9. They have fallen into error, too, respecting Zoe, by maintaining that she was produced in the sixth place, when it behoved her to take precedence of all [the rest], since God is life, and incorruption, and truth. And these and such like attributes have not been produced according to a gradual scale of descent, but they are names of those perfections which always exist in God, so far as it is possible and proper for men to hear and to speak of God. For with the name of God the following words will harmonize: intelligence, word, life, incorruption, truth, wisdom, goodness, and such like. And neither can any one maintain that intelligence is more ancient than life, for intelligence itself is life; nor that life is later than intelligence, so that He who is the intellect of all, that is God, should at one time have been destitute of life. But if they affirm that life was indeed [previously] in the Father, but was produced in the sixth place in order that the Word might live, surely it ought long before, [according to such reasoning,] to have been sent forth, in the fourth place, that Nous might have life; and still further, even before Him, [it should have been] with Bythus, that their Bythus might live. For to reckon Sige, indeed, along with their Propator, and to assign her to Him as His consort, while they do not join Zoe to the number,--is not this to surpass all other madness?
10. Again, as to the second production which proceeds from these [Æons who have been mentioned],--that, namely, of Homo and Ecclesia,--their very fathers, falsely styled Gnostics, strive among themselves, each one seeking to make good his own opinions, and thus convicting themselves of being wicked thieves. They maintain that it is more suitable to [the theory of] production-- as being, in fact, truth-like--that the Word was produced by man, and not man by the Word; and that man existed prior to the Word, and that this is really He who is God over all. And thus it is, as I have previously remarked, that heaping together with a kind of plausibility all human feelings, and mental exercises, and formation of intentions, and utterances of words, they have lied with no plausibility at all against God. For while they ascribe the things which happen to men, and whatsoever they recognise themselves as experiencing, to the divine reason, they seem to those who are ignorant of God to make statements suitable enough. And by these human passions, drawing away their intelligence, while they describe the origin and production of the Word of God in the fifth place, they assert that thus they teach wonderful mysteries, unspeakable and sublime, known to no one but themselves. It was, [they affirm,] concerning these that the Lord said, "Seek, and ye shall find," [3050] that is, that they should inquire how Nous and Aletheia proceeded from Bythus and Sage; whether Logos and Zoe again derive their origin from these and then, whether Anthropos and Ecclesia proceed from Logos and Zoe.
[3043] This sentence appears to us, after long study, totally untranslateable. The general meaning seems to be, that whatever name is given to mental acts, whether they are called Ennoea, Enthymesis, or by whatever other appellation, they are all but exercises of the same fundamental power, styled Nous. Compare the following section.
[3044] "The following," says Harvey, "may be considered to be consecutive steps in the evolution of logos as a psychological entity. Ennoea, conception; Enthymesis, intention; Sensation, thought; Consilium, reasoning; Cogitationis Examinatio, judgment; in Mente Perseverans, Logos endiathetos; Emissibile Verbum, Logos prophoikos."
[3045] That is, lest He should be thought destitute of power, as having been unable to prevent evil from having a place in creation.
[3046] Isa. lv. 8.
[3047] The Latin expression is "similimembrius," which some regard as the translation of homoiokolos, and others of homoiomeres; but in either case the meaning will be as given above.
[3048] That is, His Nous, Ennoea, etc., can have no independent existence. The text fluctuates between "emittitur" and "emittetur."
[3049] That is, in human beings no doubt, thought (Nous) precedes speech (Logos).
[3050] Matt. vii. 7.