“Bring water, bring wine, O boy Intoxicate me, plunge me into sleep. The cup tells me [Sidenote: p. 160.] What I must become.”[86]-- (_Anacreon_, XXVI, 25, 26.)
It was enough, he says, that only this should be known to men that Anacreon’s cup spoke mutely an unspeakable mystery. For mute, he says, was Anacreon’s cup which says Anacreon, tells him with mute speech what he must become, that is spiritual not fleshly, if he hears the hidden mystery in silence. And this is the water in those fair nuptials which Jesus changed by making wine. This, he says, is the mighty and true beginning of the signs which Jesus did in Cana in Galilee and made known the kingdom of the heavens. This, he says, is the kingdom of the heavens within us, as a treasure as the leaven hidden within three measures of meal.[87]
[Sidenote: p. 161.] This is, he says, the great and unspeakable mystery of the Samothracians which is allowed to be known to us alone who are perfect. For the Samothracians explicitly hand down in the mysteries celebrated by them that Adam is the Arch-man. And in the temple of the Samothracians stand two statues of naked men having both hands stretched forth to heaven and their _pudenda_ turned upwards like that of Hermes on (Mt.) Cyllene. But the aforesaid statues are the images of the Arch-man and of the re-born spiritual one in all things of one substance[88] with that man. This, he says, is what was spoken by the Saviour: “Unless ye drink my blood and eat my flesh, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of the heavens; but even though, He says, ye drink the cup which I drink when I go forth you will not be able to enter there.”[89] For He knew, he says, from which nature each of His disciples was, and that each of them was compelled to come to his own special nature. For from the twelve tribes, he says, He chose twelve [Sidenote: p. 162.] disciples,[90] and by them He spake to every tribe. Whence, he says, all could not have heard the preachings of the twelve disciples, nor, had they heard them could they have been received. For the things which are not according to[91] nature are with them natural.
