Basilides again, that he may appear to have discovered something more sublime and plausible, gives an immense development to his doctrines. Wherefore the year contains the same number of days in conformity with the number of the heavens. Those angels who occupy the lowest heaven, that, namely, which is visible to us, formed all the things which are in the world, and made allotments among themselves of the earth and of those nations which are upon it. Wherefore all other nations were at enmity with his nation. He appeared, then, on earth as a man, to the nations of these powers, and wrought miracles.
Salvation belongs to the soul alone, for the body is by nature subject to corruption.
He declares, too, that the prophecies were derived from those powers who were the makers of the world, but the law was specially given by their chief, who led the people out of the land of Egypt. The multitude, however, cannot understand these matters, but only one out of a thousand, or two out of ten thousand. They make out the local position of the three hundred and sixty-five heavens in the same way as do mathematicians. For, accepting the theorems of these latter, they have transferred them to their own type of doctrine. Carpocrates, again, and his followers maintain that the world and the things which are therein were created by angels greatly inferior to the unbegotten Father.