The Stromata, or Miscellanies

Now the sacrifice which is acceptable to God is unswerving abstraction from the body and its passions. This is the really true piety. And is not, on this account, philosophy rightly called by Socrates the practice of Death? For he who neither employs his eyes in the exercise of thought, nor draws anything from his other senses, but with pure mind itself applies to objects, practices the true philosophy. This is, then, the import of the silence of five years prescribed by Pythagoras, which he enjoined on his disciples; that, abstracting themselves from the objects of sense, they might with the mind alone contemplate the Deity. It was from Moses that the chief of the Greeks drew these philosophical tenets. For he commands holocausts to be skinned and divided into parts. For the gnostic soul must be consecrated to the light, stript of the integuments of matter, devoid of the frivolousness of the body and of all the passions, which are acquired through vain and lying opinions, and divested of the lusts of the flesh. But the most of men, clothed with what is perishable, like cockles, and rolled all round in a ball in their excesses, like hedgehogs, entertain the same ideas of the blessed and incorruptible God as of themselves. But it has escaped their notice, though they be near us, that God has bestowed on us ten thousand things in which He does not share: birth, being Himself unborn; food, He wanting nothing; and growth, He being always equal; and long life and immortality, He being immortal and incapable of growing old. Wherefore let no one imagine that hands, and feet, and mouth, and eyes, and going in and coming out, and resentments and threats, are said by the Hebrews to be attributes of God. By no means; but that certain of these appellations are used more sacredly in an allegorical sense, which, as the discourse proceeds, we shall explain at the proper time.

“Wisdom of all medicines is the Panacea,” writes Callimachus in the Epigrams. “And one becomes wise from another, both in past times and at present,” says Bacchylides in the Pœans; “for it is not very easy to find the portals of unutterable words.” Beautifully, therefore, Isocrates writes in the Panathenaic, having put the question, “Who, then, are well trained?” adds, “First, those who manage well the things which occur each day, whose opinion jumps with opportunity, and is able for the most part to hit on what is beneficial; then those who behave becomingly and rightly to those who approach them, who take lightly and easily annoyances and molestations offered by others, but conduct themselves as far as possible, to those with whom they have intercourse, with consummate care and moderation; further, those who have the command of their pleasures, and are not too much overcome by misfortunes, but conduct themselves in the midst of them with manliness, and in a way worthy of the nature which we share; fourth— and this is the greatest— those who are not corrupted by prosperity, and are not put beside themselves, or made haughty, but continue in the class of sensible people.” Then he puts on the top-stone of the discourse: “Those who have the disposition of their soul well suited not to one only of these things, but to them all— those I assert to be wise and perfect men, and to possess all the virtues.”

Do you see how the Greeks deify the gnostic life (though not knowing how to become acquainted with it)? And what knowledge it is, they know not even in a dream. If, then, it is agreed among us that knowledge is the food of reason, “blessed truly are they,” according to the Scripture, “who hunger and thirst after truth: for they shall be filled” with everlasting food. In the most wonderful harmony with these words, Euripides, the philosopher of the drama, is found in the following words—making allusion, I know not how, at once to the Father and the Son:—

“To you, the Lord of all, I bring
Cakes and libations too, O Zeus,
Or Hades would you choose be called;
Do accept my offering of all fruits,
Rare, full, poured forth.”

For a whole burnt-offering and rare sacrifice for us is Christ. And that unwittingly he mentions the Saviour, he will make plain, as he adds:—

“For you who, 'midst the heavenly gods,
Jove's sceptre sway'st, dost also share
The rule of those on earth.”

Then he says expressly:—

“Send light to human souls that fain would know
Whence conflicts spring, and what the root of ills,
And of the blessed gods to whom due rites
Of sacrifice we needs must pay, that so
We may from troubles find repose.”

It is not then without reason that in the mysteries that obtain among the Greeks, lustrations hold the first place; as also the laver among the Barbarians. After these are the minor mysteries, which have some foundation of instruction and of preliminary preparation for what is to come after; and the great mysteries, in which nothing remains to be learned of the universe, but only to contemplate and comprehend nature and things.

We shall understand the mode of purification by confession, and that of contemplation by analysis, advancing by analysis to the first notion, beginning with the properties underlying it; abstracting from the body its physical properties, taking away the dimension of depth, then that of breadth, and then that of length. For the point which remains is a unit, so to speak, having position; from which if we abstract position, there is the conception of unity.

If, then, abstracting all that belongs to bodies and things called incorporeal, we cast ourselves into the greatness of Christ, and thence advance into immensity by holiness, we may reach somehow to the conception of the Almighty, knowing not what He is, but what He is not. And form and motion, or standing, or a throne, or place, or right hand or left, are not at all to be conceived as belonging to the Father of the universe, although it is so written. But what each of these means will be shown in its proper place. The First Cause is not then in space, but above both space, and time, and name, and conception.

Wherefore also Moses says, “Show Yourself to me,” — intimating most clearly that God is not capable of being taught by man, or expressed in speech, but to be known only by His own power. For inquiry was obscure and dim; but the grace of knowledge is from Him by the Son. Most clearly Solomon shall testify to us, speaking thus: “The prudence of man is not in me: but God gives me wisdom, and I know holy things.” Now Moses, describing allegorically the divine prudence, called it the tree of life planted in Paradise; which Paradise may be the world in which all things proceeding from creation grow. In it also the Word blossomed and bore fruit, being “made flesh,” and gave life to those “who had tasted of His graciousness;” since it was not without the wood of the tree that He came to our knowledge. For our life was hung on it, in order that we might believe. And Solomon again says: “She is a tree of immortality to those who take hold of her.” “Behold, I set before your face life and death, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in His ways, and hear His voice, and trust in life. But if you transgress the statutes and the judgments which I have given you, you shall be destroyed with destruction. For this is life, and the length of your days, to love the Lord your God.”