Chapter XIV.—Valentinus and his followers derived the principles of their
system from the heathen; the names only are changed.
1. Much more like the truth, and more pleasing, is the account which Antiphanes,403
one of the ancient comic poets, gives in his Theogony as to the origin of all things. For he
speaks Chaos as being produced from Night and Silence; relates that then Love404 sprang
from Chaos and Night; from this again, Light; and that from this, in his opinion, were derived
all the rest of the first generation of the gods. After these he next introduces a second gener-
ation of gods, and the creation of the world; then he narrates the formation of mankind by
the second order of the gods. These men (the heretics), adopting this fable as their own,
have ranged their opinions round it, as if by a sort of natural process, changing only the
names of the things referred to, and setting forth the very same beginning of the generation
of all things, and their production. In place of Night and Silence they substitute Bythus and
Sige; instead of Chaos, they put Nous; and for Love (by whom, says the comic poet, all other
things were set in order) they have brought forward the Word; while for the primary and
greatest gods they have formed the Æons; and in place of the secondary gods, they tell us
of that creation by their mother which is outside of the Pleroma, calling it the second Ogdoad.
They proclaim to us, like the writer referred to, that from this (Ogdoad) came the creation
of the world and the formation of man, maintaining that they alone are acquainted with
these ineffable and unknown mysteries. Those things which are everywhere acted in the
theatres by comedians with the clearest voices they transfer to their own system, teaching
them undoubtedly through means of the same arguments, and merely changing the names.
2. And not only are they convicted of bringing forward, as if their own [original ideas],
those things which are to be found among the comic poets, but they also bring together the
things which have been said by all those who were ignorant of God, and who are termed
philosophers; and sewing together, as it were, a motley garment out of a heap of miserable
rags, they have, by their subtle manner of expression, furnished themselves with a cloak
which is really not their own. They do, it is true, introduce a new kind of doctrine, inasmuch
as by a new sort of art it has been substituted [for the old]. Yet it is in reality both old and
useless, since these very opinions have been sewed together out of ancient dogmas redolent
of ignorance and irreligion. For instance, Thales405 of Miletus affirmed that water was the
403 Nothing is known of this writer. Several of the same name are mentioned by the ancients, but to none of
them is a work named Theogonia ascribed. He is supposed to be the same poet as is cited by Athenæus, but that
writer quotes from a work styled ᾽Αφροδίτης γοναι.
404 The Latin is “Cupidinem;” and Harvey here refers to Aristotle, who “quotes the authority of Hesiod and
Parmenides as saying that Love is the eternal intellect, reducing Chaos into order.”
405 Compare, on the opinions of the philosophers referred to in this chapter, Hippolytus, Philosoph., book
i.
Chapter XIV.—Valentinus and his followers derived the principles of their system from the heathen; the names only are changed.
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Chapter XIV.—Valentinus and his followers derived the principles of their…