The Gnostics and Their Remains

regards the excretion and the dispersion from the same, the Scripture hath spoken fully and sufficiently for the instruction of all such as be brought to their perfect form: according to the saying, 'All flesh is grass, and the glory thereof as the flower of the grass; the grass withereth, the flower thereof fadeth, but the Word of the Lord endureth for ever.' Now this Word of the Lord, says Simon, is the word that is produced in the mouth, that is, Speech; for the 'place of its birth is nowhere else.

"To be brief therefore: since, according to Simon, the Fire is of the aforesaid nature, and all things that be, both visible and invisible, and vocal and voiceless, and numbered and unnumbered, are this Fire, therefore in his 'Great Revelation' he terms this the Fountain-head of all, the Great Intellectual, as constituting each individual of all things in their infinite order, which are capable of being conceived in the mind, and likewise of speaking, of thinking, and of acting. As Empedocles hath it--

"'Through Earth, the Earth perceive, through Water, Water;
Through Air scan Air; through Fire the hidden Fire;
Through Love view Love; through Discord, hateful Discord.'

"For Simon held that all the members of this Fire, both the Visible and the Invisible, possessed intelligence and a portion of mind. The world that is created, consequently, according to him, comes from the untreated Fire. The commencement of its creation was in this wise: six 'Radicals' (lit. Roots), the First Principles of the beginning of Creation, were taken by the Begotten One out of the Principle of that Fire; for he asserts that these Six Radicals emanated by pairs out of the Fire. These Six Radicals he names, 'Mind and Intelligence, Voice and Name, Reason and Thought.' And there exists in these Radicals taken together the whole of the 'Boundless Power,' but existing in potentiality, not in activity. And this Boundless Power Simon calls 'He who standeth, hath stood, and shall stand;' who, if he shall be figured (invested with form) when he is in those Six Powers, shall be in reality, force, power and perfection, the one and the same with the Unbegotten Boundless Power. But if he shall abide in potentiality

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