VII.  There—the word is with you.  Let the slings be let go; let the syllogism be woven.  Either He is altogether Unbegotten, or else He is Begotten.  If He is Unbegotten, there are two Unoriginates.  If he is Begotten, you must make a further subdivision.  He is so either by the Father or by the Son.  And if by the Father, there are two Sons, and they are Brothers.  And you may make them twins if you like, or the one older and the other younger, since you are so very fond of the bodily conceptions.  But if by the Son, then such a one will say, we get a glimpse of a Grandson God, than which nothing could be more absurd.  For my part however, if I saw the necessity of the distinction, I should have acknowledged the facts without fear of the names.  For it does not follow that because the Son is the Son in some higher relation (inasmuch as we could not in any other way than this point out that He is of God and Consubstantial), it would also be necessary to think that all the names of this lower world and of our kindred should be transferred to the Godhead.  Or may be you would consider our God to be a male, according to the same arguments, because he is called God and Father, and that Deity is feminine, from the gender of the word, and Spirit neuter, because It has nothing to do with generation; But if you would be silly enough to say, with the old myths and fables, that God begat the Son by a marriage with His own Will, we should be introduced Irenæus. I., 6. to the Hermaphrodite god of Marcion and Valentinus It would seem that S. Gregory commonly confused Marcion with Marcus, one of the leaders of the Gnostic School of Valentinus.  In another place he speaks of the Æons of Marcion and Valentinus, evidently meaning Marcus; for the system of Marcion is characterized by an entire absence of any theory of Emanations (Æons).  Similarly there is no trace in Marcion of this notion of a hermaphrodite Deity, but there is something very like it in the account of Marcus given by S. Irenæus. who imagined these newfangled Æons.