of her infirmity (which they affirm to fit in with their figment) been mentioned, but, lo! another woman was also healed, after suffering in like manner for eighteen years; concerning whom the Lord said, "And ought not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound during eighteen years, to be set free on the Sabbath-day?"[1] If, then, the former was a type of the twelfth Æon that suffered, the latter should also be a type of the eighteenth Æon in suffering. But they cannot maintain this; otherwise their primary and original Ogdoad will be included in the number of Æons who suffered together. Moreover, there was also a certain other person[2] healed by the Lord, after he had suffered for elght-and-thirty years: they ought therefore to affirm that the Æon who occupies the thirty-eighth place suffered. For if they assert that the things which were done by the Lord were types of what took place in the Pleroma, the type ought to be preserved throughout. But they can neither adapt to their fictitious system the case of her who was cured after eighteen years, nor of him who was cured after thirty-eight years. Now, it is in every way absurd and inconsistent to declare that the Saviour preserved the type in certain cases, while He did not do so in others. The type of the woman, therefore, [with the issue of blood] is shown to have no analogy to their system of Æons."[3]
Chap. xxiv.—Folly of the arguments derived by the heretics from numbers, letters, and syllables.
1. This very thing, too, still further demonstrates their opinion false, and their fictitious system untenable, that they endeavour to bring forward proofs of it, sometimes through means of numbers and the syllables of names, sometimes also through the letter of syllables, and yet again through those numbers which are, according to the practice followed by the Greeks, contained in [different] letters;—[this, I say,]
