He does not say this with any thought of an erratic Æon, or of any other power which departed from the Pleroma, or of Prunicus, but of the Jerusalem which has been delineated on [God’s] hands. And in the Apocalypse John saw this new [Jerusalem] descending upon the new earth.4773
In this passage he has undoubtedly shown that Christianity had a noblebirth, being sprung, as the mystery of the allegory indicates, from that son of Abraham who was born of the free woman; whereas from the son of the bondmaid came the legal bondage of Judaism. Both dispensations, therefore, emanate from that same God by whom,5354
5354 Apud quem.
as we have found, they were both sketched out beforehand. When he speaks of “the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,”5355