created is of an animal nature? Or, again, if (which is indeed the only true supposition, as I
have shown by numerous arguments of the very clearest nature) He (the Creator) made all
things freely, and by His own power, and arranged and finished them, and His will is the
substance609 of all things, then He is discovered to be the one only God who created all
things, who alone is Omnipotent, and who is the only Father rounding and forming all
things, visible and invisible, such as may be perceived by our senses and such as cannot,
heavenly and earthly, “by the word of His power;”610 and He has fitted and arranged all
things by His wisdom, while He contains all things, but He Himself can be contained by no
one: He is the Former, He the Builder, He the Discoverer, He the Creator, He the Lord of
all; and there is no one besides Him, or above Him, neither has He any mother, as they
falsely ascribe to Him; nor is there a second God, as Marcion has imagined; nor is there a
Pleroma of thirty Æons, which has been shown a vain supposition; nor is there any such
being as Bythus or Proarche; nor are there a series of heavens; nor is there a virginal light,611
nor an unnameable Æon, nor, in fact, any one of those things which are madly dreamt of
by these, and by all the heretics. But there is one only God, the Creator—He who is above
every Principality, and Power, and Dominion, and Virtue: He is Father, He is God, He the
Founder, He the Maker, He the Creator, who made those things by Himself, that is, through
His Word and His Wisdom— heaven and earth, and the seas, and all things that are in them:
He is just; He is good; He it is who formed man, who planted paradise, who made the world,
who gave rise to the flood, who saved Noah; He is the God of Abraham, and the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of the living: He it is whom the law proclaims, whom
the prophets preach, whom Christ reveals, whom the apostles make known612 to us, and in
whom the Church believes. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: through His Word,
who is His Son, through Him He is revealed and manifested to all to whom He is revealed;
for those [only] know Him to whom the Son has revealed Him. But the Son, eternally co-
existing with the Father, from of old, yea, from the beginning, always reveals the Father to
Angels, Archangels, Powers, Virtues, and all to whom He wills that God should be revealed.
609 That is, as Massuet notes, all things derive not only their existence, but their qualities, from His will.
Harvey proposes to read causa instead of substantia, but the change seems needless.
610 Heb. i. 3.
611 That is, Barbelos: comp. i. 29, 1.
612 “Tradunt;” literally, hand down.
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Chapter XXX.—Absurdity of their styling themselves spiritual, while the…