藥箱（駁八十異端） 第 1 章 第 20/82 段

As for those among them who are dying and reaching their very departure from life, having taken his pretexts from the aforementioned Mark, he no longer redeems them in that man's manner, but handles the matter differently, supposedly redeeming, at the point of death, those who have been deceived by him.

For sometimes some of them, mixing oil with water, pour it upon the head of the one who is departing; others use the ointment called opobalsam, together with water—though they have a common invocation, just as Mark before him also used, with the addition of certain names.

And the invocation is this:

“Messia oupharegna, mempsai men chal daian, mosomē daea, akphar nepseu oua, Iēsou Nazaria” (an untranslatable magical formula).

whom indeed they wish to say has come down from the Pleroma above.

And they instruct those thus deluded among them, saying: ‘If you come before the principalities and powers, keep in memory these things to say, after your departure hence: I am a son from the Father, the Father pre-existing, and the son [existing] in the present.’

‘And I came to see all things, both my own and those alien to me—yet not altogether alien, but belonging to Achamoth, who is female, and who made these things for herself.’

‘And I trace my lineage from the Pre-existent One, and I go again to my own [realm], whence I have come.’

‘If your Mother is ignorant of her own root, I know myself and know whence I am, and I call upon the incorruptible Wisdom, who is in the Father—the mother of your Mother, who has no father, nor indeed a male consort.’

‘And she, being a female born of a female, made you, being ignorant both of her own mother and supposing herself to be alone.’

‘But I call upon her mother.’

For they suppose that, besides body and soul, there is also something else in man.

And concerning their [doctrine of] redemption, these are the things that have come down to us.

But the intelligent, upon hearing their excessive mockery, would laugh at this play-acting, seeing that each of them legislates differently from the other as he pleases, and is not restrained from his own audacity, but each devises whatever he is able.

And as for those who are still, even to this present time, being born among them and springing up further—who each day find something new to say and to dazzle those who follow after them—it is a difficult task to investigate or set forth all their teachings.

Wherefore I shall again content myself with what has been said concerning this heresy too, having pointed out those things which have come down to us.

But if it is indeed alien [to matter], who gave him authority over matter? And first tell me, O deceiver, did he, hating the soul, bind it to matter, or did he do so in ignorance of what would result? But I know you will say neither of these.

For we do not call the body ‘matter’ [in the base sense]—God forbid—nor do we so call the creatures of God.

But Scripture knows a certain other matter, besides this base sort set forth for construction in every craft and trade—another kind, I mean, the impure imagining that springs up from the mind, and the mire-like reasonings of sin.

For neither do we, in each craft, do anything by working at what we have not first conceived in mind.

For we first conceive in mind what we wish to accomplish, and we know, before we make it, what we have chosen to complete.

And yet we, being weak and falling far short of the power of God, nevertheless know and understand through the understanding graciously given to mankind by him.

But it has happened to you, O Heracleon, that the understanding which comes from God has turned to your harm, because you do not employ it according to God, but according to a wicked pursuit.

And I will say further: whence comes the mixture of the spiritual with the psychic and the material—that which you call the ‘inner man,’ joined to the second and third, the ‘outer man,’ I mean, to soul and body? And if it is from the will of the power above, the Father of all things—I mean the Bythos according to you—then, as I have said, the creation here concerning us, being mingled together with the realms above, is not without communion with them, through the good pleasure of the Father above and through the spark sent down from him from on high, which according to you is the spiritual and innermost man.

For how could anyone be ignorant of that which he desires? For if he altogether longs for the better, he knows the beautiful and the good.

And he who knows the good, and does not hate it but desires it, is not alien to the good.

And so that I may not wear myself out being occupied with the contrivances of this charlatan, I shall content myself with these things.

For all his foolish talk has collapsed, since it is clearly confessed by all that the Master of all is good, and foreknowing, and able to do all things, and that every nature that exists, being created, has come into being well by him.

[Sin] has no root, nor does it remain forever, but arises in us as something brought in from outside, and again ceases from us.

As I have also shown everywhere, making my argument against all the heresies, that there is one God who made and fashioned all things, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and one his only-begotten Son and Child, our Lord and Savior and God; and one his Holy Spirit—one holy and consubstantial Trinity, from whom all things have been well created, not evil in any way but good, called into being out of what did not exist, according to the goodness that was thus well pleased [to do so].

To whom, God, be glory and honor and dominion — to the Father in the Son, to the Son in the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, unto the ages of ages.

Having again briefly set forth the refutation of this heresy, I shall proceed to those that follow, making to the best of my ability a refutation against each, and thus accomplishing the overthrow of their destructive wickedness.

For this creature might rightly be called a 'seps,' which is not a serpent but, as they say, is somewhat like a copper-colored lizard, a four-footed reptile resembling a gecko, whose bite causes harm counted as nothing, but whose spittle, cast into food or drink, immediately works death for those who partake of it.

Such also is this man's teaching.

But having exposed his venom too, and by the power of the Lord wiped it away from the throats or lips of those who were about to be harmed, let us pass on, as I said before, to what follows, making a refutation of the harm they cause.

Against the Ophites, 17, but 37 in the sequence.

As we have then promised by the power of God, with God's help we shall next set forth the heresy of the Ophites, which followed upon the former follies — agreeing with them in some respects but differing in others, I mean in the manners and forms of those who practice it — so that from the airy error of their disagreement it may be plain to everyone that they are led by error and not by truth.

And now their folly shall be exposed by this discourse and refuted.

For the Ophites, as I said before, took their pretexts from the heresy of Nicolaus and the Gnostics and the heresies before these, and they are called Ophites because of the serpent which they glorify.

For these too belch forth absurdities, as if filled with the stench of that aforementioned meal, and having been deceived like men beguiled by strange demons, they glorify the serpent, as I said before.

And see to what depth of evil scheming the serpent who deceived them has advanced.

For just as from the beginning he deceived Eve and Adam, so also now, hiding himself both at the present time and in the time of the Jews until the coming of Christ.

Then, as time went on, still corrupting men — who had become greedy from the food taken through disobedience because of him — and provoking them to greater deception, he separates them from the true God, always promising much, just as he did from the beginning.

For even then he deceived them, saying, 'You shall be as gods'; then, as time went on, he fashioned for them the many-shaped and monstrous fantasy.

For having made them apostatize from the one true God, he long ago hatched within them the blasphemous, empty talk of idolatry and polytheism.

For they were not gods, just as they are not now, but God alone is God.

And he had already earlier hatched idol-madness and polytheism and a deceitful mind.

But the one responsible was not the serpent who then appeared alone, but the serpent who spoke within the serpent — I mean the devil — who also disturbed man's hearing through the woman.

Nor was the tree itself sin, for God plants nothing evil; rather, the tree produced the knowledge of good and evil.

And death came not because of knowing, but because of disobedience.

It did not come about because of the food, but because it wrought disobedience in them.

Hence, having then disobeyed, they were put outside paradise, most justly rebuked, not out of hatred but according to God's careful providence.

For the Lord says to them, 'You are earth, and to earth you shall return.'

For it was fitting that the true Craftsman, caring after the manner of a potter for his own vessel and formation which he had fashioned with his hands — this vessel, which had later come to be in a defective state through disobedience, and, so to speak, while still being clay and having become, as it were through a crack, a castaway vessel — should not let it remain so, but should transform it back into the original lump, so that again in the regeneration he might refashion the vessel at the resurrection into its original brightness, and indeed something still more excellent — that is, the bodies of those who committed the most unjust deeds, and repented, and turned away from their own faults, and were perfected in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ — so that there might come to be a resurrection of the body from the earth, just as the lump, softened by the craftsman, is fashioned again into its original and even better shape.

Such, then, was the plot of the serpent against Eve.

For from the beginning human nature has been greedy, always being led along by doctrines of empty talk and vain promises.

And formerly, hiding himself, he did not reveal the full extent of his venom-casting; but afterward, after Christ's incarnate coming, he vomited forth and spat out the whole of his venomous and wicked device of malice.

For he put himself forward to be glorified as a god and to be worshiped in the minds of those he had deceived.

And this same serpent is recognized both through this school of his and through the sensible serpent, working the deception.

Now divine Scripture calls the devil a serpent, not as though he were actually such in form, but because he appears to men to be most crooked, and because of that first device of deception which was worked through the serpent.

Therefore, among those who recognize the truth, this doctrine is laughable, as are those who cling to it, glorifying the serpent as a god.

For the devil, no longer being able to deceive the manly mind that has received the power of truth from the Lord, turns instead to the female — that is, to the ignorance of men — and persuades those who are in ignorance, since he cannot deceive the firm reasoning.

For he always draws near to feminine ways of thinking, and to pleasure and desire — that is, to the ignorance that is feminized in men — and not to the firm reasoning that understands all things rationally and recognizes God from the law according to nature.

For the serpent among them says that it is itself Christ — or rather, not the serpent itself, for it cannot speak, but the devil, who has prepared their minds to think so.

Who then, seeing the serpent, will not recognize the enemy and flee? For this very reason the Lord established this serpent in enmity with the human race, since, being a beast, it had become altogether an instrument of the devil, and through it the devil deceived man in paradise — so that, seeing the enmity of this sensible serpent, men might flee the plot of deception and might, so to speak, come to hate even the sight of its form.

And these people, called Ophites, likewise attribute all knowledge to this serpent, saying that it became the beginning of knowledge for mankind, mythically introducing what they consider to be their mysteries — which are in fact mimic tales, full of mockery and vain conceit.

For these are truly myths.

For they claim that from the Aeon above, Aeons were put forth, and that Ialdabaoth came into being lower down.

And this one was put forth on account of the weakness and ignorance of his own mother, that is, of the Prounikos above.

...and it was not possible for them to pass upward into the realms above, because she had been mingled with the weight of matter.

For she had been mingled with the waters and with matter, and was no longer able to withdraw.

But she raised herself forcibly toward the higher regions and stretched herself out, and thus the upper heaven came into being.

And she was found to be, as it were, fixed fast, no longer able either to ascend above or to descend below, but she remained fixed and stretched out in the very middle.

For she could not be brought down below, because she was not akin to what was below.

Nor could she pass upward, because she was weighed down by the matter which she had taken on.

And Ialdabaoth, having been put forth on account of her ignorance, went down to the lowest regions and made for himself seven sons, who in turn made seven heavens for themselves.

And he himself shut off and hid what was above himself, so that his seven sons, put forth by him and lower than he, might not know what was above him, but might know him alone.

And this, they say, is Ialdabaoth, the god of the Jews.

But it is not so — God forbid! Rather, God the Almighty, who is God of the Jews and of Christians and of all, is about to judge them, and not some 'Ialdabaoth,' according to their nonsensical mythology.

Then, they say, once the realms above had been shut off by the device of Ialdabaoth, these seven sons who had been begotten by him — called among them by various names, whether Aeons or gods or angels — fashioned man after the likeness of their father Ialdabaoth, not easily nor quickly, but in the same manner that the earlier heresies also contrived in their empty talk.

Man was a creeping thing like a worm, unable either to lift himself up or to stand upright.

But as a plot against Ialdabaoth, the Mother above, called Prounikos, wishing to empty Ialdabaoth of the power which he had shared from her, worked in him with a view to the man fashioned by his children, so as to empty out his power and send forth from him a spark upon the man, supposedly intending this to become the soul.

And then, they say, man stood upon his feet, and in his mind surpassed the eight heavens, and came to know and praised the Father above, who is above Ialdabaoth.

And then Ialdabaoth, being seized with anguish because that which was above him had become known, looked down in bitterness upon the dregs of matter and begot a power having a serpent-shaped form, whom they also call his son.

And thus this one, they say, was sent forth and deceived Eve.

And she listened to him and was persuaded, as by a son of God, and having been persuaded, she ate from the tree of knowledge.

Then, when they have narrated this folly and the absurdity of this practice, having made it, so to speak, into a tragic plot and this comic drama, they begin to intimate to us certain things in support of what they call their false gods — asking whether even our inward parts, by which we live and are nourished, are not serpent-shaped — along with whatever else they introduce to those they have deceived, for their own error and nonsensical conjecture.

And for this reason, they say, we glorify the serpent, because the serpent became the cause of knowledge for mankind.

But Ialdabaoth, they say, did not want the Mother above, nor the Father, to be remembered by men.

But the serpent persuaded them and brought knowledge, and taught the man and the woman the whole knowledge of the mysteries above.

Therefore the father, that is, Ialdabaoth, being angered on account of the knowledge which it had shown to men, cast it down from heaven.

And hence those who belong to the party of the serpent, and possess nothing else, call the serpent a king cast down from heaven.

They glorify it, then, they say, on account of this knowledge, and they offer it bread.

They summon this same serpent to loaves upon a table.

And when the den is opened, it comes forth.

And thus the serpent, coming up in accordance with its own intelligence and cunning, already knowing their folly, goes up onto the table and coils itself around the loaves.

And they say that this is a perfect sacrifice.

Whence also, as I have heard from someone, they not only break the loaves in which this same serpent has been coiled and distribute them to those who receive them, but each one also kisses the serpent on the mouth — either because the serpent has been charmed into tameness by some sorcery, or because of some other working of the devil, whereby the creature is made to feign gentleness in order to deceive them.

And they worship such a one, and they call this a eucharist which has come about through the coiling of the serpent around the loaves, and again, as they say, through it they send up a hymn to the Father above — thus they carry out their mysteries.

One might call this folly, and full of mockery.

And there will be no need to seek a refutation from divine Scripture for this, but it will of itself be shown to be ridiculous to anyone who has a mind sound before God.

For immediately all their empty talk will be found to be a kind of nonsense.

For if they say that she is Prounikos, how, from that very name, will not the rottenness of their thinking be exposed, as I have already said before? For everything given to lewdness is worthless.

But if it is worthless, it must not be reckoned among the things to be preferred.

And how could the worthless be praiseworthy? And how is it not mythical to say that Prounikos emptied Ialdabaoth, and the spark descended below from the one who had been emptied, and having come to be in man, recognized the one higher than the one emptied? And it is a very great marvel that man, in whom is the tiniest spark, should recognize more than the angels who fashioned him.

For the angels who made man, that is, the sons of Ialdabaoth, did not recognize the things above Ialdabaoth, but the one made by them, through the spark, did recognize them.

So they overturn themselves by their own doctrines, at one time glorifying the serpent, and at another declaring that he acted deceitfully toward Eve, in saying, 'he deceived Eve.'

And at one time they proclaim him to be Christ, and at another the son of the higher Ialdabaoth, who wronged his sons by shutting them off from the knowledge of the things above, and who rejected the Mother and the Father above, so as not to allow the sons begotten by him to glorify his higher Father.

How then is the serpent a heavenly king, if he has risen up against the Father? And how, if he gives knowledge, is he declared to have deceived Eve by deceit? For one who instills knowledge through deceit no longer gives knowledge, but ignorance instead of knowledge — as indeed one can truly see that this is what is accomplished in them.

For possessing ignorance, they suppose it to be knowledge — in this alone speaking the truth, when they call their own knowledge deceit and ignorance.

They also bring forward other testimonies, saying that Moses too, in the wilderness, set up and lifted high the bronze serpent, so that it might become a cure for those bitten by serpents.

For they say that this image was a remedy for the bite.

But again, in laying this down they define matters against themselves.

For if the bites were from serpents, and these were harmful, then the serpent is not good.

But that which was then lifted up by Moses effected the healing through the beholding of it — not on account of the nature of the serpent, but on account of the good pleasure of God, who through the serpent, as it were, worked an antidote for those who had then been bitten.

And it is nothing to marvel at, if a person obtains healing through the very things by which he was harmed.

And let no one revile the creation of God, as others in their error again say.

This was prefigured for those in the wilderness for the reason which the Lord, having come, states in the Gospel: that as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up — which indeed came to pass.

For, after the fashion of a serpent's bite, those who dishonored the Savior were being wronged by the plot of the serpent — I mean, of the devil.

As by the lifting up of the serpent healing came to those who had been bitten, so at the crucifixion of Christ a ransom was made for our souls from the bites of sin that had occurred within us.

And these same people also bring forward this very saying as testimony, saying, 'Do you not see how the Savior said, in the manner that Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up?' And for this reason, they say, he also says elsewhere, 'Be wise as the serpent and innocent as the dove.'

And the things well ordained for us by God as symbols of teaching, these people twist to serve their own deceived notion.

For our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Word, who was begotten of the Father before all the ages, without beginning and without time, is not a serpent — God forbid! — but he himself came against the serpent.

But if he says, 'Be wise as the serpent and innocent as the dove,' we must ask and know why he introduced these two figures to us for our instruction — that of the dove and that of the serpent.

Now there is nothing wise in the serpent, except these two things: that when being pursued, knowing that its whole life resides in its head, and fearing the command spoken above concerning it by God for man's sake, 'you shall guard his head, and he your heel,' it wraps its whole body around its head, hiding its own skull, but surrendering the rest of its body, with the utmost cunning.

In this way the Only-begotten God, who proceeded from the Father, wishes us, in time of persecution and in time of trial, to hand over all that is ours to sword and fire, but to guard our own head, that is, not to deny Christ, since Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of the woman, and God is the head of Christ, according to the Apostle.

The serpent again possesses another mark of prudence, as the natural historians say concerning this creature.

For whenever, being thirsty, it comes forth from its lair to some water in order to drink, it does not take its venom along with it, but leaves it behind in the lair, and thus, having gone, takes its drink of water.

Let us also, then, imitate this, so that when we come to the holy church of God, or to prayer, or to the mysteries of God, we may not bring with us malice, or pleasure, or desire, or enmity, or anything else in our minds.

Since how could we be able to imitate the dove without becoming free of malice, although indeed the species of the dove is not praiseworthy in many respects? For the species of the dove is unrestrained and not held back from promiscuous mating, is lustful and devoted to pleasure at every hour, and besides this, feeble and weak.

But on account of the guilelessness, patience, and freedom from resentment of the creature, and further because the Holy Spirit appeared in the form of a dove, the divine word wishes us to imitate the will of the Holy Spirit and the guilelessness of the innocent dove — being wise toward the good, but innocent toward evil.

And thus their whole contrivance is dissolved.

For the holy Apostle at once assigns craft and treachery emphatically to none other than the devil and the serpent, saying, 'But I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and purity that is in Christ, and from righteousness.'

Do you see how the Apostle declared as corruption, terrible craftiness, and deceit the things done by the serpent toward Eve, and showed that nothing praiseworthy was done by him?

From every side, then, the folly of these people is exposed and made manifest to everyone willing to know the teaching of the truth and the knowledge of the Holy Spirit.

Let me not waste time, but having sailed through this harsh and difficult storm of the deep, I will arm my vessel again for the other sea-voyages, carefully holding fast the rigging by the power of God and the prayers of the saints, so that as we sail past we may observe the swelling of the wild waves and the shapes of the venomous beasts of the deep, yet, untouched by the venom of the moray-eel, the stingray, the sea-dragon, the shark, and the scorpion-fish, we may be able to pass through, and by prayer and supplication attain to the calm harbor of the truth — so that in us too the saying may be fulfilled, 'those who go down to the sea shall tell of the mighty works of the Lord.'

I will therefore now proceed, in order, to my next narration.

Against the Cainites, 18; but in the sequence, 38.

Certain people are called Cainites, having taken the name of their heresy from Cain.

For these praise Cain and set him up as their father, and they too, so to speak, arise as from a different swell of waves, yet are not outside the same surge and billow; and having sprung up as from a thorny thicket, they are not outside the whole mass of thorns, even though they differ in name.

For though there are many kinds of thorns, yet in all of them there is present the same malignant, pricking wickedness.

These say that Cain exists from the stronger power and from the authority above, and likewise Esau and those associated with Korah and the Sodomites, but that Abel is from the weaker power.

And [they hold] that all these are, among them, praiseworthy and of their own kindred.

For they pride themselves on being kinsmen of Cain, and of the Sodomites, and of Esau, and of Korah.

And these, they say, belong to the perfect and heavenly knowledge.

Wherefore they also say that the maker of this world, though occupied with destroying them, was unable to harm them at all.

For they were hidden from him and were transformed into the aeon above, whence the strong power is.

For Sophia received them to herself, since they were her own.

And for this reason they say that Judas had exact knowledge concerning these matters.

For they wish him too to be their kinsman, and reckon him among those of surpassing knowledge, so much so that they even produce a certain small treatise in his name, which they call the Gospel of Judas.

And they likewise fabricate certain other writings against 'Hystera' — for they call by the name 'Hystera' the maker of this whole vault of heaven and earth — and they say that no one can otherwise be saved unless they pass through all things, as Carpocrates also says.

For each of them, forsooth, under this pretext, performing unspeakable acts and carrying out shameful deeds and committing as many sins as there are, invokes the name of each angel — both of the angels that truly exist and of those falsely alleged among them.

And to each of these he assigns some unlawful deed among the sins committed on earth, referring his own act to the name of whichever angel he wishes.

And whenever they do these things, they speak thus: 'O such-and-such angel, I am employing your work.'

'O such-and-such power, I am performing your deed.'

And this is called 'perfect knowledge' among them, since they have derived, as it were, from the aforementioned mother and father heresies — I mean the Gnostics and Nicolaus and, along with them, Valentinus and Carpocrates — the pretexts for rushing fearlessly into unlawful and shameful deeds.

And again, others fabricate yet another small treatise in the name of the apostle Paul, full of unspeakable practices, which those called Gnostics also use, and which they call the 'Ascension of Paul,' having found their pretext in the apostle's statement that he was caught up to the third heaven and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter.