Tripartite Tractate
The Incarnate Savior and his Companions
He it is who was our Savior in willing compassion, who is that which they were. For it was for their sake that he became manifest in an involuntary suffering. They became flesh and soul, that is, eternally which (things) hold them and with corruptible things they die. And as for those who came into being, the invisible one taught them invisibly about himself.
Not only did he take upon <himself> the death of those whom he thought to save, but he also accepted their smallness to which they had descended when they were <born> in body and soul. (He did so) because he had let himself be conceived and born as an infant, in body and soul.
Among all the others who shared in them, and those who fell and received the light, he came into being exalted, because he had let himself be conceived without sin, stain and defilement. He was begotten in life, being in life because the former and the latter are in passion and changing opinion from the Logos who moved, who established them to be body and soul. He it is <who> has taken to himself the one who came from those whom we previously mentioned.
He came into being from the glorious vision and the unchanging thought of the Logos who returned to himself, after his movement, from the organization, just as those who came with him took body and soul and a confirmation and stability and judgment of things. They too intended to come.
When they thought of the Savior they came, and they came when he knew; they also came more exalted in the emanation according to the flesh than those who had been brought forth from a defect, because in this way they, too, received their bodily emanation, along with the body of the Savior, through the revelation and the mingling with him. These others were those of one substance, and it indeed is the spiritual (substance). The organization is different. This is one thing, that is another. Some come forth from passion and division, needing healing. Others are from prayer, so that they heal the sick, when they have been appointed to treat those who have fallen. These are the apostles and the evangelists. They are the disciples of the Savior, and teachers who need instruction. Why, then, did they, too, share in the passions in which those who have been brought forth from passion share, if indeed they are bodily productions in accordance with the organization and <the> Savior, who did not share in the passions?
The Savior was an image of the unitary one, he who is the Totality in bodily form. Therefore, he preserved the form of indivisibility, from which comes impassability. They, however, are images of each thing which became manifest. Therefore, they assume division from the pattern, having taken form for the planting which exists beneath the heaven. This also is what shares in the evil which exists in the places which they have reached. For the will held the Totality under sin, so that by that will he might have mercy on the Totality and they might be saved, while a single one alone is appointed to give life, and all the rest need salvation. Therefore, it was from (reasons) of this sort that it began to receive grace to give the honors which were proclaimed by Jesus, which were suitable for him to proclaim to the rest, since a seed of the promise of Jesus Christ was set up, whom we have served in (his) revelation and union. Now the promise possessed the instruction and the return to what they are from the first, from which they possess the drop, so as to return to him, which is that which is called "the redemption." And it is the release from the captivity and the acceptance of freedom. In its places, the captivity of those who were slaves of ignorance holds sway. The freedom is the knowledge of the truth which existed before the ignorance was ruling, forever without beginning and without end, being something good, and a salvation of things, and a release from the servile nature in which they have suffered.
Those who have been brought forth in a lowly thought of vanity, that is, (a thought) which goes to things which are evil through the thought which draws them down to the lust for power, these have received the possession which is freedom, from the abundance of the grace which looked upon the children. It was, however, a disturbance of the passion and a destruction of those things which he cast off from himself at first, when the Logos separated them from himself, (the Logos) who was the cause of their being destined for destruction, though he kept <them> at <the> end of the organization and allowed them to exist because even they were useful for the things which were ordained.