For some do not interpret
this Scripture of the Lord, although He also bore flesh, but of the
perfect man and the gnostic, inferior in comparison with the angels in
time, and by reason of the vesture [of the body]. I call then wisdom
nothing but science, since life differs not from life. For to live
is common to the mortalnature, that is to man, with that to which
has been vouchsafed immortality; as also the faculty of contemplation
and of self-restraint, one of the two being more excellent. On this
ground Pythagoras seems to me to have said that God alone is wise,
since also the apostle writes in the Epistle to the Romans, “For
the obedience of the faith among all nations, being made known to the
only wiseGod through JesusChrist;”2683
That, then, which is true being clear to God, forthwith generates
truth. And the gnostic loves the truth. “Go,” it is said,
“to the ant, thou sluggard, and be the disciple of the bee;”
thus speaks Solomon.2685
For if there is one function belonging to the
peculiarnature of each creature, alike of the ox, and horse, and dog,
what shall we say is the peculiar function of man? He is like, it appears
to me, the Centaur, a Thessalian figment, compounded of a rational and
irrational part, of soul and body. Well, the body tills the ground,
and hastes to it; but the soul is raised to God: trained in the true
philosophy, it speeds to its kindred above, turning away from the lusts
of the body, and besides these, from toil and fear, although we have
shown that patience and fearbelong to the good man. For if “by
the law is the knowledge of sin,”2686
we oppose them. For when you
take away the cause of fear, sin, you have taken away fear; and much
more, punishment, when you have taken away that which gives rise to
lust. “For the law is not made for the just
man,”2689
says the
Scripture. Well, then, says Heraclitus, “They would not have known
the name of Justice if these things had not been.” And Socrates
says, “that the law was not made for the sake of the good.”
But the cavillers did not know even this, as the apostle says, “that
he who loveth his brother worketh not evil;” for this, “Thou
shalt not kill, thou shalt not commitadultery, thou shalt not steal; and
if there be any other commandment, it is comprehended in the word, Thou
shall love thy neighbour as thyself.”2690
And “if he that loveth
his neighbour worketh no evil,” and if “every commandment is
comprehended in this, the loving our neighbour,” the commandments,
by menacing with fear, worklove, not hatred. Wherefore the law is
productive of the emotion of fear. “So that the law is holy,”
and in truth “spiritual,”2692
The assertion, then,
may be hazarded, that it has been shown that death is the fellowship
of the soul in a state of sin with the body; and life the separation
from sin. And many are the stakes and ditches of lust which impede us,
and the pits of wrath and anger which must be overleaped, and all the
machinations we must avoid of those who plot against us,—who would
no longer see the knowledge of God “through a glass.”
“The half of virtue the far-seeing Zeus takesFrom man, when he reduces him to a state of slavery.”
As slaves the Scripture views
those “under sin” and “sold to sin,” the lovers
of pleasure and of the body; and beasts rather than men, “those who
have become like to cattle, horses, neighing after their neighbours’
wives.”2694
The licentious is “the lustful ass,” the
covetous is the “savage wolf,” and the deceiver is “a
serpent.” The severance, therefore, of the soul from the body,
made a life-long study, produces in the philosopher gnostic alacrity, so
that he is easily able to bear naturaldeath, which is the dissolution
of the chains which bind the soul to the body. “For the world
is crucified to me, and I to the world,” the [apostle] says;
“and now I live, though in the flesh, as having my conversation in
heaven.”2695
