Before considering this, however, it will be well to see if our text was so entirely unknown to the Fathers as has been generally assumed. We know from Eusebius that it was the policy of the triumphant Church after the pact with Constantine to destroy all the writings of the heretics, and that this policy was continuous is shown by the advice given by St. Augustine to burn, without regard for their volume or beauty, all the manuscripts of the Manichæans. Hence we can hardly expect quotations to be as direct and as accurate as those which the Fathers made, as I have said elsewhere, from the different summaries of heathen philosophers then current, and could not have been suppressed by them had they tried to do so. But there are many allusions to phrases and words peculiar to our MS. which seem to support the view that it was used in some form or other by the early heresiologists and especially by Tertullian, who both as a lawyer striving to prove his case at all hazards and as a rebel (as he finally proved to be) against ecclesiastical discipline, would be less likely to be cautious in such matters than high officers of the Church like Irenæus and Hippolytus. We find Tertullian in his attack on the Valentinians quoting a remark about those who seek God in simplicity of heart from “the Sophia not of Valentinus, but of Solomon.” The quotation is of course from the extra-Canonical _Book of Wisdom_ to be found in the Apocrypha of the Thirty-nine Articles; and it is, as Amélineau has well said, most natural that a book should be compared to a book. But it would be contrary to the whole tenour of Valentinian ideas as they have come down to us, that the “æon” or emanation or goddess Sophia should be supposed to write books, and it results that Tertullian must have been referring to a book by Valentinus bearing the title of _Sophia_.[102] We may fairly look, then, on the hypothesis just stated, in our MS. for expressions attributed by Tertullian to Valentinus, and of these we find a fair number. Thus in the same book _Adversus Valentinianos_ (c. 27), Tertullian says that the Valentinians spoke of Christ coming upon Jesus “in the form of a dove,” which are the very words which the opening of our Second Document puts into the mouth of St. John. Later, he speaks of the Pneumatici or Spiritual Ones “despoiling” themselves by putting off their earthly souls, which is the expression used _ad nauseam_ in the same Second Document for the process used by the higher Powers and by Jesus Himself with regard to these heavenly natures. So, again, in the treatise _de Resurrectione Carnis_ (c. 32), Tertullian speaks of the flesh of man being created _ex faecibus terrae_ “from the dregs of the earth,” which is the explanation made by Jesus to St. Andrew in the last words of the same Document; and the parallel is more close because one or other of the many Sophias in the Valentinian system was always identified with the earth. Again, in the treatise _de Scorpiace_ (c.