16. "For so long as thou callest not thyself Mine, I am not what I am. But if thou hearkenest unto Me, hearing, thou, too, shalt be as I [am], and I shall be what I was, when thou [art] as I am with Myself; for from this thou art. 17. "Pay no attention, then, to the many, and them that are without the mystery think little of; for know that I am wholly with the Father and the Father with Me. 18. [101 (xv.)] "Nothing, then, of the things which they will say of Me have I suffered; nay that Passion as well which I showed unto thee and the rest, by dancing [it], I will that it be called a mystery. 19. "What thou art, thou seest; this did I show unto thee. But what I am, this I alone know, [and] none else. 20. "What, then, is Mine suffer Me to keep; but what is thine see thou through Me. To see Me as I really am I said is not possible, but only what thou art able to recognise, as being kin [to Me] (or of the same Race). 21. "Thou hearest that I suffered; yet I did not suffer: that I suffered not; yet I did suffer: that I was pierced; yet was I not smitten: that I was hanged; yet I was not hanged: that blood flowed from me; yet it did not flow: and in a word the things they say about Me I had not, and the things they do not say those I suffered. Now what they are I will riddle for thee; for I know that thou wilt understand. 22. "Understand, therefore, in Me, the slaying of a Word (Logos), the piercing of a Word, the blood of a Word, the wounding of a Word, the hanging of a Word, the passion of a Word, the nailing (or putting together) of a Word, the death of a Word. 23. "And thus I speak separating off the man. First, then, understand the Word, then shalt thou understand the Lord, and in the third place [only] the man and what he suffered." 24. [102 (xvi.)] And having said these things to me, and others which I know not how to say as He Himself would have it, He was taken up, no one of the multitude beholding Him. 25. And when I descended I laughed at them all, when they told Me what they did concerning Him, firmly possessed in myself of this [truth] only, that the Lord contrived all things symbolically, and according to [His] dispensation for the conversion and salvation of man. COMMENTS.