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Elpis, Metricus and Agape, Aeinos and Synesis, Ecclesiasticus and Macariotes, Theletes and Sophia; which completed the number of thirty æons, or fifteen couples, the one half male, the other female; who were supposed by these extravagant brains to copulate and beget, in the same manner that men and women do generate and produce their children.

These all lived within a vast and unconceivable place, far distant from these lower regions, called by them Pleroma, or fullness, mutually enjoying and rejoicing each other, fill a certain accident, as I may so term it, gave some disturbance to their repose and quiet; for though, as it was said before, Nus, or Monogenes, was only delighted with the appre hension of the unmeasurable greatness of Bythos, the root and origin of them all; yet the other ons also vehemently longed to have the same happiness of seeing their original author and producer; and especially, the last female Eon, called Sophia, was so unreasonably passionate to obtain her desire of comprehending the greatness of the Propator, or their first father, that being not able to accom. plish it, through vexation and grief at the said disappointment, she brought forth an inform matter, or such a monstrous birth, which some

times happens to women, at which she was so affrighted, confounded and astonished, that she would have been dissolved, or fallen out of the pleroma, if Bythos had not, in compassion to her, emitted a certain power called Horos, [limit or circle] who environed the plenitude wherein the Eons dwelt, and confirmed her therein, but cast that inform matter therefrom into those infinite vacuities where the world was afterwards created; after which, that none of the Eons should be any more affected as Sophia had been, Monogenes emited another couple, unto whom they gave the names of Christ and the Holy Ghost, by whose means the ons being established, they celebrated, with great joy, their propator or bythos; and to his honor, every one of them brought together the best they had, and sent forth Jesus, whom they also called the Saviour, and Logos [the word] and patronymically Christ, with whom also they emitted the angels to be his attendants.

All these precedent affairs were transacted within the plenitude, or that vast space bounded by Horos; from whence the ons never stirred, being always limitted thereby, and confined therein: but as for that inform matter produced by Sophia, and thrown by Horos out of the Pleroma into their truly imaginary

spaces, they fancied it to have been so far pi tied and assisted first by Christ, and afterwards by the Saviour, that a spiritual form, or a form kata ten gnosin, was given unto her; which being thus shaped, they called Achamoth,* whom they most ridiculously imagined, by her tears, laughter, sorrow, and such like things, to have emitted from herself the matter and foundation of all those animal and material beings which were afterwards created; and that first of all, from her animal substance she formed the great father and maker of all inferior things, or of all without the Pleroma, except that eighth heaven which she herself framed for her own habitation, and is between the Pleroma and the dwelling-place of this her son, called by them Demiurgus, or maker of the world; who being moved and excited by her, ignorantly and unknowingly created the whole universe, with every being therein; framed seven heavens, in the supremest whereof he dwells in a supine, stupid, and careless manner, neither knowing any thing of, nor concerning himself about the affairs of mankind; but leaving them altogether unto the Devil, who was without his knowledge made

* It comes from an Hebrew word which signifies wisdom, as her mother Sophia's name doth in Greek.

by him, lives in this world, and rules and gove erns all the events and transactions thereof.

Thus have I, as succinctly as possible, in the most intelligible manner that I could, ex plicated the Valentinian system relating to the first cause of all things, and the creation of the world; wherein not only the villany and impiety, but also the delusion and folly of those heretics is to be admired and wondered at ; which is so gross and notorious, that it would have seemed incredible and past belief, that ever such a senseless number of people should have appeared in the world, if the un controlable records of the most primitive times had not made it most evident, that many em braced this pernicious way; and that whilst others blasphemed the creator of the universe, by ascribing the framing thereof to angels, these dishonored him, by attributing it to an ignorant, doltish and inferior divinity.

But besides these heretics, there were yet others, who in another way and manner de nied the heaven and the earth to be made by the one only supreme and eternal God; and these were the Cerdonians and Marcionites, the introducers of two eternal principles; the inferior whereof, according to their notions, was the father and creator of the universe,

As for Cerdon, Tertullian writes, "That he invented two principles or two Gods; the one a good God, who is the superior; and the other a fierce God, who was the creator of the world." And as for Marcion, he was Cerdon's scholar, and with him maintained two eternal causes, a good and a bad one, God and the Devil; the latter of whom, as Irenæus frequently assures us, he asserted to be the "framer of the world;" by which means he made the creator to be an inferior God, as Justin Martyr, who lived in his days, writes, "That Marcion, of Pontus, imagined, that there was a greater God than the maker of the world."

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With two great reason now may we reflect with horror and amazement on these monstrous and unaccountable heresies! Who could possibly imagine, that the fancies of men should ever have been so miserably deluded? But, the matter of fact is too certain to be called in doubt; these heresies were so spreading and contagious, that as an antidote against the venomous infection thereof, the governors of the primitive church found themselves necessitated in contradiction thereunto, to insert in the creed, that the one God, the father almighty, is "the maker of heaven and earth," as we find in Irenæus; who after he

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