it is judged; so that not even the beginning is a thing needing judgment. Reasonably, then, having embraced by faith the beginning that admits no demonstration, and having received from the beginning itself, out of its abundance, demonstrations concerning the beginning, the Lord's own voice trains us toward full knowledge of what is true. For we would not simply heed men who offer unsupported claims, since others could just as readily claim the reverse. Yet since a stated opinion alone will not do — what is said needs backing — we do not await human testimony, but instead we settle the matter we are pursuing through the Lord's own voice, more reliable than any proof — or rather, which happens to be the only demonstration there is. According to this understanding, those who have merely tasted of the Scriptures are believers, while those who have advanced further are exact touchstones of the truth — the Gnostics — since even in the affairs of life the skilled craftsmen have something more than the amateurs, and beyond common notions they shape out the better result.
So then we too, demonstrating fully from the Scriptures themselves concerning the Scriptures themselves, are persuaded out of faith in a demonstrative manner — even though those who pursue the heresies dare to make use of the prophetic Scriptures, first not using all of them, and then not using them whole, nor as the body and texture of the prophecy dictates, but choosing out the ambiguously worded passages they twist them to their own opinions, plucking a few scattered phrases here and there, not looking to what is signified by them but making use of the bare wording alone. For in almost all the texts they bring forward you would find them clinging only to the words, while changing what is signified — neither knowing them as they are actually spoken nor using them as they are naturally meant, but instead employing the very excerpts they themselves import. But truth is not found by shifting what is signified (for by that method they would overturn all true teaching), but by carefully examining what is truly proper and fitting for the Lord and Almighty God, and by confirming each of the points demonstrated according to the Scriptures again from those very same kindred Scriptures. So they neither wish to turn to the truth, being ashamed to set aside the advantage of self-love, nor do they know how to dispose of their own opinions, doing violence to the Scriptures as they do; but having rushed ahead to put forth false doctrines before men, fighting almost all the Scriptures openly, and being ever refuted by us who argue against them, they still to this day hold out — refusing to admit some of the prophetic texts, and slandering us, as though we had become of another nature, as unable to understand what belongs to them — while sometimes, being refuted, they even deny their own doctrines, being ashamed to confess outright what they boast of teaching privately.
For thus one may observe, going through all the heresies in turn, the wretchedness of their doctrines. For whenever they are overturned by us, who show clearly that they contradict the Scriptures, one can spot either of two reactions among the leaders of that teaching: they scorn either the coherence of their own doctrine or, more precisely, the prophetic word on which their expectation actually rests — and in either case they prefer whatever strikes them as clearer than the message delivered through the prophets by the Lord, ratified by the gospel and, beyond that, by the apostles too. Seeing then that the danger for them concerns not one doctrine but the preservation of the heresies as a whole — not the discovery of truth (for when they meet with what is common and ready at hand among us, they despise it as cheap) — and being eager to go beyond the common faith, they have gone beyond the truth. For not having learned the mysteries of ecclesiastical knowledge, nor having room for the greatness of the truth, and having shirked from descending to the depth of the matters, they read the Scriptures superficially and dismissed them.
Puffed up, then, with pretended wisdom, they persist in quarreling, having made it plain that they are concerned rather with seeming than with philosophizing. From the start, laying down premises that are not necessary, and moved by human opinions, and then contriving as a necessary consequence a conclusion to match, they fight bitterly through their refutations against those who practice true philosophy, and they endure everything — everything, as they say, they stir up trouble — rather than change their view, even if they are about to be impious through disbelieving the Scriptures. It is out of love of honor for their sect and the much-talked-of precedence at their gatherings, on account of which they also embrace that precedence in reclining at the banquet of their falsely-named love-feast; whereas among us, knowledge of the truth is furnished to those not yet believers by those already believing, and faith becomes, so to speak, the very substance of demonstration. But it seems every heresy has, as its starting principle, ears that do not hear what is beneficial — open only to what pleases. For indeed any one of them might be healed, if only he were willing to be persuaded by truth alone. The cure of conceit is threefold, as of every passion: learning the cause, and how it might be removed, and third, the training of the soul and the habituation to being able to follow what has been rightly judged.
For just as a disturbed eye cannot see clearly, so too a soul muddied by doctrines contrary to nature is unable to discern accurately the light of truth, but even misses what lies at its feet. In muddy water, they say, even eels are caught, being blinded; and just as wicked children shut out their tutor, so these people shut the prophecies out of their own church, suspecting them because of the reproof and admonition they bring. Indeed they stitch together countless lies and fabrications, so that they may seem to have good reason for not admitting the Scriptures. In this way they are not pious, being displeased with the divine commandments — that is, with the Holy Spirit. And just as almonds are called empty not when there is nothing at all in them, but when what is inside is useless, so we say that the heretics are empty of the will of God and of the traditions of Christ, being truly bitter, like the wild almond, at the very outset of their doctrines — except for those points which, because of the sheer clarity of the truths, they were unable to set aside or hide.
Just as, then, in war a soldier must not abandon the post which the general has assigned him, so too we must not abandon the order which the Word has given — the Word we have taken as ruler of both knowledge and life. But most men have not even examined this — whether one ought to follow someone, and whom exactly, and how. For as the Word is, such must the life of the believer also be, so that he is capable "of following God," who has, from the start, been guiding everything "toward a straight goal." Now when someone transgresses the Word, and through it, God, if he grew weak because some sudden impression fell upon him unexpectedly, then the rational faculties for meeting such impressions must be made ready; but if he has been overcome through habit that had already taken hold of him and has become, as the Scripture says, "common," then the habit must be stopped altogether and the soul trained to argue against it; and if it seems that conflicting doctrines are dragging some people along, these must be removed, and one must go to the "peacemakers" among the doctrines, who charm away, by means of the divine Scriptures, the fears of the timid among the untrained, clarifying the truth through the coherence of the covenants. But, it seems, we incline rather toward the reputable, even when it happens to be the opposite of truth, than toward truth itself — for truth is austere and stern.
And indeed, there being three dispositions of the soul — ignorance, conceit, and knowledge — some, the nations, are in ignorance; others, the true Church, are in knowledge; and others, those who follow the heresies, are in conceit.
Nothing, at any rate, is clearer to see than that those who truly know assert with confidence about the things they know, just as those who merely suppose assert about the things they suppose — so far, at least, as concerns the mere act of asserting without demonstration. So they hold one another in contempt and ridicule each other, and the very same mental capacity ends up prized as the height of honor by some, while others judge it to be a kind of derangement. And yet we have come to understand that pleasure belongs to one category, proper to the nations; strife to another, proper to the heresies; joy to a third, belonging rightly to the Church; while gladness falls to whoever is genuinely a Gnostic, according to truth. Consider how devotion to Ischomachus produces a farmer, to Lampis a shipmaster, to Charidemus a general, to Simon a horseman, to Perdix a peddler, to Crobylus a cook, to Archelaus a dancer, to Homer a poet, to Pyrrho a debater, to Demosthenes an orator, to Chrysippus a logician, to Aristotle a natural philosopher, to Plato a philosopher — likewise the man who submits to the Lord and follows the prophecy delivered through him becomes complete, shaped after the Teacher's likeness, a god moving about in flesh. Those, then, who do not follow God wherever he leads fall away from this height; and he leads according to the "God-inspired Scriptures." Now though the things men do are countless in number, there are, roughly speaking, two sources of all sin: ignorance and weakness — and both lie in our own power, belonging to those who neither wish to learn nor, again, to master desire. Of these, through the one they judge wrongly, and through the other they lack the strength to follow what has been rightly judged; for neither could a man deceived in judgment act well, however capable he may be of doing what he has come to know, nor could a man capable of judging what is needed present himself blameless in his actions if he is weak in carrying them out.
Consequently, then, two kinds of instruction, corresponding to the two kinds of sin, are handed down as fitting to each: for the first, knowledge together with a plain proof drawn from what the Scriptures attest; for the second, reasoned discipline guided by faith and by fear — and the two together grow into love brought to its fullness. For the Gnostic's goal, I think, is twofold even here: in some matters it is scientific contemplation, in others it is practice.
May it be, then, that these heretics too, upon learning from these notes, be brought to their senses and turn to the Almighty God. But if, like "the deaf adders," they do not hear the song that is called new but is in fact most ancient, may they at least be disciplined by God, enduring the fatherly warnings that come before judgment, until, put to shame, they repent — rather than, through harsh disobedience, hurling themselves into the full and final judgment. For there also come certain partial disciplines, which men call chastisements, into which many of us who have fallen into transgression from the Lord's people, slipping, stumble; but just as children are disciplined by their tutor or their father, so we are chastised by providence. God does not take vengeance — for vengeance is the repayment of evil for evil — but he does chastise, for what is useful, both in common and individually, to those chastised.
These things, then, I have set forth, wishing to turn those eager to learn away from the ready tendency to fall into the heresies; and wishing also to put a stop to the widespread — whether ignorance, or foolishness, or bad disposition, or whatever one ought to call it — and striving to win over and guide toward truth all who are not entirely beyond cure, I have employed these arguments to that end.
For there are some who do not even endure to listen at all to those who exhort them toward the truth; indeed they attempt to babble nonsense, pouring forth blasphemous words against the truth, conceding to themselves that they have come to know the greatest of realities, though they have not learned, not sought, not labored, not found the sequence of reasoning. Such people one might pity or hate for so great a perversion. But if someone happens to be curable, able to bear it as one bears fire or iron, let him submit the ears of his soul to the frank speech of truth, which cuts away and burns out their false opinions. This will happen, provided they are not, in their eagerness for ease, thrust away from the truth, or, reaching after reputation, forced into innovation. For those act out of laziness who, though it is in their power to draw evidence supporting the God-inspired writings out of those very writings, instead pick out whatever presents itself and suits their own pleasures; and those desire reputation who willfully sophisticate, by means of other underhanded contrivances, the things handed down by the blessed apostles and teachers as akin to the God-inspired words, setting up human teachings in opposition to the divine tradition for the sake of establishing their own heresy. For who, truly, among men of such stature — I mean according to ecclesiastical knowledge — was there any room left, so to speak, for the doctrine of Marcion, or of Prodicus and those like them who did not walk the straight road? For they did not surpass in wisdom the men who came before them, so as to discover something further beyond what those earlier men truly stated; rather it would have been enough for them if they had been able to learn what had already been handed down.
The Gnostic, then, is for us the one alone who has grown old in the very scriptures themselves, preserving the apostolic and ecclesiastical correctness of doctrines, and who lives most rightly according to the gospel, uncovering, whenever he searches, the demonstrations supplied to him out of the Law and the Prophets by the Master himself. For a Gnostic's manner of living, I would say, amounts to nothing else than actions and speech shaped after what the Master handed down.
But "not all possess knowledge." "For I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers," says the apostle, "that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all partook of spiritual food and spiritual drink," plainly establishing that not all who hear the word have grasped, in deed and in word, the greatness of knowledge. Wherefore he also added: "but with most of them God was not well pleased." Who, then, is this one whom he found pleasing? The very one who declared: "Why do you address me as Lord, yet fail to carry out my Father's wishes?" — meaning, the Savior's own teaching, which serves us as spiritual nourishment and as an unquenchable drink, the "living water" belonging to knowledge. Now, they claim, knowledge itself is charged with puffing a person up. To this we reply: it is likely only a counterfeit knowledge that gets charged with such inflation, supposing the term is taken to mean swelling with conceit; yet if, as seems far more probable, the apostle intends by his phrase a genuinely elevated and truthful frame of mind, then the objection just raised dissolves; so let us proceed, drawing on the scriptures, to establish our point.
"Wisdom," says Solomon, "inspired her own children with greatness of spirit." For surely the Lord did not produce vanity in the young through his teaching, but rather confidence resting upon the truth; and he makes them great-minded in the knowledge handed down through the scriptures, and disdainful of those who would drag them down into sin — which is what the word "inspired with greatness" signifies, wisdom having implanted magnificence in the children of her teaching through the very things by which she instructs. Accordingly the apostle says: "and I will know, not the word of those who are puffed up, but their power," — that is, whether you grasp the scriptures with a truly elevated mind (that is, in genuine truth; since nothing surpasses truth itself in greatness). For here lies the power of the children puffed up by wisdom. As if to say: I shall know whether you are rightly great-minded over your knowledge. For "God is known," according to David, "in Judea," that is, among those Israelites who possess true knowledge; for Judah is interpreted as "confession." Fittingly, then, it has been said by the apostle: "You shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." For one must never, as those who pursue heresies do, commit adultery against the truth, nor indeed steal the rule of the church, indulging their own desires and love of reputation at the cost of deceiving their neighbors — whom it is fitting to teach, above all else, to love and to hold fast to the truth itself. It has indeed been said outright: "Declare among the nations his deeds," so that those who have already heard beforehand might not be judged, but turned back. But as many as "deal deceitfully with their tongues" have their penalties written down.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 17 ========

Those, then, who lay hold of impious doctrines, leading others astray as well, not even handling the divine words well but perverting them corruptly, neither themselves enter into the kingdom of the heavens nor allow those whom they have deceived to attain the truth. But since they do not themselves possess the key of the entrance, but rather a false one, and, as common usage calls it, a counterfeit key, by which they do not throw open the outer door, as we do through the tradition of the Lord, but cutting through a side window and secretly digging through the wall of the church, overstepping the truth, they install themselves as guides initiating the souls of the ungodly into mysteries. As for the fact that they built their human factions at a later date than the catholic church, that needs no lengthy proof. For the Lord's own teaching, delivered at his coming and starting under Augustus and Tiberius Caesar, reached completion partway through Augustus's reign, whereas that of his apostles, running at least to Paul's ministry, was finished under Nero; it was only afterward, around the reign of the emperor Hadrian, that the inventors of the heresies emerged, and their activity stretched onward into the era of Antoninus the elder - so it was with Basilides, though he names Glaucias, the interpreter of Peter, as his own instructor, or so they boast. In the same way they claim Valentinus sat under Theudas as a pupil, and this same man had once known Paul.
For Marcion, having arisen in the same age as these, associated with the younger men as an old man consorting with them. After him Simon listened to Peter's preaching for a short while. Since these things are so, it is plainly evident that, in contrast to the most ancient and truest church, these later sects, and those even further removed from it in time, have been innovated as counterfeit deviations. From what has been said, then, I think it has become clear that there is one true church, the one that is in reality ancient, into which those who are righteous according to purpose are enrolled. For since God is one and the Lord is one, for this reason also that which is supremely honorable is praised for its singularity, since it mirrors that single, primary principle. To the nature of the One, accordingly, belongs the one church as its allotted share, the very church that the heresies try to tear into pieces. According to substance, then, and according to conception, and according to origin, and according to preeminence, we say that only the ancient and catholic church exists, gathering into "the unity of one faith" - the faith grounded in the covenants that belong to it, or rather in the single covenant granted across separate ages - through the purpose of the one God, by means of the one Lord, drawing together those already marked out, whom God chose in advance, aware before he laid the world's foundations that they would prove righteous. But the church's preeminence, like the principle underlying its makeup, rests on its oneness, exceeding every other thing, with nothing resembling or matching it.
These matters, then, are for later discussion as well. Of the heresies, some are named from a person, as that from Valentinus and Marcion and Basilides, even though they boast of putting forward the opinion of Matthias - for the teaching of all the apostles was one and the same, and so too was their tradition. Others are named from a place, as the Peratics; others from a nation, as that of the Phrygians; others from an activity, as that of the Encratites; others from particular doctrines, as that of the Docetists and that of the Haematites; others from suppositions and things they have honored, as the Cainists and those called Ophians; and others from the practices they have lawlessly pursued and dared to commit, as those of the Simonians called Entychites.

======== Stromata — Book 7, Chapter 18 ========

Having thus pointed out a small opening "to those who love the contemplation of truth" from the law concerning sacrifices, regarding both the common Jews and the sects mystically distinguished as unclean, [with regard to how the pure creatures are marked off from the impure] within the assembly consecrated to God, let us bring the discussion to a close. For those sacrificial animals that part the hoof and chew the cud Scripture hands over as clean and acceptable to God, inasmuch as it is those making their journey toward the Father and the Son through the faith of the righteous (for this is the steadfastness of those that part the hoof) who "ponder God's utterances" "by night as by day" and turn them over again in the receptacle of the soul's learnings. This the law allegorizes as the chewing of the cud of a clean animal, which is in fact a gnostic exercise. But whatever has neither the one nor the other of these it sets apart as unclean. Thus, animals that chew the cud but do not part the hoof it obscurely signifies as the mass of Jews, who carry God's sayings on their tongues yet lack the faith and the footing that leads through the Son to the Father resting firmly on the truth. Hence the tribe of such creatures is also slippery, since they are not cloven-footed nor do they rest on the twofoldness of faith; for he says, "No one knows the Father except the Son, and whomever the Son reveals him to." And conversely, unclean likewise are those other animals which part the hoof but do not chew the cud. For these signify the heretics, who tread upon the name of Father and Son but are too weak to work out finely and smooth down the exact clarity of the oracles, and moreover pursue even the works of righteousness more crudely and not with greater exactness — that is, if they pursue them at all.
To some such people the Lord says: "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I say?" And wholly unclean are those who lack both the cloven hoof and the chewing of the cud. "You Megarians," Theognis declares, "count for nothing — not third, not fourth, not twelfth; you enter no reckoning and no tally, but are like husks the wind sweeps off the ground," and "like a droplet spilled from a jug."
Now that these matters have been set forth beforehand by us, and the ethical topic sketched in summary, having scattered here and there, as we promised, and strewn about the sparks of the doctrines of true knowledge, so that it should not be easy for any uninitiated person who chances upon them to find the holy traditions, let us proceed to fulfill our promise.
The Stromateis resemble, in a way, not those gardens laid out in rows planted for the pleasure of the eye, but rather some shaded and thickly wooded mountain, planted with cypresses and plane trees and laurel and ivy, together with apple trees and olives and figs, the planting deliberately intermingled, both fruit-bearing and fruitless trees together, on account of those who dare to filch and steal the ripe fruit, since the writing wishes to remain hidden from them. From these the farmer, transplanting and grafting, will arrange a beautiful garden and a delightful grove. So then the Stromateis aim neither at order nor at fine phrasing, seeing that they deliberately wish even their diction not to be Greek, and have made the sowing-in of their doctrines covertly and not straightforwardly, so as to prepare those who read them, whoever they may chance to be, to be industrious and inventive. For many and varied are the baits, on account of the differences among the fish.
And indeed, after this seventh Stromateus of ours, we shall in what follows make our discourse from another starting point.

======== Stromata — Book 8, Chapter 1 ========

But not even the most ancient of the philosophers were carried away into disputing and raising difficulties for their own sake — how much less should we be, who cling to the truly true philosophy, to whom Scripture itself expressly enjoins, for the sake of discovery, to search out and to inquire. The more recent of the philosophers among the Greeks, out of an empty and imperfect love of honor, are led off, both in a spirit of refutation and of contentiousness, into useless idle talk; but the barbarian philosophy, on the contrary, casting out all strife, said, "Search, and discovery will be yours; knock, and entry will be granted to you; request, and it will be furnished to you." The word conducted by way of question and answer, then, in the course of the inquiry, knocks at the door of truth so far as appears; and when the obstacle has been opened up by the search, scientific contemplation comes into being.
For those who knock in this manner, I hold, entry to what is sought stands granted, and for those who request in this manner, following the pattern of the writings, the questions aimed at that goal proceed from God — the divine gift of knowledge being grasped through the inquiry that genuinely comes to light by way of reasoning. For discovery apart from seeking is not possible, nor seeking apart from searching out, nor searching out apart from unfolding and laying open, by means of questioning, the object sought so it may be brought to clarity, nor again, once the entire examination has run its course, failing at last to secure the prize, that being the knowledge of the object sought. But the one who has sought can indeed find, and he will seek provided he first grants that he lacks knowledge. Carried forward from there by longing toward discovering the good, he searches honestly, free of rivalry, free of vainglory, both questioning and answering, and moreover weighing the very statements made. For it befits those devoted not merely to the sacred writings but equally to the shared assumptions to press their questions toward some worthwhile outcome, letting the discovery reach its conclusion. For another place and another crowd awaits the turbulent among men and their marketplace wranglings over discoveries, but it is fitting that the lover of truth, being at the same time also her intimate, should be peaceable even in his inquiries, approaching apprehensive knowledge through scientific demonstration, without self-love and with love of truth.

======== Stromata — Book 8, Chapter 2 ========

What method, then, could be better or clearer as a starting point for this kind of teaching than to go through in speech the name that has been put forward, so plainly that all who share the same language may follow along? Is the name "demonstration," then, like the word "blituri" — a mere sound signifying nothing at all? How could that be, when neither the philosopher nor the orator treats it so? Nay, not even the judge brings forward "demonstration" as a meaningless name, nor does any of the litigants fail to know what it signifies, even if it does not yet exist in the case at hand. At any rate, the philosophers provide for demonstration as something that has real subsistence, each in his own way. If, then, one were to divide correctly concerning anything under inquiry, one could not lead the argument back to any more agreed-upon starting point than to what is acknowledged, from the common name, by all who share a nation and a language alike. Then, setting out from there, one must necessarily inquire whether the thing signified — the thing the argument concerns — actually exists or not; and next, if it should be shown to exist, one must inquire carefully into its nature, what sort of thing it is, and whether perhaps it oversteps the order that has been assigned to it.
But since it is not enough simply to state one's opinion about the matter under inquiry — for the one taking the opposite side is equally free to declare in turn whatever he wishes — one must instead confirm what has been said. If the judgment concerning it is referred back to something equally disputed, and that in turn, likewise, to yet another disputed thing, the process will go on to infinity and remain undemonstrated; but if the confirmation of what is not agreed upon is referred back to something agreed upon by all, that must be made the starting point of the teaching. Every name, then, that is put forward must be translated into an account that is agreed upon and clear to those sharing in the inquiry — an account that will serve as the starting point of the teaching, and that will guide the discovery of what is being sought. Come, then, let the name "sun" be put forward. The Stoics, for their part, say that this is "a form of intelligent fire kindled out of the sea's moisture." Is not their account of it more obscure than the name itself, needing yet another demonstration to show whether it is true? It is better, then, to say, in a common and clear account, that the sun is named "the brightest of the bodies moving through the heaven"; for this account, I think, is more trustworthy and clearer, and agreed upon alike by all.

======== Stromata — Book 8, Chapter 3 ========

Likewise, too, all men would agree that demonstration is a statement that furnishes conviction about disputed matters out of matters already agreed upon. And not demonstration and conviction and knowledge alone, but foreknowledge too is spoken of in two ways: the one scientific and secure, the other merely hopeful. Now demonstration in its most proper sense is that which implants scientific conviction in the souls of learners, while the other is opinionative — just as a man in the truest sense is the man possessed of the common faculties of a rational mind, while the other kind of man is savage and beast-like. So indeed the comic poet said: how charming a man is, so long as he is a man. And the same account holds for ox and horse and dog, according to the virtue or vice of the animal. For it is by looking to the perfection of the kind that we arrive at the most proper application of the terms in question. For instance, we conceive of a physician as one who lacks nothing of the power of medicine, and of a knower [gnostic] as one who lacks nothing of scientific knowledge.
Indication differs from syllogism in that what is indicated is itself one thing, being itself a single sign of a single fact — as we say that pregnancy is an indication that a woman is no longer a virgin — whereas what is grasped by syllogism, though it too is a single fact, follows from several premises, as, for example, that Python was betraying the Byzantines, if that in fact happened; here not one but several signs are taken together. And to draw a conclusion from things agreed upon is to reason syllogistically, while to draw a conclusion from things true is to demonstrate; so that the benefit of demonstration is in a sense composite, arising both from taking premises that are true with respect to the matters sought and from the conclusion being drawn as a consequence of them. But if either the first premise does not hold, or the second does not follow from it, one has not demonstrated, though one has reasoned syllogistically. For to bring forward the proper conclusion from the premises is merely to reason syllogistically, whereas having each of the premises be true as well is not simply reasoning syllogistically but rather achieving demonstration. And concluding means, as is plain from the word itself, arriving at an end; and the end in every argument is, of course, the very thing sought, which is indeed also called the conclusion. And no simple, single statement is called a syllogism, even if it be true, but a syllogism is at the very least composed of three such statements, two serving as premises and one as conclusion.
Either all things need demonstration, or else some things are credible of themselves.
But if the former, then by demanding a demonstration for each demonstration we shall be carried on to infinity, and thus demonstration itself will be overturned; but if the latter, then these very things credible of themselves will become the starting-points of demonstrations. For instance, the philosophers acknowledge the first principles of the universe to be undemonstrated. So that if demonstration exists at all, it is wholly necessary that something credible of itself exist prior to it — which indeed is called primary and undemonstrated. To this undemonstrated ground of conviction, then, all demonstration is ultimately referred. But there could also be other starting-points of demonstrations besides the source that comes from conviction — namely, the things that appear clearly to sense-perception and to thought. For the things that occur with respect to sense-perception are simple and indissoluble, while the things with respect to thought are simple and are the first rational truths; and the things generated out of these are composite, yet no less clear and credible and indeed more rational than the first. There is, then, a certain natural power belonging to reason itself — the power of following and of conflicting — which all of us possess by nature. If, then, some argument be found of such a kind as to be able to furnish conviction, out of things already believed, to things not yet believed, we shall say that this very thing is the essence of demonstration. And it has been said that the kind both of conviction and of demonstration is twofold: the one producing mere persuasion in the souls of the hearers, the other producing knowledge. If, then, one begins from the things clear to sense-perception and to thought, and then draws the proper conclusion, one truly demonstrates; but if one begins only from things reputable, yet not primary — that is, not clear either to sense-perception or to thought — then, if one brings forward the proper conclusion, one will indeed reason syllogistically, but will not thereby produce scientific demonstration; while if the conclusion is not proper, one will not even reason syllogistically at all.
Demonstration differs from analysis: for each of the things demonstrated is demonstrated by means of certain other things demonstrated, those in turn having been previously demonstrated by yet others, until we run back up to the things credible of themselves, or to the things clear to sense-perception and to thought — and this process is called analysis; whereas demonstration is when one proceeds from the first things to the thing sought, through all the intermediate steps. The demonstrative man, then, must take great care regarding the truth of his premises, but need not trouble himself over names, whether one wishes to call them axioms, or propositions, or premises. Likewise he must take equally great care as to what follows from what is laid down, but need not trouble himself in the least whether one wishes to call the resulting statement a conclusive argument, or a concluding one, or a syllogistic one. For I say that the demonstrative man must, in all cases, guard these two things: that he take his premises as true, and that he bring forward the conclusion as a consequence of them — which some also call the 'inference,' that is, what is carried forward upon the premises.
Concerning everything that is sought, in each individual problem, there is need of premises that are various yet proper to the matter proposed; and it is necessary that the matter proposed itself be converted into a statement, and it is fitting that this statement be one agreed upon by all. But when premises not proper to the problem are taken, it is not possible to discover anything well from it, since the whole problem — which is indeed also called the inquiry — remains, by its very nature, unknown. In all matters sought, then, there is something foreknown beforehand (which, being wholly credible of itself, is believed without demonstration), and this one must make the starting-point of the inquiry into them and the criterion for what seems to have been discovered.

======== Stromata — Book 8, Chapter 4 ========

For every inquiry is found out of a pre-existing knowledge; and it is possible that the knowledge which pre-exists with respect to everything sought is, at one time, simply of the essence, while the works of that essence are unknown—for instance, of stones, plants, animals, whose activities we do not know, or their affections or powers, or, to put it simply, one of the things that belong to existing things; and sometimes some of these powers or affections, or some of them, are known, as with the soul, its desires and affections, while its essence is unknown and sought; and in many cases, when our very thought supposes all these things of itself, the inquiry is: to which of the essences does it belong in such and such a way? For having taken in the mind the conceptions of both, of the essence and of the activity, we thus come to the inquiry. And there are cases where, knowing even the activities together with the essences, we are ignorant of the affections.
The method of discovery, then, is this: one must begin from the very act of getting to know the problems. For quite often the shape a phrase takes will mislead and muddle and unsettle our understanding, so that one does not easily find from what kind of differentia it comes—for instance, whether that which is in the womb is an animal or not; for having some notion both of "animal" and of "that which is in the womb," we inquire whether being an animal belongs to that which is in the womb, and this is: whether to the essence that is in the womb there belongs the capacity for motion, and further the capacity for perception. So the inquiry is one of activities and affections, resting upon an essence already known beforehand.
One must at once, then, question in return the one who has put forward the problem, as to what he calls an animal; this above all must be done, whenever we see the name brought into different uses; and one must investigate whether the thing signified by the appellation is disputed or agreed upon by all. For if he should say he calls "animal" whatever grows and is nourished, we shall in turn ask whether he counts plants too among the animals; and then, if he affirms this, we must already point out that what is in the womb also grows and is nourished. For Plato calls plants too animals, as "partaking only of the third kind of soul," the appetitive; but Aristotle thinks that plants partake of the vegetative and nutritive soul, yet does not see fit to call them animals already—for he holds that only what partakes of the other soul, the perceptive one, deserves to be called animal. The Stoics, however, do not yet call the vegetative power soul. And if the one who put forward the problem denies that plants are animals, we shall reveal that his own words contradict him. For having defined animal by being nourished and growing, yet also declaring that the plant is not an animal, he seems to be saying nothing other than this: that whatever is fed and grows both counts as an animal and does not count as one. Let him say, then, what he wishes to learn: whether that which is in the belly grows and is nourished, or whether it partakes of some perception, or even of a motion driven by impulse. In the Platonic view the plant, ensouled, counts as an animal; according to Aristotle it is not yet an animal, for it lacks the perceptive faculty, but it is already ensouled—for to him "animal" is an ensouled, perceptive essence; but according to the Stoics the plant is neither ensouled nor an animal, for to them animal is an ensouled essence.
If, then, the animal is ensouled, and the soul is a perceptive nature, it is clear that what is ensouled is already perceptive.
If, then, the one who raised the inquiry, being questioned in turn whether that which is in the belly is an animal, should say he calls "animal" that which is nourished and grows, he has his answer; but if he should say that what he seeks is this: whether that which is in the womb is already perceptive, or is even capable of moving itself by some impulse, then the investigation of the matter already becomes clear, since the deception concerning the name no longer remains; but if he neither answers what has been asked in return nor is willing to say what he means, or with reference to what thing he applies the name "animal" in making his proposition, but bids us ourselves make the distinction, he would be recognized as being merely contentious. And if, there being two ways—one by question and answer, the other by continuous exposition—he has refused the one, let him listen while we go through everything bearing on the problem; then, when we have finished, it will be open to him to take up each point in turn.
But if he should attempt to interrupt the examination by asking questions, it is plain that he is not even willing to listen.
But if he should choose to answer, first of all one should ask him what thing it is to which he gives the name "animal," and when he answers this, he must again be asked what he means by "that which is in the womb" or "that which is in the belly"—whether he means by it the not-yet-formed things, and even the seed itself once deposited, that which is in the belly, or only the articulated and already formed things, called embryos. And once he has answered this too, one must proceed forthwith to complete what lies before us and to teach.
But if he should wish us to speak, without himself answering, let him hear: since you are unwilling to say with reference to what signification you speak of what you put forward (for otherwise I would not be making my argument about significations, but would already be examining the very things themselves), know that you have done something like this: as if you had put forward whether the dog is an animal. For I might reasonably say: what kind of dog? For I could run through the hound that hunts on land and the dog-shaped creature of the sea and the star set in heaven, and also Diogenes, and the other dogs in turn. For I could not divine whether you ask about all of them or about one. So do now what you would do later: say clearly which kind you are inquiring about. But if you are merely turning about names, then "that which is in the womb," this very name, is plain to everyone to be neither animal nor plant, but merely a word and a sound and a shape and a being and a something—anything sooner than an animal. And if this is what you put forward, you have your answer.
Nor indeed is what is signified by the name "that which is in the womb" an animal; rather, that is something incorporeal, and a sayable, and a matter, and an idea, and anything sooner than an animal. The nature of the animal would be something else; for it was clearly shown to belong to the very thing being inquired into. I mean the essence of the embryo—namely of what sort it is—this being a different problem from that concerning the things signified by the name "animal." I say, then, if by "animal" you mean that which is capable of perceiving and of being moved by impulse, an animal is not simply that which is moved by impulse and perceives; for it can also be asleep, or, when the perceptible things are not present, not perceive—rather, whatever is by nature suited to impulse or to perception, either one, bears the mark that makes it an animal. For something of this sort is signified by these terms. First, whether that which is in the womb is already able to perceive or to be moved by impulse—this being what is proposed for consideration. And a different question: whether that which is in the womb will at some point be able to perceive or to be moved by impulse—a signification which no one inquires about, since it is obvious. What was sought was rather whether the unborn thing already deserves the title of animal, or is instead still merely a plant. The term "animal" was next carried over into an argument, so that it might be made plain: having found it, through perception and through movement by impulse, to differ from the non-animal, we again distinguished this from the things bordering upon it, saying that one thing is that which is such potentially—which is not yet perceiving and moving, but will at some time be such—and another is that which already actually is such; and of this, one part is already active, the other capable of being active but at rest or asleep. And this is what is sought. For it is not from being nourished that the embryo is to be said to be an animal—those who reason thus depart from the essence of the thing sought, and turn their mind to other, merely incidental, matters.
Common to all things said to be discovered is set demonstration, which is an argument that establishes one thing from other things by way of proof. And the things from which what is sought must be proved need to be agreed upon and known by the learner. The starting point of all these is that which is evident to perception and to thought. Now the first demonstration is composed of these; but the demonstration that proceeds, by way of things already previously demonstrated, to establish through this again something further, is no less trustworthy than the former, yet it cannot be called first, because it is not concluded from first premises. The first kind, then, of the differentiation of things sought was shown to be threefold: I refer to that case where, though the essence is known, some of its works or affections remain unknown; the second differentia of problems was the one in which we all understand the works and affections but do not know the essence—for instance, in what part of the body the ruling faculty of the soul is.

======== Stromata — Book 8, Chapter 5 ========

The same approach to the demonstration applies also to the third problem. Some say, then, that it is not possible for a single living thing to have several principles. Now it is not possible for principles of the same kind to be more than one in a single living thing, but there is nothing absurd in their differing in kind.
Against the Pyrrhonists.
If suspension of judgment claims that no certainty exists at all, then evidently, taking itself as the starting point, it will be the first thing it invalidates. Either, then, it grants that something is true and one need not suspend judgment about everything, or it insists that nothing is true — and it is plain that in that case it will not itself be true first of all. For either it itself is true or it is not true. But if it is true, it grants, unwillingly, that something is true; and if it is not true, it leaves as true the very things it wished to abolish. For in the very point at which the suspension that abolishes things is shown to be false, in that same point the things abolished are shown to be true — like the dream that says all dreams are false. For being destructive of itself, it becomes confirmatory of everything else. And in general, if it is true, it will make its beginning from itself, being a suspension not of something else but of itself first.
Furthermore, if someone apprehends that he himself is human, or apprehends that he is withholding assent, he evidently is not withholding assent. And how could he even have arrived at the outset at disputing about everything while suspending judgment about everything? And how could he even answer what is asked him? For about this very thing he plainly is not suspending judgment. Indeed, he even declares that he suspends judgment — for which reason, even if one must, in trusting them, suspend judgment about everything, we shall first suspend judgment about the suspension of judgment itself, as to whether one ought to trust it or not.
Further, if this very thing — not knowing the truth — is itself the truth, then not knowing the truth is not knowing the truth, and from the outset no truth at all is granted by that man. But if he will say that this too is disputable — the not knowing of the truth — then in this very point he grants that the truth is knowable, in that he plainly does not confirm the suspension of judgment concerning it.
A sect is an inclination toward doctrines, or, as some say, an inclination toward many doctrines that hold together with one another and with what appears, and that tend toward living well. And doctrine is a kind of rational apprehension, while apprehension is a settled disposition and assent of the understanding.
Not only those given to suspension of judgment, but every dogmatist too, is accustomed to suspend judgment in certain matters, either because of weakness of opinion, or because of the obscurity of the facts, or because of the equal strength of the opposing arguments.
The starting points and methods of inquiries lie about these matters and within them.

======== Stromata — Book 8, Chapter 6 ========

We must first put forward, from among definitions and demonstrations and divisions, how many ways the thing sought is spoken of, and the homonymous terms must be handled and the synonymous terms clearly arranged according to their meanings. Next it must be inquired whether the subject before us belongs to the class of things considered in relation to other things, or is taken by itself. After this comes: whether it is, what it is, what belongs to it, or alternatively: whether it exists, what it is, on account of what it is so. For the contemplation of these things, both the knowledge of particulars and the knowledge of universals contribute, and prior knowledge, and the divisions made according to the differences of these things. Induction, then, brings the universal and the definition, and the divisions bring the species and the essence and the individual, while the contemplation of the many senses in which a thing is said brings the grasp of what is proper to it; and the puzzling-out of difficulties increases the differences arising from these, and the demonstrations, and the contemplation itself in other ways, together with what accompanies it. From all these together, knowledge and truth are established. Again, what is summed up from the division becomes a definition; for the determination is taken both prior to the division and posterior to it — prior, when it is conceded or set forth as a premise, posterior, when it has been demonstrated. And likewise by way of sense-perception, the particular yields up the universal in summary; for sense-perception is where induction begins, and it ends in the universal. Induction, then, does not reveal what something is, only that it exists or does not; division discloses its nature. The determination, likewise with division, teaches the substance and what a thing is, but not whether it is; while demonstration makes clear all three — whether it is, what it is, and why it is. And there are some definitions that also embrace the cause.
Since to know scientifically is to have seen the cause, and the causes are four — matter, the moving cause, the form, and the end — the determination will accordingly be fourfold. First one must adopt the genus — within it lie the things immediately above — and after that, the nearest difference. And the continuous series of differences, being cut and divided off, fills out the essence. It is not necessary to state all the differences of each thing, but only those that make the species. Geometrical analysis and synthesis resemble dialectical division and definition; and from division we run back up to the simpler and more elementary things. The genus of the thing sought, at any rate, we divide into the species contained in it — take man, for example: animal, the genus, we split into its contained species, mortal and immortal, and so, always cutting the things that seem to be composite genera into simpler species, we arrive at the thing sought, which no longer admits of cutting. For having divided animal into mortal and immortal, then again mortal into land-dwelling and water-dwelling, and again land-dwelling into winged and footed — and so, dividing the species that comes nearest to the thing sought, which also embraces the thing sought, we shall arrive, by cutting, at the simplest species, which embraces nothing else but the thing sought alone. For again we divide the footed into rational and irrational; and then, choosing out the species nearest to man from among those taken by division, and putting them together into a single account, we render the definition of man, which is: a mortal animal, land-dwelling, footed, rational.
Hence division holds the place of matter for the definition, seeking the simplicity proper to the name, while the definition holds the place of the craftsman and maker, putting together and constructing and setting forth the knowledge of the thing that is. Definitions belong neither to the things themselves nor to the ideas, but rather we say that of those things of which we have universal conceptions, the definitions are the interpretive accounts of these conceptions; for it is of these conceptions that the divisions also come to be. Of divisions, one divides the thing divided into species as a genus; another divides it into parts as a whole; another divides it into accidents. The division of the whole into parts is conceived for the most part according to magnitude, while the division into accidents can never be taken as complete, if indeed substance must belong altogether to each of the things that are. Hence both these divisions are disreputable, and only the cutting of genus into species is reputable, by which both the identity according to genus and the difference according to the specific differences are marked out. The species is always seen within some part, but not conversely — if something is a part of something, this will not necessarily also be a species. For a hand belongs to man as a part, yet counts as no species. And the genus is present within the species — for animal is found both in man and in ox — but the whole does not exist within the parts, for man does not exist within his feet. Hence the species is more properly so called than the part. And whatever is predicated of the genus, all this will also be predicated of the species.
The genus, then, is best split into two species, or failing that, into three. Now when the species undergo the more generic division, sameness and otherness mark them out; and then, when divided by way of the things signified generically, they are characterized accordingly. For each of the species is either substance (as when we say: of things that are, some are bodies, others are incorporeal) or quantity or quality or relation or place or time or position or possession or action or being-acted-upon. Whoever has scientific knowledge of anything whatsoever will also be able to render its definition, since one who is unable to grasp and define anything in an account could never have scientific knowledge of it. And it is from ignorance of definition that many disputes and deceptions come to arise. For if one who knows a thing has knowledge of it in his understanding, and is also able to make clear in speech what he understands, and the interpretation of the understanding is a definition, then it is necessary that one who knows the thing should also be able to render its definition.
Definitions also take on, in addition, the difference, which holds for the definition the place of a distinguishing mark. To the definition of man, for instance, the addition of "capable of laughter" makes the whole: a rational, mortal, land-dwelling, footed, laughter-capable animal. For the marks added to a definition according to difference belong properly to the things in question, but do not indicate the nature of the things themselves. At once they say that the rendering of what is proper is the difference; and since whatever bears the difference stands apart from everything else — the difference belonging to it alone and being counter-predicated of the thing in definitions — it is necessary to take the first genus as a starting-point and as underlying subject. In the longer definitions, then, is found the multitude of species discovered through the ten categories, while in the shortest ones the foremost of the proximate species taken together indicate the substance and nature of the thing; and the shortest definition is composed of three elements, the genus and two of the most necessary species. This happens for brevity's sake: thus we state that man is a laughter-capable, rational animal. And whatever belongs distinctively to the thing being defined must also be taken in addition — either its proper virtue or its proper function or certain other such things. The definition, then, being explanatory of the substance of the thing, is unable to grasp with precision the nature of the thing, but makes its disclosure of the substance through the most proper species, and the definition holds the substance, so to speak, within a quality.

======== Stromata — Book 8, Chapter 7 ========

There are two chief causes productive of suspension of judgment. One is the manifold and unstable character of human opinion, which is by nature generative of discord — whether the discord of people with one another, or of each person with himself. The second is the discord found among things themselves, which likewise has reasonably proved productive of suspension of judgment. For being unable, on account of this conflict, either to trust all our impressions, or to distrust all of them (since the very statement that all are untrustworthy, being itself one of the impressions, would then be included among the untrustworthy ones along with the rest), nor yet to trust some and distrust others because of their equal standing, we have been led down into suspension of judgment. And of these two most fundamental causes of suspension, the instability of the mind is productive of discord, while discord is the proximate cause of suspension itself. Hence life is full of law-courts and councils and assemblies, and in general of the choosing and avoiding of the things called good and bad — all of which are evidences of a mind that is at a loss and wavers before the equal weight of opposing arguments. And full too are the bookshelves and the treatises and the compositions of those who disagree in their doctrines and who have persuaded themselves that they know the truth about things that exist.

======== Stromata — Book 8, Chapter 8 ========

There are three things concerned with speech: names, which are symbols of thoughts primarily, and secondarily of the things underlying them; second, thoughts, which are likenesses and impressions of the things underlying them (hence thoughts are the same for all, because the same impression from the underlying things comes to be present in everyone, but names are no longer the same for all, because of the differing dialects); and third, the underlying things themselves, from which our thoughts are impressed upon us. Now names are reduced by grammar to twenty-four universal elements, the letters; for the elements must be determined and fixed, since of particulars, being infinite, there can be no science, and it is proper to science to rest upon universal and determinate theorems. Hence particulars are referred back to universals. The business of the philosophers is occupied with thoughts and with the underlying things. But since the particulars among these are infinite, certain elements have been found for these as well, under which everything sought falls. And if a thing appears to fall under one of the elements, or even several, we shall declare that it exists; but if it escapes them all, that it does not exist at all. Of things said, some are said with combination, as 'man runs,' and others are said without combination, as 'man' and 'runs' and whatever does not constitute a complete statement nor has truth or falsehood. Of the things said without combination, some signify substance, some quality, some quantity, some relation, some place, some time, some position, some possession, some action, some being-acted-upon — these we call the elements of the things that exist in matter and come after the first principles. For these are objects of contemplation by reason, whereas the immaterial things are grasped by mind alone, at the first application of thought.
Of the things ranged under the ten categories, some are said in respect of themselves, as the nine categories, and some in respect of something else. And again, of the things under these ten categories, some are synonymous, as 'ox' and 'man,' insofar as both are 'animal'; for synonymous things are those which have a name common to both — 'animal' — and the same definition, that is, the same account, namely, 'an ensouled substance.' Heteronymous things are those which, concerning the same underlying subject, are called by different names, as 'ascent' and 'descent'; for the road is the same, whether one calls it 'upward' or 'downward.' But there is another kind of heteronymous things, such as 'horse' and 'black,' which have both a different name and a different account from one another, and share nothing of the same underlying subject — these should rather be called simply 'different,' not 'heteronymous.' Polyonymous things are those having the same account but a different name, as 'aor,' 'xiphos,' 'phasganon' (all meaning 'sword'). Paronymous things are those named from something else, as 'the courageous man' from 'courage.' Homonymous things are those using the same name but not having the same account, as 'man,' which is used both of the living animal and of a painted figure. Of homonymous things, some are homonymous by chance, as Ajax the Locrian and Ajax the Salaminian; others by design, and of these, some by resemblance, as 'man' said both of the animal and of the painted figure, others by analogy, as 'the feet of Ida' and our own feet, because both are situated below; and others by function, as the 'foot' of a ship, by which the ship sails, and our own foot, by which we move. Things are also called homonymous when they derive from the same source and refer to the same thing, as a physician's book and a physician's scalpel are both called 'medical,' both because they come from the physician who uses them and because they refer to the same medical science.

======== Stromata — Book 8, Chapter 9 ========

Of causes, some are initiatory, some are sustaining, some are cooperative, and some are those without which a thing cannot occur. Initiatory causes are those that first supply an occasion for something to come to be, as beauty does for the unrestrained, in respect of desire; for when seen it produces in them only the erotic disposition, not indeed by compulsion. Sustaining causes are those which, by a synonymous term, are also called complete-in-themselves, since they are, by themselves, sufficient to produce the effect. Next all the causes must be shown in the case of the one who is learning. The father is the initiatory cause of the learning, the teacher the sustaining cause; the nature of the learner is the cooperative cause, and time holds the place of that without which the effect cannot occur.
A cause, properly speaking, is that which actively supplies something; since we say that iron is capable of cutting not only when it is cutting, but also when it is not cutting. Thus what supplies signifies two things: that which is presently engaged in acting, and also that which has not started to act, though it is furnished with the power to do so.
Some say that causes belong to the class of bodies, others that they belong to the class of incorporeals; others say that body, properly speaking, is a cause, while the incorporeal is a cause only by an extended usage, so to speak, causally; others reverse this, saying that incorporeals are, properly speaking, causes, while bodies are causes only by an extended usage — for instance, cutting, being an activity, has no body, and this bodiless activity is what causes the cutting, since it is both an activity and incorporeal — and the same holds for being cut — though the knife and the object cut are themselves bodily.
'Being the cause of something' is said in three ways: the one which is the cause, as for instance the sculptor; that of which it is the cause, as for instance the statue's coming to be; and that by which it is the cause, as for instance the material — for it is by the bronze that he is the cause of the statue's coming to be. So coming-to-be and being-cut, that of which something is the cause, are activities and are incorporeal.
In this connection causes are causes of predicates, or, as some say, of 'sayables' (for Cleanthes and Archedemus call predicates sayables); or rather, and more properly, some causes will be said to be causes of predicates, as of 'it is being cut,' whose case is being-cut, and others of propositions, as of 'a ship comes to be,' whose case, again, is the ship's coming to be; but Aristotle calls them causes of common nouns, such as of house, ship, burning, cutting. It is agreed that the case has no body; and on this basis that sophism gets untangled: 'whatever word you utter comes out through your lips' — granted, true; 'but you utter the word house, so a house comes out through your lips' — false; for what we mean is not the physical house, but the incorporeal case for which 'house' merely serves as the name.
And we say the builder builds, in reference to the thing that is to come to be. So too we say a cloak is being woven [...]; for the maker indicates an activity. And it is not that the maker belongs to one thing and the cause to another, but they belong to the same thing [whether of the cloak or of the house]; for insofar as one is the cause of something's coming to be, in that same respect one is also the producer of its coming to be. The same thing, then, is both cause and producer [and that on account of which]. And if something is both a cause and a producer, this is altogether also that on account of which; but if something is that on account of which, it is not altogether also a cause. For many things concur toward one effect, things on account of which the end comes about, but not all of them are causes. Medea, for example, would never have slain her offspring if rage had not seized her, and rage would never have seized her without jealousy, and jealousy would never have arisen without her falling in love, and none of that without Jason's voyage to Colchis, and no voyage without the building of the Argo, and no Argo unless timber had first been felled on Pelion. Amid all these, each stands as something 'on account of which,' yet none of them but Medea herself counts as a cause of the killing.
That which does not prevent is inactive, and therefore that which does not prevent is not a cause, but that which does prevent is. For a cause is conceived of in terms of acting and doing something.
Further, that which does not prevent is separate from the thing that comes about (for indeed the thing is accomplished for this very reason, that what is capable of preventing it is not present), whereas the cause stands in relation to the thing that comes about; therefore that which does not prevent could not be a cause.
A cause is spoken of in four ways: the maker, as the sculptor; the matter, as the bronze; the form, as the impressed shape; and the end, as the prize awarded by the games-master. Bronze holds the place of 'that without which' with respect to the statue's coming to be, and is likewise a cause; for everything without which the effect cannot possibly come about is, of necessity, a cause, though not a cause in the unqualified sense. For that without which is not a sustaining cause, but a cooperative one. Everything that acts produces the effect together with a fitness on the part of the thing acted upon; for the cause disposes, while each thing is acted upon according to its own nature. Fitness is what supplies the occasion, and it holds the place of the things without which the effect cannot come about. A cause is therefore inoperative without fitness, yet fitness itself is not a cause but a cooperative factor, since every cause is conceived of in terms of acting. The earth cannot fashion itself into being; therefore it likewise cannot stand as its own cause. It is ridiculous to say that it is not the fire that is the cause of burning but the wood, nor the knife the cause of the cutting but the flesh, nor the strength of his opponent the cause of the athlete's being thrown, but his own weakness.
The sustaining cause has no need of time; for the branding-iron, the instant it is pressed against the flesh, produces the pain. Of the initiatory causes, some need time until the effect comes about, others do not, as the falling that causes a fracture. Perhaps these are not called timeless by an absolute lack of time, but by a diminution of it, just as 'suddenly' too does not occur apart from time altogether.
Every cause, as a cause, must be grasped by a twofold conception; since it is conceived of as being of something and as being in relation to something — of something, namely the effect, as the knife is the cause of cutting; and in relation to something, namely to that which is suitably disposed, as fire is in relation to wood, for it will not burn adamant. A cause belongs to the class of relatives; for it is conceived of in terms of its relation to something else, so that we must attend to two things in order to conceive of the cause as a cause.
The same account holds concerning the demiurge and maker, and concerning the father. Nothing serves as its own cause, nor is anything father to itself, since otherwise the first thing would turn into the second. Rather, the cause is what acts and disposes, whereas what comes to be through the cause is what is acted upon and disposed. But the same thing, taken in relation to itself, cannot both act and be disposed at the same time; nor can it be both son and father. And besides, the cause is prior in substance to the thing that comes to be by it, as the knife is prior to the cutting. But the same thing cannot, in the same respect, both be prior in time to the matter and, insofar as it is a cause, also come later and later in time, insofar as it is the work of the cause. And to be differs from to become; so likewise a thing is a cause of what comes to be, but a father of a son. For the same thing cannot, in the same respect, both be and come to be at the same time. Nothing, then, is the cause of itself.
Causes do not cause one another, yet they do act as causes on behalf of one another. For an existing splenic condition does not cause the fever itself, but rather causes the fever's coming to be; and the fever, when it already exists, is not the cause of the spleen, but of the increase of that condition. Likewise the virtues, thanks to their mutual entailment, serve one another as causes of their staying undivided; the stones set within an arch serve one another as causes of remaining under the predicate 'stand,' though none causes another; and instructor and pupil serve one another as causes of the predicate 'making progress.' Sometimes such mutual causes concern the very same outcome, as merchant and shopkeeper serve one another as causes of turning a profit; and sometimes of one thing and another, as the knife and the flesh — the one being cause to the flesh of being cut, the flesh being cause to the knife of cutting.
'An eye for an eye' and 'a life for a life.'
For whoever deals another a lethal blow becomes for that man the cause of his death, or rather of his death's coming to be; yet should that same man strike back and kill him in turn, he too now has the first as his cause — though not in the identical sense he was a cause to him, but in a different sense. For he brought about the man's death, yet it was not his own death that struck the fatal blow against him in return, but the injured man acting himself; so he has thus become cause of one outcome, while having another as the cause acting upon him. And the one who commits injustice becomes, to the other, the cause of the injury suffered; but the law that commands retaliation is not the cause of the injustice, but is, to the one, a cause of retribution, and to the other, a cause of correction. So causes are not causes of one another as causes, but they are causes for one another.
It is further asked whether, when many causes concur toward one effect, they become many causes. For the men who join together are the cause of the ship's being launched; but not each one individually is the cause — <only together with the others, unless the joint cause too is to be called a cause. Others say that if there are many causes, each individually becomes the cause of one thing.> For instance, though happiness is one thing, the virtues, being many, are its causes, and likewise for being warmed and for being pained there are many causes alike. Perhaps, then, the many virtues form, in respect of capacity, a single unity, as do the things that warm and the things that pain; and the whole multitude of virtues, unified under one genus, becomes the cause of a single thing, namely happiness. In truth, initiatory causes of one thing become many both by genus and by species — by genus, of falling ill in general, such as chilling, overheating, fatigue, indigestion, drunkenness; by species, of fever in particular. But sustaining causes are many only by genus, no longer also by species. For though smelling sweet is one thing by genus, there are many causes of it by species — frankincense, rose, saffron, storax, myrrh, perfume; for the rose would not smell as sweet as the myrrh does.
The same thing becomes the cause of opposite effects, sometimes on account of the magnitude of the cause and its power, sometimes on account of the fitness of the thing acted upon. By virtue of a particular power: one string, depending on how taut or loose it is strung, yields either a high pitch or a low one. On account of the fitness of the things acted upon: honey tastes sweet to the healthy but bitter to the feverish, and one and the same wine drives some to anger and others to good cheer, and the same sun melts wax but hardens clay.
Of causes, then, some are plainly evident, some are grasped by inference, and some are unclear, grasped by reasoning by analogy. And of the unclear, some are unclear only for a time — hidden at one time, but again plainly seen at another — while others are unclear by nature, incapable of ever becoming plainly evident at any time. And of those unclear by nature, some are comprehensible — which some have called 'not unclear,' being grasped through signs by analogical reasoning, as is the symmetry of the pores discerned by reason alone — while others are incomprehensible, incapable in any way whatsoever of falling under comprehension; these indeed are called unclear in the absolute sense.
And some causes are initiatory, some sustaining, some joint causes, and some cooperative. And some belong to what is according to nature, others to what is contrary to nature, others to disease; and, in a subordinate way, some belong to the affections, some to their magnitude, and some to times and seasons.
Now when the initiatory causes are removed, the effect remains; but a sustaining cause is one whose presence keeps the effect in existence and whose removal removes it. The sustaining cause is called, by a synonymous term, also complete-in-itself, since on its own it suffices to bring about the effect. And if this self-sufficient cause points to a self-sufficient activity, the cooperative cause signifies a service and a joint ministration with another. If, then, it contributes nothing, it will not even be called cooperative; but if it does contribute, it is altogether the cause of that to which it contributes, that is, of what comes about through it. A cooperative cause, then, is one whose presence brings about the effect — in the case of the plainly evident, together with a plainly evident cause, and in the case of the unclear, together with an unclear one. And the joint cause too belongs to the class of causes, in the way that a comrade-in-arms still counts as a soldier, and a fellow trainee still counts as a trainee. Now the cooperative cause assists the sustaining cause toward the intensification of what comes about by it, but the joint cause is not of the same notion; for a thing can be a joint cause even if it is not a sustaining cause. For the joint cause is conceived of as being with another, since it too is unable by itself alone to produce the effect, being a cause together with another cause. Here is where the cooperative cause parts ways with the joint cause: the joint cause lends its contribution alongside another factor that, alone, cannot produce the effect, whereas the cooperative cause does not act by itself alone, but, coming to the aid of another that does act by itself, cooperates with it so that the effect comes about more forcefully. And it is especially the case, when a cooperative cause arises out of an initiatory one <toward being cooperative>, that it demonstrates the power of the cause extending further.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 1 ========

Those who bring the rich gifts of encomiastic speeches would, I think, be justly judged not only flatterers and servile, since they pretend to be bestowing a great favor when in fact they bestow nothing gracious at all, but also impious and treacherous men — impious, because, neglecting to praise and glorify the only perfect and good God, from whom are all things, and through whom are all things, and unto whom are all things, they hang instead . . . . . . . . . . . the prize on men . . . . . . . . . . . wallowing in life . . . . . . the chief matter lying under the judgment of God; treacherous, because, when abundance itself is by its own nature sufficient to make soft and to corrupt the souls of those who possess it and to turn them aside from the road by which it is possible to attain salvation, these men further confound the minds of the rich, puffing them up with the pleasures of immoderate praises, and, save for the wealth on account of which they are admired, teaching them to despise absolutely everything else — piling, as the saying goes, fire upon fire, pouring vanity upon vanity, and heaping bulk upon wealth, a heavier burden upon a nature already heavy, wealth from which they ought rather to be taking away and cutting back, as from a treacherous and deadly disease; for to him who is lifted up and magnified there stands fixed, in reversal, a change and a fall into lowliness, as the divine word teaches. To me it seems far more humane to attend to the rich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . than to join in bringing them to ruin . . . . . . . . . . . their salvation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . in every way possible — on the one hand asking these things of God, who steadily and gladly grants such things to his own children, and on the other healing their souls by the word, through the grace of the Savior, illuminating them and leading them on toward the possession of truth, which whoever attains and is also made radiant by good works alone shall carry off the prize of eternal life. And prayer needs a soul that is vigorous and rich, sustained evenly to the very last day of life, and the manner of life needs a disposition that is good and steadfast and stretched out toward all the commandments of the Savior.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 2 ========

It seems that the reason salvation appears harder for the rich than for those without possessions is not a single thing but manifold. For some, hearing at once and offhand the Lord's saying, that a camel finds it easier to squeeze through a needle's opening than a wealthy man to gain entrance to the kingdom of heaven, despair of themselves as men who cannot live that life, and, giving everything over to the world, and clinging to the life here as though it were the only one left to them, have fallen away all the more from the road that leads yonder, no longer troubling themselves to inquire either whom the Master and Teacher means by "the rich," or how what is impossible among men becomes possible. Others, on the other hand, have understood this rightly and fittingly, but, neglecting the works that bear upon salvation, have not made the preparation needed to obtain the things hoped for. Now I say this with both classes of the rich in mind — those who have perceived both the power of the Savior and his manifest salvation — while I care little for the uninitiated in the truth.
It is necessary, then, for those who love the truth and love the brethren . . .

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 3 ========

And neither growing arrogantly bold toward the wealthy who are called, nor again on the other hand cringing before them out of one's own love of gain, one must first remove from them by argument their empty despair, and show, with the exposition of the Lord's sayings that is required, that the inheritance of the kingdom of the heavens has not been utterly cut off from them, if they will obey the commandments; then, when they have learned that they fear a groundless fear, and that the Savior gladly receives them if they are willing, then one must also show the way beforehand and initiate them into the mysteries, so that by what sort of works and dispositions they might attain the hope, since it is set before them neither as impossible nor, on the contrary, as gained at random. But in the very way it stands with athletes — to compare small and perishable things with great and imperishable ones — let the man who is rich according to the world reckon this concerning himself as well. For among those athletes, one man, because he despaired of being able to win and to obtain the crowns, did not even enroll himself at all for the contest; while another, who did cast this hope into his mind, but did not admit toils and exercises and the fitting foods, came through uncrowned and failed of his hopes. So too let a man who is clothed in this earthly covering not, from the very outset, disqualify himself from the Savior's contests, if he is faithful and perceives the greatness of God's love for mankind; nor yet again, remaining untrained and unexercised, let him hope to share, without dust and without sweat, in the crowns of incorruption; but let him submit himself, bringing his own person, with the Word as trainer and Christ as president of the games; and let the new covenant of the Lord be appointed as his food and drink. Let the commandments be his exercises. Let good dispositions be his elegance and adornment — love, faith, hope, knowledge of truth . . . gentleness, compassion, dignity — so that, when the last trumpet gives the signal for the end of the race and of the departure from here, as it were from the stadium of life, he may stand before the judge of the games with a good conscience, victorious, acknowledged as worthy of the fatherland above, into which he returns with crowns and with angelic proclamations.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 4 ========

May the Savior, then, grant us, as we begin our discourse from this point, to contribute to the brothers what is true and fitting and salutary, first with a view to hope itself, and second with a view to the way of approach to that hope. And he who freely grants to those in need also teaches those who ask, and dissolves their ignorance, and shakes off their despair, by again introducing to us the same sayings concerning the rich, becoming for us the reliable interpreter and expounder of his own words. For there is nothing like hearing the very sayings themselves once more — the sayings which, up to now, have troubled us as we listened to them in the gospels without due examination and mistakenly, out of childishness. "As he was setting out on his way, a man ran up and knelt before him, saying: 'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' And Jesus said: 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but One, God. You know the commandments: do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and mother.' And he answered and said to him: 'All these I have kept from my youth.' And Jesus, looking upon him, loved him, and said: 'One thing you lack. If you wish to be perfect, sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.' But he, saddened at this word, went away grieving, for he had great possessions and fields. And Jesus, looking around, said to his disciples: 'How hard it is for those who have possessions to enter the kingdom of God!' And the disciples were astounded at his words. And again Jesus answered and said to them: 'Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God! Sooner would a camel pass through a needle's opening than a wealthy man make his way into God's kingdom.' And they were exceedingly astonished, and said: 'Who then can be saved?' And he, looking upon them, said: 'What is impossible with men is possible with God.' Peter began to say to him: 'Look, we have left everything and followed you.' And Jesus answered and said: 'Truly I say to you, whoever leaves his own home, and parents, and brothers, and possessions for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, will receive a hundredfold. Now, in this present time, to have fields and possessions and houses and brothers, along with persecutions — to what end? But in the age to come there is eternal life. And the first will be last, and the last first.'"

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 5 ========

This, then, is what stands written in the Gospel according to Mark; and in all the other Gospels that are agreed upon, though perhaps here and there a word is exchanged for another in each, all display the very same agreement of sense. But we must know clearly that the Savior teaches nothing in a merely human way; rather he teaches all things to his own by a divine and mystical wisdom, so that we ought not to listen to what is said in a fleshly manner, but to search out and come to understand the meaning hidden within them, with worthy inquiry and comprehension. For even those things which seem to have been spoken plainly by the Lord himself to the disciples are found, even now, to require attention no less — indeed still more — than the things uttered enigmatically, on account of the surpassing excess of wisdom within them. And where even what is thought to have been opened up by him to those within, to the very children of the kingdom whom he himself has called, still has need of further consideration, how much more do those sayings which seem to have been uttered simply, and for that reason were not even questioned by their hearers, yet bear upon the whole end of salvation itself, and are wrapped in a wondrous and heaven-transcending depth of meaning — such sayings it is fitting not to receive superficially with the ears, but rather, letting the mind sink down into the very spirit of the Savior and the hidden secret of his meaning.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 6 ========

For our Lord and Savior was gladly asked a question most fitting for him — Life was asked about life, the Savior about salvation, the Teacher about the chief matter [not merely of the doctrines being taught], Truth about true immortality, the Word about the Father's Word, the Perfect One about perfect rest, the Incorruptible about steadfast incorruption. He was asked about these things for the sake of which he had also come down — the things he trains us in, the things he teaches, the things he supplies — so that he might display the very theme of the gospel, namely that it is the gift of eternal life. And being God, he foreknew both what he was about to be questioned on and what answer someone was going to give him; for who could know better than the prophet of prophets and the lord of every prophetic spirit? And being called good, taking from this very word itself the starting point, he begins his teaching from that point, turning the disciple back toward God the good, the first and only steward of eternal life, which the Son gives to us, having received it from him.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 7 ========

Therefore the greatest and most crowning of the teachings that bear upon life must be laid down in the soul from the very beginning, namely to know the eternal God, the giver of eternal things, the first and the highest, one and good God — whom it is possible to gain through knowledge and apprehension; for this is the unchanging and unshaken foundation and groundwork of life, the knowledge of God who truly is and who bestows the things that are, that is, the eternal things, he from whom the very existence of all else comes, and their power to remain in being. For ignorance of him is death, but the full knowledge of him, and kinship with him, and love toward him, and being made like him, are life alone.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 8 ========

This one, then, he exhorts the man who is to live the true life to come to know first — him "whom none know but the Son, and any to whom the Son chooses to unveil him." Then, after him, to learn the greatness of the Savior and the newness of his grace, since indeed, according to the apostle, "the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ"; and the things given through a faithful servant are not equal to those bestowed by the true son. If, then, the law of Moses were sufficient to furnish eternal life, it would be in vain that the Savior himself came and suffered for our sake, running the course of humanity from birth to the sign of the cross, and it would be in vain that a man who had done all the commandments of the law "from his youth" should fall on his knees and beg immortality from another. For he had not merely fulfilled the law, but had begun to do so from his very first years; since indeed what is great or exceedingly splendid about an old age barren of the wrongs that youthful desires beget, or boiling anger, or the love of money? But if someone, amid the leaping of youth and the heat of that age, has shown forth a mind ripened and older than his years, this man is a wondrous contestant, distinguished, and gray-haired in judgment. Yet even such a man as this is exactly persuaded that, while he lacks nothing for righteousness, he is wholly in need of life; and so he asks for it from the one alone able to give it, and toward the law he shows confidence, but the Son of God he supplicates. He is transferred "from faith to faith"; as one who, tossing precariously in the law and riding at anchor dangerously, shifts his moorings to the Savior.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 9 ========

Jesus, then, does not reproach him as one who has not fulfilled all the things of the law — indeed he loves him and warmly embraces the obedience he had learned in those things — but he says he is incomplete with respect to eternal life, as one who has not fulfilled the perfect things, a workman of the law but idle as regards the true life. Those precepts, then, are good too (who denies it? for "the commandment is holy"), leading up, by way of a certain tutelage accompanied by fear and preliminary instruction, toward the utmost legislation and grace of Jesus. But "Christ is the fulfillment of the law unto righteousness for everyone who believes," not making them slaves, as a slave would, but sons and brothers and joint-heirs, for those who carry out the will of the Father.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 10 ========

"If you wish to become perfect." So he was not yet perfect; for nothing is more perfect than the perfect. And divinely the phrase "if you wish" made plain the self-determining freedom of the soul he was addressing. For the choice lay with the man, as a free being, while the giving lay with God, as Lord. And he gives to those who wish and are earnest and ask, so that in this way salvation may become properly their own. For God does not compel — for compulsion is hateful to God — but to those who seek he supplies, and to those who ask he grants, and to those who knock he opens. If, then, you wish — if you truly wish and are not deceiving yourself — acquire the thing that is lacking. "One thing you lack" — the one thing, my own thing. The good. That which is already above the law. That which the law does not give. That which the law does not contain, which belongs properly to the living. Indeed, the man who had fulfilled all the requirements of the law "from his youth" and had boasted of his surpassing achievements was not able to add this one thing to the whole — the thing singled out by the Savior, that he might receive eternal life, which he longed for. Instead he went away grieved, vexed at the command of life, for the sake of which he had been pleading. For he did not truly want life, as he claimed, but wrapped himself only in the reputation of good intention. And though he was capable of busying himself about many things, this one thing — the work of life — he was unable, unwilling, and too weak to accomplish. It was something like what the Savior said to Martha, who was busied about many things and being pulled about and troubled with serving, when she found fault with her sister because, having left off her service, she sat at his feet keeping a disciple's leisure: "You are troubled about many things; but Mary has chosen the good part, and it shall not be taken away from her." So too he was bidding this man, having let go of his many concerns, to be devoted and to sit attentively upon the one thing, while the grace of the one who bestows eternal life is added to it.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 11 ========

What, then, was it that urged him to flight and made him desert his teacher, his supplication, his hope, his life, and all his previous labors? "Sell what you possess." But what does this mean? Not what some people readily suppose it to mean — that he commands a man to throw away his existing property and to renounce his wealth — but rather to banish from the soul the opinions held about wealth, the attachment to it, the excessive desire for it, the fluttering agitation and sickness over it, the cares, the thorns of life that choke the seed of life. For it is no great or enviable thing simply to be without money for no reason bound up with life — since in that case those who have nothing at all anywhere, but are destitute and beg for their daily bread, the poor flung down along the roads, "not knowing" God and "the righteousness of God," would, merely on the strength of being utterly destitute and helpless in life and lacking even the smallest necessities, be the most blessed and the most beloved of God, and alone possess eternal life. Nor again is it anything new to renounce riches and give them away to the poor or to one's homeland, a thing which many did before the Savior's descent — some for the sake of leisure devoted to letters and to dead wisdom, others for empty fame and vain glory: the Anaxagorases and the Democrituses and the Crateses.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 12 ========

What, then, is it that he announces as new and peculiar to God and alone life-giving, which did not save the men of old? But if the "new creation," the Son of God, reveals and teaches something distinctive, he does not enjoin the visible act, which others also have performed, but through it signifies something else, greater and more divine and more perfect: the stripping bare of the soul itself and its disposition from the passions that inhere in it, and the cutting out and casting away, root and all, of whatever is alien to right judgment. For this is a lesson peculiar to the believer, and a teaching worthy of the Savior. For the men of old, despising external things, gave up their possessions and let them go to ruin, but the passions of their souls, I think, they even intensified; for they fell into arrogance and boastfulness and vainglory and contempt for other men, as though they themselves had accomplished something beyond what is human. How then could the Savior have urged upon those who are to live forever things that would harm and corrupt them with respect to the life he promises? And besides, there is this further point: a man who has unloaded his possessions can nonetheless still have the desire and craving for wealth clinging to him and living on within him, having cast away the use of it while, being at once destitute and yearning for what he squandered, he grieves doubly - both from the absence of the means to serve his needs and from the presence of his regret. For it is unattainable and impossible for one who is in need of life's necessities not to have his judgment broken and to be kept from higher pursuits, while he tries by whatever means and from whatever source to procure these things.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 13 ========

And how much more useful is the opposite course — for a man who has acquired sufficient possessions neither to suffer hardship himself over his property nor to fail to help those whom he ought? For what fellowship could be left among men, if no one had anything? And how could this doctrine not be found plainly opposed to and at war with many other fine doctrines of the Lord? "Make friends for yourselves out of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings." "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys nor thieves break through." How could anyone feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, and gather in the homeless — things whose neglect he threatens with fire and outer darkness — if each person himself were beforehand lacking in all these things? But indeed he himself lodges as a guest with Zacchaeus and Levi and Matthew, rich men and tax collectors, and he does not command them to give up their money, but having laid down its just use and taken away its unjust use he proclaims: "Today salvation has come to this house." So highly does he praise their usefulness that even with this added condition he still enjoins fellowship — to give drink to the thirsty, to give bread to the hungry, to receive the homeless, to clothe the naked. But if it is not possible to fulfill these needs except by means of money, and yet he commands men to renounce money, what else would the Lord be doing than urging the same things both to be given and not given, to feed and not feed, to receive and to shut out, to share and not to share — which of all things is the most irrational.
One must not, then, cast away money, which is also useful to one's neighbors —

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 14 ========

For possessions are so called because they are possessable, and riches are so called because they are useful, prepared by God for the use of men — they lie ready and are laid at hand like a kind of material and instruments for good use by those who know how to use them. An instrument, if you use it skillfully, is skillful; if you fall short of the skill, it partakes of your unskillfulness, though it is itself blameless. Wealth is just such an instrument. You can use it justly; then it serves justice. Someone uses it unjustly; then again it is found the servant of injustice. For it is by nature suited to serve, not to rule. It is not right, then, to blame that which of itself has neither the good nor the evil, being blameless in itself; rather blame that which has the power to use these things both well and badly, according to whichever it chooses — for it is in this very respect that it is culpable. And this is the mind of man, which has within itself a free tribunal and the self-determination to manage the things given to it. So let no one destroy his possessions rather than the passions of the soul, which do not allow the better use of what one has — so that, having become noble and good, he may also be able to use these possessions well. The command, then, to renounce all one's possessions and sell all that one has must be understood in this way, as spoken with reference to the soul's passions.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 15 ========

I for my part would say this too: since some things belong to the soul within, and others lie outside it, and if the soul makes good use of them, these outward things too appear good, but if it uses them wickedly, they appear wicked — does he who bids us alienate our possessions thereby renounce first those things whose removal still leaves the passions remaining, or rather those things whose removal makes even our possessions useful? Now the man who has cast away his worldly abundance can still be rich in his passions even when the material is no longer present; for the disposition works out its own effect, and chokes and presses the reasoning faculty, and inflames it with the desires that are bred along with it. It has therefore done him no good at all to be poor in money while he is rich in passions. For he has not cast away the things that ought to be cast away, but the things that are indifferent, and has cut himself off from what was useful, while he has kindled the more fiercely the innate matter of vice through the want of outward things. What must be renounced, then, is our possessions insofar as they are harmful — not insofar as one, if he knows their right use, is able to profit others by them as well. What benefits is what is administered with prudence and self-control and piety; what must be thrust away is what does harm; but the outward things themselves do no harm.
So then the Lord too introduces the use of outward things, bidding us put away not the necessities of life, but the things that make bad use of these; and these are

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 16 ========

...but they were the sicknesses and passions of the soul. This wealth of theirs, while present, is death-bringing to all, but once destroyed, is salvation-bringing; of which wealth the soul must be purged clean — that is, must be made poor and stripped bare — and so offering itself already to hear the Savior saying, "Come, follow me." For he himself already becomes a way for the one pure in heart, but into an impure soul the grace of God does not slip in; and impure is the soul that is rich in desires and travails in labor with many loves, worldly ones. For the man who has possessions and gold and silver and houses, and holds them as gifts of God, and ministers with them to God who gave them, for the salvation of men, and who knows that he has acquired these for the sake of his brothers rather than for himself, and who is master over the possession of them, not being a slave to what he possesses, nor carrying these about in his soul, nor bounding and circumscribing his own life within them, but always laboring at some good and divine work — even if he should at some point have to be stripped of these, being able with a cheerful mind to bear their removal just as equally as he bore their abundance — this is the man who is called blessed by the Lord and named poor in spirit, a ready heir of the kingdom of heaven, not a rich man unable to live.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 17 ========

But the man who carries his riches in his soul, and instead of the Spirit of God carries gold or a field in his heart, and is forever making his possession boundless, and looking each time for more, bowed down toward the earth and shackled by the snares of the world -- being earth, and destined to depart into earth -- how can he desire the kingdom of heaven, or give it any thought? A man who carries not a heart but a field or a mine will of necessity be found among those very things he chose. "For where the mind of man is, there also is his treasure."
Now the Lord knows treasures of two kinds: the one good, for "the good man brings forth good out of the good treasure of his heart"; the other evil, for "the evil man brings forth evil out of the evil treasure, because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." Just as, then, treasure is not a single thing among men, in his usage any more than in ours -- the sort that grants a great sudden gain upon being found, but also a second kind, profitless and unenviable and hard to acquire and even harmful -- so too wealth is in one case of good things, in another of evil things, since we know that wealth and treasure are not, by their nature, separate from one another. And one sort of wealth would be worth acquiring and worth wrapping oneself in, while the other is not worth acquiring and ought to be thrown away; and in the same way poverty too -- the spiritual kind -- is to be called blessed. That is why Matthew added: "Blessed are the poor" -- how? -- "in spirit." And again: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God." So then wretched are those of the opposite poverty, who have no share in God, and still less share in human possessions, and have no taste of the righteousness of God.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 18 ========

Wherefore the rich must be listened to mathematically — those who will enter the kingdom with difficulty — neither crudely nor boorishly nor carnally; for it has not been said in that way. Nor does salvation depend on external things: not whether these be many or few, small or great, glorious or inglorious, well-reputed or ill-reputed, but on the virtue of the soul — on faith and hope and love and brotherly love and knowledge and gentleness and freedom from pride and truth, of which salvation is the prize. For no one will live because of beauty of body, nor perish for the opposite reason; but he who uses the body given to him purely and according to God will live, while he who corrupts the temple of God will be corrupted. It is possible for even an ugly man to be licentious, and for a beautiful one to be temperate; neither does strength and size of body give life, nor does any defect of limb destroy it, but the soul that makes use of these supplies the cause on either side. "Endure," it says, "being struck on the face" — which even a strong man in good condition can obey, and again a weak man may transgress through incontinence of judgment. So too a man who is poor and without means might be found drunk with his desires, while another, rich in money, is sober, and though a beggar in pleasures is convinced, prudent, pure, disciplined. If, then, it is above all and first the soul that is to live, and virtue growing up around it saves it while vice puts it to death, it is now plainly clear that the soul, even when destitute of those things by which one is corrupted through wealth, is saved, and, even when rich in those things which wealth grinds down, is put to death; and let us no longer seek the cause of the end elsewhere than in the condition and disposition of the soul toward obedience to God and purity, and toward transgression of the commandments and the gathering together of vice.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 19 ========

He, then, is truly and rightly rich who is rich in the virtues and able to make holy and faithful use of every fortune, while the counterfeit rich man is the one who is rich according to the flesh and has transferred his life to external possession — possession that passes away and perishes, that becomes now one man's and now another's, and in the end belongs to no one at all. Again, in the same way, there is a genuine poor man, and another poor man who is counterfeit and falsely so called. The one is poor in spirit, and this poverty is properly his own; the other is poor in worldly goods, and this belongs to what is alien to him. To him, then, who is not poor in worldly goods but rich in the passions, the man who is not poor in spirit but rich toward God says: "Depart from the alien possessions abiding in your soul, so that, having become pure in heart, you may see God" — which is the very thing that in other words is called entering into the kingdom of heaven. And how are you to depart from them? By selling them. What then — are you to take money in exchange for your possessions, making an exchange of one wealth for another, turning your visible property into silver? By no means. Rather, in place of the things that formerly dwelt within the soul you long to save, you are to bring in instead another wealth, one that makes godlike and supplies life eternal — the dispositions that accord with the commandment of God. In exchange for these there will remain to you a reward and an honor: unbroken salvation and everlasting incorruption. Thus do you sell your possessions well — the many superfluous things that shut the heavens against you — exchanging them for what is able to save. Let the poor of the flesh, who have need of such things, keep them; but you, having received spiritual wealth in their place, would already possess treasure in the heavens.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 20 ========

Not understanding these things properly, the rich and law-abiding man—not understanding either how the same person can be both poor and rich, can both have possessions and not have them, can both use the world and not use it—went away gloomy and downcast, abandoning the rank of life which he only desired but could not attain, having made the difficult thing impossible for himself by his own doing. For it was difficult not to be led about, nor to have one's soul dazzled by the luxuries attending manifest wealth and by its blooming enchantments, yet it was not impossible even in that condition to lay hold of salvation, if one should transfer himself from sensible wealth to the intelligible, God-taught wealth, and learn to use indifferent things well and properly, and in such a way as to press on toward eternal life. And the disciples too at first themselves became fearful and astonished. Having heard what, exactly? Was it perhaps because they themselves had possessed much money? But even these things—the little nets and hooks and the small serving-boats—they had long ago abandoned, which were all they had. Why then, in fear, do they say, "Who then can be saved?" They heard rightly, and as disciples of him who spoke in parables and obscurely—the Lord—they perceived the depth of his words. As far as freedom from possessions was concerned, then, they were of good hope regarding salvation; but since they were conscious in themselves that they had not yet fully put away the passions (for they were newly taught and had only recently been enlisted as men by the Savior), "they were exceedingly astonished," and despaired of themselves no less than of that rich man who clung terribly to his possession—which he preferred to eternal life. It was fitting, then, that the disciples should feel fear altogether: for if both the man who had acquired wealth and the man pregnant with the passions—of which they too were rich—would alike be driven away from the heavens; salvation belongs to souls free from passion and pure.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 21 ========

But the Lord answers, because "what is impossible with men is possible with God." This too, again, is full of great wisdom. For a man practicing and toiling by himself to attain freedom from passion accomplishes nothing, but if he becomes manifestly overdesiring of this and zealously in earnest, he prevails through the addition of the power that comes from God; for God breathes together with souls that are willing, but if they should fall away from their eagerness, the spirit given from God is withdrawn as well. For to save the unwilling belongs to one who uses force, but to save those who choose belongs to one who bestows grace. Nor does the kingdom of God belong to those who sleep and are sluggish, but "the violent seize it by force"; for this alone is a good violence, to do violence to God and to seize life from God, and he who recognizes those who cling violently — or rather, firmly — yielded to them; for God rejoices to be overcome in such matters. Accordingly, blessed Peter, having heard these things — the chosen one, the distinguished one, the first of the disciples, for whom alone, besides himself, the Savior paid the tax — quickly seized upon and grasped the meaning. And what does he say? "See, we have left all things and followed you." Now if by "all things" he means his own possessions — four obols, so to speak, as the saying goes — then in leaving them behind he is magnified, and by declaring them worth an equivalent he might unwittingly lay claim to the kingdom of heaven. But if, as we are just now saying, having cast away the old intelligible possessions and the diseases of the soul, they follow in the footsteps of the Teacher, this would already be counted toward those who are to be enrolled in the heavens. For this is truly to follow the Savior — pursuing his sinlessness and perfection, and adorning and tuning the soul toward him as toward a mirror, and disposing all things through all things alike.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 22 ========

»But Jesus answered: Amen, I say to you, whoever leaves his own possessions, and parents, and brothers, and wealth, for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, shall receive a hundredfold.« But let not even this trouble us, nor that saying still harsher than it, uttered elsewhere in these words: »Whoever does not hate father and mother and children, and moreover his own soul too, cannot be my disciple.« For the God of peace does not introduce hatred and estrangement from those dearest to us — he who, indeed, exhorts us to love even our enemies. But if enemies are to be loved, then by the same proportion, rising upward from them, those nearest of kin are to be loved as well; or if those of one's own blood are to be hated, then the argument, descending in the same proportion, teaches that enemies are to be set at a still greater distance — so that the two sayings, in destroying one another, would stand convicted of contradiction. But they do not destroy one another, not even nearly. For it is from one and the same judgment and disposition, and by one and the same standard, that a man would both hate a father and love an enemy: namely, the man who neither retaliates against an enemy nor reveres a father more than Christ. For in the one saying the Lord cuts away hatred and the doing of evil; in the other, an excessive and misplaced deference toward one's own kindred. If a father or a son or a brother should prove godless and become a hindrance to someone's faith, and an obstacle to the life above, so as to harm his salvation, then let him not agree with such a one nor be of one mind with him, but let him dissolve the tie of fleshly kinship for the sake of the spiritual enmity it entails.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 23 ========

Imagine the matter as a trial at law. Let your father seem to stand beside you and say, 'I begot you and reared you; follow me and join me in wrongdoing, and do not obey the law of Christ' — and whatever else a blasphemous man, dead in his nature, might say. But from the other side, hear the Savior: 'I begot you anew, when you had been born badly by the world unto death; I have set you free, healed you, ransomed you. I will provide for you life unceasing, eternal, above the world. I will show you the face of God the good Father. "Call no man on earth your father." "Let the dead bury their dead, but you, follow me" — for I will lead you up into the rest and enjoyment of good things unspeakable and indescribable, "which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man — things into which angels long to stoop and look, which God has prepared for the saints, for the children who love him." I am your nourisher, giving myself as bread, of which whoever has tasted no longer suffers the trial of death; and daily giving a drink of immortality. I am the teacher of teachings above the heavens. For your sake I contended against death, and I paid your death, which you owed on account of your former sins and your unbelief toward God.' Having heard these words from each side, judge on your own behalf, and cast your vote for your own salvation — even if a brother should say the like, or a child, or a wife, or anyone whatsoever. Before all else let Christ the victor be within you, for he contends on your behalf.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 24 ========

Are you able to be superior to riches? Then say so, and Christ does not drive you away from possession — the Lord does not begrudge it. But do you see yourself being overcome by them and overturned? Let go. Cast it away. Hate it, renounce it, flee it: "and if your right eye causes you to stumble, cut it out at once"; better for a one-eyed man to enter the kingdom of God than for a whole-bodied man to go into the fire. And if it is a hand, or a foot, or the soul itself, hate it. For if it perishes here for Christ's sake, it will be saved there.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 25 ========

Akin to this same judgment is what follows: "But now, in this time, to what end is it to have fields and money and houses and brothers, along with persecutions?" For he calls people to life neither moneyless, nor homeless, nor brotherless. Since indeed he has called even the rich — but in the manner we have already stated — and brothers in the same way, as Peter with Andrew, and James with John, the sons of Zebedee, but ones who are of one mind both with each other and with Christ. But the phrase "along with persecutions" disapproves of having each of these things together with persecution. Now persecution is of one kind that comes upon men from without, from those who drive the faithful either through enmity, or through envy, or through love of gain, or through diabolical activity; but the harshest persecution is the one from within, sent forth from each person's own soul when it is being corrupted by godless desires and manifold pleasures and base hopes and destructive daydreams — whenever the soul, ever reaching after more and raving under savage lusts and burning, is, as it were, goaded and pricked by the passions that beset it and bled toward frenzied pursuits and despair of life and contempt of God. This persecution is heavier and harsher, since it is set in motion from within, is ever present, and cannot be escaped by the one being persecuted; for he carries the enemy about with him everywhere, within himself. So too, a burning that falls upon one from outside produces a testing, but the one from within works death. And a war brought on from without is easily put down, but the one within the soul is measured out even unto death. If, together with such a persecution, you have sensible wealth, and brothers by blood, and other such pledges, abandon the entire possession of these things, since it tends to your harm; provide peace for yourself; free yourself from a long persecution; turn away from those things toward the gospel; choose the Savior before all things, the advocate and comforter of your soul, the steward of unending life. "For what is visible lasts only a while, but what is invisible endures forever"; and in the present time they are short-lived and unstable. "But in the age to come is life eternal."

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 26 ========

"The first shall be last, and the last first." This saying is rich in implication and admits of much elucidation, but it does not, at least at present, demand investigation on our part; for it bears not only upon the wealthy in possessions, but simply upon all men who have once for all given themselves over to faith. So let this matter rest for now. As for the point before us, I think it has been shown to be nothing less than the promise required, namely that the Savior has by no means shut out the rich, on the score of their wealth and the compass of their property, nor dug a trench between them and salvation, provided they are able and willing to bow beneath the commandments of God, and to prize their own life above things temporal, and to look toward the Lord with a steady gaze, as men who have fixed their eyes upon the nod of a good pilot, watching what he wishes, what he commands, what he signals, what token he gives to his own sailors, and toward what harbor, and from where, he promises to bring them in. For what wrong does a man do, if by attending to his judgment and being sparing before he came to faith he amassed a sufficient livelihood? Or is not this rather still more free of blame, if he was straightway, by the God who apportions fortune, settled into the household of such people, and into a family abounding and prevailing in wealth and dominant in riches? For if, on account of his involuntary birth into wealth, he is banished from life, then he is wronged rather by the God who begot him, having been deemed worthy of a fleeting enjoyment while being deprived of eternal life; and why should wealth ever have sprung up out of the earth at all, if it is a purveyor and procurer of death? But if a man is able to bend his authority over his possessions inward, and to think in moderation and be temperate, and to seek God alone and breathe God and live as a fellow-citizen with God -- this man stands before the commandments as a poor man, free, unconquered, unafflicted, unwounded by riches; but if not, sooner shall a camel go through a needle's eye than such a rich man pass into the kingdom of God. Let the camel, then, also signify something loftier, arriving before the rich man by a narrow and afflicted road -- a mystery of the Savior which one may learn in the exposition concerning first principles and theology.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 27 ========

Nevertheless, let us first offer what appears on the surface, and the reason for which the parable was spoken. Let it teach the wealthy that they must not neglect their own salvation as though already condemned in advance, nor again must riches be cast into the sea, nor condemned as a plot against life and an enemy, but rather one must learn in what manner and how wealth is to be used and life is to be acquired. For since no one is altogether lost merely because he is rich and afraid, nor is everyone altogether saved by being confident and believing that he will be saved, come, let us examine what hope the Savior sketches out for them, and how what is without hope might become secure, and what is hoped for might be attained as a possession.
The Teacher, then, when asked which is the greatest of the commandments, says: "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole soul and with your whole strength," and that no commandment is greater than this — and quite reasonably so, for it has been enjoined concerning the first and the greatest, God himself our Father, through whom all things came into being and exist, and to whom the things being saved return again. Since we have thus been loved beforehand by him, and have obtained our very coming-to-be from him, it is not holy to hold anything else as more venerable or more honored, repaying only this grace, small as it is, for things so great, and having nothing else whatsoever to contrive as recompense toward a God who is complete and in need of nothing — but by the very act of loving the Father, receiving incorruption for one's own strength and power. For to the degree that one loves God, to that degree one slips further within, into God himself.
And second in rank, and in no way lesser than this,

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 28 ========

He says: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" — and therefore God above yourself. And when the one conversing with him asked, "Who is my neighbor?", he did not, in the manner of the Jews, define beforehand a kinsman by blood, nor a fellow-citizen, nor a proselyte, nor one likewise circumcised, nor one who observed one and the same law; but instead, by his account, he brings a certain man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and shows him struck through by robbers and left half-dead on the road, passed by by a priest, overlooked by a Levite, but pitied by the Samaritan — the one held in reproach and set apart — who did not pass by as those others did by chance, but came furnished with the very things the endangered man needed: wine, oil, bandages, a beast to carry him, payment for the innkeeper, part given at once, part promised besides. "Which of these," he said, "proved to be neighbor to the one who suffered these terrible things?" And when the man answered, "The one who showed mercy to him," he said, "Go, then, and do likewise" — showing that from love good deeds spring forth.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 29 ========

In both commandments, then, he sets forth love, but he has divided it by rank, and in the one place assigns the first place of love to God, while in the other he allots the second place to the neighbor. But who else could this neighbor be but the Savior himself? Or who has shown us more mercy than he, we who were all but put to death by the world-rulers of darkness with their many wounds — fears, desires, angers, griefs, deceits, pleasures? Of these wounds Jesus alone is the physician, cutting out the passions utterly by the root, not merely, as the law does, the bare results, the fruits of the evil plants, but bringing his own axe to the very roots of wickedness. This is he who poured the wine, the blood of the vine of David, upon our wounded souls; this is he who brought the oil, the mercy that flows from the Father's inmost heart, and lavished it upon us; this is he who displayed the unbreakable bonds of health and salvation — love, faith, hope; this is he who commanded angels and principalities and powers to serve us, for a great reward, since they too shall be set free from the vanity of the world at the revealing of the glory of the sons of God. This one, then, we must love equally with God. And he loves Christ Jesus who does his will and keeps his commandments. "It is not everyone crying out to me, 'Master, Master,' who will pass into heaven's kingdom, but the one carrying out my Father's wishes." And: "Why do you address me as 'Master, Master,' yet fail to do what I tell you?" And: "Blessed are you who see and hear what neither the righteous nor the prophets saw or heard," if you do what I say.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 30 ========

This, then, is the first man, the one who loves Christ. The second is the one who honors and cherishes those who have believed in him. For whatever a man does for a disciple, the Lord takes as done to himself and makes wholly his own. "Come, you who are blessed by my Father: take as your inheritance the realm made ready for you since the world began. For when I hungered you fed me, when I thirsted you gave me drink, when I was a foreigner you welcomed me under your roof, when I went bare you clothed me, when illness struck me you came to my side, when I sat in a cell you visited me there." Then those who are upright will ask him: "Lord, at what moment did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and pour you drink? At what moment did we see you a foreigner and welcome you, or bare and clothe you? At what moment did we see you ill or shut in a cell, and come to you?" And the king will reply to them: "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for even the humblest of these brothers of mine, you did it for me." Conversely, again, those who did not provide these things to them he casts into the eternal fire, as men who did not provide them to himself. And elsewhere: "He who receives you receives me, he who does not receive you rejects me."

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 31 ========

These he calls children and little ones and infants and friends, and small ones here in comparison with their greatness to come above. "Do not despise," he says, "one of these little ones; for their angels continually behold the face of my Father who is in the heavens." And elsewhere: "Fear not, little flock; for it has pleased the Father to give you the kingdom" of the heavens. In the same way, of John, the greatest among those born of women, he says that the least in the kingdom of the heavens — that is, his own disciple — is greater. And again: "He who receives a righteous man or a prophet in the name of a righteous man or a prophet shall receive their reward; and he who gives a disciple a cup of cold water to drink in the name of a disciple shall not lose his reward." This, then, is the only reward that is not lost. And again: "Make friends for yourselves out of the mammon of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles." He declares that every possession which, by nature, a man has acquired for himself as his own and does not put into common use for those in need, is unrighteous; yet from this very unrighteousness it is possible also to perform a righteous and saving deed — to give rest to one who has an eternal tabernacle with the Father.
Observe first that he has not commanded that you be exacted from, nor that you wait to be troubled, but that you yourself seek out those who will fare well and who are worthy to be disciples of the Savior. Fine indeed is the saying of the apostle: "God loves a cheerful giver," one who rejoices in giving and sows not sparingly, so that he may not also reap in that manner — sharing without murmurings and hesitation and grief, which is pure well-doing. But better than this is what is said by the Lord in another place: "Give to everyone who asks you"; for such generosity is truly of God. And this saying surpasses every divine standard — not even to wait to be asked, but to seek out on one's own whoever is worthy to be well treated,

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 32 ========

And then to fix so great a reward for that fellowship — an eternal dwelling! Oh, what beautiful trade, oh, what a divine marketplace! One buys incorruption with money. And by giving away the perishing things of the world, he receives in exchange their everlasting abode in the heavens. Sail toward this, if you are wise. This is the festival, O rich man — even if it requires it, go about the whole earth. Do not spare yourself dangers and labors, so that here you may purchase a heavenly kingdom. Why do transparent stones and emeralds and a house delight you so greatly? Food for fire, or a plaything of time, or the incidental victim of an earthquake, or the outrage of a tyrant? Desire to dwell in the heavens and to reign with God; this kingdom a man will give you by imitating God — having received a small thing here, he will make you his housemate there through all the ages. Beg him that he may receive it; hurry, strive earnestly, fear lest he dishonor you — for it has not been commanded that you receive, but that you provide. Indeed the Lord did not say, 'Give,' or 'Provide,' or 'Do good,' or 'Help,' but 'Make a friend.' And a friend is not made from a single gift, but from complete rest together and long companionship; for neither faith nor love nor endurance belongs to a single day, but 'he who endures to the end, this one shall be saved.'

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 33 ========

How then does man give these things? Because it is on account of that One's honor and goodwill and kinship that the Lord gives: "for I will give not only to friends, but even to the friends of friends." And who is this friend of God? Do not you yourself judge who is worthy and who unworthy; for it is possible for you to err in your judgment. Since the matter stands in the ambiguity of our ignorance, it is better to do good even to the unworthy for the sake of the worthy, than, by being on guard against those less good, to fail to meet even the earnest. For from sparing and pretending to test who will reasonably obtain help or not, it is possible for you to neglect even some who are dear to God, whose penalty is eternal fiery punishment; but from giving forth to all in turn who are in need, it is altogether necessary to find also some among those able to be saved by God. "Do not judge," therefore, "that you may not be judged; with the measure you measure, with that it will be measured back to you also; a good measure, pressed down and shaken together and overflowing, will be given back to you." Open your inmost heart to all the disciples of God who are enrolled. Do not look upon the body with disdain, do not be carelessly disposed toward age, nor, if someone appears poor or ill-clad or ill-favored or weak, be vexed in soul at this and turn away. This is a form thrown about us from without, on the pretext of our passage into the world, so that we might be able to enter into this common schoolhouse; but within dwells hidden the Father, and his Son who died for us and rose again with us.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 34 ========

This visible shape deceives death and the devil; for the wealth within them and their beauty is invisible to it. And they rage madly over the poor flesh, which they themselves despise as weak. Being blind to the possessions within, they do not know what a great "treasure in an earthen vessel" we carry, walled about by the power of God the Father and the blood of God's Child and the dew of the Holy Spirit. But you, at least, must not be deceived — you who have tasted the truth and have been deemed worthy of the great redemption. Rather, in contrast to other men, enroll for yourself an army unarmed, unwarlike, bloodless, free of wrath, undefiled: god-fearing old men, orphans beloved of God, widows armed with gentleness, men adorned with love. Acquire such men, for your wealth and for your body and for your soul, as bodyguards, whose general is God. Because of them even a ship, when taking on water, is lightened, steered by the prayers of the holy alone. And a raging disease is tamed, driven off by the laying-on of hands. And the assault of robbers is disarmed, stripped of its weapons by pious prayers, and the violence of demons is shattered, refuted by strenuous commands.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 35 ========

All these are active soldiers and steadfast guards; none idle, none useless. One can ask something for you from God; another can comfort you when you are worn out; another can weep and groan with sympathy for you before the Lord of all; another can teach something useful for salvation; another can admonish with frankness; another can counsel with good will; and all of them can love truly, guilelessly, fearlessly, unhypocritically, without flattery, without pretense. O sweet ministrations of those who love! O blessed services of those who take courage! O sincere faith of those who fear God alone! O truthfulness of words among those who cannot lie! O beauty of the deeds of those persuaded to serve God! They persuade God, they please God; they do not seem to be touching your flesh, but each of them touches his own soul; they are not speaking to a brother, but to the King of the ages who dwells within you.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 36 ========

All the faithful, then, are good and befitting God and worthy of the title which they wear about them like a diadem. Yet nevertheless there are already some who are even more elect than the elect, and are so much the more distinguished the less conspicuous they are, in a manner hauling themselves up out of the surge of the world, like ships, and drawing themselves back to safety, not wishing to seem holy. And if someone should call them so, they are ashamed, hiding in the depth of their mind the unutterable mysteries, and disdaining that their own nobility be seen in the world — those whom the Word calls "the light of the world" and "the salt of the earth." This is the seed, the image and likeness of God, and his genuine child and heir, sent here as into a kind of foreign sojourn by the great dispensation and proportion of the Father; for whose sake both the visible and the invisible things of the world have been fashioned, some for servitude, others for discipline, and others for his instruction. And all things, so long as the seed remains here, are held together, and once it has been gathered in, all things will most swiftly be dissolved.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 37 ========

What further need is there? Gaze upon the mysteries of love, and then you will behold with unveiled eyes the bosom of the Father, which the only-begotten God alone has declared. And God himself is love, and for love's sake he was seen by us. And that which is unutterable in him is Father, but that which has become sympathetic toward us is Mother. In loving, the Father took on a feminine nature. And of this the great sign is he whom he begot from himself; and the fruit brought forth from love is love. For this reason he himself came down. For this reason he put on man. For this reason he willingly suffered the things of men, that, having been measured against our weakness, he might in turn measure us, whom he loved, against his own power. And when about to be poured out as a libation, and giving himself as a ransom, he leaves us a new covenant: "My love I give to you." But what is this, and how great? For each one of us he laid down a life equal in worth to the whole world; this he demands back from us on behalf of one another. And if we owe our lives to the brothers, and have pledged such a covenant in return to the Savior, shall we still shut up and hoard the things of the world -- poor, alien, fleeting things -- shall we shut them off from one another, things which in a little while the fire will possess? Divinely and by inspiration John says, "He who does not love his brother is a murderer," seed of Cain, nursling of the devil. He has no bowels of God, no hope of better things. He is unsown, he is barren. He is not a branch of the ever-living vine above the heavens; he is cut off, and awaits the fire in a mass.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 38 ========

But you, learn the "way beyond comparison" which Paul points out unto salvation: "love seeks not its own," but is poured out upon the brother; about him it is fluttered, about him it is soberly mad. "Love covers a multitude of sins; perfect love casts out fear; it is not boastful, it is not puffed up. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices together with the truth; it bears all things. It believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things. Love never falls away, but prophecies are brought to nothing. Tongues cease, healings are left behind on earth. But these three remain, faith, hope, love; and the greatest of these is love." And rightly so; for faith departs when we are persuaded by the sight of our own eyes, having seen God, and hope vanishes once the things hoped for have been delivered, but love comes together into fullness and grows all the more once the perfect things have been handed over. If a man casts this into his soul, he is able, even if he has been born amid sins, even if he has done many of the things forbidden, by increasing love and receiving a pure repentance, to make good again the things in which he stumbled. Let not even this be left to you unto despair and derangement of mind, even should you learn who the rich man is that

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 39 ========

One who has no place in the heavens, and who by what manner of dealing with existing things might escape both the reproach of wealth and its harshness in the way of life, and be able to enjoy the eternal goods—should he have fallen, either through ignorance or through weakness or through some involuntary circumstance, after the seal and the redemption, into certain sins or transgressions, so as to be swept away completely—let him not suppose that he has therefore been condemned utterly by God. For to everyone who turns to God in truth, with his whole heart, the doors stand open, and the Father receives with the greatest joy a son who repents in truth; and true repentance is no longer to be held liable to the same sins, but to root them out utterly from the soul, the sins on account of which he condemned himself to death; for once these have been removed, God will again come to dwell in you. For great, He says, and unsurpassable is the joy and festival in the heavens, for the Father and the angels, over one sinner who turns and repents. Therefore also He cries out: "I desire mercy and not sacrifice; I do not wish the death of the sinner, but his repentance; and though your sins be as scarlet wool, I will make them white as snow, and though they be blacker than darkness, I will wash them and make them as white wool." For it is God alone who is able to grant forgiveness of sins and not reckon transgressions, seeing that even to us the Lord bids, every day, to forgive our brothers when they repent. But if we, being evil, know how to give good gifts, how much more "the Father of mercies," the good Father "of all comfort," who, being full of compassion and full of mercy, is by nature long-suffering; he awaits those who turn back; and truly to turn back is to cease from one's sins and no longer look behind.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 40 ========

Of the sins that have already occurred, God grants remission; but of those still to come, each man is his own judge. And this is what it means to repent: to condemn one's own past deeds and to ask amnesty for them from the Father, who alone of all beings is able to render undone what has been done, by his own mercy and by the dew of the Spirit wiping away former sins. "For in whatever state I find you," he says, "in that will I also judge you"; and at every turn the end of all things cries this aloud. So that even for the man who has done the greatest good throughout his life, if at the end he runs aground on wickedness, all his former labors are of no profit, since at the catastrophe of the drama he has been cast out of the contest; while for the one who has lived worse and more carelessly before, it is possible, if he repents afterward, for the time following his repentance to overcome a long span of wicked conduct. But great precision is needed, just as bodies worn down by long illness require careful diet and still greater attention. Thief, do you wish to receive remission? Steal no more. Adulterer, let the fire in you burn no longer. Fornicator, be chaste from now on. You who have seized what is not yours, give it back, and give back more besides. False witness, practice truth. Perjurer, swear no more. And cut short the other passions as well — anger, desire, grief, fear — so that at your departure you may be found already reconciled here with your adversary. Now it is perhaps impossible to cut off all at once passions that have grown up with us; but with God's power, and human supplication, and the help of brothers, and sincere repentance, and continual practice, it is accomplished.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 41 ========

Therefore it is altogether necessary that you, the haughty and powerful and rich man, set over yourself some man of God, as a trainer and a pilot. Show reverence toward at least one such man, fear at least one, take pains to listen to at least one who speaks with frank boldness, both chastening and healing at once. For it does not even benefit the eyes to remain forever unrestrained, but they must sometimes weep and smart for the sake of greater health. So too nothing is more ruinous to the soul than unbroken pleasure; for it is blinded through this wasting away, if it remains unmoved by the word spoken with frank boldness. Fear this man even when he grows angry, and be grieved when he groans, and revere him when he checks his anger, and forestall him when he would beg off from punishing you. Let him keep watch many nights on your behalf, interceding for you before God and, as it were, working upon the Father by his accustomed prayers of entreaty; for God's inmost heart cannot hold out against his children when they beseech him. He will pray for you with a pure heart if he is honored by you as an angel of God and is grieved by nothing from you, but suffers only on your behalf. This is repentance without hypocrisy. 'God is not mocked,' nor does he attend to empty words; for he alone examines the marrow and kidneys of the heart, and he hears those who are in the fire, and he listens to those who supplicate from within the belly of the sea monster, and he is near to all who believe, and far from the godless, unless they repent.

======== Quis dives salvetur — Chapter 42 ========

So that you may take courage, having thus truly repented, that a trustworthy hope of salvation remains for you, hear a story that is not a story but a true account concerning the apostle John, handed down and preserved in memory. For when, after the death of the tyrant, he moved from the island of Patmos to Ephesus, he used to go out, when called upon, also to the neighboring regions of the nations, in some places to appoint bishops, in others to fit together whole churches, in others again to allot to the clergy some one man of those pointed out by the Spirit. So then, having come also to one of the not-distant cities—whose name too some report—and having in other respects given the brothers rest, he at last turned his gaze upon the bishop who had been established there, and, seeing a young man, sturdy in body and comely of face and fervent in soul, said, "This one I entrust to you with all earnestness, in the presence of the church and of Christ as witness." And when the bishop accepted him and promised everything, John again urged and solemnly charged him with the same words. Then he himself set off for Ephesus, while the presbyter, taking the young man entrusted to him into his own house, reared him, kept watch over him, cherished him, and at last enlightened him with baptism; and after this he relaxed his fuller care and watchfulness, as having set over him the perfect safeguard, the seal of the Lord. But to him, having seized upon this freedom before its proper time, certain idle and reckless age-mates attached themselves, men habituated to evil deeds; and first they led him on through costly banquets, then they took him along with them going out at night for street robbery, then they began to require him to join in something greater still. And he, growing accustomed to it little by little, and through greatness of natural spirit swerving from the straight road like an unbroken and strong-mouthed horse that has bitten down the bit, was carried the more headlong toward the precipices. And having utterly despaired of salvation in God, he no longer contemplated anything small, but, having resolved on some great deed, since he had already perished once for all, he thought it fitting to suffer the same fate as the rest. So taking these very men and forming them into a band of robbers, he was a ready chief of brigands, most violent, most bloodthirsty, most savage. Time passed in the midst of this, and when some need arose they called John back. And he, when he had settled the other matters for the sake of which he had come, said, "Come now, bishop, restore to us the deposit which I and Christ entrusted to you in the presence of the church over which you preside as witness." The bishop was at first astounded, thinking he was being falsely charged about money he had not received, and he could neither believe an accusation concerning something he did not have nor disbelieve John. But when John said, "I am demanding back the young man, and the soul of the brother," the old man, groaning deeply and even shedding some tears, said, "He is dead." "How, and by what death?" "He is dead to God," he said; "for he turned out wicked and ruinous, and, in a word, a robber, and now, instead of the church, he has taken possession of the mountain with a band of soldiers like himself." Then the apostle, tearing his garment and striking his head with great lamentation, said, "A fine guardian of a brother's soul I left behind! But let a horse be brought to me at once, and let someone be my guide on the road." He rode off, just as he was, straight from the church. And coming to the region, he was seized by the robbers' outpost, neither fleeing nor begging off, but crying out, "For this very purpose I have come; lead me to your leader." The leader, meanwhile, was waiting, armed as he was; but when he recognized John approaching, he turned to flee in shame. But John pursued him with all his strength, forgetting his own old age, crying out, "Why do you flee from me, child, your own father, unarmed and old? Pity me, child; do not fear; you still have hopes of life. I will give an account to Christ on your behalf; if it must be, I will willingly undergo your death, as the Lord underwent death for us; for you I will give my own soul in exchange. Stand, believe: Christ has sent me." And he, hearing this, first stood still looking down, then threw away his weapons, then, trembling, wept bitterly; and when the old man came up to him, he embraced him, pleading for himself with his groanings as best he could, and being baptized a second time with his tears, hiding only his right hand. But John, pledging and swearing that he had found forgiveness for him from the Savior, beseeching him, falling on his knees, kissing that very right hand as now cleansed by repentance, led him back to the church, and, entreating for him with abundant prayers, joining battle for him with continual fasts, and charming his mind with the varied spells of his words, did not depart, as they say, until he had established him in the church, giving a great example of true repentance and a great token of regeneration, a trophy of a visible resurrection.
...radiant, rejoicing, singing hymns, opening the heavens. And before all of them the Savior himself comes forth to meet them and welcomes them, stretching out a light that casts no shadow and does not fail, leading them into the bosom of the Father, into eternal life, into the kingdom of the heavens. Let a man believe these things, both on the word of God's disciples and on God who is their guarantor, on the prophecies, the gospels, the apostolic words; living together with these, and lending them his ears, and practicing their works, at the very moment of his departure he will see the fulfillment and the demonstration of these teachings. For the man who here admits the angel of repentance will not repent then, when he leaves the body, nor will he be put to shame when he sees the Savior approaching with his own glory and his host; he will not fear the fire. But if anyone chooses to remain sinning further at every turn for the sake of pleasures, and prefers the delight found here to eternal life, and turns away from the forgiveness the Savior offers, let him blame neither God any longer, nor his wealth, nor his own fall, but his own soul, perishing of its own will. But to the one who looks toward salvation and longs for it and asks for it with shamelessness and force, the good Father in the heavens will grant the true cleansing and the unchanging life. To him, through his child Jesus Christ, the Lord of the living and the dead, and through the Holy Spirit, be glory, honor, power, eternal majesty, both now and unto generations of generations and unto the ages of ages. Amen.