Imaginings as to our Blessed Lord. 51 venerable ones, and named with faith, in his teaching: Unspeakable and Silence; Father and Truth. And of this quaternion the whole number is of twenty-four elements. For the name "Αῤῥητος hath in itself seven letters, and σειγὴ and аThρ five, and 'Anoeta seven: which being added together, the 2x5 and 2 x 7, complete the number of twentyfour. And in like manner also the second Quaternion, the Word and the Life, the Man and the Church, exhibit the same number of their Elements. And that the Saviour's Name which may be spoken, 'Inooûs, is of six letters, but His ineffable one of twenty-four letters. Tiòs and Xploròsh [the Son and Christ] is of twelve letters; but that which is unspeakable in Christ, of thirty letters. And therefore He calls Himself A and 2, in order to indicate the Dove, this number belonging to that bird. "But Jesus, saith he, hath the following unspeakable generation. From the mother of all, the first Quaternion, the second Quaternion proceeded as a daughter, and it became an Ogdoad, from which proceeded a Decad: thus there came to be a set of eighteen. The Decad therefore combining with the Ogdoad, and making it tenfold, put forth the number of eighty, and having multiplied the eighty again, produced the number of 800. So that the whole number of the letters going on from the Ogdoad to the Decad, is 888, which is JESUS. For the Name JESUS, according to the number in the letters, is 888. Thou hast clearly the supercelestial generation of JESUS also, by their account. And that the Greek Alphabet has accordingly eight units, and eight tens, and eight hundreds, thus exhibiting the calculation of the 888, that is, the Name JESUS, made out of all the numbers: and that He is therefore called A and , signifying His generation from all. And again thus: The first Quaternion in arithmetical progression being added to itself, the number of ten comes out for 1+2+3+4=10: which is I: and this, they say, is Jesus. But Christ also, they say, being of eight letters, signifies b Supposed to be spelt xperòs: x made a double letter. or perhaps χρηστὸς=χρεεστός; or the § 2. 52 Imaginings as to our Blessed Lord. Book 1. the first Ogdoad, which being conjoined with the ten, brought forth Jesus 888. § 3. "And he is called too, saith he, the Son Christ, i. e. the number Twelve. For the name Son is of four letters, and Christ of eight: which being added exhibit the sum twelve. Now before the mark of this name, which mark is Jesus, appeared to his sons, men were in much ignorance and error. But He appeared who is the name with six letters, who put on flesh, that He might come to the perception of Man, having in Himself the six and the twenty-four: then knowing Him they ceased from their ignorance, and ascended from death unto life, the name being made their way to the Father of Truth: it having been the will of the Father of all to do away with ignorance and to destroy Death. And the doing away with ignorance was by the better knowledge of Him. And to this end was elected the Man who according to His will was mysteriously provided as an image of the Power on high. "For from the Quaternion proceeded the Eons. And in the Quaternion were the Man and the Church, the Word and the Life. From these then, saith he, certain powers flowing forth, generated the JESUS who appeared on Earth. And the place of the Word was filled by the Angel Gabriel, and of the Life by the Holy Ghost, and of the Man by the Power of the Son and the place of the Church the Virgin supplied. And thus by his account is produced the Man of the Dispensation by Mary, whom the Father of all selected, after he had passed through the womb, for the perfect knowledge of Himself. And when He had come to the water, there descended upon Him, as a Dove, he that hastened upwards, and fulfilled the number of twelve: and that in him exists the seed of these who are sown with him, and with him descended and arose. But the virtue itself, which descended, he says is the seed of the Father, having in itself both the Father and the Son, and the Power of Silence, made known through these, but without a name, and all the Eons. And this is the Spirit that spake by Jesus, which professed itself to be the Son of Man, and manifested the Father, de The Truth more recent than letters, if formed from letters. 53 scending upon Jesus, yet so as to be made one with Him. And he who by this dispensation is our Saviour, while he destroyed death, made known the Father Christ. Jesus then, he said, is a name for the man who comes of the Economy, but it was assigned for a resemblance and figure of the Man who was afterwards to come down upon him. And that he by receiving him, had both the Man himself, and the Word himself, and the Father, and the Unspeakable, and the Silence, and the Truth, and Church, and Life." These things then surely are what no O, nor Alas, nor any tragical exclamation and deploration can reach. For who would not hate the evil contriver and framer of so great falsehoods, seeing, first of all, The Truth made by Mark but an Idol; and that branded with the letters of the Alphabet? Lately, but yesterday and the day before, as they say, compared with that which was from the beginning, do the Greeks own that they received from Cadmus first sixteen, then afterwards in process of time themselves discovered at one time the aspirates, at another the double letters. Last of all Palamedes they say added to these the long vowels. Was there then no truth, before the Greeks had these? For her body according to thee, Mark, was later than Cadmus and those before him, and later than those who added the other letters; yea, later than thyself; for thou alone didst bring down as an idol that which thou denominatest Truth. But who will endure thy Silence, babbling such things? her who names the Unnamed, and explains the Unspeakable, and declares Him who cannot be traced, and saith that He opened His mouth, whom thou affirmest to be without body or form and that He produced a word, as it might be any one of the animals made up of parts: and that His Word being like Him who produced it, and having been made the Form of the Invisible One, is of thirty Letters, and four Syllables. Wherefore the Father of all, by thy account, according to his resemblance to the Word, will consist of thirty letters and four syllables. Or again who will bear with thee, shutting up the Word of God, the Creator, Artificer § 4. § 5. 51 Lament over Mark's soul-wounding impiety. BOOK. and Maker of all things in figures and numbers, now thirty, now twenty-four, now six only; and mincing Him small into four syllables and thirty letters: and reducing the Lord of all, the Establisher of the Heavens, to the number of 888, as though He were framed like the Alphabet: subdividing the the Father Who comprehends all and is Himself incomprehensible, into sets of four, and eight, and ten, and twelve respectively, and by such multiplications expressing the Father's being, unspeakable and inconceivable as thou sayest it is. And Whom thou termest incorporeal and without substance, His being and substance thou framest out of many. letters, generated one set from another: thyself turning out a false Dædalus, and a bad artificer of the Most High Virtue: dividing moreover that which thou sayest is indivisible into mute and vowel and semivowel sounds, falsely assigning that which is mute in them to the Father of all and to His Mind, thou hast cast all who believe in thee into the highest blasphemy and greatest impiety. § 6. CHAP. § 1. Wherefore also justly and suitably to this boldness of thine did the divine Ancient and herald of the truth exclaim against thee in verse, thus saying: Thou idol-framer, Mark, and portent-gazer Skill'd in the astrologer's and wizard's art Strengthening thereby the words of thy false lore, Such to perform thy father Satan still Thus far that Elder, beloved of God. But we will endea- The birth then of their ons, and the wandering and disof the sheep, are united, and a mystical exposition covery How they pervert parables of the drachma and the sheep. 55 endeavoured to be put on them, by those who reduce all things to numbers, stating that all sums are made up of the Monad and Duad: and, by numbering from the Monad unto four, so they generate the Decad: for 1 + 2 + 3 + 4, bring forth the number of the ten ons. And again the Duad proceeding from itself unto the number of the Mark [6] as 2 + 4 + 6, exhibits the sum of twelve. And again if we number in like manner from the Duad to ten, it comes out 30, wherein are 8 and 10 and 12. The number of twelve then, because of its containing the Mark as an accompaniment to it, on account of the mark they term the Passion: and therefore that the defect took place in the twelfth number, when the sheep which bounded away was lost: the falling away, as they say, having taken place from the number twelve. And in like manner they conjecture that from the sum of twelve one power revolted and perished: and that this is the woman who lost her piece of silver, and S. Luke lighted a candle and found it. Thus then the numbers remaining, in the parable of the Drachma nine, in that of the sheep eleven, conjoining with one another, produce the number ninety-nine, since 9 x 1199. Wherefore also the word Amen, they say, hath this number1. : xv. 8. Neither will I grudge relating to thee another expla- § 2. nation of theirs, to give thee in all ways a notion of the fruit to be had from them. As thus the letter n (i. e. including the mark [S']) they say is the Ogdoad, lying in the eighth place from the first. Then again without the mark [5] calculating the number of the letters themselves, and adding them on as far as the 7, they make out thirty. For one beginning at a and ending at 7, will find by the number of the letters (subtracting however the mark 5' and adding on continually the increment of the letters) the number thirty. For as far as em it makes up fifteen, then the number seven added to these completes twenty-two: n= 8 adjoining itself produces in full. 12+4+6+8+10=30. The Mark (56) not being a letter, indicates a defect in the numeral alpha bet, and this is called a Passion. I. e. A=1, μ= 40, n=8, v = 50. ma + β + γ + δ + ε = 15. |