That some know more and others less in respect of understanding does not come about by their altering the very hypothesis, and inventing some other God besides the Demiurge, Maker, and Sustainer of this universe, as though these were not sufficient, or another Christ, or another Only-begotten. Rather it consists in further working out all that has been said in parables, and making it proper to the hypothesis of the faith; and in narrating the working and dispensation of God which came about for the sake of humanity; and in making clear that God was long-suffering both at the apostasy of the transgressing angels and at the disobedience of men; and in declaring why one and the same God made some things temporal and others eternal, some heavenly and others earthly; and in understanding why God, being invisible, appeared to the prophets, not in one form, but differently to different ones; and in showing why several covenants were given to humanity, and in teaching what is the character of each of the covenants; and in searching out why God shut up all things in disobedience, that he might have mercy on all; and in giving thanks why the Word of God became flesh and suffered; and in declaring why in the last times the coming of the Son of God—that is, the Beginning—appeared at the end; and in unfolding what lies in the Scriptures concerning the end and the things to come; and in not keeping silent as to why God has made the despaired-of nations fellow-heirs, of the same body, and partakers of the saints; and in announcing how this mortal flesh shall put on immortality, and this corruptible incorruption; and in proclaiming how it shall be said, 'Those who were not my people shall be my people, and she who was not beloved, beloved,' and how 'More are the children of the desolate than of her who has a husband.' For concerning these and the like the Apostle exclaimed, 'O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!' But it does not consist in inventing, above the Creator and Demiurge, a Mother of these beings, who is herself the Enthymesis of an erring Aeon, and in coming to such a degree of blasphemy; nor in falsely imagining above her, in turn, another Pleroma—at one time of a single member, but now of an innumerable tribe of Aeons—as these teachers say, who are truly destitute of divine understanding; whereas the whole existing Church has one and the same faith throughout the entire world, as we said before.