43. For the blessed elder Irenæus having come forward [Sidenote: p. 309.] very openly for (their) refutation has set forth these baptisms and redemptions saying in rounder terms what those who traffic[195] with them do; and if some of these deny that they have thus received them (it is because) they learn to always deny.[196] Wherefore we have been careful to enquire very sedulously and to find out minutely what they hand down in the first baptism as they call it, and what in the second which they call Redemption: and no unutterable doing of theirs has escaped us. But let us abandon[197] these things to Valentinus and his school. Marcus, however, imitating his teacher himself also concocts a vision, thinking thus to glorify himself. For Valentinus claims that he himself saw a new-born infant, hearing whom he enquired who he might be. And (the infant) answered declaring himself to be the Logos. Thereupon (Valentinus) having added a certain tragic myth, wishes from this to construct the heresy which he had already taken in hand.[198] With like audacity, Marcus declares that the Tetrad came before him in feminine shape; because, he says, the cosmos could not bear its male form.[199] And [Sidenote: p. 310.] she disclosed to him what she was, and the coming into being of all things, which she had never yet revealed to any either of gods or men (but) announced it to him alone, saying thus:--when the First (Being) who has no father,[200] the Inconceivable and Substanceless One, who is neither male nor female, willed the ineffable to be spoken and the invisible to take shape, He opened His mouth and a Logos like unto Him went forth. Who, standing beside Him, showed Him what He was, Himself having appeared in the shape of the Invisible One. And the utterance of the name was on this wise. He spoke the first word of the name which was the beginning and was the syllable[201] of four letters. And He added to it the second, and it also was of four letters. And He spoke the third, which was of ten letters and then the fourth, and this was of twelve. There came to pass therefore, the pronunciation of the whole name of thirty letters, but of four syllables. But each of the elements has its own letters[202] and its own character,[203] and its own pronunciation and figures and images, nor is there any of them which perceives the form of another. [Sidenote: p. 311.] Nor does it see that it is an element, nor know the pronunciation of its neighbour; but each sounds as if pronouncing the whole, and believes itself to be naming the [universe].[204] For while each of them is a part of the universe, it thinks its own sound names as it were the whole, and does not cease to sound until it has arrived at the last single-tongued letter of the last element. Then he says that the return of the universals (to the Deity)[205] will come to pass when all things coming together into one letter shall echo one and the same sound. He supposes that the likeness