On Marcellina Prima

1:1 Some “Carpocratians” mark their disciples by branding them on the back part of the right ear. Marcellina, who came to Rome under Anicetus bearing these doctrines of Carpocrates, led many to ruin.

1:2 Marcellina and her disciples called themselves "gnostics."

1:3 They gather in her villa, where she displays paintings, but there is one painting Marcellina claims to be the very same portrait of Christ ordered by Pontius Pilate just before he had him flogged.

1:4 She crowns this image of Christ, and displays it alongside portraits of the philosophers of the world, namely Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and the rest. Before these paintings, they perform their observances in like manner as the pagans do.

On The Demiurge(s)

1:5 As for Carpocrates, his followers say that the world and the things which are in it were Built by angels greatly inferior to the unbegotten Father.

1:6 The accuser is one of those angels who Built the world—The Builders. His task is to lead the souls of the dead to the judge. Upon judgment, another angel, the jailer, transfers each soul into a new body appropriate for its sentence. These three are chief among all the angels.

On Metempsychosis

1:7 Carpocratians say the body is "a prison" for the soul.

1:8 They affirm that for this reason Jesus spoke the following parable: "While you are with your adversary on the way, give all diligence, that you may be delivered from him, lest he give you up to the judge, and the judge surrender you to the jailer, and he cast you into prison. Verily, I say unto you, you shall not go out thence until you pay the very last farthing."

1:9 They deem it necessary, therefore, that through transmigration from body to body, souls should experience every kind of life as well as every kind of action—unless, indeed, one can do all things in a single incarnation and thereby avoid any further incarnations.

1:10 It is necessary to insist upon this, lest anything still lacking for their deliverance compel them to become incarnate once more.

1:11 When nothing remains lacking, then each liberated soul should soar upwards to the unbegotten Father far above The Builders. In time, all souls shall be saved this way.

On Christology

1:12 Carpocratians believe that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, conceived through sexual relations like other human beings. Jesus differed from other human beings because his soul remained steadfast and pure, perfectly remembering what it had witnessed in the presence of the unbegotten Father.

1:13 A power descended upon him from heaven, and with this power, he escaped from this world. After evading The Builders and being liberated from their power, he ascended to the Father. And a Carpocratian who emulates Jesus is capable of the same thing.

1:14 Jesus, despite having been raised as a Jew and thoroughly instructed in the Law, regarded its teaching with contempt.

1:15 A soul like the soul of Jesus, capable of defying The Builders, may likewise receive the power to accomplish his feats. Some therefore strove to match Jesus; others sought to attain greater mastery than his apostles.

1:16 I can hardly believe the reports that all these ungodly, unlawful, and forbidden acts are really committed among them.

On Soteriology

1:17 And yet in their own books we read their explanation…

1:18 "We are saved, indeed, by means of faith and love; but all other things, while in their nature indifferent, are reckoned by the opinion of men—some good and some evil, there being nothing evil by nature."

1:19 So unbridled is their madness, that they declare they are at liberty to practice all things which are irreligious and impious.

On Magic

1:20 Therefore it is little wonder these lunatics also practice magic: incantations, concoctions, even aphrodisiacs! They summon familiars, send dreams to the unsuspecting, and, scariest of all, claim to possess power to command even now the rulers and creators of this world—and not only them, but also the elements from which the world was made.

1:21 I have no doubt these people were sent by our adversary to disgrace the name of the Church—so that outsiders assume all Christians are like them, and seeing their conduct would turn from the truth: condemning us all.

1:22 We share nothing "in commonality" with them: neither doctrine, nor morals, nor way of life.