Fragments of a Faith Forgotten

BASING themselves on the Sayings preserved in the canonical Gospels and on the description of the communities given in the Acts, many have supposed that Jesus was a member of or intimately acquainted with the doctrines and discipline of the Essene communities. Who then were these Essenes or Healers ? For centuries before the Christian era Essene communities had dwelt on the shores of the Dead Sea. These Essenes or Essseans, in the days of Philo and Josephus, were imbued with the utmost reverence for Moses and the Law. They believed in God, the creator, in the immortality of the soul, and in a future state of retribution. Finding it impossible to carry out in ordinary life the minute regulations of the laws of purity, they had adopted the life of ascetic communism. Their chief characteristic was the doctrine of love — love to God, love of virtue, and love of mankind — and the practical way in which they carried out their precepts aroused the admiration of all.

Their strict observance of the purificatory discipline enacted by the Levitical institutions thus compelled them to become a self-supporting com munity ; all worked at a trade, they cultivated their own fields, manufactured all the articles of food and dress which they used, and thus in every way avoided contact with those who did not observe the same rules. They also appear in their inner circles to have been strict celibates. Their manner of life was as follows: they rose Their before the sun, and no word was uttered until they ofaLifer had assembled together and, with faces turned towards the dawn, offered up prayers for the renewal of the light. Each then went to his appointed task under the supervision of the stewards or overseers (" bishops ") elected by universal suffrage. At eleven o'clock they again assembled and, putting off their working clothes, performed the daily rite of baptism in cold water; then clothing themselves in white linen robes, they proceeded to the common meal, which they regarded as a sacrament ; the refectory was a " holy temple." They ate in silence, and the food was of the plainest — bread and vegetables. Before the meal a blessing was invoked, and at the end thanks were rendered. The members took their seats according to seniority. They then went forth to work again until the evening, when they again assembled for the common meal. Certain hours of the day, however, were devoted to the study of the mysteries of nature and of revelation, as well as of the powers of the celestial hierarchies, the names of the angels, etc. ; for they had an inner instruction, which was guarded with the utmost secrecy.

This was the rule for the week-days, while the Sabbath was kept with extreme rigour. They had, however, no priests, and any one who was " moved " to do so, took up the reading of the Law, and the exposition of the mysteries connected with the Tetragrammaton, or four-lettered mystery-name of the Creative Power, and the angelic worlds. The Essenes, therefore, were evidently in contact with Chaldaean " kabalism " and the Zoroastrian tradition of the discipline of purity ; logic and metaphysics, how ever, were eschewed as injurious to a devotional life. There were four degrees in the community: (i.) novices; (ii.) approachers; (iii.) new full members, or associates; (iv.) old members, or elders. (i.) After the first year the novice gave all his possessions to the common treasury, and received a copy of the regulations, a spade (for the purpose described in Moses' camp-regulations), and a white robe, the symbol of purity ; but the novice was still excluded from the lustral rites and common meal.

(ii.) After two years more, the novice shared in the lustral rites, but was still excluded from the common meal. (iii.) The associates were bound by the most solemn assurances, and in case of any delinquency could only be judged by the "assembly," consisting of one hundred members. Essenism is said by some to have been an exaggerated form of Pharisaism; and it may be a The matter of surprise to those whose only knowledge Holiness. of the Pharisees is derived from canonical docu ments, to learn that the highest aim of this enlightened school of Judaism was to attain to such a state of holiness as to be able to perform miraculous cures and to prophesy. The "degrees of holiness " practised by the Pharisees are said to have been: (i.) the study of the Law and circumspection; (ii.) the noviciate, in which the apron was the symbol of purity; (iii.) external

purity, by means of lustrations or baptisms; (iv.) celibacy ; (v.) inward purity, purity of thought ; (vi.) a higher stage still, which is not further defined ; (vii.) meekness and holiness; (viii.) dread of every sin ; (ix.) the highest stage of holiness ; (x.) the stage which enabled the adept to heal the sick and raise the dead. We should, however, remember that the Healers absolutely refused to have anything to do with the blood-sacrifices of the Temple-worship, and refused to believe in the resurrection of the physical body, which the rest of the Pharisees held as a cardinal doctrine. In this brief sketch it is of course impossible to point out the striking similarities between the dis cipline of the Essenes and that of the Therapeutae of Egypt and of the Orphic and Pythagorean schools. Every subject referred to in these essays requires a volume or several volumes for its proper treatment ; we can only set up a few finger-posts, and leave the reader to make his own investigations.

But before leaving this most interesting theme, it will be necessary to point to the identity between many of the Essene regulations and the Gospel teachings and traditions. Converts were required to sell their possessions and give to the poor, for the laying up of treasure was regarded as injurious to a spiritual life. Not ity"8tian only did tne Essenes despise riches, but they lived a life of self-imposed poverty. Love of the brotherhood and of one's neighbour was the soul of Essene life, and the basis of all action ; and this characteristic of their discipline called forth universal admiration. The members lived together as in a family, had all things in common, and appointed a steward to manage the common bag. When travelling they would lodge with brethren whom they had never seen before, as though with the oldest and most intimate friends ; and thus they took nothing with them when they went on a journey. All members were set on the same level, and the authority of one over another was forbidden ; nevertheless mutual service was strictly enjoined. They were also great lovers of peace, and so refused to take arms or manufacture warlike weapons ; moreover they pro scribed slavery. Finally, the end of the Essenes was to be meek and lowly in spirit, to mortify all sinful lusts, to be pure in heart, to hate evil but reclaim the evildoer, and to be merciful to all men. More over, their yea was to be yea, and their nay, nay. They were devoted to the curing of the sick, the healing of both body and soul, and regarded the power to perform miraculous cures and cast out evil spirits as the highest stage of discipline. In brief, they strove to be so pure as to become temples of the Holy Spirit, and thus seers and prophets.

To these inner communities were attached outer circles of pupils living in the world, and found in all the main centres of the Diaspora. Philo distinguishes the Essenes from the Therapeuts by saying that the former were devoted to the " practical " life, while the latter proceeded to the higher stage of the " contemplative " life, and devoted themselves to still higher problems of religion and philosophy, and it is in this direction that we must look for the best in Gnosticism.

BUT here again accurate historical data are out of The the question, and we have for the most part to deal izing"of with what the Germans call " Tendenz." Harnack ity.nS speaks of the tendency, which by long convention is generally called Gnostic, as the "acute secularizing of Christianity." What then is the meaning of this phrase ? Catholic dogma is said to be the outcome of the gradual hellenizing of general Christianity, that is to say, the modification of popular tradition by the philosophical and theological method. All evolution of popular beliefs takes time, and the results arrived at by the general mind only after centuries, are invariably anticipated by minds of greater instruction generations before. The Galileos of the world are invariably condemned by their contemporaries. The Gnostic mind rapidly arrived on the one hand at many conclusions which the Catholics gradually adopted only after generations of hesitation, and on the other at a number of conclusions which even to our present generation seem too premature. All theosophic students are, in matters of religion, centuries before their time, for the simple reason that they are endeavouring by every means in their power to shorten the time of normal evolution and reach the mystic goal, which at every moment of time is near at hand within, but

for the majority is far distant along the normal path of external evolution. The phrase "acute secularizing of Christianity," then, represents the rapid theologizing and systema tizing of Christianity; but I doubt whether this altogether accounts for the facts. The Gnosis was pre-Christian ; the Christ illumined its tradition, and by His public teaching practically threw open to all what had previously been kept "secret from the creation of the world " — to speak more accurately, the intermediate grades of the Mysteries. The leaven worked, and in course of time much that had been previously kept for the " worthy " alone, was forced into publicity and made common property. It was forced out by the stress of circumstances, inaugurated by the propaganda of Paul, and intensitied by subse quent hseresiological controversy. The Gnostics claimed that there were two lines of tradition — the public sayings, and the inner teachings which dealt with things that the people in the world could not understand. This side of their teaching they kept at first entirely to themselves, and only gradually put forth a small portion of it; the rest they kept in closest secrecy, as they knew it could not possibly be understood.

The Gnostics were, then, the first Christian theologists, and if it is a cause for reprehension that the real historical side of the new movement was obscured in order to suit the necessities of a religion which aspired to universality, then the Gnostics are the chief culprits. not*" the ^^e Beliefs °^ popular Judaism and the YahwehFather " cult, DUt in the earlier years it had been inclined to seek for an allegorical interpretation. Gnosticism, on the contrary, whenever it did not entirely reject the Old Covenant documents, invariably adopted not only the allegorical method, but also a canon of criticism which minutely classified the " inspiration " and so sifted out most of the objectionable passages from the Jewish Canon.

Thus, in persuit of a universal ideal, the tribal God — or rather, the crude views of the uninstructed Jewish populace as to Yahweh — was, when not entirely rejected, placed in a very subordinate position. In brief, the Yahweh of the Elohim was not the Father of Jesus; the Demiurgos, or creative power of the world, was not the Mystery God over all. Arid just as this idea of the true God transcended The inner the popular notions of deity, so did the true teaching Teaching. o£ ^ Gnosis illumine the enigmatical sayings or parables. The ethical teachings, or " Words of the Lord," and the parables, required interpretation; the literal meaning was sufficient for the people, but for the truly spiritual minded there was an infinite vista of inner meaning which could be revealed to the eye of the true Gnostic. Thus the plain ethical teaching and the unintelligible dark sayings were for the uninstructed; but there was a further instruction, an esoteric or inner doctrine, which was imparted to the worthy alone. Many gospels and apocalypses were thus

compiled under the inspiration of the " Spirit," as it was claimed — all purporting to be the instruction vouchsafed by Jesus to His disciples after the "resurrection from the dead," which mystical phrase they mostly represented as meaning the new birth or Gnostic illumination, the coming to life of the soul from its previous dead state. But even these Gnostic treatises did not reveal the whole matter ; true, they explained many things in terms of internal states and spiritual processes; but they still left much unexplained, and the final revelation was only communicated by word of mouth in the body, and by vision out of the body. Thus it was a custom with them to divide mankind into three classes: (a) the lowest, or Various

" hyhcs, were those who were so entirely dead Souls. to spiritual things that they were as the hyle, or unperceptive matter of the world; (b) the intermediate class were called " phychics," for though believers in things spiritual, they were believers simply, and required miracles and signs to strengthen their faith ; (c) whereas the " pneu matics," or spiritual, the highest class, were those capable of knowledge of spiritual matters, those who could receive the Gnosis. It is somewhat the custom in our days in extreme circles to claim that all men are " equal." The modern theologian wisely qualifies this claim by the adverb " morally." Thus stated the idea is by no means a peculiarly Christian view — for the doctrine is common to all the great religions, seeing that it simply asserts the great principle of justice as one

of the manifestations of Diety. The Gnostic view, however, is far clearer, and more in accord with the facts of evolution; it admits the "morally equal," but it further asserts difference of degree, not only in body and soul, but also in spirit, in order to make the morality proportional, and so to carry out the inner meaning of the parable of the talents. This classification obtained not only among men, but also among powers ; and the prophets of the Old Testament as instruments of such powers were, as stated above, thus sorted out into an order of dignity. The personality of Jesus, the prophet of the new Person of tidings proved, however, a very difficult problem for Jesus. ^ne Gnostic doctors, and we can find examples

of every shade of opinion among them — from the original Ebionite view that he was simply a good and holy man, to the very antipodes of belief; that he was not only a descent of the Logos of God — a familiar idea to Oriental antiquity —but in deed and in his person very God of very God, a necessity forced upon faith by the boastful spirit of an enthusiasm which sought to transcend the claims of every existing religion. The person of Jesus was thus made to bear the burden of every possibility of the occult world and every hidden power of human nature. In their endeavours to reconcile the ideas of a suffering man and of a triumphant initiator and king of the universe (both sensible and intellectual), they had recourse to the expedient of Docetism, a theory which could cover every phase of contradiction in the sharp juxtaposition of the divine and human natures of their ideal. The

docetic theory is the theory of "appearance." A sharp distinction was made between Christ, the divine geon or perfected " man," and Jesus the personality. The God, or rather God, in Christ, did not suffer, but appeared to suffer; the lower man, Jesus, alone suffered. Or again, Christ was not really incarnated in a man Jesus, but took to himself a phantasmal body called Jesus. But these were subsequent doctrinal developments on the ground of certain inner facts: (a) that a phantasmal body can be used by the " perfect," be made to appear and disappear at will, and become dense or materialised, so as to be felt physically ; and (6) that the physical body of another, usually a pupil, can be used by a master of wisdom as a medium for instruction. Such underlying ideas occur in Gnostic treatises and form an important part of their christology, especially with regard to the period of instruction after the "resurrection."

In fact no problem appeared too lofty for the intuition of the Gnostic philosopher ; the whence, The Main whither, why, and how of things, were searched into with amazing daring. Not only was their cosmogony of the most sublime and complex character, but the limits of the sensible world were too narrow to contain it, so that they sought for its origins in the intellectual and spiritual regions of the immanent mind of deity, wherein they postulated a transcendent aeonology which pour tray ed the energizings of the divine ideation. Equally complex was their anthropogony, and equally sublime the potentialities which they postulated of the human soul and spirit. As to their soteriology, or theory of the salvation or regeneration of mankind, they did not confine the idea to the crude and limited notion of a physical passion by a single individual, but expanded it into a stupendous cosmical process, wrought by the volition of the Logos in His own nature.

Their eschatology, or doctrine of the " last things/' again painted for mankind at the end of the world - cycle a future which gave "nirvana" to the "spiritual" and seonian bliss to the " psychic," while the " hylic " remained in the obscuration of matter until the end of the "Great Peace" — a picture somewhat different from the crude expectation of the good feasting time on earth of the " Poor Men," which Harnack technically refers to as a " sensuous eudsemonistic eschatology." Finally, the whole of their doctrine revolved round the conception of cyclic law for both the universal and the individual soul. Thus we find the Gnostics invariably teaching the doctrine not only of the preexistence but also of the rebirth *of human souls ; and though a chief feature of their dogmas was the main doctrine of forgiveness of sins, they nevertheless held rigidly to the infallible working out of the great law of cause and effect. It is somewhat curious that these two main doctrines, which explain so much in Gnosticism and throw light on so many dark places, have been either entirely overlooked or, when not unintelligently slurred over, despatched with a few hurried remarks in which the critic is more at pains to apologize for touching on such ridiculous super stitions as "metempsychosis" and "fate," than to elucidate tenets which are a key to the whole position.

THE study of Gnosticism has so far been almost entirely confined to specialists, whose works cannot be understand ed of the people ; the ordinary reader is deterred by the wealth of detail, by the difficulty of the technical terms, by the obscurity of theological phraseology, and by the feeling that he is expected to know many things of which he has never even heard. It is to be hoped that ere long some competent English scholar, endowed with the genius of lucid generalization, may be induced to write a popular sketch of the subject, in order that thinking men and women who have not enjoyed the advantages of a technical training in Church history and dogmatics, may understand its importance and absorbing interest.

Meantime our present essay may, perhaps, to some extent serve as a " guide to the perplexed," yet not conceived on the plan or carried out with the ability of a Maimonides, but rather the mere jotting down of a few notes and indications which may spare the general reader the years of labour the writer has spent in searching through many books. First, then, as to books ; what are the best works on Gnosticism ? The best books without exception Literature, are by German scholars. Here, then, we are confronted with our first difficulty, for the general reader as a rule is a man of one language only. For the ordinary English reader, therefore, such works are closed books, and he must have recourse to

translations, if such exist. Unfortunately only two of such works are procurable in English dress. The second volume of the translation (Bohn, new ed., 1890) of Neander's Church History (1825, etc.), deals with the Gnostics, but the great German theologian's work is now out of date. The best general review of Gnosticism by the light of the most recent researches, is to be found in Harnack's admirable History of Dogma, in the first volume, translated in 1894. For a more detailed account, Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography (1877-1887) is absolutely indispensable. The scheme of this useful work contains a general article, with lengthy articles on every Gnostic teacher, and shorter articles on a number of the technical terms of the Gnosis. Lipsius, Salmon, and Hort are responsible for the work, and their names are a sufficient guarantee of thoroughness.

The last two works are all that are necessary for a preliminary grasp of the subject, and are the outcome of profound scholarship and admirable critical acumen. It is a pleasure to subscribe one's tribute of praise to such work, although the point of view assumed by these distinguished scholars is not sufficiently liberal for one who is deeply convinced that the inspiration of every honest effort to formulate the inner truth of things is really from above. Of other English works we may mention King's Gnostics and their Remains (2nd ed., 1887), a work intended for the general reader. King strongly insists on a distinct Indian influence in Gnosticism, and deals with a number of interesting points; but his work lacks the thoroughness of the specialist. He is, however, far removed from "orthodoxy," and has an exceeding great sympathy for the Gnostics. The weakest point of King's work is the side he has brought into chief prominence ; the so-called " remains " of the Gnostics, amulets, talismans, etc., in which King as a numismatologist took special interest, are now stated by the best authorities to have had most probably no connection with our philosophers. Nevertheless King's book is well worth reading.

Mansel's posthumous work, The Gnostic Heresies of the First and Second Centuries (18*75), is not only unsympathetic, but for the most part does grave injustice to the Gnostics, by insisting on treating their leading ideas as a metaphysic to be judged by the standard of modern German philo sophical methods, the Dean having himself once held a chair of philosophy. Norton, in his Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels (1847), devotes his second volume to the Gnostics, but the value of his work is small. Burton's Inquiry into the Heresies of the Apostolic Age (1829) might have been written by an early Church Father. The Bampton lecturer's effort and Norton's are now both out of date; moreover their books and that of Mansel are only procurable in the second-hand market.

So much for works in English dealing directly with Gnosticism. The student will find in Harnack brief but discriminating bibliographies after each chapter, in which all the best works are given, especially those of German scholars ; in Smith and Wace's Dictionary each article is also followed by a fair biblio graphy. A short general bibliography, and also a list of nearly all the latest work done on the only direct documents of Gnosticism which we possess, is to be found in the Introduction to my translation of the Gnostic treatise Pistis Sophia (1896); and a classified bibliography of all the most important works is appended to this essay. The student will be surprised to see how unfavourably the paucity of information in English compares with the mass of encyclopaedic work in German, and how France also in this department of Church history and theological research runs England very close. But the con sideration of these works does not fall into the plan of this short essay.

So much, then, for the general literature of the indirect subject in English; we have now to consider briefly the indirect and direct documents of Gnosticism. By " indirect " documents I mean the polemical writings of the Fathers of what subsequently established itself as the orthodox Catholic Church. These indirect documents were practically the only sources of information until 1853, when Schwartze's translation of the Pistis Sophia was published. By " direct" documents I mean the few Gnostic treatises which have reached our hands through the medium of Coptic translation. come through the hands of the most violent opponents of the Gnosis ; and we have only to remember the intense bitterness of religious con troversy at all times, andespecially in the early centuries of the Church, to make us profoundly sceptical of the reliability of such sources of informa tion. Moreover, the earlier and more contemporaneous, and therefore comparatively more reliable, sources are to be found mostly in the writings of the Fathers of the Western Church, who were less capable of understanding the philosophical and mystical problems which agitated the Eastern communities. The Roman and occidental mind could never really grasp Greek and oriental thought, and the Western Fathers were always the main champions of " orthodoxy."

We should further remember that we have extant no contemporary " refutation " of the first century (if any ever existed), or of the first three quarters of the second. The great " store-house of Gnosticism " is the Refutation of Irenaeus, who wrote at Lyons in Gaul, far away from the real scene of action, in about the penultimate decade of the second century. All subsequent refutators base themselves more or less on the treatise of Irenseus, and frequently copy tho work of the Gallic bishop. If, then, Irenaeus can be shown to be unreliable, the whole edifice of refutation is endangered by the insecurity of its foundation. This important point will be considered later on. Prior to Irenseus a certain Agrippa Castor, who flourished late in the reign of Hadrian, about 135 A.D.,

is said by Eusebius to have been the first to write against heresies. His work is unfortunately lost. Justin Martyr, the apologist, also composed a work against heresies; this Syntagma or Compendium is also unfortunately lost. Judging from Justin's account of the Gospel-story in his extant works, it would appear that the " Memoirs of the Apostles " to which he repeatedly refers, were not identical with our four canonical Gospels, though it may well be that these Gospels were assuming their present shape at this period. It may therefore be supposed that his work upon heresies threw too strong a light on pre-canonical controversy to make its continued use desirable. This may also be the reason of the disappearance of the work of Agrippa Castor. Justin nourished about 140-160 A.D.

Clement of Alexandria, whose greatest literary activity was from about 190-203 A.D., lived in the greatest centre of Gnostic activity, and was personally acquainted with some of the great doctors of the Gnosis. His works are for the most part free from those wholesale accusations of immorality with which the general run of Church Fathers in after years loved to bespatter the character of the Gnostics of the first two centuries. All the critics are now agreed that these accusations were unfounded calumnies as far as the great schools and their teachers were concerned, seeing that the majority were rigid ascetics. But this point will come out more clearly later on. Clement is supposed to have dealt with the higher problems of Gnosticism in his lost work, The Outlines,

in which he endeavoured to construct a complete system of Christian teaching, the first three books of which bore a strong resemblance to the three stages of the Platonists : (i.) Purification, (ii.) Initiation, (iii.) Direct Vision. This work is also unfortunately lost. It was the continuation of his famous Miscellanies, in which the Christian philosopher laboured to show that he was a true Gnostic himself. Tertullian of Carthage (fl. 200-220 A.D.), whose intolerance, " fiery zeal," and violently abusive language are notorious, wrote against heresies, mostly copying Irenseus. For the Marcionites, however, he is an independent authority. Part of the treatise against heresies ascribed to Tertullian is written by some unknown refutator, and so we have a PseudoTertullian to take into consideration.

Hippolytus, Bishop of Portus at the mouth of the Tiber, was the disciple of Irenseus. He wrote a Compendium against all heresies, based almost entirely on Irenseus, which is lost ; but a much larger work of the same Father was in 1842 discovered at Mount Athos. This purported to be a Refutation of All Heresies, and adds considerably to our information from indirect sources ; for the work is not a mere copy of Irenseus, but adds a large mass of new matter, with quotations from some Gnostic MSS. which had fallen into Hippolytus' hands. The composition of this work may be dated somewhere about 222 A.D. About this time also (225-250) Origen, the great Alexandrian Father, wrote a refutation against a

certain Celsus, who is supposed to have been the first opponent of Christianity among the philosophers, and who lived some seventy-five years before Origen's time. In this there are passages referring to some of the Gnostics. If then we include Origen's work against The True Word of Celsus, we have mentioned all the Fathers who are of any real value for the indirect sources of Gnosticism in the first two centuries Philaster, bishop of Brescia in Italy, Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, and Jerome, fall about the last quarter of the fourth century, and are therefore (unless, of course, they quote from earlier writers) too late for accuracy with regard to the things of the first two centuries. Philaster, moreover, is generally put out of court owing to his over weening credulity; and the reliability of Epiphanius is often open to grave suspicion, owing to his great faculty of inventing or retailing scandals and all kinds of foulness.

Eusebius is fifty years earlier, but there is little to be gleaned from him on the subject, and his reputation for accuracy has been called into question by many independent historical critics. Theodoret's Compendium, based on his predecessors and dating about the middle of the fifth century, is far too late to add to our knowledge of the first two centuries. The study of these indirect documents has exercised the ingenuity of the critics and resulted in a marvellously clever feat of scholarship. Lipsius has demonstrated that Epiphanius, Philaster, and Pseudo-Tertullian all draw from a common source, which was the lost Syntagma or Compendium of Hippolytus, consisting mainly of notes of the lectures of Irenseus ; that is to say, in all probability, of the polemical tractates which the bishop read to his community, and on which he based his larger work. Thus reconstructing the lost document, he compares it with Irenseus, and infers for both a common authority, probably the lost Syntagma of Justin.

We thus see that our main source is Irenaeus. The Refutation of Irenseus is the "store-house of Gnosticism "—according to the Fathers — for the first two centuries. Irenseus lived far away in the wilds of Gaul ; is his evidence reliable ? Setting aside the general presumption that no ecclesiastical writer at such a time could, in the nature of things, have been fair to the views of his opponents, which he perforce regarded as the direct product of the prince of all iniquity, we shall shortly see that fate has at length — only a few years ago — placed the final proof of this presumption in our hands. But meantime let us turn our attention to our Direct

direct sources of information. We have now no less than three Codices containing Coptic translations of original Greek Gnostic works. (i.) The Askew Codex, vellum, British Museum, London : containing the Pistis Sophia treatise and extracts from The Books of the Saviour. (ii.) The Bruce Codex (consisting of two distinct MSS.), papyrus, Bodleian Library, Oxford : containing a series of lengthy fragments under the general title The Book of the Great Logos according to the Mystery ; another treatise of great sublimity but without a title; and a fragment or fragments of yet another treatise. (iii.) The Akhmim Codex, papyrus, Egyptian Museum, Berlin : containing The Gospel of Mary (or Apocryphon of John), The Wisdom of Jesus Christ, and The Acts of Peter.

The Akhmim Codex was only discovered in 1896. Prior to 1853, when the Askew Codex was translated into Latin, nothing of a practical nature was known of its contents, while the contents of the Bruce Codex were not known till 1891-1892, when translations appeared in French and German. We have to reflect on the indifference which allowed these important documents to remain, in the one case (Cod. Ask.) for eighty years without translation, and in the other (Cod. Bruc.) one hundred and twenty years ! The first attempt at translation in English appeared only in 1896 in my version of Pistis Sophia. It will thus be seen that the study of Gnosticism from direct sources is quite recent, and that all but the most recent research is out of date. This new view is all the more forced upon us by the latest discovery which in the Akhmim MS. places in our hands the means of testing the accuracy of Irenseus, the sheet-anchor of hseresiologists. The Gospel of Mary is one of the original sources that Irenseus used. We are now enabled in one case to control the Church Father point by point — and find that he has so condensed and paraphrased his original that the consistent system of the school of Gnosticism which

he is endeavouring to refute, appears as an incom prehensible jumble. This recent activity among specialists in Gnostic research, at a time when a widespread interest in a revival of theosophic studies has prepared the way for a reconsideration of Gnosticism from a totally different standpoint to that of pure criticism or refutation, is a curious coincidence. From the above considerations it is evident that so far are the Gnostics and their ideas from being buried in that oblivion which their opponents have so fervently desired and so busily striven to ensure, that now at the opening of the twentieth century, at a time when Biblical criticism is working with the reincarnated energy and independence of a Marcion, the memory of these universalizers of Christianity is coming once more to the front and occupying the attention of earnest students of religion.

In addition to these indirect and direct sources there is also another source that may yield us some valuable information, when submitted to the searching of an enlightened criticism. The legends and traditions preserved in the Gnostic Acts deserve closer attention than they have hitherto received, as we shall hope to show in the sequel by quotations from several of them.

Oh that mine adversary had written a book !

WE shall now proceed to introduce the reader to the chief teachers and schools of Gnosticism, as far No as they are known to us from the polemical writings Possible. of the Church Fathers. Unfortunately we are not in a position to present the student with a satisfactory classification of the Gnostic schools ; every classifi cation previously attempted has completely broken down, and in the present state of our knowledge we must be content to sift the different phases of development out of the heap as best we can. Clement of Alexandria, at the end of the second century, tried the rough expedient of dividing these schools of Christendom into ascetic and licentious sects ; Neander at the beginning of the present century endeavoured to classify them by their friendly or unfriendly relations to Judaism ; Baur followed with an attempt which took into consideration not

only how they regarded Judaism, but also their attitude to Heathenism ; Matter adopted a geographi cal distribution into the schools of Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt ; and Lipsius followed with a more general division into the Gnosticism of Syria and of Alexandria. All these classifications break down on many important points; and we are thus compelled to follow the imperfect indications of the earliest Patristic hseresiologists, who vaguely and uncritically ascribed the origin of Gnosticism to " Simon Magus." It is, however, certain that the origin of Gnostic ideas, so far from being simple and traceable to an individual, was of a most complex nature ; some have thought that it has to be sought for along the line of so-called " Ophitism," which is a general term among the hseresiologists for almost everything they cannot ascribe to a particular teacher. But the medley of schools and tendencies which the Fathers indiscriminately jumble together as Ophite, contains the most heterogeneous elements, good and bad. The name Ophite, or " serpentworshipper," is simply a term of abuse used solely by the refutators, while the adherents of these schools called themselves generally " Gnostics," and were apparently the first to use the term.

We shall, therefore, first of all follow the so-called " Simonian " line of descent until the first quarter of the second century ; then plunge into the indefinite chaos of the " Gnostics " ; next retrace our steps along a Gnostic phase of the Ebionite tradition ; and finally treat of the most brilliant epoch of Gnosticism known to us — when Basilides, Valentinus, and Bardesanes lived and worked and thought, and Marcion amazed infant orthodoxy with a " higher criticism " which for boldness has perhaps not yet been equalled even in our own day. It was an epoch which gave birth to works of such excellence that, in the words of Dr. Carl Schmidt (in the Introduction to his edition of the Codex Brucianus), " we stand amazed, marvelling at the boldness of the speculations, dazzled by the richness of thought, touched by the depth of soul of the author" — "a period when Gnostic genius like a mighty eagle left the world behind it, and soared in wide and ever wider circles towards pure light, towards pure knowledge, in which it lost itself in ecstasy."

We should, however, in studying the lives and teachings of these Gnostics always bear in mind that our only sources of information have hitherto been the caricatures of the hgeresiologists, and remember that only the points which seemed fantastic to the refutators were selected, and then exaggerated by every art of hostile criticism ; the ethical and general teachings which provided no such points, were almost invariably passed over. It is, therefore, impossible to obtain anything but a most distorted portrait of men whose greatest sin was that they were centuries before their time. It should further be remembered, that the term " heresy " in the first two centuries, did not generally connote the narrow meaning assigned to it later on. It was simply the usual term for a school of philosophy ; thus we read of the heresy of Plato, of Zeno, of Aristotle. The Gnostics, and the rest of Christendom also, were thus divided into a

number of schools or " heresies," which in those early times were more or less of equal dignity and authenticity. THERE is no reason to suppose that the Gnostics The Origin whom the Church Fathers call " Simonians " would Name have themselves answered to the name, or have recognized the line of descent imagined for them by their opponents as founded on any basis in fact. As early as Justin Martyr (c. 150 A.D.), " Simon " assumed a prominence out of all proportion to his place in history. Evidently Justin regarded him with great detestation, and accused the Romans of worshipping him as a god, on the strength of an inscription on a statue at Rome. Justin gives the inscription as " Simoni Deo Sancto " - " To Simon, the holy God." But (alas ! for the reputation of Justin's accuracy when engaged in controversy) archaeology has discovered the statue — and finds it dedicated to a Sabine deity, " Semo Sancus " ! Justin's assertion, however, was received without question by subsequent haeresiologists, as all such assertions were in that uncritical age.

Now it is very probable that Justin, in his innumerable controversies in defence of his par ticular view of Christianity, was met with some argument in which Simon was quoted as an example. It may have been that Justin argued that the miracles of Jesus proved all that Justin claimed on His behalf, and was met by the counter-argument that Simon also was a great wonder-worker, and made great claims, so that miracles did not prove Justin's contentions. Thus it may have been that Justin grew to detest the memory of Simon, and saw him and his supporters everywhere, even at Rome in a statue to a Sabine godling. It may well have been that some wonder-worker called Simon may have astonished people in Samaria with his psychological tricks, and that stories were still in Justin's time told of him among the people. But what did most to stereotype the legend that Simon was the first heretic, was the insertion of his name in one of the stories included in the sub sequently canonical Acts of the Apostles. This took place later than Justin, and so we have the first moments in the evolution of the legend of the origin of heresy (and therefore, according to the Fathers, of Gnosticism). What then is told us about " Simon " and the " Simonians," is only of interest for a recovery of some of the ideas which the subsequently Catholic party was striving . to con trovert; it has no value as history.

The legendary background of the Pseudo-ClemenA Follower ^ne polemic informs us that the precursor of Baptist. " Simon Magus " was a certain Dositheus. He is mentioned in the lists of the earliest hseresiologists, in a Samaritan Chronicle, and in the Chronicle of Aboulf atah (fourteenth century) ; the notices, however, are all legendary, and nothing of a really reliable character can be asserted of the man. That however he was not an unimportant personage is evidenced by the persistence of the sect of the Dositheans to the sixth century; Aboulfatah says even to the fourteenth. Both Dositheus and " Simon Magus " w'ere, according to tradition, followers of John the Baptist; they were, however, said to be inimical to Jesus. Dositheus is said to have claimed to be the promised prophet, "like unto Moses," and "Simon" to have made a still higher claim. In fact, like so many others in those days, both were claimants to the Messiaship. The Dositheans followed a mode of life closely resembling that of the Essenes ; they had also their own secret volumes, and apparently a not inconsiderable literature.

Dositheus (Dousis, Dusis, or Dosthai) was apparently an Arab, and in Arabia, we have every reason to believe, there were many mystic com munities allied to those of the Essenes and Therapeuts. One of the Gospels used by Justin, under the general title "Memoirs of the Apostles," states that the "wise men " came from Arabia. One legend even claims Dositheus as the founder of the sect of the Sadducees ! Later tradition assigned to him a group of thirty disciples, or to be more precise twenty-nine and a-half (the number of days in a month), one of them being a woman. That is to say, the system of Dositheus turned on a lunar basis, just as subsequent systems ascribed to Jesus turned on a solar basis, the twelve disciples typifying the solar months or zodiacal signs, or rather certain facts of the wisdom-tradition which underlie that symbolism. Dositheus is said to have claimed to be a manifestation of the " Standing One " or unchanging principle, the name also ascribed to the supreme principle of the " Simonians." The one female disciple was Helena (the name of the moon or month, Selene, in Greek), who appears also in the legend of Simon.

On the dim screen of Dosithean tradition we can thus see shadows passing of the sources of a The Prepre-Christian Gnosis — Arab, Phoenician, Syrian, Gnosis. Babylonian shadows. More interesting still, we can thus, perhaps, point to a source to which may be traced, along another line of descent, the subsequent thirty aeons of the Valentinian pleroma or ideal world, with the divided thirtieth, Sophia (within and with out, above and below), the lower aspect of which constituted the World-soul or the primordial substance of a world-system. It is also to be observed that Aboulfatah places Dositheus 100 years B.C. Of course only very qualified credence can be given to this late chronicler, but still it is possible that he may have drawn from sources

no longer accessible to us. The statement is interesting as showing that the chronicler recognized the fact of a pre-Christian Gnosis; though how he reconciles this John the Baptist date with the orthodox chronology is a puzzle. Can he have been influenced by the Talmudic tradition of the date of Jesus, which places him a century prior to our era ? Together with Dositheus and " Simon," Hegesippus (according to Eusebius) also mentions Cleobius, Gorthseus, and Masbotheus as prominent leaders of primitive Christian schools. " SIMON MAGUS, " as we have already said, is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, a document of the New Testament collection, said not to be quoted prior to 177 A.D. Irenseus and his successors repeat the Acts legend. Justin Martyr (c. 150) speaks of a certain Simon of Gitta whom nearly all the Samaritans regarded with the greatest reverence ; this Simon, he said, claimed to be an incarnation of the " Great Power," and had many followers. Justin, however, makes no reference to the Acts story, and so some have assumed two Simons, but this does not seem to be necessary. The Justin account is the nucleus of the huge Simonian legend which was mainly developed by the cycle of Pseudo-Clementine litera ture of the third century, based on the second century Circuits of Peter.

Hippolytus alone, at the beginning of the -third century, has preserved a few scraps from the extensive literature of the " Simonians " ; the bishop of Portus quotes from a work entitled The Great Announcement, and so we are able to form some idea of one of the systems of these Gnostics. The scheme of the Gnosis contained in this document, so far from presenting a crude form, or mere germ, of Gnostic doctrine, hands on to us a highly developed phase of Gnostic tradition, which, though not so elaborated as the Valentinian system, nevertheless is almost as mature as the Barbelo scheme, referred to so cursorily by Irenseus, and now partly recovered in the newly-discovered Gospel of Mary.

In the earliest times to which Catholic Christians subsequently traced the origin of their traditions, TheEbionite there were, as we know from various sources, numerous movements in and about Palestine of a prophetical and reformatory nature, many prophets and teachers of ethical, mystical, religio-philosophical, and Gnostic doctrines. The Ebionite communities found themselves in conflict with the followers of these teachers on many points, and Ebionite tradition handed on a garbled account of these doctrinal conflicts. Above all things, the Ebionites were in bitterest strife with the Pauline churches. Later on General Christianity set itself to work to reconcile the Petrine and Pauline differences, principally by the Acts document; and in course of time Ebionite tradition was also edited by the light of the new view, and the name of Simon substituted for the great "heretic" with whom the Ebionites had striven. And so the modified Ebionite tradition, which was

presumably first committed to writing in the Circuits of Peter, gradually evolved a romance, in which the conflicts between Simon Peter the Ebionite, and Simon the Magician, are graphically pourtrayed, the magical arts of the Samaritan are foiled, and his false theology is exposed, by the doughty champion of the " Poor Men." The latest recension of this cycle of romance gave the whole a Roman setting, and so we find Simon finally routed by Peter at Rome (to suit the legend of the Roman Church that Peter had come to Rome), but in earlier recensions Peter does not travel beyond the East, and Simon is finally routed at Antioch. A close inspection of the Pseudo-Clementine literature reveals a number of literary deposits or strata of legend, one of which is of a very remarkable nature. Baur was the first to point this out, and his followers in the Tubingen school elaborated his views into the theory that Simon Magus is simply the legendary symbol for Paul. The remarkable similarity of the doctrinal points at issue in both the PetroSimonian and Petro-Pauline controversies cannot be denied, and the scholarly reputation of the Tubingen school puts out of court mere a priori impossibility. Although, of course, it would not be prudent to take the extreme view that wherever Simon Magus is mentioned, Paul is meant, nevertheless we may not unclearly distinguish this identity in at least one of the strata of the legend.

The " Simonian " systems, as described by the Fathers, reveal the main features of the Gnosis : the Father over all, the Logos-idea, the aeon-world, or ideal universe, its emanation, and its positive and negative aspects represented as pairs or The syzygies; the world-soul represented as the thought Literature. or female aspect of the Logos; the descent of the soul; the creation of the sensible world by the builders; the doctrines of reincarnation, redemp tion, etc. The main characteristic of the " Simonians " is said to have been the practice of "magic," which " Simon " is reported to have learned in Egypt, and which gave rise to most of the fantastic stories invented by their opponents. But it is very probable that the title Magus covers much more than the story of the Samaritan wonder-worker, and puts us in touch with a Gnostic link with Persia and the Magi; and indeed the fire-symbolism used in the MS. quoted from by Hippolytus amply confirms this hypothesis.

In other respects the " Simonian " Gnosis was on similar lines to the Barbelo-Gnostic and BasilidoValentinian developments ; this is to be clearly seen in the fragments of The Great Announcement pre served by Hippolytus. The rest of the "Simonian" literature has perished; one of their chief documents, however, was a book called The Four Quarters of the World, and another famous treatise contained a number of controversial points (Refutatorii Sermones) ascribed to "Simon," which submitted the idea of the God of the Old Testament to a searching criticism, especially dealing with the serpent-legend in Genesis. The main symbolism, which the evolvers of the Simon-legend parodied into the myth of Simon and Helen, appears to have been sidereal ; thus the Logos and his Thought, the World-soul, were symbolized as the Sun (Simon) and Moon (Selene, Helen); so with the microcosm, Helen was the human soul fallen into matter and Simon the mind which brings about her redemption. Moreover one of the systems appears to have attempted to interpret the Trojan legend and myth of Helen in a spiritual and psychological fashion.

This is interesting as showing an attempt to invoke the authority of the popular Greek " Bible," the cycle of Homeric legend, in support of Gnostic ideas. It was the extension of the method of the Jewish allegorizers into the domain of Greek mythology. The detractors of the " Simonians," among the Church Fathers, however, evolved the legend, that Helen was a prostitute whom Simon had picked up at Tyre. The name of this city presumably led Baur to suggest that the Simon (*#ftt#, Sun) and Helen (SeA^i/j/, Moon) terminology is connected with the Phoenician cult of the sun and moon deities which was still practised in that ancient city. Doubtless the old Phoenician and Syrian ideas of cosmogony were familiar to many students of religion at that period, but we need not be too precise in matters so obscure.

Ireneeus gives the following outline of the system The he ascribes to the " Simonians." It is the dramatic System of myth of the Logos and the World-soul, the Sophia, or Wisdom. Irenseus, however, would have it that it was the personal claim of Simon concerning Helen; he evidently bases himself on a MS. in which the Christ, as the Logos, is represented as speaking in the first person, and we shall there fore endeavour to restore it partially to its original form. " ' Wisdom was the first Conception (or Thought) of My Mind, the Mother of All, by whom in the beginning I conceived in My Mind the making of the Angels and Archangels. This Thought leaping forth from Me, and knowing what was the will of her Father, descended to the lower regions and generated the Angels and Powers, by whom also the world was made. And after she had generated them, she was detained by them through envy, for they did not wish to be thought the progeny of any other. As for Myself, I am entirely unknown to them.'

"And Thought," continues Irenaeus, summarising from the MS., " was made prisoner by the Powers and Angels that had been emanated by her. And she suffered every kind of indignity at their hands, to prevent her reascending to her Father, even to being imprisoned in the human body and trans migrating into other female [?] bodies, as from one vessel into another. ... So she, transmigrating from body to body, and thereby also continually undergoing indignity, last of all even stood for hire in a brothel ; and she was the ' lost sheep.' " ' Wherefore, also, am I come to take her away for the first time, and free her from her bonds; to make sure salvation to men by My Gnosis.'

" For as the Angels," writes the Church Father, " were mismanaging the world, since each of them desired the sovereignty, He had come to set matters right; and He had descended, tranforming Himself and being made like to the Powers and Principalities and Angels ; so that He appeared to men as a man, although He was not a man; and was thought to have suffered in Judsea, although He did not really suffer. The prophets, moreover, had spoken their prophecies under the inspiration of the Angels who made the world." All of these doctrines proceeded from circles who believed in the mystical Christ, and are common to many other systems ; if Irenaeus had only told us the history of the document which he was summarizing and glossing, if he had but copied it verbally, how much labour would he have saved posterity ! True, he may have been copying from Justin's controversial writings, and Justin had already done some of the summarizing and commenting; but in any case a single paragraph of the original would have given us a better ground on which to form a judgment than all the paraphrazing and rhetoric of these two ancient worthies who so cordially detested the Gnostics.

Fortunately Hippolytus, who came later, is more The Great correct in his quotations, and occasionally copies verbally portions of the MSS. which had come into his hands. One of these he erroneously attributes to " Simon " himself, presumably because he considered it the oldest Gnostic MS. in his possession; most critics, however, consider it a later form of the Gnosis than the system summarized by Irenseus, but there is nothing to warrant this assumption. By this time the legend that " Simon " was the first heretic had become " history " for the hseresiologists, and no doubt Hippolytus felt himself fully justified in ascribing the contents of the MS. to one whom he supposed to be the oldest leader of the Gnosis.

The title of the MS. was The Great Announce ment, probably a synonym for The Gospel, in the Basilidian sense of the term ; and it opened with the following words : " This is the Writing of the Revelation of Voice-and-Name from Thought, the Great Power, the Boundless. Wherefore shall it be sealed, hidden, concealed, laid in the Dwelling of which the Universal Root is the Foundation." The Dwelling is said to be man, the temple of the Holy Spirit. The symbol of the Boundless The Hidden Power and Universal Root was Fire. Fire was conceived as being of a twofold nature — the concealed and the manifested ; the concealed parts of the Fire are hidden in the manifested, and the manifested produced by the concealed. The manifested side of the Fire has all things in itself which a man can perceive of things visible, or which he unconsciously fails to perceive ; whereas the concealed side is everything which one can conceive as intelligible, even though it escape sensation, or which a man fails to conceive.

Before we come to the direct quotation, however, Hippolytus treats us to a lengthy summary of the Gnostic exposition before him, from which we may take the following as representing the thought of the writer of the MS. less erroneously than the rest. " Of all things that are concealed and manifested, the Fire which is above the heavens is the treasureThe Fire house, as it were a great Tree from which all flesh is nourished. The manifested side of the Fire is the trunk, branches, leaves, and the outside bark. All these parts of the great Tree are set on fire from the all-devouring flame of the Fire and des troyed. But the fruit of the Tree, if its imaging has been perfected and it takes shape of itself, is placed in the store-house (or treasure), and not cast into the Fire. For the fruit is produced to be placed in the store-house, but the husk to be committed to the Fire ; that is to say, the trunk, which is generated not for its own sake but for that of the fruit."

This symbolism is of great interest as revealing points of contact with the " Trees " and " Treasures " of the elaborate systems recoverable from the Coptic Gnostic works, and also with the line of tradition of the Chaldsean and Zoroastrian Logia, which were the favourite study of so many of the later Platonic school. The fruit of the Fire-tree and the " Flower of Fire" are the symbols of (among other things) the man immortal, the garnered spiritual consciousness of the man-plant ; but the full interpretation of this graphic symbolism would include both the genesis of the cosmos and the divinizing of man. Man (teaches the Gnosis we are endeavouring to recover from Hippolytus) is subject to generation and suffering so long as he remains in potentiality; but, once that his "imaging forth" is accomplished, he becomes like unto God, and, freed from the bonds of suffering and birth, he attains perfection. But to our

quotation from The Great Announcement, taken apparently from the very beginning of the treatise, immediately following the superscription : " To you, therefore, I say what I say, and write what I write. And the writing is this: " Of the universal ^Eons there are two growths, without beginning or end, springing from one The Root, which is the Power Silence invisible, inapprehensible. Of these one appears from above, which is the Great Power, the Universal Mind, ordering all things, male ; and the other from below, the Great Thought (or Conception), female, producing all things. " Hence matching each other, they unite and manifest the Middle Space, incomprehensible Air [Spirit], without beginning or end. In this [Air] is the [second] Father who sustains and nourishes all things which have beginning and end.

"This [Father] is He who has stood, stands and will stand, a male-female power, like the pre-existing Boundless Power, which has neither beginning nor end, existing in oneness. It was from this Boundless Power that Thought, which had previously been hidden in oneness, first proceeded and became twain. " He [the Boundless] was one ; having her in Himself, He was alone. Yet was He not ' first,' though ' pre-existing,' for it was only when He was manifested to Himself from Himself that there was a ' second.' Nor was He called Father before [Thought] called Him Father. "As, therefore, producing Himself by Himself, He manifested to Himself His own Thought, so also His manifested Thought did not make the [manifested — the second] Father, but contemplating Him hid him — that is, His power — in herself and is male-female, Power and Thought.

" Hence they match each other, being one ; for there is no difference between Power and Thought. From the things above is discovered Power, and from those below Thought. "Thus it comes to pass that that which is mani fested from them, though one, is found to be two, male-female, having the female in itself. Equally so is Mind in Thought; they really are one, but when separated from each other they appear as two." So much for The Great Announcement of "Simon." That some document may yet be discovered which will throw fresh light on the subject is not an impossibility; in the meantime we can reserve our judgment, and regard all positive statements that "Simon" was the "first-born son of Satan" as foreign to the question.

ONE of the teachers of the " Simonian " Gnosis who was singled out by Justin for special mention, because of his having led " many " away, even as Marcion was gaining an enormous following in Justin's own time, is Menander, a native, we are told, of the Samaritan town Capparatea. The notice in Justin shows us that Menander was a man of a past generation, and that he was specially famous because of his numerous following. We know that the dates of this period are exceedingly obscure even for Justin, our earliest authority. For instance, writing about 150 A.D., he says that Jesus lived 150 years before his time. His " Simon " and Menander dates are equally vague ; Menander may have lived a generation or four generations before Justin's time, or still earlier.

The centre of activity of Menander is said to have been at Antioch, one of the most important commercial Sis and literary cities of the Grseco-Roman world, on the highway of communication between East and West. He seems to have handed on the general outlines of the Gnosis ; especially insisting on the distinction between the God over all and the creative power or powers, the " forces of nature." Wisdom, he taught, was to be attained by the practical discipline of transcendental " magic " ; that is to say, the Gnosis was not to be attained by faith alone, but by definite endeavour and conscious striving along the path of cosmological and psychological science. Menander professed to teach a knowledge of the powers of

nature, and the way whereby they could be subjected to the purified human will ; he is also said to have claimed to be the Saviour sent down by the higher Powers of the spiritual world, to teach men the sacred knowledge whereby they could free themselves from the dominion of the lower Angels. It is, however, almost certain that Menander made no more claim to be the Saviour (in the Catholic meaning of the term) than did " Simon." The Saviour was the Logos, as we have seen above. The claim of the Gnostics was that a man might so perfect himself that he became a conscious worker with the Logos ; all those who did so, became " Christs," and as such were Saviours, but not in the sense of being the Logos Himself.

The neophyte on receiving " baptism," that is to say, on reaching a certain state of interior purification or enlightenment, was said to " rise from the dead " ; thereafter, he " never grew old and became immortal," that is to say, he obtained possession of the unbroken consciousness of his spiritual ego. Menander was especially opposed to the materialistic doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and this was made a special ground of complaint against him by the Patristic writers of the subsequent centuries. The followers of Menander were called Menandrists, and we can only regret that no record has been left of {hem and their writings. As they seem to have been centralized at Antioch — seeing that tradition assigns the founding of the Church of Antioch to Paul, and assigns to it Peter as its first bishop ; seeing again that the " withstanding to the

face " incident is placed by the Acts tradition in the same city — it may be that their writings would have thrown some light on these obscure traditions. I would, however, suggest that Mainandros should be placed far earlier than " Simon," and that we should see in him one of the earliest links between Gnosticism and the Magian tradition. It may be even that the Gnostics traced the tradition of their aeon-lore to this disciple of the Magi, for the root of their aeonology is to be found in the Zoroastrian Amshaspends, the personal emanations of Ahuramazda, as Mills and others have shown; though I myself would seek the origin of the aeon-doctrine in Egypt.

regarded as the founder of the Syrian Gnosis, but The Chain of there is every reason to suppose that Gnosticism was widespread in Syria prior to his time. Justin Martyr (Trypho, xxxv.), writing between 150 and 160, speaks of the Satornilians as a very important body, for he brackets them with the Marcians ( ? Marcionites), Basilidians and Valentinians, the most important schools of the Gnosis in his time. Saturninus, Basilides and Valentinus were separated from each other respectively by at least a generation, and Saturninus may thus be placed somewhere about the end of the first and the beginning of the second century ; but this assignment of date rests entirely upon the Patristic statements that Menander was the

teacher of Saturninus, Saturninus of Basilides, and Basilides of Valentinus. It is, however, not improb able that, with regard to the first two, a general similarity of doctrine alone was sufficient reason for the hseresiologists to father the origin of Saturninus' system upon Menander himself, whereas in reality a generation or two may have elapsed between them, and they may have never as a matter of fact met face to face. Saturninus is said to have taught at Antioch, but Asceticism. (as is almost the invariable case with the Gnostic doctors) we have no information as to his nationality or the incidents of his life. He was especially dis tinguished for his rigid asceticism, or encratism. His followers abstained from marriage and from animal food of all kinds, and the rigidity of their mode of life attracted many zealous adherents. Salmon says that Saturninus seems to have been the first to have introduced encratism " among those who called themselves Christians." Protestant theologians especially regard encratism as a heretical practice; but there seems no sufficient reason for assuming that so common a feature of the religious life can be traced to any particular teacher.

Doctrines °f *s unf ornately exceedingly defective ; the short summary of Irenseus is presumably based on, or a copy of, the lost Compendium of Justin. This is all the more regrettable as fuller information would have probably enabled us to trace its connection with the " Ophite " and " Barbelo " developments, and to define the relations of all three to thet Gnosticism of Basilides and Valentinus. The main features are of the same nature as those of the " Simonian " and Menandrian Gnosis ; we should, however, always bear in mind that these early systems, instead of being germinal, or simple expressions, may have been elaborate enough. The mere fact that Irengeus gives a summary which presents comparatively simple features, is no guarantee that the systems themselves may not have been full and carefully worked out expositions. We may with safety regard the summary of the bishop of Lyons as a rough indication of heads of docHne, as a catalogue of subjects deprived of their content. Thus we learn that Saturninus taught the Unknown Father ; the great intermediate hierarchies, arch angels, angels, .and powers ; the seven creative spheres and their rulers ; the builders of the universe and the fashioners of man. There were numerous inimical hierarchies and their rulers, and a scheme of regeneration whereby a World-saviour in the apparent form of man, though not really a man, brings about not only the defeat of the evil powers, but also rescues all who have the lightspark within them, from the powers of the creative hierarchies, among whom was placed the Yahweh of the Jews. The Jewish scriptures were imper fect and erroneous; some prophecies being inspired by the creative angels, but others by the evil powers.

The most interesting feature of the system which Irenseus has preserved for us, is the myth of the creation of man by the angels, or rather the fabri- cation of man's external envelope by the hierarchies of the builders. The making of man was on this wise. A shining ima£e or tyPe was snown by the Logos to the demiurgic angels ; but when they were unable to seize hold upon it, for it was withdrawn immediately, they said to one another : " Let us make man according to [this] image and likeness." They accordingly endeavoured to do so, but the naturepowers could only evolve an envelope or plasm, which could not stand upright, but lay on the ground helpless and crawling like a worm. Then the Power Above, in compassion, sent forth the life-spark, and the plasm rose upright, and limbs developed and were knit together, that is to say, it hardened or became denser as race succeeded race ; and so the body of man was evolved, and the light-spark, or real man, tabernacled in it. This light-spark hastens back after death to those of its own nature, and the rest of the elements of the body are dissolved.

Here we have in rough suggestion the same theory of the evolution of the bodies of the early races as we find advanced, from totally different sources and an entirely different standpoint, by a number of modern writers on theosophic doctrines — and, therefore, we all the more regret that the orthodox prejudices of Irenaeus or his informant have treated Saturninus and his " heresy " with so scant notice. THE task we have now to attempt is, by far the most difficult which can be undertaken by the student The ., c of Patristic Gnosticism. When we have the name fche Subject. of an individual teacher to guide us, there is at least a point round which certain ideas and state ments may be grouped; but when we have no such indications, but only scraps of information, or summaries of " some say " and " others maintain," as in Irenseus ; or vague designations of widespread schools of various periods, as in Hippolytus; when further we reflect that among such surroundings we are face to face with one of the main streams of evolving Gnosticism, and realize the complete absence of any definite landmarks, where all should have been carefully surveyed — a feeling almost of despair comes over even the most enthusiastic student.

It has been supposed that up to the time of Irenaeus Gnostic documents were freely circulated ; but that by the time of Hippolytus (that is to say, after the lapse of a generation or more) orthodoxy had made such headway that the Gnostic documents were withdrawn from circulation and hidden, and that this accounts for the glee of Hippolytus, who taunts the Gnostics with his possession of some of their secret MSS. I am, however, convinced that the most recondite and technical treatises of the Gnostics were never circulated; the adherents of the Gnosis were too much imbued with the idea of a "secret doctrine" and grades of initiation to blazon their inner tenets forth on the house-tops. Also I doubt exceedingly whether these inter twined schools and phases of doctrine were separated from one another in any very precise fashion, or that the Basilidians, Valentinians, and the rest, distinguished themselves by such designations. Gnosticism was a living thing, no crystallized system or dead orthodoxy ; each competent student thought out the main features of the Gnosis in his own fashion, and generally phrased it in his own terms.

In treating this part of our essay also another difficulty presents itself; we are writing for those who are presumably but slightly acquainted with the subject, and who would only be confused by a mass of details. It is, however, precisely these details which are of interest and importance, and therefore a summary must at best be exceedingly imperfect and liable to misconstruction. We have thus to set up our finger-posts as best we may. As stated above, the term "Ophite" is exceedingly heTerm^ erroneOus ; it does not generally describe the schools of which we are treating; it was not used by the adherents of the schools themselves, who mostly preferred the term Gnostic ; even where the symbolism of the serpent enters into the exposition of their systems, it is by no means the characteristic feature. In brief, this term, which originated in the fallacy of taking a very small part for the whole — a favourite trick of the haeresiologist, whose main weapon was to exaggerate a minor detail into a main characteristic — has been used as a vague designation

for all exposition of Gnostic doctrine which could not be ascribed to a definite teacher. It is in this foundling asylum, so to say, that we must look for the general outlines which form the basis of the teachings of even Basilides and Valentinus, each of whom, like the rest of the Gnostics, modified the general tradition in his own peculiar fashion. This " Ophite " Gnosticism is said by Philaster to be pre-Christian; Irenseus, after detailing a system, which Theodoret when copying from him calls " Ophite," says that it was from the Valentinian school. Celsus, the Pagan philosopher, in his True Word, writing about the third quarter of the second century, makes no distinction between the rest of the Christian world and those whom Origen, almost a century afterwards, in his refutation of Celsus, calls " Ophiani."

The latest criticism is of opinion that Philaster has blundered, but the statement is sufficient evidence that there was a body of pre-Christian Gnosis, that the stream flowed unbrokenly and in ever-increasing volume during the first two centuries, and that the erroneous designation " Ophite " still marks out one of its main channels. The serpent-symbol played a great part in the Mysteries of the ancients, especially in Greece, Egypt, The Serpent and Phoenicia; thence we can trace it back to Syria, Babylonia, and farther East to India, where it still survives and receives due explanation. It figured forth the most intimate processes of the generation of the universe and of man, and also of the mystic birth. It was the glyph of the creative power, and in its

lowest form was debased into a phallic emblem. Physical procreation and the processes of conception are lower manifestations of the energizing of the great creative will and the evolutionary world -process. But the one is as far removed from the other, as man's body is from the body of the universe, as man's animal desire from the divine will of deity. The mysteries of sex were explained in the adyta of the ancient temples ; and naturally enough the attempt to get behind the great passion of mankind was fraught with the greatest peril. A knowledge of the mystery led many to asceticism ; a mere curious prying into the matter led to abuse. Illumina tion, seership, and spiritual knowledge, were the reward of the pure in body and mind; sexual excess and depravity punished the prying of the unfit. This explains one of the most curious phenomena in religious history; the bright and dark sides are almost invariably found together; whenever an attempt is made to shed some light on the mystery of the world and of man, the whole nature is quickened, and if the animal is the stronger, it becomes all the more uncontrolled owing to the quickening. Thus we find that some obscure groups of dabblers in the mystery-tradition fell into grave errors, not only of theory but of practice, and that Patristic writers of the subsequent centuries tried by every means to exaggerate this particular into a general charge against " error " ; whereas, as a matter of fact, it is in the writings of the Gnostics themselves that we find the severest condemnation of such abuses.

As man was generated in the womb from a " serpent " and an " egg," so was the universe ; but the serpent of the universe was the Great Power, the Mighty Whirlwind, the Vast Vortex, and the egg was the All-Envelope of the world system, the primordial " fire-mist." The serpent was thus the glyph of the Divine Will, the Divine Reason, the Mind of Deity, the Logos. The egg was the Thought, the Conception, the Mother of All. The germinal universe was figured as a circle with a serpent lying diagonally along its field, or twined a certain number of times round it. This serpentine force fashioned the universe, and fashioned man. It created him; and yet he in his turn could use it for creation, if he would only cease from generation. The Caduceus, or Rod of Mercury, and the Thyrsus in the Greek Mysteries, which conducted the soul from life to death, and from death to life, figured forth the serpentine power in man, and the path whereby it would carry the " man " aloft to the height, if he would but cause the " Waters of the Jordan " to " flow upwards."

The serpent of Genesis, the serpent-rod of Moses, and the uplifting of the brazen serpent in the wilderness, were promptly seized upon by Jewish Gnostics as mythological ideas similar to the myths of the Mysteries. To give the reader an insight into their methods of mystical exegesis, which looked to an inner psychological science, we may here append their interpretation of what may be called " The Myth of the Going-forth." The Myth was common to a number of schools, but Hippolytus ascribes it to an otherwise unknown school called the Peratae, supposed to mean TransThe Myth cendentalists, or those who by means of the Going-forth. Gnosis had "passed beyond" or "crossed over." Thus then they explained the Exodus-myth. Egypt is the body; all those who identify them selves with the body are the ignorant, the Egyptians. To " come forth " out of Egypt is to leave the body; and to pass through the Red Sea is to cross over the ocean of generation, the animal and sensual nature, which is hidden within the blood. Yet even then they are not safe ; crossing the Red Sea they enter the Desert, the intermediate state of the doubting lower mind. There they are attacked by the "gods of destruction," which Moses called the " serpents of the desert," and which plague those who seek to escape from the "gods of genera tion." To them Moses, the teacher, shows the true serpent crucified on the cross of matter, and by its means they escape from the Desert and enter the Promised Land, the realm of the spiritual mind, where there is the Heavenly Jordan, the Worldsoul. When the Waters of the Jordan flow downwards, then is the generation of men; but when they flow upward, then is the creation of the gods. Jesus (Joshua) was one who had caused the Waters of the Jordan to flow upwards.

Many of the ancient myths had a historicolegendary background, but their use as myths, or religious and mystic romances, had gradually effaced the traces of history. Those instructed in the Mysteries were practised in the science of mythology, and thus the learned Gnostics at once perceived the mythological nature of the Exodus and its adapta bility to a mystical interpretation. The above instance is a very good example of this method of exegesis ; a great deal of such interpretation, however, was exceedingly strained, when not decidedly silly. The religious mind of the times loved to exercise its ingenuity on such interpretations, and the differ ence between Gnostic exegesis and that of the subsequent Orthodox, is that the former tried to discover soul-processes in the myths and parables of scripture, whereas the Orthodox regarded a theological and dogmatic interpretation as alone legitimate.

the " silliest " element which entered into such pious Pseudophilology. pastimes was the method of word-play, or pseudophilology, which is found everywhere in the writings of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Indians, Jews, and Greeks. Among the Gnostic and Patristic writers, therefore, we find the most fantastic derivations of names, which were put forward in support of theo logical doctrines, but which were destitute of the most rudimentary philological accuracy. Men, such as Plato, who in many other respects were giants of intellect, were content to resort to such methods. It is, however, pleasant to notice that the nature of the soul and the truths of the spiritual life were the chief interest for such ancient "philologists," and not the grubbing up of " roots " ; nevertheless, we should be careful when detecting the limitation of such minds in certain directions, to guard against the error of closing our eyes to the limitations of

our own modern methods in directions where the ancients have done much good work. We will now proceed to give a brief sketch of the main outlines of one of the presentations of general Gnostic ideas preserved by Irenseus.

IN the Unutterable Depth were two Great Lights, The the First Man, or Father, and his Son, the Second Creation. Man; and also the Holy Spirit, the First Woman, or Mother of all living. Below this triad was a sluggish mass composed of the four great " elements," called Water, Darkness, Abyss, and Chaos. The Universal Mother brooded over the Waters; ena moured of her beauty, the First and Second Man produced from her the third Great Light, the Christ ; and He, ascending above, formed with the First and Second Man the Holy Church. This was the righthand birth of the Great Mother. But a Drop of Light fell downwards to the left hand into chaotic matter ; this was called Sophia, or Wisdom, the TTor£c£- Mother. The Waters of the zEther were thus set in motion, and formed a body for Sophia (the Light-^Eon), viz., the Heaven-sphere. And she, freeing herself, left her body behind, and ascended to the Middle Region below her Mother (the Universal Mother), who formed the boundary of the Ideal Universe.

By her mere contact with the Space- Waters she had aleady generated a son, the chief Creative Power of the Sensible World, who retained some of the

Light-fluid ; this son was laldabaoth (said by some to mean the Child of Chaos), who in his turn produced a son, and he another, until there were seven in all, the great Formative Powers of the Sensible Universe. And they were " fighters," and quarrelled much with their fathers. And by means of this interplay of forces on matter came forth the "mind," which was " serpent-formed," and " spirit," and " soul," and all things in the world. And laldabaoth was boastful and arrogant, and exclaimed : " I am Father and God, and beyond me is none other." But Sophia hearing this cried out to her son : " Lie not, laldabaoth, for above thee is the Father of All, the First Man, and Man the Son of Man." And all the Powers were astonished at the word ; but laldabaoth, to call off their attention, cried out : " Let us make ' man ' after our image." So they made " man," and he lay like a worm on the ground, until they brought him to laldabaoth, who breathed into him the " breath of life," that is to say the Light-fluid he had received from Sophia, and so emptied himself of his Light. And " man " receiving it, immediately gave thanks to the First Man and disregarded his fabricators (the Elohim).

Whereupon laldabaoth (Yahweh) was jealous and planned to deprive Adam of the Light-spark by forming " woman." And the six creative powers were enamoured of Eve, and by her generated sons, namely, the angels. And so Adam again fell under the power of laldabaoth and the Elohim ; then Sophia or Wisdom sent the " serpent " (" mind ") into the Paradise of laldabaoth, and Adam and Eve listened to its wise councils, and so once more " man " was freed from the dominion of the Creative Power, and transgressed the ordinance of ignorance of any power higher than himself imposed by laldabaoth. Whereupon laldabaoth drove them out of his Paradise, and together with them the " serpent " or " mind " ; but Sophia would not permit the Lightspark to descend, and so withdrew it to avoid profanation. And " mind " (the lower mind) the serpent-formed, the first product of laldabaoth, brought forth six sons, and these are the " dsemonial " powers, which plague men because their father was cast down for their sake.

Now Adam and Eve before the fall had spiritual bodies, like the " angels " born of this Eve ; but after their fall, down from the Paradise of laldabaoth, their bodies grew more and more dense, and more and more languid, and became " coats of skin," till finally Sophia in compassion restored to them the sweet odour of the Light, and they knew that they carried death about with them. And so a recollection of their former state came back to them, and they were patient, knowing that the body was put on only for a time. The system then goes on to grapple with the legends of Genesis touching Cain and Noah, etc., and the Old Testament record generally, with moderate success ; the main idea being that the prophets were inspired by one or other of the seven Elohim, but occasionally Sophia had succeeded in impressing them with fragmentary revelations about the First Man and the Christ above.

The rest of the system is devoted to the question of the scheme of regeneration and the interpretation Christology. of the Mystery-myths. Sophia, or Wisdom, finding no rest in heaven or earth, implored the help of the Great Mother, and she in compassion begged of the First Man that the Christ should be sent to help her. And then Wisdom, knowing that her brother and spouse was coming to her aid, announced his coming by John, and by means of the " baptism of repentance " Jesus was made ready to receive him, as in a clean vessel. And so the Christ descended through the seven spheres, likening himself unto the Rulers, and draining them of their power, the Light they had retained all flowing back to him. And first of all the Christ clothed his sister Sophia with the Lightvesture, and they rejoiced together, and this is the mystical " marriage " of the " bridegroom and the bride." Now Jesus, having been born of a "virgin" by the working of God (in other words, after the spiritual " second birth " had been attained by the ascetic Jesus), Christ and Sophia, the one enfolding the other, descended upon him and he became Jesus Christ.

Then it was that he began to do mighty works, to heal, and to proclaim the Unknown Father, and Jesus, profess himself openly the Son of the First Man. Whereupon the Powers and especially laldabaoth took measures to slay him, and so Jesus, the man, was " crucified " by them, but Christ and Sophia mounted aloft to the Incorruptible ^Eon. But Christ did not forget the one in whom He had tabernacled, and so sent a power which raised up his body, not indeed his gross physical envelope, but a psychic and spiritual body. And those of his disciples who saw this body, thought he was risen in his physical frame, but to certain of them who were capable of receiving it, he explained the mystery, and taught them many other mysteries of the spiritual life. And Jesus now sits at the right hand of his father, laldabaoth, and receives the souls who have received these mysteries. And in proportion as he enriches himself with souls, in such measure is laldabaoth deprived of power ; so that he is no longer able to send back holy souls into the world of reincarnation, but only those of his own substance ; and the consummation of all things will be when all the Light shall once more be gathered up and stored in the treasures of the Incorruptible ^Eon.

Such is the account of this by no means absurd scheme of the Gnosis preserved to us in the barbarous Latin translation of Irenaeus' summary. That the original system was far more elaborate we may assume from the now known method of Irenseus to make a very brief summary of the tenets he criticized. The main features of the christological and soteriological part of the system is identical with the main outlines of the system of the Pistis Sophia, and of one of the treatises of the Codex Brucianus. This is a very important point, and indicates that the dates of these treatises need not necessarily be later than the time of the bishop of Lyons, but the consideration of this important subject must be reserved for the sequel. Interesting again is it to remark the influence of the Orphic,

Pythagorsean, Platonic, and Hermetic tradition in the cosmological part, and to observe how both the Hellenic and Jewish myths find a common element in the Chaldsean tradition. HIPPOLYTUS devotes the fifth book of his Refutation to the " Ophites," who, ho we ver, all call themselves followers of the Gnosis, and not " Ophites," as explained above; he seems to regard them as the most ancient stream of the Gnosis. After treating of three great schools, to which we shall subsequently refer, he specially singles out for notice a certain Justinus, who is mentioned by no other hseresiologist. This account of Hippolytus is all the more important, seeing that the system with which the name of Justinus is associated, represents apparently one of the oldest forms of the Gnosis of which we have record. This has been disputed by Salmon, but to my mind his arguments are unconvincing ; the fact that the Justinian school, in its mystical exegesis, makes no reference to the texts of the New Testament collection, although freely quoting from the Old, should decide the point. One short saying is referred to Jesus, but it is nowhere found in the canonical texts.

This circle had a large literature, from which Hippolytus selects a single volume, The Book of Baruch, as giving the most complete form of the system. The members were bound by an oath of secrecy not to reveal the tenets of the school, and the form of the oath is given. The cosmogony is based on a Syrian creation-myth, a variant of which is preserved by Herodotus (iv. 8-10), in which Hercules (the Sun-god) plays the prin cipal part, and a stratum of which is also found in Genesis. The myth has intimate points of contact with Chaldsean and ancient Semitic traditions. The following is the outline of the system. There are three principles of the Universe : (i.) The Book of The Good, or all-wise Deity; (ii.) the Father, or Spirit, the creative power, called Elohim; and (iii.) the World-Soul, symbolized as a woman above the middle and a serpent below, called Eden. From Elohim (a plural used as a collective) and Eden twenty-four cosmic powers or angels come forth, twelve follow the will of the Father-Spirit, and twelve the nature of the Mother-Soul. The lower twelve are the World-Trees of the Garden of Eden. The Trees are divided into four groups, of three each, representing the four Rivers of Eden. The Trees are evidently of the same nature as the cosmic forces which are represented by the Hindus as having their roots or sources above and their branches or streams below. The name Eden means Pleasure or Desire.

Thus the whole creation comes into existence, and finally from the animal part of the Mother-Soul are generated animals, and from the human part men. The upper part of the Garden is called the "most beautiful Earth"; that is to say, Cosmic Earth, and the body of man is formed of the finest. Man having thus been formed, Eden and Elohlm depute their powers unto him ; the World-Soul bestows on him the soul, and the World-Spirit infuses into him the spirit. Thus were men and women constituted. And all creation was subjected to the four groups of the twelve powers of the World-Soul, according to their cycles, as they move round as in a circular dance But when the man-stage was reached, the turningpoint of the world — process, Elohim, the Spirit, ascended into the celestial spaces, taking with him his own twelve powers. And in the highest part of the heaven he beheld the Great Light shining through the Gate (? the physical sun), which led to the Light-world of The Good. And he who had hitherto thought himself Lord of Creation, perceived that there was one above him, and cried aloud: "Open me the gates that I may acknowledge the [true] Lord; for I considered myself to be the Lord." And a voice came forth, saying : " This is the Gate of the Lord ; through this the righteous enter in." And leaving his angels in the highest part of the heavens, the World-Father entered in and sat down at the right hand of the Good One.

And Elohim desired to recover by force his spirit which was bound to men, from further degradation; but the Good Deity restrained him, for now that he had ascended to the Light-realm he could work no destruction. And the Soul (Eden) perceiving herself abandoned by Elohim, tricked herself out so as to entice him back ; but the Spirit would not return to the arms of Mother Nature (now that the ''middle point of evolution was passed). Thereupon, the spirit that was left behind in man, was plagued by the soul; for the spirit or mind desired to follow its Father into the height, but the soul, incited by the powers of the Mother — Soul, and especially by the first group who rule over sexual passion and excess, gave way to adulteries and even greater vice; and the spirit in man was thereby tormented.

Now the angel, or power, of the World-Soul, which Baruch. especially incited the human soul to such misdeeds, was the third of the first group, called Naas (Heb. Nachasli), the serpent, the symbol of animal passion. And Elohim, seeing this, sent forth the third of his own angels, called Baruch, to succour the spirit in man. And Baruch came and stood in the midst of the Trees (the powers of the WorldSoul), and declared unto man that of all the Trees of the Garden of Eden he might eat the fruit, but of the Tree Naas, he might not, for Naas had transgressed the law, and had given rise to adultery and unnatural intercourse. And Baruch had also appeared to Moses and the prophets through the spirit in man, that the people might be converted to the Good One ; but Naas had invariably obscured his precepts through the soul in man. And not only had Baruch taught the prophets of the Hebrews, but also the prophets of the uncircumcised. Thus, for instance, Hercules among the Syrians had been instructed, and his twelve labours were his conflicts with the twelve powers of the World-Soul. Yet Hercules also had finally failed,

for after seeming to accomplish his labours, he is vanquished by Omphale, or Venus, who divests him of his power by clothing him with her own robe, the power of Eden below. Last of all Baruch appeared unto Jesus, a shepherd boy, son of Joseph and Mary, a child of Christology. twelve years. And Jesus remained faithful to the teachings of Baruch, in spite of the enticements of Naas. And Naas in wrath caused him to be " crucified," but he, leaving on the " tree " the body of Eden — that is to say, the psychic body or soul, and the gross physical body — and committing his spirit or mind to the hands of his Father (Elohim), ascended to the Good One. And there he beholds " whatever things eye hath not seen and ear hath not heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man " ; and bathes in the ocean of life-giving water, no longer in the water below the firmament, the ocean of generation in which the physical and psychic bodies are bathed. This ocean of generation is, of course, the same as the Brahmanical and Buddhistic samsdra, the ocean of rebirth.

Hippolytus tries to make out that Justinus was a very vile person, because he fearlessly pointed out one of the main obstacles to the spiritual life, and the horrors of animal sensuality ; but Justinus evidently preached a doctrine of rigid asceticism, and ascribed the success of Jesus to his triumphant purity.

PRIOR to the section on Justinus, Hippolytus treats of three schools under the names Naasseni, Peratae, and Sethians or Sithians. All three schools appa rently belong to the same cycle, and the first two present features so identical as to make it highly probable that the Naassene work and the two Peratic treatises from which Hippolytus quotes, pertain to the same Gnostic circle. Although the name Naassene is derived from the Hebrew Nachash, a serpent, Hippolytus does not call the Naassenes Ophites, but Gnostics ; in fact, he reserves the name Ophite for a small body to which he also gives (viii. 20) the names Cainites and Nochaitse (?Nachaitae from Nachasli), and considers them of not sufficient importance for further mention.