{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/003/0030536.htm","path":"chr/ecf/003/0030536.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/003/0030536.htm","text":"Chapter XXI.\u2014The Vanity as Well as Ignorance of the Demiurge. Absurd Results from So Imperfect a Condition.\nMeanwhile you must believe 6824 that Sophia has the surnames of earth and of Mother\u2014\u201cMother-Earth,\u201d of course\u2014and (what may excite your laughter still more heartily) even Holy Spirit. In this way they have conferred all honour on that female, I suppose even a beard, not to say other things. Besides, 6825 the Demiurge had so little mastery over things, 6826 on the score, 6827 you must know, 6828 of his inability to approach spiritual essences, (constituted as he was) of animal elements, that, imagining himself to be the only being, he uttered this soliloquy: \u201cI am God, and beside me there is none else.\u201d 6829 But for all that, he at least was aware that he had not himself existed before. He understood, therefore, that he had been created, and that there must be a creator of a creature of some sort or other. How happens it, then, that he seemed to himself to be the only being, notwithstanding his uncertainty, and although he had, at any rate, some suspicion of the existence of some creator?","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol III: Tertullian: Part II: The Va...","type":"page"}