Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 5.djvu/222

case of Pelops, whose flesh was cut in pieces by the Father, and then collected and brought together, and compacted anew by all the gods,^[1] did she in this way indicate Pandora; and these men having their consciences seared^[2] by her, declaring, as they maintain, the very same things, are [proved] of the same family and spirit as the others.

Chap. xxii.—The thirty Æons are not typified by the fact that Christ was baptized in His thirtieth year: He did not suffer in the twelfth month after His baptism, but was more than fifty years old when He died.

1. I have shown that the number thirty fails them in every respect; too few Æons, as they represent them, being at one time found within the Pleroma, and then again too many [to correspond with that number]. There are not, therefore, thirty Æons, nor did the Saviour come to be baptized when He was thirty years old, for this reason, that He might show forth the thirty silent^[3] Æons of their system, otherwise they must first of all separate and eject [the Saviour] Himself from the Pleroma of all. Moreover, they affirm that He suffered in the twelfth month, so that He continued to preach for one year after His baptism; and they endeavour to establish this point out of the prophet (for it is written, "To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of retribution"^[4]), being truly blind, inasmuch as they affirm they have found out the mysteries of Bythus, yet not understanding that which is called by Isaiah the acceptable year of the Lord,

which he suggests, besides being without authority, does not clear away the obscurity which hangs upon the sentence.

1. Comp. [[Author:Pindar|]], Olymp. i. 38, etc.
2. "Compuncti," supposed to correspond to κεκαυτηριασμένοι; see 1 Tim. iv. 2. The whole passage is difficult and obscure.
3. Harvey wishes, without any authority, to substitute "tacitus" for "tacitos," but there is no necessity for alteration. Irenæus is here playing upon the word, according to a practice in which he delights, and quietly scoffs at the Sige (Silence) of the heretics by styling those Æons silent who were derived from her.
4. Isa. lxi. 2.