C. — " and receiving in themselves the recompense of their

Error which was meet"
H. For in these words which Paul spake is contained, they say, the whole of their hidden and ineffable Mystery of the Blessed Bliss.
For what is promised by the [rite of Uie] bath ^ is nothing else, according to them, than the introduction into Unfading Bliss of him who, according to them, is washed with Living Water, and anointed with the Chrism that no tongue can declare.*
1 Evidently a reference to the Chaldean fourfold (man-eagle- lion-bull) glyph of what Later Orphicism and Platonism called the Autozoon, representing the four main types of Animal Life ; the same mystery which Ezekiel saw in Uie Vision of the Mercabah, or Celestial Chariot — a reflected picture, I believe, from the Chaldsean Mysteries.
' Verses 24 and 25 of the Beceived Text are omitted.
> iiffxnf^o^^ — meaning also ''formlessness."
« (y. Ex. V. 2.
* That is, baptism.
• We wonder what "they" really did sayl They may have argued in their private circles that even in the foulest things the clean soul could recognise the reversed signs of the Mysteries of Purity ; for certainly these things require an explanation — nay, more urgently do they require an interpretation in proportion to their foulness. The hateful suggestion of Hippolytus that these ascetic and spiritually-minded folk — for their doctrines plainly show them to be so — were as foul as those of the Flood, only shows the ineradicable prejudice of unwitting self-righteonsneBs.
THB MYTH OF MAN IN THE MYSTERIES 155
(7) And they say that not only the Mysteries of the Assyrians and Phrygians substantiate this teaching {logoti) concerning the Blessed Nature, which is at once hidden and manifest [but also those of the Egyptians ^ ].
C* [The Nature] which (H. he says) is the Kingdom of the Heavens sought for within man —
H. —concerning which [Nature] they hand on a distinct tradition in the Qospel entitled According to ThomaSy saying as follows :