and that this God-Who-Was-Not willed to make a world[309]. This act of volition, exercised in Hippolytus’ words “without will or mind or consciousness[310],” produced the Seed of the World which contained within itself all the future universe, as the grain of mustard-seed contains the roots, stem, branches, leaves, and innumerable other seeds of the future plant[311]. In this Seed was “a Sonhood, threefold in all things, of the same substance with the God-Who-Was-Not and generated from non-existing things[312].” Of this threefold Sonhood, one part was subtle or finely divided like aether or air, one coarser, and one which needed purification; and he goes on to describe how the finer part immediately upon the projection of the Seed, burst forth and flew upwards until it reached the Non-Existent-One, towards whom, Hippolytus says, “every nature strains,” on account of “its beauty and majesty[313].” The coarser part of the Sonhood attempted to imitate the first, but failed to do so until helped by the Holy Spirit who served it as the wing does the bird; but although the second Sonhood thereby attained beatitude, the Holy Spirit could not enter into the Godhead along with him “because it (or she) was of a different substance from him and had nothing of his nature[314].” She was therefore left near it, purified and sanctified by her contact with the Sonhood as a jar which has once contained perfume still preserves its savour[315]. As for the third Sonhood, it remained in the Seed of the World, which thereafter gave birth to the Great Archon or Ruler, who is the Demiurge or Architect of the Universe and fashions all cosmic things. This Archon makes out of the things below him a Son who by the arrangement of the God-Who-Was-Not is greater and wiser than himself, whence the Archon causes him to sit at his right hand[316]. This Son is in effect Christ, who reveals to the Archon the existence of the worlds above him, and sends the Gospel (here personified) into the world so that by it the third Sonhood might be purified and thus raised to union with the God-Who-Was-Not.