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which here at least can mean no more than that Hippolytus held the Basilidians of his own day responsible for the doctrines of his author. The freshness and power of the whole section, wherever we touch the actual words of the author, strongly confirm the impression that he was no other than Basilides himself. Thus we are led independently to the conclusion suggested by the correspondence with the information of Clement, whom we know to have drawn from the fountain-head, the Exegetica. The fancy that the book used by Hippolytus was itself the Traditions of Matthias has nothing to recommend it. The whole form is unlike that which analogy would lead us to expect in such a production. If it was quoted as an authority in the Exegetica, the language of Hippolytus is justified. Nor is there anything in this inconsistent with the fact vouched for by Clement (Strom. vii. p. 898) that Basilides claimed to have been taught by Glaucias, an "interpreter" of St. Peter.

We shall therefore assume that the eight chapters of Hippolytus (vii. 20‒27) represent faithfully though imperfectly the contents of part at least of the Exegetica of Basilides; and proceed to describe his doctrine on their authority, using likewise the testimony of Clement wherever it is available.

IV. Doctrine.—Basilides asserts the beginning of all things to have been pure nothing. He uses every device of language to express absolute nonentity. He will not allow the primitive nothing to be called even "unspeakable": that, he says, would be naming it, and it is above every name that is named (20). Nothing then being in existence, "not-being God" (or Deity, οὐκ ὢν θεός: the article is omitted here) willed to make a not-being world out of not-being things. Once more great pains are taken to obviate the notion that "willing" implied any mental attribute whatever. Also the world so made was not the extended and differentiated world to which we gave the name, but "a single seed containing within itself all the seed-mass of the world," the aggregate of the seeds of all its forms and substances, as the mustard seed contains the branches and leaves of the tree, or the pea-hen's egg the brilliant colour of the full-grown peacock (21). This was the one origin of all future growths; their seeds lay stored up by the will of the not-being God in the single world-seed, as in the new-born babe its future teeth and the resemblances to its father which are thereafter to appear. Its own origin too from God was not a putting-forth (προβολή), as a spider puts forth its web from itself. (By this assertion, on which Hippolytus dwells with emphasis, every notion of "emanation" is expressly repudiated.) Nor was there an antecedent matter, like the brass or wood wrought by a mortal man. The words "Let there be light, and there was light" convey the whole truth. The light came into being out of nothing but the voice of the Speaker; "and the Speaker was not, and that which came into being was not."

What then was the first stage of growth of the seed? It had within itself "a tripartite sonship, in all things consubstantial with the not-being God." Part of the sonship was

subtle of substance (λεπτομερές), part coarse of substance (παχυμερές), part needing purification (ἀποκαθάρσεως δεόμενον). Simultaneously with the first beginning of the seed the subtle sonship burst through (διέσφυξεν) and mounted swiftly up "like a wing or a thought" (Odyss. vii. 36) till it reached the not-being God; "for toward Him for His exceeding beauty and grace (ὡραιότητος) every kind of nature yearns (ὀρέγεται), each in its own way." The coarse sonship could not mount up of itself, but it took to itself as a wing the Holy Spirit, each bearing up the other with mutual benefit, even as neither a bird can soar without wing, nor a wing without a bird. But when it came near the blessed and unutterable place of the subtle sonship and the not-being God, it could take the Holy Spirit no further, as not being consubstantial or of the same nature with itself. There, then, retaining and emitting downwards the fragrance of the sonship like a vessel that has once held ointment, the Holy Spirit remained, as a firmament dividing things above the world from "the world" itself below (22).

The third sonship continued still within the heap of the seed-mass. But out of the heap burst forth into being the Great Archon, "the head of the world, a beauty and greatness and power that cannot be uttered." He too raised himself aloft till he reached the firmament which he supposed to be the upward end of all things. Then he became wiser and every way better than all other cosmical things except the sonship left below, which he knew not to be far better than himself. So he turned to create the world in its several parts. But first he "made to himself and begat out of the things below a son far better and wiser than himself," for thus the not-being God had willed from the first; and smitten with wonder at his son's beauty, he set him at his right hand. "This is what they call the Ogdoad, where the Great Archon is sitting." Then all the heavenly or ethereal creation (apparently included in the Ogdoad), as far down as the moon, was made by the Great Archon, inspired by his wiser son (23). Again another Archon arose out of the seed-mass, inferior to the first Archon, but superior to all else below except the sonship; and he likewise made to himself a son wiser than himself, and became the creator and governor of the aerial world. This region is called the Hebdomad. On the other hand, in the heap and seed-mass, constituting our own (the terrestrial) stage, "those things that come to pass come to pass according to nature, as having been previously uttered by Him Who hath planned the fitting time and form and manner of utterance of the things that were to be uttered (ὡς φθάσαντα λεχθῆναι ὑπὸ τοῦ τὰ μέλλοντα λέγεσθαι ὅτε δεῖ καὶ οἷα δεῖ καὶ ὡς δεῖ λελογισμένου): and these things have no one to rule over them, or exercise care for them, or create them: for sufficient for them is that plan (λογισμός) which the not-being One planned when He was making" [the seed-mass] (24).

Such is the original cosmogony as conceived by Basilides, and it supplies the base for his view of the Gospel, as well as of the interval before the coming of the Gospel into the