5. Five Books in Reply to Marcion.: 277

²⁷⁷ Mundi.

²⁷⁸ Virtute.

²⁷⁹ Honestas.

²⁸⁰ Or, "records:" "monumenta," i.e., the written word, according to the canon.

²⁸¹ I make no apology for the ruggedness of the versification and the obscurity of the sense in this book, further than to say that the state of the Latin text is such as to render it almost impossible to find any sense at all in many places, while the grammar and metre are not reducible to any known laws. It is about the hardest and most uninteresting book of the five.

²⁸² Or, "consecrated by seers and patriarchs."

²⁸³ i.e., all the number of Thy disciples.

²⁸⁴ Tempora lustri, i.e., apparently the times during which these "elders" (i.e., the bishops, of whom a list is given at the end of book iii.) held office. "Lustrum" is used of other periods than it strictly implies, and this seems to give some sense to this difficult passage.

²⁸⁵ i.e., Marcion.

²⁸⁶ i.e., excommunicated.

²⁸⁷ Complexu vario.

²⁸⁸ Ancipiti quamquam cum crimine. The last word seems almost = "discrimine;" just as our author uses "cerno" = "discerno."

²⁸⁹ Mundo.