Stromata

Do not go the way of the nations and do not enter a city of Samaritans, the Lord says, turning us away from the opposite way of life, since the ruin of lawless men is evil. And these are the ways of all who accomplish lawless deeds. Woe to that man, the Lord says; it would have been well for him if he had not been born, or to scandalize one of my elect; it would have been better for him to have a millstone placed around his neck and to be sunk in the sea, than to pervert one of my elect; for the name of God is blasphemed through them. Hence the apostle nobly wrote to you, he says in the epistle, not to mix with fornicators until the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And that he does not call marriage fornication, he adds: Or do you not know that he who clings to a harlot is one body? Or will one call the virgin a harlot before she marries? And do not deprive one another, he says, unless by mutual agreement for a time, by the word "deprive" indicating the debt of marriage, the procreation of children, which he made clear earlier by saying, to the

Let the husband pay the debt to his wife, and likewise the wife to the husband, after which payment she is a helper according to household management and faith in Christ. And speaking even more clearly: I command those who are married—not I, but the Lord—that a wife not be separated from her husband (but if she is separated, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband), and that a husband not dismiss his wife. To the rest I say, not the Lord: if any brother is still holy. What do those who run down the law and marriage as permitted only according to the law, and not also according to the new covenant, say to these things? What have those who abominate sowing and generation to say to these laws? Since he also legislates that the bishop who presides well over the household should lead the church, and the Lord’s house is constituted by the union of one wife. Therefore, all things are pure to the pure, he says, but to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. And concerning pleasure contrary to the rule, do not be deceived, he says: neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate men nor pederasts nor covetous men nor thieves, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor plunderers will inherit the kingdom of God.

We, who have been in these things, have washed ourselves off; but they, washing into this licentiousness, baptize from temperance into fornication, teaching that one should gratify pleasures and passions, instructing the incontinent to be from the continent, and attaching their hope to the shamelessness of the members, they prepare their disciples to be outcasts from the kingdom of God, not enrolled therein, having taken upon themselves the journey into the outer darkness under the name of false knowledge. For the rest, brethren, consider all that is true, all that is holy, all that is just, all that is pure, all that is dear, all that is of good report, whatever virtue and whatever praise there is; practice what you have learned, what you have received, what you have heard, and what you have seen in me; and the God of peace will be with you. And Peter in his epistle says similar things: "So that your faith and hope be in God, having purified your souls in obedience to the truth, as children of obedience, not conforming yourselves to your former desires in ignorance, but according to the one who called you, become holy yourselves in all your conduct, for it is written: 'You shall be holy, because I am holy.'" But indeed, beyond what is necessary, the necessary opposition to the hypocrites of false knowledge has led us away and extended our discourse to a great length. Hence the third of our Stromata, according to the true philosophy of the gnostics, has this end.

Clement of the Stromata, Book Four. It would be fitting, I think, to treat next concerning martyrdom and who the perfect man is, in which will be included, according to the demand of what will be said, the attendant matters, and that one must philosophize alike whether a slave or free, and whether the sex be male or female. Then, after having completed what follows concerning faith and concerning inquiry, we will set forth the symbolic form, so that, as in a summary, having concluded the ethical discourse, we may present in a summary manner the benefit that was disseminated to the Greeks from the barbarian philosophy. After this outline, both the exposition against the Greeks and that against the Jews, in epitome of the Scriptures, will be delivered, as well as whatever in the previous Stromata, according to the introduction of the prooemium, having proposed to complete in a single memorandum, we were not able to include, being necessarily enslaved to the multitude of matters. After these things, when the outline according to our subjects has been fulfilled as much as possible, the things physiologized concerning principles by the

We must investigate the opinions of the Greeks and the other barbarians, as many as have come down to us, and we must attempt to address the most important of the conceptions devised by the philosophers. Following this, after a survey of theology, it would be fitting to treat the traditions concerning prophecy, so that, having demonstrated that the scriptures in which we believe are authoritative, being of sovereign authority, we may proceed through them in a connected manner and from this point show to all the heresies that there is one God and Lord Almighty, proclaimed genuinely through the law and the prophets, and also through the blessed gospel. Many refutations of the heterodox await us as we attempt to resolve in writing the arguments they put forward and to persuade them, even unwillingly, by convicting them through the scriptures themselves. When, therefore, our entire plan has been completed in the commentaries in which, if the Spirit wills, we serve the pressing need (for the necessity of the truths that must be stated beforehand is great), then we shall proceed to the true gnostic physiology, having been initiated into the small mysteries before the great, so that nothing may hinder the truly divine hierophany, since the matters that must be narrated and transmitted beforehand have been purified and prefigured. The physiology, or rather the epopteia, according to the rule of truth of the gnostic tradition, depends on the account of cosmogony, ascending from there to the theological form. Hence we will fittingly begin the tradition from the prophesied creation, in part also setting forth the views of the heterodox and attempting to resolve them as best we can.

But indeed, this will be written, if God so wills and as He may inspire; for now, we must proceed to the matter at hand and complete the ethical discourse. Let our notes be, as we have often said, for those who read without restraint and without experience, variegated—as the name itself suggests—woven together, passing continuously from one thing to another, and indicating one thing through the sequence of arguments while signifying another. For those who seek gold, says Heraclitus, dig much earth and find little; but those who mine the kindred metal of the truly golden race will find much in little: for the writing will find the one who will understand. The Stromateis of the notes contribute, then, both to recollection and to the manifestation of truth for him who is able to seek with reason. And we too must labor further and discover other things besides these, since for those who travel a road they do not know, it suffices only to indicate the way that leads; but thereafter one must walk and discover the rest for oneself, just as they say that when a certain slave once asked what he might do to please his master, the Pythia replied, "You will find if you seek." It is truly difficult, as it seems, to discover the good that lies hidden, since sweat is set before virtue, and the path to it is long and steep and rough at first; but when one reaches the summit, it becomes easy thereafter, though it was hard. For the way of the Lord is truly narrow and constrained, and the kingdom of God is for the strenuous; hence it is said, "Seek and you will find," holding fast to the royal road and not straying from it.

Naturally, then, the seed of the doctrines contained in this treatise is highly generative in a small space, just as the scripture says of the field that produces all things. And the Stromateis of our notes bear the title appropriately, in accordance with that ancient offering gathered from flowers, about which Sophocles writes: "There was a fleece of wool, there was a libation from the vine and a grape well stored, there was a mixture of all fruits with barley, and the fat of olive oil, and the most variegated waxen instrument of the yellow bee." Indeed, our Stromateis, according to the farmer of Timocles the comic poet, bring in figs, olive oil, dried figs, and honey, as from a field that yields everything. Because of this fruitfulness, he adds: "You speak of a eiresione, not of farming," for the Athenians were accustomed to chant: "The eiresione brings figs and rich loaves and honey in a cup and oil to anoint oneself." Therefore, one must often, as if shaking and tossing the mixture of seeds in the baskets, pick out the wheat. But the many have a disposition similar to the state of storms, both unstable and irrational. Much good has been done by disbelief, and much evil by belief. And Epicharmus says: "Remember to disbelieve; these are the joints of the mind." Indeed, disbelieving the truth brings death, as believing brings life; conversely, believing falsehood and disbelieving the truth drags one into ruin. The same reasoning applies to self-control and lack of self-control. For exercising self-control is a work of beneficence from evil, and refraining from injustice is the beginning of salvation.

It seems to me that the Sabbath signifies, through abstinence from evils, self-control. And what is it, then, by which man differs from beasts? Moreover, the angels of God are wiser than this. "You have diminished him," it says, "a little in comparison with angels"—for they do not receive the scripture as referring to the Lord (although he too bore flesh), but to the perfect and gnostic man, who is inferior to the angels in time and in outward form. I do not, therefore, call wisdom anything other than knowledge, since life does not differ; for living is common in nature to mortal nature—that is, to man—and to that which has been deemed worthy of immortality, the one differing by the possession of contemplation and self-control. Hence it seems to me that Pythagoras also says that God alone is wise (since the apostle writes in the Epistle to the Romans: "for the obedience of faith, when he was made known to all the nations, to the only wise God through Jesus Christ"), and that he himself, through friendship toward God, is a philosopher. At any rate, it says, God conversed with Moses as a friend with a friend. Now the truth is clear to God. Indeed, he begets truth, while the gnostic loves truth. "Know yourself," says Solomon, "in relation to the ant, O sluggard, and become a disciple of the bee." For if the work proper to each nature is one—and likewise of the ox, the horse, and the dog—what would we say is the proper work of man?

He seems to me, I think, like a centaur, a Thessalian fiction, composed of the rational and the irrational, soul and body; but the body works the earth and hastens to earth, while the soul stretches toward God, being educated through true philosophy to hasten toward its kindred above, having turned away from the desires of the body, and from toil and fear as well. Yet we have shown that both endurance and fear are for the good. For if through law there is knowledge of sin, as those who run down the law say, and sin existed in the world up to the law, but without law sin is dead, we sing back to them. For when you remove the cause of fear, sin, you have removed fear, and much more so punishment, when that which naturally desires is absent; for the just have no law, the scripture says. Well then Heraclitus says that the name of justice would not be known if these things did not exist, and Socrates that law would not come into being for the sake of goods. But even this the accusers did not know, that the apostle says that he who loves his neighbor does no evil; for the commandments "you shall not kill," "you shall not commit adultery," "you shall not steal," and any other commandment, are summed up in this one saying: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." In this way it says, "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." If then he who loves his neighbor does no evil, and every commandment is summed up in this, to love one's neighbor, the commandments that impose fear produce love, not hatred. Therefore fear is not a passion of which the law is generative.

Thus the law is holy and truly spiritual according to the apostle. It is necessary, therefore, as it seems, having investigated the nature of the body and the substance of the soul, to grasp the end of each and not to consider death an evil. For when you were slaves of sin, says the apostle, you were free with respect to righteousness. What fruit, then, did you have then? That for which you are now ashamed; for the end of those things is death. But now, having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you have your fruit for sanctification, and the end is eternal life. For the wages of sin are death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is therefore likely that death has been shown to be the communion of the soul in the body when it is sinful, and life the separation from sin. There are many stakes and trenches of desire in the way, and pits of anger and wrath, which it is necessary to leap over and to avoid entirely the demolition of plots for him who will no longer behold the knowledge of God through a mirror; for wide-seeing Zeus takes away half of virtue from a man, when he seizes him according to a slavish day. The scripture knows as slaves those under sin and sold to sins, the pleasure-lovers and body-lovers, and as beasts rather than humans those likened to cattle, neighing like horses mad for females after their neighbors' women; the licentious man is an insolent ass, the covetous man a savage wolf, and the deceiver a serpent.

Therefore, the separation of the soul from the body, practiced throughout the entire life by the philosopher, prepares a gnostic readiness to bear easily the death of nature, which is the dissolution of the bonds of the soul to the body. For he says, "The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world," and I live already while in the flesh as one dwelling in heaven. Hence, when called, the gnostic readily obeys, and to the one asking for his little body, he gives it up, and also his passions, stripping them off before the flesh, not insulting the tempter, but educating, I think, and refuting, from what honor and from what height of prosperity, as Empedocles says, having come here, he consorts with mortals. This one truly bears witness to himself that he is a genuine believer toward God, to the tempter that he has vainly emulated the faithful one through love, and to the Lord the divine persuasion toward teaching, from which he will not depart through fear of death; indeed, he also confirms the truth of the proclamation by deed, showing that the God toward whom he hastens is powerful. You would marvel at his love, which he manifestly teaches, uniting gratefully with what is akin, and also shaming the unbelievers with his precious blood. Therefore, he will not avoid denying Christ through fear of the commandment, so that he might become a witness through fear.

Nor does he sell his faith for the hope of prepared rewards, but through love for the Lord he will be most gladly released from this life, perhaps even recognizing a debt to the one who provided the cause of his departure from here and to the one who contrived the plot, having taken a reasonable pretext, which he himself did not provide, to show himself as he is: to the former through endurance, to the Lord through love, by which he was revealed to the Lord, who knew the choice of the one who would bear witness even before his birth. Therefore, taking courage toward the Lord as a friend, for whose sake he has willingly given up his body, and also his soul, as the judges expected, he comes, having heard poetically, dear brother, from our Savior because of the likeness of life. Indeed, we call martyrdom a completion, not because the man received the end of life as others do, but because he displayed a perfect work of love. And the ancients among the Greeks praise the death of those who died in war, not advising violent death, but because the one who dies in war is freed from the fear of death, severed from the body, and has not grown weary in soul nor become effeminate, as men suffer in diseases; for they depart pampered and longing for life. For this reason, they do not release the soul pure, but as if carrying desires like lead weights with itself, unless some of these have become renowned for virtue. And there are also those who die in war with desires, differing in no way, or

Even if they were wasting away from disease. If, then, confession toward God is martyrdom, every soul that has lived purely with knowledge of God, that has obeyed the commandments, is a martyr in both life and word, however it may be separated from the body, pouring out faith like blood throughout the whole of life, and also at the departure. Immediately the Lord says in the Gospel: "Whoever leaves behind father or mother or brothers and so forth for the sake of the Gospel and my name, this one is blessed," indicating not simple martyrdom but gnostic martyrdom, as one who has lived according to the rule of the Gospel through love for the Lord; for knowledge signifies the understanding of the name and the comprehension of the Gospel, not merely the appellation, to leave behind the worldly kindred, to leave behind substance and every possession for the sake of living without attachment. For mother is allegorized as fatherland and nurse, and fathers as the political laws. These things must be scorned gratefully by the magnanimous just person for the sake of becoming a friend to God and attaining the right parts of the sanctuary, just as the apostles have done. Then Heraclitus says: "Those slain by Ares are honored by gods and men," and Plato in the fifth book of the Republic writes: "Of those who die in military service, whoever dies having gained honor, shall we not first say that he is of the golden race? Most certainly." The golden race is among the gods of the heaven and the sphere of the fixed stars, who especially hold the hegemony of providence over human affairs.

Some of the heretics, having misheard the Lord, impiously and cowardly love life, saying that true martyrdom is the knowledge of the God who truly is, which we also confess, but that the one who confesses through death is a murderer of himself and a suicide, and they bring forward other such sophistries of cowardice. Against them it will be spoken when the occasion demands; for they differ from us concerning first principles. We also blame those who rush headlong into death; for there are some, not of us, but only sharing the name, who hasten to surrender themselves out of hatred for the Creator, wretches longing for death. We say that these men remove themselves without witness, even if they are publicly punished. For they do not preserve the character of faithful martyrdom, not having known the true God, but surrender themselves to an empty death, just as the naked philosophers of the Indians do to vain fire. But since these falsely-named ones slander the body, let them learn that even the good harmony of the body contributes to the mind for good natural disposition. For this reason, in the third book of the Republic, Plato, whom they especially invoke as a witness while reviling generation, said that one must take care of the body for the sake of the soul's harmony, through which it is possible to live and to live rightly, proclaiming the message of truth; for through life and health, journeying, we learn knowledge. For one to whom it is not even possible to approach any height without being in the necessities and through them doing all that contributes to knowledge, how is the good life not to be chosen for him?

In living, then, right living is achieved, and one who has practiced good living through the body is transmitted to a state of perpetuity. It is also worthy of admiration that the Stoics say that the soul is in no way affected by the body, neither toward vice by disease nor toward virtue by health; but they declare both these things to be indifferent. And yet Job, by excess of self-control and preeminence of faith, becoming poor from rich, dishonored from honored, ugly from beautiful, and sick from healthy, is for us a good example recorded, putting to shame the tempter, blessing the creator, bearing the second things as he did the first, teaching very well how the gnostic can use all circumstantial things well. And that the ancient achievements are set forth as images for our own corrections, the apostle indicates, so that "my bonds," he says, "became manifest in Christ in the whole praetorium and to all the rest, and the majority of the brethren, trusting in the Lord, because of my bonds more boldly dared to speak the word of God without fear," since also the martyrdoms are examples of conversion, gloriously sanctified. For everything that was written, he says, was written for our instruction, so that through the endurance and the consolation of the scriptures we might have the hope of consolation. And somehow the soul, when pain is present, seems to turn away from it and to consider release from the present distress as valuable. Naturally, at that time it also grows negligent of learning, just when the other virtues are also neglected.

And surely we do not say that virtue itself suffers (for virtue does not fall ill), but the one who partakes of both, virtue and sickness, is oppressed by what presses upon him; and if he does not happen to be magnanimous, the one who has not yet acquired the habit of self-control gives way, and is found to be equal to one who flees by not enduring. The same reasoning applies also to poverty, since this too, of the necessities—I mean for contemplation and pure sinlessness—forces the soul to be distracted, compelling the one who has not wholly devoted himself through love to God to spend time on means of subsistence, just as conversely health and abundance of necessities keep the soul free and unhindered, which knows how to use well what is present. For the apostle says, "Such persons will have distress in the flesh, but I spare you. For I want you to be free from care, so that you may be seemly and constant in attending to the Lord without distraction." Therefore one must hold to these things not for their own sake, but for the sake of the body, and care for the body is for the sake of the soul, to which the reference is made. For in this it is necessary for the one who lives in a gnostic manner to learn what is fitting, since it is agreed that pleasure is not a good from the fact that some pleasures are evil. By this reasoning the good appears evil and the evil good. Then again, if we choose some pleasures and flee others, not every pleasure is a good. Similarly also concerning pains the same reasoning holds, of which we endure some and flee others, and the choice and avoidance occur according to knowledge; so that knowledge is the good, not pleasure, on account of which we sometimes choose a particular pleasure.

For example, the martyr chooses pleasure through hope by means of present pain. But if pain is conceived in relation to thirst, and pleasure in relation to drinking, the pain which preceded becomes productive of pleasure; but evil could not be productive of good, so neither is evil. Simonides, then, just like Aristotle, writes that the best thing for a man is to be healthy, second to be beautiful in form, third to be wealthy without deceit. And Theognis of Megara: "One must flee poverty, Cyrnus, even by throwing oneself into the deep-bosomed sea and down from steep rocks." But the comic poet Antiphanes says the opposite: "Wealth, more than the other, takes those who see and makes them blind." For instance, he is proclaimed blind from birth by the poets: "And she bore a son who never saw the sun," says Euphorion of Chalcis. Euripides in his *Alexander* has written: "Wealth was a certain evil training for manly excellence, and so were excessive luxuries." It has been said: "Poverty obtained wisdom because of its kinship." And love of money would destroy not only Sparta but every city. Therefore, not only is this coinage white silver or gold, but virtue also is coinage for mortals, as Sophocles says. Our holy Savior arranged poverty and wealth and things similar to these both in spiritual and in sensible matters; for having said, "Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness," he clearly teaches us to seek the martyr in every circumstance. If he is poor for the sake of righteousness, he bears witness that righteousness, which he loved, is good; and if he hungers or thirsts for the sake of righteousness, he bears witness that righteousness is the best thing.

Similarly, the one who weeps and the one who mourns for the sake of righteousness bears witness that the best law is good. Therefore, just as those who are persecuted, so also those who hunger and thirst for the sake of righteousness are called blessed by the one who accepts genuine longing, which even famine could not interrupt. And if they hunger for righteousness itself, they are blessed; and the poor are also blessed, whether in spirit or in property, obviously for the sake of righteousness. So does he not bless not simply the poor, but those who have chosen to become poor for the sake of righteousness, those who have disdained earthly honors for the acquisition of the good? Similarly, he blesses those who have become beautiful in character and body through chastity, and those who are noble and renowned, who have advanced to adoption for the sake of righteousness and through this have received authority to become children of God and to walk above snakes and scorpions, and to rule over demons and the army of the adversary. And in general, the Lord’s discipline draws the soul away from the body gratefully, if indeed it even draws itself away by means of a change. For the one who finds his soul will lose it, and the one who loses it will find it, provided we cast our perishable part onto the immortality of God. And the will of God is the knowledge of God, which is participation in immortality. Therefore, the one who knows, according to the principle of repentance, that the soul is sinful will lose it from the sin from which it has been separated, and having lost it, will find it according to obedience, which has come to life through faith but died to sin. This, then, is what it means to find the soul: to know oneself.

The conversion to divine things the Stoics say comes about by a change, the soul changing into wisdom, but Plato says it is when the soul takes a turning and conversion toward better things from some nocturnal day. Accordingly, the philosophers also grant a reasonable departure to the virtuous person, if something should so deprive him of his action that no hope of action is left to him. But the judge who compels one to deny the beloved seems to me to expose the friend of God and the one who is not. Here no comparison remains as to what one would rather choose, a human threat or the love of God. And in a way, abstinence from evil actions is found to be a reduction and extinction of vices, their activity being purged through inaction, and this is: "Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and come follow me," that is, follow what is said by the Lord. Some say that he called "possessions" the alien things in the soul, and they cannot tell how these are distributed to the poor. But God distributes everything to all according to worth, the economy being just. Having despised, then, he says, the possessions which God distributes through your greatness, follow what is said by me, hastening toward the ascent of the spirit, justified not only by abstinence from evils but also perfected by the Lord's beneficence. Accordingly, he refuted the one who boasted of having perfectly fulfilled the commandments of the law, for not having loved his neighbor. Beneficence is what love promises, the love that rules the Sabbath according to gnostic advancement.

I think one must approach the saving Word neither through fear of punishment nor because of promises of reward, but for the sake of the good itself. Such persons stand on the right of the sanctuary. Those who think they can exchange the things of corruption for the things of incorruption through the giving of perishable goods are called hirelings in the parable of the two brothers. And here, I think, the matter of likeness and image emerges, so that some live in accordance with the likeness to the Savior, while others, standing on the left, live in accordance with the image of these. There are, then, third from the truth, with one root underlying both, but the choice is not equal—rather, the difference according to the choice is not equal. And I think there is a difference between choosing according to imitation and choosing according to knowledge, as the fired and the illuminated differ from fire and light. Israel, then, is the light of the scriptural likeness, while the other is the image. What does the parable of Lazarus mean for the Lord, showing the image of rich and poor? And why does no one can serve two masters, God and mammon, the Lord thus naming avarice? Immediately, those who are fond of possessions, when called to the dinner, do not attend—not because they possess, but because they possess with passion. So foxes have dens. He called those who spend their time on wealth that is mined and dug up, malicious men and earthborn foxes. Likewise, in the case of Herod: "Go, tell this fox, 'Behold, I cast out demons and perform healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day I am perfected.'

For he called the birds of the heaven those distinguished from other birds by heaven, truly pure, those winged for the knowledge of the heavenly Word. For not only wealth and glory and marriage, but also poverty brings countless cares to one who cannot bear it, and perhaps in the parable of the fourfold seed he hinted at these cares, saying that the seed of the Word falling into thorns and hedges was choked by them and could not bear fruit. Therefore it is necessary to learn how to use each of the things that befall us, so as to be trained through gnostic well-living into a state of eternal life. For I saw, it says, the impious man exalted and raised up like the cedars of Lebanon, and I passed by, says the Scripture, and behold he was not; and I sought him and his place was not found. Guard innocence and behold righteousness, for there is a remnant for the peaceful man. This would be the one who believes without hypocrisy from the whole heart and is serene in his entire soul; for the other people honor with their lips, but their heart is far from the Lord. With their mouth they bless, but with their heart they curse; they loved him with their mouth and with their tongue they lied to him. Their heart is not straight with him, nor did they stand firm in his covenant. Therefore let the deceitful lips be speechless, those that speak lawlessness against the righteous. And again: May the Lord destroy all deceitful lips and boastful tongue, those who said: We will magnify our tongue, our lips are with us; who is our lord?

Now I will rise up from the misery of the poor and the groaning of the needy, says the Lord; I will place myself in safety, I will speak boldly in it. For Christ belongs to the humble-minded, not to those who exalt themselves over his flock. Do not, therefore, amass treasures for yourselves upon the earth, where moth and decay destroy and thieves dig through and steal; perhaps the Lord rebukes the property-lovers, perhaps also those who are simply anxious and worried, and already also the body-lovers; for desires and diseases and base thoughts dig through the reason and the whole man, but our true treasure is where the kinship of the mind lies. Moreover, he hands down the communality of justice, indicating that one must give back to the custom of the old way of life the things acquired by it for us and run back to God, begging mercy. This is truly a purse that does not grow old, a provision for eternal life, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven, because "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy," says the Lord. And he says these things also to those who wish to become poor for the sake of justice; for they have heard through the commandment that the broad and spacious road leads to destruction and many pass through it; he speaks not about anything else, but about prodigality and love of women, love of glory, love of power, and similar passions; for he said thus, "Fool, for this night they demand your soul; and what you have prepared for it, to whom will it belong?" And the words of the commandment are as follows, verbatim:

Beware, therefore, of all greed, for a person's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. For what benefit is it to a man if he gains the whole world but damages his own soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? Therefore I say: do not be anxious for your soul about what you will eat, nor for your body about what you will put on; for the soul is greater than food and the body than clothing. And again: for your Father knows that you need all these things; but seek first the kingdom of heaven and righteousness, for these are great, while the small things concerning life will be added to you. Does he not plainly command us to follow the gnostic life and exhort us to seek the truth in deed and word? Christ, who educates the soul, considers not the gift but the intention as rich. Therefore Zacchaeus—or as some say, Matthew—a chief tax collector, having heard the Lord deign to come to him, said: "Behold, I give half of my possessions as alms, Lord, and if I have falsely accused anyone of anything, I repay fourfold." Concerning him the Savior said: "The Son of Man, coming today, has found what was lost." And again, seeing in the treasury that the rich man had contributed in proportion to his wealth, while the widow had contributed two copper coins, he said that the widow had contributed more than all; for he gave from his surplus, while she contributed from her need. And that he referred everything to the education of the soul, he says: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

The meek are those who have put an end to the implacable war in the soul, the war of anger and desire and the forms subject to them. He praises the meek according to deliberate choice, not by necessity. For with the Lord there are both rewards and more numerous abodes in proportion to lives; for he who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet, he says, will receive a prophet's reward, and he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward, and he who receives one of these little disciples will not lose the reward. And again, through the hours which are not equal in number, and also through the equal reward given to each of the workers (that is, salvation, which the denarius signifies), he has revealed the equal justice through those who worked during the disproportionate hours. They will therefore work according to the abodes proportionate to the honors of which they have been deemed worthy, as co-workers of the ineffable economy and service. Those who seem to have been especially called to live piously, says Plato, these are the ones who are freed and released from these things on earth as from prisons, and who arrive above into a pure dwelling. And again, through clearer words, he says something like this: of these themselves, those who have sufficiently purified themselves in philosophy live entirely without bodies for all time, although he assigns some forms to them, some airy, others fiery. He further adds: and they arrive at dwellings even more beautiful than these, which it is not easy to describe nor is the time sufficient at present.

Hence the mourners are rightly called blessed, because they themselves will be comforted. For those who have repented of their past evil lives will be present at the calling; for this is what it means to be comforted. There are two modes of repentance: the more common one is fear of what has been done, and the more particular one is the soul's shame toward itself arising from conscience, whether here or elsewhere, since no place is idle of God's beneficence. Again he says: blessed are the merciful, because they themselves will be shown mercy. Mercy is not, as some philosophers have supposed, grief at others' misfortunes, but rather something noble, as the prophets say: "I desire mercy, not sacrifice," he says. He wishes to be merciful not only those who perform mercy, but also those who wish to be merciful, even if they are unable, in whom the act is present according to deliberate choice. For sometimes we wish to perform mercy through a gift of money or through bodily effort, such as to assist someone in need, or to tend to someone sick, or to stand by someone in a crisis, and we are not able, whether because of poverty, or illness, or old age (for this too is a natural infirmity), to serve the deliberate choice toward which we are impelled, having been unable to bring to completion what we intended. Therefore, those who have intended will share in the same honor as those who were able, since their deliberate choice is equal, even if others have an advantage in resources. Since two paths leading to the perfection of salvation are found, works and knowledge, he called blessed those who are pure in heart, because they themselves will see God.

If we truly consider the matter, knowledge, which is the purification of the ruling part of the soul, is also a good activity. Some goods are good in themselves, while others participate in goods, as we say of noble actions. But without the intermediate things, which hold the place of matter, neither good nor bad actions are constituted—I mean, for example, life, health, and other necessary or circumstantial things. Therefore, it wishes us to be pure in bodily desires and holy in the thoughts that reach toward the knowledge of God, so that the ruling part may have nothing spurious obstructing its power. So when one dwells in contemplation, communing purely with the divine, the one who participates gnosticly in the holy quality comes more directly into a state of impassible identity, so that he no longer has knowledge and possesses gnosis, but is knowledge and gnosis. Blessed, then, are the peacemakers. Those who have tamed and civilized the law that opposes the intention of our mind—the threats of anger, the lures of desire, and all other passions that war against reason—and who have lived with knowledge, good works, and true speech, will be restored to the most beloved adoption. The perfect peacemaking would be that which preserves the peaceful state unaltered in every circumstance, calling the governance holy and beautiful, established in the knowledge of divine and human things, through which it considers the oppositions in the world as the most beautiful harmony of creation.

They also make peace with those who are warred against here by the stratagems of sin, teaching them to pass over to faith and peace. The chief point, I think, of all virtue is the Lord teaching us that we must, in a more gnostic manner, through love for God, despise death. "Blessed," he says, "are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, because they will be called sons of God," or, as some of those who alter the Gospels say: "Blessed," he says, "are those who have been persecuted for righteousness, because they will be perfect. And blessed are those who have been persecuted for my sake, because they will have a place where they will not be persecuted. And blessed are you, when men hate you, when they separate you, when they cast out your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man." If, of course, we do not abhor those who persecute us and endure the punishments inflicted by them, not hating them, thinking that we have been tempted later than we expected, but also recognizing that every temptation whatsoever is a pretext for martyrdom. Then, he who has lied and shown himself faithless and has deserted to the army of the devil—in what evil, do we think, does he exist? He therefore lies to the Lord, or rather he has deceived his own hope, who does not believe in God. And he does not believe who does not do what he commanded. What then? Does not he who denies the Lord deny himself? For he does not deprive the Lord of his master who also deprives himself of his relationship to him. Therefore, he who denies the Savior denies life, because the light was life.

He does not call these "of little faith," but faithless and hypocrites, who have the name inscribed upon them, but deny that they are faithful. "Faithful" is also said of a servant and a friend. So if one loves himself, he loves the Lord and confesses salvation, in order to save his soul. And yet, even if you die for your neighbor out of love—and you take "neighbor" to mean our Savior (for God, who is near and saves, is said to be close to the one being saved)—you die a death chosen for the sake of life, and you suffer more for your own sake than for his. And is it not for this reason that he is called "brother"? Because he who suffers out of love for God suffers for his own salvation, and he who dies for his own salvation endures it out of love for the Lord. For he himself, being life, through whom he suffered, wished to suffer, so that we might live by his passion. "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,'" he says, "and not do what I say?" For the people who love with their lips, but keep their heart far from the Lord, are different, persuaded by another, and have willingly sold themselves to him. But those who fulfill the Savior's commandments bear witness by every action, doing what he wills, and accordingly naming the Lord, and bearing witness by deed to him whom they are persuaded exists—those who have crucified the flesh together with its desires and passions. "If we live by the spirit," he says, "let us also walk by the spirit." He who sows into his own flesh will reap corruption from the flesh; he who sows into the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit.

To the wretched among men, the most violent death seems to be martyrdom through blood for the Lord, not knowing that such a gate of death is the beginning of true life. And they wish neither to understand the honors after death of those who have lived piously nor the punishments of those who have lived unjustly and licentiously, not only from our scriptures I say (for nearly all the commandments indicate these things), but they do not even wish to heed their own words. For Theano the Pythagorean writes: for life would truly be a feast for the wicked who have done evil; then when they die, if the soul were not immortal, death would be a godsend. And Plato in the Phaedo: for if death were a release from everything, it would be a godsend, and so forth. It is not, therefore, according to Aeschylus’ Telephus to think that a single path leads to Hades, but there are many roads that lead away, manifold errors. These unbelievers, it seems, Aristophanes ridicules: "Lead on," he says, "men of shadowy life, like unto a generation of leaves, feeble, waxen figures, shadowy tribes, strengthless, wingless, ephemeral." And Epicharmus: "This is the nature of men, inflated wineskins." But to us the Savior has said: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Because the apostle explains that the mind of the flesh is enmity toward God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. And continuing his exposition he adds, so that no one, like Marcion, may ungratefully take the creation to be evil.

If Christ is in you, the body is dead through sin, but the spirit is life through righteousness. And again: For if you live according to the flesh, you are about to die; for I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy compared with the future glory to be revealed to us, if indeed we suffer together, so that we may also be glorified together, as fellow heirs of Christ. But we know that for those who love God, all things cooperate for the good, for those who are called according to a purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he himself might be the firstborn among many brothers; and those whom he predestined, these he also called; and those whom he called, these he also justified; and those whom he justified, these he also glorified. You see martyrdom taught through love. And if you wish to bear witness for the sake of a reward of good things, you will hear again: For we were saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope; for what one sees, what does he also hope for? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it through endurance. But if we also suffer for righteousness, we are blessed, says Peter. Do not fear their fear nor be disturbed, but sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts, and be always ready to give an account to anyone who asks you for a word concerning the hope in you, but with gentleness and fear, having a conscience.

good, so that in what you are slandered, those who revile your noble conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer while doing good, if the will of God so desires, than to do evil. And if someone mockingly says, "How is it possible for the weak flesh to resist the powers and spirits of the authorities?" let him know that we, trusting in the Almighty and the Lord, oppose the principalities of darkness and death. While you are still speaking, he says, he will say, "Behold, I am here." Behold the invincible helper, the one who shields us. Do not be astonished, then, Peter says, at the burning within you that occurs for your trial, as if something strange were happening to you, but inasmuch as you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, so that in the revelation of his glory you may rejoice exultantly. If you are reproached in the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you; as it is written, "Because of you we are put to death all day long, we are counted as sheep for slaughter." But in all these things we prevail through the one who loved us. As for what you need to learn from my mind, neither by burning nor by force, even if you apply terrible saws to the ends of my feet, would you learn it, says the woman in the tragedy, fearlessly acting bravely. And Antigone, despising the decree of Creon, says boldly, "For it was not Zeus who proclaimed these things; but God proclaims to us, and we must obey him; for he is believed in the heart for righteousness, and confessed by the mouth for salvation." Thus the Scripture says:

Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. Naturally, then, Simonides writes: "There is a saying that Virtue dwells on rocks hard to climb, and that a swift chorus of pure maidens tends her; she is not visible to the eyes of all mortals, unless heart-biting sweat comes from within and one reaches the peak of manliness." And Pindar: "The cares of the young, revolving with toils, find glory, and deeds shine with time, illumined in the ether." Aeschylus, taking up this thought, says: "From the gods, glory is owed to the one who toils as the offspring of his labor." For greater labors obtain greater portions, according to Heraclitus. And who is a slave to death, being heedless? For God did not give us a spirit of slavery again for fear, but of power, love, and self-discipline. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, he writes to Timothy. Such a one would be he who cleaves to the good, according to the apostle, abhorring evil, having unfeigned love; for he who loves the other has fulfilled the law. And if this God of hope is the one to whom we bear witness, as indeed he is, we confess our hope, hastening toward hope. But those full of goodness are filled, it is said, with all knowledge. The philosophers of the Indians say to Alexander the Macedonian: "You may move bodies from place to place, but you will not compel our souls to do what we do not wish. Fire is the greatest punishment for men; we despise it." And from this, Heraclitus chose one glory in place of all, and he admits that the many are satisfied like cattle.

For the sake of the body, then, the many toils, for its sake we have devised a watertight house and to dig white silver and to sow the earth, and all the other things that we know by name. For the many, then, this vain labor is choiceworthy, but for us the apostle says: we know this, that our old man has been crucified with him, so that the body of sin may be abolished, that we may no longer be slaves to sin. Does not the apostle then clearly add those things, showing the shame of faith among the many? For I think, God appointed us apostles last, as though condemned to death, because we became a spectacle to the world and to angels and to men; until this very hour we hunger and thirst and go naked and are buffeted and are homeless and labor with our own hands; when reviled we bless, when persecuted we endure, when slandered we exhort; we became as the scum of the world. Such also are the words of Plato in the Republic, that the just man, even if he is racked and even if his eyes are gouged out, will be happy. Therefore the gnostic will never place his end in fortune, but his being happy and blessed and a royal friend of God would be in himself; and even if someone surrounds him with dishonor, exile, confiscation, and finally death, he will never be torn away from his freedom and his most sovereign love for God, which endures all and withstands all; love is persuaded that divine providence governs all things well. Therefore I exhort you, become my imitators, he says.

The first step of salvation, then, is teaching accompanied by fear, through which we abstain from injustice; the second is hope, through which we desire the best; and love perfects, as is fitting, educating in a gnostic manner. For the Greeks, I know not how, having yielded to irrational necessity, admit that they are unwillingly persuaded by what happens. At any rate, Euripides says: "What I advise, then, accept from me, woman. No mortal is born who does not toil; he buries children and sows others new, and himself dies. And mortals are distressed by these things." Then he adds: "These things must be endured, which must be passed through according to nature; nothing necessary is terrible for mortals." For those hastening to perfection, the goal is rational knowledge, whose foundation is the holy triad: faith, hope, love; and greater than these is love. Of course, all things are permitted, but not all things are beneficial; all things are permitted, but not all things build up, says the apostle. And let no one seek only his own interest, but also that of the other, so as to be able both to do and to teach, building up and building upon. For that the Lord's is the earth and its fullness is agreed, but the conscience of the one who is weak is borne along. By conscience I mean not one's own, but that of the other. For why is my freedom judged by another's conscience? If I partake by grace, why am I blasphemed for that for which I give thanks? Therefore, whether you eat or drink or do anything, do everything to the glory of God. For walking in the flesh, we do not serve according to the flesh.

For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but powerful through God for the demolition of fortifications, overthrowing reasonings and every height raised against the knowledge of the Lord. Armed with these weapons, the gnostic says, O Lord, grant a crisis and receive a demonstration; let this terrible thing come; I despise dangers because of my love for you. Hence virtue alone among human things does not receive its rewards from external sources, but has itself as the prize for its labors. Therefore, as chosen, holy, and beloved of God, put on bowels of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, long-suffering, and above all these, love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ be the umpire in your hearts, to which you have also been called in one body; and be grateful, while still in the body, just as the ancient righteous, reaping impassibility of soul and tranquility of heart. For not only Aesopians and Macedonians and Laconians endured while being tortured, as Eratosthenes says in his On Goods and Evils, but also Zeno of Elea, when forced to reveal some secret, held out against the tortures confessing nothing, who even at the end, biting off his tongue, spat it at the tyrant, whom some call Nearchus, others Demylus. Similarly, Theodotus the Pythagorean did likewise, and Praulus the acquaintance of Lacydes, as Timotheus of Pergamum says in his On the Courage of Philosophers, and Achaicus in his Ethics. But also Postumus the Roman, when captured by Pencetion, not only revealed none of the hidden things,

But also, placing his hand upon the fire, he melts it like bronze with his steadfast posture. I pass over Anaxarchus, who, when being pounded with iron pestles by the tyrant, cried out, "Pound the bag of Anaxarchus; for you do not pound Anaxarchus." Neither the hope of happiness nor love for God is distressed by what befalls; it remains free, even if it falls among the most savage beasts, even if it falls into the all-devouring fire, even if it is destroyed by tyrannical tortures, suspended from divine friendship, it dwells unconquered above, having surrendered the body to those things that can only grasp it. The Getae, a barbarian nation not unacquainted with philosophy, choose an ambassador each year to the hero Zalmoxis. Now Zalmoxis was one of the disciples of Pythagoras. The one judged most worthy is then slaughtered, while those who have philosophized but were not chosen are grieved, as having been rejected from a blessed service. Thus the whole church is full of those who have practiced the life-giving death in Christ throughout their entire life, both men and women of self-control. For it is possible for one who lives according to our rule to philosophize even without letters, whether barbarian or Greek, whether slave or old man or child or woman; for self-control is common to all human beings who have chosen it. And it is agreed by us that the same nature in each kind has the same virtue. Therefore woman does not appear to have a different nature from man with respect to humanity; but the same, so also virtue.

If the virtue of a man is self-control and justice and all that is considered to follow from these, then is it fitting for a man alone to be virtuous, and for a woman to be licentious and unjust? But this is unseemly even to say. Therefore, self-control and justice and every other virtue must be practiced alike by woman and by man, by free person and by slave, since it happens that virtue is one and the same for the same nature. Now, we do not say that the nature of the female is the same as that of the male insofar as it is female; for there must certainly be some difference between these two, on account of which one is female and the other male. We say, for instance, that bearing and giving birth belong to the woman insofar as she is female, not insofar as she is human. But if there were no difference between man and woman, each of them would do and suffer the same things. Therefore, insofar as they are the same, namely, as soul, they will attain the same virtue; but insofar as they differ, according to the peculiarity of the body, they will be directed toward childbearing and household management. For I want you to know, says the apostle, that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of a woman is the man. For man is not from woman, but woman is from man. Yet neither is woman without man nor man without woman in the Lord. For just as we say that the man must be self-controlled and superior to pleasures, so too we would deem the woman likewise to be self-controlled and practiced in struggling against pleasures. I say: Walk in the spirit and do not fulfill the desire of the flesh, the apostolic commandment advises.

For the flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. These things, then, are opposed not as evil to good, but as contending in a way that is expedient. He adds, therefore: "So that you may not do what you wish." The works of the flesh are manifest, which are: fornication, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, strifes, jealousies, angers, contentions, dissensions, heresies, envies, drunkennesses, revels, and the like, which I foretell to you as I also said before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, self-control, goodness, faith, meekness. By "flesh," I think, he means the sinners, as by "spirit" the righteous. Indeed, the quality of courage must be taken in the sense of cheerfulness and endurance, so as to offer the other cheek to the one who strikes the jaw, and to yield even the tunic to the one who takes the cloak, controlling the anger vigorously. For we do not train women as Amazons in martial courage, since we wish even men to be peaceful. I myself hear of Sauromatid women who engage in war no less than men, and other Sacae who shoot arrows backwards while pretending to flee, equally with men. I know also the women near Iberia who practice work and toil in a manly fashion, and even when they come to give birth, they relax none of their tasks, but often in the very midst of the struggle of labors, the woman, having given birth to the infant, picks it up and carries it home.

Already, then, bitches are in no way inferior to males: they guard the house, hunt, and watch over the flocks. "A Cretan bitch ran after the track of a deer—Gorgo." Therefore, women must philosophize in a manner similar to men, even if males happen to be better, being first in all things, unless they become enervated. So education and virtue are necessary for the entire human race, if indeed they hasten toward happiness. And not in vain does Euripides write variously: at one time, "Every wife is worse than her husband, even if the worst man marries the most reputable woman"; at another, "Every woman is a slave to her husband, the chaste woman, but the unchaste woman surpasses her companion in folly." For "nothing is stronger and better than when a man and a woman, being of one mind, keep a house." The head, then, is the ruling part. If the Lord is the head of the man, and the man is the head of the woman, then the man is the lord of the woman, being the image and glory of God. Hence, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, he writes: "Submitting to one another in the fear of God; women to their own husbands as to the Lord, because the man is the head of the woman, just as Christ is the head of the Church, the Savior himself of the body." But as the Church submits to Christ, so also women submit to their own husbands in everything. "Men, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church; thus also men ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh." And in the Epistle to the Colossians, he says: "Women, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.

Men, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become disheartened. Slaves, obey your masters in the flesh in all things, not with eye-service as flatterers of men, but with simplicity of heart, fearing the Lord. And whatever you do, work from the soul as serving the Lord and not men, knowing that you will receive the recompense of the inheritance from the Lord. For you serve the Lord Christ; for the unjust man will receive what he has done unjustly, and there is no favoritism. Masters, provide justice and equality to your slaves, knowing that you also have a master in heaven, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor foreskin, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but all things and in all things Christ. The earthly church is an image of the heavenly church, which is what we pray for, that the will of God be done on earth as in heaven. Putting on bowels of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, long-suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; just as Christ forgave us, so also we. Above all these things is love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ preside in your hearts, to which you have also been called in one body; and be grateful.

For nothing prevents us from frequently citing the same scripture to shame Marcion, so that if he should change his mind, being persuaded, he might learn that the faithful person must be grateful to the creator God who called us and proclaimed the good news in a body. It is clear to us from these things that unity comes from faith, and who the perfect person is has been shown, so that even if some are unwilling and most oppose, and even if punishments are threatened by a husband or by a master, both the slave and the wife will philosophize. Indeed, also the free person, even if death is threatened by a tyrant, even if he is brought before courts and dragged into extreme dangers, and even if he risks all his property, he will not abstain from piety in any way whatsoever; nor will the wife living with a worthless husband ever give up, nor the son if he has a worthless father, nor the slave if he has a wicked master, but they will cling to virtue nobly. But just as it is noble for a man to die for virtue, for freedom, for himself, so also for a woman; for this is not peculiar to the nature of males, but to that of the good. Faithfully, then, both the elder and the young and the slave obeying the commandments will live and, if necessary, will die, which would be to be given life through death. For we know that children, slaves, and wives have often become very good, even when their fathers, masters, and husbands were unwilling. Therefore, those who intend to live piously must not be less eager when some seem to hinder them, but I think it is much more fitting for them to hasten and strive especially, so that they may not, being defeated, fall away from the best and most necessary resolutions.

For I do not think it admits of comparison whether it is better to become a follower of the Almighty or to choose the darkness of the demons. For things done for the sake of others we would each time do, trying to look to those for whose sake they seem to occur, considering as the measure that which is pleasing in them; but things that are for our own sake rather than for the sake of certain others, these would be done by us with equal zeal, whether they seem to please some or not. If, then, some indifferent things have obtained such honor as to seem choiceworthy even without some considerations, much more must virtue be regarded as worth fighting for, looking not to anything else but to that which can be done well, whether it seems otherwise to some or not. Rightly, then, does Epicurus also write to Menoeceus: "Let no one, being young, delay to philosophize, nor, being old, grow weary of philosophizing. For no one is either too young or too old for the health of the soul. And the one who says that the time for philosophizing is not yet present or has passed is like the one who says that the time for happiness is either not yet present or no longer present. So one must philosophize both when young and when old, the one so that in growing old he may be young in good things through the grace of what has happened, the other so that he may be at once young and old through the fearlessness of what is to come." Concerning martyrdom the Lord has spoken explicitly, and let us compile the variously written passages: "I say to you, everyone who confesses in me before men, the Son of Man will also confess in him before the angels of God.

But the one who denies me before men, I will deny him before the angels. For whoever is ashamed of me or my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with his angels. Therefore, whoever confesses in me before men, I also will confess in him before my Father in heaven. And when they bring you into the synagogues and before the rulers and authorities, do not worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves or what you will say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you must say. Interpreting this passage, Heracleon, the most esteemed of the school of Valentinus, says word for word that confession is of two kinds: one in faith and conduct, the other in speech. Now the confession in speech takes place also before the authorities, which alone, he says, the many consider to be confession, not rightly, and they are able to make this confession

The hypocrites confess. But this saying will not be found to have been spoken universally; for not all who are saved have made the confession through the voice and gone out, among whom are Matthew, Philip, Thomas, Levi, and many others. And the confession through the voice is not universal, but partial. The universal confession, which he now speaks of, is that in works and deeds corresponding to faith in him. And following this confession comes the partial one before the authorities, if need be and reason permits. For such a one will also confess with the voice, having first rightly confessed with the disposition. And he well said "in me" concerning those who confess, but added "me" concerning those who deny. For these, even if they confess him with the voice, deny him by not confessing him in deed. Only those who live in the polity and action according to him confess in him, in whom he himself confesses, being enfolded by them and held by them. Therefore they can never deny him; but those who are not in him deny him. For he did not say "whoever denies in me," but "me"; for no one who is ever in him denies him. And "before men" applies both to the saved and to the Gentiles alike, among some by polity, among others by voice. Therefore they can never deny him; but those who are not in him deny him. These things says Heracleon.

And the rest of it appears to agree with us according to this passage, but he did not notice that even if some did not confess Christ by action and by their life before men, yet by confessing with the voice in courts and, when tortured to death, not denying, they appear to have believed from disposition; and a confessed disposition, especially one not turned even by death, effects a severance of all the passions at once, which were generated through bodily desire; for it is, so to speak, at the end of life a concentrated repentance in action and a true confession to Christ, with the voice bearing witness. And if the spirit of the Father in us bears witness, how are they still hypocrites, whom he said bear witness only by voice? It will be granted to some, if it is beneficial, to make a defense, so that through both the witness and the confession all may benefit, those in the church being strengthened, those from the nations who have inquired into salvation being amazed and led into faith, and the rest being seized by astonishment. So one must confess in every case, for it is in our power, but one must not make a defense in every case, for that is not in our power. And he who endures to the end, this one will be saved; for who among the right-minded would not choose to rule in God, rather than to serve? Therefore some confess to know God according to the apostle, but by their works they deny him, being abominable and disobedient and unfit for every good work; but those who confess even this alone have accomplished at the end one good work.

Martyrdom, then, seems to be a purification of sins accompanied by glory. For instance, the Shepherd says: "You will escape the activity of the wild beast if your heart becomes pure and blameless." But also the Lord himself says: "Satan demanded to sift you; but I refused." So the Lord alone, because of the folly of those who plotted against him and the purification of the unbelievers, drank the cup; imitating whom, the apostles, as true gnostics and perfect ones, suffered for the churches which they had established. Thus also those who follow the apostolic path as gnostics must be sinless and, through love for the Lord, love their neighbor as well, so that, if circumstances call, they may, for the church, endure tribulations without stumbling and drink the cup. But those who, while living contrary to the faith in deed, yet in word bear witness in court, whether from hope or from fear, are better than those who confess salvation only with their mouth. But if someone should go beyond

Love—truly blessed and genuine is the martyr who has perfectly confessed, both through the commandments and through God by means of the Lord, whom he loved and recognized as brother, giving his entire self for the love of God, like a deposit faithfully and lovingly returning the required person. But when, on the contrary, it is said, "When they persecute you in this city, flee to the other," it does not advise fleeing as if persecution were evil, nor does it command us to avoid death through flight out of fear; rather, it wishes us to become the cause or co-cause of no evil, neither to ourselves nor to the persecutor and the executioner. For in a way, it instructs us to avoid him, while the one who disobeys is reckless and rash. If the one who kills a man of God sins against God, then the one who presents himself to the court also becomes guilty of his own death. This would be the one who does not take precautions against persecution, offering himself as capturable through audacity. Such a person, as far as it depends on him, becomes a collaborator with the persecutor's wickedness; and if he also provokes, he is fully responsible, summoning the beast. Likewise, if he provides any cause for conflict, loss, enmity, or lawsuit, he has generated an occasion for persecution. For this reason, we are commanded to cling to nothing in life, but even to give up our cloak and tunic to the one who takes them, not only so that we remain detached, but so that, by not contending, we do not provoke those who lay claim against us and, through us, stir up blasphemy against the Name.

Yes, they say, if your God cares for you, why are you persecuted and killed? Or does he himself hand you over for this? But we do not suppose that the Lord wished us to fall into such circumstances; rather, he prophetically foretold what would happen, that we would be persecuted, killed, and tortured because of his name. So he did not wish us to be persecuted, but he foretold what we would suffer, training us for endurance through the prediction of what would happen, for which he promised the inheritance. And yet we are not alone, but are punished along with many. But those, they say, being malefactors, justly undergo punishment. So they unwillingly bear witness to our righteousness, as we are unjustly punished for righteousness. But the injustice of the judge does not touch providence; for the judge must be master of his own judgment, not pulled like a lifeless instrument, perhaps receiving only occasions from an external cause. He is tested, then, in how he judges, just as we are, both in the choice of what is chosen and in endurance; and even if we do no wrong, the judge looks to us as though we do wrong; for he does not know our circumstances nor wishes to learn, but is carried away by empty prejudice, and therefore is himself judged. So they persecute us not because they have found us to be unjust, but because they suppose that merely being Christians is to do injustice to life, both in their own conduct and in urging others to choose a similar life. And why, they say, are you not helped when you are persecuted?

For what injustice do we suffer, as far as we ourselves are concerned, when we are released by death to the Lord and undergo a change of life as if it were a change of age? And if we were right-minded, we would be grateful to those who have provided the occasion for our speedy departure, if we bear witness out of love. And if we did not seem to the many to be some worthless men, and if they themselves also knew the truth, all would leap upon the path, and there would be no selection. But our faith, being the light of the world, convicts unbelief. For Anytus and Meletus might kill me, but they could not harm me in the least; for I do not think it is lawful for the better to be harmed by the worse. So each of us may confidently say: The Lord is my helper, I shall not fear; what can man do to me? For the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and torture will not touch them. Basilides, in the twenty-third book of his *Exegetica*, concerning those punished in martyrdom, says in these very words: For I say that all who fall under the so-called afflictions, having sinned in other hidden transgressions, are led to this good, by the kindness of the one who leads them, being truly accused of one thing after another, so that they may not suffer as condemned for acknowledged evils, nor be reviled as an adulterer or a murderer, but because they are Christians, which will console them so that they do not even seem to suffer. And if someone who has not sinned at all comes to suffer, which is rare, even he will not suffer through the plotting of any power, but will suffer as the infant who seems not to have sinned suffered.

Then, going on further, he adds: "Just as an infant, not having sinned previously or actively committed any sin, but having the capacity to sin within itself, when subjected to suffering, is benefited, gaining much that is difficult, so also if a perfect man, having committed no sin in deed, should happen to suffer, whatever he suffers, he suffers in a manner similar to the infant. For although he has the capacity to sin within himself, not having taken the occasion to sin, he did not sin. Therefore, the fact that he did not sin is not to be credited to him. For just as one who wishes to commit adultery is an adulterer, even if he does not succeed in committing adultery, and one who wishes to commit murder is a murderer, even if he is unable to kill, so also if I see the so-called sinless man suffering, even if he has done no evil, I will call him evil because of his will to sin. I will say anything rather than call evil that which exercises providence." Then, going on further, he speaks plainly about the Lord as about a man: "If, however, leaving aside all these arguments, you come to put me to shame by means of certain persons, saying, for instance, 'So-and-so sinned, for so-and-so suffered,' if you permit, I will say, 'He did not sin, but he was like the suffering infant.' But if you press the argument more vehemently, I will say, 'Whatever man you name is a man, but God is just. For no one is pure from defilement, as someone has said.'" But for Basilides, the hypothesis says that the soul, having sinned beforehand in another life, undergoes punishment here, the elect soul honorably through martyrdom, and the other soul being purified by its own punishment. And how is this true, when it lies with us to confess and be punished or not?

For in the case of the one who will deny, providence according to Basilides is dissolved. I therefore ask him, in the case of the confessor who is seized, whether he will bear witness and be punished according to providence or not. For if he denies, he will not be punished. But if, from the outcome, he says that this one ought not to be punished, he will unwillingly attest to the destruction of those who deny as coming from providence. And how is it that the most glorious reward in heaven is still laid up for the one who has borne witness because he bore witness? But if providence did not allow the one capable of sinning to come to the act of sinning, it becomes unjust in both respects: both in not rescuing the one who is dragged to punishment for righteousness, and in rescuing the one who wished to do wrong—while the one acted as he intended, the other prevented the deed and did not justly preserve the one capable of sinning. And how is it not atheistic to deify the devil, and to dare to call the Lord a sinful human? For the devil tempts, knowing what we are, but not knowing whether we will endure; but he tempts, wishing to shake us from faith and draw us to himself, which alone is permitted to him both because we must be saved by ourselves, having taken starting points from the commandment, and because of the shame of the tempter who fails, and because of the strengthening of those in the church, and because of the conscience of those who marvel at the endurance. But if martyrdom is a requital through punishment, then faith and teaching, for the sake of which martyrdom occurs, are co-workers of punishment—than which what greater absurdity could there be?

But as for those doctrines, if the soul is reincarnated, and concerning the devil, this will be discussed at the appropriate times according to the relevant authorities. For now, let us add this to what has been said: Where then is faith according to the retribution for prior sins when martyrdom occurs? Where is the love for God that is persecuted and endures for the sake of truth? Where is the praise of the confessor or the blame of the denier? Of what use is right conduct—to mortify desires and to hate none of the created things? If, as Basilides himself says, we have understood one part of the so-called will of God to be loving all things, because all things preserve a relation to the whole, and another part to desire nothing, and a third to hate nothing, then punishments will also be by the will of God—which is impious to conceive. For neither did the Lord suffer by the will of the Father, nor are the persecuted persecuted by the will of God, since one of two things follows: either persecution will be something good because of the will of God, or those who inflict and oppress are innocent. But indeed nothing happens without the will of the Lord of all. It remains, then, to say briefly that such things occur because God does not prevent them; for this alone preserves both providence and the goodness of God.

Therefore, one must not think that he himself brings about the afflictions—let it not be to conceive this—but rather it is fitting to be persuaded that he does not hinder those who act, and that he turns the audacities of the adversaries to good use (for he says, "I will tear down the wall, and it will be for trampling underfoot"), such providence being a pedagogical art, in the case of others because of each one's own sins, but in the case of the Lord and the apostles because of our sins. Immediately the divine apostle says, "For this is the will of God," he says, "your sanctification: that you abstain from fornication, that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the passion of desire, just as the nations that do not know the Lord, that you not transgress and take advantage of your brother in the matter, because the Lord is avenger concerning all these things, as we have already told you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but to sanctification. Therefore, the one who rejects does not reject a man, but God, who gave his Holy Spirit into you. For this reason, then, because of our sanctification, the Lord was not prevented from suffering." If, then, one of them should say in defense that the martyr is punished because of sins prior to this embodiment, but that he will receive again the fruit of his conduct in this life, for thus the administration is ordered, we will ask him whether the recompense occurs by providence. For if it is not of the divine administration, the economy of purifications is gone and their hypothesis has fallen; but if the purifications are by providence, then the punishments are also by providence.

Providence, even if it begins to be set in motion from the Archon, as they say, was nevertheless sown into substances together with the generation of substances by the God of all. Things being so, they must necessarily admit either that punishment is not unjust (and that those who condemn and persecute the martyrs act justly) or that the persecutions also are set in motion by the will of God. Therefore, toil and fear, as they themselves say, do not supervene upon things as rust upon iron, but come to the soul from its own volition. Concerning these matters, the discussion is extensive, and it will be reserved for later examination at the appropriate time, when we take them up in turn. Valentinus, in some homily, writes verbatim: "From the beginning you are immortal, and you are children of eternal life, and you wished to distribute death among yourselves, that you might consume and annihilate it, and that death might die in you and through you. For when you dissolve the world, but are not yourselves dissolved, you rule over all creation and all corruption." For he too posits a race that is saved by nature, similarly to Basilides, and that this distinct race has come down to us from above for the abolition of death, and that the generation of death is the work of the one who created the world. Hence he also interprets that scripture thus: "No one will see the face of God and

He will live as though of a cause of death. Concerning this god, he hints at those things, writing in these very words: "As much as the image is inferior to the living face, so much is the cosmos inferior to the living Aeon." What then is the cause of the image? The majesty of the face, which furnished the painter with the type, so that it might be honored through his name; for the form was not found authentically, but the name filled what was lacking in the shaping. And the invisibility of the god also cooperates for belief in what has been molded. For he called the Demiurge, as god and father, an image of the true god and a prophet, and Wisdom the painter, whose product is the image, for the glory of the invisible, since whatever proceeds from a syzygy are pleromas, but whatever from a single one are images. And since his visible part is not the soul from the mesotes, the different one comes, and this is the inspiration of the different spirit, and in general what is breathed into the soul, the image of the spirit, and in general the things said about the Demiurge who came into being according to the image—these, they say, were prophesied in the portion of the perceptible image in Genesis concerning the generation of man. And indeed they transfer the likeness also to themselves, teaching that the addition of the different spirit to the Demiurge occurred unknown to him. When, therefore, we treat of the one God proclaimed through law, prophets, and gospel, we will also argue against this (for the discourse is foundational), but we must respond to the urgent matter.

If the superior race is to achieve the abolition of death, then Christ did not abolish death, unless he too is said to be consubstantial with them. But if he abolished it in such a way that it does not touch the superior race, then it is not these imitators of the Demiurge who abolish death, they who, according to the heresy of their doctrine, breathe life from above into the soul from the mean, their own image, even if they say this happens through the mother. But even if they claim to campaign against death together with Christ, they confess the hidden doctrine, in that they dare to attack the divine power of the Demiurge, correcting his creation as if they were superior, attempting to save the psychic image which he himself was unable to rescue from corruption. And the Lord would then be superior to the Demiurge god; for the son would never contend with the father, and that among gods. But that this is the father of the son, the Demiurge of all things, the almighty Lord, we have deferred to that inquiry in which we have undertaken to discuss the heresies, showing that this is the one proclaimed by him. But for us, the apostle, writing on endurance of afflictions, says this also from God: that it has been granted to you to suffer for Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him; having the same contest which you saw in me and now hear in me.

If, then, there is any consolation in Christ, any comfort of love, any communion of spirit, any bowels and compassions, fill my joy, that you may think the same, having the same love, of one soul, thinking the one thing. But if he pours libation at the sacrifice and liturgy of faith, rejoicing and rejoicing together, and calls those to whom the apostle speaks, the Philippians, fellow partakers of grace, how does he call them of one soul and psychic? Similarly, writing about Timothy and himself, he says, "For I have no one of equal soul who will genuinely care for your affairs; for all seek their own, not those of Jesus Christ." Let not, therefore, those previously mentioned call us "psychic" as a term of reproach, but also the Phrygians; for already these too call those who do not attend to the new prophecy "psychic," concerning whom we will discourse in the books On Prophecy. The perfect man must therefore practice love, and from here hasten to divine friendship, fulfilling the commandments through love. But to love enemies is not to love evil.

He says not impiety or adultery or theft, but the thief and the impious and the adulterer, not insofar as he sins and by a certain activity defiles the appellation of man, but insofar as he is a man and a work of God. Indeed, sinning lies in activity, not in substance; therefore it is not a work of God. Sinners are said to be enemies of God, enemies of the commandments to which they have not hearkened, just as friends are those who have hearkened, the one named through affinity, the other through alienation resulting from choice; for neither enmity nor sin exists without the enemy and the sinner. And the precept to desire nothing does not teach us to have no longing for the objects of desire as if they were alien, as those who dogmatize that the creator is other than the first God have supposed, nor as if generation were abominable and evil—for these opinions are godless—but we say that the things of the world are alien not as being out of place, nor as not belonging to the God who is lord of all, but because we do not abide in them for all eternity, they being alien possessions and belonging to those who succeed us, while each of us owns them by use, for whose sake they came into being, except insofar as it is necessary for them to accompany us. Therefore, one must use according to natural desire what is not forbidden, rightly, renouncing every excess and sympathy. And how great is the goodness: Love your enemies, it says, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you, and the like; to which it adds: that you may become sons of your father in heaven, hinting at assimilation to God.

Again he says: Be well-disposed toward your adversary quickly, while you are on the road with him. The adversary is not the body, as some suppose, but the devil (and those who are made like him), who accompanies us through men who emulate his works in this earthly life. It is therefore impossible for those who profess to be followers of Christ but are found in the works of the devil not to suffer the most hostile things; for it is written: Let him never hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the servant of the devil's authority. For I am convinced that neither death, which comes at the hands of the persecutors, nor life, as it is in this world, nor the apostate angels, nor the principalities (for the life which Satan chose is his principality; such are the principalities and powers of darkness according to him), nor the present circumstances in which we are during the time of this life, as hope is for the soldier and profit for the merchant, nor height nor depth, nor any other creation (by its own activity can oppose the faith of the one who chooses; creation is called synonymously activity, such activity being our work) will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. You have a summary of the gnostic martyr. We know that we all have common knowledge in common matters and that there is one God; for he was writing to the faithful. Hence he adds: But the knowledge that is handed down to a few is not in all. And there are those who say that the knowledge concerning things offered to idols is not in all ** to bear, lest our authority become a stumbling block to the weak.

For the one who is weak in your knowledge is lost. And if they claim that one must buy everything sold in the market, bringing in by inquiry the phrase "examining nothing" as equivalent to "examining," they will set forth a ridiculous interpretation. For the apostle says: Buy all other things from the market, examining nothing, with the exception of the things indicated in the catholic epistle of all the apostles, with the approval of the Holy Spirit, which was written in the Acts of the Apostles and conveyed to the faithful through Paul serving as intermediary; for they declared that it is necessary to abstain from idolothytes, blood, strangled things, and fornication, from which those who keep themselves will fare well. Therefore, what is said by the apostle is different: Do we not have the authority to eat and drink? Do we not have the authority to take a sister as a wife, as also the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas did? But we did not use this authority, he says, but we endure everything, so that we may not hinder the gospel of Christ, either by carrying burdens when we ought to be unencumbered for everything, or by becoming an example to those who wish to practice continence, who are not edified to eat what is set before them fearlessly and to associate with a woman casually; especially those entrusted with such a great stewardship ought to stand as an unsullied example to the learners. For being free from all things, I enslaved myself to all, he says, in order to gain everyone, and every one who struggles practices continence in all things; but the Lord's is the earth and its fullness. Therefore, one must abstain from what one must abstain for the sake of conscience.

I call conscience not one's own, for that is gnostic, but that of the other, so that he may not be badly edified, imitating in ignorance what he does not know, becoming a despiser instead of a magnanimous person. For why is my freedom judged by another's conscience? If I partake by grace, why am I blasphemed for that for which I give thanks? Therefore, do all things that you do for the glory of God; do all things that are permitted by the rule of faith. By heart it is believed for righteousness, by mouth it is confessed for salvation. At any rate, Scripture says: "Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." This is the word of faith that we proclaim: that if you confess the word with your mouth, that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. It plainly describes perfect righteousness, fulfilled in both deed and contemplation. Therefore, one must bless those who persecute; bless and do not curse. For this is our boast, the testimony of our conscience, that we have known God in holiness and sincerity, through this small pretext displaying the work of love, that we have conducted ourselves in the world not by fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God. So much concerning knowledge from the apostle; and he has called the common teaching of faith a scent of knowledge in the second letter to the Corinthians. For until the present day, the same veil remains for the many over the reading of the Old Testament, not being lifted according to the turning toward the Lord. For this reason, he also showed a resurrection to those able to see clearly, the one still in the flesh of the life that creeps on its belly.

Hence he called such persons offspring of vipers—those who are pleasure-lovers, who serve the belly and the genitals, and who cut off one another's heads because of worldly desires. "Children, let us not love with word or tongue," says John, teaching that we are to be perfect not in speech but in deed and truth. In this we shall know that we are from the truth. If God is love, then piety is also love; fear is not in love, but perfect love casts out fear. This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. Again, to the gnostic who desires to become, it is written: "But be a type for the faithful in word, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity." For the perfection of faith, I think, is distinguished from common faith. And indeed the divine apostle sets forth the gnostic's rule through such words, writing this: "For I have learned to be self-sufficient in what I am. I know how to be humble, I know how to abound; in everything and in all things I have been initiated, both to be satisfied and to hunger, both to abound and to be in need. I am strong in all things through the one who strengthens me." And this also, speaking to others for their edification, he does not hesitate to say: "Remember the former days, when after being enlightened you endured much struggle with passions. On the one hand, you were made a spectacle through reproaches and afflictions; on the other, you became partners with those who conducted themselves thus. For you sympathized with my bonds, and you accepted the plunder of your possessions with joy, knowing that you have

ourselves a better and enduring existence. Do not, therefore, cast away your frankness, which has a great reward. For you have need of patience, so that having done the will of God you may obtain the promise; for it is still a very little while, the one who is coming will arrive and will not delay. And my righteous one will live from faith. And if he draws back, my soul is not pleased with him. But we are not of withdrawal to destruction, but of faith for the preservation of the soul. Then he presents a swarm of divine examples. For was it not, he says, by faith through patience that those who experienced mockery and scourges, and also bonds and imprisonment, succeeded? They were stoned, they were tried, they died by the sword, they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, lacking necessities, oppressed, maltreated—those whom the world was not worthy of—wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth. And all, having borne witness through faith, did not obtain the promise of God. It remains to understand what is said by omission: "only." He then adds: God, foreseeing something better concerning us—for he was good—so that they might not be perfected without us. Therefore let us also, having such a holy and transparent cloud of witnesses surrounding us, setting aside all weight and easily preventable sin, run through patience the contest set before us, looking to the founder and perfecter of faith, Jesus. That he speaks of one salvation in Christ for the righteous and for us, he has clearly said before, and no less does he add when speaking about Moses:

He considered the reproach of Christ a greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt; for he looked to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king's wrath; for he endured as though seeing the invisible. Divine wisdom says concerning the martyrs: They seemed in the eyes of the foolish to have died, and their departure was accounted a calamity, and their journey from us a ruin; but they are in peace. For even if they are punished in the sight of men, their hope is full of immortality. Then it adds, teaching that martyrdom is a glorious purification: And having been disciplined a little, they will be greatly benefited, because God tested them—that is, he allowed them to be tried for the testing and shame of the tempter, and found them worthy of himself, that is, to be called sons; as gold in a furnace he assayed them, and as a whole burnt offering of sacrifice he accepted them. And at the time of their oversight they will shine forth, and like sparks in stubble they will run through. They will judge nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will reign over them for eternity. Indeed, in the Epistle to the Corinthians, the apostle Clement himself, sketching for us a type of the gnostic, says: For who that has sojourned among you has not approved your all-virtuous and steadfast faith? Who has not admired your temperate and seemly piety in Christ? Who has not proclaimed the magnificence of your hospitable character? Who has not blessed your perfect and secure knowledge? For you did everything without partiality, and you walked in the laws of God, and so forth. Then more clearly:

Let us then fix our gaze upon those who have ministered perfectly to his magnificent glory. Let us take Enoch, who, found righteous in obedience, was translated; and Noah, who, believing, was saved; and Abraham, who, through faith and hospitality, was called a friend of God, and father of Isaac. Through hospitality and piety, Lot was saved from Sodom; through faith and hospitality, Rahab the harlot was saved; through endurance and faith, they walked about in goatskins and sheepskins and weavings of camel hair, proclaiming the kingdom of Christ—we mean Elijah and Elisha, Ezekiel and John, the prophets. For Abraham, called a friend of God through free faith, was not puffed up by the glory, but, being moderate in his passions, said: "I am but earth and ashes." And concerning Job, it is written thus: "Job was righteous and blameless, truthful and god-fearing, abstaining from every evil." This is the one who conquered the tempter through endurance, and both bore witness and was witnessed to by God, who clings to humility and says: "No one is clean from filth, not even if his life is but a single day." Moses, the faithful servant in his whole house, said to the one who spoke from the bush: "Who am I, that you send me? I am weak-voiced and slow-tongued to minister the voice of the Lord through a human tongue." And again: "I am but steam from a pot." For God sets himself against the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And indeed David also, concerning whom the Lord bears witness, saying: "I have found a man after my heart, David the son of Jesse; with holy oil I anointed him." But even he says to God:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy, and according to the abundance of your compassions blot out my lawlessness. Wash me yet more from my lawlessness, and cleanse me from my sin; for I know my lawlessness, and my sin is before me always. Then, hinting at the sin that does not fall under law, he adds with gnostic moderation: I have sinned against you alone and done evil before you. For somewhere the scripture says: The spirit of the Lord is a lamp searching the chambers of the belly. And the more one acts righteously and becomes more gnostic, the more closely does the light-giving spirit attend him. Thus the Lord draws near to the righteous, and nothing of the thoughts and reasonings we entertain escapes him—I mean the Lord Jesus, who by the all-ruling will is overseer of our heart, whose blood was sanctified for us. Let us therefore feel shame before our predecessors and feel awe, let us honor the elders, let us instruct the young in the discipline of God. For blessed is he who both teaches and does the things of the Lord worthily; and this belongs to a magnanimous and contemplative mind of truth. Let us correct our wives toward the good: let them display the lovable character of chastity, let them show forth the unalloyed intention of their gentleness, let them make manifest the fairness of their tongue through silence, let them offer their love not according to partiality but equally to all who fear God. Let our children partake of the education that is in Christ.

Let them learn what humility avails before God, what pure love can do before God, how the fear of the Lord is good and great, saving all who dwell in it piously with a pure heart. For he is an examiner of thoughts and intentions; his breath is in us, and when he wishes, he will take it away. All these things are confirmed by faith in Christ: "Come, children," the Lord says, "hear me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is there who desires life, who loves to see good days?" Then he adds the gnostic mystery of the hebdomad and the ogdoad: "Restrain your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking guile; turn from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it." For through these things he hints at knowledge, together with abstinence from evils and the performance of good deeds, teaching that perfection is attained both in deed and word. The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their supplication; but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to blot out their memory from the earth. The righteous man cried out, and the Lord heard him and delivered him from all afflictions. For the scourges of sinners are many, but mercy will surround those who hope in the Lord. He says that the one who hopes genuinely is encompassed by a multitude of mercy; for it is written in the Epistle to the Corinthians: Through Jesus Christ our senseless and darkened mind blossoms again into the light. Through him the master of the immortal

to taste of knowledge. And more explicitly, indicating the peculiar character of knowledge, he added: Since these things are evident to us, and we have delved into the depths of divine knowledge, we ought to do in order all that the master commanded to be performed at appointed times. Therefore let the wise man manifest his wisdom not only in words but in good deeds; let the humble man not bear witness to himself, but allow himself to be witnessed by another; let the chaste in flesh not boast, knowing that it is another who supplies him with continence. See, brothers, to the extent that we have been deemed worthy of greater knowledge, to that extent we are subject to greater danger. Therefore our dignified and pure conduct of philanthropy, according to Clement, seeks the common benefit, whether it bears witness or educates, in deed and in word, and this in two ways, unwritten and written. This is love: to love God and one's neighbor; this leads to an indescribable height; love covers a multitude of sins; love endures all things, is patient in all things; love joins us to God; it accomplishes everything in harmony; in love all the elect of God were perfected; without love nothing is pleasing to God. Of its perfection there is no explanation, he says. Who is capable of being found in it, except those whom God himself deems worthy? For instance, the apostle Paul says: If I give my body but do not have love, I am a resounding brass and a clashing cymbal; unless I bear witness from a chosen disposition, through gnostic love, he says, but from fear.

If, then, I also, clapping my lips for the expected reward, confess the Lord as a witness to the Lord, I am a common man, echoing the Lord, not knowing him. For there is the people who love with the lips, and there is another who gives up the body to be burned. Even if I give away all my possessions, he says, not according to the principle of loving communion, but according to that of requital either from the benefited man or from the promised Lord; and even if I have all the faith so as to move mountains and cast off the passions that overshadow, but am not confirmed in faith to the Lord through love, I am nothing, being reckoned as differing not at all from the multitude compared with him who bears witness gnosticly. All the generations from Adam down to this day have passed away; but those perfected in love according to the grace of God have the place of the pious; they will be made manifest in the oversight of the kingdom of Christ. Love does not permit sinning; but if one should involuntarily fall into some such circumstance through the interpositions of the adversary, imitating David he will sing: I will confess to the Lord, and it will please him more than a young calf bearing horns and hooves. Let the poor see and rejoice. For he says: Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise and pay your vows to the Lord; and call upon me in the day of your distress, and I will deliver you and you will glorify me. For a sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit. Love, then, is also called God, being good.

where love for one's neighbor does no evil, neither harming nor ever retaliating, but doing good to all universally according to the image of God. Love, then, is the fulfillment of the law, just as Christ—that is, the presence of the Lord who loves us—and our loving teaching and way of life according to Christ. For by love, not committing adultery and not coveting one's neighbor's spouse is perfected, having previously been restrained by fear. The same action, therefore, has a difference whether it is done from fear or accomplished through love, and whether it is enacted through faith or even in a gnostic manner. Naturally, then, the rewards for these are different: for the gnostic, what no eye has seen nor ear heard nor entered into the heart of man is prepared; for the one who has simply believed, a hundredfold of what he has left behind is promised, which promise has happened to fall within human understanding. Having come to this point, I recalled someone claiming to be a gnostic. For, in expounding the saying "But I say, he who looks at a woman with desire has already committed adultery," he did not deem mere desire to be judged, but whether the act according to that desire, proceeding further than desire, is completed within it; for if in a dream, by imagination, he already misuses the body as well. Those who have compiled the histories relate the following judgment of Bocchoris the Just. A young man in love with a courtesan persuades the girl, for a fixed fee, to come to him on the following day.

The desire, having anticipated in a dream, the youth, having unexpectedly satisfied his longing, heard his beloved according to the prescribed order, but he bars her from entry; she, having learned what had happened, demanded the payment, claiming that she had somehow fulfilled the desire for her lover. So they went before the judge. He ordered the youth to hold out the purse of the fee in the sun, and commanded the courtesan to take hold of the shadow, wittily ordering her to give back a phantom of payment for a phantom of union. Now, one dreams with the soul's consent to the fantasy, but in waking life one dreams who looks toward desire, not only as that so-called Gnostic said, if at the sight of a woman he conceives intercourse in thought (for this is already an act of desire as desire), but if one looks at the beauty of a body, the Word says, and the flesh itself seems beautiful to him according to desire, having seen carnally and sinfully, he is judged by that through which he has admired; for conversely, he who looks with chaste love at beauty does not consider the flesh but the soul beautiful, having admired the body, I think, as a statue, through whose beauty he transmits himself to the craftsman and the truly beautiful, displaying to the angels stationed at the ascent a holy symbol, the luminous character of righteousness, I mean the anointing of good pleasure, the quality of disposition lying upon the soul polished by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This glory that shone upon the face of Moses the people were not able to look upon, and so they took a veil of the glory for those who saw carnally.

For those who bring in some worldly thing are held back by those who demand the end, burdened with their own passions, but the one who is naked of things subject to the end, yet full of knowledge and of justice from works, they escort with prayers, having blessed the man together with his work; and his leaf will not fall off from the living tree, which is nourished along the channels of the waters; and the righteous man is likened to fruit-bearing trees, not only to those in the sacrifice of the aerial **. And there were also in the presentations of sacrifices according to the law the inspectors of the victims. Therefore, those skilled in these matters distinguish desire from appetite, and they assign the one to pleasures and licentiousness, being irrational, and appetite to the necessary things according to nature, being a rational motion. It is possible for this perfection to be shared equally by a man and equally by a woman. For instance, not only Moses, having heard from God: "I have spoken to you once and twice saying: I have seen this people, and behold they are stiff-necked; let me destroy them, and I will wipe out their name from under heaven and make you into a great and wonderful nation, much more than this," answers, entreating not with his own interest in view, but the common salvation: "By no means, Lord, forgive the sin of this people, or erase me also from the book of the living." What perfection is that of one who was willing to die together with the people or to be saved alone.

But also Judith, perfected among women, when the city was under siege, begged the elders and went out into the camp of the foreigners, despising all danger, giving herself over to the enemies for the sake of her fatherland in faith in God; and she immediately received the reward of her faith, a woman who excelled against the enemy of faith, becoming mistress of the head of Holofernes. Again, the perfect Esther, by faith, rescuing Israel from tyrannical power and the cruelty of the satrap, alone, a woman oppressed by fasts, arrayed herself against countless armed right hands, dissolving a tyrannical decree through faith; and indeed she tamed him, and restrained Haman, and preserved Israel impassible through perfect supplication to God. For I pass over Susanna and the sister of Moses, how the one co-commanded with the prophet, taking the lead among all the women esteemed among the Hebrews for wisdom, while the other, by an excess of modesty and going even to death, condemned by licentious lovers, remained an unwavering witness of chastity. Indeed, Dio the philosopher records that a certain woman, Lysidice, bathed in her tunic because of an excess of modesty, and that Philotera, whenever she was about to enter the bath, quietly drew up her tunic only as far as the water covered the naked parts, then, as she came up little by little, put it back on. For did not Leaena the Attic woman also endure tortures courageously? She, knowing of the plot against Hipparchus with Harmodius and Aristogeiton, did not reveal anything at all, though she was thoroughly tortured.

They say also that the Argolic women, with Telesilla the poetess leading them, turned back the Spartan men, who were valiant in war, merely by appearing, and procured for those women fearlessness of death. The author of the Danais speaks similarly concerning the daughters of Danaüs, thus: "Then the daughters of Danaüs armed themselves swiftly before the wide-flowing river of lord Nile," and so forth. The rest of the poets sing of Atalanta's swiftness in the hunt, and Anticleia's devotion, and Alcestis's love for her husband, and the courage of Macaria and the Hyacinthides. What then? Did not Theano the Pythagorean advance so far in philosophy that, when someone looked at her curiously and said, "The forearm is beautiful, but not public," she replied? Of the same dignity is also that saying: for when asked how many days after her husband a woman goes down to the Thesmophorion, she said, "From her own, immediately; from another's, never at all." Indeed, Themisto the daughter of Zoilus, the Lampsacene, wife of Leonteus the Lampsacene, philosophized in the Epicurean manner, just as Myia the daughter of Theano did in the Pythagorean, and Arignote who wrote the works concerning Dionysus; for the daughters of Diodorus, surnamed Cronus, all became dialecticians, as Philo the dialectician says in his Menexenus, whose names he sets forth as follows: Menexene, Argeia, Theognis, Artemisia, Pantacleia. I also recall a certain Cynic woman, Hipparchia by name, the Maronite, wife of Crates, on whose account the Cynogamia were celebrated in the Stoa Poikile. Arete the Cyrenaic, daughter of Aristippus, educated Aristippus, surnamed Metrodidactus.

With Plato, Lastheneia of Arcadia and Axiothea of Phlius studied philosophy. As for Aspasia of Miletus, about whom the comic poets write much, Socrates enjoyed her for philosophy, and Pericles for rhetoric. I pass over the others due to the length of the discourse, neither listing the poetesses—Corinna, Telesilla, Myia, and Sappho—nor the painters, such as Eirene, daughter of Cratinus, and Anaxandra, daughter of Neacles, whom Didymus mentions in his Symposiaca. The daughter of Cleobulus, the wise man and monarch of the Lindians, was not ashamed to wash the feet of strangers from her father's household. For also the blessed Sarah, wife of Abraham, herself prepared the hearth-cakes for the angels, and royal maidens among the Hebrews tended the sheep, whence also Nausicaa in Homer went to the washing-places. The temperate woman would choose, first, to persuade her husband to become a partner with her in the things that lead to happiness; but if that is impossible, let her hasten alone toward virtue, obeying her husband in all things as one who is not unwilling.

that man ever did anything except what is considered to contribute to virtue and salvation. But also, if someone were to hinder a woman or even a maidservant who is genuinely impelled by such a disposition, such a person would appear at that time to be doing nothing other than deliberately leading away from justice and temperance, and at the same time intending to render his own household unjust and licentious. It is therefore not possible for a man or a woman to become distinguished in any respect without making use of learning, practice, and training. And we say that virtue depends on nothing else more than on ourselves. Now other things one can hinder by opposing them, but what depends on us cannot be hindered at all, not even if one resists with all one's might; for it is a gift from God and is subject to nothing else. Hence licentiousness would be considered an evil of none other than the one who is licentious, and temperance a good of the one who is capable of being temperate. Euripides portrays a woman as fond of her husband with dignity, advising: when she says something, she should seem to speak well, even if she does not speak, and to labor over what she is about to say to please her companion. And again elsewhere, similar things: it is sweet, if he does something wrong, for the wife to share her husband's gloom, and in common to have a share of both grief and pleasure. And indicating gentleness and affection in this way, even in misfortunes, he adds: I will bear with you even when you are sick, sharing your sickness, and I will share your troubles, and nothing is bitter to me; for one ought to fare well or ill with one's friends; for what else is the friend but this?

Marriage, then, is sanctified when completed according to reason, if the union is subject to God and governed with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, the hearts being purified from a wicked conscience and the body washed with clean water, and they hold the confession of hope; for the one who has promised is faithful. The happy marriage must be judged neither by wealth nor by beauty, but by virtue. "Beauty," says the tragedy, "has never benefited a wife for her husband, but virtue has benefited many; for every good woman who is united with her husband knows how to be chaste." Then, as if giving exhortations, it says: "First of all, this is the case: even if the husband is ugly, he must seem handsome to the woman who possesses understanding. For it is not the eye that judges, but the mind that sees," and so on. For the Scripture very appropriately said that the woman is given to the man as a helper from God. It is clear, then, I think, that she will choose to treat each of the distressing events that befall her from her husband, according to the management of the household, with reason and persuasion; but if he does not obey, then she will try, as far as is possible for human nature, to lead a blameless life, whether it be necessary to die with reason or to live, considering God to be the ally and partner in such an action, the one who is truly the protector and savior both for the present and for the future, having made him the general and guide of every action, regarding temperance and justice as the work, and making what is pleasing to God the goal.

Gracefully, then, in the Epistle to Titus, the Apostle says that the elderly women must be of a dignified and sacred bearing, not slanderous, not enslaved to much wine, so that they may teach the young women to be loving toward their husbands, loving toward their children, self-controlled, chaste, domestic, good, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. Rather, he says, pursue peace with all and sanctification, without which no one will see the Lord, watching lest anyone be a fornicator or profane like Esau, who for a single meal gave up his birthright, and lest a root of bitterness growing upward cause trouble and through it the many be defiled. Then, as if placing a crowning touch on the inquiry concerning marriage, he adds: Marriage is honorable in all respects and the bed is undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Since one goal and one end is shown for both man and woman, what the perfect is, Peter says in his Epistle: Having grieved a little now, if need be, in various trials, so that the test of your faith, much more precious than perishing gold and tested through fire, may be found to praise and glory in the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom you love without knowing, in whom you now rejoice without seeing, but believing, you exult with ineffable and glorified joy, receiving the end of faith, the salvation of souls. Therefore Paul also boasts that through Christ he has been in labors more abundantly, in blows exceedingly, in deaths many times. Here I find the perfect understood in many ways according to the one who excels in virtue in each case.

One is perfected, then, both as pious and as patient and as self-controlled and as a worker and as a martyr and as a gnostic; but I do not know if any human being, while still being human, is perfect in all respects together, except only the one who put on humanity for our sake. Yet even according to the bare law, one might be perfect who professes abstinence from evils; but this is a path both to the gospel and to beneficence. However, the perfection of a legalist is the gnostic reception of the gospel, so that the one perfect according to the law may come to be; for thus Moses according to the law foretold that we must listen, so that we might receive, according to the apostle, Christ as the fulfillment of the law. In the gospel, the gnostic already advances, not using the law merely as a step, but understanding it and comprehending it as the Lord who gave the covenants transmitted it to the apostles. And if he should also live rightly (just as it is impossible for knowledge to follow upon ill conduct) and should become a martyr, having confessed most rightly on these grounds through love, he receives greater worth as among humans. Yet not even thus will he be called perfect while in the flesh, since this appellation has been anticipated by the conclusion of life, the gnostic martyr having already been able to display the perfect work and to present it, the blood having been offered up through gnostic love, sending the spirit on its way. Blessed from then on he would be, and proclaimed perfect in righteousness, so that the excess of power belongs to God and not to us, as the apostle says.

Let us preserve only the proairetic and love, being oppressed in everything, but not straitened, being at a loss, but not in despair, being persecuted, but not abandoned, being cast down, but not perishing. For those hastening to perfection must, according to the same apostle, give no offense in anything, but in everything present themselves not to men, but to God. Let them, as a consequence, also be persuaded by men; for it is reasonable to yield to them on account of the slanders that assail them. The self-consistency consists in great endurance, in afflictions, in necessities, in straits, in blows, in imprisonments, in disturbances, in labors, in vigils, in fasts, in chastity, in knowledge, in long-suffering, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in unfeigned love, in the word of truth, in the power of God, that we may be temples of God purified from every defilement of flesh and spirit. "And I," he says, "will receive you and will be to you a father, and you will be to me sons and daughters," says the Almighty Lord. "Let us therefore accomplish," he says, "holiness in the fear of God." For if fear also produces grief, "I rejoice," he says, "not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved unto repentance; for you were grieved according to God, so that you might suffer no loss from us." For grief according to God works repentance unto salvation that is without regret; but the grief of the world works death. For behold, this very thing, that you were grieved according to God, how much diligence it has worked in you, but also apology, but also indignation, but also fear, but also longing, but also zeal, but also vengeance.

In everything you have established yourselves to be pure in the matter. These are preliminary exercises of gnostic discipline. Since the all-powerful God himself has given some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, and others as shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints in the work of service, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all arrive at the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the son of God, at a perfect man, at the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, we must hasten to become manly in a gnostic way and to be perfected as much as possible while still remaining in the flesh, having practiced from the perfect concord here to run together with the will of God for the restoration of the truly perfect nobility and kinship into the fullness of Christ, which is perfectly completed from perfecting. We now see where and how and when the divine apostle speaks of the perfect one and shows differences among the perfect. And again, to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is beneficial. For to one is given through the Spirit a word of wisdom, to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings in the same Spirit, to another workings of powers, to another prophecy, to another discernment of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another interpretation of tongues; and all these things the one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each individually as it wills.

Since this is so, some are perfect in prophecy, others in righteousness, and others in confession as martyrs, and still others in preaching—not without a share in the common virtues, but excelling in the tasks to which they were assigned. For who in his right mind would say that a prophet is not righteous? What then? Did not even the righteous, like Abraham, prophesy? "To one man God gave works of war, to another the dance, to another the lyre and song," says Homer. But each has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that; the apostles, however, are fulfilled in all. You will find, if you wish, from their acts and writings: knowledge, life, preaching, righteousness, purity, prophecy. It must be noted, however, that even if Paul is recent in time, having flourished immediately after the Lord's ascension, still his scripture depends on the old covenant, breathing and speaking from that source; for faith in Christ and knowledge of the gospel are an exposition and fulfillment of the law. And for this reason it was said to the Hebrews: "If you do not believe, you will not understand"—that is, if you do not believe in the one prophesied through the law and ordained by the law, you will not understand the old covenant, which he himself expounded by his own presence. The one who understands and is discerning is the gnostic. His work is not abstention from evils (for that is a stepping-stone to the greatest progress), nor yet doing some good either through fear (for it is written: "Where shall I flee and where shall I hide from your face? If I go up to heaven, you are there").

If I go to the ends of the sea, there is your right hand; if I descend into the abysses, there is your spirit), but not even through hope of promised reward (for it is said: Behold the Lord and his reward from his face, to give to each according to his works, which eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered into the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love him), but only beneficence through love, chosen for the sake of the good itself, is choiceworthy for the Gnostic. For instance, it is said from the face of God to the Lord: Ask of me and I will give you nations as your inheritance, teaching to ask for the most kingly request, the salvation of men without reward, so that we might inherit and acquire the Lord. For conversely, to desire knowledge concerning God for the sake of some need, so that this may happen to me and that may not happen, is not proper to the Gnostic; the cause of contemplation suffices for him, knowledge itself. For I would dare to say, he who pursues knowledge for the sake of divine science itself will not choose knowledge because he wishes to be saved; for thinking, from training, leads to always thinking.

It extends, while perpetual intellection, having become an undivided fusion with the essence of the knower and an eternal contemplation, remains a living substance. If, then, one were to propose hypothetically to the Gnostic which he would choose, knowledge of God or eternal salvation, and these were separated (though they are more than anything identical), he would without any hesitation choose knowledge of God, judging that the property which has ascended through love from faith to knowledge is choiceworthy for its own sake. This, then, is the primary beneficence of the perfect one, when it occurs not for any needful thing pertaining to himself, but because he has judged that doing good is noble, and the energy, borne earnestly in every action, is made good, not in some cases but not in others, but having settled into a state of well-doing, neither for glory nor, as the philosophers say, for good repute, nor for reward either from men or from God; * * he would complete his life according to the image and likeness of the Lord. And if, while he is doing good, something contrary should befall him, being impassible he will offer requital without malice, becoming just and good toward both the just and the unjust. To such persons the Lord says: Become as your Father is perfect. For this one the flesh has died. He alone lives, having consecrated the tomb into a holy temple for the Lord, having turned the old sinful soul toward God. This one is no longer continent, but has come into a state of impassibility, awaiting the putting on of the divine form. If you do alms, he says, let no one know.

And if you fast, anoint yourself, so that God alone may know, and not a single human being, nor even the compassionate one himself ought to know that he is compassionate; for thus he will sometimes be merciful, and at other times not. But when he makes the beneficent act a habit, he will imitate the nature of the good; and the disposition will be both nature and training. One must not be lifted up and then transferred, but must arrive where one ought by walking, passing through the entire narrow road; for this is to be drawn by the Father, to become worthy to receive the power of grace from God and to run upward without hindrance. Even if some hate the elect one, he knows their ignorance, pitying the opinion of their lack of learning. Naturally, then, this knowledge loves even the ignorant and teaches and educates them to honor the entire creation of the almighty God. But if he has learned to love God, he will never cast off virtue, neither in waking nor in dreaming, nor in any fantasy; since the habit never departs from itself, falling away from being a habit, whether knowledge is called a habit or a disposition. For because different notions never enter in, the ruling part remains unaltered, not receiving any alteration of fantasies, dreaming the image-making of daily movements. For this reason the Lord commands us to be awake, so that our soul may never be affected even in a dream, but he orders us to keep the conduct of the night, as if it were enacted in the day, pure and unblemished. For this is the assimilation to God according to power: to keep the mind in the same state.

This is the disposition of the mind as mind, while the variegated condition arises from attachment to material things. For this reason, I think, they have called the night "eupohronē," because at that time the soul, having ceased from the senses, turns inward to itself and partakes more of prudence. For this reason, then, the initiations take place especially at night, signifying the contraction of the soul from the body in the night. Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us be wakeful and sober. For those who sleep sleep at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night; but we, being in the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of saving hope. And whatever they say about sleep, the same must be understood about death. For each indicates the departure of the soul, one more, the other less, as one may also take from Heraclitus: "A man in the night kindles a light; he is kindled to himself when dead, having his eyes extinguished, while living; he is kindled to the dead when sleeping, having his eyes extinguished; the waking one is kindled to the sleeping one." For blessed are those who know the time, according to the apostle, that it is already time for you to be roused from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. The night has advanced, and the day has drawn near. Let us therefore put away the works of darkness, and let us put on the arms of light. And he allegorizes the son as day and light, and the commandments as arms of light metaphorically. For this reason, they say that those who have bathed must go to the sacred rites and prayers, pure and bright.

And this is done for the sake of the symbol, to be adorned and purified externally; but purity is to think holy thoughts. Indeed, the image of baptism would be that handed down from Moses to the poets in some such way: "She, having bathed, with clean garments on her skin," Penelope comes to prayer; and Telemachus, having washed his hands in the gray sea, prays to Athena. This is a custom of the Jews, as is also frequent bathing after intercourse. Well said, too, is that: "Know that you are pure not by bathing, but by the mind." For purity, I think, is the perfection of the mind, of deeds, of thoughts, and also of words, and finally, freedom from sin even in dreams. Sufficient purification for a man, I think, is accurate and steadfast repentance, if, having condemned ourselves for past actions, we press forward, having afterwards come to our senses and emerged from the pleasures of the senses and from former transgressions. If, then, we must derive the etymology of knowledge from "standing," we must take its application from the fact that it stands our soul in things, which was previously carried now here, now there; and similarly, faith must be etymologized as the standing of our soul concerning being. But we desire to learn about the one who is always and in all things just, who remains just neither fearing punishment from the law, nor dreading the misanthropy of those who associate with and pursue transgressors, nor shrinking from the danger arising from the wronged themselves; for he who refrains from doing any unjust deed because of these things is not voluntarily good, but good through fear.

And Epicurus says that the wise man according to him does not wish to commit injustice for the sake of some gain; for he cannot be confident that he will escape detection. So if he is persuaded that he will escape notice, he will commit injustice according to him. Such are the obscure doctrines. But if someone refrains from injustice because of the hope of reward from God for righteous deeds, not even he will be voluntarily good; for just as fear makes the former just, so reward makes this one just, or rather shows him to seem just. And the hope after death is known not only to those who pursue barbarian wisdom, as good for the good and the opposite for the base, but also to the Pythagoreans; for they too prescribed hope as the end for those who philosophize, since even Socrates in the Phaedo says that beautiful souls depart from here with good hope, and again, reproaching the wicked, he contrasts them, saying they live with evil hope. Heraclitus also appears to agree with this in what he says about human beings: "For human beings, after death, things await which they neither hope for nor expect." Divinely, then, Paul writes plainly to the Romans: "Affliction produces endurance, endurance produces testing, testing produces hope, and hope does not put to shame." For it is through hope of the future that endurance exists; and hope is homonymously both the expectation and the fulfillment and restoration of hope, which does not put to shame, being no longer reproached. But he who obeys the bare call, insofar as he is called, does not hasten to knowledge either through fear or through pleasures.

For he does not consider whether any profitable gain or enjoyment from outside follows him, but is drawn by love for the truly existing one and is led to what is fitting, and so worships God. Hence, even if, by hypothesis, he were to receive authority from God to do the forbidden things while remaining unpunished, and even if he were to receive a promise of the blessed goods as a reward for such actions, and even if he were persuaded that God would be unaware of what he does—which is impossible—he would never wish to do anything contrary to right reason, having once chosen the truly beautiful and choiceworthy as lovable in itself and for this reason. For we have not understood the good to consist in the gratification of the belly. That man has heard that neither food will present us, nor indeed marriage, nor yet abstinence from marriage in ignorance, but the gnostic work, the action according to virtue, since even the dog, the irrational animal, may be called continent when it fears the raised staff and therefore abstains from the food. Know well that in such cases, when the promised reward is removed, the threatened fear is circumscribed, and the impending danger is separated, the intention is exposed. For they are not attached to the nature of the thing itself, as those who truly gnosticly apprehend that all things created for our use are good—such as marriage, for instance, and procreation, when taken with temperance—but that it is better to become passionless and virtuous through assimilation to the divine. And being drawn to things externally useful or harmful, they abstain from some and not from others.

But also, those from whom they abstain, they appear to loathe these things, slandering creation and the creator, and while seeming to conduct themselves faithfully, they have an unholy judgment. The precept "you shall not desire" requires neither compulsion from fear, which forces abstinence from pleasures, nor a reward that, through promise, persuades one to check one's impulses; nor do those who obey God because of the promise choose obedience for the sake of the commandment, but for the sake of the promise, having been chosen by the bait of pleasure. Nor would aversion from sensible things consequently produce affinity for intelligible things; on the contrary, affinity for intelligible things is, for the gnostic, a natural conversion from sensible things, by choice of the beautiful, having chosen the good gnostically, marveling at creation and sanctifying the creator, and sanctifying assimilation to the divine. "I myself will release myself from desire," he will say, "because of my affinity for you, Lord." For the created economy is beautiful, and everything is well administered; nothing happens without a cause; I must be in your realm, Pantocrator; even if I am here, I am with you; I wish to be fearless, so that I may be able to draw near to you, and to be content with little, practicing your just choice of the beautiful from among like things. Most mystically and most holily, the apostle, teaching us the truly grateful choice, has indicated that we should make it not by rejection of the others as base, but as a choice of the better among beautiful things, saying: "So he who marries off his virgin daughter does well, and he who does not marry her off does better," with a view to seemliness and undistracted attendance upon the Lord.

We know that things difficult to obtain are not necessary, while necessary things have been made easy to obtain by God in His love of goodness. Hence Democritus speaks well, saying that nature and teaching are similar, and he has briefly added the reason: for teaching reshapes a person, and in reshaping, it makes nature, and it makes no difference whether one is formed by nature to be such or is transformed by time and learning. The Lord has provided both: the one through creation, the other through renewal and renovation from the covenant. What is beneficial to the more dominant is more choiceworthy, and the most dominant of all is the mind. Therefore, for whom the truly beautiful things appear most pleasant, from himself he procures the fruit he desires, the stability of the soul. "He who hears me," he says, "will rest in peace, trusting and being free from fear of every evil." Know that you trust with your whole heart and mind in God. In this way it is possible for the Gnostic to become already a god: I said, "You are gods and sons of the Most High." And Empedocles also says that the souls of the wise become gods, writing somewhat as follows: "And at last, seers and hymn-singers and physicians and

are foremost among men on earth; from them spring forth gods most excellent in honor. Now, man in general is formed according to the idea of his innate spirit; for he is not created shapeless or formless in the workshop of nature, where the generation of man is mystically accomplished, art and substance being common. But the individual man is characterized according to the impression made on his soul by whatever he may choose. Hence we say that Adam was perfect as regards his formation; for nothing that characterizes the idea and form of man was lacking in him. But what he received in the process of becoming was perfection, and he was justified through obedience; this was the humanization that lay within his power. But by reason of the choice of the one who chose, and still more because he chose what was forbidden, God is blameless. For generation is twofold: one of those who are born, and another of those who become. And the courage of man, they say, being passionate, makes the one who partakes of it fearless and invincible in substance, and anger is the bodyguard of the mind in endurance and steadfastness and the like; while temperance and saving prudence are assigned to desire. But God is without passion, without anger, and without desire; and He is not fearless in the sense that He does not avoid terrors, nor temperate in the sense that He rules over desires; for the nature of God would neither fall into any terror, nor does God flee from cowardice, just as He will not desire in order to rule over desire.

Mystically, then, the Pythagorean saying was applied to us, that man must become one, since the high priest himself is one, God being one according to the immutable disposition of always running toward good things. At once the Saviour, through desire, also abolished anger, which is a desire for vengeance; for in general the passible element * * in every kind of desire, and man, becoming divine in apatheia, becomes immaculately unitary. Just as those at sea, straining from an anchor, pull the anchor but do not draw it toward themselves, but draw themselves toward the anchor, so those living the gnostic life, in drawing God, unwittingly bring themselves toward God; for one who serves God serves himself. In the contemplative life, then, one cares for oneself by worshipping God and, through one's own pure purification, beholds God holily as holy; for temperance, when understood as a standing before oneself, constantly observing and contemplating itself, becomes like God as far as possible. At once, what is in our power is that of which we are equally masters both of it and of its opposite, such as philosophizing or not, and believing or disbelieving. Therefore, because we are equally masters of each of the opposites, what is in our power is found to be possible. And indeed the commandments are such as to be either performed or not performed by us, to which praise and blame reasonably attach, and those who are punished for the sins committed by them are punished for those sins alone; for what has happened has passed away, and what has happened could never become unhappened.

They are, then, released by the Lord from sins committed before faith, not so that they never happened, but as if they had not happened. However, Basilides says that not all sins are released, but only the involuntary ones and those committed in ignorance, as if such a great gift were provided by a man, not by God. To this the Scripture says: "Did you suppose, lawless one, that I would be like you?" But if we are punished for voluntary sins, it is not so that they, having happened, may not have happened, but we are punished because they did happen. Punishment does not benefit the one who sinned by making it as if he had not done it, but by ensuring that he no longer sins and that no one else falls into similar offenses. Here, then, the good God educates for these three reasons: first, so that the one being educated may become better than himself; next, so that those who can be saved through examples may be warned in advance by admonition; and third, so that the one wronged may not be easily despised and liable to be wronged. There are also two modes of correction: one

...the teacher, and the other punitive, which we have also called disciplinary. It must be known, however, that those who fall into sins after the bath are the ones who are disciplined; for the sins committed beforehand are remitted, while those that arise afterward are purged. Concerning the unbelievers, it has been said that they are considered as chaff, which the wind blows from the face of the earth, and as a drop from a jar. Blessed is he who has obtained learning of history, neither inclining toward harm of citizens nor toward unjust deeds, but beholding the ageless cosmos of an immortal nature, where it is constituted and † where and how. For such persons, the practice of shameful works never settles. Reasonably, then, Plato says that the contemplator of the forms will live as a god among men; but mind is the place of forms, and mind is God. Therefore, he has said that the contemplator of the invisible God lives as a god among men, and in the Sophist, Socrates calls the Eleatic stranger, being a dialectician, a god, such as gods resembling strangers from other lands visiting cities **. For when the soul, having risen above generation, is by itself and communes with the forms, as is the case with the chief figure in the Theaetetus, it becomes like an angel and will be with Christ, being contemplative, always observing the will of God, truly wise, while others dart about like shadows; for the dead bury their own dead. Hence Jeremiah says: I will fill her with earthborn dead, whom my wrath has struck. Now God, being indemonstrable, is not scientific; but the Son is wisdom and science and truth and all else akin to these, and indeed possesses demonstration and exposition.

All the powers of the Spirit, collectively becoming one thing, contribute to the same end, the Son, but he is independent of the conception of each of his powers. And indeed the Son does not become simply one as one, nor many as parts, but as all one. Hence also all things; for the same circle of all the powers is wound together and united into one. For this reason the Word is called alpha and omega, whose end alone becomes a beginning and terminates again upon the beginning from above, nowhere receiving a division. Therefore also believing in him and through him is to become monadic, being united in him without distraction, while disbelieving is to doubt and to be separated and divided. For this reason the Lord says: every alien son, uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh, that is, impure in body and in spirit, shall not enter into the holy places from among the aliens in the midst of the house of Israel, but only the Levites. By aliens he means those who have not wished to believe, but who choose to disbelieve. Therefore only those who live purely are truly priests of God. For this reason, when all the tribes were circumcised, those anointing the high priests and kings and prophets were considered holier. Hence he commands them not to touch the dead nor to enter among the deceased, not because the body is polluted, but because sin and disobedience are both fleshly and embodied and dead, and therefore abominable.

Only to a father and mother, and to a son and daughter who have died, is it permitted for the priest to enter, because these alone are kindred by flesh and seed, from whom the priest himself has received the proximate cause of his entrance into life. And these also are purified for seven days, through which generation is perfected; for on the seventh day rest is celebrated, and on the eighth he offers a sacrifice of propitiation, as it is written in Ezekiel, by which propitiation it is possible to receive the promise. A perfect purification, I think, is faith through law and prophets into the Gospel; and propitiation is purity through all obedience, together with the laying aside of worldly things, for the grateful return of the tabernacle from the enjoyment of the soul. Whether, then, it is time which, through the seven periods of the numbers, restores to the highest rest, or whether it is seven heavens, which some count in succession, or whether the sphere of the fixed stars, which is near the intelligible world, is called the ogdoad, yet the gnostic must, it says, emerge from generation and sin. At any rate, on the seven days, victims are sacrificed for sins, for still a fear of change touches even the seventh revolution. And Job the righteous himself says, "Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked I shall go there," not naked of possessions (for that is a small and common thing), but as a righteous man he goes naked of vice and sin and of the shapeless phantom that follows those who have lived unjustly.

This was what was meant by the saying, "Unless you turn and become like children, pure in flesh and holy in soul through abstinence from evil works," the Lord showing that He wishes us to be such as He has also begotten from the womb of water; for generation succeeding generation wishes to immortalize through progress, but the lamp of the impious will be extinguished. Indeed, the purity of both body and soul, which the Gnostic pursues, the all-wise Moses indicated with fitting repetition, describing the incorruptibility of both body and soul in the case of Rebecca somewhat as follows: "The maiden was beautiful, she was a maiden, a man had not known her." And Rebecca is interpreted as "glory of God," and the glory of God is incorruptibility. This is true righteousness, not to overreach in one part, but to be wholly a sanctified temple of the Lord. Righteousness, then, is peace of life and stability, to which the Lord dismissed them, saying, "Go in peace"; for Salem is interpreted as "peace," of which our Savior is recorded as king, whom Moses calls Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who gave the wine and the bread, the sanctified food, as a type of the Eucharist. And indeed Melchizedek is interpreted as "righteous king," and there is a synonymy of righteousness and peace. Basilides supposes that Righteousness and her daughter Peace are hypostases arranged to remain in the Ogdoad. We must now pass from the more physical matters to the more evident ethical ones; for the discourse concerning those will follow after the present treatise.

The Saviour himself, exactly as in the tragedy, initiates us, seeing those who see, and gives the sacred rites. And if you ask, "What form do these sacred rites have for you?" you will hear again, "Unutterable for mortals not possessed by the god to know." And if someone is overly curious as to what they might be, let him hear again, "It is not lawful for you to hear; but they are worthy to know." The one who practices impiety abhors the sacred rites of God. God is without beginning, the complete beginning of all things, the maker of the beginning. Insofar as He is substance, He is the beginning of the physical realm; insofar as He is the Good, of the ethical; and insofar as He is Mind, of the logical and critical realm. Hence the Word alone is teacher, the Son of the Father Mind, who educates man. Therefore, those who run down the creation and revile the body, not seeing that the construction of man was made upright for the contemplation of the heavens and that the organization of the senses tends toward knowledge, and that the limbs and parts are suited for the good, not for pleasure, are unreasonable. Hence this dwelling becomes capable of receiving the soul most honored by God, and is deemed worthy of the Holy Spirit according to the sanctification of soul and body, being perfected by the preparation of the Saviour. And indeed the mutual implication of the three virtues is found in the gnostic man, who deals with the divine ethically, physically, and logically. For wisdom is knowledge of divine and human things, justice is harmony of the parts of the soul, and piety is service to God. But if someone should claim that the flesh is slandered, and through it generation, citing Isaiah saying, "All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man is like the flower of grass,

The grass withered and the flower fell off; but the word of the Lord remains forever. Let him hear the Spirit interpreting the matter through Jeremiah: "And I scattered them like chaff flying in the wind into the desert." This is the lot and portion of your disobedience, says the Lord: "As you forgot me and trusted in lies, I will reveal what is behind you to your face, and your shame, your adultery, your neighing, and the rest will be seen." For this is the flower of the grass, and to walk according to the flesh and to be carnal, as the Apostle says, being in sins. The soul is agreed to be better than the human being, the body worse. But neither is the soul good by nature, nor is the body evil by nature, nor is that which is not good immediately evil. For there are also some intermediate states, and things preferred and dispreferred among the indifferent. Now the composition of the human being, having come into being among perceptible things, ought to consist of different elements, but not of opposites, body and soul. Therefore, good actions, as better, are always attributed to the better, the spiritual part; while pleasure-loving and sinful actions are assigned to the worse, the sinful part. For instance, the soul of the wise and gnostic person, as if sojourning in the body, conducts itself toward it with dignity and honor, not with attachment, and not at all, if the time of departure calls, leaving the tent. "I am a sojourner," he says, "in the land and a resident alien among you." And from this Basilides took to saying that the election of the world is foreign, as if it were supramundane by nature. But this is not so.