(3) When he has fought a big fight, he decrees what must be done in his honour; he causes fear of him to arise, and he creates terror

(6) And if you do these things, O my son, you will be victorious over all your enemies, and they will not be able to wage war against you, neither will they be able to resist, nor will they be able to get in your way. For if you find these, you will despise them as deniers of truth. They will speak to you, cajoling you and enticing (you), not because they are afraid of you, but because they are afraid of those who dwell within you, namely, the guardians of the divinity and the teaching.

(19) Wouldst thou fight against the wrath of God? Then thou must put on the helmet of obedience and of love, otherwise thou wilt not break through; and if thou dost not break through, then thou fightest in vain, and remainest to be a servant or minister of the devil, in one way as well as in another.

(37) And they said unto him, " We shall nothearken unto thee to make peace with him ; for our strength is greater than his strength, and we are more powerful than he ; we shall go against him and slay him, and destroy him and his sons. And if thou wilt not go with us, we shall do hurt to thee also.

(4) Listen, my son, to my advice! Do not show your back to enemies and flee, but rather, pursue them as a strong one. Be not an animal, with men pursuing you; but rather, be a man, with you pursuing the evil wild beasts, lest somehow they become victorious over you and trample upon you as on a dead man, and you perish due to their wickedness.

(46) And though thy body may suffer pain, yet it is much worse with him when he is vanquished, for then he roareth like a lion that is robbed of her young whelps, for the fierceness and wrath of God tormenteth him; but if thou lettest him lodge within thee, then he grows fat and wanton, and will vanquish thee in time.

(123) Therefore this is a very difficult article to be understood; nay, it cannot be understood at all, except by experience in this fight. Though I should write many books thereof, yet thou wouldst understand nothing of it, unless thy spirit stand in such a birth or geniture, and that the knowledge be generated in thyself; otherwise thou canst neither comprehend nor believe it.

(37) And now hearken unto us : Let us send to Aram and Philistia and Moab and Amrnon, and let us choose for ourselves chosen men who are ardent for battle, and let us go against him and do battle with him, and let us exterminate him from the earth before he growetli strong."

(95) And to certain men of a generation shall the paths of violence and of death be revealed, And they shall hold themselves afar from them, And shall not follow them.

(8) Through these our deeds (of sacrifice and zeal ), they are terrified among whom there was (once) destruction, and for many (at the time) when the oppressor of Thy holy vows was as the stronger oppressing the weaker . They who have not thought (in consonance) with Thy Righteous Order, from these Thy Good Mind abideth afar.

(100) Against which the wrath, with its snarling in the astringent and bitter quality, at the hinder gums in the hollow on the tongue, struggles, and keeps its right to itself, and keepeth its seat in its place, and lets the meek spirit come forth from the heart, through itself [the wrath], and thundereth with its [the wrath's] snarling after the meek spirit, and so helps to form or frame the word, yet with its thundering cannot get away from its seat, but abideth in its hollow hole, as a captive prisoner, and appears terrible. This is a great Mystery.

(45) While thou livest in this struggling or striving birth or geniture thou must buckle to, and suffer the devil to ride upon thee; but so hard as he striketh thee, so hard thou must strike him again, if thou wilt defend thyself. For when thou tightest against him, thou stirrest up his wrath-fire, and destroyest his nest, and this is then as a great combustion, and as a great strong battle maintained against him.

(16) Is it not then from ignorance of what is and what is not to be dreaded that cowardice arises? Consequently the only man of courage is the Gnostic, who knows both present and future good things; along with these, knowing, as I have said, also the things which are in reality not to be dreaded. Because, knowing vice alone to be hateful, and destructive of what contributes to knowledge, protected by the armour of the Lord, he makes war against it.

(3) But there being but one First Cause, as will be shown afterwards, these men will be shown to be inventors of chatterings and chirpings. But since God deemed it advantageous, that from the law and the prophets, men should receive a preparatory discipline by the Lord, the fear of the Lord was called the beginning of wisdom, being given by the Lord, through Moses, to the disobedient and hard of heart. For those whom reason convinces not, fear tames; which also the Instructing Word, foreseeing from the first, and purifying by each of these methods, adapted the instrument suitably for piety. Consternation is, then, fear at a strange apparition, or at an unlooked-for representation - such as, for example, a message; while fear is an excessive wonderment on account of something which arises or is. They do not then perceive that they represent by means of amazement the God who is highest and is extolled by them, as subject to perturbation and antecedent to amazement as having been in ignorance. If indeed ignorance preceded amazement; and if this amazement and fear, which is the beginning of wisdom, is the fear of God, then in all likelihood ignorance as cause preceded both the wisdom of God and all creative work, and not only these, but restoration and even election itself. Whether, then, was it ignorance of what was good or what was evil?

(317) They who fear when they ought not to fear, and fear not when they ought to fear, such men, embracing false doctrines, enter the evil path.

(386) S UCH then, I said, are our principles of theology—some tales are to be told, and others are not to be told to our disciples from their youth upwards, if we mean them to honour the gods and their parents, and to value friendship with one another. Yes; and I think that our principles are right, he said. But if they are to be courageous, must they not learn other lessons besides these, and lessons of such a kind as will take away the fear of death? Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him? Certainly not, he said. And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the world below to be real and terrible? Impossible. Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this class of tales as well as over the others, and beg them not simply to revile but rather to commend the world below, intimating to them that their descriptions are untrue, and will do harm to our future warriors. That will be our duty, he said. Then, I said, we shall have to obliterate many obnoxious passages, beginning with the verses, ‘I would rather be a serf on the land of a poor and portionless man than rule over all the dead who have come to nought 1 .’ We must also expunge the verse, which tells us how Pluto feared,

(54) For the old Enemy is subtile and strong, who still assaults the Soul again, to try how he may afflict and deceive it; if he cannot overwhelm it with Sins, then he begins an outward War with it, and stirs up the Children of Malice against it, so that they contemn, mock, deride, vilify it, and do all Manner of Evil to it; and so they lay Wait for its Body and Goods, they jeer, reproach, and scorn it, and account it as the Off-scouring of the World; they upbraid it for its Infirmities; if it does but reprove their Faults and Unrighteousness, then it must be an Hypocrite [with them.]

(2) My son, throw every robber out of your gates. Guard all your gates with torches, which are the words, and you will acquire through all these things a quiet life. But he who will not guard these things will become like a city which is desolate, since it has been captured. All kinds of wild beasts have trampled upon it, for thoughts which are not good are evil wild beasts. And your city will be filled with robbers, and you will not be able to acquire peace, but only all kinds of savage wild beasts. The Wicked One, who is a tyrant, is lord over these. While directing this, he (the Wicked One) is beneath the great mire. The whole city, which is your soul, will perish.

(24) And whoever escapeth the sword of the enemy and the Kittim, may the righteous nation root out in judgment from under heaven ; for they will be the enemies and foes of my children throughout their generations upon the earth.

(26) Now if Man awakens Sin, then the fierce Anger [or severity] of God is stirred in himself, viz. in Man, which otherwise (if Man stood in Humility) would rest and be turned into great Joy, as was often mentioned before. But now when he burns [in Wrath,] then one People devours the other, and one Sin destroys another. If Israel had been upright, they had not been put to make War, but they should have entered in with Wonders, and have converted the People; Moses should have led them into the [promised Land] with his [Miracles] or Deeds of Wonder. But because they were wicked, they could not enter in (with the brightness of Moses, with Deeds of Wonder, in the Luster [or Glance] of the Father) to convert the Heathens; but Moses (with his Deeds of Wonder) must stay in the Wilderness, and the whole People was consumed and devoured in the Wrath; and Joshua must war with the Heathens, and destroy them, for one