The generic law of the Whole was the first Intelligence of all The second [creation?] was the poured-forth Chaos of the First-born And the third and labouring soul obtains the law as her portion Wherefore clothed in watery form [Behold] The loved one subject to toil [and] death Now, having lordship, she beholds the Light Then cast forth to piteous state, she weeps. Now she weeps and now rejoices Now she weeps and now is judged Now she is judged and now is dying Now no outlet is found, the unhappy one Into the labyrinth of woes has wandered. But Jesus said: Father, behold! A strife of woes upon earth From thy spirit has fallen But he [_i.e._ man?] seeks to fly the malignant chaos And knows not how to break it up. For his sake, send me, O Father; Having the seals, I will go down Through entire aeons I will pass, All mysteries I will open And the forms of the gods I will display, The secrets of the holy Way Called knowledge [Gnosis], I will hand down. It is probable that this psalm really did once contain a summary of the essential parts of the Ophite teaching. In whatever way we may construe the first three lines, which were probably misunderstood by the scribe of the text before us, there can hardly be a doubt that they disclose a triad of three powers engaged in the work of salvation[217]. The fall of Sophia seems also to be alluded to in unmistakable terms, while the Mission of Jesus concludes the poem. Jesus, not here distinguished from the Christos or Heavenly Messenger of the Trinity, is described as sent to the earth for the purpose of bringing hither certain “mysteries” which will put man on the sacred path of Gnosis and thus bring about the redemption of his heavenly part from the bonds of matter. These “mysteries” were, as appears in Hippolytus and elsewhere, sacraments comprising baptism, unction, and a ceremony at least outwardly resembling the Christian Eucharist or Lord’s Supper[218]. These had the magical effect, already attributed by the Orphics to their own homophagous feast, of changing the recipient’s place in the scale of being and transforming him _ipso facto_ into something higher than man. That the celebration of these mysteries was attended with the deepest secrecy accounts at once for their being nowhere described in detail by Hippolytus’ Ophite author, and also for the stories which were current among all the heresiological writers of filthy and obscene rites[219]. Fortified by these mysteries, and by the abstinences and the continence which they entailed—at all events theoretically, and as a counsel of perfection—the Ophite could attend, as we have seen, all the ceremonies of the still pagan Anatolians or of the Christian Church indifferently, conscious that he alone understood the inner meaning of either.