(3) "It came to pass then, when I had come into the midst of the rulers of the æons, that I looked down on the world of mankind, by command of the First Mystery. I found Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptizer, before she had conceived him, and I sowed into her a power which I had received from the little Iaō, the Good, who is in the Midst, that he might be able to make proclamation before me and make ready my way, and baptize with the water of the forgiveness of sins. That power then is in the body of John.

Jesus revealed himself [at the] Jordan River as the fullness of heaven’s kingdom. The one [conceived] before all was conceived again; the one anointed before was anointed again; the one redeemed redeemed others.

(26) And as the Prophets have written of it, so the new Man, (which is born to us of God) is the Son of the Virgin, not of earthly Flesh and Blood, also not of the Seed of Man, but conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of a pure divine chaste Virgin, and (in this World) revealed [or manifested] in our Flesh and Blood, and is entered with his holy Body into Death, and has separated the earthly [Body,] together with the Might of the Anger, from the holy Element, and has restored the Soul again, and has opened the Gate to the Light of God again, so that the averted Soul can (with the Essences of the Father in the holy Will) reach the Light of God again.

(4) "It came to pass, when the sun rose in the east, thereafter then through the First Mystery, which existed from the beginning, on account of which the universe hath arisen, out of which also I am myself now come, not in the time before my "Moreover in place of the soul of the ruler which he was appointed to receive, I found the soul of the prophet Elias in the æons of the sphere; and I took him thence, and took hi soul and brought it to the Virgin of Light, and she gave it over to her receivers; they brought it to the sphere of the rulers and cast it into the womb of Elizabeth. So the power of the little Iaō, who is in the Midst, and the soul of the prophet Elias, they were bound into the body of John the Baptizer. For this cause then were ye in doubt aforetime, I when I said unto you: 'John said: I am not the Christ,' and ye said unto me: 'It standeth written in the scripture: When the Christ shall come, Elias cometh before him and maketh ready his way.' But when ye said this unto me, I said unto you: 'Elias verily is come and hath made ready all things, as it standeth written, and they have done unto him as they would.' And when I knew that ye had not understood that I had discoursed with you concerning the soul of Elias which is bound into John the Baptizer, I answered you in the discourse in openness face to face: 'If ye like to accept John the Baptizer: he is Elias, of whom I have said that he will come.'"

(85) See, thou beloved Soul, thou wast gone out from God; but his Love caught hold of thee again, and P fastened thee (with the Promise) to his Thread; and then came the Fulfilling of the Promise, and put another new Body on to thee; but thou canst not have another Soul, for thy Soul was out of the Eternity. Therefore now as the Holy Ghost overshadowed and filled [or impregnated] Mary, so the Water out of the Heavenly Matrix (which has its Beginning out of the Trinity) in the Baptism of Christ (and in all baptized Christians) overshadowed and filled the Soul of Christ in the Baptism in Jordan, and also the Souls of all Christians, and so renewed the earthly Water (of the Out-Birth) in the Soul, and washed it clean, that it is rin itself a pure Angel, which of itself may eat of the heavenly Fruit; and that is the Cause of the Baptism. O Man consider thyself.

(28) Christ begun the Use of the Baptism by John, who was his Fore-runner, and John was born into this World before Christ, which has its Signification, therefore open thy Eyes. As the Water is in the Originality, and a Cause and Beginning of the Life, and [then] in the Water (by the Tincture) the Sulphur is first generated, wherein the Life becomes stirring, and the a Tincture generates again the Sulphur and the Water, wherein afterwards the Blood in the Tincture comes to be; thus now, as the Beginning of the Life is, so must also the Order in the Regeneration be, that the poor Soul first receives the Water of eternal Life, and be baptized therein, and then God gives it the Grain of Mustard-Seed of the Pearl, that so, if it receive the same, it may become a new Fruit in God.

(6) Jesus,--that is Aberamenthō,--said unto his disciples: "Amēn, I say unto you: I have brought nothing into the world when I came, save this fire, this water, this wine and this blood. I have brought the water and the fire out of the region of the Light of the lights of the Treasury of the Light; and I have brought the wine and the blood out of the region of Barbēlō. And after a little while my father sent me the holy spirit in the type of a dove. "And the fire, the water and the wine are for the purification of all the sins of the world. The blood on the other hand was for a sign unto me because of the human body which I received in the region of Barbēlō, the great power of the invisible god. The breath on the other hand advanceth towards all souls and leadeth them unto the region of the Light.

(82) Let us look upon his Baptism, and then upon his Temptation instantly after his Baptism, and so we shall find our new Regeneration, as also in what Kingdom we lie imprisoned; and we very highly rejoice (in this Knowledge) that God is become Man: And if now we would apprehend it, we must first set down the Baptism Or Heresy. of Christ, and then the Temptation in its right Order. Of the Baptism of Christ upon Earth, in Jordan.

(20) And here it is as clear as the Sun, that it was not intended that Man (in the Beginning) should generate in such a Manner, for it should have been done without a Pain, without bestial Impregnation, without a Wife [or Woman,] and without a Husband [or Man.] And therefore the Treader upon the Serpent was born of a Virgin, without the Seed of Man; although now that [also] must come to be done in such a human Manner, yet that was to this End only, that the Deity might enter into Flesh, and [so might] generate the Soul of Flesh again out of the dark Flesh, out of Death into Life. But otherwise, the Saviour [or Champion] is wholly the Virgin's Son, and a virgin Mind, as the first Adam [was] in the Creation; for you must earnestly and accurately [consider and] understand what Manner of Person he is.

(84) But now Baptism was not instituted in respect of the earthly corruptible [Man,] which belongs to the Earth, nor for the heavenly [Man's] Sake, which was pure and spotless without that, but for the poor Soul's Sake. Seeing the heavenly Man in Christ took our natural Soul (in the Body of the Virgin Mary) to his heavenly Man, and that also the earthly Man hung to the Soul, therefore the holy Trinity [by the Hand of Man] took the Water of the eternal Life in the pure Element, and dipt the Soul therein, as I may so speak.

(20) This, then, is the type of "the law and the prophets which were until John; " while he, though speaking more perspicuously as no longer prophesying, but pointing out as now present, Him, who was proclaimed symbolically from the beginning, nevertheless said, "I am not worthy to loose the latchet of the Lord's shoe." For he confesses that he is not worthy to baptize so great a Power; for it behooves those, who purify others, to free the soul from the body and its sins, as the foot from the thong. Perhaps also this signified the final exertion of the Saviour's power toward us - the immediate, I mean - that by His presence, concealed in the enigma of prophecy, inasmuch as he, by pointing out to sight Him that had been prophesied of, and indicating the Presence which had come, walking forth into the light, loosed the latchet of the oracles of the [old] economy, by unveiling the meaning of the symbols.

(31) "All who come into the world, like a drop from the Light, are sent by him to the world of Almighty, that they might be guarded by him. And the bond of his forgetfulness bound him by the will of Sophia, that the matter might be through it to the whole world in poverty, concerning his (Almighty's) arrogance and blindness and the ignorance that he was named. But I came from the places above by the will of the great Light, (I) who escaped from that bond; I have cut off the work of the robbers; I have awakened that drop that was sent from Sophia, that it might bear much fruit through me, and be perfected and not again be defective, but be through me, the Great Savior, that his glory might be revealed, so that Sophia might also be justified in regard to that defect, that her sons might not again become defective but might attain honor and glory and go up to their Father, and know the words of the masculine Light. And you were sent by the Son, who was sent that you might receive Light, and remove yourselves from the forgetfulness of the authorities, and that it might not again come to appearance because of you, namely, the unclean rubbing that is from the fearful fire that came from their fleshly part. Tread upon their malicious intent."

(85) The Virgin comprehended [or contained him] as a Mother does her Child, she gave him the natural Essences which she inherited from her Parents; those he assumed to the Creature, which was God and Man, the Essences of his Mother (in her Virgin-matrix, out of Flesh and Blood) he assumed to the Limbus of God (out of the [holy] Element) and in these became a living Soul, without blemishing of the [holy] Element; and the Word was in the Midst; the Might [Strength,] Height and Depth of the Soul, reaches even into the Father; and the outward Kingdom of this World hung to the inward, as the four Elements hang to the [one] Element, 1 which in the End shall pass away again, and go through the Fire.

(52) You must understand, Mary was to conceive in the Body, viz. in her own Body, not in a strange assumed [Body,] as the Unenlightened (who apprehend not the Kingdom of God) might interpret our Writings to mean. Besides, it is not the Ground neither, which the Ancients and those heretofore have set down (which yet went very high) as if Mary from Eternity had been hidden in Ternario Sancto [the holy Ternary or Trinity,] and that she entered at that Time only in Anna, as into a Case, [or House,] and was not of the Seed of Joachim, and Blood of Anna. They say, she was an eternal Virgin out of the Trinity, of whom Christ was born; because he came not out of the Flesh and Blood of any Man, and as himself witnesses, that he was not of this World, but was come from Heaven. He says, That he came forth from God, and must return again to God; and to Nicodemus he said, No one goes into Heaven, but the Son of Man which is come from Heaven, and who is in Heaven.

(4) ¶Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. But John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?

As Jesus perfected the water of baptism, he poured death out. For this reason we go down into the water but not into death, that we may not be poured out into the spirit of the world. When it blows, winter comes. When the holy spirit blows, summer comes.

(3) 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 has taken to himself the one who came from those whom we previously mentioned.

(7) Then John suffered him. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and praying, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending in a bodily shape like a dove, and lighting upon him; and to a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

One day when John the brother of James, the sons of Zebedee, went up to the temple, it happened that a Pharisee named Arimanios came up to him and said to him, Where is your teacher, whom you followed? I said to him, He has returned to the place from which he came. The Pharisee said to me, This Nazarene has deceived you badly, filled your ears with lies, closed your minds, and turned you from the traditions of your parents. When I, John, heard this, I turned away from the temple and went to a mountainous and barren place. I was distressed within, and I said, How was the savior selected? Why was he sent into the world by his father? Who is his father who sent him? To what kind of eternal realm shall we go? And what was he saying when he told us, This eternal realm to which you will go is modeled after the incorruptible realm, but he did not teach us what kind of realm that one is? At the moment I was thinking about this, look, the heavens opened, all creation under heaven lit up, and the world shook. I was afraid, and look, I saw within the light a child standing by me. As I was staring, it seemed to be an elderly person. Again it changed its appearance to be a youth. Not that there were several figures before me. Rather, there was a figure with several forms within the light. These forms appeared through each other, and the figure had three forms. The figure said to me, John, John, why are you doubting? Why are you afraid? Are you not familiar with this figure? Then do not be fainthearted. I am with you always. I am the father, I am the mother, I am the child. I am the incorruptible and the undefiled one. Now I have come to teach you what is, what was, and what is to come, that you may understand what is invisible and what is visible; and to teach you about the unshakable race of perfect humankind. So now, lift up your head that you may understand the things I shall tell you today, and that you may relate them to your spiritual friends, who are from the unshakable race of perfect humankind.

(13) The perfect Savior said: "I came from the Infinite that I might tell you all things. Spirit-Who-Is was the begetter, who had the power a begetter and a form-giver`s nature, that the great wealth that was hidden in him might be revealed. Because of his mercy and his love, he wished to bring forth fruit by himself, that he might not his goodness alone, but (that) other spirits of the Unwavering Generation might bring forth body and fruit, glory and honor, in imperishableness and his infinite grace, that his treasure might be revealed by Self-begotten God, the father of every imperishableness and those that came to be afterward. But they had not yet come to visibility. Now a great difference exists among the imperishables."