Antipope Hippolytus

“ Leave aside enquiry concerning God and Creation and the like, and enquire about Him from thyself, and learn who it is who simply makes His own all that is within thee, saying ‘My God, my mind, my understanding, my soul, my body.’ Learn also what are grief and rejoicing, and love and hate, and undesired watching and sleep, and undesired anger and love. ”

“ Everything which you understand by your mind or which you pass by unthought of, is formed by nature to become each of these principles, as in the soul of man every art which is taught. For example, he says, that a boy will become a piper if he spend some time with a piper, or a geometrician if he does so with a geometrician, or a grammarian with a grammarian, or a carpenter with a carpenter, and to one in close contact with other trades it will happen in the same way. But the substance of the principles, he says, are light and darkness ”

“ For substance and the cosmos are one. But strife rends asunder and diversifies, and tries by every means to make the world divide. Just as one cuts arithmetically the myriad into thousands and hundreds and tens and drachmas, and obols, and quarters by dividing it into small parts, so Strife cuts the substance of the cosmos into animals, plants, metals and such like things. And Strife is according to them, the Demiurge [92] of the generation of all things coming to pass, and Love governs and provides for the universe, so that it abides. ”

“ When Phison has rule over the places, famine, distress and affliction come to pass in that part of the world, for miserly is the array of these angels. And in like manner in each of the quarters according to the nature and power of each, come evil times and troops of diseases. And evermore the flow of evil according to the rule of the quarters, as if they were rivers, by the will of Edem goes unceasingly about the world. ”

“ We now learn, too, for the first time that Simon taught, like the Ophites, that the Supreme Being was of both sexes like his antitypes, that the universe consisted of three worlds reflecting one another, and that man must achieve his salvation by coming to resemble the Deity—a result which was apparently to be brought about by finding his twin soul and uniting himself to her. None of these ideas seem to have been Simon’s own invention, and all are found among those of earlier or later Gnostics. ”

“ As then the darkness seeks after the brilliance, that it may hold the spark as a slave and may see, so do the light and the spirit seek after their own power, and make haste to raise up and take back to themselves their powers which have been mingled with the underlying dark and fearful water. [252] But all the powers of the three principles being everywhere boundless in number are each of them wise and understanding as regards its own substance, and the countless multitude of them being wise and understanding, whenever they remain by themselves are all at rest. ”

“ Boundless Power dwells in him, which (power) he says is the root of the universals. But the Boundless Power, the fire according to Simon, is not simple as the many say who think that the four elements are simple and that fire is simple; but there is a certain double nature of fire, and of this double nature he calls one part hidden and the other manifest. But the hidden (parts) have been hidden in the manifest parts of the fire, and the manifest have come into being by the hidden. This it is which Aristotle calls potentiality and action, and Plato the comprehensible and the perceptible. ”

“ For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made by Him, in truth, His eternal power and godhead, so that they are without excuse. ”

“ And the beauty of that Son of Man is till now unrevealed to all men who are misled as to the offspring of a woman. Nothing then of the things here come into being, he says, from that Man, nor will they ever do so; but all things that have come into being have done so not from the whole, but from some part of the Son of Man. For, says he, the Son of Man is one Iota, one tittle flowing from on high, full, and filling full all things, and containing within itself whatever the Man, Father of the Son of Man possesses. ”

“ Word, the God, they declare that they themselves as Brachmans alone know, because they alone put away vain thinking which is the last tunic of the soul. They scorn death; but are ever naming God in their own tongue, as we have said above, and send up hymns to Him. But neither are there women among them, nor do they beget children. ”

“ O all ye men, Greeks and Barbarians, Chaldæans and Assyrians, Egyptians and Libyans, Indians and Ethiopians, Celts and ye army-leading Latins, [116] and all ye dwellers in Europe, Asia and Libya. [117] To you I am become a counsellor, being a disciple of the Word who loves man and myself a lover of mankind, so that you may hasten to be taught by us who is the real God and what His well-ordered creation. And that you give not heed to the sophistries of artificial discourses, [118] nor to the crazy promises of plagiarizing heretics, but to the august simplicity of unboastful truth. ”

“ But since I consider that not one tenet of this earthy and grovelling wisdom has been passed over, I perceive that our care with regard to the same things has not been useless. For we see that our discourse has been of great use not only for the refutation of heresies, but also against those who magnify these things. [175] Those who happen to notice the manifold care taken by us will both wonder at our zeal and will neither despise our painstaking nor denounce Christians as fools when they see what themselves have foolishly believed. ”

“ These and such like things, then, the Pythagoreans say, imitating whom the heretics think they declare great things to certain men. The Pythagorean doctrine says that the Great Geometrician and Reckoner [100] the Sun is the Demiurge of all things that are, and is fixed in the whole cosmos like the soul in bodies, as says Plato. For the Sun like the soul is fire, but the earth a body. But if fire were absent, nothing could be seen, nor could there be any solid perceptible to the touch; for there is no solid without earth. ”

“ But if we are ignorant of these things, the accurate discovery of the nature of the conception vanishes. [20] Nor if, as some physiologists say, seed being first seethed and altered in the womb then goes forward to its gaping vessels as the seeds of the earth go to the earth; why then, those who do not know the length of time taken by this change will not know either the moment of conception. And again, as women differ from one another in energy and other causes of action in other parts of the body, so do they differ in the energy of the womb, some conceiving quicker and others slower. ”

“ Now the darkness is sensible, and knows that if the light is taken away from it, the darkness will remain desolate, viewless, without light, powerless, idle and weak. In this way by all its wit and foresight it is forced to retain within itself the brilliance and scintillation of the light along with the fragrance of the spirit. ”

“ And he also made statements nearly in accord with Empedocles, as he said that Discord and Friendship were the beginning of all things, and that the intellectual fire was God and that all things were borne in upon one another and did not stand still. And like Empedocles he said that every place of ours was filled with evil things, and that these come as far as the moon extending from the place surrounding the earth, but go no further, since the whole place above the moon is very pure. ”

“ Marcion the Pontian, and Cerdo his teacher, also determined that there are three principles of the All, a Good One, a Just One, and Matter. But certain disciples of theirs add to this, saying that there are a Good One, a Just One, a Wicked One, and Matter. But all [agree] that the Good One created nothing wholly; [57] but they say that the Just One, whom some name the Wicked One, but others merely the Just, made all things out of the underlying Matter. For he made them not well but absurdly. [58] For things must need be like their creator. ”

“ Again, there are repetitions in our text excusable in a lecturer who does not, if he is wise, expect his hearers to have at their fingers’ ends all that he has said in former lectures, and who may even find that he can best root things in their memory by saying them over and over again; but quite unpardonable in a writer who can refer his readers more profitably to his former statements. Yet, we find our author in Book I giving us the supposed teaching of Pythagoras as to the monad being a male member, the dyad a female and so on up to the decad, which is supposed to be perfect. ”

“ The which Boundless Power he says is He who Stood, Stands, and will Stand. Who if he be made into a complete image (of the fire) will be in substance, power, greatness, and effect one and the same with that Unbegotten and Boundless Power, and lacking nothing possessed by that unbegotten and unchanging and infinite power. ”

“ Not less useful or less unexpected are the revelations in the same book of the true meaning of the syncretistic worship of Attis and Cybele, and the disclosure here made of the supreme mystery of the Eleusinian rites, which we now know for the first time culminated in the representation of a divine marriage and of the subsequent birth of an infant god, coupled with the symbolical display of an “ear of corn reaped in silence.” For the study of classical antiquity as well as for the science of religions such facts are of the highest value. ”

“ Wherefore, he says, the psychic man does not receive the things of God’s spirit; for they are foolishness unto him. But foolishness, he says, is the power of the Demiurge, for he was senseless and mindless and thought that he fashioned the cosmos, being ignorant that Sophia, the Mother, the Ogdoad, wrought all things with regard to the creation of the world for him who knew it not. ”

“ Now there are some also who try to construct hebdomads from the healing art, being struck by the dissection of the brain, saying that the substance, power of paternity, and divinity of the universe can be learned from its constitution. p. 135. For the brain, being the ruling part of the whole body rests calm and unmoved, containing within itself the breath. [210] Now such a story is not incredible, but a long way from their attempted theory. ”

“ On the two inferior classes, there will then fall the “Great Ignorance,” a merciful oblivion which will prevent them from remembering or otherwise being troubled in their beatitude by the knowledge of the still better things above them.
How the salvation of these souls is to be effected there is no indication in Hippolytus, and he leaves us in entire doubt as to whether Basilides allowed any free-will to man in the matter. It is probable that he taught the doctrine of transmigration as a means of purification from sins or faults committed in ignorance. ”

“ Those who, having been trained in this science, become pupils of the Chaldæans and who having changed the names only, have imparted mysteries as if they were strange and wonderful to men, have constructed a heresy out of this. But since they consider the astrologers’ art a mighty one and making use of the witness of the Chaldæans wish to get their own systems believed because of them, we shall now prove that the astrological art as it appears to-day is unfounded, and then that the Peratic heresy is to be put aside as a branch growing from a root which does not hold. ”

“ From which and not from the Gospels, Valentinus has drawn his own heresy, as we shall show, and should therefore be reckoned a Pythagorean and a Platonist, but not as a Christian. Accordingly he and Heracleon and Ptolemy and all their school, the disciples of Pythagoras and Plato copying their teachers, have framed an arithmetical doctrine of their own. p. 280. For indeed an unbegotten, incorruptible, incomprehensible fruitful Monad is to them the beginning of all and the cause of the birth of all things that are. ”

“ Plants that have been planted in the earth up to the rising of the Dog-star take no root, but yet grow leaves and appear to beholders as if they will bear fruit and are alive, but have no life from the root in them. ”

“ Thus also the rest of the models of all things were modelled resembling a womb like heaven and earth. But they say that from the water came into being the first born principle, a violent and rushing wind the cause of all generation, which sets in action a certain heat and movement in the cosmos from the movement of the waters. And [they say] p. 486. that this was changed into a complete form like the hissing of a serpent, beholding which the cosmos is driven to generation, being excited like a womb, and therefrom they will have it the generation of the universals is established. ”

“ In order then that the Great Man [20] on high, from whom, [123] as they say, “every fatherhood [21] named on earth and in the heavens” is framed, might be completely held fast, there was given to him also a soul, so that through the soul he might suffer, and that the enslaved “image of the great and most beautiful and Perfect Man”—for thus they call him—might be punished. [22] Wherefore again they ask what is the soul and of what kind is its nature that coming to the man and moving [23] him it should enslave and punish the image of the Perfect Man. ”

“ Towards whom, he says, each [soul] is borne and hurries, thinking that she is alone. Who is indeed her kinsman and fellow-citizen. Whom she beholding for the first time recognizes as her own brother and all the rest as bastards. Those then who have their nature from the lower places cannot see the forms of the Saviour above them. But those on high, he say, from the middle Decad and the most excellent Ogdoad [43] —whence, say they, we are—know Jesus the Saviour not in part but wholly, and are alone the Perfect from above, while the others are only partly so. ”

“ But, he says, we alone who know the compulsion of birth and the paths whereby man enters into the world and have been carefully instructed—we alone can pass through [221] and escape destruction. But water, he says, is destruction, and never, he says, did the world perish quicker than by water. But the water which rolls around the Proastii is, they say, Kronos. For such a power, he says, is of the colour of water and this power, that is Kronos, none of those who have been founded in generation can escape. ”

“ This Eighth Heaven is under the sway of the Great Ruler, a functionary emitted by the Seed-Mass for the purpose of governing this abode of perfection, from which it may be inferred that the Second Sonhood like the First ultimately returns to the presence of the Supreme Being. In his organization of this Eighth Heaven, the Great Ruler is much helped by the Son whom he calls forth from the Seed-Mass, who is expressly stated to be greater and wiser than his own Father. ”

“ But another sect of philosophers was called Academic, p. 45. from their holding their discussions in the Academy, whose founder was Pyrrho, after whom they were called Pyrrhonian philosophers. He first introduced the dogma of the incomprehensibility of all things, so that he might argue on either side of the question, but assert nothing dogmatically. For he said that there is nothing grasped by the mind or perceived by the senses which is true, but that it only appears to men to be so. And that all substance is flowing and changing and never remains in the same state. ”

“ But the rogue having fallen in love with the hussy, the so-called Helen, and having bought her enjoyed her, and being ashamed (before) his disciples made up this story. But they who became (in time) the imitators of the error and of Simon Magus do like things, pretending that they ought to have (promiscuous) intercourse like beasts, saying: “All earth is earth and it matters not where one sows, so long as one sows.” And they also bless this intercourse saying that the same is perfect love and the “Holy of Holies” and that “ye shall sanctify one another.” ”

“ But that there is an eternal movement towards Him wherein it happens that the heavens are born. And that the earth is a heavenly body [57] supported by nothing, but remaining in its place by reason of its equal distance from everything. And that its form is a watery cylinder [58] like a stone pillar; and that we tread on one of its surfaces, but that there is another opposite to it. And that the stars are a circle of fire distinct from the fire in the cosmos, but surrounded by air. ”