Chapter XVI.—Achamoth Purified from All Impurities of Her Passion by the Paraclete, Acting Through Soter, Who Out of the Above-Mentioned Impurities Arranges Matter, Separating Its Evil from the Better Qualities.

She, too, resorts to prayers, after the manner of her mother.  But Christ, Who now felt a dislike to quit the Pleroma, appoints the Paraclete as his deputy. To her, therefore, he despatches Soter,180    Saviour: another title of their Paraclete. (who must be the same as Jesus, to whom the Father imparted the supreme power over the whole body of the Æons, by subjecting them all to him, so that “by him,” as the apostle says, “all things were created”181    Col. i. 16.), with a retinue and cortege of contemporary angels, and (as one may suppose) with the dozen fasces. Hereupon Achamoth, being quite struck with the pomp of his approach, immediately covered herself with a veil, moved at first with a dutiful feeling of veneration and modesty; but afterwards she surveys him calmly, and his prolific equipage.182    Fructiferumque suggestum. With such energies as she had derived from the contemplation, she meets him with the salutation, Κύριε, χαῖρε (“Hail, Lord”)! Upon this, I suppose, he receives her, confirms and conforms her in knowledge, as well as cleanses183    Expumicat. her from all the outrages of Passion, without, however, utterly severing them, with an indiscriminateness like that which had happened in the casualties which befell her mother. For such vices as had become inveterate and confirmed by practice he throws together; and when he had consolidated them in one mass, he fixes them in a separate body, so as to compose the corporeal condition of Matter, extracting out of her inherent, incorporeal passion such an aptitude of nature184    Habilitatem atque naturam. We have treated this as a “hendiadys.” as might qualify it to attain to a reciprocity of bodily substances,185    Æquiparantias corpulentiarum. which should emulate one another, so that a twofold condition of the substances might be arranged; one full of evil through its faults, the other susceptible of passion from conversion.  This will prove to be Matter, which has set us in battle array against Hermogenes, and all others who presume to teach that God made all things out of Matter, not out of nothing.

CAPUT XVI.

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Convertitur enim ad preces et ipsa more materno. Sed Christus, quem jam pigebat rursus extra Pleroma proficisci, vicarium praefecit Paracletum. Soterem (hic erit Jesus, largito ei patre universorum Aeonum summam potestatem , subjiciendis eis 0570A omnibus; uti in ipso secundum Apostolum omnia conderentur) ad eam emittit cum officio atque comitatu coaetaneorum angelorum; credas et cum duodecim fascibus. Ibi demum adventu pompatico ejus concussa Achamoth, protinus velamentum sibi obduxit, ex officio primo venerationis et verecundiae: dehinc contemplatur eum, fructiferumque suggestum. Quibus inde conceperat viribus occurrit illi, Κύριε! Χαῖρε! Hic opinor susceptam ille confirmat, atque conformat agnitione jam , et ab omnibus injuriis Passionis expumicat, non eadem negligentia in exterminium discretis, quae acciderat in casibus matris. Sedenim exercitata vitia, et usu viriosa confudit: atque ita massaliter solidata, defixit seorsum in materiae corporalem 0570B paraturam, commutans ex incorporali passione indita habilitatem atque naturam , qua pervenire mox posset in aemulas aequiparantias corpulentiarum, ut duplex substantiarum conditio ordinaretur: de vitiis, pessima; de conversione, passionalis. Haec erit materia quae nos commisit cum Hermogene, caeterisque 0571A qui Deum ex materia, non ex nihilo operatum cuncta, praesumunt .