Philosophumena; or, The refutation of all heresies, Volume IHippolytus, Antipope
Philosophy
Philosophumena; or, The refutation of all heresies, Volume I
Hippolytus, Antipope
Christian heresies -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Occultism; Philosophy, Ancient
But the same one is called by the Phrygians “unfruitful.” For he is
unfruitful when he is fleshly and performs the desire of the flesh.
This, he says, is the saying: “Every tree which bringeth not forth
good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.”[124] For these fruits,
he says, are only the rational, the living man who enter by the third
gate.[125] They say, indeed: “Ye who eat dead things and make living
ones, what will ye make if ye eat living things?”[126] For they say
that words[127] and thoughts and men are living things cast down by
that Unportrayable One into the form [Sidenote: p. 169.] below. This,
he says, is what he means: “Throw not your holy things to the dogs nor
pearls to the swine,”[128] saying that the intercourse of woman with
man is the work of dogs and swine.
But this same one, he says, the Phrygians call goatherd, not because,
he says, he feeds goats and he-goats, as the psychic man calls
them, but because, he says, he is Aipolos, that is, he who is ever
revolving[129] and turning about and driving the whole cosmos in its
circumvolution. For to revolve is to turn about and to change the
position of things, whence, he says, the two centres of the heaven men
call Poles. And the poet says:--
“What unerring ancient of the sea turns hither
The Immortal Egyptian Proteus.”--
(_Odyssey_, IV, 384.)
He[130] is not betrayed (by Eidothea), he says, but turns himself
about, as it were, and goes to and fro. He says, too, that cities
wherein we dwell are called πόλεις, because [Sidenote: p. 170.] we turn
and go about in them. Thus, he says, the Phrygians call him Aipolos,
who turns everything always in every direction and changes it into
what it should be. But the Phrygians also call the same one “of many
fruits,” because (the Naassene writer) says, “the children of the
desolate are more in number than those of her who has a husband”;[131]
that is, the deathless things which are born again and ever remain are
many, if few are those which are born (once); but all the things of
the flesh, he says, are corruptible, even if those which are born are
many. Wherefore, he says, Rachel mourned for her children and would
not be comforted when mourning over them, for she knew, he says, that
they were not.[132] And Jeremiah wails for the Jerusalem below, not the
city in Phœnicia,[133] but the mortal generation below. For Jeremiah,
he says, also knew the Perfect Man who has been born again of water and
the spirit and is not fleshly. The same Jeremiah indeed said: “He is a
man, and who shall know him?”[134] Thus, he says, the knowledge of the
Perfect Man is very deep and hard to comprehend. For the beginning of
perfection, he says, is the knowledge of man; but the knowledge of God
is completed perfection.
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