38. Now Apelles who [sprang] from among these men, says thus:--There is a certain good God as Marcion supposed; but he who created all things is [only] just; and there is a third [God] who spoke to Moses, and yet a fourth, a cause of evil. And he names these angels and speaks ill of the Law and the Prophets, deeming the Scriptures of human authorship and false. And he picks out of the Gospels and Epistles the things favourable to him. Yet he clings to the discourses of a certain Philumena as the manifestations[192] [Sidenote: p. 394.] of a prophetess. And he says that the Christ came down from the powers on high, _i. e._ from the Good One and was the son of that One, and was not begotten from a virgin, nor did He appear bodiless;[193] but that taking parts from every substance[194] of the All, He made a body, that is from hot and cold and wet and dry. And that in this body He lived unnoticed by the cosmic authorities during the time that He spent in the cosmos. And moreover that having been crucified[195] by the Jews He died, and after three days rose again and appeared to the disciples showing the marks of the nails and [the wound] in his side, and thereby convinced them that He existed and was not a phantom but was incarnate. The flesh [Apelles] says, which He showed, He gave back to the earth whence was its substance, and He desired nothing of others, but merely used [the flesh] for a season. He gave back to each its own, having loosed again the bond of the body, _i. e._ the hot to the hot, the cold to the cold, the wet to the wet and the dry to the dry,[196] and thus passed to the presence of the good Father, leaving the seed of life to the world to those who believe through the disciples.[197] [Sidenote: p. 395.] 39. It seems to us that we have set forth sufficiently these things also. But since we have decided to leave unrefuted no doctrines taught by any [heretic], let us see what has been excogitated by the Docetae. FOOTNOTES