constructed thus: its length512 was two cubits and a half, its breadth one cubit and a half, its height one cubit and a half; but such a number of cubits in no respect corresponds with their system, yet by it the type ought to have been, beyond everything else, clearly set forth. The mercy-seat513 also does in like manner not at all harmonize with their expositions. Moreover, the table of shew-bread514 was two cubits in length, while its height was a cubit and a half. These stood before the holy of holies, and yet in them not a single number is of such an amount as contains an indication of the Tetrad, or the Ogdoad, or of the rest of their Pleroma. What of the candlestick,515 too, which had seven516 branches and seven lamps? while, if these had been made according to the type, it ought to have had eight branches and a like number of lamps, after the type of the primary Ogdoad, which shines pre-eminently among the Æons, and illuminates the whole Pleroma. They have carefully enumerated the curtains517 as being ten, declaring these a type of the ten Æons; but they have forgotten to count the coverings of skin, which were eleven518 in number. Nor, again, have they measured the size of these very curtains, each curtain519 being eight-and-twenty cubits in length. And they set forth the length of the pillars as being ten cubits, with a refer- ence to the Decad of Æons. “But the breadth of each pillar was a cubit and a half;”520 and this they do not explain, any more than they do the entire number of the pillars or of their bars, because that does not suit the argument. But what of the anointing oil,521 which sanctified the whole tabernacle? Perhaps it escaped the notice of the Saviour, or, while their Mother was sleeping, the Demiurge of himself gave instructions as to its weight; and on this account it is out of harmony with their Pleroma, consisting,522 as it did, of five hundred shekels of myrrh, five hundred of cassia, two hundred and fifty of cinnamon, two hundred and fifty of calamus, and oil in addition, so that it was composed of five ingredients. The incense523 also, in like manner, [was compounded] of stacte, onycha, galbanum, mint, and frankincense, all which do in no respect, either as to their mixture or weight, harmonize 512 Ex. xxv. 10. 513 Ex. xxv. 17. 514 Ex. xxv. 23. 515 Ex. xxv. 31, etc. 516 Only six branches are mentioned in Ex. xxv. 32. 517 Ex. xxvi. 1. 518 Ex. xxvi. 7. 519 Ex. xxvi. 2. 520 Ex. xxvi. 16. 521 Ex. xxvi. 26. 522 Ex. xxx. 23, etc. 523 Ex. xxx. 34. 1015 Chapter XXIV.—Folly of the arguments derived by the heretics from numbers,…