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Anti-Marcion
Now listen to some other buffooneries[6924] of a master who is a great swell among them,[6925] and who has pronounced his dicta with an even priestly authority. They run thus: There comes, says he, before all things Pro-arche, the inconceivable, and indescribable, and nameless, which I for my own part call Monotes (Solitude). With this was associated another power, to which also I give the name of Henotes (Unity). Now, inasmuch as Monotes and Henotes—that is to say, Solitude and Union—were only one being, they produced, and yet not in the way of production,[6926] the intellectual, innascible, invisible beginning of all things, which human language[6927] has called Monad (Solitude).[6928] This has inherent in itself a consubstantial force, which it calls Unity[6929] These powers, accordingly, Solitude or Solitariness, and Unity, or Union, propagated all the other emanations of Æons.[6930] Wonderful distinction, to be sure! Whatever change Union and Unity may undergo, Solitariness and Solitude is profoundly supreme. Whatever designation you give the power, it is one and the same.
Secundus is a trifle more human, as he is briefer: he divides the Ogdoad into a pair of Tetrads, a right hand one and a left hand one, one light and the other darkness. Only he is unwilling to derive the power which apostatized and fell away[6931] from any one of the Æons, but from the fruits which issued from their substance.
Now, concerning even the Lord Jesus, into how great a diversity of opinion are they divided! One party form Him of the blossoms of all the Æons.[6932] Another party will have it that He is made up only of those ten whom the Word and the Life[6933] produced;[6934] from which circumstance the titles of the Word and the Life were suitably transferred to Him. Others, again, that He rather sprang from the twelve, the offspring of Man and the Church,[6935] and therefore, they say, He was designated “Son of man.” Others, moreover, maintain that He was formed by Christ and the Holy Spirit, who have to provide for the establishment of the universe,[6936] and that He inherits by right His Father’s appellation. Some there are who have imagined that another origin must be found for the title “Son of man;” for they have had the presumption to call the Father Himself Man, by reason of the profound mystery of this title: so that what can you hope for more ample concerning faith in that God, with whom you are now yourself on a par? Such conceits are constantly cropping out[6937] amongst them, from the redundance of their mother’s seed.[6938] And so it happens that the doctrines which have grown up amongst the Valentinians have already extended their rank growth to the woods of the Gnostics.
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