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| Chapter XXIII.—The Same Subject Continued.
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Chapter XXIII.—The Same Subject Continued.
For it is not suitable to the nature of the thing
itself, that they should apprehend in the truly gnostic manner the truth,
that all things which were created for our use are good; as, for example,
marriage and procreation, when used in moderation; and that it is better
than good to become free of passion, and virtuous by assimilation to the
divine. But in the case of external things, agreeable or disagreeable,
from some they abstain, from others not. But in those things from which
they abstain from disgust, they plainly find fault with the creature and
the Creator; and though in appearance they walk faithfully, the opinion
they maintain is impious. That command, “Thou shall not lust,”
needs neither the necessity arising from fear, which compels to keep from
things that are pleasant; nor the reward, which by promise persuades to
restrain the impulses of passion.
And those who obey God through the promise,
caught by the bait of pleasure, choose obedience not for the sake of
the commandment, but for the sake of the promise. Nor will turning
away from objects of sense, as a matter of necessary consequence,
produce attachment to intellectual objects. On the contrary,
the attachment to intellectual objects naturally becomes to the
Gnostic an influence which draws away from the objects of sense;
inasmuch as he, in virtue of the selection of what is good, has
chosen what is good according to knowledge (γνωστικῶς),
admiring generation, and by sanctifying the Creator sanctifying
assimilation to the divine. But I shall free myself from lust, let him
say, O Lord, for the sake of alliance with Thee. For the economy of
creation is good, and all things are well administered: nothing happens
without a cause. I must be in what is Thine, O Omnipotent One. And if
I am there, I am near Thee. And I would be free of fear that I may be
able to draw near to Thee, and to be satisfied with little, practising
Thy just choice between things good and things like.
Right mystically and sacredly the apostle, teaching
us the choice which is truly gracious,
not in the way of rejection of
other things as bad, but so as to do things better than what is good,
has spoken, saying, “So he that giveth his virgin in marriage
doeth well; and he that giveth her not doeth better; as far as respects
seemliness and undistracted attendance on the Lord.”2899
Now we know that things which are difficult are
not essential; but that things which are essential have been graciously
made easy of attainment by God. Wherefore Democritus well says,
that “nature and instruction” are like each other. And
we have briefly assigned the cause. For instruction harmonizes man,
and by harmonizing makes him natural; and it is no matter whether
one was made such as he is by nature, or transformed by time and
education. The Lord has furnished both; that which is by creation, and
that which is by creating again and renewal through the covenant. And
that is preferable which is advantageous to what is superior; but
what is superior to everything is mind. So, then, what is really good
is seen to be most pleasant, and of itself produces the fruit which is
desired—tranquillity of soul. “And he who hears Me,” it
is said, “shall rest in peace, confident, and shall be calm without
fear of any evil.”2900
“Rely with all thy heart and thy mind
on God.”2901
On this wise it is possible for the Gnostic
already to have become God. “I said, Ye are gods, and2902
sons of the highest.” And Empedocles says that the souls of the
wise become gods, writing as follows:—
“At last prophets, minstrels, and physicians,
And the foremost among mortal men, approach;
Whence spring gods supreme in honours.”
Man, then, genetically considered, is
formed in accordance with the idea of the connate spirit. For he is not
created formless and shapeless in the workshop of nature, where mystically
the production of man is accomplished, both art and essence being common.
But the individual man is stamped according to the impression produced
in the soul by the objects of his choice. Thus we say that Adam was
perfect, as far as respects his formation; for none of the distinctive
characteristics of the idea and form of man were wanting to him; but in
the act of coming into being he received perfection. And he was justified
by obedience; this was reaching manhood, as far as depended on him. And
the cause lay in his choosing, and especially in his choosing what was
forbidden. God was not the cause.
For production is twofold—of things
procreated, and of things that grow. And manliness in man, who is
subject to perturbation, as they say, makes him who partakes of it
essentially fearless and invincible; and anger is the mind’s
satellite in patience, and endurance, and the like; and self-constraint
and salutary sense are set over desire. But God is impassible,
free of anger, destitute of desire. And He is not free of fear,
in the sense of avoiding what is terrible; or temperate, in the
sense of having command of desires. For neither can the nature of
God fall in with anything terrible, nor does God flee fear; just as
He will not feel desire, so as to rule over desires. Accordingly
that Pythagorean saying was mystically uttered respecting us,
“that man ought to become one;” for the high priest
himself is one, God being one in the immutable state of the perpetual
flow2903
of
good things. Now the Saviour has taken away wrath in and with lust,
wrath being lust of vengeance. For universally liability to feeling
belongs to every kind of desire; and man, when deified purely into a
passionless state, becomes a unit. As, then, those, who at sea are held
by an anchor, pull at the anchor, but do not drag it to them, but drag
themselves to the anchor; so those who, according to the gnostic life,
draw God towards them, imperceptibly bring themselves to God: for he
who reverences God, reverences himself. In the contemplative life,
then, one in worshipping God attends to himself, and through his own
spotless purification beholds the holy God holily; for self-control,
being present, surveying and contemplating itself uninterruptedly,
is as far as possible assimilated to God.
Chapter XXIV.—The Reason and End of Divine Punishments.
Now that is in our power, of which equally with
its opposite we are masters,—as, say to philosophize or not, to
believe or disbelieve. In consequence, then, of our being equally masters
of each of the opposites, what depends on us is found possible. Now
the commandments may be done or not done by us, who, as is reasonable,
are liable to praise and blame. And those, again, who are punished on
account of sins committed by them, are punished for them alone; for what
is done is past, and what is done can never be undone. The sins committed
before faith are accordingly forgiven by the Lord, not that they may be
undone, but as if they had not been done. “But not all,”
says Basilides,2904
“but only
sins involuntary and in ignorance, are forgiven;” as would be
the case were it a man, and not God, that conferred such a boon. To
such an one Scripture says, “Thou thoughtest that I would be
like thee.”2905
But if we are punished
for voluntary sins, we are
punished not that the sins which are done may be undone, but because
they were done. But punishment does not avail to him who has sinned,
to undo his sin, but that he may sin no more, and that no one else
fall into the like. Therefore the good God corrects for these three
causes: First, that he who is corrected may become better than
his former self; then that those who are capable of being saved by
examples may be driven back, being admonished; and thirdly, that he
who is injured may not be readily despised, and be apt to receive
injury. And there are two methods of correction—the instructive
and the punitive, which we have called the disciplinary. It ought
to be known, then, that those who fall into sin after baptism2906
are those who
are subjected to discipline; for the deeds done before are remitted,
and those done after are purged. It is in reference to the unbelieving
that it is said, “that they are reckoned as the chaff which the
wind drives from the face of the earth, and the drop which falls from a
vessel.”2907
“Happy he who possesses the culture of
knowledge, and is not moved to the injury of the citizens or to wrong
actions, but contemplates the undecaying order of immortal nature, how
and in what way and manner it subsists. To such the practice of base
deeds attaches not,” Rightly, then, Plato says, “that the
man who devotes himself to the contemplation of ideas will live as a god
among men; now the mind is the place of ideas, and God is mind.”
He says that he who contemplates the unseen God lives as a god among
men. And in the Sophist, Socrates calls the stranger of Elea,
who was a dialectician, “god:” “Such are the gods who,
like stranger guests, frequent cities. For when the soul, rising above the
sphere of generation, is by itself apart, and dwells amidst ideas,”
like the Coryphæus in Theætetus, now become as an angel, it
will be with Christ, being rapt in contemplation, ever keeping in view
the will of God; in reality
“Alone wise, while these flit like shadows.”2908
| 2908 Hom., Odyss., x. 495. |
“For the dead bury
their dead.” Whence Jeremiah says: “I will fill it
with the earth-born dead whom mine anger has smitten.”2909
God, then, being not a subject for demonstration,
cannot be the object of science. But the Son is wisdom, and knowledge,
and truth, and all else that has affinity thereto. He is also susceptible
of demonstration and of description. And all the powers of the Spirit,
becoming collectively one thing, terminate in the same point—that
is, in the Son. But He is incapable of being declared, in respect of the
idea of each one of His powers. And the Son is neither simply one thing
as one thing, nor many things as parts, but one thing as all things;
whence also He is all things. For He is the circle of all powers rolled
and united into one unity. Wherefore the Word is called the Alpha and
the Omega, of whom alone the end becomes beginning, and ends again at
the original beginning without any break. Wherefore also to believe in
Him, and by Him, is to become a unit, being indissolubly united in Him;
and to disbelieve is to be separated, disjoined, divided.
“Wherefore thus saith the Lord, Every
alien son is uncircumcised in heart, and uncircumcised in flesh”
(that is, unclean in body and soul): “there shall not enter
one of the strangers into the midst of the house of Israel, but
the Levites.”2910
He calls those that would not believe, but
would disbelieve, strangers. Only those who live purely being true priests
of God. Wherefore, of all the circumcised tribes, those anointed to be
high priests, and kings, and prophets, were reckoned more holy. Whence He
commands them not to touch dead bodies, or approach the dead; not that
the body was polluted, but that sin and disobedience were incarnate,
and embodied, and dead, and therefore abominable. It was only, then,
when a father and mother, a son and daughter died, that the priest was
allowed to enter, because these were related only by flesh and seed,
to whom the priest was indebted for the immediate cause of his entrance
into life. And they purify themselves seven days, the period in which
Creation was consummated. For on the seventh day the rest is celebrated;
and on the eighth he brings a propitiation, as is written in Ezekiel,
according to which propitiation the promise is to be received.2911
And the perfect propitiation, I take it, is that propitious faith in
the Gospel which is by the law and the prophets, and the purity which
shows itself in universal obedience, with the abandonment of the things
of the world; in order to that grateful surrender of the tabernacle,
which results from the enjoyment of the soul. Whether, then, the
time be that which through the seven periods enumerated returns to
the chiefest rest,2912
or the
seven heavens, which some reckon one above the other; or whether also
the fixed sphere which borders on the intellectual world be called the
eighth, the expression denotes that the Gnostic ought to rise out of
the sphere of creation and of sin. After these seven days, sacrifices
are offered for sins. For there is still fear of
change, and it touches the
seventh circle. The righteous Job says: “Naked came I out of
my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there;”2913
not
naked of possessions, for that were a trivial and common thing; but,
as a just man, he departs naked of evil and sin, and of the unsightly
shape which follows those who have led bad lives. For this was what was
said, “Unless ye be converted, and become as children,”2914
pure in flesh, holy in soul by abstinence from evil deeds; showing
that He would have us to be such as also He generated us from our
mother—the water.2915
For the intent of one generation succeeding
another is to immortalize by progress. “But the lamp of the wicked
shall be put out.”2916
That purity in body and soul
which the Gnostic partakes of, the all-wise Moses indicated, by employing
repetition in describing the incorruptibility of body and of soul in the
person of Rebecca, thus: “Now the virgin was fair, and man had not
known her.”2917
And Rebecca, interpreted, means
“glory of God;” and the glory of God is immortality.2918
This is in reality righteousness, not to desire other things, but
to be entirely the consecrated temple of the Lord. Righteousness
is peace of life and a well-conditioned state, to which the Lord
dismissed her when He said, “Depart into peace.”2919
For
Salem is, by interpretation, peace; of which our Saviour is enrolled King,
as Moses says, Melchizedek king of Salem, priest of the most high God,
who gave bread and wine, furnishing consecrated food for a type of the
Eucharist. And Melchizedek is interpreted “righteous king;”
and the name is a synonym for righteousness and peace. Basilides, however,
supposes that Righteousness and her daughter Peace dwell stationed in
the eighth sphere.
But we must pass from physics to ethics, which
are clearer; for the discourse concerning these will follow after
the treatise in hand. The Saviour Himself, then, plainly initiates
us into the mysteries, according to the words of the tragedy:2920
| 2920 Eurip., Bacchæ,
465, etc. | —
“Seeing those who see, he also gives the orgies.”
And if you ask,
“These orgies, what is their nature?”
You will hear again:—
“It is forbidden to mortals uninitiated in the Bacchic rites to know.”
And if any one will inquire
curiously what they are, let him hear:—
“It is not lawful for thee to hear, but they are worth knowing;
The rites of the God detest him who practices impiety.”
Now God, who is without beginning,
is the perfect beginning of the universe, and the producer of the
beginning. As, then, He is being, He is the first principle of the
department of action, as He is good, of morals; as He is mind, on the
other hand, He is the first principle of reasoning and of judgment. Whence
also He alone is Teacher, who is the only Son of the Most High Father,
the Instructor of men.
Chapter XXVI.—How the Perfect Man Treats the Body and the Things of the World.
Those, then, who run down created existence and
vilify the body are wrong; not considering that the frame of man was
formed erect for the contemplation of heaven, and that the organization
of the senses tends to knowledge; and that the members and parts
are arranged for good, not for pleasure. Whence this abode becomes
receptive of the soul which is most precious to God; and is dignified
with the Holy Spirit through the sanctification of soul and body,
perfected with the perfection of the Saviour. And the succession of
the three virtues is found in the Gnostic, who morally, physically,
and logically occupies himself with God. For wisdom is the knowledge of
things divine and human; and righteousness is the concord of the parts
of the soul; and holiness is the service of God. But if one were to
say that he disparaged the flesh, and generation on account of it, by
quoting Isaiah, who says, “All flesh is grass, and all the glory
of man as the flower of grass: the grass is withered, and the flower
has fallen; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever;”2921
let him hear the Spirit interpreting the matter in question by Jeremiah,
“And I scattered them like dry sticks, that are made to fly
by the wind into the desert. This is the lot and portion of your
disobedience, saith the Lord. As thou hast
forgotten Me, and hast trusted in lies, so will I discover thy hinder
parts to thy face; and thy disgrace shall be seen, thy adultery,
and thy neighing,” and so on.2922
For “the
flower of grass,” and “walking after the flesh,” and
“being carnal,” according to the apostle, are those who are
in their sins. The soul of man is confessedly the better part of man,
and the body the inferior. But neither is the soul good by nature, nor,
on the other hand, is the body bad by nature. Nor is that which is not
good straightway bad. For there are things which occupy a middle place,
and among them are things to be preferred, and things to be rejected.
The constitution of man, then,
which has its place among things of sense, was necessarily composed of
things diverse, but not opposite—body and soul.
Always therefore the good actions, as better,
attach to the better and ruling spirit; and voluptuous and sinful actions
are attributed to the worse, the sinful one.
Now the soul of the wise man and Gnostic,
as sojourning in the body, conducts itself towards it gravely
and respectfully, not with inordinate affections, as about to
leave the tabernacle if the time of departure summon. “I
am a stranger in the earth, and a sojourner with you,” it is
said.2923
And hence Basilides says, that he apprehends
that the election are strangers to the world, being supramundane by
nature. But this is not the case. For all things are of one God. And no
one is a stranger to the world by nature, their essence being one, and
God one. But the elect man dwells as a sojourner, knowing all things to
be possessed and disposed of; and he makes use of the things which the
Pythagoreans make out to be the threefold good things. The body, too,
as one sent on a distant pilgrimage, uses inns and dwellings by the way,
having care of the things of the world, of the places where he halts;
but leaving his dwelling-place and property without excessive emotion;
readily following him that leads him away from life; by no means and on
no occasion turning back; giving thanks for his sojourn, and blessing
[God] for his departure, embracing the mansion that is in heaven.
“For we know, that, if the earthly house of our tabernacle be
dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan,
desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: if so
be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we walk by faith,
not by sight,”2924
as the apostle says; “and we are
willing rather to be absent from the body, and present with God.”
The rather is in comparison. And comparison obtains in the case of things
that fall under resemblance; as the more valiant man is more valiant
among the valiant, and most valiant among cowards. Whence he adds,
“Wherefore we strive, whether present or absent, to be accepted
with Him,”2925
that is, God, whose work and creation are all
things, both the world and things supramundane. I admire Epicharmus,
who clearly says:—
“Endowed with pious mind, you will not, in dying,
Suffer aught evil. The spirit will dwell in heaven above;”
and the minstrel2926
| 2926 Pindar, according to
Theodoret. | who sings:—
“The souls of the wicked flit about below the skies on earth,
In murderous pains beneath inevitable yokes of evils;
But those of the pious dwell in the heavens,
Hymning in songs the Great, the Blessed One.”
The soul is not then sent down
from heaven to what is worse. For God works all things up to what is
better. But the soul which has chosen the best life—the life that is
from God and righteousness—exchanges earth for heaven. With reason
therefore, Job, who had attained to knowledge, said, “Now I know
that thou canst do all things; and nothing is impossible to Thee. For
who tells me of what I know not, great and wonderful things with which I
was unacquainted? And I felt myself vile, considering myself to be earth
and ashes.”2927
For he who, being in a state of ignorance,
is sinful, “is earth and ashes;” while he who is in a
state of knowledge, being assimilated as far as possible to God,
is already spiritual, and so elect. And that Scripture calls the
senseless and disobedient “earth,” will be made clear by
Jeremiah the prophet, saying, in reference to Joachim and his brethren
“Earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord;
Write this man, as man excommunicated.”2928
And another prophet
says again, “Hear, O heaven; and give ear, O earth,”2929
calling
understanding “ear,” and the soul of the Gnostic, that of the
man who has applied himself to the contemplation of heaven and divine
things, and in this way has become an Israelite, “heaven.”
For again he calls him who has made ignorance and hardness of heart his
choice, “earth.” And the expression “give ear” he
derives from the “organs of hearing,” “the ears,”
attributing carnal things to those who cleave to the things of sense. Such
are they of whom Micah the prophet says, “Hear the word of the Lord,
ye peoples who dwell with pangs.”2930
| 2930 Mic. i. 2, where, however, the concluding words
are not found. | And Abraham said, “By no means. The
Lord is He who judgeth the earth;”2931
“since he
that believeth not, is,” according to the utterance of the
Saviour, “condemned already.”2932
And there is written in the
Kings2933
the judgment and sentence of the Lord, which stands thus: “The
Lord hears the righteous, but the wicked He saveth not, because they
do not desire to know God.” For the Almighty will not accomplish
what is absurd. What do the heresies say to this utterance, seeing
Scripture proclaims the Almighty God to be good, and not the author of
evil and wrong, if indeed ignorance arises from one not knowing? But
God does nothing absurd. “For this God,” it is said,
“is our God, and there is none to save besides Him.”2934
“For there is no unrighteousness
with God,”2935
according to the apostle. And clearly yet the prophet teaches the will of
God, and the gnostic proficiency, in these words: “And now, Israel,
what doth the Lord God require of thee, but to
fear the Lord thy God, and walk in all His ways,
and love Him, and serve Him alone?”2936
He asks of thee, who hast the
power of choosing salvation. What is it, then, that the Pythagoreans
mean when they bid us “pray with the voice”? As seems to
me, not that they thought the Divinity could not hear those who speak
silently, but because they wished prayers to be right, which no one
would be ashamed to make in the knowledge of many. We shall, however,
treat of prayer in due course by and by. But we ought to have works that
cry aloud, as becoming “those who walk in the day.”2937
“Let thy works shine,”2938
and behold a man and his
works before his face. “For behold God and His works.”2939
For the gnostic must, as far as is possible, imitate God. And the poets
call the elect in their pages godlike and gods, and equal to the gods,
and equal in sagacity to Zeus, and having counsels like the gods, and
resembling the gods,—nibbling, as seems to me, at the expression,
“in the image and likeness.”2940
Euripides accordingly says, “Golden wings are
round my back, and I am shod with the winged sandals of the Sirens; and I
shall go aloft into the wide ether, to hold convene with Zeus.”
But I shall pray the Spirit of Christ to wing
me to my Jerusalem. For the Stoics say that heaven is properly a city,
but places here on earth are not cities; for they are called so, but are
not. For a city is an important thing, and the people a decorous body,
and a multitude of men regulated by law as the church by the word—a
city on earth impregnable—free from tyranny; a product of the
divine will on earth as in heaven. Images of this city the poets create
with their pen. For the Hyperboreans, and the Arimaspian cities, and the
Elysian plains, are commonwealths of just men. And we know Plato’s
city placed as a pattern in heaven.2941
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