Those who are opposed to God's creation, disparaging it under the fair name of continence, also quote the words to Salome which we mentioned earlier. They are found, I believe, in the Gospel according to the Egyptians. They say that the Saviour himself said "1 came to destroy the works of the female," meaning by "female" desire, and by "works" birth and corruption. What then would they say? Has this destruction in fact been accomplished? They could not say so, for the world continues exactly as before. Yet the Lord did not lie. For in truth he did destroy the works of desire, love of money, contentiousness, vanity, mad lust for women, paederasty, gluttony, licentious- ness, and similar vices. Their birth is the soul's corruption, since then we are "dead in sins." And this is the incontinence referred to as "female." Birth and the corruption chiefly involved in the creation must necessarily continue until the achievement of complete separation and the restoration of the elect, on whose account even the beings mingled with this world are restored to their proper condition.

Those Gnostic sects maintaining a more rational attitude on the subject declared the very existence of the lower worlds to signify that the Supreme...

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...

Whereby then you see here, that God has not willed the earthly Copulation. Man should have continued in the fiery Love which was in Paradise, and...

It is those people who used to say; "God created members for our use, for us to grow in defilement, in order that we might enjoy ourselves." And they ...

Jesus said: "The measure of the man who hath intercourse with males and of the man with whom he lieth, is the same as that of the blasphemer. "When...