Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
How the account they give based on numbers and names is destroyed. But also concerning that woman afflicted for years with a flow of blood, who touched the fringe of the Lord's garment, and thereby was made well, their ignorance stands exposed (for they say that through her is shown the suffering of that twelfth power, which flowed away into infinity, that is, the twelfth Aeon) — first, because according to their own system the twelfth is not this Aeon, as we have shown. But even granting them this point beyond what is due: of the twelve Aeons, eleven are said to have remained free from suffering, and the twelfth alone suffered; whereas the woman, on the contrary, was healed in her twelfth year — it is plain that for eleven years she had a continuing affliction, and recovered in her twelfth year. Now if the eleven Aeons were reported to have suffered incurably, while only the twelfth was cured, one might grant that the woman prefigured them. But since this woman suffered for eleven years and was not healed, and was healed in the twelfth year, how then can it be that they suffered nothing at all except that the twelfth alone was involved in suffering? For a type and image differs from the truth in some respects as regards material and substance, but must preserve the resemblance in form and outline, and thus show, by means of things present, those things which are not present.
And not only in this woman are the years of her infirmity recorded, which they say correspond to their fiction, but see also: another woman likewise, infirm for eighteen years, was healed, of whom the Lord asked: "Should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham bound by Satan for eighteen years, be set free on that day..." and she ought to be a type of the eighteenth suffering Aeon. But they cannot show this: otherwise their first and principal Ogdoad would have to be numbered among the Aeons that suffered together. And yet another again is healed by the Lord, having been thirty-eight years in his infirmity: and let them say that the thirty-eighth Aeon suffered. For if they claim that the Lord's deeds are figures of what exists within the Pleroma, then that figure must be maintained consistently throughout. But they cannot fit either the woman healed after eighteen years, or the man healed after thirty-eight, into their scheme. It is senseless and utterly inconsistent to say that the Savior preserved the type in some cases, but not in others. The woman's type is therefore shown to be dissimilar to the business of the Aeons.