Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.14

So the Sonship left the Spirit near that blessed place, which cannot be conceived or characterized by any word, not altogether empty nor bereft of the Sonship. But just as when a most fragrant ointment is poured into a vessel, even if the vessel is emptied with the greatest care, still some scent of the ointment remains and is left behind, even though the ointment has been separated from the vessel, and the vessel has the scent of ointment though not the ointment, so the Holy Spirit has remained without share in the Sonship and separated from it, yet has in itself, much like ointment, its power, the scent [of the Sonship]. And this is what is said: “like ointment on the head, which runs down on the beard of Aaron”: the scent borne from the Holy Spirit from above downward, as far as the formlessness and the interval where we are, from which the Sonship began to go up, carried, he says, as on the wings and back of an eagle. For all things, he says, hasten from below upward, from the worse to the better; and nothing among those [in] the better is so foolish as to come down below. But the third Sonship, he says, the one needing purification, has remained in the great heap of the seed-mass, benefiting and being benefited. In what way it is benefited and benefits we shall say later, when we come to the proper account of it.