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| The Opinions of Carpocrates, Another Offset from the Pythagorean Dogmas, Stated and Confuted.
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Chapter
XXXV.—The Opinions of Carpocrates, Another Offset from the
Pythagorean Dogmas, Stated and Confuted.
However, it is not for you alone, (Simon), that
the transmigration philosophy has fabricated this story. Carpocrates
also makes equally good use of it, who was a magician and a fornicator
like yourself, only he had not a Helen.1727
| 1727 For Carpocrates,
see Irenæus, i. 24; Eusebius, H. E. iv. 7; Epiphan.
Hær. 27. |
And why should he not? since he asserted that souls are reinvested with
bodies, in order to ensure the overthrow by all means of divine and
human truth. For, (according to his miserable doctrine,) this life
became consummated to no man until all those blemishes which are held
to disfigure it have been fully displayed in its conduct; because there
is nothing which is accounted evil by nature, but simply as men think
of it. The transmigration of human souls, therefore, into any
kind of heterogeneous bodies, he thought by all means indispensable,
whenever any depravity whatever had not been fully perpetrated in the
early stage of life’s passage. Evil deeds (one may be sure)
appertain to life. Moreover, as often as the soul has fallen short as a
defaulter in sin, it has to be recalled to existence, until it
“pays the utmost farthing,”1728
thrust out from time to time into the prison of the body. To this
effect does he tamper with the whole of that allegory of the Lord which
is extremely clear and simple in its meaning, and ought to be from the
first understood in its plain and natural sense. Thus our
“adversary” (therein mentioned1729
)
is the heathen man, who is walking with us along the same road of life
which is common to him and ourselves. Now “we must needs go out
of the world,”1730
if it be not
allowed us to have conversation with them. He bids us, therefore, show
a kindly disposition to such a man. “Love your enemies,”
says He, “pray for them that curse you,”1731
lest such a man in any transaction of
business be irritated by any unjust conduct of yours, and
“deliver thee to the judge” of his own (nation1732
), and you be thrown into prison, and be
detained in its close and narrow cell until you have liquidated all
your debt against him.1733
Then, again, should
you be disposed to apply the term “adversary” to the devil,
you are advised by the (Lord’s) injunction, “while you are
in the way with him,” to make even with him such a compact as may
be deemed compatible with the requirements of your true faith. Now the
compact you have made respecting him is to renounce him, and his pomp,
and his angels. Such is your agreement in this matter. Now the friendly
understanding you will have to carry out must arise from your
observance of the compact: you must never think of getting back any of
the things which you have abjured, and have restored to him, lest he
should summon you as a fraudulent man, and a transgressor of your
agreement, before God the Judge (for in this light do we read of him,
in another passage, as “the accuser of the
brethren,”1734
or saints, where
reference is made to the actual practice of legal prosecution); and
lest this Judge deliver you over to the angel who is to execute the
sentence, and he commit you to the prison of hell, out of which
there will be no dismissal until the smallest even of your
delinquencies be paid off in the period before the
resurrection.1735
| 1735 Morâ
resurrectionis. For the force of this phrase, as apparently
implying a doctrine of purgatory, and an explanation of
Tertullian’s teaching on this point, see Bp. Kaye on
Tertullian, pp. 328, 329. [See p. 59, supra.] | What can be a more
fitting sense than this? What a truer interpretation? If, however,
according to Carpocrates, the soul is bound to the commission of all
sorts of crime and evil conduct, what must we from his system
understand to be its “adversary” and foe? I suppose it must
be that better mind which shall compel it by force to the performance
of some act of virtue, that it may be driven from body to body, until
it be found in none a debtor to the claims of a virtuous life. This
means, that a good tree is known by its bad fruit—in other words,
that the doctrine of truth is understood from the worst possible
precepts. I apprehend1736
that heretics of
this school seize with especial avidity the example of Elias, whom they
assume to have been so reproduced in John (the Baptist) as to make our
Lord’s statement sponsor for their theory of transmigration, when
He said, “Elias is come already, and they knew him
not;”1737
and again, in
another passage, “And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which
was for to come.”1738
Well, then, was it
really in a Pythagorean sense that the Jews approached John with the
inquiry, “Art thou Elias?”1739
and not rather in the sense of the divine prediction, “Behold, I will send you
Elijah” the Tisbite?1740
The fact, however,
is, that their metempsychosis, or transmigration theory, signifies the
recall of the soul which had died long before, and its return to some
other body. But Elias is to come again, not after quitting life (in the
way of dying), but after his translation (or removal without dying);
not for the purpose of being restored to the body, from which he had
not departed, but for the purpose of revisiting the world from which he
was translated; not by way of resuming a life which he had laid aside,
but of fulfilling prophecy,—really and truly the same man, both
in respect of his name and designation, as well as of his unchanged
humanity. How, therefore could John be Elias? You have your answer in
the angel’s announcement: “And he shall go before the
people,” says he, “in the spirit and power of
Elias”—not (observe) in his soul and his body. These
substances are, in fact, the natural property of each individual;
whilst “the spirit and power” are bestowed as external
gifts by the grace of God and so may be transferred to another person
according to the purpose and will of the Almighty, as was anciently the
case with respect to the spirit of Moses.1741
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