Heracleon, and to which Tischendorf pointedly refers, is as follows: "But if it was not produced, but was generated by itself, then that which is void is both like, and brother to, and of the same honour with, that Father who has before been mentioned by Valentinus; but it is really more ancient, having existed long before, and is more exalted than the rest of the Æons of Ptolemseus himself, and of Heracleon, and all the rest who hold these views."(1) We fail to recognize anything special, here, of the kind inferred by Tischendorf, in the way in which mention is made of the two later Gnostics. If anything be clear, on the contrary, it is that a distinction is drawn between Valentinus and Ptolemaeus and Heracleon, and that Irenæus points out inconsistencies between the doctrines of the founder and those of his later followers. It is quite irrelevant to insist merely, as Tischendorf does, that Irenæus and subsequent writers represent Ptolemaeus and Heracleon and other Gnostics of his time as of "the school" of Valentinus. The question simply is, whether in doing so they at all imply that these men were not contemporaries of Irenæus, or necessarily assign their period of independent activity to the lifetime of Valentinus, as Tischendorf appears to argue? Most certainly they do not, and Tischendorf does not attempt to offer any evidence that they do so. We may perceive how utterly worthless such a fact is for the purpose of affixing an early date by merely considering the quotation which Tischendorf himself makes from Hippolytus: "Valentinus, therefore, and Heracleon and Ptolemæus, and {214} the whole school of these, disciples of Pythagoras and Plato.... "(l) If the statement that men are of a certain school involves the supposition of coincidence of time, the three Gnostic leaders must be considered contemporaries of Pythagoras or Plato, whose disciples they are said to be. Again, if the order in which names are mentioned, as Teschendorf contends by inference throughout his whole argument, is to involve strict similar sequence of date, the principle applied to the whole of the early writers would lead to the most ridiculous confusion. Teschendorf quotes Epiphanius: "Cerdo follows these (the Ophites, Kainites, Sethiani), and Heracleon."