(55) The Father is the one only Being, who himself is ALL, who continually generates his heartily beloved Son from Eternity, and in both of them the Holy Ghost is continually standing in the Flash, wherein the Life is generated.

(54) so the Son of God is continually generated from all the Powers of his Father from Eternity, and is not made, but is the Heart and Lustre shining forth from the Powers of his Heavenly Father; a self-subsisting Person, the Center, or Body of the Lustre in the Deep.

(8) He is the true Only-begotten, the express image of the glory of the universal King and Almighty Father, who impresses on the Gnostic the seal of the perfect contemplation, according to His own image; so that there is now a third divine image, made as far as possible like the Second Cause, the Essential Life, through which we live the true life; the Gnostic, as we regard him, being described as moving amid things sure and wholly immutable.

(21) First, he is God, and is in the Father of Eternity, generated out of the Father of Eternity from Eternity, without Beginning and End, out of the Depth of the Omnipotence, out of the broken Gates of the Sharpness [or Depths] of God in the Joy, [or Habitation,] where the Father attracts the pleasant Joy in his eternal Will, whereby the Will is impregnated, with the attracted Virtue of the Light, out of which [Impregnation] the Father conceives the other [or second] Will to generate the Virtue; and that Conception [or comprehension] is his Word, which the Father speaks (out of the Will, before the Will) out of himself; and this Speaking remains in the Mouth of the Father, as fa comprehended Word, with the second Will; and the proceeding forth out of the spoken Word (which goes forth out of the Will through the Word) is the Spirit; and that which is spoken forth % before the Will, is the eternal Wisdom of God, the Virgin of the Chastity.

(1) Anything existing after The First must necessarily arise from that First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it through intervenients; there must be an order of secondaries and tertiaries, in which any second is to be referred to The First, any third to the second.

Standing before all things, there must exist a Simplex, differing from all its sequel, self-gathered not inter-blended with the forms that rise from it, and yet able in some mode of its own to be present to those others: it must be authentically a unity, not merely something elaborated into unity and so in reality no more than unity's counterfeit; it will debar all telling and knowing except that it may be described as transcending Being- for if there were nothing outside all alliance and compromise, nothing authentically one, there would be no Source. Untouched by multiplicity, it will be wholly self-sufficing, an absolute First, whereas any not-first demands its earlier, and any non-simplex needs the simplicities within itself as the very foundations of its composite existence.

There can be only one such being: if there were another, the two would resolve into one, for we are not dealing with two corporal entities.

Our One-First is not a body: a body is not simplex and, as a thing of process cannot be a First, the Source cannot be a thing of generation: only a principle outside of body, and utterly untouched by multiplicity, could be The First.

Any unity, then, later than The First must be no longer simplex; it can be no more than a unity in diversity.

Whence must such a sequent arise?

It must be an offspring of The First; for suppose it the product of chance, that First ceases to be the Principle of All.

But how does it arise from The First?

If The First is perfect, utterly perfect above all, and is the beginning of all power, it must be the most powerful of all that is, and all other powers must act in some partial imitation of it. Now other beings, coming to perfection, are observed to generate; they are unable to remain self-closed; they produce: and this is true not merely of beings endowed with will, but of growing things where there is no will; even lifeless objects impart something of themselves, as far as they may; fire warms, snow chills, drugs have their own outgoing efficacy; all things to the utmost of their power imitate the Source in some operation tending to eternity and to service.

How then could the most perfect remain self-set- the First Good, the Power towards all, how could it grudge or be powerless to give of itself, and how at that would it still be the Source?

If things other than itself are to exist, things dependent upon it for their reality, it must produce since there is no other source. And further this engendering principle must be the very highest in worth; and its immediate offspring, its secondary, must be the best of all that follows.

(78) Thus there is one God and three distinct Persons one in another, and neither of them can comprehend, or withhold, or fathom the Original of the other, but the Father generates the Son, and the Son is the Father's Heart, and his Love and his Light, and is an Original of Joy, and the Beginning of all Life.

(37) For if it was so, then must the Son of God have a Beginning, and the Father must have generated him at once, and then he could not be the Eternal Almighty Son of the Father, but was like a King, who had yet a greater King above him, who had generated him in Time, and in whose Power it was to alter and change him.

(56) For behold, the Father is the original Essence of all Essences. And if now the second Principle did not break forth and spring up in the Birth of the Son, then the Father would be a dark Valley. And thus you see, that the Son (who is the Heart, the Love, the Brightness and the mild Rejoicing of the Father,) [in whom he is well-pleased,] opens another Principle in his Birth, and makes the angry and wrathful Father (as I may say, as to the Originality of the first Principle) reconciled, pleased, loving, and as I may say, merciful; and he is another [Manner of] Person than the Father; for in his a Center there is nothing else but mere Joy, Love, and Pleasure. And yet you may see that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, for when the Heart or Light of God is generated in the Father, then there springs up (in the Kindling of the Light in the fifth Form) out of the Water-Source in the Light, a very pleasant sweet smelling and sweet tasted Spirit; and this is that Spirit which in the Original was the bitter Sting or Prickle in the Harshness [or Tartness;] and that makes now in this Water-Source many thousand of the Water.

(83) The Son is in the Father, being the Father’s Heart or Light, and the Father generates the Son continually from Eternity to Eternity; and the Son’s Power and Splendor shine back again in the whole Father, as the Sun does in the whole World.

(60) He is eternally in the Father, and the Father generates him continually from Eternity to Eternity, and the Father and the Son is ONE God, of an equal Being in Power and Omnipotence.

(56) Thus the Father is the self-subsisting Being of all Powers, and the Son is the Heart in the Father, which is generated continually out of all the Powers of the Father, who again enlightens the Powers of the Father.

(11) Wherefore also the apostle designates as "the express image (karakthra) of the glory of the Father " the Son, who taught the truth respecting God, and expressed the fact that the Almighty is the one and only God and Father, "whom no man knoweth but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him." That God is one is intimated by those "who seek the face of the God of Jacob;" whom being the only God, our Saviour and God characterizes as the Good Father. And "the generation of those that seek Him" is the elect race, devoted to inquiry after knowledge. Wherefore also the apostle says, "I shall profit you nothing, unless I speak to you, either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophecy, or by doctrine."

(5) But there is a distinction in the superessential nomenclature of God, not only that which I have mentioned, namely, that each of the One-springing Persons is fixed in the union itself, unmingled and unconfused; but also that the properties of the superessential Divine Production are not convertible in regard to one another. The Father is sole Fountain of the superessential Deity, since the Father is not Son, nor the Son, Father; since the hymns reverently guard their own characteristics for each of the supremely Divine Persons. These then are the unions and distinctions within the unutterable Union and sustaining Source. But, if the goodly progression of the Divine Union, multiplying itself super-uniquely through Goodness, and taking to itself many forms, is also a Divine distinction, yet, common within the Divine distinction, are the resistless distributions, the substance-giving, the life-giving, the wise-making, and the other gifts of the Goodness, Cause of all, after which from the participations and those participating are celebrated the things imparticipatively participated. And this is kindred and common, and one, to the whole Divinity, that it is all entire, participated by each of the Participants, and by none partially. Just as a point in a circle's centre participates in all the circumjacent straight lines in the circle, and as many impressions of a seal participate in the archetypal seal, and in each of the impressions the seal is whole and the same, and in none partial in any respect. But superior to these is the impartibility of the Deity--Cause of all--from the fact that there is no contact with it. Nor has it any commingled communion with the things participating.

(8) For He was the Wisdom "in which" the Sovereign God "delighted." For the Son is the power of God, as being the Father's most ancient Word before the production of all things, and His Wisdom. He is then properly called the Teacher of the beings formed by Him. Nor does He ever abandon care for men, by being drawn aside from pleasure, who, having assumed flesh, which by nature is susceptible of suffering, trained it to the condition of impossibility.

(8) And John the apostle says: "No man hath seen God at any time. The only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him," -calling invisibility and ineffableness the bosom of God. Hence some have called it the Depth, as containing and embosoming all things, inaccessible and boundless. This discourse respecting God is most difficult to handle. For since the first principle of everything is difficult to find out, the absolutely first and oldest principle, which is the cause of all other things being and having been, is difficult to exhibit. For bow can that be expressed which is neither genus, nor difference, nor species, nor individual, nor number; nay more, is neither an event, nor that to which an event happens? No one can rightly express Him wholly. For on account of His greatness He is ranked as the All, and is the Father of the universe. Nor are any parts to be predicated of Him.