Against the Valentinians

​But there was in Achamoth, from the substance of her mother Sophia, a certain private property of spiritual seed, just as Achamoth herself had deposited it in her son the Demiurge, without his even knowing of this. Receive the industrious design of this clandestine providence. For she had both deposited and hidden it for this purpose, so that, when the Demiurge should presently communicate the soul from his own breath into Adam, that spiritual seed likewise might, as if through the soul as a conduit, be derived into the clay-made, and thus, having been gestated in the material body as if in a womb and grown up there, it might be found fit for receiving some day the perfect Word. And so, while the Demiurge commits the graft of his soul into Adam, the spiritual man lay hidden, inserted into his breath and likewise introduced into the body, because the Demiurge knew the seed of his mother no more than he knew her herself. This seed they call the Church, the mirror of the church above, and the status of the (spiritual) man, accordingly deputing him to Achamoth, just as they do the animal man to the Demiurge, the clay-made to the substance of aporia, and the material man to the flesh. You have a new, that is, a fourfold Geryon.

​In this way they also divide the end for each: to the material indeed, that is the carnal, which they also call the left, undoubted destruction; to the animal indeed, which they also call the right, a doubted outcome, as fluctuating between the material and the spiritual, and owing to that side to which he has mostly inclined. But the spiritual is sent forth in partnership with the animal, so that he may be educated with him and exercised in life’s intercourses. For the animal stood in need even of sensible disciplines. For this purpose also the preparation of the world was foreseen, and for this the Savior was represented in the world, namely for the salvation of the animal, monstrous in still another composition. They will have it that he put on the first-fruits of those substances whose sum he was to restore to salvation, so that he received the spiritual indeed from Achamoth, and the animal indeed from the Demiurge, whom he presently put on as Christ; but the corporeal, although from animal substance, yet constructed with a wonderful and inexpressible ingenuity of design, he bore meanwhile for the sake of administration, whereby he might be subject to meetings, and sight, and contact, and death, though unwillingly; but that there was nothing material in him, as being alienated from salvation. As if he were necessary for any other than for the one needing salvation! And all this, so that by alienating the condition of our flesh from Christ, they may expel us also from the hope of salvation.

​Now I return to Christ, into whom some introduce elements with as much lawless license as they stuff the spiritual seed along with the animal breath, having devised some kind of stuffings of both men and their own gods: that the Demiurge also has his own Christ, a natural son and likewise animal, produced by him, proclaimed by the prophets, placed in the questions of prepositions, that is, brought forth through a virgin, not out of a virgin, because, having been introduced into the virgin, he proceeded by a transmigratory rather than a generative manner, through her, not out of her, having experienced her not as a mother but as a way. And so upon this Christ, at that time in the sacrament of baptism, Jesus flew down in the likeness of a dove. But there was also in Christ a seasoning of the spiritual seed from Achamoth, so that indeed the rest of the stuffing might not spoil. For, into the figure of the primal tetrad, they pack him with four substances: the spiritual of Achamoth, the animal of the Demiurge, the inexpressible corporeal, and that of the Savior, that is, the dove-like. And the Savior indeed remained in Christ impassible, inviolable, incomprehensible. Finally, when it comes to the arrest, he departed from him during the inquiry of Pilate. Likewise, the seed of the mother did not admit injuries, being equally insubmissive and not even known to the Demiurge himself. But the animal and fleshly Christ suffers, as a sketch of the higher Christ, who, in forming Achamoth by a substantial, not a cognitive form, had leaned upon the Cross, that is, Horos. Thus they force all things into images, clearly being themselves also imaginary Christians.