(3) Now if the son resist and oppose the father, it is but right that the father should cast him away out of the house, seeing the son sets himself against him that has generated him, and from whose power he is become a creature.

(102) But when the child rebelleth and resisteth against the mother, and takes away all from the mother, and domineers over her, and moreover striketh at her, and forceth her to change into a low condition, contrary to right and equity, then it is but just that the child should be expelled, out of the house, and left to sit behind the hedge and quite lose its child's portion and inheritance.

(80) From hence also the RIGHTS [Laws] in this world exist, or have their original. For when a son resisteth his father, and striketh his father, then he loseth his paternal inheritance, and his father may thrust him out of his house; but so long as he continueth in obedience to his father, the father has no right, authority or lawful power to disinherit him.

(16) And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.

(1) For it was ludicrous. It is I who bear witness that it was ludicrous, since the rulers do not know that this is an ineffable union of undefiled truth, as exists among the children of light, of which they made an imitation, having proclaimed a doctrine of a dead man and lies so as to resemble the freedom and purity of the perfect assembly, and having joined themselves in their doctrine to fear and slavery, worldly cares, and abandoned worship, being small and ignorant, since they do not contain the nobility of the truth. For they hate the one in whom they are and love the one in whom they are not. For they did not know the knowledge of the greatness that it is from above and from a fountain of truth and not from slavery and jealousy, fear, and love of worldly matter. For that which is not theirs and that which is theirs they use fearlessly and freely. They do not desire because they have authority, and they have a law from themselves over whatever they will wish.

(10) Now the energy of the Lord has a reference to the Almighty; and the Son is, so to speak, an energy of the Father. Therefore, a hater of man, the Saviour can never be; who, for His exceeding love to human flesh, despising not its susceptibility to suffering, but investing Himself with it, came for the common salvation of men; for the faith of those who have chosen it, is common. Nay more, He will never neglect His own work, because man alone of all the other living creatures was in his creation endowed with a conception of God. Nor can there be any other better and more suitable government for men than that which is appointed by God.

(55) And so Cain and his Successors have set up a potent Kingdom, from whence Dominion proceeds, whereby one Brother aspires above another, and has made them Slaves. And thus horrible Tyranny has been hatched, and the Potent has done whatsoever he listed; he has oppressed the Needy at his Pleasure; he has got to him the Kingdom of the Earth, and therewith exercises Tyranny, Wickedness, and Wrong, and yet Men must say to him, it is right; he has contrived all Sorts of Policy and cunning Devices, and made Laws of them [and established them for Right,] and afterwards sold them to others for Rights, and has brought up his Children with Wickedness and Falsehood. He has beaten down the Conscience of the Simple-hearted in his good Meaning; he has invented Rights, which in his Laws serve to promote his Deceit, contrary to the Light of Nature; all Reproach and Blasphemies have subsisted in his Strength and Authority, whereby he has terrified the Simple-hearted, that his Power might be great.

(100) And in those days the destitute shall go forth and carry off their children, And they shall abandon them, so that their children shall perish through them: Yea, they shall abandon their children (that are still) sucklings, and not return to them, And shall have no pity on their beloved ones.

(46) Thus it is highly [necessary] for us to know the miserable Fall of our first Parents; why it was so with God, that his Anger is in us, and that we must die, and (if we apprehend not the Treader upon the Serpent) must also perish eternally. But that we may set down a short Summary of the Fall (because of our simple, cold, dull, and dark Mind) for the Reader's Understanding, who it may be does not yet apprehend our Sense and Knowledge, therefore we will explain it briefly and clearly, and also readily impart our Knowledge and Mind to him, as indeed (according to the divine Image) we ought to do.

(10) "Together shall they be oppressed 2, and unto evil shall [they ...]."

(14) "You and your friends," replied Complacency, "regard all men as alike because they happen to be born at the same time and in the same place as yourselves. You look on us as scholars who have separated from humanity and cast off the world, and who have no guiding principle beyond poring over the records of the past and present, or indulging in the logomachy of this and that. "Were we to lead the mundane lives you do, it would be at the sacrifice of the very conditions of existence. And surely thus we should be wandering far from the royal road to long life, comfort, and general happiness. The discomfort of wretch edness, the comfort of well-being, you do not refer to the body. The abjectness of terror, the elation of joy, you do not refer to the mind itself. You know that such things are so, but you do not know how they are so. Wherefore, though equalling the Son of Heaven in power, and with all the empire as your personal property, you would not be free from care." "Wealth," replied Discontent, "is of the greatest service to a man. It enables him to do good, and to exert power, to an extent which the perfect man or the true Sage could never reach. He can borrow the courage and strength of others to make himself formidable. He can employ the wisdom and counsels of others to add clearness to his own deliberations. He can avail himself of the virtue of others and cause it to appear as his own. Without being in possession of a throne, he can wield the authority of a prince.

(5) 'Twas not to know the number in which are The motors here above, or if 'necesse' With a contingent e'er 'necesse' make, 'Non si est dare primum motum esse,' Or if in semicircle can be made Triangle so that it have no right angle. Whence, if thou notest this and what I said, A regal prudence is that peerless seeing In which the shaft of my intention strikes. And if on 'rose' thou turnest thy clear eyes, Thou'lt see that it has reference alone To kings who're many, and the good are rare. With this distinction take thou what I said, And thus it can consist with thy belief Of the first father and of our Delight. And lead shall this be always to thy feet, To make thee, like a weary man, move slowly Both to the Yes and No thou seest not; For very low among the fools is he Who affirms without distinction, or denies, As well in one as in the other case; Because it happens that full often bends Current opinion in the false direction, And then the feelings bind the intellect.

(42) Thus we are to consider, and highly to know in the Light of Nature, the Ground of the Kingdom of Heaven, and of Hell, as also [the Ground] of the Kingdom of this World, and how Man in the Mother's Body inherits three Kingdoms, and how Man in this Life bears a threefold Image, which our first Parents by the first Sin a inherited for us; therefore we have Need of the Treader upon the Serpent, to bring us again into the angelical Image. And it is needful for Man to tame his Body and Mind, [or bring them under Subjection,] with great Earnestness [and Labour,] and to submit himself under the Cross, and not to hunt so eagerly after Pleasure, Riches, and the Bravery of this World, for therein sticks Perdition.

(34) And then he studies Cunning and Deceit, and casts about [to find] which Way he may by Shifts and Tricks fill his Belly and live; he curses his Master secretly, and though he steals away covertly by some Slight the Bread of another needy Man, yet that must be right [with him;] and his Master does not regard it, so he eats not of his Cost, and so that he continues to be his Dog under his Yoke. Thus the Master [Lord or Superior] is unrighteous and wicked, and makes also that his Servant is unrighteous and wicked; whereas otherwise (if he might eat his Bread under an easy Yoke) he would not be so cursed, and cunning in Thievery.

(7) It is essential, certainly, that the providence which manages all, be both supreme and good. For it is the power of both that dispenses salvation - the one correcting by punishment, as supreme, the other showing kindness in the exercise of beneficence, as a benefactor. It is in your power not to be a son of disobedience, but to pass from darkness to life, and lending your ear to wisdom, to be the legal slave of God, in the first instance, and then to become a faithful servant, fearing the Lord God. And if one ascend higher, he is enrolled among the sons.

(69) Whereby it is seen, how great the Anger was in Adam and Eve, in that the wrathful Kingdom sooner overcame than the Kingdom of Heaven; and the Scorner is sooner generated than the upright. But yet the Fault of this was in the Parents; had they not sinned, and let the Anger into them, then it had not been so, as at this Day.

(7) He severeth the mourners from those who quarrel with them: he putteth a stop to them whose hand is violent against those weaker than themselves: he keepeth within bounds the contentions of the Powers

(2) But those who have not are poor, that is, those who possess nothing, and yet they desire something. And they lead astray those who, through them, have become like those who possess the truth of their freedom, so as to bring us under a yoke and constraint of care and fear. This person is in slavery. And one who is brought by constraint of force and threat has been guarded by god. But the entire nobility of the fatherhood is not guarded, since he guards what is his own by himself, without word and constraint. He is united with his will, he who belongs only to the thought of the fatherhood, to make it perfect and ineffable through the living water, to be with you mutually in wisdom, not only in word of hearing but in deed and fulfilled word. For the perfect ones are worthy to be established in this way and to be united with me, in order that they may not share in any enmity, in a good friendship. I accomplish everything through the good one, for this is the union of the truth, that they should have no adversary. But everyone who brings division—and such a one will learn no wisdom at all, because he brings division and is not a friend—is hostile to them all. But one who lives in harmony and friendship of brotherly love, naturally and not artificially, completely and not partially, this person is truly the desire of the father. This is the universal one and perfect love.

(9) Wealth and poverty, and all inequalities of that order, are made ground of complaint. But this is to ignore that the Sage demands no equality in such matters: he cannot think that to own many things is to be richer or that the powerful have the better of the simple; he leaves all such preoccupations to another kind of man. He has learned that life on earth has two distinct forms, the way of the Sage and the way of the mass, the Sage intent upon the sublimest, upon the realm above, while those of the more strictly human type fall, again, under two classes, the one reminiscent of virtue and therefore not without touch with good, the other mere populace, serving to provide necessaries to the better sort.

But what of murder? What of the feebleness that brings men under slavery to the passions?

Is it any wonder that there should be failing and error, not in the highest, the intellectual, Principle but in Souls that are like undeveloped children? And is not life justified even so if it is a training ground with its victors and its vanquished?

You are wronged; need that trouble an immortal? You are put to death; you have attained your desire. And from the moment your citizenship of the world becomes irksome you are not bound to it.

Our adversaries do not deny that even here there is a system of law and penalty: and surely we cannot in justice blame a dominion which awards to every one his due, where virtue has its honour, and vice comes to its fitting shame, in which there are not merely representations of the gods, but the gods themselves, watchers from above, and- as we read- easily rebutting human reproaches, since they lead all things in order from a beginning to an end, allotting to each human being, as life follows life, a fortune shaped to all that has preceded- the destiny which, to those that do not penetrate it, becomes the matter of boorish insolence upon things divine.

A man's one task is to strive towards making himself perfect- though not in the idea- really fatal to perfection- that to be perfect is possible to himself alone.

We must recognize that other men have attained the heights of goodness; we must admit the goodness of the celestial spirits, and above all of the gods- those whose presence is here but their contemplation in the Supreme, and loftiest of them, the lord of this All, the most blessed Soul. Rising still higher, we hymn the divinities of the Intellectual Sphere, and, above all these, the mighty King of that dominion, whose majesty is made patent in the very multitude of the gods.

It is not by crushing the divine unto a unity but by displaying its exuberance- as the Supreme himself has displayed it- that we show knowledge of the might of God, who, abidingly what He is, yet creates that multitude, all dependent on Him, existing by Him and from Him.

This Universe, too, exists by Him and looks to Him- the Universe as a whole and every God within it- and tells of Him to men, all alike revealing the plan and will of the Supreme.

These, in the nature of things, cannot be what He is, but that does not justify you in contempt of them, in pushing yourself forward as not inferior to them.

The more perfect the man, the more compliant he is, even towards his fellows; we must temper our importance, not thrusting insolently beyond what our nature warrants; we must allow other beings, also, their place in the presence of the Godhead; we may not set ourselves alone next after the First in a dream-flight which deprives us of our power of attaining identity with the Godhead in the measure possible to the human Soul, that is to say, to the point of likeness to which the Intellectual-Principle leads us; to exalt ourselves above the Intellectual-Principle is to fall from it.

Yet imbeciles are found to accept such teaching at the mere sound of the words "You, yourself, are to be nobler than all else, nobler than men, nobler than even gods." Human audacity is very great: a man once modest, restrained and simple hears, "You, yourself, are the child of God; those men whom you used to venerate, those beings whose worship they inherit from antiquity, none of these are His children; you without lifting a hand are nobler than the very heavens"; others take up the cry: the issue will be much as if in a crowd all equally ignorant of figures, one man were told that he stands a thousand cubic feet; he will naturally accept his thousand cubits even though the others present are said to measure only five cubits; he will merely tell himself that the thousand indicates a considerable figure.

Another point: God has care for you; how then can He be indifferent to the entire Universe in which you exist?

We may be told that He is too much occupied to look upon the Universe, and that it would not be right for Him to do so; yet, when He looks down and upon these people, is He not looking outside Himself and upon the Universe in which they exist? If He cannot look outside Himself so as to survey the Kosmos, then neither does He look upon them.

But they have no need of Him?

The Universe has need of Him, and He knows its ordering and its indwellers and how far they belong to it and how far to the Supreme, and which of the men upon it are friends of God, mildly acquiescing with the Kosmic dispensation when in the total course of things some pain must be brought to them- for we are to look not to the single will of any man but to the universe entire, regarding every one according to worth but not stopping for such things where all that may is hastening onward.

Not one only kind of being is bent upon this quest, which brings bliss to whatsoever achieves, and earns for the others a future destiny in accord with their power. No man, therefore, may flatter himself that he alone is competent; a pretension is not a possession; many boast though fully conscious of their lack and many imagine themselves to possess what was never theirs and even to be alone in possessing what they alone of men never had.

(78) Again his remarks are directed against libertines when he continues as follows: "The mind of the flesh is death because those who live according to the flesh mind the things of the flesh, and the mind of the flesh is enmity against God. For it is not subject to the law of God. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God," not in the sense in which some teach, but in the sense which we have already explained. Then by contrast to this he says to the Church: "But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. If any man has not Christ's Spirit, he is none of his. But if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. So then, brethren, we are under an obligation, not to the flesh to live after the flesh. If you live after the flesh you shall die. But if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." And against the "nobility of birth" and the "freedom" abominably taught by the heretics who make a boast of their licentiousness, he goes on to say: "You have not received the spirit of bondage that you should again be in fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship by which we cry, Abba, Father." That is, we have received the Spirit for this purpose, that we may know him to whom we pray, the true Father, the only Father of all that is, him who like a father educates us for salvation and destroys fear.