Stromata

John's father is said to have prophesied before the child in the Gospels. From above, then, from Moses, let us gather the chronology according to the Greeks: from the birth of Moses to the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, eighty years, and the additional forty years until his death; the exodus occurs under Inachus, before the Sothic period, with Moses departing from Egypt three hundred and forty-five years earlier. From the leadership of Moses and Inachus to the flood of Deucalion—I mean the second deluge—and to the conflagration of Phaethon, which events happen under Crotopus, forty generations are counted; for three generations are reckoned to a hundred years. From the flood to the conflagration of Ida and the discovery of iron and the Idaean Dactyls, seventy-three years, as Thrasyllus says. And from the conflagration of Ida to the abduction of Ganymede, sixty-five years. From there to the expedition of Perseus, when also Glaucus instituted the Isthmian games for Melicertes, fifteen years. From the expedition of Perseus to the foundation of Ilium, thirty-four years. From there to the voyage of the Argo, sixty-four years. From this to Theseus and the Minotaur, thirty-two years; then to the Seven against Thebes, ten years; then to the contest at Olympia, which Heracles instituted for Pelops, three years; and to the expedition of the Amazons against Athens and the abduction of Helen by Theseus, nine years. From there to the deification of Heracles, eleven years; then to the abduction of Helen by Alexander, four years.

then to the capture of Troy, twenty years. And from the capture of Troy to the return of Aeneas and the foundation of Lavinium, ten years; and to the beginning of Ascanius’s rule, eight years; and to the return of the Heracleidae, sixty-one years; and to the Olympiad of Iphitus, three hundred thirty-eight years. Eratosthenes records the chronology as follows: from the capture of Troy to the return of the Heracleidae, eighty years; from there to the foundation of Ionia, sixty years; and thereafter to the regency of Lycurgus, one hundred fifty-nine years; and to the year preceding the first Olympiad, one hundred eight years; from that Olympiad to the crossing of Xerxes, two hundred ninety-seven years; from there to the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, forty-eight years; and to its end and the defeat of the Athenians, twenty-seven years; and to the battle of Leuctra, thirty-four years; after that to the death of Philip, thirty-five years; and after that to the death of Alexander, twelve years. Again, from the first Olympiad some say that twenty-four years are counted to the foundation of Rome. From there to the abolition of the kings, when consuls were instituted, two hundred forty-three years; and from the abolition of the kings to the death of Alexander, one hundred eighty-six years. From there to the victory of Augustus, when Antony killed himself in Alexandria, two hundred ninety-four years, when Augustus was consul for the fourth time.

from that time to the contest which Domitian instituted in Rome, one hundred and fourteen years, and from the first contest to the death of Commodus, one hundred and eleven years. There are those who reckon from Cecrops to Alexander the Macedonian one thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight years, and from Demophon one thousand two hundred and fifty, and from the capture of Troy to the return of the Heracleidae one hundred and twenty or one hundred and eighty years. From this to Euaenetus the archon, under whom they say Alexander crossed into Asia, according to Phanias seven hundred and fifteen years, according to Ephorus seven hundred and thirty-five, according to Timaeus and Cleitarchus eight hundred and twenty, according to Eratosthenes seven hundred and seventy-four, and according to Duris from the capture of Troy to Alexander’s crossing into Asia one thousand years. From there to Euaenetus the archon at Athens, under whom Alexander died, eleven years. From there to the reign of Germanicus Claudius Caesar three hundred and sixty-five years, from which time the years to the death of Commodus are also clear, as many as are reckoned. After the Greek matters, one must also set forth from the times among the barbarians according to the greatest intervals. From Adam to the flood are reckoned two thousand one hundred and forty-eight years and four days, from Shem to Abraham one thousand two hundred and fifty years, from Isaac to the allotment of the land six hundred and sixteen years. Then from the judges to Samuel four hundred and sixty-three years and seven months. And after the judges, of the kings five hundred and seventy-two years, six months, and ten days.

After these times, the Persian kingdom lasted two hundred thirty-five years, then the Macedonian kingdom until the death of Antonius, three hundred twelve years and eighteen days. After that time, the Roman kingdom until the death of Commodus, two hundred twenty-two years. Again, from the seventy-year captivity and the restoration of the people to their ancestral land to the captivity under Vespasian, four hundred ten years are reckoned, and finally from Vespasian to the death of Commodus, one hundred twenty-one years, six months, and twenty-four days are found. Demetrius says in his work On the Kings in Judea that the tribe of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi were not taken captive by Sennacherib, but that from this captivity to the last one, which Nebuchadnezzar made from Jerusalem, there are one hundred twenty-eight years and six months. From the time when the ten tribes were taken captive from Samaria to Ptolemy the Fourth, five hundred seventy-three years and nine months, and from the time from Jerusalem, three hundred thirty-eight years and three months. Philo also recorded the kings of the Jews, disagreeing with Demetrius. Moreover, Eupolemus in a similar treatise says that all the years from Adam to the fifth year of the reign of Demetrius, when Ptolemy the Twelfth was ruling Egypt, amount to five thousand one hundred forty-nine years. From the time when Moses led the Jews out of Egypt to the aforementioned terminus, two thousand five hundred eighty years are reckoned.

From this time until the consulship of Gnaeus Domitius and Asinius at Rome, one hundred twenty years are collected. Ephorus and many other historians say that there are seventy-five nations and languages, having heard the voice of Moses saying: "All the souls from Jacob that went down into Egypt were seventy-five." But according to the true account, the generic dialects appear to be seventy-two, as our scriptures transmit, while the many others arise from the sharing of two or three or even more dialects. A dialect is a form of speech that reveals the distinctive character of a place, or a form of speech that reveals the distinctive character of a nation, whether particular or common. The Greeks say that there are five dialects among them: Attic, Ionic, Doric, Aeolic, and a fifth, the Common; and that the countless barbarian tongues, not being dialects, are called languages. Plato assigns a certain dialect even to the gods, inferring this especially from dreams and oracles, and also from those possessed by daemons, who utter neither their own voice nor dialect, but that of the daemons entering them. He also thinks that there are dialects of irrational animals, which those of the same kind understand. For instance, when an elephant fell into a bog and cried out, another elephant, happening to be present and seeing what had happened, returned after a short time, brought a herd of elephants with him, and rescued the one that had fallen in. They also say that in Libya, if a scorpion cannot reach a man to strike him, it goes away and returns with more, and hanging one from another like a chain, they thus reach him.

who set about the plot, not, I suppose, by using some invisible signal of irrational animals, nor by indicating to them through their form, but, I think, in their own dialect. And some others say that if a fish, when drawn up, escapes after the line breaks, no fish of that same kind will be found in that same place on that same day. The first and generic dialects are barbarian, but they have their names by nature, since men also agree that prayers spoken in a barbarian tongue are more powerful. And Plato in the Cratylus, when he wishes to interpret "fire," says that the name is barbarian. He at least bears witness that the Phrygians call it so, with a slight variation. I think it is no worse, in addition to these things, to set forth the times of the Roman emperors for the demonstration of the Savior's birth: Augustus forty-three years, Tiberius twenty-two years, Gaius four years, Claudius fourteen years, Nero fourteen years, Galba one year, Vespasian ten years, Titus three years, Domitian fifteen years, Nerva one year, Trajan nineteen years, Hadrian twenty-one years, Antoninus twenty-three years, again likewise Antoninus and Commodus thirty-two years. The total from Augustus to the death of Commodus is two hundred twenty-two years, and from Adam to the death of Commodus is five thousand seven hundred eighty-four years, two months, twelve days. Some, however, record the times of the Roman emperors thus: Gaius Julius Caesar three years, four months, and days; after him Augustus reigned forty years, four months, one day; then Tiberius twenty years, months, nineteen days; whom Gaius Caesar succeeded, three years, ten months, eight days.

Claudius 13 years, 8 months, 28 days; Nero 13 years, 8 months, 28 days; Galba 7 months, 7 days; Otho 5 months, 1 day; Vitellius 7 months, 1 day; Vespasian 11 years, 11 months, 22 days; Titus 2 years, 2 months; Domitian 15 years, 8 months, 5 days; Nerva 1 year, 4 months, 10 days; Trajan 19 years, 7 months, 15 days; Hadrian 20 years, 10 months, 28 days; Antoninus 22 years, 3 months, 7 days; Marcus Aurelius Antoninus 19 years, 11 days; Commodus 12 years, 9 months, 14 days. From Julius Caesar therefore to the death of Commodus there are 230 years, 0 months. And all the years from Romulus, the founder of Rome, to the death of Commodus amount to 43 months. Our Lord was born in the twenty-eighth year, when the first census was ordered under Augustus. That this is true is written in the Gospel according to Luke as follows: "In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, a word of the Lord came to John the son of Zacharias." And again in the same: "And Jesus was coming to be baptized as about thirty years old." And that he was to preach for only one year, this too is written thus: "He sent me to preach a year acceptable to the Lord." This both the prophet said and the Gospel. Fifteen years of Tiberius and fifteen of Augustus, thus the thirty years are fulfilled until he suffered. From when he suffered until the destruction of Jerusalem there are 42 years, 3 months, and from the destruction of Jerusalem to the death of Commodus 122 years, 10 months, 13 days.

From the birth of the Lord to the death of Commodus, the total years are 104, one month, and 13 days. There are those who, with greater precision, add not only the year but also the day of our Savior’s birth, which they say was the 28th year of Augustus, on the 5th of Pachon and the 20th. Those from the school of Basilides celebrate the day of his baptism, spending the night in readings. They say it was the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, the 15th of the month Tybi, while some say the 11th of the same month. As for his passion, some, being precise, place it in the 16th year of Tiberius Caesar, on the 25th of Phamenoth, others on the 25th of Pharmouthi; still others say the Savior suffered on the 19th of Pharmouthi. Indeed, some of them say he was born on the 24th or 25th of Pharmouthi. Moreover, one must also add to the chronology those days which Daniel alludes to from the desolation of Jerusalem, the 7 years and 11 months of Vespasian. For the two years are taken together with the 17 months and 8 days of Otho, Galba, and Vitellius, and thus it becomes three years and months, which is half of the week, as the prophet Daniel said. He said that 2,300 days elapsed from when the abomination was set up by Nero in the holy city until its destruction. For thus the appended text shows: “How long will the vision stand, the sacrifice that was removed, and the sin of desolation that was given, and the power and the holy place be trampled?” And he said to him, “Until evening and morning, 2,300 days, and the holy place will be taken away.

These 2,702 days therefore become 7 years and 4 months, half of which Nero held while reigning, and it became half a week; and the other half Vespasian together with Otho, Galba, and Vitellius. And for this reason Daniel says: "Blessed is he who arrives at the 1,335th day." For until these days the war was, but after this it ceased. And this number is also shown from the appended chapter which reads thus: "And from the time of the change of the continual sacrifice and the giving of the abomination of desolation, 1,200 days; blessed is he who endures and arrives at the 1,335th day." Flavius Josephus the Jew, who composed the Jewish histories, having brought down the times, says that from Moses to David there are 585 years, and from David to the second year of Vespasian 1,379 years. Then from this to the tenth year of Antoninus 77 years, so that from Moses to the tenth year of Antoninus there are in all 1,833 years. Others, having counted up to the death of Commodus from Inachus and Moses, said there are 1,842 years, and others 1,821. In the Gospel according to Matthew, the genealogy from Abraham to Mary the mother of the Lord is completed; for there are, it says, from Abraham to David 14 generations, and from David to the Babylonian captivity 14 generations, and from the Babylonian captivity to Christ likewise another 14 generations, three mystical intervals completed by six weeks.

And let the matters concerning the times, which have been variously recorded by many and also set forth by us, stand thus. It is said that the translation of the scriptures, both of the law and the prophetic books, from the Hebrew language into the Greek tongue took place under King Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, or, as some say, under the one surnamed Philadelphus, who brought the greatest ambition to this task, Demetrius of Phalerum having carefully managed the matters concerning the translation. For while the Macedonians still held Asia, the king, ambitious to adorn the library he had established at Alexandria with all writings, deemed it worthy to ask the inhabitants of Jerusalem to translate the prophecies in their possession into the Greek language. They, being still subject to the Macedonians, selected seventy elders, most esteemed among them, experienced in the scriptures and knowledgeable in the Greek language, and sent them to him together with the divine books. And when each had translated each prophecy separately, all the translations, when compared, agreed both in thought and in wording; for it was the will of God, carefully prepared for Greek ears. It is not strange, therefore, that by the inspiration of the God who gave the prophecy, the translation, as it were a Greek prophecy, was accomplished, since also at the time of the captivity under Nebuchadnezzar, when the scriptures had been destroyed, in the time of Artaxerxes, king of the Persians, Ezra the Levite, becoming inspired as a priest, again renewed all the ancient scriptures and prophesied them. And Aristobulus, in the first book addressed to Philometor, writes word for word:

And Plato also followed our legislation, and it is evident that he has elaborated each of the things said in it. The matters concerning the exodus of the Hebrews, our fellow citizens, from Egypt, and the manifestation of all the events that happened to them, and the occupation of the land, and the exposition of the entire legislation, had been interpreted by others before Demetrius, before the supremacy of Alexander and the Persians; so that it is quite clear that the aforementioned philosopher took many things (for he became learned), just as Pythagoras also transferred many of our things into his own doctrinal system. And Numenius the Pythagorean philosopher writes outright: "What is Plato but Moses speaking Attic?" This Moses was a theologian and prophet, and as some say, an interpreter of sacred laws. His lineage, deeds, and life are proclaimed by the scriptures themselves, which are trustworthy; nevertheless, we must also speak of them as briefly as possible. Moses, then, was by descent a Chaldean, born in Egypt, his ancestors having migrated from Babylon to Egypt because of a prolonged famine. Born in the seventh generation and raised in a royal manner, he experienced such circumstances. When the Hebrews in Egypt had increased to a great multitude, the king of the country, fearing a conspiracy from the multitude of those born of the Hebrews, ordered that the females be reared by them (for a woman is weak for war), but that the males be destroyed, suspecting their vigorous youth.

The child, being of noble birth, his parents hid and nursed him for three consecutive months, their natural affection overcoming the tyrant's cruelty. But later, fearing that they might perish along with the child, they made a vessel from a local papyrus, placed the child in it, and exposed him on the banks of the river, which was marshy. The child's sister, standing at a distance, watched what would happen. Now the king's daughter, who had not conceived for a long time and desired children, came to the river on that day to use baths and lustral waters. Hearing the child crying, she ordered it brought to her, and taking pity on it, she sought a nurse. Then the child's sister ran up and said that she had a Hebrew woman who had recently given birth, whom she could present as a nurse, if she wished. When the princess agreed and made the request, she brought the child's mother, who was to be the nurse, as if she were some other woman, for a stated wage. Then the princess gave the child the name Moses, aptly because she had drawn him from the water (for the Egyptians call water "môu"), into which he had been exposed to die. Indeed, they call Moses one who has breathed his last in the water. It is clear, then, that in the earlier time, after the child had been circumcised, his parents gave him a name, and he was called Joakim. And he also had a third name in heaven after his assumption, as the initiates say, Melchi.

When he came of age, he was taught arithmetic, geometry, rhythmics, harmonics, and also metrics together with music by the most distinguished Egyptians, and in addition the philosophy expressed through symbols, which they display in hieroglyphic writing. The rest of the encyclical education Greeks taught in Egypt, as for a royal child, as Philo says in his Life of Moses; he also learned Assyrian letters and the science of the heavens from both Chaldeans and Egyptians, whence in the Acts he is reported to have been educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Eupolemus, in his work On the Kings in Judaea, says that Moses was the first wise man and first gave grammar to the Jews, and that the Phoenicians received it from the Jews, and the Greeks from the Phoenicians. When he advanced to manhood, he intensified his prudence, emulating the education of his kin and ancestors, even to the point of striking and killing the Egyptian who unjustly attacked the Hebrew. The initiates say that he killed the Egyptian by word alone, just as later Peter

In the Acts it is related that he killed those who had embezzled the price of the land and had lied, by a word. Artapanus, at any rate, in his treatise On the Jews, records that Moses was shut up in prison by Chenephres, the king of the Egyptians, for requesting that the people be released from Egypt, and that at night the prison was opened by the will of God, and he went out and entered the palace, stood before the sleeping king, and woke him; and the king, astounded at what had happened, ordered Moses to tell the name of the god who had sent him, and Moses, bending down, whispered in his ear, and the king, on hearing it, fell speechless, but was held up by Moses and revived. Concerning the upbringing of Moses, Ezekiel, the poet of Jewish tragedies, will agree with us in the drama entitled Exagoge, writing thus in the person of Moses: For seeing our race increased to a multitude, the king Pharaoh devised great guile against us, afflicting mortals with brickmaking and heavy buildings, and fortified cities, because of us wretches; then he proclaimed to us, the Hebrew race, to cast the male children into the deep-flowing river. Then my mother who bore me hid me for three months, as she said; but not escaping notice, she exposed me, having put ornaments on me, by the bank of the river, in a deep thicket. My sister Mariam watched nearby; and then the king's daughter came down with her maids to bathe and cleanse her young skin. Seeing me at once, she took me up, and knew that I was a Hebrew; and Mariam my sister, running up, says this to the princess:

Do you wish me to find quickly a nurse for this child from among the Hebrews? And she urged the girl. She went and told her mother, and the mother herself came quickly and took me in her arms. And the king's daughter said: "Woman, nurse this child, and I will give you wages." And she named the name Moses, because she had taken him from the bank of the river. And when the time of infancy had passed for me, the mother of the princess led me to the palace. She told me everything and related to me my father's lineage and the gifts of God. So long as we had the time of childhood, she promised everything by royal nurture and education, as if from her own womb. But when the full cycle of days was present, I left the royal house. Then, after relating the conflict between the Hebrew and the Egyptian and the burial of the Egyptian in the sand, he speaks thus concerning the other fight: "Why do you strike one weaker than yourself?" And he said: "Who sent you here to us as judge or overseer? Will you not kill me as you did the man yesterday?" And being afraid, I said: "How did this become known?" So he flees from there and shepherds sheep, being trained beforehand for leadership by shepherding; for shepherding is a preliminary exercise for kingship for one who is to preside over the most gentle of human flocks, just as hunting is for those warlike by nature. And from there God leads him to the command of the Hebrews. Then the Egyptians are often admonished, though often senseless, and the Hebrews become spectators of the evils which others suffered, learning without danger the power of God.

Moreover, the Egyptians, in their folly, did not accept by hearsay the results of the power, disbelieving like infants. Then, as has been said, what was done the infants later recognized. And when the Hebrews departed, they carried off much plunder from the Egyptians and went away, not because of love of money, as their accusers say (for God did not persuade them to covet the possessions of others), but first, as receiving necessary wages for all the time they had served the Egyptians, and second, they in a way retaliated, causing grief in return to the money-loving Egyptians by the carrying off of the plunder, just as the Egyptians had grieved the Hebrews by enslaving them. So then, whether one might say this happened as in war—they deemed it right to carry off the goods of enemies by the law of the victors, as the stronger over the weaker (and the cause of the war was just: the Hebrews came as suppliants to the Egyptians because of famine, and the Egyptians, enslaving the strangers as if captives, forced them to serve them without even paying them wages)—or as in peace, they took the plunder as wages from those who for a long time did not pay but defrauded them.

Thus Moses is for us prophetic, legislative, tactical, strategic, political, and philosophical. How he was prophetic will be stated later, when we treat of prophecy. The tactical part would be a part of the strategic, and the strategic a part of the royal. Again, the legislative part would be a part of the royal, just as the judicial also is. Of the royal, one part is divine, such as that which pertains to God and his holy Son, from whom the goods from the earth, the external goods, and perfect happiness are supplied; for, it is said, ask for the great things, and the small things will be added to you. A second form of kingship, after the purely rational and divine administration, is that which uses only the spirited part of the soul for rule, according to which form Heracles ruled Argos, and Alexander the Macedonians. A third is that which aims only at conquering and subjugating (whether the victory is for evil or good is not inherent in such a one); this the Persians employed when they marched against Greece. For of the spirited part, one kind is merely victory-loving, having made its dominion for the sake of ruling itself, while another is beauty-loving, the soul using the spirited part for a noble end. A fourth, the worst of all, is that kingship which is arranged according to the desires, such as that of Sardanapalus and of those who make it their end to gratify the desires as much as possible. Of the royal, that which conquers according to virtue and that which conquers by force, the tactical is an instrument, but another is according to another nature and matter.

In arms and in fighting animals, both animate and inanimate, the ordering principle is soul and mind; but in the passions of the soul, which we overcome by virtue, the tactical element is reason, which stamps self-control and temperance with piety and good knowledge with truth, referring the end to piety toward God. For thus prudence, using virtue, is the ordering faculty: wisdom orders divine matters, politics orders human matters, and the royal art orders all things together. A king, therefore, is one who rules according to laws, possessing the science of ruling willing subjects, such as the Lord is who receives those who believe in him and through him. For God has delivered and subjected all things to Christ our king, so that in the name of Jesus every knee of heavenly, earthly, and subterranean beings may bend, and every tongue confess that Lord Jesus Christ is for the glory of God the Father. The stratagem is comprised of three forms: the safe, the risky, and the mixed from these; and each of these is composed of three elements, either through speech, through deeds, or through both together. All these can be accomplished either by persuading, by forcing, or by doing injustice in self-defense, or by doing what is just, which includes either lying or telling the truth, or using some of these simultaneously at the same time. The Greeks have benefited by taking all these things and the manner of using each of them from Moses. For the sake of one or two examples, I will mention a strategic example.

Moses, having led the people out, suspecting that the Egyptians would pursue, left the short and direct road and turned toward the desert, and mostly used the night for the journey. For there was a different economy, according to which the Hebrews were trained through much wilderness and a long time, being habituated only to believe that God exists, through patient self-control. Indeed, the stratagem of Moses teaches that before dangers one must foresee what is useful and thus set about it. Certainly what he suspected came to pass: the Egyptians pursued on horses and chariots, but they perished quickly when the sea burst and overwhelmed them with horses and chariots, so that not even a remnant of them was left. After this, a pillar of fire following (for it led before them) guided the Hebrews by night through impassable terrain, exercising them in toils and journeys for both courage and endurance, and teaching them, so that the good things of the land might appear after the experience of what seemed terrible, into which he sent them from the pathless region. Indeed, he also turned back and killed the enemies who were settled in the land, attacking them from the desert and rough road (for such is the virtue of the general). For it was a work of experience and generalship to take the land of the enemies. Miltiades, the Athenian general who conquered the Persians at the battle of Marathon, perceiving this, imitated this method: he led the Athenians by night, marching through pathless terrain and deceiving the barbarians who were watching him.

Hippias, the Athenian, having revolted, brought the barbarians into Attica and, having seized the strategic positions beforehand, kept guard because of his experience of the country. It was therefore a task to escape the notice of Hippias, whence Miltiades, naturally making use of both trackless terrain and night, attacked the Persians, whose leader was Datis, and succeeded in the contest with those whom he himself commanded. And for Thrasybulus, who brought back the exiles from Phyle and wished to escape notice, a pillar became a guide as he went through untrodden places. For Thrasybulus, when the night was moonless and the weather stormy, a fire was seen leading the way, which, having escorted them without mishap, ceased at Munychia, where now the altar of Phosphorus stands. Let our accounts, then, be deemed credible even by the Greeks from this, that it is possible for the all-powerful God to cause a pillar of fire to lead the Hebrews by night, which also guided them on their way. It is also said in some oracle: "a pillar of Dionysus, much-rejoicing, for the Thebans," from the history among the Hebrews. And Euripides in the *Antiope* says: "Within the chambers of the cowherds, a pillar of the god Euius, wreathed with ivy." The pillar signifies the formlessness of God, and the illuminated pillar, besides signifying the formlessness, indicates the stable and permanent nature of God, and his unchangeable light and shapelessness. For before the forms of statues were elaborated, the ancients, setting up pillars, revered them as images of God. Thus the author of the *Phoronis* writes:

Callithoe, key-bearer of Olympian queen, Argive Hera, first adorned with garlands and tassels the long pillar of the mistress. And the author of the Europia also relates that the statue of Apollo at Delphi is a pillar, through these words: that we might hang for the god a tenth and first-fruits from sacred precincts and a high pillar. Apollo, however, understood mystically as the negation of the many, is the one God. But that fire which resembles a pillar and the fire through the bush is a symbol of the holy light that passes from the earth and runs back again to heaven through the wood, through which the power of seeing has been granted to us intellectually. Plato the philosopher, having been helped by the writings of Moses concerning legislation, censured the constitutions of Minos and Lycurgus for looking only to courage, and praised as more solemn the one that speaks of one thing and always inclines toward one doctrine; for he says that it is more fitting for us to philosophize with strength, solemnity, and prudence, using the same opinion unchangeably concerning the same things, with regard to the dignity of heaven. Does not the law indicate that one should look to one God and command to act justly? And of the political, he speaks of two kinds, one legal, the other political, named homonymously.

And by "political" he primarily hints at the demiurge in the book of the same name, and he calls those who look to him and live actively and justly, together with contemplation, also "political" themselves. The "political" called equally with the "legal" he divides into cosmic magnanimity and private arrangement, which he named orderliness, harmony, and temperance, when rulers are becoming to the ruled, and the ruled become obedient to the rulers, which the Mosaic legislation earnestly strives to bring about. Furthermore, Plato, having been benefited, says that the legal pertains to generation, the political to friendship and concord; in the Laws he composed the philosopher of the Epinomis, who knows the course of all generation through the wandering stars, and another philosopher, the Timaeus, who is astronomical and contemplative of their motion, sympathy, and communion with each other, and he attaches him to the Republic in sequence. Then **. For I think the end of both the political man and the one who lives according to law is contemplation; at any rate, to govern rightly is necessary, but to philosophize is best. For the man who has intellect, having directed all his own affairs toward knowledge, would live, guiding his life by good deeds, despising the opposites, and pursuing the studies that contribute to truth. Law is not what is conventionally thought (for neither are visible things sight), nor is every opinion law (for not even wicked opinion is), but law is good opinion, and good is true, and true is that which finds and attains what is; and "the one who is has sent me," says Moses.

Some, accordingly, declared that the law is right reason, in accordance with good opinion, commanding what must be done and forbidding what must not be done. Hence the law is rightly said to have been given through Moses, being a standard of just and unjust things. And this we might properly call a divine ordinance, that which was handed down by God through Moses. It certainly has the function of leading to the divine. And Paul says: the law was established for the sake of transgressions, until the seed to which it was promised should come. Then, as if explaining the meaning, he adds: before faith came, we were guarded, shut in under law, that is, by fear from sins, until the coming faith should be revealed. So the law became our pedagogue to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. The legislative part is that which assigns what is fitting to each part of the soul and to their works; Moses, in a word, was a living law, governed by good reason. He administered a good polity, which is a noble nurture of men in community. He immediately employed the judicial art, which is a science corrective of errors for the sake of justice. Coordinate with it is the punitive art, which is a science of the measure of punishments. Punishment, being just, is a correction of the soul. And, so to speak, the whole education of Moses is paedagogic for those who are to become good and noble men, and a hunting for those similar to them, which would be the general's art; and the use of what is hunted, according to reason, would be legislative wisdom; for both acquiring and using are proper to this, which is most royal.

Only the wise man, at any rate, the philosophers proclaim as king, lawgiver, general, just, holy, beloved of God. If we should find these things concerning Moses, as is shown from the scriptures themselves, we would with full conviction declare Moses to be truly wise. Just as we say that the pastoral art provides for sheep—for the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep—so also we will say that the legislative art establishes human virtue, rekindling the human good as far as possible, being supervisory and caring for the human flock. And if the flock allegorized by the Lord is nothing other than a certain herd of men, the same one will be both shepherd and good lawgiver of the one flock of his obedient sheep, the one guardian, who seeks and finds the lost by law and word, since the law is spiritual, and leads to happiness; for he who becomes spiritual by the Holy Spirit is spiritual. This is the true lawgiver, who not only promises good and noble things, but also knows them. His law, too, is the saving ordinance of him who possesses knowledge, or rather the law is an ordinance of knowledge, for the word of God is power and wisdom. And this same one is the interpreter of laws, through whom the law was given, the first interpreter of the divine ordinances, the only-begotten Son who interprets the bosom of the Father.

Then those who are persuaded by the law and have some knowledge of it can neither disbelieve nor be ignorant of the truth, while those who disbelieve, being least willing to be present in deeds, if any others, are also acknowledged to be ignorant of the truth. What then is the disbelief of the Greeks? Is it not that they are unwilling to be persuaded by the truth which declares that the law was given by God through Moses, especially since they themselves honor Moses among their own? For they record that Minos received laws from Zeus every ninth year by going into the cave of Zeus, and that Lycurgus continually went to Delphi to Apollo to be instructed in legislation, as Plato, Aristotle, Ephorus, and Chamaeleon of Heraclea in his work On Drunkenness, and Aristotle in his Constitution of the Locrians, record that Zaleucus the Locrian received laws from Athena. But they, exalting the credibility of legislation among the Greeks as far as they can, by attributing it to the divine in imitation of the prophecy concerning Moses, are ungrateful, not acknowledging outright both the truth and the archetype of what is recorded among them.

Let no one, therefore, run down the law because of its punishments, as if it were not good and noble. For if one who removes a disease of the body is considered a benefactor, would not one who tries to free the soul from injustice be even more a guardian, inasmuch as the soul is more honorable than the body? Indeed, for the sake of bodily health we submit to incisions, cauteries, and doses of drugs, and the one who applies these is called a savior and a physician, not out of any envy or ill-will toward the sufferer, but as the logic of the art dictates; and he even cuts off some parts, so that the healthy parts may not be corrupted along with them, and no one would accuse the physician's art of wickedness. But for the sake of the soul, shall we not similarly submit to exile, to paying fines, to bonds, if only one might thereby at some time acquire justice from injustice? For the law, caring for its subjects, educates them toward piety and prescribes what must be done, and restrains each of the sins, imposing penalties on their moderate ones; but when it sees someone so disposed as to seem incurable, driving to the extreme of injustice, then, caring for the others so that they may not be corrupted by him, just as one cuts off some part of the whole body, it most healthily puts such a one to death. "And being judged by the Lord," says the apostle, "we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned along with the world." For the prophet said beforehand: "The Lord disciplined me, but did not hand me over to death.

For the sake of teaching you His righteousness, He disciplined you, it says, and tested you, and starved you, and made you thirst in a desert land, so that all His ordinances and judgments might be known in your heart, as many as I command you today, and you will know in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord our God will discipline you. And that the example brings prudence, it immediately says: a clever man, seeing a wicked man punished severely, is himself disciplined, for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The greatest and most perfect good is when one is able to turn someone from doing evil to virtue and right action, which the law accomplishes. So that even when someone falls into an incurable evil, having been overtaken by injustice and greed, the one being put to death would be benefited; for the law is a benefactor, being able to make the just from the unjust, if only they are willing to heed it, and to deliver them from present evils. For it promises to immortalize those who choose to live temperately and justly. And to know the law is a mark of a good mind. And again: evil men do not understand the law, but those who seek the Lord will understand in every good thing. So the governing providence must be both sovereign and good. For the power of both administers salvation, one disciplining by punishment as sovereign, the other acting kindly through beneficence as benefactor.

It is possible not to be a son of disobedience, but to pass from darkness into life and, having applied the ear to wisdom, to be first a lawful slave of God, then a faithful servant, fearing the Lord God. And if one should ascend further, he is enrolled among the sons; and when love covers a multitude of sins, he awaits the perfection of blessed hope, having grown in love, and is enrolled in the elect adoption called the friend of God, already singing the prayer and saying: Let the Lord become God for me. The apostle has indicated the beneficence of the law through the passage concerning the Jews, writing somewhat as follows: But if you call yourself a Jew and rest in the law and boast in God and know the will of God and discern the differences, being instructed from the law, and you trust yourself to be a guide of the blind, a light for those in darkness, an educator of the foolish, a teacher of infants, having the formation of knowledge and truth in the law. For it is agreed that the law can do these things, even if those who do not live according to the law boast of living as in the law. Blessed is the man who has found wisdom, and mortal is he who has seen prudence; and from her mouth, that is, wisdom, righteousness proceeds, and he bears law and mercy on his tongue. For the energy of the one Lord, who is the power and wisdom of God, is both the law and the gospel; and he whom the law has begotten in fear is merciful for salvation. Let alms and faith and truth not fail you, and fasten them around your neck.

Similarly, the prophecy rebukes the people, as Paul does, for not understanding the law. "Their ways are brokenness and misery, and they have not known the way of peace; there is no fear of God before their eyes. Claiming to be wise, they have become foolish." But we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully; yet those who wish to be teachers of the law do not understand, says the apostle, either what they say or what they affirm. The end of the commandment is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and unfeigned faith. Now the philosophy according to Moses is divided into four parts: the historical, the properly so-called legislative (which would belong to ethical treatment), the third into the hierurgical (which is already part of physical contemplation), and fourth, over all, the theological form, the epopteia, which Plato says is truly of the great mysteries, and Aristotle calls this form "after the physics." And dialectic according to Plato, as he says in the *Statesman*, is a certain science of discovery for the revelation of beings, and it is attainable by the temperate person not for the sake of speaking and doing something concerning human affairs, as the current dialecticians do, busying themselves with sophistic matters, but for the sake of being able to say things pleasing to God and to do things pleasing to God, the whole to the best of one's ability. And being a mixed philosophy with the true one, true dialectic, examining things, powers, and authorities, and testing them, ascends to the

It dares to place the most excellent substance beyond all things, directing it toward the God of the universe, professing not experience of mortal things but knowledge of divine and heavenly matters, to which is attached the proper use of human affairs, both in words and actions. Reasonably, therefore, Scripture also exhorts us to become such dialecticians: "Be approved money-changers, rejecting some things and retaining the good." For this is truly dialectical prudence, which distinguishes intelligible things, showing each of the beings unmixed and purely as it is, or a power that distinguishes the genera of things, descending to the most specific, presenting each being pure as it is. Hence, this alone leads to true wisdom, which is a divine power, knowing beings as beings, possessing perfection, free from every passion, not without the Savior who, by the divine word, has removed from the visionary part of our soul the misty ignorance poured in from base conduct and restored the best, so that we might well know both God and man. This is the one who truly showed how we must know ourselves, this is the one who reveals the father of all, to whomever he wishes, and as far as human nature can comprehend; for no one has known the son except the father, nor the father except the son and to whom the son reveals. Reasonably, therefore, the apostle says he has known the mystery according to revelation, as I have previously written briefly, to which you can, by reading, understand my understanding in the mystery of Christ.

To which he said, "You are able," since he knew that some had taken only milk, not yet solid food, and thus not simply milk. And we must understand the intention of the law in four ways: either as a sign indicating something, or as a command establishing right conduct, or as a prophecy uttering a divine decree. I know well that it is for men to distinguish and speak of such things; for the whole scripture is not, as the proverb says, "one Myconos" for understanding; rather, one must approach it as dialectically as possible, seeking the sequence of divine teaching. Hence the Egyptian priest in Plato very beautifully said: "O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children, and there is no old Greek man," meaning, I think, by "old" those who know the more ancient things—that is, our things—and conversely by "young" those who know the newer things practiced by the Greeks, things that happened yesterday and the day before, which they recount as ancient and old. He then added a teaching that is hoary with age, in a barbarian manner, using metaphor in an artless and unclear way. Indeed, the well-disposed approach the entire fabric of interpretation straightforwardly; but concerning the Greeks, he says that their conceit differs little from children's tales. For one must not understand it as childish myths, nor as myths that happened to children; rather, he called the myths themselves "children," as if those who consider themselves wise among the Greeks see little, hinting at the ancient teaching, the most ancient among the barbarians.

Truth, to which he opposed the word "childish myth," refuting the mythical element of the younger men's undertaking as having nothing older, like children, and presenting both their myths and their arguments as childish. Divinely, then, the power speaking to Hermas in revelation says that the visions and revelations are for the double-minded, those who debate in their hearts whether these things exist or not. Similarly, from the abundance of learning, demonstrations strengthen, confirm, and ground demonstrative arguments, as long as their minds, like those of the young, are unsettled. A lamp, then, is a good commandment, according to Scripture, and law is the light of the path; for education examines the ways of life. "Law, the king of all, mortals and immortals," says Pindar. And I understand the one who established the law through these words, and I take the Hesiodic saying as spoken of the god of all, even if spoken by the poet conjecturally, but not comprehensively: "For this law the son of Cronos ordained for men: for fish and beasts and winged birds to eat one another, since there is no justice among them; but to men he gave justice, which is far best." Whether he speaks of the law that comes with birth or the one given later, both the law of nature and the law of learning are from God, being one, just as Plato in the *Statesman* says there is one lawgiver, and in the *Laws* one who will understand the musical matters, teaching through these that the Word is one and God is one. And Moses appears to call the Lord a covenant, saying, "Behold, I am my covenant with you.

Since he previously spoke of a covenant, he advises not to seek it in writing. For there is a covenant which the God who is the cause of all things establishes (and God is named from the act of placing), he himself who made the ordering of the universe. And in the Preaching of Peter you would find law and word called the Lord. But let the first Stromateus of our Gnostic Commentaries according to the true philosophy be concluded here. CLEMENT'S STROMATA, BOOK TWO. Next it would be necessary to discuss, since Scripture declared the Greeks to be thieves of the barbarian philosophy, how this will be shown in few words. For we will not only demonstrate that they record imitations of the paradoxical things narrated among us, but we will also refute them as they contrive and counterfeit the most essential doctrines, since our scriptures are earlier, as we have shown, both in matters concerning faith, and concerning wisdom, knowledge, and science, hope and love, and concerning repentance and self-control, and indeed also fear of God (a veritable swarm of the virtues of truth). And whatever the annotation on the present topic will require will be included, and also how those who philosophized in a practical manner about the things of the ancients emulated especially the hidden character of the barbarian philosophy, this symbolic and enigmatic form, which is most useful, indeed most necessary, for the knowledge of truth. After these things, I think it is fitting to defend ourselves against the Greeks who attack us for using few scriptures, if somehow gently even the Jew who hears might be able to turn from what he believed to what he did not believe.

He will fittingly succeed the noble among the philosophers with a refutation that is loving toward their life and toward the discovery of new doctrines, not because we are defending ourselves against our accusers (far from it; indeed, we who have learned to bless those who curse us, even if they vainly bring down blasphemous words against us), but for the conversion of those very persons themselves, if only the all-wise might be shamed, disciplined by a barbarian refutation, so that at last they might be able to perceive what kind of teachings those are toward which they set out on their overseas journeys. For some of these they have stolen, and indeed these must be demonstrated, once their self-love is removed; but as for those which they, after searching for themselves, boast to have discovered, this is the refutation of them. By consequence, we must also run through the so-called encyclical education, to the extent it is useful, and concerning astrology, mathematics, and the sorcery of magic. For the Panhellenes boast of these as the greatest sciences. He who refutes with frankness makes peace. We have already said many times that we have neither practiced nor do we cultivate speaking Greek; for this is sufficient to demagogue the truth away from the many, but the true philosophical pursuit will benefit those who understand not in language but in judgment. It is necessary, I think, that the

concerned for truth, not to compose his phrasing from design and care, but to try only to name as best he can what he wishes; for those who cling to words and busy themselves with them let the facts escape them. It is, then, the farmer's task to take unharmed the rose that grows among thorns, and the craftsman's to find the pearl buried in the flesh of an oyster; and they say that birds have the most pleasant quality of flesh when, not because abundant food is set before them, but as they scratch with their feet and pick out their food with effort. If, therefore, anyone is capable of seeing the similar, and in many plausible and Greek things the truth lies hidden, as the true face lies hidden under the masks, he will hunt it down by diligent inquiry. For in the vision of Hermas the power that appeared says: "If it is possible for it to be revealed to you, it will be revealed." "Do not exalt yourself in your wisdom," says the Proverbs, "but in all ways make it known, so that you may straighten your ways; and your foot shall not stumble." For through these words it wishes to show that deeds must follow the word consistently, and that we must already indicate that we have selected what is useful from all education. The ways of wisdom are many; they are to be straightened toward the way of truth, and the way is faith; and "your foot shall not stumble" speaks concerning certain things that seem to oppose the one divine providential governance. Hence it adds:

Do not be wise in your own eyes, according to the godless reasonings that are opposed to the economy of God, but fear the only powerful God, to whom it pertains that nothing is opposed to God; and besides, the induction clearly teaches that divine fear is an avoidance of evil. For it says: "And turn aside from every evil." This is the discipline of wisdom; for the Lord disciplines whom he loves, causing pain for understanding, but restoring to peace and incorruption. Now the barbarian philosophy, which we follow, is truly perfect and true. For it says in the Wisdom: "For he himself has given me unerring knowledge of beings, to know the constitution of the world and the rest, up to and including the powers of roots." In all these things he has included the natural contemplation concerning the sensible world of all that has come to be. Next, he also hints at the intelligible things through what he adds: "I have known all that is hidden and manifest; for the wisdom that is the artificer of all things taught me." You have in brief the profession of our philosophy. The learning of these things, practiced with right conduct, leads through the wisdom that is the artificer of all things to the ruler of the universe, a thing hard to capture and hard to hunt, always withdrawing and standing far off from the pursuer. Yet the same, being far away, stands very near, a wondrous mystery: "I am a God drawing near," says the Lord; far away in essence (for how could the generated ever come near the ungenerated?), but very near in power, by which all things are embraced. "If someone does something in secret," he says, "will I not see him?" And indeed the power of God is always present, touching us with its power that is both observant and beneficent and disciplining.

Hence Moses, convinced that God will never be known by human wisdom, says, "Show yourself to me," and forces his way into the darkness where the voice of God was, that is, into the inaccessible and invisible conceptions concerning Being; for God is not in darkness or place, but is beyond both place and time and the quality of things that have come into being. Therefore he never dwells in a part, since he encompasses and is not encompassed, nor according to any definition or division. "For what house will you build for me?" says the Lord; but he did not build one for himself either, being uncontained, and even if heaven is called his throne, he is not thus contained, but rests there, delighting in the creation. It is clear, then, that the truth has been hidden from us, as has already been shown by one example, and a little later we will demonstrate it through more. And how are not those worthy of acceptance who wish to learn and who are able, according to Solomon, to know wisdom and education, to understand words of prudence, to receive turns of speech, to understand true righteousness (since there is also another righteousness not taught according to truth by the Greek laws and the other philosophers), and to straighten judgments, as he says, not the judicial ones, but indicating that the criterion within us must be sound and unerring, so that it may give cunning to the guileless, and perception and understanding to the young child. For having heard these things, the wise man—the one persuaded to obey the commandments—will become wiser in knowledge, and the intelligent man will acquire governance and will understand a parable and an obscure saying, the utterances of the wise, and riddles.

For those who are inspired do not produce counterfeit words from God, nor do those who traffic in them, nor indeed snares with which most of the sophists entangle the young, devoting themselves to nothing true. But those who possess the Holy Spirit investigate the depths of God, that is, they become partakers of the concealment concerning prophecies. And it is forbidden to share holy things with dogs, as 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 unbelieving characters, shameless in the barking of inquiry. Let not waters overflow outside your spring; let your waters flow through your own channels. For many do not understand such things, however many they encounter, nor do they know them when they learn, but think they do, according to the noble Heraclitus. Does it not seem to you that he too blames those who do not believe? "And my righteous one will live from faith," the prophet has said. And another prophet says: "If you do not believe, you will not understand." For how could a soul ever contain the transcendent contemplation of these things when disbelief concerning learning struggles within? Faith, which the Greeks slander, considering it empty and barbarous, is a voluntary preconception, an assent to piety, a substance of things hoped for, a proof of things not seen, according to the divine apostle. For by this especially the elders were testified to; without faith it is impossible to be pleasing to God. Others have defined faith as the conceptual assent to an invisible thing, just as demonstration is the manifest assent to an unknown thing.

If, then, it is a deliberate choice, being appetitive of something, the appetite is now intellectual; and since deliberate choice is the beginning of action, faith is found to be the beginning of action, a foundation of prudent choice, when someone demonstrates to him through faith the demonstration. And to follow willingly what is beneficial is the beginning of understanding. At any rate, an undistracted deliberate choice provides a great impetus toward knowledge. Indeed, the practice of faith becomes knowledge, resting on a secure foundation. The philosophers' children define knowledge as a state unshaken by reason. Is there, then, some other such true condition of piety itself, whose only teacher is the Word? I do not think so. Theophrastus says that sense perception is the beginning of faith; for from it the beginnings extend toward the reason in us and the intellect. He who has believed, then, in the divine scriptures, having a firm judgment, receives as an irrefutable demonstration the voice of the God who bestowed the scriptures; thus faith is no longer fortified by demonstration. Blessed, therefore, are those who have not seen and yet have believed. At any rate, the enchantments of the Sirens, displaying a superhuman power, astonished those who happened upon them, almost involuntarily preparing them for the reception of what was said. Here the followers of Basilides consider faith to be natural, inasmuch as they also place it in the selection, finding the disciplines without demonstration by intellectual apprehension.

The followers of Valentinus, assigning faith to the simple among us, but claiming for themselves knowledge as belonging to those who are saved by nature according to the superiority of a distinctive seed, wish it to be far separated from faith, as the spiritual from the psychic, so they say. Moreover, the followers of Basilides say that faith and election are proper to each interval, and that in consequence of the supramundane election, the cosmic faith of all nature follows, and that the gift of faith is proportionate to each one's hope. Faith, then, is no longer an achievement of deliberate choice, if it is a natural advantage; nor will the one who did not believe, being without cause, meet with just recompense, nor is the one who believed responsible; and all the peculiarity and difference of faith and unbelief would fall under neither praise nor blame for those reasoning correctly, having as its antecedent the natural necessity arising from the one who is powerful over all things; but if we are pulled like lifeless puppets by natural energies, the voluntary and the involuntary become superfluous, as does the impulse that leads these. And I no longer understand this as a living being, whose impulsive faculty has been allotted by necessity, moved by an external cause. Where, then, is the repentance of the one who was once unbelieving, through which there is remission of sins? So that baptism is no longer reasonable, nor the blessed seal, nor the Son, nor the Father; but God, I think, is found to be the distribution of natures for them, not having the voluntary faith, the foundation of salvation.

We, who have received from the Lord through the scriptures that choice and avoidance have been given to men as an autonomous power, rest upon faith as an unerring criterion, having shown a ready spirit, because we have chosen life and have believed in God through his voice; and he who has believed the Word knows the matter to be true, for the Word is truth; but he who disbelieved the speaker disbelieved God. By faith we understand that the ages have been constituted by the word of God, so that the visible has not come from the visible, as the apostle says: by faith Abel offered a greater sacrifice than Cain, through which he was testified to be righteous, God bearing witness to him over his gifts; and through it, though dead, he still speaks, and so on until the point of having a temporary enjoyment of sin. Now these, even before the law, faith, having justified them, established them as heirs of the divine promise. Why then do I still, gathering testimonies of faith from our history, set them forth? For time will fail me as I narrate concerning Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David and Samuel and the prophets and those who follow them. There being four things in which the truth resides—sense-perception, intellect, knowledge, and opinion—by nature the intellect is first, but for us and in relation to us sense-perception is first, and from sense-perception and intellect the substance of knowledge is constituted, while clarity is common to both intellect and sense-perception. But sense-perception is the foundation of knowledge, while faith, having traveled through the sensible, leaves opinion behind, hastens toward the infallible, and abides in the truth.

If someone says that knowledge is demonstrative with reason, let him hear that the first principles are indemonstrable; for they are known neither by art nor by prudence. For the one concerns things that can be otherwise, and the other is only productive, not also theoretical. Therefore it is possible to reach the principle of all things by faith alone. For all knowledge is teachable; and what is teachable comes from something pre-known. But the principle of all things was not pre-known by the Greeks, neither by Thales, who knew water as the first cause, nor by the other natural philosophers who followed; since even if Anaxagoras was the first to set mind over things, yet not even he preserved the efficient cause, depicting some mindless vortices together with the inactivity and mindlessness of mind. Hence the word says: Do not call yourselves a teacher on earth. For knowledge is a demonstrative disposition, but faith is a grace that, from indemonstrables, elevates to the universal the simple, which is neither with matter, nor matter, nor under matter. But the unbelievers, as it seems, drag everything from heaven and the invisible down to earth, grasping with their hands rocks and oaks, as Plato says; for touching such things, they insist that only this exists, which provides

and some sort of touch, defining body and substance as the same. Those who dispute with them, very cautiously defending themselves from some invisible source above, insist that certain intelligible and incorporeal forms are the true substance. Behold, says the Word, I make new things, which no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor entered into the heart of man—with a new eye, a new ear, a new heart, all that is visible, audible, and comprehensible through faith and understanding, as the Lord's disciples speak, hear, and act spiritually. For there is genuine coinage and counterfeit, which nonetheless deceives the unskilled, but not the money-changers, who have learned to distinguish and separate the counterfeit from the genuine. Thus the money-changer tells the unskilled only that this coin is counterfeit; but how, only the one familiar with the banker and the one trained for this learns. Aristotle says that the judgment following knowledge, as true of a particular thing, is faith. Therefore faith is more authoritative than knowledge and is its criterion. Conjecture, a weak supposition, counterfeits faith, just as the flatterer counterfeits the friend and the wolf the dog. Since we see that the carpenter, by learning something, becomes a craftsman, and the pilot, educated in his art, will be able to steer, I consider that wishing to become good and noble is not sufficient; one must therefore be persuaded and learn. And being persuaded by the Word, whom we have proclaimed as teacher, is to trust in that very one, opposing nothing. For how is it possible to resist God?

Faith, then, is knowledge, and knowledge becomes faith by some divine sequence and counter-sequence. Indeed, even Epicurus, who valued pleasure above truth, supposes faith to be a preconception of the mind; and he defines preconception as an application to something evident and to the evident notion of the thing; and that no one can either inquire or be at a loss, nor even opine, nor yet refute, without a preconception. For how could one who has no preconception of that which he desires learn about that which he seeks? And he who has learned already makes the preconception a comprehension. And if the learner does not learn without a preconception which is receptive of what is said, he himself has ears that are auditory of the truth; but blessed is the speaker who speaks into the ears of hearers, just as, of course, blessed also is the hearer himself. And to hear is to understand. If, then, faith is nothing other than a preconception of the mind concerning what is said, and this is called both obedience and understanding and persuasion, no one will learn without faith, since not even without a preconception. And so what is said by the prophet is shown to be true beyond all else: "Unless you believe, you will not understand." This saying, Heraclitus of Ephesus has paraphrased, saying: "Unless one hopes for the unhoped-for, he will not find it out, it being unsearchable and inaccessible." But also the philosopher Plato, in the Laws, says that he who is going to become blessed and happy must from the very beginning be a partaker of truth, so that he may live as true for as long a time as possible; for he is faithful. But the faithless man is one to whom a voluntary falsehood is dear; and he to whom it is involuntary is mindless; neither of which creatures, then, is enviable.

Every faithless and ignorant person is friendless. And perhaps he calls this royal wisdom in the Euthydemus in a concealed manner. At any rate, in the Politicus he says verbatim: "Thus the knowledge of the true king is royal, and he who possesses it, whether he happens to be a ruler or a private individual, shall rightly be called royal according to the art itself." Accordingly, those who have believed in Christ are both good and are called good, as being truly royal, like those who are cared for by a king. For just as the wise are wise by wisdom and the lawful are lawful by law, so those who are kings by Christ the king and those of Christ are Christians. Then, a little further on, he clearly adds: "The right would be lawful, and the law, being right reason, is law by nature, and not in writings or other things." And the Eleatic stranger declares the royal and political man to be a living law. Such a one is he who fulfills the law, doing the will of the Father, and is openly inscribed upon some high wood, set forth as an example of divine virtue to those able to see clearly. The Greeks know the secret messages of the ephors in Lacedaemon inscribed by law on wood; but my law, as has been said, is both royal and living, and is right reason—law that is king of all, both mortals and immortals, as the Boeotian Pindar sings. For Speusippus, in the first book of his Against Cleophon, seems to write similarly to Plato: "For if kingship is something excellent, and the wise man alone is king and ruler, then the law, being right reason, is excellent; and so it is.

The Stoic philosophers teach doctrines consistent with these, attributing kingship, priesthood, prophecy, legislation, true wealth, true beauty, nobility, and freedom to the wise man alone—who, they themselves admit, is exceedingly difficult to find. All the aforementioned doctrines, then, appear to have been transmitted from the great Moses to the Greeks. Through these he teaches that all things belong to the wise man, and that because God has had mercy on me, all things are mine. He indicates that the wise man is beloved of God by saying: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. For one is found to be called outright "friend," another is shown to be renamed "one who sees God," and Isaac he allegorized as a consecrated sacrificial victim, choosing him as a type for us of a saving economy. Among the Greeks, Minos is sung as the nine-year king, the companion of Zeus, since they heard how God conversed with Moses, as one might speak with his own friend. Now Moses was wise, a king, a lawgiver; but our Savior surpasses all human nature: beautiful, as the one alone to be loved by us who yearn for the true good—for he was the true light—and he is shown to be proclaimed king even by countless children and by unbelieving and ignorant Jews, and announced by the prophets themselves; and so wealthy that he scorned all the gold of the earth and above and below it, along with all glory offered to him by the adversary.

Why need one say that only the high priest, the sole knower of the service of God, the king of peace Melchizedek, is the most competent to lead the whole race of men? And as lawgiver, as one who gives the law through the mouth of the prophets, commanding and teaching most clearly what is to be done and what not. And who could be more noble than he, whose only father is God? Come then, let us also set forth Plato as applying himself to the same doctrines. He has called the wise man rich in the Phaedrus, saying, "O dear Pan and all other gods here, grant that I may become beautiful within; and that from without, all that I have may be friendly to me within; and that I may consider the wise man rich." And the Athenian Stranger, censuring those who think that those who possess many possessions are rich, speaks thus: "It is impossible for those whom the many count rich to be both very rich and good; for they call rich those who, among few men, possess possessions worth the most coin, which even a bad man may possess." "The whole world of wealth belongs to the faithful man," says Solomon, "but to the unfaithful not even an obol." So we must much rather trust the Scripture which says that a camel will sooner pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man philosophize; but on the contrary, it blesses the poor, as Plato understood, saying: "Poverty is to be considered not as making property less, but as making insatiability greater. For it is never the lack of money, but insatiability, from which the good man, being free, would also be rich." And in the Alcibiades he calls vice slavish, and virtue liberal.

Lift from yourselves the heavy yoke," it says, "and take the gentle one," the scripture says, just as the poets also call it the servile yoke. And the phrase "you were sold to your sins" agrees with what was previously said. Now everyone who commits sin is a slave. But the slave does not remain in the house forever. If the son sets you free, you will be free, and the truth will set you free. The Athenian stranger speaks well of the wise man in this way: as if someone were to insist that the just, even if they happen to be ugly in body, are by the most just character most beautiful in this respect, almost no one speaking thus would seem to speak amiss; and the prophecy foretold that his form would be lacking among all the sons of men. Plato called the wise man king in the *Statesman*, and the passage is at hand. These things having been demonstrated, let us run back again to the discourse concerning faith. Indeed, with full demonstration, Plato somehow represents that faith is needed everywhere, while at the same time hymning peace: for a man faithful and sound in seditions could not arise without complete virtue; but there are very many mercenaries who are combative and willing to die in war, most of whom become bold and unjust, insolent and foolish, except for a very few. If these things are correctly said, every lawgiver, who is of even small benefit, will lay down the laws looking especially to the greatest virtue. And this is faithfulness, which we need at every time, in peace and in every war and in all the rest of life.

For it seems to embrace the other syllables. The best thing is neither war nor faction; for it is to be deprecated to have need of these, but peace with one another together with goodwill is the best. From these things it is evident that the greatest prayer is to have peace according to Plato, and the greatest mother of virtues is faith. Naturally, then, it is said by Solomon, "Wisdom in the mouth of the faithful," since Xenocrates also in his On Prudence says that wisdom is knowledge of the first causes and of intelligible substance, considering prudence to be twofold, the one practical, the other theoretical, which indeed is human wisdom. Wherefore wisdom is prudence, but not every prudence is wisdom. It has been shown that faith is knowledge of the principle of all things, but not demonstration. For it is absurd that the followers of Pythagoras of Samos, while rejecting demonstrations of the things sought, consider the "he himself said" as faith and are content with this alone for the confirmation of what they have heard, while the lovers of truth attempt to disbelieve a trustworthy teacher, the only savior God, and demand from him proofs of what is said. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear," he says. And who is this? Let Epicharmus say: "The mind sees and the mind hears; the rest are deaf and blind." Heraclitus, reproving some as faithless, says they do not know how to hear or to speak, having been benefited, presumably, by Solomon: "If you love to hear, you will receive, and if you incline your ear, you will be wise." "Lord, who has believed our hearing?" says Isaiah. For faith is from hearing, and hearing is through the word of God, says the apostle.

How then will they call upon him in whom they did not believe? And how will they believe in him of whom they did not hear? And how will they hear without a herald? And how will they herald unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who proclaim the good news. Do you see how he traces faith through hearing and the preaching of the apostles back to the word of the Lord and the Son of God? Do we not yet understand that the word of the Lord is demonstration? Just as playing ball depends not only on the one who skillfully sends the ball, but also requires the one who gracefully receives it, so that the exercise may be carried out according to the rules of ball-playing, so also teaching becomes trustworthy when the faith of the hearers, being a kind of natural art, as it were, cooperates for learning. Thus also fertile earth cooperates for the sowing of seeds. For there is no benefit from the best instruction without the reception of the learner, nor from prophecy without the ready obedience of the hearers being present. Indeed, dry tinder, being ready to receive the fiery power, is easily kindled, and the much-discussed stone attracts iron through affinity, just as the souchian tear draws tinder and amber stirs up chaff; and the things drawn are persuaded, being drawn by an ineffable spirit, not as causes but as co-causes.

Since the form of evil is twofold—one accompanied by deceit and concealment, the other leading and carrying by force—the divine Word has cried out, calling all collectively, knowing full well those who will not be persuaded, yet nevertheless, because it is up to us to be persuaded or not, so that some may not have ignorance as a pretext, it has made the call just, demanding from each according to his ability. For in some, both the will and the ability are present together, having increased this through training and purification; others, even if they are not yet able, already have the will. Now, willing is a work of the soul, but acting is not without the body. Nor are actions measured only by the outcome, but they are judged by each one's choice—whether he chose readily, whether he repented of his errors, whether he gained understanding of his faults, and repented, which is to have known afterwards; for repentance is a slow knowledge, while knowledge is the first sinlessness. Therefore, repentance is also an achievement of faith; for if one does not believe that what he formerly clung to is a sin, he will not change; and if he does not believe that punishment hangs over the transgressor and salvation over the one who lives according to the commandments, he will not change in that way either. Indeed, hope also is constituted from faith. The followers of Basilides define faith as the soul's assent to something that does not move the senses because it is not present. Hope is the expectation of acquiring a good; and the expectation must be faithful. Faithful is the one who keeps inviolably what has been entrusted; and what are entrusted to us are the words about God and the divine words, the commandments, together with the accomplishment of the precepts.

This is the faithful servant, the one praised by the Lord. But when it says "the Lord is faithful," it indicates the one whose declaration is worthy of belief; and his Word declares, and he himself would be the faithful God. How then, if believing is a supposition, do the philosophers consider their own doctrines secure? For belief is not a voluntary assent before demonstration, but an assent to something strong. And what could be stronger than God? Unbelief, on the other hand, is a weak negative supposition of the opposite, just as distrust is a disposition that is hard to receive faith. And faith is a voluntary supposition and a well-disposed preconception before comprehension, while expectation is an opinion about the future; and the expectation of others is an opinion about the uncertain; but confidence is a firm judgment about something. Therefore we believe in that in which we have confidence, for divine glory and salvation; and we have confidence in the only God, whom we know will not transgress the things well promised to us and created and granted to us by him out of goodwill. Goodwill is a wish for good things for another for that person's own sake. For he is without need; but the beneficence and the kindness from the Lord terminates upon us, being divine goodwill and goodwill toward doing good. And if faith was counted as righteousness for Abraham, and we are the seed of Abraham through hearing, then we too must believe. For we are Israelites, not through signs, but obedient through hearing. Therefore rejoice, barren one who does not give birth, break forth and cry out, says the one who does not labor in childbirth; for the children of the desert are many, more than those of the woman who has a husband.

You lived within the enclosure of the people; your children were blessed in the tents of the fathers. But if the same abodes are announced to us by prophecy and to the patriarchs, one God is shown in both Testaments. He adds more clearly: "You have inherited the covenant of Israel," speaking to the call from the nations, to the one formerly barren of this husband, who is the Word, to the desert before the bridegroom. The righteous man will live from faith, according to the covenant and the commandments, since these two, in name and time, given according to age and progress in an economic manner, are one in power, the one old, the other new, and are supplied through the Son from one God. The Apostle also says in the Epistle to the Romans: "For the righteousness of God is revealed in him from faith to faith," teaching that the one salvation from prophecy perfected into the Gospel is through one and the same Lord. "This," he said, "I set before you as the command, child Timothy, according to the prophecies that precede you, so that you may serve in them the noble service, having faith and a good conscience, which some, having rejected, have been shipwrecked concerning faith, because they defiled the conscience that came from God with unbelief." Therefore, faith is not to be slandered as something easy, common, and belonging to ordinary people. For if it were a human pursuit, as the Greeks supposed, it would have died out; but it grows and is present everywhere.

I say, then, that faith, whether it is founded by love or even by fear, as the accusers claim, is something divine, neither torn apart by any other worldly affection nor dissolved by present fear. For love, through its friendship toward faith, makes believers, while faith is the foundation of love, bringing forth beneficence in return, when even the fear that is the pedagogue of the law is believed from those things from which it is believed, and is believed to be fear. For if being is shown in acting, and what is future and threatening, but not acting and present, is believed, then, being believed according to its being, it is not itself generative of faith, since it has been judged trustworthy by faith itself. Divine, then, is such a change from unbelief, when someone becomes faithful and believes in both hope and fear. And indeed, the first inclination toward salvation appears to us to be faith, after which fear and hope and repentance, together with self-control and patience, advancing, lead us to both love and knowledge. Naturally, then, the apostle Barnabas, from whom he says he received, says, "I have been eager to send you a small portion, so that along with your faith you may also have perfect knowledge." Now, the supporters of our faith are fear and patience, while our allies are long-suffering and self-control. Of these, he says, if they remain purely toward the Lord, wisdom, understanding, science, and knowledge rejoice together with them. Since, then, the aforementioned virtues are elements of knowledge, it happens that faith is more elementary, being as necessary to the gnostic as breathing is to living in this world.

Just as it is impossible to live without the four elements, so too without faith knowledge cannot follow. This, then, is the foundation of truth. Those who accuse fear attack the law, and if they attack the law, it is clear that they also attack the God who gave the law. For these three necessarily subsist in relation to the subject: the ruler, the administration, and the ruled. If, then, by hypothesis they were to remove the law, it would necessarily follow that each person who is led by desire, gratifying pleasure, would neglect what is right, despise the divine, and at the same time both be impious and unjust, having recklessly broken away from the truth. Yes, they say, fear is an irrational aversion and a passion. What do you mean? And how would this definition still be preserved for you when the commandment is given to me through reason? The commandment forbids, threatening fear for the education of those who are thus receptive to admonition. Fear, then, is not irrational; on the contrary, it is rational. For how could it not be, when it exhorts: you shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness? But if they quibble over names, the philosophers call the fear of the law caution, which is a rational aversion. Critolaus of Phaselis not inappropriately called these people word-fighters. The commandment, then, when understood by a change of name, appears to those who accuse us to be already noble and most beautiful. Caution, therefore, is shown to be rational, of that which harms

It is a turning away, from which repentance for past sins arises. For the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord, and good understanding is for all who practice it. He speaks of the making of wisdom, which is fear of God, paving the way to wisdom. And if the law is productive of fear, the beginning of wisdom is knowledge of the law, and there is no wise man without the law. Therefore those who reject the law are unwise, and it follows that they are considered godless. But discipline is the beginning of wisdom. "Wisdom and discipline the impious will despise," says Scripture. Let us see what fearful things the law announces. If they are the things intermediate between virtue and vice, such as poverty, disease, ill-repute, low birth, and the like, then even the laws of the city are praised for holding these up, and this opinion is in harmony with those from the Peripatos who introduce three kinds of goods and consider their opposites to be evils. But for us, the given law commands us to flee from things that are truly evil: adultery, licentiousness, pederasty, ignorance, injustice, sickness of the soul, death—not the death that separates soul from body, but the one that separates the soul from truth. For these vices and the activities arising from them are truly grievous and fearful. It is not without reason that the divine oracles say that nets are spread for winged creatures, for those who partake of bloodshed store up evils for themselves. How then can the law still be called not good by some heresies, which invoke the apostle saying, "For through the law comes knowledge of sin"? To them we say: the law did not create sin, but revealed it; for by commanding what is to be done, it exposed what is not to be done.

Of the good, one part is to teach what is salvific, and the other to point out what is harmful, and to advise using the former, and to command fleeing the latter. For instance, the apostle, whom they do not understand, said that knowledge of sin was revealed through the law, not that it came into existence. How is the law that educates not good, given as a pedagogue leading to Christ, so that we may turn back, being guided educationally through fear toward perfection through Christ? He says, "I do not wish for the death of the sinner as for his repentance." The commandment produces repentance, being prohibitive of what should not be done, and promising benefits. By death, I think, he means ignorance. And "he who is near the Lord is full of stripes"; that is, he who draws near to knowledge experiences dangers, fears, pains, and afflictions because of his desire for truth. For a son who is educated becomes wise and is saved from the heat; an intelligent son receives commandments. And Barnabas the apostle, having first set down, "Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and knowledgeable before themselves," added, "Let us become spiritual, a perfect temple for God." As far as it is in our power, let us practice the fear of God and strive to keep his commandments, so that we may rejoice in his ordinances. Hence it is divinely said, "The beginning of wisdom is fear of God.

Here the followers of Basilides, interpreting this saying, claim that the Ruler himself, having heard the announcement of the ministering spirit, was astounded at both the hearing and the sight, being unexpectedly evangelized, and that his astonishment was called fear, becoming the beginning of wisdom that is discriminative, discerning, perfective, and restorative; for the one over all sends forth, having distinguished not only the world but also the election. And Valentinus, in some letter, seems to have taken such things in mind and writes in these very words: "And just as fear arose among the angels at that creation when it uttered something greater than its formation, because of the one who invisibly gave the seed of the higher substance in it and spoke boldly, so also in the generations of worldly men, fears became the works of men to their makers, such as statues and images and everything that hands accomplish in the name of God; for Adam, formed in the name of Man, provided fear to the pre-existing Man, as indeed that one stood in him, and they were astonished and quickly destroyed the work." But since there is one principle, as

will be shown later. These men will be revealed as fabricators of chirpings and twitterings. Since it seemed beneficial to God to be pre-educated through the Lord from the law and the prophets, the beginning of wisdom is said to be the fear of the Lord, given through Moses by the Lord to the disobedient and hard-hearted. For those whom reason does not persuade, fear tames. The educating Word, foreseeing this from above, adapted an instrument for each of the two modes, purifying appropriately for piety. Now, astonishment is fear arising from an unfamiliar impression or from an impression at an unexpected event, or even from a message, while fear is as in relation to something that has happened or exists, or is an overwhelming wonder. They therefore do not perceive that they have made the greatest God, whom they themselves hymn, subject to passion through astonishment, and that before the astonishment he was in ignorance. If, then, ignorance preceded the astonishment, and astonishment and fear have become the beginning of wisdom—the fear of God—then ignorance threatens to be the causal antecedent of the wisdom of God and of the entire cosmogony, and even of the restoration of the election itself. Is ignorance, then, of good things or of bad? But if of good things, why does it cease through astonishment? And the messenger, the proclamation, and the baptism are superfluous for them. If of bad things, how can evil be the cause of the best things? For if ignorance had not pre-existed, the messenger would not have descended, nor would astonishment have seized the Ruler, as they themselves say, nor would he have taken the beginning of wisdom from fear for the separation of the election and the cosmic elements.

If the fear of the pre-existent Man made the angels conspirators against their own creation, as if the invisible seed of the higher substance were established in the product of their craftsmanship, or if they were roused by empty presumption—which is improbable—since they were entrusted with the creation of which they were to become, as it were, the masters of a child, and were condemned for complete ignorance; or if they were moved by being subject to foreknowledge, they would not have conspired against that through which they attempted, nor would they have been astonished at their own work, having understood from foreknowledge the seed from above; or finally, if they dared, trusting in knowledge—which is also impossible, since they learned the difference in the fullness of Man, to conspire, and also that which is according to the image, in which both the archetype and that which is incorruptible along with the rest of knowledge were received. To these, then, and to certain others, especially those from Marcion, Scripture cries out, though they do not hear; but he who hears me will rest in peace, trusting, and will be free from fear of every evil. What, then, do they intend for the law? They will not say it is evil, but just, distinguishing the good from the just. But the Lord, commanding fear of evil, does not remove evil by evil, but dissolves the opposite by its opposite. Evil is opposite to good, as unjust is to just. If, then, abstinence from evils is fearlessness, which the fear of the Lord produces, then fear is good, and the fear from the law is not only just but also good, since it destroys wickedness; and by introducing fearlessness through fear, it does not produce impassibility by passion, but moderation of passion through discipline. When, then, we hear:

Honor the Lord and you will be strong, but fear no other besides him; we understand that to fear is to sin, and that following the commandments given by God is honor to God. Dread is fear of the divine. But even if fear is a passion, as some maintain, because fear is a passion, not every fear is a passion. Superstition, at any rate, is a passion, being fear of demons, which are subject to passion and passionate; conversely, therefore, the fear of the impassible God is impassible. For one fears not God, but falling away from God; and he who fears this fears falling into evils and dreads evils; and he who fears the fall wishes himself to be incorruptible and impassible. "A wise man, having feared, turned away from evil, but a fool mingles confidently," the scripture says; and again it says, "In the fear of the Lord is the hope of strength." Such fear, then, leads both to repentance and to hope. Hope is expectation of good things, hopeful of a good that is absent. Indeed, **eue mptosia** is taken for hope, which we have learned to lead by the hand to love. Love would be concord of those in accordance with reason, life, and manner, or, to sum up, a sharing of life, or an intensity of friendship and affection with right reason concerning the use of companions. The companion is another self; for this reason we address as brothers those reborn by the same word. Adjacent to love are hospitality, which is a kind of art concerning the use of strangers; and strangers are those for whom the things of the world are foreign. For we understand as worldly those who hope in the earth and in fleshly desires.

Do not conform yourselves, says the apostle, to this present age, but transform yourselves by the renewal of your mind, so that you may discern what the will of God is, the good and pleasing and perfect. Hospitality, then, concerns what is beneficial to strangers; strangers are guests, guests are friends, friends are brothers. "Dear brother," says Homer. Philanthropy, through which also comes affection, is a friendly use of human beings; and affection, being a kind of love of art concerning the love of friends or relatives, accompanies love. If the true human being in us is the spiritual one, then brotherly love is philanthropy toward those who have shared in the same spirit. Affection, again, is the preservation of goodwill or love; love is complete acceptance, and to love is to be pleased with the character, being led and being led away. They are led to identity through concord, which is knowledge of common goods; for unanimity is harmony of opinions. And let our love be unfeigned, says he, and let us ourselves, abhorring evil, become, by cleaving to the good through brotherly love, and so forth, until, if possible, it is from you, making peace with all people. Then he says, "Let me not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil in the good." To the Jews the same apostle confesses that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge; for, being ignorant of the justice of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to the justice of God; for they neither knew nor did the will of the law, but they thought that what they themselves supposed was what the law willed.

Nor did they trust the law as a prophet, but followed a bare word and fear, not with disposition and faith; for the end of the law is Christ for righteousness, the one prophesied by the law, for every believer. Hence it is said to them by Moses: I will provoke you to jealousy not over a nation, I will anger you over a senseless nation, that is, over one that has become ready for obedience. And through Isaiah it is said: I was found by those not seeking me, I became manifest to those not questioning me, before the Lord's coming, clearly; after which those things prophesied are now fittingly said to Israel: I stretched out my hands all day long over a disobedient and gainsaying people. Do you see the cause of the calling from the nations clearly stated by the prophet as the people's disobedience and gainsaying? Then the goodness of God is shown even in these things; for the apostle says: But by their transgression salvation came to the nations, to provoke them to jealousy and to wish to repent. And the Shepherd, simply placing the word concerning those who have fallen asleep, knows some righteous among the nations and among the Jews not only before the Lord's coming, but even before the law, according to their good pleasure toward God, such as Abel, such as Noah, and any other righteous one. For he says that the apostles and teachers who proclaimed the name of the Son of God and fell asleep proclaimed in power and faith to those who had previously fallen asleep. Then he adds: And they themselves gave them the seal of the proclamation. So they went down with them into the water and came up again. But these went down living and came up again living.

Those who had fallen asleep in death descended, but rose up alive. Through these, then, they were brought to life and recognized the name of the Son of God. For this reason they also ascended together with them and were fitted into the building of the tower, and were built in unhewn; for they slept in righteousness and in great purity, but they did not have this seal alone. For when nations that do not have the law by nature do the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves, according to the apostle. Now, as to how the virtues follow one another, what need is there to say, since it has already been shown that faith follows repentance and hope, and reverence follows faith, and perseverance in these and practice together with learning are completed into love, which is perfected by knowledge? That must be noted as necessary: that only the divine is to be understood as wise by nature; therefore wisdom is the power of God that taught the truth; and here somewhere the perfection of knowledge is grasped. The philosopher loves and cherishes the truth, being already considered a friend through love, as a genuine servant. The beginning of this is wonder at things, as Plato says in the Theaetetus, and Matthias in the Traditions exhorts: wonder at present things, positing this as the first step of transcendent knowledge; to which, in the Gospel according to the Hebrews, it is written: he who wonders will reign, and he who reigns will rest. It is impossible, therefore, for the ignorant, as long as he remains ignorant, to philosophize, for one who has not received a notion of wisdom, philosophy being a desire for that which truly is and for the studies that tend toward it.

Even if some have practiced doing well, yet knowing how one ought to use and act and also to labor together, in which one is likened to God—God, I mean, the Savior—serving the God of all through the high priestly Word, through which things truly beautiful and just are seen. Piety is an action that follows and is in accordance with God. Therefore, our philosopher adheres to these three things: first, contemplation; second, the fulfillment of the commandments; third, the formation of good men. These, when combined, perfect the Gnostic. If any of these is lacking, the knowledge is lame. Hence, the Scripture divinely says: "And the Lord said to Moses, saying: 'Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them: I am the Lord your God. According to the practices of the land of Egypt, in which you dwelt, you shall not do; and according to the practices of the land of Canaan, into which I am leading you, you shall not do; and you shall not walk in their laws. You shall do my judgments and keep my ordinances, to walk in them. I am the Lord your God. And you shall keep all my ordinances and do them. The man who does them shall live in them. I am the Lord your God.'" Whether Egypt and the land of Canaan are symbols of the world and deceit, or of passions and vices, from which we must abstain, and what sort of things are to be practiced as divine and not worldly, the oracle shows us. And when it says, "The man who does them shall live in them," it calls the correction of the Hebrews themselves and of our neighbors, and our own training and progress, life—both theirs and ours.

For the dead are brought to life together with Christ through our covenant, by means of the fallen. And the scripture, frequently repeating "I am the Lord your God," most urgently shames and teaches us to follow the God who gave the commandments, while gently reminding us to seek God and to attempt to know Him as far as possible, which would be the greatest contemplation, the epoptic, the true science, that which becomes unchangeable by reason. This alone would be the knowledge of wisdom, from which right action is never separated. But the knowledge of the self-styled wise, whether they be barbarian heresies or the philosophers among the Greeks, puffs up, according to the apostle. Faithful, however, is the knowledge which would be the scientific demonstration of the things handed down according to true philosophy. We would say that it is a reason that, from agreed-upon premises, supplies faith for disputed matters. Since faith is twofold, the one scientific, the other doxastic, nothing prevents us from calling demonstration twofold, the one scientific, the other doxastic, since also knowledge and foreknowledge are spoken of as twofold, one having its own nature precisely, the other deficiently. And perhaps our demonstration alone would be true, since it is supplied from divine scriptures, from the sacred writings and the God-taught wisdom, according to the apostle. Learning, then, is also being persuaded by the commandments, that is, believing in God. And faith is a certain power of God, being the strength of truth. For instance, it says: "If you have faith as a grain of mustard, you will move the mountain." And again: "According to your faith, so shall it be for you.

And one is healed, having taken healing through faith, while the dead man rises because of the strength of the one who believed that he would rise. The demonstrative proof that brings glory is both human and produced by rhetorical arguments or even dialectical syllogisms. For the highest proof, which we have hinted at as scientific, instills faith through the juxtaposition and exposition of the scriptures in the souls of those eager to learn, which would be knowledge. For if the premises taken for the inquiry are accepted as true, as being divine and prophetic, it is clear that the conclusion drawn from them consistently will also be true; and knowledge would rightly be for us proof. When, then, the memorial of the heavenly and divine food was ordered to be consecrated in a golden jar, the gomor, it says, was the tenth of the three measures. For in ourselves three measures, three criteria are indicated: sense for sensibles, reason for things spoken, names, and words, and intellect for intelligibles. The gnostic, therefore, will abstain from sins according to reason, according to thought, according to sense and action, having heard how the one who looked with desire committed adultery, having taken to heart that blessed are the pure in heart, because they will see God, and knowing this, that it is not what enters the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out through the mouth that defiles a man; for thoughts come out from the heart.

This, I think, is the true and just measure according to God, by which things measured are measured, the decad that holds man together, which the three previously mentioned measures indicated in summary. And there would be body and soul, the five senses, and the vocal, the seminal, and the intellectual or spiritual, or however you wish to call it. But one must, so to speak, overleap all the rest and stand upon the mind, just as in the cosmos, having leaped over the nine divisions, first that through the four elements placed in one region because of equal revolution, then the seven wandering ones and the ninth fixed sphere, to arrive at the perfect number above the nine, the tenth division, at the knowledge of God, in a word, yearning for the creator after creation. For this reason, tithes of the oiphi and of the victims were offered to God, and the feast of Passover began from the tenth, being a crossing over of every passion and every sensible thing. The gnostic, then, is fixed in faith, but the conceited wise man does not touch the truth, using unstable and unsteady impulses. Rightly, then, it is written: "And Cain went out from the face of God and dwelt in the land of Naid opposite Eden." And Naid is interpreted as "tumult," and Eden as "delight." Faith and knowledge and peace are the delight, from which the disobedient one is cast out, and the conceited wise man from the beginning does not even wish to hear the divine commandments, but, as if self-taught, having bolted away, willingly moves into a surging tumult, descending from the knowledge of the unbegotten to mortal and generated things, holding different opinions at different times.

For those who lack governance, they fall like leaves; reason and the ruling faculty, remaining unerring and leading the soul, is called its pilot; for truly the approach is to the immutable by the immutable. Thus Abraham stood before the Lord and, drawing near, spoke; and to Moses it is said, "But you stand here with me." The followers of Simon wish to be like the Standing One, whom they revere, in manner. Faith, then, and knowledge of the truth always being the same and in the same way, prepare the soul that chooses them to be steadfast. Change, deviation, and apostasy are akin to falsehood, just as stillness, rest, and peace are to the gnostic. Just as philosophy has been slandered by vanity and conceit, so too has knowledge been slandered by false knowledge, that which is called by the same name, concerning which the apostle, writing to Timothy, says, "Guard the deposit," turning away from the profane empty talk and contradictions of falsely named knowledge, which some, professing, have missed the mark concerning faith. Those from the heresies, refuted by this utterance, reject the epistles to Timothy. Come then, if the Lord is truth and wisdom and power of God, as indeed he is, let it be shown that the true gnostic is the one who has known him and, through him, his father; for he perceives the one who says, "The lips of the righteous know high things." Since faith, like time, is twofold, we would find two virtues dwelling with both. For of time, memory belongs to the past, hope to the future; and we believe that past things have happened and that future things will be.

We love, then, that the past is so, being persuaded by faith, and awaiting the future with hope. For love has permeated everything for the gnostic, who knows one God; and behold, he knows and marvels at all that He has created as exceedingly beautiful; and piety adds length of life, and fear of the Lord adds days. Therefore, as days are a part of life in progression, so fear is the beginning of love, becoming faith by increase, then love; but not as I fear the beast and hate (fear being twofold), but as I also fear my father, whom I fear and love at the same time; again, fearing lest I be punished, I love myself, choosing fear; but he who fears to offend his father loves him. Blessed, then, is he who becomes faithful, blended with love and fear; and faith is strength for salvation and power for eternal life. Again, prophecy is foreknowledge, and knowledge is understanding of prophecy, that is, knowledge of what was foreknown by them through the Lord who reveals all. Therefore, knowledge of what was foretold indicates a threefold outcome: either having happened long ago, or being present now, or about to be. Then the extremes fall under faith, either of things accomplished or of things hoped for, while the present activity provides persuasion for the confirmation of both extremes. For if, prophecy being one, one part is already being fulfilled and another has been completed, then from this both what is hoped for and what is past are trustworthy.

For the present was once, and then has passed away for us, so that faith in past things is a comprehension of what has passed, and hope for future things is a comprehension of a future matter. And not only the followers of Plato, but also those of the Stoa, say that acts of assent are within our power. Therefore every opinion, judgment, supposition, and learning, by which we live and are always in communion with the human race, is an act of assent; and this would be nothing other than faith, while disbelief, being a departure from faith, shows that assent and faith are possible; for privation of non-existence could not be spoken of. And if one examines the truth, he will find that man is by nature disposed against assent to falsehood, but has starting points for faith in the truth. Therefore, as the Shepherd says, the virtue that holds the church together is faith, through which the elect of God are saved; and the virtue that acts with manliness is self-control. And following them are simplicity, knowledge, innocence, dignity, love. And all these are daughters of faith. And again: faith leads, fear builds, and perfects.

But love. Therefore one must fear the Lord, it says, for edification, but not the devil for destruction. Conversely: the works of the Lord, that is, the commandments, are to be loved and performed, while the works of the devil are to be feared and not performed; for fear of God educates and restores to love, whereas hatred of the works of the devil has a companion. And the same author says that repentance is great understanding; for one who repents of what he has done no longer does or says it, and by examining his own soul for his sins he does good. Thus remission of sins differs from repentance, but both show what is in our power. Therefore one who has received remission of sins ought no longer to sin. For upon the first and only repentance for sins (this would be for those previously existing according to the pagan and first life, I mean the life in ignorance), immediately for those who are called there is repentance that cleanses the place of the soul from transgressions, so that faith may be founded. But since the Lord is a knower of hearts and foreknows the future, and foresaw from the beginning the fickleness of man and the shifting and crafty nature of the devil, that the devil, jealous over the remission of sins, would inflict some causes of sins upon the servants of God, wickedly cunning, so that they too might fall with him, therefore, being very merciful, he gave yet another repentance to those who, even in the faith, fall into some transgression, so that if anyone should be tempted after the call, but being forced and outwitted, he might receive one further repentance that is not to be repented of.

For when we sin voluntarily after receiving knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins remains, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a zeal of fire that is about to consume the adversaries. And the continuous and successive repentances for sins differ in nothing from those who have never believed at all, except only in the awareness that they are sinning. And I do not know which of the two is worse: either to sin knowingly, or after repenting for what one has sinned, to transgress again. For the sin is manifest in being refuted on both sides: one sin is condemned by the worker of lawlessness for having been committed, the other is undertaken by one who foreknows what will be done as evil. And one perhaps gratifies anger and pleasure, not being ignorant of what he gratifies; the other, repenting for what he gratified, then running back again into pleasure, joins with the one who from the beginning voluntarily sins. For in regard to what one has repented, doing this again, he performs this voluntarily, having condemned it. Now the one who from the nations and from that former life has hastened to faith once received remission of sins. But the one who has sinned after this and then repents, even if he obtains pardon, ought to be ashamed, no longer bathing for remission of sins. For one must not only leave behind the idols which he formerly deified, but also the works of the former life, being reborn not from blood nor from the will of the flesh, but in spirit; which would be to repent of a fault without being carried back into the same. For frequent repentance is conversely a practice of sins and a readiness for fickleness from lack of discipline.

Thus, the frequent asking of forgiveness for the things we often do wrong is a semblance of repentance, not repentance itself. "But righteousness cuts straight the blameless paths," cries the Scripture. And again: "The righteousness of the innocent will set his path straight." Indeed, as a father pities his sons, so the Lord pitied those who fear him, writes David. Therefore, those who sow in tears will reap in joy, among those who confess in repentance. For blessed are all who fear the Lord. Do you see the beatitude similar to that in the Gospel? "Do not fear," it says, "when a man becomes rich, and when the glory of his house increases; for when he dies, he will not take all things, nor will his glory descend with him. But I will enter your house in your mercy, I will bow down before your holy sanctuary in fear of you. Lord, guide me in your righteousness." Now, impulse is a movement of the mind toward or away from something. Passion is an excessive impulse, or one that exceeds the measures according to reason, or an impulse that is carried away and disobedient to reason. Therefore, passions are an unnatural motion of the soul according to its disobedience to reason. (And this deviation, ecstasy, and disobedience are up to us, just as obedience is up to us; hence, voluntary actions are judged.) Indeed, if one were to examine each of the passions individually, one would find them to be irrational appetites. At any rate, the involuntary is not judged (and this is twofold: that which occurs through ignorance, and that which occurs by necessity). For how could one pass judgment concerning those said to sin in involuntary ways?

For one might be ignorant of oneself, as were Cleomenes and Athamas in their madness; or of the action one performs, as Aeschylus (who, having divulged the mysteries on stage, was tried in the Areopagus and acquitted thus, having shown himself not to be initiated); or one might be ignorant of the person toward whom the action is directed, as when someone lets his opponent go and kills a comrade instead of an enemy; or of the means by which the action is performed, as when one trains with blunted spears and kills someone because the spear has lost its ball; or of the manner, as when one kills an antagonist in the stadium (for he was contending not for death, but for victory); or of the purpose for which the action is performed, as when a physician gives a healthful antidote and kills, but he gave it not for this reason, but to save. The law then prevailed, punishing even the involuntary slayer as the involuntary emitter of seed, but not equally with the voluntary. Yet even that one will be punished as for a voluntary act, if one transfers the passion to the truth; for in reality the incontinent of the generative word is punishable, which itself is an irrational passion of the soul, bordering on idle talk; but the faithful man has chosen to conceal matters by his breath. Now voluntary actions are judged. For the Lord examines hearts and kidneys; and one who looks with desire is judged. Therefore it says, "Do not even desire," and this people honors me with their lips, he says, but their heart is far from me.

God looks to intention, for He also left Lot’s wife, who merely turned back voluntarily toward worldly vice, insensible, having shown her as a pillar of salt and set her so as not to proceed further—not a senseless and inactive image, but to season and contract the one able to see spiritually. The voluntary is either according to appetite, or according to choice, or according to intention. These are, in a way, adjacent to one another: error, misfortune, wrongdoing. Error is, for example, living luxuriously and licentiously; misfortune is striking a friend as an enemy out of ignorance; wrongdoing is tomb-robbing or temple-robbery. Sinning consists in being ignorant of what one ought to do, or in being unable to do it—just as, of course, one falls into a pit either from ignorance or from inability to leap over it due to bodily weakness. But it is up to us both to present ourselves for education and to obey the commandments. If we should not wish to partake of these, surrendering ourselves to anger and desire, we will sin, or rather we will wrong our own soul. For that Laius in the tragedy says: “None of these things that you admonish has escaped me, but though I have judgment, nature overpowers me”—that is, he has surrendered to passion. And Medea herself similarly cries on the stage: “I know what evils I am about to do, but anger is stronger than my counsels.” Nor does Ajax keep silent, but as he is about to cut his own throat he shouts: “Nothing is a calamity that so bites the soul of a free man as dishonor.

Thus I have suffered, and a deep stain from the depths, bearing me along, turns back a man goaded by the bitter goads of madness. Now anger produces these, but desire produces countless others, dramatizing Phaedra, Antheia, Eriphyle, who received gold for her husband’s friend, a price of honor. For that comic Thraso, another stage says that a cheap little slave girl has enslaved me. Now misfortune is an irrational error, and error is involuntary injustice, while injustice is voluntary wickedness. Therefore error is my involuntary act. Hence he says: “Error will not rule over you; for you are not under law, but under grace,” speaking to those who already believe, that by his wound we were healed. Misfortune is another’s involuntary action toward me, while injustice alone is found to be voluntary, whether mine or another’s. The psalmist hints at these differences of errors when he calls blessed those whose lawless acts God has wiped away, whose errors He has covered over, and whose others He has not counted, and the rest He has let go. For it is written: “Blessed are those whose lawless acts are forgiven, and whose errors are covered over; blessed is the man whose error the Lord will not count, and in whose mouth there is no guile.” This blessing was given to those chosen by God through Jesus Christ our Lord. For love covers a multitude of errors. And he who chooses repentance for the sinner rather than death wipes them away. And those errors that are not committed with deliberate intent are not counted; for he who has desired has already committed adultery, it is said.

The illuminating Word releases sins, and at that time, the Lord says, they will seek the injustice of Israel, and it will not exist, and the sins of Judah, and they will not be found, for who is like me? And who will stand against my face? You see one God proclaimed as good, both distributing and remitting sins according to merit. And John also, in the longer epistle, teaches the differences of sins in these words: If someone sees his brother committing a sin not unto death, he will ask, and he will save life for him, he said to those sinning not unto death; for there is a sin unto death; I do not speak of that, that one might ask. Every injustice is a sin, and there is a sin not unto death. But David, and before David, Moses, indicate the knowledge of the three doctrines through these: Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the impious, as fish move in darkness into the depths; for those without scales, which Moses forbids touching, graze below the sea; nor has he stood in the way of sinners, as those who seem to fear the Lord sin like the pig; for when hungry it cries out, but when filled it does not recognize its master; nor has he sat on the seat of plagues, as birds ready for plunder. And Moses exhorted: You shall not eat pig, nor eagle, nor swift-wing, nor raven, nor any fish that does not have a scale upon itself. These things Barnabas says.

I have heard a wise man say such things, calling the nations a counsel of the impious, the Jewish understanding a way of sinners, and the heresies a seat of plagues. Another more authoritative speaker said that the first beatitude is assigned to those who did not follow evil opinions that had apostatized from God, and the second to those who do not abide by the spacious and broad way, whether those raised in the law or those from the nations who have repented. A seat of plagues would be the theaters and the courts, or rather, the pursuit of evil and destructive authorities and communion according to their works. But in the law of the Lord is his will; Peter in the Kerygma called the Lord both law and word. The lawgiver also seems to teach in another way the abstention from three modes of sin: those in speech through the speechless fish—for there is indeed a difference where silence of speech prevails, and there is a safe reward of silence—those in deed through the rapacious and flesh-eating birds; the pig delights in mud and dung, and one must not have a conscience defiled.

Naturally, then, the prophet says: Not so, he says, the impious, but rather like chaff which the wind scatters from the face of the earth. For this reason the impious will not rise in judgment (those already condemned, since the one who does not believe is already judged), nor will the sinners be in the council of the righteous (those already condemned to not be united with those who have lived without stumbling), because the Lord knows the way of the righteous, and the way of the impious will perish. Again, the Lord shows plainly that both transgressions and offenses are within our power, suggesting modes of treatment corresponding to the passions, desiring us to be corrected by the shepherds, through Ezekiel blaming some of them, I think, for not having kept the commandments: "You did not strengthen the weak" and so on up to "and there was no one seeking nor turning back"; for great is the joy to the father over one sinner saved, says the Lord. Abraham is more praiseworthy for this, that he went as the Lord spoke to him. From this one of the wise among the Greeks drew and uttered the saying "follow God." And Isaiah says the pious deliberated wisely. Deliberation is inquiry into how we might conduct ourselves rightly in present circumstances, and good deliberation is prudence concerning deliberations. What then? Does not God, after the pardon granted to Cain, accordingly not long after introduce the repentant Enoch, showing that pardon naturally generates repentance? And pardon consists not in remission but in healing. The same thing occurs also in the matter of the people's worship of the calf under Aaron.

Hence one of the wise among the Greeks declared that forgiveness is better than punishment, just as indeed the saying "Surety is a snare" comes from the voice of Solomon, which says: "Son, if you give surety for your friend, you will deliver your hand to your enemy; for a man's own lips are a strong trap, and he is caught by the words of his own mouth." And more mystically, the "Know thyself" is taken from that source: "You have seen your brother, you have seen your God." Somewhere it is said: "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and your neighbor as yourself"; in these commandments, it says, the whole law and the prophets hang and are suspended. These also agree with those words: "I have spoken these things to you so that my joy may be fulfilled. And this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you"; for the Lord is merciful and compassionate, and the Lord is kind to all. And more clearly, Moses, urging "Know thyself," often says: "Pay attention to yourself." Sins are therefore cleansed by acts of mercy and by faith; and by fear of the Lord everyone turns away from evil. And fear of the Lord is discipline and wisdom. Here again the accusers attack, saying that joy and grief are passions of the soul; for they define joy as a rational elation, and exultation as rejoicing in good things, while pity is grief over one who suffers undeservedly, and such things are changes and passions of the soul. But we, it seems, do not cease to understand such things carnally, and, being led up from our own passions, we interpret the intention of the impassible God in terms of our own movements.

But if we suppose that we are capable of hearing as it truly is concerning the Almighty, we wander impiously. For the divine is not such as it can be spoken; rather, as it is possible for us, bound in flesh, to perceive, so the prophets spoke to us, the Lord accommodating himself in a saving manner to human weakness. Since, then, it is the will of God that the one obedient to the commandments and the one repenting from sins be saved, and we rejoice in our salvation, the Lord who spoke through the prophets appropriated our joy, as he says philanthropically in the Gospel: "I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; for what you have done to one of these least ones, you have done to me." Just as he is nourished without being nourished, because the one he wills has been nourished, so he rejoiced without being affected, because the one who repented has come into joy as he willed. And since God, being good, abundantly shows mercy, giving commandments through law, through prophets, and now more directly through the presence of the Son, saving and showing mercy, as has been said, to those who are pitied, and properly the superior shows mercy to the inferior, and a man would not be superior to another man insofar as he is by nature a man, but God is superior to man in every respect; if, then, the superior shows mercy to the inferior, only God will show mercy to us. For man becomes social through justice and shares what he has received from God, both through natural goodwill and relationship and through the commandments to which he is obedient.

God has no natural relationship with us, as the founders of the heresies wish (neither if he were to create from non-being nor if he were to fashion from matter, since the former is not at all being, and the latter is in every respect other than God), unless one dares to say that we are a part of him and consubstantial with God. And I do not know how anyone who has known God, looking upon our life and the evils in which we are mired, could endure hearing this. For in that case God would be, which it is not even lawful to say, partially sinning, if the parts of the whole are parts and complementary to the whole; but if they are not complementary, they would not be parts. But in fact God, being naturally rich in mercy, cares for us on account of his own goodness, we being neither his parts nor his children by nature. And indeed this is the greatest indication of God’s goodness, that, though we are in such a relation to him and are completely alienated by nature, he nevertheless cares for us. For natural affection toward children exists in animals, and friendship from familiarity exists among those of like mind, but God’s mercy toward us is abundant, we who are in no way related to him—neither in our substance, I mean, nor in nature nor in the power proper to our substance—but only by being a work of his will. And indeed he who willingly, through discipline and teaching, has taken up the knowledge of truth, he calls to adoption, the greatest advancement of all. Transgressions ensnare a man, and each is bound by the chains of his own sins, and God is blameless. And truly blessed is the man who trembles at everything out of reverence.

As, then, scientific knowledge is a state from which the act of knowing results, and its apprehension is unalterable by reason, so ignorance is a yielding impression, subject to change by reason, and that which changes, as also that which is trained, is within our power through reason. Alongside scientific knowledge lie experience, information, understanding, intellection, and knowledge. Information would be scientific knowledge of universals according to form; experience is comprehensive scientific knowledge, so as to investigate each thing as it is; intellection is scientific knowledge of the intelligible; understanding is scientific knowledge of the comparable, or an unalterable comparison, or a comparative faculty of those things of which prudence and scientific knowledge consist, both of the one and of each and of all that fall under a single account; knowledge is scientific knowledge of being itself, or scientific knowledge in accord with things that come to be; truth is scientific knowledge of the true, and the state of truth is scientific knowledge of true things. Scientific knowledge is constituted through reason and is unalterable by another reason. Here he investigates knowledge. Things we do not do, we either do not do because we are unable, or because we are unwilling, or because of both. We do not fly, then, since we are neither able nor willing; we do not swim, for example, at this moment, since we are able but unwilling; we are not like the Lord, since we are willing but unable. For no disciple is above the teacher, and it is sufficient if we become like the teacher, not in essence—for it is impossible for that which exists by positing to be equal in existence to that which exists by nature—but by having become eternal and having known the contemplation of beings and having been called sons, and by seeing the Father only from his own attributes.

Willing, then, precedes all things; for the rational faculties are by nature servants of the will. "Will," it is said, "and you will be able." In the gnostic, willing, judging, and training are the same. For if the purposes are the same, the doctrines and judgments are also the same, so that his words, life, and manner may be consistent with his state. "A straight heart seeks knowledge and understands those things." "God has taught me wisdom, and I have known the knowledge of holy things." Now all the other virtues recorded by Moses are manifest, having provided the Greeks with the beginning of the whole ethical domain—I mean courage, temperance, prudence, justice, endurance, patience, modesty, self-control, and, in addition to these, piety. Piety is everywhere manifest, teaching us to revere and honor the highest and most ancient cause. And justice itself the law sets forth, educating us in prudence through abstinence from perceptible images and through attachment to the maker and father of all things, from which opinion, as from a source, all understanding grows. For "the sacrifices of the lawless are an abomination to the Lord, but the prayers of the upright are acceptable to him," since "justice is more acceptable to God than sacrifice." Such also are the words of Isaiah: "What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me?" says the Lord, and the whole passage: "Loosen every bond of injustice; for this is a sacrifice acceptable to God—a heart broken and seeking its maker." "Deceitful scales are an abomination before God, but a just balance is acceptable to him." From this Pythagoras exhorts, "Do not step over the yoke.

Righteousness, then, is called deceitful—the profession of the heresies; and the tongue of the unjust shall be destroyed, but the mouth of the righteous distills wisdom. But the wise and prudent they call base. It would be long to adduce testimonies concerning these virtues, since the whole Scripture hymns them. Since, then, they define courage as knowledge of what is terrible and what is not terrible and of the intermediate, and temperance as a habit preserving the judgments of prudence in choice and avoidance, and since patience, which they call endurance—knowledge of what is to be endured and what is not to be endured—and magnanimity—knowledge rising above circumstances—are akin to courage, and also to temperance is akin caution, which is a rational avoidance. The keeping of the commandments, being their unimpaired preservation, is a securing of the safety of life. And it is not possible to be patient without courage, nor yet to be continent without temperance. The virtues follow one another; and in whom the sequences of the virtues are present, in that one also is salvation, being the preservation of the good state. Naturally, then, having treated of these virtues, we would have considered all, since he who has one virtue gnosticly has all through their mutual following. For instance, continence is an unsurpassable disposition concerning what has appeared according to right reason. And the continent man is either one who restrains the impulses contrary to right reason, or one who restrains himself so as not to impulse contrary to right reason.

Self-control, then, is not without courage, since it arises from commandments, following the ordained God—prudence and justice, which is imitative of the divine disposition, according to which we, practicing self-restraint, are dispatched pure toward piety and the action that follows accordingly with God, being assimilated to the Lord as far as possible for us, who are mortal by nature. This is to be just and holy with prudence. For the divine is without need and impassible, hence not properly continent; for it never falls under passion, so as to master it; but our nature, being subject to passion, requires self-control, through which, trained toward having few needs, it attempts to approximate the divine nature in disposition. For the earnest person has few needs, being a border between immortal and mortal nature, having need due to both the body and birth itself, but having learned to need few things through rational self-control. For what reason is there to forbid a man from assuming a woman's garment? Or does it not wish us to be manly, neither in body

and the works, neither in thought nor in word becoming effeminate; for the one who devotes himself to truth must be manly in endurance, in perseverance, in life, in manner, in word, and in discipline by night and by day, and, if the need should arise when martyrdom through blood is at hand, he wills it. Again, if someone, he says, having recently built a house has not yet had time to move in, or having cultivated a newly planted vineyard has not yet partaken of the fruit, or having betrothed a virgin has not yet married, the humane law commands that these be exempted from military service, in a strategic sense, so that, not being distracted by desires, we may not serve the war half-heartedly (for those who unreservedly throw themselves into dangers are free in their impulses), and in a humane sense, since the outcomes of wars are uncertain, deeming it unjust that one should not enjoy the fruits of his labors, while another should take without effort the things for which others have toiled. The law also seems to indicate the courage of the soul, legislating that the planter should reap, the builder should dwell, and the suitor should marry; for it does not render the hopes of those who have trained according to the gnostic word incomplete; for the hope of a good man, whether dead or alive, is not lost. I, he says, love those who love me, says Wisdom, and those who seek me will find peace, and so forth. What then? Did not the women of the Midianites, by their beauty, lead the warring Hebrews from self-control through licentiousness into godlessness?

Having drawn them to themselves from holy discipline into harlotries, having enticed them with beauty, they drove them mad for the sacrifices of idols and for foreign women; and having been defeated by women and pleasure, they fell away from God, they fell away from the law, and the whole people nearly became subject to the enemy through a woman's stratagem, until fear, admonishing them while they were in danger, checked them. Immediately the survivors, taking up the contest for piety with a love of danger, became masters of the enemy. The beginning of wisdom is piety, and understanding is the forethought of the saints, and to know the law is of a good mind. Those, therefore, who suppose the law to be productive of emotional fear are neither good at understanding nor have they truly comprehended the law. For the fear of the Lord produces life. But the one who errs will be pained in toils which knowledge does not visit. Indeed, Barnabas says mystically, "But God, who rules the whole world, may give to you also wisdom and understanding, knowledge, knowledge of his ordinances, endurance. Therefore become God-taught, seeking what the Lord seeks from you, that you may find it on the day of judgment." He called those who attain these things children of love and of peace, in a gnostic manner. Concerning transmission and communion, though there are many discourses, it suffices to say only this, that the law forbids lending to a brother (calling brother not only one born from the same parents, but also whoever is of the same race, of the same mind, and has shared in the same word), not deeming it right to exact interest on money, but to give with open hands and minds to those in need.

For God is the creator of such grace; and the giver receives worthy returns, the most valuable things among men: gentleness, goodness, magnanimity, good repute, glory. Does not this commandment seem to you to be one of philanthropy, like that other, to pay a poor man his wages on the same day? It teaches that the wages for services must be paid without delay; for the eagerness of the poor man is, I think, paralyzed if he goes hungry for the future. Further, it says, let not the creditor enter the debtor's house to take a pledge by force, but let him order the debtor to bring it out, and let the one who has it not shrink back. In the harvest it prevents the owners from gathering the fallen ears, just as it also advises leaving some part uncut in the reaping, thereby training the owners well for fellowship and magnanimity by giving something of their own to those in need, and providing the poor with a means of sustenance. Do you see how the legislation proclaims both the justice and the goodness of God, who supplies food to all without stint? Again, in the vintage it has forbidden both the gleaning of what is left behind and the collecting of fallen grapes; and the same is ordained for those gathering olives. Moreover, the tithes of both fruits and flocks taught piety toward the divine and not to be entirely covetous, but to share philanthropically with one's neighbors. From these first-fruits, I think, the priests also were maintained.

Now therefore do we understand that we are being educated by the law toward piety, toward community, toward justice, and toward love of humanity? Is it not so? Does it not command that the land be left fallow in the seventh year, and did it not bid the poor to use fearlessly the fruits that grow according to God, with nature farming for those who wish? How then is the law not good and a teacher of justice? And again it commands that the same things be accomplished in the fiftieth year as in the seventh, restoring to each his own if in the meantime someone has been deprived of a plot of land due to some circumstance, limiting the desire of those who wish to acquire by a measured time of enjoyment, and not wishing those who have suffered long poverty to be punished for life. Alms and royal trusts, and blessing upon the head of the giver, and he who pities the poor will be blessed, because he shows love toward his fellow man through the love toward the creator of the human race. Now the aforementioned matters also have other interpretations, more natural, concerning rest and the recovery of inheritance, but they are not to be spoken of at present. Love is understood in many ways: through gentleness, through goodness, through patience, through generosity and freedom from envy, through freedom from hatred, through forgetfulness of wrongs. It is undivided in all, undiscriminating, communal. Again, if you see, it says, a beast of burden belonging to your household or friends or generally to people you know wandering in a deserted place, lead it away and return it. And if the master happens to be far away, keep it with your own until he recovers it, and then return it.

It teaches natural community to consider a deposit as a thing found, and not to bear a grudge against an enemy. The command of the Lord is a fountain of life, truly, making one turn aside from the snare of death. What then? Does it not command to love strangers, not only as friends and relatives, but as oneself, in both body and soul? Yes indeed, it has also honored the nations and does not bear a grudge against those who have done evil. At any rate, it says plainly: You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in Egypt, calling the gentile or also every worldly person an Egyptian. And as for enemies, even if they are already standing at the walls trying to take the city, they are not yet to be considered enemies, until they are summoned to peace by proclamation. Yes indeed, it also commands not to have intercourse with a captive woman for insult, but after allowing thirty days, it says she may mourn whom she wishes, and later, after changing her clothes, you may have intercourse with her as a lawful wife. For it deems that intercourse should take place neither for insult nor for hire as with courtesans, but only for the procreation of children. Do you see philanthropy with self-control? It does not permit the master who has fallen in love with the captive woman to gratify his pleasure, but checks his desire by a measured interval, and moreover cuts off the captive woman's hair, in order to shame the insolent love. For if reason persuades him to marry, he will hold fast to her even when she has become ugly.

Next, if someone, having become sated with desire, no longer deigns to have intercourse with the captive woman, it ordains that he is not permitted to sell her, nor even to keep her as a servant, but wishes her to be free and released from servitude, so that when another woman enters, he may not suffer something irreparable due to jealousy. What then? It also commands us to lighten the load of and help raise up the burden-bearing beasts of enemies, teaching us from afar, the Lord, not to embrace malice or rejoice over enemies, so that, having trained ourselves in these things, we may learn to pray for enemies. For it is not fitting to envy and grieve over the goods of one’s neighbor, nor to take pleasure in the evils of one’s neighbor. And if, he says, you find a straying beast of burden belonging to some enemy, setting aside the kindling of discord, lead it back and return it. For good conduct follows upon forgetfulness of wrongs, and upon that, the dissolution of enmity. From this we are fitted for concord, which leads to happiness. And if you consider someone an enemy from habit, but catch him acting irrationally, whether from desire or from passion, turn him toward good conduct. So now the law is clearly seen as philanthropic and kind, the law that educates toward Christ, and God himself is good with justice, having from beginning to end fittingly employed each kind for salvation. “Have mercy,” says the Lord, “that you may be shown mercy; forgive, that you may be forgiven; as you do, so it will be done to you; as you give, so it will be given to you; as you judge, so you will be judged; as you show kindness, so kindness will be shown to you.

By the measure with which you measure, it will be measured back to you. Further, it forbids dishonoring those who serve for food, and grants a moratorium for the entire seventh year to those enslaved through debts. Moreover, it forbids handing over suppliants for punishment. Therefore, more than anything, that saying is true: just as gold and silver are tested in the furnace, so the Lord selects the hearts of men. And the merciful man is patient, and in every anxious man there is wisdom; for anxiety will fall upon a man of understanding, and being a thinker, he will seek life; and he who seeks God will find knowledge with righteousness, while those who have sought him rightly have found peace. It seems to me that Pythagoras also took his gentleness toward irrational animals from the Law. For instance, concerning the young born in flocks, herds of goats, and herds of cattle, it prescribed abstaining from immediate enjoyment, not even taking them on the pretext of sacrifices, for the sake of both the offspring and the mothers, nurturing man in gentleness from below, beginning with irrational animals. "Grant, then," it says, "to the mother the offspring, at least for the first seven days." For if nothing happens without cause, and milk is showered upon those who have given birth for the nourishment of their young, then he who tears the newborn away from the economy of milk dishonors nature. Therefore, let Greeks and anyone else who runs down the Law be ashamed, if the Law shows kindness even toward irrational animals, while they expose even human offspring, even though the Law, through the aforementioned commandment, restrains their savagery from afar and prophetically.

For if it forbids separating the offspring of irrational animals from their mother before weaning, much more does it pre-treat the raw and untamed disposition in humans, so that even if they despise nature, they may at least not despise learning. For it is permitted to feast on kids and lambs, and there is perhaps some excuse for the one who separates the offspring from its mother; but what cause does the exposure of a child have? For one who does not desire to produce children ought not to have married in the first place, or else, through intemperance of pleasure, become a child-killer. Again, the good law forbids sacrificing offspring and mother on the same day. Hence also the Romans, if a pregnant woman is condemned to death, do not allow her to undergo the punishment before she has given birth. Indeed, directly, the law does not permit sacrificing any of the animals that are pregnant until they have given birth, thereby restraining from afar the recklessness of those who wrong humans. Thus it extended equity even to irrational animals, so that by practicing on those of a different kind, we may use a great abundance of philanthropy toward those of the same kind. But some even kick the bellies of certain animals before birth,

so that they feast on flesh mixed with milk, making the womb created for generation a tomb for the fetuses, although the lawgiver explicitly commands: "You shall not even boil a lamb in its mother's milk." For let not the food of the living become a seasoning for the slaughtered animal, says the flesh, nor let the cause of life become an accomplice to the consumption of the body. The same law also prescribes not to muzzle an ox while it is threshing; for the worker too must be deemed worthy of food. It also forbids yoking together an ox and an ass for plowing the earth, perhaps having considered the incongruity concerning animals, but at the same time indicating that no one of a different race should be wronged and brought under the yoke, having nothing to accuse them of except that they are of a different kind, which is blameless, neither evil nor proceeding from evil. It seems to me that the allegory also indicates that one must not impart the cultivation of the word equally to the pure and the impure, to the faithful and the unfaithful, because the one is pure, the ox, while the ass is reckoned among the unclean. And the good word, being generous in philanthropy, teaches that it is not fitting to cut down even those trees that belong to the cultivated material, nor to cut a stalk to its harm before the harvest, nor to destroy any cultivated fruit at all, neither that of the earth nor that of the soul; for it does not even permit cutting the land of enemies. Indeed, farmers too have benefited from the law in these matters.

He commands that newly planted trees be nursed for three successive years, cutting away the superfluous shoots, so that they are not weighed down and oppressed, and so that the nourishment, not being divided, does not weaken them through deficiency; and to trench and dig around them, so that nothing sprouting alongside hinders their growth. He does not permit the fruit to be gathered unripe from immature trees, but after three years, in the fourth year, they are to consecrate the firstfruits to God after the tree has reached maturity. This pattern of agriculture would be a mode of teaching, instructing that the offshoots of sins must be cut away, and the vain growths of thought that spring up together with the fruitful crop, until the shoot of faith is perfected and becomes firm. For in the fourth year, since the catechumen also needs time to become steadfast, the tetrad of virtues is consecrated to God, the third station already joining to the fourth hypostasis of the Lord. Sacrifice of praise is above whole burnt offerings. For this, it says, gives you strength to accomplish power. If your affairs are illuminated, having received and acquired strength in knowledge, accomplish power. For through these things it indicates that both the goods and the gifts are supplied from God, and that we, becoming servants of divine grace, must sow the beneficences of God and make those who approach both beautiful and good, so that as much as possible the temperate one perfects the self-controlled, the brave one the noble, the prudent one the wise, and the just one the righteous.

This is the one who is according to image and likeness, the gnostic, who imitates God as far as possible, omitting nothing that contributes to the attainable likeness, practicing self-control, enduring, living justly, ruling over the passions, sharing what he has, as far as he is able, doing good both in word and deed. This one is greatest, it is said, in the kingdom, whoever both does and teaches, imitating God by granting similar benefits; for the gifts of God are for the common good. But whoever attempts to act with arrogance provokes God, it is said; for boastfulness is a vice of the soul, from which and from the other vices he commands those who are harmonizing their life to repent, changing from disharmony to the better transformation through these three: mouth, heart, hands. These would be symbols: hands of action, heart of intention, and mouth of speech. Well, then, that saying is spoken concerning those who repent: "Today you have chosen God to be your God, and today the Lord has chosen you to be his people." For the one who hastens to serve the being, being a suppliant, is claimed by God. Even if he is one in number, he is honored equally with the people.

For being a part of the people, he becomes complementary to it, restored from what he was, and the whole is also called from the part. This nobility is shown in choosing and practicing the best things. For what did such nobility benefit Adam? He had no mortal father; for he himself is the father of men in generation. He eagerly chose shameful things, following the woman, and neglected the true and beautiful; for these he exchanged a mortal life for an immortal one, but not to the end. Noah, who did not become as Adam, is preserved by divine oversight; for bearing himself, he dedicated himself to God. And Abraham, who had children from three women, not for the enjoyment of pleasure, but for hope, I think, of multiplying the race in the beginning, is succeeded by only one heir of the paternal goods, while the others were separated from the kinship; and from him, of twins born, the younger inherits, having become pleasing to his father, and receives the blessings, while the elder serves him; for the greatest good for the base man is not to be self-willed. This arrangement is both prophetic and typical. And that everything belongs to the wise man, he clearly indicates by saying: Because God had mercy on me, everything is mine. For he teaches that one must strive for the one, through whom all things have come to be and by whom the promised things are distributed to the worthy. Therefore, he records the earnest man, having become an heir of the kingdom, as a fellow citizen through divine wisdom, and of the righteous of old, those who lived lawfully according to the law and before the law, whose actions have become laws for us. And again, teaching that the wise man is king, he makes those not of the same tribe say to him:

You are a king from God among us, with the willing consent of the ruled, who obey the excellent man out of zeal for virtue. Plato the philosopher, positing happiness as the end, says it is likeness to God as far as possible, whether he somehow coincided with the doctrine of the law (for great natures, stripped of passions, somehow hit the mark concerning truth, as the Pythagorean Philo says when interpreting the writings of Moses), or whether he was taught by some oracles of that time, ever thirsting for learning. For the law says: Walk behind the Lord your God and keep my commandments. For the law calls assimilation "following"; and such following assimilates according to capacity. "Become," says the Lord, "merciful and compassionate, as your heavenly Father is compassionate." From this the Stoics also dogmatized that living in accordance with nature is the end, having improperly renamed God as "nature," since nature extends to plants, seeds, trees, and stones. So it is clearly said: "Evil men do not understand the law, but those who love the law set up a wall for themselves. For wisdom will know the ways of the crafty, but the folly of the foolish is in error. For to whom shall I look but to the gentle, the quiet, and the one who trembles at my words?" says the prophecy. We are taught three kinds of friendship, and of these the first and best is that according to virtue; for love from reason is firm. The second and middle is that according to exchange; this is social, communicative, and beneficial for life; for friendship from favor is common.