Chapter XXI.—The Vanity as Well as Ignorance of the Demiurge. Absurd Results from So Imperfect a Condition.

Meanwhile you must believe214    Tenendum. that Sophia has the surnames of earth and of Mother—“Mother-Earth,” of course—and (what may excite your laughter still more heartily) even Holy Spirit. In this way they have conferred all honour on that female, I suppose even a beard, not to say other things. Besides,215    Alioquin. the Demiurge had so little mastery over things,216    Adeo rerum non erat compos. on the score,217    Censu. you must know,218    Scilicet. of his inability to approach spiritual essences, (constituted as he was) of animal elements, that, imagining himself to be the only being, he uttered this soliloquy: “I am God, and beside me there is none else.”219    Isa. xlv. 5; xlvi. 9. But for all that, he at least was aware that he had not himself existed before. He understood, therefore, that he had been created, and that there must be a creator of a creature of some sort or other.  How happens it, then, that he seemed to himself to be the only being, notwithstanding his uncertainty, and although he had, at any rate, some suspicion of the existence of some creator?

CAPUT XXI.

Interim tenendum, Sophiam cognominari et Terram et Matrem, quasi Matrem terram, et quod magis rideas, etiam Spiritum Sanctum. Ita omnem illi honorem contulerunt foeminae, puto et barbam, ne dixerim caetera. Alioquin Demiurgus adeo rerum non 0575B erat compos, de animalibus scilicet censu invaletudinis 0576A spiritalia accedere, ut se solum, ratus, concionaretur: Ego Deus, et absque me non est (Esa. XLV, 6): certe tamen non fuisse se retro sciebat. Ergo et factum intelligebat, et factitatorem facti esse quemcumque. Quomodo ergo solus sibi videbatur, etsi non certus, saltem suspectus de aliquo factitatore ?