a typical manifestation of the things in the Pleroma, [yet has a wide prevalence[1]] will be proved as follows from the Scriptures. Soter is a name of five letters; Pater, too, contains five letters; Agape (love), too, consists of five letters; and our Lord, after[2] blessing the five loaves, fed with them five thousand men. Five virgins[3] were called wise by the Lord; and, in like manner, five were styled foolish. Again, five men are said to have been with the Lord when He obtained testimony[4] from the Father,—namely, Peter, and James, and John, and Moses, and Elias. The Lord also, as the fifth person, entered into the apartment of the dead maiden, and raised her up again; for, says [the Scripture], "He suffered no man to go in, save Peter and James,[5] and the father and mother of the maiden."[6] The rich man in hell[7] declared that he had five brothers, to whom he desired that one rising from the dead should go. The pool from which the Lord commanded the paralytic man to go into his house, had five porches. The very form of the cross, too, has five extremities,[8] two in length, two in breadth, and one in the middle, on which [last] the person rests who is fixed by the nails. Each of our hands has five fingers; we have also five senses; our internal organs may also be reckoned as five, viz. the heart, the liver, the lungs, the spleen, and the kidneys. Moreover, even the whole person may be divided into this number [of parts],—the head, the breast, the belly, the thighs, and the feet. The human race passes through five ages: first infancy, then boyhood, then youth, then maturity,[9] and then old age. Moses delivered the law to the people in five books. Each table which he received from God contained five[10] command-
- ↑ Some such supplement as this seems requisite, but the syntax in the Latin text is very confused.
- ↑ Matt. xiv. 19, 21; Mark vi. 41, 44; Luke ix. 13, 14; John vi. 9, 10, 11.
- ↑ Matt. xxv. 2, etc.
- ↑ Matt. xvii. 1.
- ↑ St. John is here strangely overlooked.
- ↑ Luke viii. 51.
- ↑ Luke xvi. 28.
- ↑ "Fines et summitates;" comp. Justin Mart. Dial. c. Tryph. 91.
- ↑ "Juvenis," one in the prime of life.
- ↑ It has been usual in the Christian church to reckon four command-
