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Against Heresies
4.
This opinion, too, that they hold the Creator formed the world out of previously existing matter, both Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and Plato expressed before them; as, forsooth, we learn they also do under the inspiration of their Mother. Then again, as to the opinion that everything of necessity passes away to those things out of which they maintain it was also formed, and that God is the slave of this necessity, so that He cannot impart immortality to what is mortal, or bestow incorruption on what is corruptible, but every one passes into a substance similar in nature to itself, both those who are named Stoics from the portico (stoa), and indeed all that are ignorant of God, poets and historians alike, make the same affirmation. 1 Those [heretics] who hold the same [system of] infidelity have ascribed, no doubt, their own proper region to spiritual beings,--that, namely, which is within the Pleroma, but to animal beings the intermediate space, while to corporeal they assign that which is material. And they assert that God Himself can do no otherwise, but that every one of the [different kinds of substance] mentioned passes away to those things which are of the same nature [with itself].
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[Our author's demonstration of the essential harmony of Gnosticism with the old mythologies, and the philosophies of the heathen, explains the hold it seems to have gained among nominal converts to Christianity, and also the necessity for a painstaking refutation of what seem to us mere absurdities. The great merit of Irenaeus is thus illustrated: he gave the death-blow to heathenism in extirpating heresy.] ↩
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Gegen die Häresien (BKV)
4.
Wenn sie weiter lehren, daß der Weltenschöpfer aus einer bereits vorhandenen Materie die Welt gemacht, so haben das schon Anaxagoras, Empedokles und Plato vor ihnen gelehrt, sicherlich wohl von ihrer Mutter gleichfalls inspiriert. Wenn ferner ein jedes Ding dahin zurückkehren muß, woher es gekommen, und Gott ein Sklave der Notwendigkeit sein soll, so daß auch er nicht imstande wäre, dem Sterblichen Unsterblichkeit, dem Vergänglichen Unvergänglichkeit zu verleihen, sondern daß alles in die Substanz zurückkehre, die seiner Natur ähnlich ist, so behaupten dies schon die nach der Stoa so genannten Stoiker, wie alle Dichter und Schriftsteller, die Gott nicht kennen. Nichts anders tun diese in ihrem Unglauben, wenn sie den geistigen Dingen die Gegend innerhalb des Pleroma anweisen, den seelischen die Mitte, den körperlichen aber das Irdische; wenn sie sagen, daß dagegen Gott nichts vermöge, alles müsse in sein Gebiet zurückkehren.