god, like that Libyan Apsethus; (a god) subject to
generation and suffering, so long as he remained in potentiality,
but freed from the bonds of suffering and birth, as soon as his
imaging forth was accomplished, and attaining perfection he passed
forth from the first two Powers, to wit heaven and earth. For Simon
speaks distinctly concerning this in his _Revelation_ as follows:

"_To you, therefore, I say what I say, and write what I write. And
the writing is this._

"_Of the universal Aeons there are two shoots, without beginning or
end, springing from one Root, which is the Power invisible,
inapprehensible Silence. Of these shoots one is manifested from
above, which is the Great Power, the Universal Mind ordering all
things, male, and the other, (is manifested) from below, the Great
Thought, female, producing all things_.

"_Hence pairing with each other_,[34] _they unite and manifest the
Middle Distance, incomprehensible Air, without beginning or end. In
this is the Father who sustains all things, and nourishes those
things which have a beginning and end._

"_This is He who has stood, stands and will stand, a male-female
power like the preexisting Boundless Power, which has neither
beginning nor end, existing in oneness. For it is from this that
the Thought in the oneness proceeded and became two._

"_So he_[35] _was one; for having her_[36] _in himself, he was
alone, not however first, although preexisting, but being
manifested from himself to himself, he became second. Nor was he
called Father before (Thought) called him Father._

"_As, therefore, producing himself by himself, he manifested to
himself his own Thought, so also the Thought that was manifested
did not make the Father, but contemplating him hid him--that is to
say the Power--in herself, and is male-female, Power and Thought._

"_Hence they pair with each other being one, for there is no
difference between Power and Thought. From the things above is
discovered Power, and from those below Thought._

"_In the same manner also that which was manifested from them_[37]
_although being one is yet found as two, the male-female having the
female in itself. Thus Mind is in Thought--things inseparable from
one another--which although being one are yet found as two._"

19.